LeadingAnswers: Leadership and Agile Project Management Blog

Hiring for an Agile Team

What characteristics do you look for when hiring for an agile team? Our next Calgary APLN meeting is a panel discussion on the topic and looks set be a great one.

 

Some broad characteristics identified in the planning emails for the panel include:

Characteristics of a high performing team:

• Collaborative / effective communicator
• Willing to cross boundaries
• Work side by side / discuss work out problems real time
• A lot of face to face communication required
• Humility - accept feedback
• Able to compromise / support team decisions
• Able to reflect back on events and provide insights (critical for retrospectives)
• Always looking to improve
• Think about things rather than blinding moving forward…..
• Pragmatic - Knows what “just” enough is, Do what it takes
• Adaptive / Flexible - Change direction as required
• Takes initiative / self motivated
• Willing to try new things (may be evident by a desire for continuous learning)
• Can figure out the most important thing to do next. Doesn’t need to be told what to do.
• Risk tolerant – able to make a decision and act based on the information known
• Able to work in fast pace / intense
• Willing to work in a team room – little privacy, very noisy, no prestige
• Can challenge ideas in a respectful manner
• Work incrementally - Willing to revisit work
• Accepting that the big picture will evolve over time

Detecting these characteristics:

• Behavioural descriptive questions – tell me a time when….give me an example of….
• Interests / desires may be evidence of the characteristics
• Informal references from prior projects / peers etc.
• Auditions – pairing on an activity
• Trial periods

The panel members have also identified a set of technical requirements based on the various roles (developer, test, architect, etc), but I am most excited about who we have on our panel.

 

Jennitta Andrea (Tester)
Jennitta has been actively engaged on a variety of different agile projects in Calgary as a hands-on practitioner (analyst, tester), consultant (retrospectives, assessments), and instructor. Her writing and conference presentations have brought international recognition as a thought leader in the area of agile requirements and test driven development.

Gerard Meszaros (Solution Architect)
Gerard is an independent consultant specializing in coaching agile teams. He is the author of the Jolt Productivity Award winning book "xUnit Test Patterns - Refactoring Test Code" and frequently speaks at agile conferences.

John Johnston (Business Analyst)
John is a BA and Agile coach at ThoughtWorks. He is particularly interested in finding ways to make agile and user centered design work together. Right now he wants to know more about Lean and Kanban systems.

Janice Aston (Project Manager)
Janice is an Agile project manager and coach currently working as an independent consultant. She is passionate about building high performing teams and delivering business value.

Dustin Aleksiuk (Developer)
Dustin is a Calgary independent software developer and consultant. He has been using agile methods in various roles for the last 9 years.

 

From the planning emails back and forth for the event it is apparent we agree on the main points and I find myself thinking “Yes, that’s right, person really gets it”. So, for my next project I really want a team comprised of the panel participants. Which, given their demand might be a bit tricky.

 

Anyway, if you can, come and hear from a panel of experts on Wednesday 28 at the Calgary APLN meeting. Get a more in depth discussion about the attributes for each role, ask questions and share your experiences.

 

Update: Here are the notes from the session: Download Hiring for an Agile Team

Zombieland Project Management

Zombies and Project Managers; to many people the images are synonymous, fools blindly shuffling from one goal to the next. Not too smart, but a major annoyance if you are trying to get somewhere, or get something done.

Yet, as a project manager I have a weakness for zombie films, they appeal to my inner urge to cut down those who impede progress or just don’t get it. I know you can not really do that, and these feelings are more likely a reflection on my inability to communicate effectively, but none the less, a socially acceptable demographic for outpourings of frustration seems to have wide appeal, and box office success.

So, other than some people thinking project managers are lumbering dullards, and this one occasionally thinking of chainsaws, what does the film Zombieland and project management have in common?

• The Insecurity Complex
• The Goal Obsession

In the film comedy Zombieland two mismatched characters team up to survive zombie attacks, find love and pursue a goal. Our hero is Columbus, a socially awkward young man who’s obsessions and aversions in normal life had made him a lonely misfit, now keep him alive in a time when most people have succumbed to zombies. His partner is Tallahassee a hard hitting, shoot first ask questions later, type guy who is driven by an overwhelming desire to find the world’s remaining supply of “Twinkie” cakes.

The Insecurity Complex

An Insecurity Complex is a common feeling for new project managers. Linda Hill describes it well in her book “On Becoming a Manager”. She explains how people who did well in technical and sales roles often struggle and experience “Self-Doubt” when first in a management position.

Scrum, Bikram Yoga and The Attention Economy

What do Scrum and Bikram Yoga have in common? They both cater for the attention economy. Humans derive a lot of their sense of security and confidence, what psychologist Albert Bandura calls “self-efficacy,” from predictable routines. Without these predictable routines we can feel uncomfortable and uncertain.

 

I was talking to a colleague, Mike McCullough, last week who was creating agile training materials and quick-start templates to help organizations adopt agile. I was teasing him on the irony of creating prescriptive templates to guide people through an adaptive process that should probably be tailored for each project. He agreed, but pointed out that definitive models (even if not optimal) are much easier to sell than open-end frameworks requiring adjustment and set-up.

 

This is true, known entities create buying confidence. Comforted by the certainty (or less uncertainty) of a well defined approach our mental search for predictability is satisfied. Plus, really, which is easier to explain and sell to sponsors:

1. We are adopting Scrum, it has two-week iterations, a Product Owner role, and work prioritized in a Product Backlog.
2. We will select a hybrid of agile and traditional approaches, based on project and organizational characteristics, and selectively add and subtract approaches based on stakeholder feedback and project performance.

 

Even if option 2 is better, it sounds so fuzzy and nebulous that frankly as a sponsor, I am not sure what I am buying into.

 

Scrum

At the heart of Scrum is a simple process, obviously a great deal of skill is required to make it successful in challenging environments, but the underlying model is simple and this is a great strength. Scrum is the fastest growing and most widely used agile method, due to this simplicity. It can be quickly described, the rules are clearly defined, and there is a certainty to the process guidelines that (regardless of whether they always really apply) satisfy our urge for completeness and certainty.

• There are clearly defined activities (Release Planning Meeting, Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review)
• Sprints are fixed time periods, traditionally 30 days, but now many teams use 2 weeks
• Only Certified Scrum Trainers can deliver Certified Scrum Master training courses

Bikram Yoga

Bikram Yoga is a form of hot-yoga developed by Bikram Choudhury. It caused some controversy when the 26 postures were pursued under copyright and wide-scale franchising occurred. The whole commercialization of yoga for personal profit seemed, well, un-yoga -ish and spawned the “Yoga, Inc” documentary and terms like “McYoga “.  Regardless of the controversy, it has been amazingly successful. With over 600 studios worldwide, it is the fastest growing form of yoga.

• All classes perform the same 26 Postures
• Classes are always 90 minutes in length and conducted at 104F
• Only certified Bikram instructors can run Bikram hot yoga classes

The Attention Economy...

Agile Business Conference 2009

I attended the Agile Business Conference in London this week and presented on Tracking Project Performance. I missed this conference last year and so it was especially good to catch up with people again and hear what they have been doing. Also, after working in London for six years, but then living in Canada for the last nine years, it is always interesting to see how things have changed since my last visit. This year it was video screens replacing all the paper billboards going up and down the escalators on the Underground that caught my eye.

 

The conference was very good, and had the general theme of “Agile Grown Up”, focussing on the organizational impacts of using agile. This may not have been as much interest to technical people, but was right up my street. On Tuesday there was a great session about agile at Nokia where 1800 software developers are using agile to develop the Symbian mobile phone platform. They are using a version of Dean Leffingwell’s “Agile Train” approach for scaling agile to such a large team and most agile practices, but not pair-programming or emerging architecture. However, the main emphasis was beyond the technical process scaling and more on the ongoing coaching, mentoring and training that is required for such a large undertaking. In a discussion with the presenter Simon Buck after the talk I learned that they aim for one full time coach/trainer for each set of 5 Scrum Teams (each about 7 people). Quite the undertaking.

PMBOK v4 and Agile mappings

For the attendees of my recent Las Vegas course, below is a link to the PMBOK v4 to Agile mappings we discussed. My previous course material mappings were based on PMBOK v3, and before that the 2000 edition, which are out of date now.

 

Quite a lot changed from the PMBOK v3 to v4; all the processes were renamed into the new verb-noun format. Six of the old processes were merged into four new ones, two processes were deleted, and two new ones added. So it seemed like time to redo the mappings and post them online this time.

 

Cautions

Process guidelines and templates are not an acceptable replacement for common sense, thought, dialog, or collaboration. A fool with a tool is still a fool, but can be especially dangerous since they give the impression that they have a potential solution to tricky problems. Beware of simply following any project guidelines that seem counter to your objectives.

 

So, why would you want to be mapping the PMBOK v4 to Agile techniques anyway?...

Calgary APLN Social

The Calgary Agile Project Leadership Network (Calgary APLN) 2009/2010 season kicks off this week with a social at the Barley Mill in Eau Claire, Thursday Oct 1, 4:30 – 6:30pm.

“To help build a vibrant Agile community in Calgary, we would like to invite you to a networking event. Come out and meet other Agile Leaders within Calgary, swap stories and share some laughs. Agile Recruiting has graciously sponsored the event by providing appetizers. Cash bar will be available.”

This is a chance to meet and chat to other people in the agile project leadership community in Calgary. We have a limited capacity so register to reserve a place. I hope to see you there.

Passion and Talent

Passion is infectious; we are drawn to people who are passionate about topics and goals. We share their excitement and feel the rush, it is authentic and attractive. You cannot really fake passion, it is the raw unfiltered outflow that makes it recognizable as genuine.

I have been entertained by friends who are passionate about chess, dance and bird watching even though I have little interest in these topics. Yet when brought alive by genuine enthusiasm it is interesting. I have been talked into crazy adventures by people buzzing with excitement. I have invested in companies, enthralled by the passion for a vision described by their founders. I am not alone, it is a fundamental human urge.

Passion for a cause is powerful and while we cannot manufacture it, we can learn to channel our own genuine passion to help on projects. By opening up on what you are passionate about we can bring enthusiasm into any endeavor. Yet, we should be aware that passion is independent from talent.

Talent, the measure of proficiency, often accompanies experts who love their craft. They are focused, passionate and accomplished at their art; think of the great musicians and painters, they have passion and talent.

I have a passion, but not much of a talent for mountain biking, this is not the best combination. I love to ride, but crash more than most and as I’m getting older take longer to heal than before. I need to develop my biking skills, yet while still keen and willing to get out I have plenty of opportunities to learn and improve (or get into more trouble.)

The good news in the work environment is that a little passion about a cause goes a long way. The idea of leaders having to be charismatic rock-stars to get people to follow them is a myth. Research by Jim Collins in “Good to Great” proved this repeatedly; the Level 5 Leaders, of the “Great” companies were more often described as “quiet” and “considered” than “flamboyant” or “outspoken”. There just needs to be the occasional sparks of unprocessed joy for a goal to keep people engaged and looking for that next glimpse of passion.

PMI Agile Launch Event

On Tuesday I was in Chicago for the PMI Agile Community of Practice launch event. It was hosted by Thoughtworks and kicked off by Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith. Jesse Fewell and I introduced the community and outlined the goals.

With getting on for half a million PMI members worldwide, many in the knowledge-worker domain, agile methods have a lot to offer this already huge community. It is set to get larger too, PMI member growth progresses at about 20% per year, and PMI research indicates there are up to 20 million people engaged in knowledge-worker projects worldwide.

The spread of agile ideas to the PMI is inevitable and already happening on many fronts. I was concerned that it would be adopted incorrectly, fail and then be dismissed. This is still a risk, but with the launch event at Agile 2009 and an open invitation to Agile Alliance members to get involved and drive the initiative, the hope is that the initiative will succeed.

For an event that proposed bringing agile and PMI groups together, there was surprisingly little conflict or debate. But, then I suppose those people opposed self-selected and chose not to attend. Besides, few people subscribe to a purely agile or purely traditional approach to all projects anyway. We have to be pragmatic and chose our approach based on project and organizational circumstances.

The “PMI-Agile Community of Practice” is a free to join group aimed at “Equipping PMI members with Agile knowledge and skills".  For more details see the community wiki.

Small Books on Big Ideas

Life is short, people are busy. We don’t get time to read as many books as we would like to. Yet we could probably miss a TV show now and again. Here are a couple of really short reads (1 hour or less) on the big ideas in leadership.

Leadership: A Practical Guide to Leadership Principles and Strategies - by Dan MacDonald and Carmen DeLisle.  

 

This super small book is a no frills summary of the transition from manager to leader. It covers:

Back Blogging Again

OK, I'm back and I really need to post here more often. Summers in Canada are so short that I try to pack a year’s worth of adventures into 3-4 short months. We (hopefully) still have plenty of summer left, but I intend to post more frequently as there is lots going on in the agile project management space too.

In a couple of weeks we have the Agile Conference in Chicago and I’m looking forward to the PMI-Agile Community Launch. (See this week’s GanttHead article). In September I’ll be teaching my 2 day class in Las Vegas (Sep. 14-15). In October I’ll be presenting at the Agile Business Conference in London (Oct 11- 15). Then training again in November in Savannah (Nov 7-11) and San Diego (Dec 12-16).

 

This summer’s silly idea was to try competitive mountain biking. A sport in which I quickly progressed beyond my ability and paid the penalty with crashes and injuries. So for now, I’m keeping the extreme to the projects and would like to thank Kelly Waters for pointing out that my site needed some long over due maintenance (one link was now an “off-topic” site.) Kelly runs the great site www.allaboutagile.com check it out if it is not on your regular list of sites.

Launch of the PMI Agile Community

The “PMI Agile Community” will be officially launched at the Agile 2009 Conference in Chicago, August 24. This has been made possible by Jesse Fewell and the strong team of volunteers pushing through the red tape of the PMI and the help from supportive PMI members.

For over eight years now I have been promoting taking agile principles to the PMI. In 2001-2003 my proposals for the PMI Global Congress conference (that were pretty derogatory of command and control approaches) were rejected. It was not until 2004 I smartened up and was successful in getting my paper (Using Agile Alongside the PMBOK) accepted and went to Anaheim to present at the PMI conference.  That was the only agile presentation that year at the conference, but year on year since, there have been more and more agile sessions at the PMI conferences. In 2007 when I met Jesse at the PMI Global Congress in Atlanta (where I presented on Developments in Agile Project Management) there were about 10 other agile related sessions.

This year I had decided to skip the Agile Conference, only because August is prime hiking, biking and climbing season in Canada’s short summer in the mountains. Yet, I cannot miss this launch; it has been so long coming, so I’m flying in for a couple of days for the community kick-off. I am glad to be attending, if only for a short time.

The PMI Agile Community is a grass-roots initiative between a group of Agilists and the Project Management Institute (PMI) to create a new Agile Community of Practice (CoP) within the PMI, with the stated purpose "to equip PMI members with Agile knowledge and skills". To read more about the PMI Agile Community see the Community Wiki. 

Thanks to the Scrum Alliance for sponsoring our launch event and the Agile Alliance for helping us kick this off at the best event of the year, the Agile Conference . I am looking forward to it.

2004 PMI Paper - Using Agile Alongside the PMBOK

2007 PMI Paper - Developments in Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management Viewed from Behavioral Science

Background
Earlier this year I attended an interesting talk by Tony Parrottino on Applied Behavior Analysis Science and posted a short write up. Recently I have had a couple of follow-on meetings with Tony and have become fascinated by the science of behaviour. I think it is a powerful, but under utilized resource for project managers, yet I am still trying to reconcile it with some other theories. Fortunately, Tony agreed to help outline some of the key concepts and clear up some issues.

1) Mike: Q: As a project manager I spend lots of time managing budgets and schedules, but in you say that in reality we can only hope to manage behaviour. Can you explain this?

1) Tony: A: Sure. Simply put, the “means” to all business results is “behavior” or what people do. That’s why we hire them – to produce these results. Money (budgets) for example is usually a “measure” of a result (selling value for example) or a behavior (labor cost for example). It’s not a result – we don’t actually make it, unless you’re a Counterfeiter? So if you think about it more precisely you really are “managing behavior” and the budget is really one “measure” of how well you are doing that. The same can be said about “schedules” or time in terms of managing a person’s behavior. If you’re doing that well the measure of “time” or what we call one dimension of productivity in business should improve. This is not a question of semantics either. This is a question about scientific precision and understanding what variables you have control over as a Project Manager – like behavior. Behavior Analysis Science helps managers understand how to “control” performer’s behaviors to positively enhance things like productivity and budgets. 

2) Q: Following an agile methodology approach, our team meets daily to briefly review work and issues. Everyone answers three questions: 1) What have you done since yesterday? What do you plan on working on today? What blockers or impediments do you have to progress? I recall you thought this was a sub-optimal set of questions; can you explain why, and suggest a better set?

2) A: Well Mike I apologize if I said these questions were “sub-optimal” – I didn’t mean to be so critical. This is another great question but requires an extremely lengthily answer to be complete, as it has several elements related to performance. So I will be general and brief in my answer and hope to make just a few points here. My first comment may sound strange but here it goes: “managers” tend to “over-emphasize” “asking questions of their performers” and also focusing on “removing” impediments. At the heart of performance management is the focus on not what people typically have to say, but what we want people to accomplish precisely and what we want people to do precisely. When we start there the data provided gives us objective information about how well any individual or team is performing or progressing. Also, when we focus on what we want and reinforce it we simply get it. If managers are finding they are spending a lot of time managing what they don’t want (like impediments, blockers, etc.) this is a strong sign of managing what we call “a deviation of performance”. This may not be obvious to most but I’m sure that every project manager has experienced a lot of spent time trying to manage what he doesn’t want? Just remember trying to remove what you don’t want will not ensure you will get what you do want! I would suggest if you feel there is value in asking daily questions to start with what precisely you want from your performers (results data preferably) and have clear objective measurable data on that performance. Then, here is one of my favorite questions I like to ask, after reviewing the data for progress; “How did you do that?” In this way you can reinforce the behaviors to accelerate the performance further. This may seem somewhat strange to most managers as most are constantly in problem solving mode and want to “remove” obstacles. If you find yourself doing this often I would recommend a review of your pinpoints and make sure they focus on what you want.

Assessing Your Emotional Capital

IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and IQ tests that attempt to measure intelligence are well known. However, IQ is not a good predictor of how successful you will be in life, or how effective and valued you will be at work.

Emotional Intelligence (EI), often measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), is a different measure that describes the ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups.

“Research shows convincingly that EQ is more important than IQ in almost every role and many times more important in leadership roles. This finding is accentuated as we move from the control philosophy of the industrial age to an empowering release philosophy of the knowledge worker age.” - Stephen Covey

So since software is a knowledge worker activity, and agile methods promote an empowering release philosophy, for leaders of agile projects EQ is of special importance. How can we measure our EQ? Well Martyn Newman’s Emotional Capital Inventory (ECI) is a great place to start. This online assessment scores participants against the 10 EQ dimensions of:

1. Self-Awareness
2. Self-Confidence
3. Self-Reliance
4. Self-Actualization
5. Assertiveness
6. Relationships Skills
7. Empathy
8. Self-Control
9. Flexibility
10. Optimism

LeadingAnswers.com readers are invited to take the short version of the assessment for free, just follow this link. Free Emotional Capital Inventory Test.

I recently read an early release copy of Martyn Newman’s “Emotional Capitalists: The New Leaders” book and was impressed. Several years ago I finally realized that successful projects are more about people and less about processes and tools. A Computer Science degree and 20 years of technical experience had not equipped me for the role of managing teams. Since then my studies have been focussed on the higher leverage area of people and team dynamics more than project management mechanics. You definitely need the mechanics to run projects, but usually the final outcome comes down to people.

Reuven Bar-On was amongst the pioneers to write about Emotional Intelligence and Daniel Goleman helped bring the subject to the business world with his Emotional Intelligence best seller. I liked these books and agreed with all the points raised, but often finished a book without a clear action plan for what I should start doing differently tomorrow.

What I like best about Emotional Capitalists is the practical nature of the advice given. Not only are the concepts explained clearly with entertaining stories, but each chapter is followed with a one page action plan summary, the advice is very accessible whereas some other books on EQ are more theoretical.

 

Bad News and Good News
The bad news is your IQ peaks in your teens and from there on declines. The good news is that IQ is not a great predictor of happiness or success anyway, EQ is a better predictor of these, and EQ peaks in your late forties and early fifties so we have more time to practice and improve.

(As an aside, I think it is interesting how in our optimism we gravitate towards metrics that suit our circumstances. We are getting older and not any smarter, but hey, that’s OK, here’s a different score that we look better against! Maybe this is being wiser rather than smarter. Since turning forty my chances of running a sub 3hr marathon or sub 36 minute 10K again have approached zero, however I now use Age Weighted Scores and, problem solved, I’m not getting slower (well I am) but I can now compare my times against others my own age and use that as a metric for performance.) 

Anyway, have a look at the assessment, if nothing else it will familiarize you with some aspects of Emotional Intelligence that are critical to being successful today. Thanks again to Martyn Newman for giving a free trial of the tool for readers of this blog. The book covers many great topics that I plan to write on in the future, but for now I will end with some of my favourite quotes:

"You can’t lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse" - John Peters

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others" - Jack Welch

"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen" - Henry David Thoreau

"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great" - Friedrich Hegel

“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance” - Bruce Barton

"If leadership is ultimately the art of accomplishing extraordinary things with ordinary people then building emotional capital is how you achieve it" – Martyn Newman

Project Success?

What defines project success? On “time and budget”, or “to specification and quality requirements”, maybe all of these? No, we are missing some less tangible, but critical components; how do people feel about the project once it is done.

On May 12 the PMI-SAC Awards for the best projects and the best project managers will be held in Calgary and Captain James Lovell, Commander of Apollo 13 will be giving the keynote “Apollo 13 – A Successful Failure”. This year I am a judge for the awards ceremony and in reviewing the applicants I have been thinking about what constitutes a successful project which prompted the recollection of some famous projects...

Apollo 13
Let’s consider Apollo 13. The third manned mission by NASA intended to land on the moon that experienced electrical problems 2 days after liftoff. An explosion occurred resulting in the loss of oxygen and power and the "Houston, we've had a problem" quote from Lovell (that is widely misquoted as, "Houston, we have a problem".)

The crew shut down the Command Module and used the Lunar Module as a "lifeboat" during the return trip to earth. Despite great hardship caused by limited electrical power, extreme cold, and a shortage of water, the crew returned safely to Earth and while missing the main moon-based scope, it was a very successful rescue, allowing future missions. “A Successful Failure”

Titanic
(The 1997 film not the original ship). This film was six months late, massively over budget and finished with a bloated 194-minute running time. Seemingly not a good performance given the original schedule, budget and scope requirements. Yet the film turned into an enormous critical and commercial success, winning eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and became the highest-grossing film of all time.

The Simple Guide to Earned Value

I have written a couple of posts now on agile alternatives to earned value, but lots of people still do not understand traditional earned value. So here is a simple worked example and a one page .PDF summary...

Let’s imagine our project is to build a wall around a garden. 
 
  

For simplicity, let’s assume 4 equal sides and a budget of $200 per side. Our schedule is one side per day so we should finish in 4 days with a cost of $800.

Here is how the project progresses:

Upcoming Events

After returning from teaching a PMI class in New Orleans, the PMI have added some additional venues for the course later in the year. This is a good sign for agile methods within the PMI community; the course sold out quickly which hopefully indicates that many companies are still able to invest in training.

My 2 day Agile Project Management courses will be offered:

• September 14-15 Las Vegas, Nevada
• November 9-10 Savannah, Georgia
• December 14-15, San Diego, California

Of course PMI events go on throughout the year (full schedule), but this year I have deliberately kept the summer free from work events to enjoy some outdoor things closer to home. I am currently signed up for the Police Half Marathon, Calgary Marathon, Canmore 24hrs of Adrenaline, The Canadian Death Race, The TransRockies Bike Race, and Half Moon Adventure Race. Time will tell if I survive them all or stub my toe on the first one and miss the rest – hopefully not! I will report any remotely work related news back here.

Other agile events that look interesting this year include:
Atern Road Shows in the UK: London May 14, Bristol June 18, Manchester June 25.
XP 2009 Sardinia, Italy May 25-29
Agile 2009 Conference, Chicago August 24-28
Agile Business Conference, London October 13, 14

So many events, so little time!

Non-Functional Requirements - Minimal Checklist

All IT systems at some point in their lifecycle need to consider non-functional requirements and their testing. For some projects these requirements warrant extensive work and for other project domains a quick check through may be sufficient. As a minimum, the following list can be a helpful reminder to ensure you have covered the basics.  Based on your own project characteristics, I would recommend the topics are converted into SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realisable, Timeboxed / Traceable) requirements with the detail and rigour appropriate to your project.

The list is also available at the bottom of the article as a one-page PDF document. While it is easy to make the list longer by adding more items, I would really like to hear how to make the list better while keeping it on one page (and readable) to share with other visitors here.

Security
  • Login requirements - access levels, CRUD levels
  • Password requirements - length, special characters, expiry, recycling policies
  • Inactivity timeouts – durations, actions

Audit
  • Audited elements – what business elements will be audited?
  • Audited fields – which data fields will be audited?
  • Audit file characteristics - before image, after image, user and time stamp, etc

Agile in New Orleans

Next week I’ll be teaching a two day Agile Project Management course for the PMI in New Orleans. The class sold out quickly; I only teach 3 or 4 times a year for the PMI and I wondered if registration numbers would be down this year. The fact that it filled up so quickly is very positive and perhaps more people are tuning to agile as a way to get more work done with less budget.

This year’s Agile Business Conference in London has the theme of “Driving Success in Adversity” and I have submitted a presentation outline and plan to attend. There submission system states “This year we invite presentations and tutorials emphasising how Agile practices promote efficiency in project delivery, guarantee business value and optimise return on investment.” This seems a great theme, agile is all about maximizing business value, and I am looking forward to the conference.
 
Meanwhile, in New Orleans next week, I am keen to hear how organizations are currently using agile methods within their organizations to add value. (I am also looking forward to sampling the food and feeling some warmer weather after a long Canadian winter!)

The "Realization, Suck, Advance" Progression

Many skills go through a familiar progression:
1) Poor Performance
2) The Point of Realization
3) The “Sucking” Phase
4) The Advancement Phase

I went through this with TDD, then with a switch from management to leadership, more recently with learning to ski down hill in control on cross-country skis.

1) Poor Performance – Some things you just cannot do, or you have a lack of recognition about. The end result is that performance is poor.

2) The Point Realization – this is when you realize what you are supposed to be doing and the “a-ha” moment occurs. It feels good to now know what you need to do, but usually we are not practiced at it and still continue to fail for a while.

3) The “Suck” Phase – We know what we should do, but despite our best efforts we fail at doing it. This is because we have had no practice and we have not developed our skills yet. It can be frustrating that after making the mental leap that our performance hardly improves at all. From an external view observers may see no discernable improvement between before and immediately after the Point of Realization. Yet the seed has been sown and with practice we will get better.

4) The Advancement Phase – Now at last we start to make progress as we practice, continue to make mistakes, but get better and better. Our performance improves, we still fail occasionally, but less often and we get longer periods of high performance in between.

Applied Behavioral Analysis Science
My latest Point of Realization came during a presentation by Tony Parrottino at a recent PMI-SAC meeting. Tony was talking about Applied Behavioral Analysis Science as outlined by Aubrey Daniels.

VUCA Lessons For Agile

Bob Johansen author of “Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present” outlines the challenges of VUCA projects. VUCA is a military term used to describe environments characterized by:

Volatility
Uncertainty
Complexity
Ambiguity

In such environments standard Command-and-Control processes are not effective.

I recently attended a great presentation by Denise Caron who outlined Bob’s description of VUCA challenges and the new leadership models that lend themselves to these circumstances. Many of today’s software projects exhibit Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity and there are numerous parallels between agile leadership and the VUCA leadership model.

Low complexity, fixed targets and “knowable” problems can be solved with a Command-and-Control approach. Here careful upfront planning and then methodical execution pay dividends. However, projects with high complexity, moving targets and initially unclear end-goals cannot be planned in detail upfront and then simply executed. This is where the advantages agile approaches come into play gaining the benefits of adaption over a traditional “Plan-the-work, work-the-plan” approach.

Johansen brings some useful parallels to the agile model, focusing on the role of a leader when faced with a dilemma involving Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. He highlights a Foresight to Insight to Action cycle as shown next...

Reinvigorate Your Retrospectives

Come and see Jennitta Andrea present on how to reinvigorate your retrospectives at the Calgary APLN meeting this Friday 27 February.

From the outline:
“You know you should be performing regular retrospectives, but you can't convince management or the team that it's a worthwhile investment of time ... Your team has been performing retrospectives every iteration, and they have become monotonous and have stopped producing valuable insights ... You've heard about retrospectives, but don't even know how to get started ...”

Jennitta is a thought leader in the agile community and serves on the board of the Agile Alliance. I am sure the talk will promote many ideas to make retrospectives extra productive.

To register for this free event visit the Calgary APLN Site

Agile Organizations

The week before last I was in Regina teaching a two day Agile Project Leadership course for the Regina .NET User Group. One of the side conversations we had there was about Agile Organizations. Companies who not only embrace agile principles on their projects, but also within the behaviour and execution of their entire business. There is a big difference between running projects in an agile way within a traditional organization and orienting an entire company around principles that match agile values. Here are four well known and some not so well known examples:

1) Toyota
Toyota’s lean approach is well publicized. Through their passion for worker-led continual improvement they review, learn, adapt and improve at an impressive pace. Much has been written about Toyota’s capacity to innovate and nearly all of it comes from the incorporation of many small internal suggestions. In “The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation” author Mathew May describes how Toyota implements over 1 million employee suggestions per year, that is about 3000 per working day, a truly staggering number.

There is no big prize for the best suggestion picked each month. Instead all suggestions are valued equally and thanked in a small way. Toyota believes the biggest improvements come about from implementing thousands of small improvements, not waiting for the next big idea.

How do we learn from this? By creating ways for people to contribute, canvas their ideas frequently and recognize all suggestions for improvement; whether they are ultimately successful or not.

Batch Size and Velocity Fluctuations

I recently wrote a post on Velocity Signature Analysis and have been looking at how undertaking large chunks of work as a complete team impacts velocity. We are currently three quarters of the way through a major (4 months long) piece of functionality and velocity is finally rising. This seems a pattern; for the early portion of a new area of work we spend a lot of time understanding the business domain and checking our interpretation using mock-ups and discussions. Velocity, in terms of functionality built and approved by the business is down during this time since many of the team members are involved in understanding the new business area rather than cranking out code.

As project manager I can get jittery, did we estimate this section of work correctly? Our average velocity for the last module was 60 points per month and now we are only getting 20! Weeks and weeks go by as whiteboards get filled, designs get changed, but the tested story counts hardly moves. Compounding this Discovery Drain phenomenon is the Clean-up Drain pattern. During the early portions of a new phase, fixing up the niggling issues hanging over from the last phase seems to take a long time. This makes perfect sense, if they were easy they would probably have been done earlier. It is always the difficult to reproduce bug, the change request that necessitates a rework of established workflow or multiple stakeholder collaboration that seem to bleed into the next development phase. While there may only be 3 or 4 bugs or change requests hanging over, they take a disproportionate amount of time to resolve.

Lifecycle Variables

I have written a couple of posts now (here and here) about the new PMBOK v4 guide due out soon. One of the new graphs included helps describe how project characteristics change over the project life time.
 

The top blue line of the graph is used to illustrate how Stakeholder Influence, Risk and Uncertainty start off high and then reduce as the project progresses. The Escalating orange line illustrates how the Cost of Changes increase dramatically over the project timeline.

Quite a lot has already been written on flattening the Cost of Change curve within agile, so I will leave that for now and focus first on the top line.

Before discussing ideas such as how ongoing business input in, for example, prioritization of the remaining work prolongs their ability to influence the project, we should take a moment to understand the PMBOK audience. The PMBOK is not just for software projects, or IT projects, it is an industry agnostic guide relevant to construction, engineering, and manufacturing among other disciplines.

As a general guide, I think these curves make sense, especially outside of software projects. The ability to influence does decline rapidly once designs are committed and construction begins. Likewise, Risks and Uncertainty also reduce generally later in the project once technical obstacles have been overcome.

Software though is different, actually I would hazard a guess that every industry is different really, however software is the one that I know about. Software exhibits a characteristic known as “Extreme Modifiability” meaning we can make many changes, even late in the lifecycle and still be successful. While it would be difficult to move a bridge 3 miles upstream when it was 75% complete; we could choose to move validation logic from the presentation layer, to a middle tier, or a database trigger late into a project.

Velocity Signature Analysis

Most agile projects track their velocity. For the past 10 years or so I have been studying the velocity profiles of my projects and any other projects I can get data from. Velocity profiles tell a story about the project, and like signatures are unique.

Tracking stories, or more normally points completed per iteration, gives the classic velocity graphs such as the one shown below.

Here we can see the Projected Velocity shown by the dotted blue line and the Actual Velocity shown in dark blue.

From observing 15-20 projects I have noticed the following reoccurring patterns. Am I the only one, or are these common?
 

Living the Theory of Constraints

This past week I have had an opportunity to experience some hospital process control and contrast it with traditional project process controls. In doing so, I saw many instances of where today’s projects that exhibit uncertainty could be better managed via prioritization and collaborative decision making than preset plans.

How did we get to Traditional Project Management?
Project management is a fairly young discipline, yet because its repeatable process scales so well, and is easy to duplicate and automate; it rapidly became the dominant process for running projects. Frederick Taylor published his studies on “Scientific Management” in 1911 outlining the process of decomposing complex work into simpler and simpler steps until localized labour could be employed to perform each simple task. Embraced by Henry Ford and others, Scientific Management became the prevailing way of problem solving for entire industries.

It was not until the 1950’s when Peter Drucker and then later Michael Porter convinced the world that centralization and command-and-control structures were flawed. Respect for workers and a holistic value based view of systems can produce better results and more sustainable organizations. Yet traditional project management persisted.

Upcoming Calgary APLN Meeting

The next Calgary Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) meeting will be on Wednesday November 26 at the 5th Avenue Place Meeting room.

At the meeting Mike McCullough from Quadrus Development will be presenting  a re-run of his Agile 2008 conference session “Learning Games For the Agile Practitioner”. At the Agile 2008 conference the session was voted back for a re-run and was very popular. I hope you can make it out to the event.

To register for this free event visit the Calgary APLN site here.

PMI Opening the Doors to Agile

“To deal with complex projects there is an increased need for agile and flexible project management… In future, ‘people’ and leadership skills will be viewed as more important than technical skills.”

Statements like these hardly seem surprising to regular readers here. This is what I have been advocating for years. However, these recommendations do not come from me, but instead from this month’s PMI Today magazine. Couple this with the announcement last week at the PMI Global Congress in Denver that the next PMI Virtual Community to be created will be for Agile Methods and we begin to see a promising trend.

I reported previously that the PMBOK v4 Guide due out later this year has more iterative lifecycle coverage. Then today I heard that my Agile Project Management course has been added to the PMI Asia Pacific Congress 2009 conference in Kuala Lumpur, next February. So, while agile methods “crossed the chasm” into mainstream development a couple of years ago, I think we are only just witnessing this shift in project management.

Why has it taken so long for the managers to catch up? Well, as the popular stereotypes go, perhaps we are just a little slow, or have more change inertia, or more practices to change before embracing the new approach. Regardless, I am just glad things seem to be moving at last in the right direction.

I am looking forward to the PMI Agile Virtual Community as a great platform for bringing agile methods to project managers worldwide; (Virtual Community is the new PMI name for a Special Interest Group (SIG)). Congratulations to Jesse Fewell and the rest of the PMI Agile Board for pushing through the red tape and making this new group a reality.

Teaching in Costa Rica

Next week I will be teaching two one-day agile workshops and an executive summary session in Costa Rica. The courses are organized by Invenio University Research and Education and will be taking place in the capital, San Jose.

I will be travelling with my friend and colleague Dustin Aleksiuk, who usefully speaks great Spanish and lived in Costa Rica for a while. Dustin has translated my slides into Spanish and the plan is for me to be viewing an English slide deck and Dustin keeping the Spanish projected slide deck in sync. We have a real-time interpreter and headsets for attendees and the whole thing should seem as if it is in Spanish. Questions and Answers will go through the interpreter too.

We will try it for a while and poll the audience, who by all accounts will likely speak good English anyway. If the majority of the audience is more comfortable in English rather than second-hand Spanish we will flip to English, but the process of translation has been fun. The Agile acronyms we use to remember key points like INVEST, CRACK, and IKIWISI just do not translate the same.

I have also been in touch with David Alfaro who lives in Costa Rica, writes the Scrum Costa Rica blog and co-ordinated the first ScrumMaster training in Costa Rica. We are organizing a separate presentation for the University after the regular courses have finished and I hope this attracts a good crowd also.

A trip to Costa Rica would be no fun if it were all work and so we have wrapped the 3 days of courses with 5 days of sight-seeing and activities. It should be great and I’ll post a report with a few photo’s when I return.

Three Dimensions of High Performance

To be truly effective you need ability and passion. Some people use the formula:

 Performance = Ability * Passion

However, you also need time to dedicate to the work at hand; and so Availability factors in also. 
In the volunteer world we often say we are looking for 3 key attributes:

• Talent (Ability in some useful skill)
• Passion (motivation to do it)
• Availability (time to commit to it)

In other words you need to have skills, enthusiasm, and time to dedicate to something in order to be effective. (This also applies to paid work too, but because we get paid for things it is easy to mix-up motivation with payment and forget about considering if we are passionate/motivated about the work.)

Framing team member performance along these axis’ can help separate the reasons and possible responses from the simple assessment that someone is not working.  However, people are complex and they do not fit neatly into boxes; we often experience varying levels of Talent, Passion and Availability from the same person on different tasks in the same project. So the model I outline below is intended more as a way of thinking about the issues rather than categorizing the people.

How Good?

 

Agile Project Management in Alaska

I have just returned from a great trip to Alaska. It was made possible by a request to speak at the PMI Alaska chapter and deliver two one-day training courses. Alaska is one of those places I have always wanted to visit and so I took the family and extended the trip to include a mini vacation.
 
The Work
For a city with a relatively small population (360,000) they have an active and well attended PMI Chapter. Over 70 people turned out for my dinner presentation on “Leading Agile Teams” and then we had 40 people each day for the one day classes.

Both were new classes, the first “Agile Project Mechanics” was a one day class focussed on agile processes, agile planning and estimating, etc. The second one day class, “Agile Project Dynamics” which was all about the people side of projects, building empowered teams and leadership rather than management. I was a bit hesitant about separating these topics since I think you need a combination of mechanics and dynamics; but as it turned out most people attended both days and so a balance was achieved.
 
Agile Beyond IT
The group was more diverse than I am used to. When I teach the SeminarsWorld course normally the attendees come from the IT industry. In Anchorage we had IT, construction and engineering managers, a fireman, and local authority project managers.

PMI Agile SIG Getting Ready For Launch

The PMI Agile SIG is gathering speed. This Special Interest Group (SIG) is set to be launched later this year and is very timely. While currently the interaction between agile and traditional project management approaches in most organizations may be small.

This intersection is set to expand. The agile community knows that interest and adoption of agile is on the increase. We need only look at the attendance figures for the major agile conferences over the past few years to see how usage and interest is on the increase.

    

Yet, at the same time the PMI is seeing dizzying growth too. Fueled by demands for tighter controls and better governance, along with a seeming insatiable demand for the PMP certification PMI membership has seen strong growth over the past 10 years.

The PMI Agile SIG will be a group made available to all PMI members who want to learn, contribute, and discuss using agile methods. It will examine the best ways to manage such projects and should be a powerful voice for driving agile related practices into the PMBOK Guide and other PMI standards.

As both agile and PMI adoption increases we will see far more overlap and iteration on projects.

Agile methods are being used increasingly beyond the software domain and rather than dismiss traditional approaches as not applicable I think it is better to work with them and help shape a better set of standards for the future.

I have written on introducing agile into the PMI several times before (here, here, here) and often end up discussing the IP concerns of working with the PMI with people. My take is that I'd rather be on the inside trying to make changes rather than outside taking shots. That's why I present on agile at the PMI Conferences and teach an agile project management course for PMI SeminarsWorld.

So, for those that want to help change the world of project management, the PMI Agile SIG is a good place to start. We are actively looking for members, anyone interested in joining can send an email to PMIAgileSIG@LeadingAnswers.com

Just what the PMI Agile SIG can do will be limited only by the enthusiasm of its members. I do know that there is a PMBOK Extension for the Construction Industry published by the PMI. It is for people in the Construction industry wanting to use PMBOK processes in their unique domain. Rather than the name suggests of just extending the PMBOK it actually says: "if you are in the construction industry, forget these processes from the standard PMBOK and instead replace them with these ones…" Longer term, a PMBOK Extension for the Software Industry that removes static planning and substitutes some agile methods would be very useful.

Team Size, Velocity and Specialization

(Well actually a bunch of hiking stories)
 
Do large teams bog-down, do delays propagate, is specialization harmful or desirable? In today's knowledge-worker environment we process intangible information rather than physical products, and so seeing the impact of good and bad team dynamics can be difficult.

One of the main reasons I moved to Canada from London was to be in the mountains for hiking, mountain biking and skiing. While we can usually hike from May – October; the hiking season for the high peaks is short, just mid-July through early September and so recently I have been doing far more hiking than blogging, but it makes you think about velocity when you are trying to calculate if you will make it back to your car before sundown, or how much of the hike will be in the dark through grizzly bear habitat!

Generally large groups travel slower than small groups. Waiting for everyone to arrive at the trail head and then the inevitable delays for rest breaks, boot adjustments, etc all seem to compound. Not only is the group constrained to the speed of the slowest hiker, but interruptions from anyone tend to impact everyone since there is little to buffer variability when people want to hike together.

Seattle APLN Update and Agile Program Management Slides

Last week I attended the APLN Leadership Summit in Seattle. It was a great event and while I was disappointed I did not get to learn more about Real Options and iteration-less Kanban (because I was busy hosting a competing session with Mike Cottmeyer). I had a good time and met some great people.

The event was held at the very swank Edgewater hotel, located on the waterfront, near Pier 67. It is a chic combination of log, steel, timber, and river-rock. Due to some reservation mix up my standard room was upgraded the “Beatles Suite”. Scene of the 1964 Beatles stay and the photo of them fishing out of a hotel window. The suite was large and fun in a “Austin Powers meets Yogi Bear” kind of way (Union Jack cushions, log furniture, etc) – anyway being British I am always curious to what other nationalities associate with Britain.

The summit started with a great keynote by Lisa Haneberg. Some points that really resonated with me were bringing a sense of energy and creating a vision. A nice graphic she used to visualize this is shown below.
 

This diagram depicts the Current Reality in the bottom yellow oval and projects up to Probable Future and Preferred Future state ovals that could happen. Obviously we would favour the preferred future state and so we should focus on the “Things We Need to Start Doing” to get there and make sure we stop doing the “Things We Need to Stop Doing” activities that would lead us to the less desirable Probable Future.

Lisa pointed out that good visions stretch the Possible Future envelope (which is why the Preferred Future oval extends beyond the Possible Future set.) It is good to have some element of “How on earth are we going to do this!” within the vision.

For those that visualize time going left to right and good scales going upwards (weird people like me) I have redrawn the diagram.

Mike Cottmeyer and I facilitated the Agile Program Management track and as always, the best content and value came from the attendees who shared their experiences of agile program challenges and solutions.  In the afternoon we discussed integrating agile projects with traditional project management frameworks and reviewed some slides that show the sweet spot for agile within the entire project scope, mechanisms for external parties to interact with agile teams, and a hybrid agile plan.

I have uploaded the images here.

Agile Traditional Integration.pdf

Shared Leadership

Question: Which is better, a team with great leader as project manager, or a team of competent leaders?
Answer: The results are not even close. Companies like Semco, Toyota, and W. L. Gore & Associates have demonstrated beyond doubt, that while it is great to have an outstanding leader as project manager, it is far better to have an entire team of individuals who are competent leaders.

In the book “How People Work: And How You Can Help Them to Give Their Best” Roderic Gray outlines nine ingredients that bring about a successful outcome at work:

1. I know what I am expected to do and why it needs to be done
2. I want to do it
3. I have the ability to do it
4. Someone who matters to me will notice if I do it
5. I know how well I’m doing it
6. Processes help me do it
7. I have the resources to do it
8. The environment is right
9. I can do better next time

It is easy to look at our jobs and criticize management if any are missing. Yet, as Michael Aucoin points out, it is far better to get a critical mass of the ingredients right and then give workers the green light to fill in what is missing. This is the essence of distributed leadership and the stuff of which exemplary projects and companies are made.

An example of this shared leadership in action is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (www.orpheusnyc.org). This full size orchestra has no conductor; instead they share and rotate leadership roles. So, what does this orchestra with no conductor sound like? Well, very good apparently, they have won two Grammy awards, recorded over 70 albums, and play worldwide to rave reviews, regularly performing at Carnegie Hall.

Teams do not need all 9 of the magic ingredients handed to them, but they do need to know that they have the authority and freedom add the missing ingredients from their mix. Empowered teams exhibiting shared leadership are the key to great performance. Project managers add value by illuminating and facilitating the process.

The APLN Seattle Leadership Summit

The APLN Seattle Leadership Summit is shaping up to be quite the learning event. Here are some of the highlights:

• Collaboration Games by Luke Hohmann and Allan Shalloway
• Kanban by David Anderson and Corey Ladas
• Scrum by Brent Barton and Lance Young
• Getting Started with Agile by Mitch Lacey and Julie Chickering
• Writing Agile Contracts by Bruce Eckfeldt and Jim Benson
• Agile Program Management by Mike Griffiths and Mike Cottmeyer
• Real Option Theory by Chris Matts and Olav Maassen
• Agile User Experience by Arlen Bankston and Jeff Patten

The program also includes two leadership keynotes by:

• Lisa Haneberg, author of seven books including 10 Steps to Be a Successful Manager and Two Weeks to a Breakthrough.

• John Yuzdepski, a partner at Management Concepts LLC specializing in product transitions and commercialization of new technology and a veteran of the mobile communications industry.

While I am involved in facilitating a session on Agile Program Management with Mike Cottmeyer, my real motivation for attending is to hear the other speakers present.

I am a big fan of Luke’s work on Collaboration Games and posted on it previously here. As too with David’s work on Kanban here and Jim’s work on Agile Contracts here. I know Mitch Lacey does a great job of explaining agile and I was introduced to Real Options as a reviewer of Preston Smith’s Flexible Product Development book and want to learn more.

(I’m sure Mike Cottmeyer can handle the session by himself, I think I’ll be sneaking out to attend some the other sessions!)

So, if you can get to Seattle July 17-18 I recommend the event as the best value agile project leadership training you will find this year. $300 for two days of leading edge knowledge and experience is excellent value (plus you could claim 16 self-directed-learning PDUs too, if you need PDUs).

A Better S Curve and Simplified EVM

“S Curves” are great to track project spend. They are simple to interpret and quickly let us see if we are over or under budget.

  

However, we could be doing fine spend wise, but behind from a schedule perspective. This is where Tracking Gantt charts come in and show schedule.

 

Yet, Gantt charts lack the spend component. Pretty soon most projects get ahead or behind in spend and time and so trying to gauge the overall project health becomes difficult.

This is why Earned Value Analysis (EVA) and Earned Value Management (EVM) were created, combining both spend and progress variables to produce a comprehensive set of project measures and metrics. However, there begins the problem.

What’s Bad about Earned Value

EVA is beyond most project stakeholders -

Most people who are not using EVM every week do not understand the terms. “Is a negative Schedule Variance good or bad?”, “What’s the difference between BCWP and EV?” (Answers: it is bad, and they are the same). Despite its usefulness, the confusing terms and heavy use of math puts off a large percentage of the population.

Debates digress beyond numerical accuracy - More challenging still is when several people do understand EVM and start debating which versions of the formulae to use and everyone starts obsessing on the math instead of the project. “Should we use EAC = BAC/CPI, or EAC = AC + ETC, or EAC = AC + [(BAC-EV)/CPI ?” Geez people, the developers probably pulled half of these estimates out of the air and we are applying advanced math to them?

What’s the value in tracking progress against a flawed plan? - EVM compares actual project performance to planned performance at a point in time. So, if our initial plan is wrong we could be effectively trying to do the equivalent of tracking our progress on a road trip from Calgary to Salt Lake City on a map of France! The quality of the baseline plan is a critical success factor of EVM. In agile projects we acknowledge initial plans will likely need changing and so the basis for effective EVM is quickly eroded with evolving plans.

Where’s the Quality?  - We could be on time and on budget, but building a horrible product that the business does not like or is low in quality. We should be aware that cost and schedule are not the whole picture. EVM and agile alternatives are just a part of the picture.

What’s Good about Earned value

It is a Leading Indicator - Perfect rear vision is not of much use to people. At least EVM tries to predict completion dates and final costs. Imperfect leading metrics are always more valuable than perfect trailing metrics, since they give us options to re-plan and change our approach.

It is visual - It is easy to forget the EVM graphs and focus on the numbers, but at the heart of the process are some useful graphs. Visual is good because it engages the right-side of the brain and helps us draw on more mental power to understand, interpret and plan appropriate responses. Visual things are also better to discuss and collaborate on since we can point, annotate and extrapolate easier than with words or numbers.

Agile Alternatives
So how can we maintain the Leading and visual components of EVM and reduce some of the down sides? Well "Double S Curves" are a good start.

 
 
In this graph we have a familiar spend line shown in green tracking to the dollar scale on the right hand axis; and also a feature based line shown in blue tracking against the points scale on the left. 

The gradient of the blue line indicates project velocity. Where it rises steeply we got a lot of points developed in a short time, where it is flat, progress was slow.

 

Adding a background on the graph can be useful to show functional areas. Here we can see that the “Configuration” and “Stock” components of the system have been built and we are currently in the “Sales” piece of functionality at just over 1000 points worth of functionality completed.

Also, at the end of 2007 the step in the background image shows where the scope of the “Sales” portion of the system was increased, shifting the remaining functional areas out by the new work amount. Yet we are still missing projections and a sense of if we are ahead or behind from both spend and schedule perspectives. This is where predicted values come in.

  

Now we can see how we are comparing against our projections. In this example we are overspent and a little ahead of progress currently, but the trends in velocity do not correlate with the continuing velocity improvements predicted.

As a replacement for Earned Value Management, these graphs are all you need. We can get the same metrics and indices right here.

 

Traditional EVM metrics like Schedule Performance Index (SPI) and Cost Performance Index (CPI) can be easily translated into Agile terms. For example, if we planned to complete 30 stories this iteration, but only completed 25 then our SPI is 25/30 or 0.83 (we are working at only 83% of the rate planned). Likewise, CPI is the Earned Value (Completed Features Value) to date divided by the Actual Costs to date, in the example above $2.2M / $2.8M = 0.79. This means we are only getting 79 cents on the dollar compared to what we had predicted, (but of course, who is to say what we predicted is correct.)

Cruel Irony
I find it ironic and amusing that “Earned Value” is a traditional project management term and agile projects often track progress in nebulous “Points”. This is backwards. Agile projects deliberately relate things back to real business value, and yet many traditional project track progress against tasks that add little or no business value and call the process “Earned Value”.

Creating a detailed requirements document that formalizes an incomplete, premature view of requirements that should change as details emerge and business continues to evolve is not earning much value at all. Yet prioritizing features by business value and tracking progress against the business oriented features is an excellent example of real “Earned Value”.

Next Steps
I have uploaded the example spreadsheet used to produce these graphs so you can get started with your own if you are intersted. The Excel “tricks” are as follows:

1) To get the two graphs on the same chart use the ‘Line – Column on 2 axes” graph option. This is on the “Custom Graphs” tab in old versions of Excel, In the Vista version of Excel, add a secondary axis to a normal line graph, by Formatting the data series, then click “Secondary Axis” on the Series Options tab.

2) Create a background image with bands that vary in height corresponding to their points estimates. E.G. a project with two phases one 300 points and one 200 points, would have background image with two bands, one, say, 3cm high the other 2 cm high. Just as long as the proportions are correct the image will be scaled to fit the graph region appropriately. I simply use PowerPoint to create my background images, but you can be as fancy as you like.

3) In Excel format the axes and adjust the Min. and Max values from 0 to you budget amount and points estimate for the project. If these number change, create a new background image and reset the scales.

Download graph_examples.xls

Tool support

I try to keep up with the agile PM tools, but as far as I know, Rally, VersionOne, Target Process, Mingle, XPlanner, etc do not produce these graphs yet. I hope they do soon and calculate the EVM numbers too. I talk to many organizations who want to apply EVM type analysis on agile projects or work with PMO’s that ask for these stats.

Discussion on when it is appropriate to use straight line extrapolation to calculate Estimates At Completion (EAC) and the impacts of updating plans will be the subject of a future post. In the mean time you can also read a research paper on the topic written for the 2006 Agile Conference.

Download rp2_cabri_griffiths_agile_and_earned_value_reporting.pdf

Calgery APLN Meeting Slides Posted

On May 15 I presented on “Decomposing large programs into agile projects” and “Mapping the PMI Processes to Agile Best Practices” at the Calgary APLN meeting. I have uploaded the slides in PDF format and also a zip file containing the hyperlinked Process Groups / Knowledge Areas mapping to Agile practices. (You will need to unzip the PowerPoint slide and Word files into the same directory for the hyperlinks to work correctly.)

Calgary APLN May 15 Slides.pdf

PMI Agile Mappings.ZIP

The timing of the presentation was very close to Michele Sliger and  Stacia Broderick’s release of their new book “The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility”. I was hoping we could give a copy of their book away as a door prize, but the book was available about a week too late. However, I received a copy this weekend (thanks Michele, Stacia) it looks good and I look forward to reading it. We also have some copies on order as door prizes for future meetings.

Agile Alliance Update

I recently returned from the Agile Alliance Board meeting in Boston. Three times a year we meet as the board to review progress, plan Agile Alliance programs, conferences and member services. This latest meeting was my favourite. Not only did we get lots done in the two day period, but the process (mainly open space) worked really well and rather than committee work being frustratingly slow, it progressed well, and I came away energized by the whole experience!
We had many good discussions including:

Conference 2009 Update – Next year’s agile conference will most likely by in Chicago, at the Hyatt downtown hotel. Options are being kept open and the venue would work well with between 1200-2400 attendees.

  <Todd Little explains the dynamics of conference venue selection>

Click the "Contine Reading..." link below for more updates.

Calgary APLN Meeting: PMI Framework and Agile

At the next Calgary APLN meeting I will be discussing how the PMI framework maps onto Agile best practices. Yikes, what brought me to this!

Well, back in October at the Calgary APLN planning meeting we asked attendees what they would like to hear about this year. People made suggestions and voted on the topics, the top 5 were:

1) Using Agile on distributed teams
2) Team collaboration / motivation / accountability
3) How to decompose large programs into agile projects
4) Mapping the PMI Framework to Agile best practices
5) Fitting agile into the constraints imposed by the business

The first two have been covered; last November Jane Robarts spoke about her first hand experience of managing distributed agile teams and in February Gerard Meszaros spoke about team collaboration. Both were excellent talks and we have an experience report based on topic 5 “Fitting agile into the constraints imposed by the business” scheduled for June.

This leaves “3) How to decompose large programs into agile projects” and “4) Mapping PMI Framework to Agile best practices”.

Not surprisingly, we had no volunteers for the PMI to agile mapping so on May 15 I have the dubious pleasure of presenting on these two topics; weaving the risk reduction concepts of smaller, more agile projects with the connects-and-disconnects of PMI to agile processes.

When I saw the topic “Mapping the PMI Framework to agile best practices” my first thoughts were; “Don’t” and ‘Why would you want to?” it seemed akin to mapping horse-and-cart operating tips to car driving tips. They are just different and have divergent philosophies.

However, I can see that asking for mappings helps provide a familiar context for new knowledge. It also reassures people that everything in our old process is covered-off in the new process and there are no gaps. So, to help provide context, but not to imply equivalence, mapping the PMI framework to agile methods will be explored with the connection points and gaps identified. I will be careful to emphasize the viewpoint shifts in addition to the process differences.

If you can, please join us for what I hope will be an informative and entertaining presentation. Spaces are limited so register in advance to reserve your place. www.calgaryapln.org. For those that cannot attend in person, I will post the slides and resources here after the presentation.

Travel and Training

I have been traveling and training lots recently and not had much time to post new entries here.

However, the travel time has allowed me to read more and two books I am current enjoying are Leadership Agility by Joiner, Josephs and A Leader Becomes a Leader by J. Sheehan.

Neither is specifically about Agile methods, but both highlight great ideas that are universally applicable. I will post complete reviews when I have finished them.

My traveling and training courses continue next week when I will be teaching a public 2 day Agile Project Management course in Scottsdale for the PMI. I will be repeating it in Seattle May 20-21 and Washington D.C. August 11, 12.

Other public courses coming up include a 1 day in Sacramento June 20 and a two day in Anchorage September 11-12. These courses are proving popular (Scottsdale and Seattle are sold-out) but I also offer private courses that can be tailored to company requirements. Please see here for a full list.

Once the Scottsdale course is over I will resume regular postings here.

Print Your Own Planning Poker Cards

Local APLN member Edgardo Gonzalez, has kindly offered a Planning Poker card template for readers to download. (No longer are we tied to the decks generously given out by Mountain Goat Software at conferences; now we can print our own!)  Based on the Fibonacci sequence, these cards print on standard Avery stationery and can be used by team members to estimate story points. (Post on Agile Estimation Techniques)

Thanks Edgardo for your gift to the community.

Download Planning Poker Cards.doc

Top 10 Team Practices

There are some great books on agile team dynamics nowadays. My personal favorites include:

• Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka
• Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber
• Right-Brain Project Management by Michael Aucoin
• Great Boss Dead Boss by Ray Immelman
• The Blind Men and the Elephant by David Schmaltz

The problem is that most people do not get the time they want or need to read about these topics. So, I have created the following: Top 10 Team Practices list and one-page printer friendly version to remind us of some of the basic points.

If you lead a team then print the sheet and post it somewhere visible and do a mental inventory of the practices from time to time. If you are a member of a team that could do with a boost, print a copy and post it on your manager’s wall, I am sure they will thank you for it! (actual results may vary.)

1) Empower them – By giving control for local decision making and work sequencing to the team we gain the advantages of additional insights, better motivated teams, and more practical plans with less waiting. 

2) Listen to them – The team is closer to the technical details of the project and also best placed to determine the most successful solutions to project challenges and problems. Encouraging the team to solve the project problems has two main benefits. It demonstrates they are valued for their insight as well as their output, which makes people feel more involved and appreciated. Also, solutions suggested by the team are more likely to be embraced and executed with enthusiasm. It is better to have a 70% optimal solution executed with 80% enthusiasm than a 100% optimal solution executed with 40% enthusiasm.

No Glory in “The Middle Way“

(The “Balanced Blend” Manifesto takes Shape)

Don’t really buy into all the hype of agile? Think it works up to a point, but real-life is actually more complicated and demands more of a hybrid approach? – Don’t worry, you are not alone.

Since helping define DSDM in 1994, I have spent the last 14 years helping organizations adopt agile methods like DSDM, Scrum, XP, FDD, etc and have come to realize, like many others, that these methods are not the solution. Instead they are the over-simplified starting points that you need to blend into what already works within the organization. Then overlay and support with additional approaches to create successful project ecosystems.

We need simplified schematics of systems to assist comprehension and discussion. However, all too often these simplified models are put into production as the entire solution and then problems occur.  Like a simplified model of a car braking system, it is useful in helping us understand how the system works in theory, yet is full of design flaws for practical implementation.

In real life, servo’s and pumps are needed to amplify the braking force from the pedal. There is not a single shared-fluid system, but instead two diagonally opposed systems (so a leak does not result in total brake failure or pulling to one side in a left and right split system). In addition to the basic system shown here, cars also employ an array of supporting systems for fluid level monitoring, ABS, wear detection, etc.

Luckily people do not read about the basics of car braking systems and then decide to replace the one on their car with their own design. However plenty of people read about agile methods and decide to implement that as their new software production system.

The good news is that the state of existing software production systems is often very poor and so implementing any kind of better conceived system is an improvement. (A basic sub-optimal braking system is probably better than relying on throwing an anchor out the window and hoping it snags on something to stop you!) The problems occur when the current system is not optimal, but understood and working; and it is then replaced by an oversimplified alternative.

Agile 2008 Submission Review Marathon

Phew, I am done! We had over 120 submissions for the Agile 2008 “Leadership and Teams” stage which is a great response. However at about 5-10 minutes each to read the bio’s, proposal and submit a review it adds up to a large evaluation effort. Here’s how the stages and numbers broke down:

PMBOK 4 – This Time It’s Iterative!

(Well, maybe a little more iterative)

The current Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide is labeled “Third Edition” and was published in 2004. Every 4 years the Project Management Institute (PMI) brings out a new version and the Fourth Edition has just been released to reviewers in Exposure Draft format.

I was a contributor and reviewer for version 3 and will likely submit some feedback for version 4 too. One thing that will be of interest to agile project managers is the increased acceptance of iterative lifecycles.

The concepts of rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration have been in the PMBOK since at least the 2000 edition that I know of. These concepts address the idea that planning near term work in detail and later work in less detail. Then as new details emerge, going back to the plans and updating them with the new data. This is common sense to those in the agile community, but it sometimes surprises people that it has been in the PMBOK for the last 8 years since, unfortunately, many people skim past these important principles in the PMBOK Guide.

Likewise, previous versions of the PMBOK have mentioned alternative lifecycles and nesting of activities. Yet with the PMBOK v 4 draft we start to see more embodiment of iterative approaches.

Collaboration Tools

Last week’s Calgary APLN meeting was on Team Collaboration and afterwards an attendee volunteered a really neat and useful team assessment questionnaire. Gerard Meszaros (author of XUnit Test Patterns) who also has strong project management and team collaboration knowledge, presented on “Using Collaboration to Build Team Commitment”. It was a great presentation and referenced some of the Jean Tabaka’s work from the book “Collaboration Explained”.

I have known Jean since her facilitation work with DSDM in the mid 90’s and she really knows about teams, motivation and working effectively with people. Chapter 4 of her book talks about characteristics of high performance teams. After the presentation, Edgardo Gonzalez sent me a spreadsheet based on these criteria that allows quick and easy team assessments.

As seen from the screenshot above, the tool is a one page Excel sheet that assesses the team’s abilities in:
• Self Organizing
• Empowered to Make Decisions
• Belief in Vision and Success
• Committed Team
• Trust Each Other
• Participatory Decision Making
• Consensus-Driven
• Constructive Disagreement

In our example of a fictitious project, four people completed the questionnaire. The collective team score is shown on the left hand radar chart (indicating a weakness in the “Consensus Driven” field) and the individual scores are shown on the right hand radar diagram. Colour coding flags areas as “Red” for concern, “Yellow” for warning (“Trust…” in the example), and “Green” for good.

Not only is the spreadsheet an effective team diagnostic, but a good lesson in Excel spreadsheet formatting and validation. Thanks Edgardo for agreeing to make this available to everyone and to Gerard and Jean for their work in this important field.

You can download the spreadsheet for your own use below:

Collaborative Team Assessment.xls

Agile Project Leadership and More on Accreditation

Last week I taught the “Agile Project Leadership” course with Sanjiv Augustine in Manchester, UK. The course went really well and we were looked after by Ian and Dot Tudor our hosts from TCC Training and Consultancy. They have a number of training facilities around the UK and ours was Aspen House, a converted church that retained all the arched doorways and high vaulted ceilings you would hope for.

It was a rare treat to teach in such nice surroundings and the church setting made evangelising agile all the more fun. In truth we were “preaching to the choir” as most of the delegates were already familiar with the benefits of agile and were looking for practical tools and more leadership techniques to move their organizations to the next level.

We Don’t Want User Input!

Do you really need those pesky users on your project, forever changing their minds and requesting new functionality just as you are about to be done?

When I was at school, my physic’s teacher was fond of telling us that, "if it were not for the students I would enjoy teaching." The same is true for users, they may cause us issues and headaches, but they are the reason we are there and developing software in the first place.

Why we Need User Input
The truth is that on agile projects we do not want user input we actually need user input in order to be successful. Agile projects are deliberately light on capturing initial requirements because we realize that requirements are likely to change, and evaluation of an emerging system will surface new requirements and improvements to existing requirements that we want to encourage.

Agile 2008 – “Leadership and Teams” Stage

This year’s Agile conference in Toronto this August will be structured slightly differently. Following a music festival structure, the conference will be divided into “stages” to cover different topics. I was able to visit the Agile 2008 conference venue in December when the last Agile Alliance Board meeting was held there and we toured the facility with the Agile 2008 Conference Committee.

Johanna Rothman and I are the “Leadership and Teams” chairs for the conference and we have been allocated a great venue; a large, bright ballroom with high ceilings and lots of natural light. This year the conference has much more space and larger mingling areas both indoors and out which I am sure will help.

On the “Leadership and Teams” stage we are looking for submissions on, you guessed it, leadership and team focused experience reports, research papers, tutorials, and presentations. Now is a great time to submit a proposal, so take a look at the submission system and propose your ideas.

The other element I am excited about is the submission system selection process. I have written previously about encouraging the agile community to prioritize our proposal backlog (list of submissions) and this year it is happening. On the Drupal based submission system anyone can write a review for a session and “up-vote” or “down-vote” a proposal. The cumulative scores for proposals help determine what gets selected.

This will not be a totally crowdsourced selection (like ideagora: Cambrian House), instead panel review will still be involved, but it is great to see the conference users (attendees) involved in prioritizing the features (proposals) for the event.

So, head over to the submission system and up-vote your buddy’s submission, down-vote anything from that guy that won’t return your emails (only kidding) or better yet, submit something valuable on Leadership and Teams for the conference, we would love to see it.