LeadingAnswers: Leadership and Agile Project Management Blog

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).

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.

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:

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.

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.

Agile Project Leadership Training Course

On February 4-5th I will be co-instructing with Sanjiv Augustine our new “Agile Project Leadership” training course in Manchester, UK. Sanjiv is the author of the excellent “Managing Agile Projects” book and fellow APLN board member.

This is a fast paced, practical focussed course that covers agile project management, leadership, and avoiding common agile project pitfalls.

You can find further details including a course outline at here.

Personal Agility – Free Webinar

Is agile about new tools and techniques or more a mindset? Philippe Kruchten asserts “agility is not a technology, science, or product but a culture”. This makes sense to me; innovation comes in waves (object oriented programming, business process engineering, lean production, etc); and while they all have their merits, most fail to deliver the full potential of their benefits because people concentrate on the process rather than the mindset. At the heart of agile is a mindset not a toolset.

I was speaking to Christopher Avery today, author of “Teamwork is an Individual Skill” and he shared some thoughts on personal agility and team motivation. Christopher is great for this since he approaches agility and team work from a psychological side whereas my thoughts are usually based on observation and trial and error.

We were discussing motivation and how to motivate peers who you do not necessarily have positional power over. Bosses may try to create motivation via carrot and stick approaches, but these are weak and short lived. People grow tired of such manipulation and find ways to break the system.

Instead, Christopher talked about “Intrinsic Motivation”, a more powerful motivation that comes from within.  People want to be on a winning team, but are not sure how to find or create them. The secret lies in understanding what “winning” means for others and then creating wins around you. In practical terms this means asking people “what is in it for them?” i.e. what is it they would like to learn, do, or gain (beyond a paycheck) from the project and then provide opportunities for these things to happen.

At first this sounded a little odd to me, a bit too touchy-feely. Asking people what they did over the weekend is one thing, but asking them what they want out of a project seems, well, invasive, too personal. However when you think about it, that is backwards, after all the project is something we all have in common. What they did with their spouse over the weekend, now that could be personal!

Telling someone what you really want to get out of a project might seem a little odd too, but fears of doing so indicate a ‘scarcity model’ to information. Why should we worry if people know what we really like to do or gain, chances are they will make opportunities available for us to do them. Helping others get what they want from projects creates an upward spiral of support and co-operation, which when you think about it, is the heart of a winning team.

Chatting to Christopher is always refreshing, he shares so much useful information that I struggle to retain it all. Fortunately for us Chris has recorded a free tele-seminar on Mastering Personal Agility. I heartily recommend it, the people side of projects have the greatest leverage, even small improvements here can yield large benefits; be sure to check it out.

Calgary APLN Planning Session

Last week we had the planning session for the 2007/2008 Calgary APLN Chapter. The goal was to create a prioritized list of topics to explore this season and demonstrate some of the values and practices of agile project leadership along the way.

We started by using the Speedboat game in small groups to identify impediments and propellers towards our goal of “Connecting, developing, and supporting great project leaders”. Speedboat is a group exercise for “Issue” and “Enabler” brainstorming that can be used with any group. It helps people to clarify goals, air their concerns, and suggest options for avoiding risks and moving forward. My colleague and co-host for the session, Janice Aston, wrote up these useful notes on using Speedboat and the outputs from the group.

Download Speed_Boat_Instructions.doc

Download Session_Results_10-17-07.doc

I previously wrote an account on Speedboat and other Innovation Games in an earlier post.

Following the Speedboat exercise we brainstormed presentation topics for the upcoming year. The thought process was: “Given the issues and enablers you just identified with agile leadership, what are the topics you would most like to see presented and discussed this year?”

Each group wrote ideas on sticky notes and we then posted them on the wall. Went through an affinity grouping exercise that sorted them into themed groups and removed duplicate suggestions. We all then went through a dot voting exercise where we assigned three votes among the topic suggestions. The topics and votes counts (shown in brackets) are shown below:

Agile In Atlanta – PMBOK to LWOK

I have just got back from the 2007 PMI Global Congress conference held in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a good conference and while I may question the applicability of traditional project management approaches for software development projects; for organizing a conference it is hard to question the results. I experienced no line-ups; good speaker support and a well thought out and organized conference.

My presentation on “Developments in Agile Project Management” was over subscribed and I was asked back to do an encore presentation which is a great endorsement for the level of interest in agile project management, especially from within the traditional PM community. When I presented on agile methods at the 2004 PMI Global Congress in Anaheim, I was the only presenter on agile methods there. Since then I have seen an increase year on year. Last year I counted four agile topics and this year six, which is a promising trend.

I met up with Mitch Lacey and Stein Dolan who were also presenting on agile methods at the conference and it was great to chat and discover we had a similar philosophy. This is that agile methods are merely additional tools for the project toolbox that work well given certain circumstances. They do not replace traditional methods, but instead can exist alongside them and can be used very effectively when the circumstances warrant. This is what Jim Collins calls” The Genius of the And” and the “Tyranny of the Or” by using a smart mix of traditional methods And agile we can better respond to project challenges and avoid the limitations of “either / Or” thinking.

It is good that the PMI is incorporating more agile content; lots of of today’s projects really need these techniques to be successful. Yet many agile practitioners are reluctant to take their message to the PMI, and prefer to focus on agile conferences. However as Henry David Thoreau reminds us “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root” Not that the PMI is evil, but if we are to change the world of project management, then the PMI is a great place to start.

LWOK
My talk covered what’s new with Agile Project management and I was glad to be able to announce the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) LWOK program approved just a few days before.

While the PMI has its Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK) as its core set of agreed practices, little exists yet for agile project leaders. There are great resources scattered around different web sites, but no place we can point people to and say “go and start here, it will get you on your way”.

Developing Authentic Leadership

Last night I gave a talk on “Agile Project Leadership” at the Calgary Agile Methods User Group (CAMUG). I like giving these because the questions raised make me re-examine elements of leadership and last night was no exception.

One question raised was basically “We hear about these ideas and they sound good, but in our projects the same old stuff keeps happening. How do we get real results?” I responded with some explanation about encouraging servant leadership, but in retrospect I think the underlying question was more about making the switch to authentic leadership rather than shallow imitations that bring poor results.

 

Some subsequent discussions with a couple of attendees have helped me straighten out my thoughts on the issue further. “Cargo cults” is the term used to explain the phenomenon of blindly replicating outward behaviour with the hope that it will yield positive results. It originates from a few scattered instances of Pacific Island tribes recreating replicas of the war time aircraft runways, control towers, and radios out of wood in the belief that they would bring back the cargo planes that brought Western goods during the war.

 

The equivalent cargo cult leadership pattern would be to practice techniques like team recognition in the hope that it improves morale and productivity without understanding the work undertaken, or by presenting phony “well done’s” and insincere praise. People have excellent BS radars and phony praise is quickly recognized as attempts at manipulation and has the opposite effect as desired. Likewise mechanical-only attempts at creating a common vision, challenging the process, or creating empowered teams will fall short too. These activities require deep conviction or else they will falter and fade, making genuine attempts harder to introduce later as an “antibody effect” of mistrust develops in the team.

   

Agile 2007, Agile 2008

I’m heading off to the Agile 2007 conference in Washington DC next week so you can probably expect a short gap in postings here as I take in the sessions and events there. This year’s conference sold out early as it was capped at 1100 people due to venue capacity. Next year’s conference will be in Toronto and there has been a good dialogue on the Agile Alliance board recently regarding the objectives for the 2008 conference including optimal size and format.

An element I have suggested for inclusion is a stronger community involvement. On agile projects we let the users prioritize the requirements and I would like to see a similar approach used for Agile 2008. Agile Alliance members could be encouraged to suggest a conference theme and asked to vote on the splits for conference tracks (development, testing, project management, etc) as well as the formats (presentation, Open Space, workshops, etc).

The same could work for selecting presentations and papers too. Why not employ the Wisdom of Crowds and Participation of Crowds in choosing presentations also? Rather than having only a selection committee, give members the facility to vote for presentations using modern web 2.0 collaboration tools. Or if that is too radical and a selection committee is required to ensure a balanced mix of programs across the spectrum of agile methods, at least give 50% of the voting power to the agile community.

The tools to allow such mass collaboration are already available and being used by Amazon in UnSpun and Cambrian House in RobinHoodFund. I’m sure Agile 2007 will be a great conference and with more user participation, Agile 2008 can break new ground in user driven content.

New Agile Project Leadership Training Course

In September I will be co-instructing with Sanjiv Augustine the new course “Agile Project Leadership”. Sanjiv is a fellow APLN board member and author of the excellent “Managing Agile Projects” book. I’m really excited because a) we have an excellent course that will stretch attendees while engaging them, and b) co-teaching with Sanjiv will be a blast since he is such a knowledgable and personable expert.

Our first course offering will be in Manchester, UK on September 10-11th. You can find further details including a course outline at Agile University here

Agile / Traditional Dictionary

I’m presenting a beginners session on Agile Project Management entitled "...But it's not on the project plan!" at the Agile 2007 conference in Atlanta next month. It is targeted towards traditional PMI based project managers and I thought it might be fun and perhaps even useful to give them an Agile to Traditional language translator.

So, like a French / English : English / French Dictionary here are some translations to help the two camps communicate. This dictionary is also available as a PDF for download, the link at the end of the article.

Agile to Traditional

Adaptive - Frequently responding to changes and learning’s on a project by changing the plan, priorities, and/or approach. Agilists believe changes are good!

Agile Methods - A set of development methodologies characterized by being iterative, adaptive to changes and learning, value driven, low ceremony, and encouraging empowered teams.

Backlog – The prioritized list of stories, features, or requirements that the project works it’s way through. The closest thing to a list of requirements a traditional PM will find.

BDUF – Big Design Up Front a condescending term given to large efforts invested early in the project to define requirements or design before building some functionality and getting feedback from the user community.

Burn Down Graph – a project reporting trend graph popular in Scrum used to show the progressive reduction in features or estimated work remaining on the project.

Burn Up Graph – a project reporting trend graph that shows the total number of stories (or features) delivered to date on the project.

Continuous Integration – the process of building and testing the system upon the check-in of any code. Examples of continuous integration tools include: TeamCity and CruiseControl

Carnival of Agilists

This site has been included in the latest “Carnival of Agilists”, a bi-weekly collection of agile related posts, that introduces people to agile sites they may not be aware of and probably produces some Google page ranking uplift due to all the cross referencing.
   

Anyhow, the collection is well worth checking out and I particularly enjoyed the overview of the new Certified Scrum Coach proposal posted by Pete Brehrens and the list of Top 10 Agile Development Web Sites posted by Kelly Waters.

Kelly writes such snappy, engaging posts; I need to learn how to do that! Enjoy.

Developments in Agile Project Management - Part 3

Here’s the last instalment from my Developments in Agile Project Management Paper. Last time I wrote about Accreditation and Generation Y. Today I cover Leadership, Lean and Six Sigma, and Tool support.

    

You can download the full paper with the additional intro to agile and post-agile sections at the end of this post.

Developments in Agile Project Management – Part 2

In my last post I outlined some thoughts for an upcoming PMI presentation. Today I’ll introduce the first two concepts: “Accreditation” and “Appeal to Generation Y”, then will cover the last three topics in a later post and attach the final paper with the “Why Agile?” introduction.

As always I welcome feedback and suggestions for improvements.

Accreditation
Where traditional project management has certifications like PMP and PRINCE2 Practitioner, agile methods are adopting more formal accreditation schemes also. Currently the agile methods: Scrum, DSDM, and FDD have accreditation schemes and recently there have been discussions about additional programs and multi-disciplinary (not just one agile method) accreditations.

However, this is not without great debate and consternation, as for many people in the agile community, certification represent the centralized control that agile methods liberate workers from. For these people creating accreditation schemes represents: commercialization, profit chasing, and rewarding the wrong behaviours. Yet for others, it provides an opportunity to demonstrate their level of knowledge and agile methods experience, it can also provide a study program for self directed learning, and perhaps a low benchmark for hiring decisions.

The Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) are two volunteer lead groups that promote agile methods, organize conferences and help steward the successful application of agile methods. The boards of both groups are populated by experienced agile practitioners and have discussed the idea of endorsing certification schemes. The Agile Alliance decided not to get involved in the agile certification business and instead issued a statement that “…employers should have confidence only in certifications that are skill based and difficult to achieve.”

Within the APLN, the board has been split on whether or not to lead the development of such a program. However, at the Salt Lake APLN board meeting in February 2007 a motion made by Alistair Cockburn “The APLN commits to lead and support the creation, implementation, and evolution of an accreditation program for Agile Project Leaders based on design criteria including the DOI, with a draft proposal published by August 15, 2007” passed 10 votes to 3.

It was felt that if more agile certification was inevitable then the APLN was well positioned to do it right.

Weaknesses in current schemes were examined which included:
• lack of a difficult test
• lack of peer review and endorsement of candidates in the assessment process
• a closed models to the body of knowledge

Developments in Agile Project Management

Earlier this year I submitted a presentation proposal for the PMI Global Congress conference held in Atlanta this October. I called it "Developments in Agile Project Management" and wrote up a pretty seductive outline that got accepted. That is all well and good, but now the accompanying paper is due and I have to decide what to write about!

I felt a little guilty submitting a proposal when I did not know what I was going to talk about, but in the agile spirit of delaying decisions to the `last-responsible-moment` it gave me the flexibility of including some late-breaking new discovery or trend that may have been missed by locking-in early. Plus, it is not as though I have nothing to present, rather that my choice of topics had not been finalized.

So, in this and my next couple of posts I will outline some of my thoughts on "Developments in Agile Project Management" and offer an open invitation for readers to provide feedback and suggest alternative topics.

The Audience
The typical PMI conference attendee is not very familiar with agile methods. While the title will likely attract those who do know about agile, the majority will still only have a passing awareness of what it is all about. So I will have to keep the content fairly basic and prefix it with a quick tour of agile concepts to provide context. I`d love to present on something like `EVA to Andons: Mapping traditional metrics to agile-lean indicators`, but only a few people would understand it and many others may leave with the impression agile is just mumbo-jumbo and not for them. So, I think the topics should remain fairly basic to engage a large proportion of the audience.

Outline
My thoughts on the structure currently go like this:

Introduction

• Agile methods have been gaining in popularity for software development projects
• As they are becoming more popular, new people are expanding their boundaries and application areas

Why software development is hard to manage

• The intangible nature of software
• Difficulty articulating true requirements
• High rates of change
• High complexity, sometimes R&D based, unprecedented

How Agile methods help

• Incremental delivery provides frequent checkpoints
• Iterative development reduces technical risk
• Lifecycle supports late breaking changes

How Agile methods work

• Business Prioritization
• Timeboxed iterations
• Communications and constraint removal
• Reviews, Retrospectives, acknowledgements and adaptation

Then once this overview is out of the way, introduce the topics that can be thought of as "Developments in Agile Project Management":

Accreditation – Like when children grow up and progress from playgroup to school and start experiencing exams, accreditation and certification in agile methods are increasing as we leave the kindergarten.

Redesigning the workplace to attract and retain Gen Y`ers – how the new generation who “grew up digital” and are now entering the workforce demand: inclusion, collaboration and empowerment – handily the approach promoted by agile methods.

Recognizing the link to leadership – how agile project management is more closely aligned to leadership best practice than traditional project management.

Support by tools and processes – How a new segment of agile project management tools and processes have emerged to support agile projects.

Integration with adjoining fields such as Lean Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints – How the boundaries between agile and these highly compatible fields are disappearing as a broader audience adopt agile and bring their own contributions and links.

This is probably more topics than I should attempt to cover in a paper or presentation but I wanted to get my ideas out there and ask for alternatives. If you where giving a presentation on "Developments in Agile Project Management" what would you include and why?

Job Posting

I am looking for an experienced .NET 2.0 developer to join our team at Husky Energy. This is a challenging role on an established agile team building a complex oil pipeline management system. The skills we are looking for include:

Must Have

• NET 2.0 (advanced)
• OO/design patterns skills (advanced)
• Experience in enterprise application development (advanced)
• SQL (intermediate)
• Unit testing (intermediate)

Nice to Have      

• Crude Pipeline knowledge
• ReSharper
• MSBuild
• Subversion
• iBatis
• Developer Express suites
• WCF

The role is a contract position for one year. The project has 18 months left to go so an extension is likely. We are using a practical set of agile techniques and have the benefit of three full time users dedicated to the project – which in my experience is rare.

   

Candidates with strong .NET development abilities, a passion to join a high performing agile team, and availability to work in Calgary should send their resume to me at mike.griffiths@huskyenergy.ca

 

The team will be doing the technical interviewing so expect some code reviews and coding assignments in the interview. We have a great team in place that work well together so we are particular about finding the right person. Fit is more important than availability, we will wait up to a couple of months to accommodate the availability of the right candidate.

Blog Award

To my surprise, this blog won the PMISAC award for Project Management Literature last night at the 2007 Awards Gala Dinner. This is a great endorsement, I work on the blog in my spare time and it provides a large encouragement to continue and do more.

I also think having a blog considered for a literary award demonstrates how progressive the PMISAC is. It was not long ago that blogs were more the domain of developers than project managers. It is very encouraging to see alternative media branches recognized.

Blog Award Nomination

I am very pleased to announce that this blog has been selected as a finalist in the PMI-SAC award for Project Management Literature.

The other entries include Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura , Dr. George Jergeas, and Mohamed Moussa  who have written (amongst other things) some great material on decision tree simulation and civil engineering PM best practices. So, while I do not expect to win, being selected as a finalist is a great endorsement and encouraging that a PMI body recognizes agile and leadership based material.

This is an emerging trend, three or four years ago agile awareness and acceptance within traditional project management was the anomaly, now it appears the norm. When I spoke at the PMI Global Congress in Anaheim in 2004 I had the only agile session there, at this year’s conference in Atlanta there will be six others with me. The reasons are clear, many companies are achieving success with agile methods and many others want to mirror them. The high change world of today’s software endeavours are “not your father’s projects” and so we need “not your father’s project management” to lead them.

The winner of the literary award will be announced next Tuesday; I’ll post the result here.

Update on Introducing Agile Article

My recent posts on “Introducing Agile methods to Organizations: Mistakes to Avoid” (part 1, part 2, part 3) have been picked up by InfoQ for a mini-book. While this is great positive feedback for me, it is good news for you as readers too, as I will also post links to the new expanded version here so you can get access to the extra material.

Mini-books are available free electronically and sold in paper form through Amazon. They are short (60-80 pages maximum) and intended to serve a tech savvy audience with a concise, yet in-depth coverage of a subject.

I plan to work on this in May and June and will keep you posted as to how it goes and when the final version is available.

Changing Jobs

In April I will be leaving Quadrus Development to go independent again. I have found an interesting contract at local company, Husky Energy, where they have an agile project to manage and some other interesting initiatives underway and I am looking forward to my new role.

End With the Beginning in Mind
I have been at Quadrus for over six years and I enjoyed my role there tremendously. Someone very wise (Christopher Avery) once told me that when a relationship comes to an end that you should always End With the Beginning in Mind i.e. remember the reasons why the relationship started in the first place and focus on these points when wrapping up. Not only is end-with-the-beginning-in-mind, a great twist on Stephen Covey’s "begin-with-the-end-in-mind", it is also very wise advice I wish I had appreciated when I was much younger.

In his book “Teamwork is an Individual Skill”, Chris says the following about ending partnerships:

“…people so seldom end relationships well. Maybe because we all want so much to win - and endings are associated with losing. Maybe it’s because we are embarrassed that we don’t know how to derive any more benefits from a partnership. Maybe we are embarrassed because of un-kept promises, real or imagined…endings are as inevitable as beginnings and we can improve the quality of endings by avoiding three things:

1) Burning bridges
2) Harming reputations
3) Being inhumane to oneself or others”

Chris then goes on to recommend some positive steps that include:

"1) End the collaboration by bringing to mind the positive intentions and positive results that the partnership produced.
2) Thank your partners for the opportunities, results, and trust they provided you.
3) …"

I think this is great advice, and personally think back with fond memories of when I started at Quadrus. Having enjoyed several years holidays snowboarding and hiking in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, my wife and I decided to emigrate to Canada. It seems foolhardy now, but we both quit our jobs, sold our house in England and moved to Calgary without new jobs to go to. I was fortunate to interview with Quadrus my second week in Canada and was offered a position the same day.

Quadrus took a chance hiring me and I am very grateful for that, I arrived here with my PRINCE2 project management certification that no one had heard of and quickly sat my PMP exam to at least gain some traditional project management accreditation. Fortunately my methodology experience was more transferable, with RUP, Scrum, and XP being well understood in Canada.

I had some cultural challenges as Canada and England are two nations separated by a common language. I learned how to “get my ducks in a row”, “ramp” on new technologies and avoid “kack” while explaining how long a “fortnight” is and what “knackered” means.

Quadrus encouraged me to develop training courses, speak at conferences and publish articles. Without these opportunities I would have missed meeting so many smart people and becoming enthralled by research and lifelong learning. Quadrus has a great set of dedicated IT professionals and I will miss their skills and community.

Other Items, Business as Usual
While I am changing my 9-5 job, my other activities will continue. Quadrus has agreed to continue hosting the Calgary APLN Drupal web site and I look forward to seeing Quadrus folks at future APLN meetings. I will still be writing articles for the Agile Journal and Gantthead and continue to be actively involved with the Agile Alliance, the APLN, CAMUG, and Cambrian House. I will still be presenting on Agile Project Management at Agile 2007 in August and the PMI Global Congress in Atlanta this October. Not least of course, I will continue blogging here, so there will be no end to totally biased leadership and project management ideas.

I will be having some leaving drinks in Ceili’s (803 8th Avenue) on Friday 30th at 4:30pm, anyone who knows me is welcome to drop by for a beer if you are in the neighbourhood.

Next Calgary APLN Meeting - April 10 - Team Motivation

The next Calgary APLN Chapter meeting is on April 10^th and will feature Ross Martin and Lynn Harrison from Black Tusk Leadership speaking on: "Team Motivation: Working Inside the Egg". See www.CalgaryAPLN.org for a full description and registration details. This promises to be an interactive and entertaining talk that emphasises the importance of listening and motivation within teams.

I first met Ross when I attended a "Leadership Challenge" workshop last year. Ross was an invited panel presenter and he impressed me with his knowledge and humble demeanour. I met up with Ross for lunch shortly afterwards to ask him some leadership questions and we got talking about his job as an executive coach and leadership consultant.

Ross explained that he spends a good portion of his time coaching company executives in leadership techniques and providing feedback. As we talked I could not help thinking that this sounded like nice work if you could get it, but a little soft, "foo-foo" and fuzzy, so I asked some more questions. Ross said that the best way to understand what coaching involved was to experience it and offered to give me a 10 minute session there in the restaurant. So that's what we did, and boy, it explained it well.

Ross asked me what my biggest work concerns were and I explained rather than any particular project, I was thinking hardest about what I would like to do with my career. Ross then asked, for this biggest concern, what had I done to try and solve it, and how much of my working week was I dedicating to it. I was embarrassed to admit that while I claimed it was the most important thing, I was doing a pretty lousy job of addressing it. We reviewed each of my options and work done investigating them so far and, in a very nice way, Ross was able to get me to realize that there was a lot more I could do and helped outline a roadmap.

From this and other discussions, I went from being an entertained sceptic to an enthralled convert faster than I can remember. The cynic in me may have thought that this must have been a one-off tr