tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25789831003714724912024-03-13T06:53:37.852-04:00TONES Project LeadershipThe middle management is a transformational change agent exhibiting industry expertise, business acumen, negotiation skills, empowerment skills, and strategic leadership, according to my post-doctoral TONES research. I present my ongoing observations to demonstrate my commitment to continuous learning.
For more games, thought leadership, book, and KOL talks, please visit <a href="https://www.sriramrajagopalan.com">my site</a>.Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.comBlogger137125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-1614887838809106892024-02-23T11:05:00.149-05:002024-03-04T15:31:39.278-05:00Demystifying Technical Project Myths<p>I had the opportunity to facilitate training for a graduate class where there was an interesting discussion about defining technical projects. Now, the discussions were really inspiring and we discussed a number of different characteristics such as novel use of emerging 4th Industrial Evolution related technologies playing a critical role in creating a unique product, service, or result. At the same time, there were also some definitions of technical projects that need to be debunked. </p><p>Now, one of the promising unbiased definition of a technical project is that technology is used in achieving the project goals that otherwise are not possible or would take time. It is imperative that we don't limit ourselves that "technology" itself is the use of "information technology". In fact, technology is broadly defined as the application of scientific knowledge or a structured approach to realize an objective. For instance, brainstorming ideas can apply the concepts of design thinking, Delphi techniques, nominal group technique or many other forms such as the 6-3-5 technique (Rajagopalan, 2020). In these brainstorming approaches, a technical tool can be used but not always necessary. </p><p>A few things that I would like to consider incorrect for defining a technical project are the following:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Only technical projects have risks</b></li><ul><li>Risk is any uncertain event that can positively or negatively impact a project. So, it does not distinguish whether the project is technical or not. If the wrong hypothesis was chosen as the null hypothesis in a scientific project, it is a concept risk that impacts the project's schedule.</li></ul><li><b>Technical projects always have shorter timeframe</b></li><ul><li>This idea is coming from the application of adaptive approaches (e.g.: Agile or Scrum) in technical projects. The reason for shorter timeframe in adaptive approaches to facilitate faster feedback from the users who may not always not what they want or may have changes in the upcoming iterations. Progressive elaboration has been present in project management frameworks for quite some time and the amount of time given for feedback facilitation is up to the project. </li></ul><li><b>Using Jira makes the project technical</b></li><ul><li>While Jira is an example here, the use of any tool for requirements, test cases, risks, defects, and any other artifacts used in a project does not make a project technical. By that definition, any project documenting its goals and objectives in Microsoft Word should call that project as a technical project.</li></ul><li><b>Non-Tech projects do not use technology</b></li><ul><li>As mentioned before, technology is the methodical approach of using a technique. A project may use a technical tool like soil analysis to evaluate if a small campsite can be strongly established for training local students on agriculture. The project may be a non-tech project but uses technology.</li></ul><li><b>Non-Tech projects do not need special talent</b></li><ul><li>This is a biased statement thinking that special talent applies to people with advanced computer technology, data science, etc. A plumber, electrician, auto-mechanic, creative artist, musician, linguist, journalist, or market research specialist are all equally qualified special talent. Let us not forget the numerous specialty vocational schools that prepare people many skills and competencies we take for granted. </li></ul><li><b>Quality is not relevant in non-tech projects</b></li><ul><li>This is a biased statement thinking manual testing, automated testing, robotic process automation, and a number of other quality control and quality assurance related professions that has emerged. Quality is a function of risk (Rajagopalan, 2023) and wherever there is a project, there is risk. So, to say that quality is limited only to technical projects and further more not relevant in non-technical projects is losing the foundations of total quality management principles.</li></ul><li><b>Cost is not relevant to agile projects</b></li><ul><li>This is a false thinking primarily because people don't incorporate cost based decisions in their usual iteration/sprint planning. There is a cost to every iteration (Rajagopalan, 2019). Most often, people are not working free in most of the professional projects except in the volunteer settings where people volunteer their time. Even in such cases, the opportunity cost of working on a feature that is less customer focused than the feature the customer wants is always at the epicenter of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) discussions as part of risk-adjusted prioritization in product planning. </li></ul></ul><p></p><p>Thoughts? Love your comments.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2020). Alternative Idea Generation: 6-3-5 technique. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2020/01/alternative-idea-generation-6-3-5.html </p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2019). Agile iterations also involve cost. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2019/04/test-post.html</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2023). Quality is a function of risk. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2023/03/quality-is-function-of-risk.html</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-32506116393415797202024-01-30T17:02:00.000-05:002024-01-31T17:28:44.174-05:00Servant Leadership: Demystify the Agile Scrum Scaled Agile misconceptionsRepeatedly, I kept hearing people that I tutor, train, and coach as well as people in the Agile, Scrum, and Scaled Agile communities like SAFe mentioning the role of a scrum master, agile coach, or Release Train Engineer is to be a servant leader. On multiple occasions, I asked what they meant by being a servant leader or if they could name the ten characteristics of a servant leader. Frequently, however, people mentioned that they should guide the team, manage the backlog, and align with value stream mapping, etc! Is that what "Servant Leadership" is? No. Never once I heard anyone clearly articulate the ten characteristics of the servant leader. <div><br /></div><div>So, what is the Agile, Scrum, and Scaled Agile communities preaching? Does attending a Scrum Master certification or accruing multiple certifications in this space make one a competent servant leader? If so, there must be so many competent servant leaders changing the world and not thinking of the team or the organization alone. Servant Leadership is not just a lip service to the team or business ideas like value, benefits, outcomes, etc. </div><div><br /></div><div>In fact, if you look at the original proposal by Robert Greenleaf (1977) on Servant leadership definition, it provided a new way of looking at "leadership." Greenleaf asserted that "The best test is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?" (1977/2002, p. 27; Spears, 2010). Furthermore, Greenleaf asked servant leaders to evaluate their "leadership" effect on the least privileged society on whether the society at large will benefit not be further deprived of the benefits they deserve? </div><div><br /></div><div>While I was leading one of the projects early in project management career in 1998, I asked in one of the status meetings what else I could do for the team. My manager, Beth Hokanson, suggested that I instead train myself to ask, "how may I help you?" She was not a Certified Scrum Master! But, she enabled me to think differently. I observed her in many initiatives, such as the Y2K program, walk the talk. Such ideas of promoting one to think differently (individual consideration) providing guidelines such as asking to look into project management certifications (intellectual stimulation), giving 1-1 coaching at times when I had some challenges (inspirational motivation) are the reasons why I look up to her (idealized influence) even now when I am not in 'constant contact.' These are the foundational principles (4 I's) of the Transformational Leadership for scrum master, product owners, and project managers. </div><div><br /></div><div>Depending upon the extent of maturity and the level of guidance required, situational leadership will be the next one to consider for scaling agile and scrum in organizations. The situational leadership takes into account the extent of direction required and supportive behavior distinguishing four styles of leadership to practice. This includes directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. This approach is contingency based and hence extends the transformational leadership (4 I's) for Program Managers, Chief Scrum Master (for SoS) and Team Level Coaches. </div><div><br /></div><div>But, if one thinks about these powerful thoughts Greenleaf advanced, it definitely starts with 'servant' first! That means, one should exercise transformational leadership at the team level to make them become better versions of themselves as well contribute towards the organizational objectives! Yet, only when one thinks beyond the team and the organization. The focus should not be how their product serve the community but how they serve the community. This is where their ethical obligations further carry them forward into the larger society (beyond corporate strategies) into local or global leadership. Writing books, blogging to share their stories, speaking in communities, and volunteering are examples of how they carry the mission. For instance, connecting with 'beneficence" (effect on least privileged society) and "non-maleficence" (will they be deprived of the deserving benefits?) are examples the servant leaders can think of the larger society in the solutions they design (Rajagopalan, 2020). </div><div><br /></div><div>Spears (2010) synthesizes Greenleaf's (1977/2002) thoughts of the ten characteristics of the servant leader. </div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Listening: Here, it is not listening to respond but listing to learn, differentiate said and unsaid things (Rajagopalan, 2017) and self-reflect with a goal towards improving oneself.</li><li>Empathy: Covey (1987) already emphasized "Seek to understand before being understood" and Empathy therefore is action oriented. It is not feeling sorry for something but taking actions to leave the world in a better place than what you found. </li><li>Healing: Being able to connect with oneself is paramount to managing others and leading the society. One can find connections with Emotional Intelligence dimensions here. Being able to forgive oneself and not linger in the post purifies one's mind to see the world differently. As the old saying goes, "we all see the world not the way it is but the way we are!"</li><li>Awareness: Bringing thought leadership and market awareness together, they think beyond the status quo and integrates ethics and values in the decision-making. </li><li>Persuasion: Social scientists discuss the various levels of power that the project management community also adopted (Gemmill & Thamhain, 1974). These power levels include formal (legitimate), reward, penalty (coercive), expert, and referential powers. One's ability to establish the required trustworthy relationships make their expert and referential powers persuade others (especially as they lobby the organization and the stakeholders in the society for a larger cause).</li><li>Conceptualization: Delivering the right solutions the right way at the right time is a critical consideration for servant leaders who both think strategically outside the box (has a huge foresight to dream BHAG) but also focus on tactical operational excellence. </li><li>Foresight: Servant leaders, by their very nature, are comfortable in the VUCA world continuously learning from experiences and still with a childlike curiosity. The serenity prayer "Give me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference" comes to my mind in defining this characteristics. </li><li>Stewardship: Standing on top of all the previous characteristics, the stewardship is 'leading the world' by 'walking the talk' for the larger society! Without ethical guidelines baked into one's character, it is not possible to be a steward!</li><li>Commitment to People's Growth: This is where I said servant leaders go beyond lip service by committing themselves to everyone's growth. This is also the reason that the transformational leadership is the platform that is integral to servant leadership because practicing the 4I's in the microcosm of a team makes them excel in practicing them well in the macrocosm of the society as the situation warrants. </li><li>Building Community: As the popular saying goes, "Change yourself, and you will change the world," I believe servant leaders change the world by creating, building, rebuilding, and empowering communities. Everyone is responsible for shaping the world that we live in. </li></ol></div><div><br /></div><div>So, servant leadership is a lot bigger than managing the scrum team or product backlog. It truly brings the best in us every day towards the betterment of the work life, home life, and the larger society!</div><div><br /></div><div>What are your thoughts? Please share.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>References</b></div><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #6b6b6b; font-size: 13.2px;"><br /></span></div><div>Covey, S. (1987). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon & Shuster.</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; text-indent: -48px;">Gemmill, G. R. & Thamhain, H. J. (1974). The effectiveness of different power styles of project managers in gaining project support. </span><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; text-indent: -48px;">Project Management Quarterly, 5</span><span style="background-color: white; text-indent: -48px;">(1), 21–28.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Greenleaf, R.K. (1977/2002). Servant-Leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. </div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Life cycle theory of leadership. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Training & Development Journal</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">.</span></span></div><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></div><div>Rajagopalan, S. (2017). Listening with Eyes. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2017/04/listening-with-eyes.html</div><div><br /></div><div>Rajagopalan. S. (2020). Artificial Intelligence Solutions: Four Considerations extended from Digital Bioethics. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2020/09/artificial-intelligence-solutions-four.html</div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-6692256986188086532023-12-20T18:22:00.001-05:002023-12-31T19:31:38.959-05:00Kanban India 2023: Reflections on Kanban Awareness<p>I had an opportunity to present a 90-min workshop on boosting business agility leveraging Kanban principles in the Kanban India 2023 conference organized by Innovation Roots in Bengaluru, India. This conference was represented by various types of people from many industries but mainly from project management office and information technology professionals. So, it was not surprising for me to see the diverse roles of project manager, product manager, product owner, director or project management office, agile coaches, scrum masters, and a small percentage of resource managers and senior leaders. However, what surprised me largely was the complete unawareness of the Kanban principles by almost all the 30+ members that sat in my workshop across all these previously represented roles!</p><p>First, Kanban is not a framework or methodology! It is a method because Kanban can be adopted within any plan-driven or adaptive framework as well as the organization specific methodology adaptations of these frameworks specifically within their organizations! Without understanding these distinctions among framework, methodology, and methods, people have rushed to the same thought process of how they conceived waterfall methodology when the original author never even promoted the concept of such linear waterfall thinking (Rajagopalan, 2014). Instead, Kanban has been conceived as a set of cards organized in status-driven swim-lanes such as "To Do", "Doing" and "Done". </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBNLd9sZzMYX6mBEddeUiFbibQ8Uo6O4048hprF9nWMG7LlaNfDUAuUrDKzLehZyNsCrnqWzUrk9DwI9q026q0UAhJuCT-IEpBox5_lDum6wYmhuJ7DJlGyTD-aowQmcv-V-bbsPCQLN7bt4PauvIqoweNvW3_DDxJ_KCjeuvEikYsK2Qxs4ImeygkowY/s1160/ValueFlows.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="651" data-original-width="1160" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBNLd9sZzMYX6mBEddeUiFbibQ8Uo6O4048hprF9nWMG7LlaNfDUAuUrDKzLehZyNsCrnqWzUrk9DwI9q026q0UAhJuCT-IEpBox5_lDum6wYmhuJ7DJlGyTD-aowQmcv-V-bbsPCQLN7bt4PauvIqoweNvW3_DDxJ_KCjeuvEikYsK2Qxs4ImeygkowY/w410-h231/ValueFlows.png" width="410" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Figure 1: Dr. Rajagopalan's synthesis of value flow</i></div></i><p>Contrary to popular thinking of Kanban cards in such statuses reducing the Kanban implementation as a tactile execution, Kanban has a set of principles that promote business level systems thinking among the team members for strategic value delivery. Since value itself flows both vertically across projects, programs, and portfolios (and hence the notions of benefit management in programs, value stream mapping in product management, and expanding these concepts with risk management in programs and portfolios), Kanban applied the lean manufacturing concepts combining managerial (efficiency) and leadership (effectiveness) with a concerted qualification efforts (efficacy) applying five important principles. Without all these five thoughts, business agility with both horizontal and vertical value delivery simply does not exist!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ0_DLYpRTNla9AsR_FAweqghXGqcPBghPTwGtcexdp1XXCRads10tfI-m3G7rhXUtlCLjOmHFGm2NpkXaLJKWHuV1TDWDveUqHSIRQz7N1r_MGSafa-WNaRotEpbziWg9-7w4I-sW_uTfGxAHUaWBZnyOkFVaxqj_EMcekEnK6GqK4gw05xWjH6vzVZg/s623/KanbanBusinessAgility.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="623" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ0_DLYpRTNla9AsR_FAweqghXGqcPBghPTwGtcexdp1XXCRads10tfI-m3G7rhXUtlCLjOmHFGm2NpkXaLJKWHuV1TDWDveUqHSIRQz7N1r_MGSafa-WNaRotEpbziWg9-7w4I-sW_uTfGxAHUaWBZnyOkFVaxqj_EMcekEnK6GqK4gw05xWjH6vzVZg/s320/KanbanBusinessAgility.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Figure 2: Dr. Rajagopalan's adaptation of Kanban Principles</i></div><p>First among these principles is the <b>Andon </b>thinking promoting the notion of team accountability through a transparent visual factory. While the Andon thinking emphasized team level ownership by allowing the team members to self-organize using the visual cards and queue buildups towards better documentation and training as needed to ensure cost of quality! </p><p>This team accountability was supplemented with <b>Jidoka </b>that ensured people thought value delivery from an overall systems (not just tactical cards like how people conceive of tasks and subtasks) but the combined influence of all these tasks towards benefits (requirements, specifications, design, quality, etc.). This systems thinking thought process also elevated people to relieve themselves of mundane tasks (for the sake of doing them - remember being busy is not being productive) by intelligent automation wherever possible. </p><p>This simultaneous concept of thinking both from a systems perspective and automating mundane activities intelligently also was supported by teams and their line managers (hence project managers, product owners, scrum masters, agile coaches, managers) thinking of <b>Heijunka </b>bringing the resource optimization principles of reducing unevenness and minimizing overburden in distributing work for people or load with systems and processes. The entire notions of the total quality management (focusing on muda, mura, and muri) emerge from these Heijunka thinking for cost of quality!</p><p>As people owned the processes (means to end) that supported in delivering products (evaluating value for customers), the focus on <b>Kaizen </b>emerged on continuously improving the processes (simplifying documentation, training, reducing errors (Poka Yoke, for instance), risk management, etc.) and evaluating customer success factors and business benefits. This is when objectives and key results (OKR) where evaluated with the right level of key performance indicators (KPIs) along with built-in quality thoughts of critical success factors (CSF). </p><p>Just to ensure that Kaizen thinking itself didn't apply to product and process increments in a monotonous way, the systems thinking was further advanced by radical innovations of continuous experiments. This thought process lead to <b>Kaikaku </b>ensuring that everyone contributed researching market trends in augmenting business value by doing something innovative avoiding the notion of "this is how it is done here" (Kotter & Rathgeber, 2016)</p><p>As Kotter & Rathgeber (2016) very nicely discuss the using of meerkat colonies organizing differently to deal with emerging threats to their survival, it is pivotal to understand the principles of Kanban rather than bring it down to its knees by reducing them to a set of nice visuals (cards and swim-lanes) limited to the tools used! If all these principles are not understood and practiced, no tool or technology can help the teams to swarm, self-organize, and survive!</p><p><b>References</b></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Kotter, J. & Rathgeber, H. (2016). That's Not How We Do It Here!" Plantation, FL: J.Ross Publishing.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Rajagopalan, S. (2014). Review of the myths on original software development model. </span><i style="font-size: 14px;">International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, 5(16),</i><span style="font-size: 14px;"> 103-111.</span></span></p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-74257569170780960692023-11-28T05:36:00.002-05:002023-11-28T06:03:40.563-05:00Music Performance: Reflections towards Change Management<p>I was very excited to attend my niece's solo music performance as part of her Music program graduation requirements. There were postures of the "Soul Quest" posted in many places outside the auditorium announcing her solo performance with QR codes for registering for the event. As I sat in the theater in the front row, I reviewed the program schedule before the program began! Now, I didn't relate to the list of songs selected, the genre of emotions it invoked, and the time period of the composers or the story behind those compositions. But, I very much related to the multitude of things that happened as the program started with my niece performing on flute and singing in Western and Eastern styles. </p><p>A music performance such as this program needs to be viewed from multiple angles. There must have been several discussions between the student and the teachers in selecting the songs to ensure that the songs were challenging bringing the maximum out of the student. There must have been multiple rehearsals from the student personally and specific staged performances before the teachers to confirm readiness. Through out these processes are instances of change management initiatives constantly adapting themselves. Not a single song was instantly selected, iterative practice avoided, and approval granted. This is exactly how initiatives are identified, evaluated, executed, and approved at various stages for both proactive and reactive change. </p><p>Did this program only conclude with the song selection and practice? There were creative postures designed, a title carefully selected, and the entire design and development process executed in parallel. Production of such colorful displays were further compounded by complexities around where these postures can be displayed around the campus. Furthermore, there were digital media approaches to QR code generation, website for program announcements, and scheduling the campus theater for the per graduation requirements. Everyone of this needs had to go through many rounds of changes. I only saw the final outcome, just like a project manager stages the final outcome or the product owner approvers the product increment! There were many other team members that staged this performance!</p><p>Then, the post-production processes similar to the post-deployment considerations or the operational excellence initiatives. Were they left out in this music program? No! I saw people who were streaming the performance for online audience, people collecting the photographs people took, and others, such as the teachers confirming the satisfaction and providing feedback. There were also website updates about the program's success. </p><p>So, the concepts of risk based thinking towards delivering a quality performance satisfying stakeholders with the agreed upon scope within the confirmed schedule and cost considerations involving appropriate timely management of resources and procuring work to other subject matter experts were all evident! Little do people relate to the concepts of integrated change management in a delivering projects such as this music performance! </p><p>This is the reason why I keep mentioning project management principles are integral to everyone pursuing any degree so that they can excel in what they prepare themselves for! What do you think? </p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-18689707034073682572023-10-31T20:29:00.005-04:002023-10-31T20:29:41.827-04:00TREAD carefully to transition benefits<p>Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to deliver the benefits management module as part of the Program Management (PgMP) certification preparation class delivered by Kailash Upadhay from AddOn Skills. Subsequently, I was doing another corporate training where people were discussing about benefit as the financial gain to the organization as part of "Program Increment" planning in Scaled Agile. When I tried to explain the differences, people felt that program management is not relevant in adaptive approaches as agile focuses only on value.</p><p>As I reflected on these combined discussions, I felt that there is a larger disconnect on benefits and value and when different emerging frameworks play with words, the fundamental meaning is lost! I would like to call out my reflections from a dental visit blog (Rajagopalan, 2020) where I synthesized the importance of output, capabilities, outcomes, benefits, and value. Consequently, I would like to address two big myths!</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First, in the world of project, program, and portfolio managing focusing on product management, benefits are program level deliverables. Programs represent the integrated outcomes that indicates an operational state. This outcome is derived from the integration of one or more components (which include projects, sub-programs, and program related activities). The utility value of these outcomes represent the benefit and the extent to which the benefits are realized represent the value. So, the concepts of benefits belong to traditional approaches and value belongs to adaptive approaches are incorrect.</li><li>Second, benefits lifecycle (these include the stages benefits identification, benefits analysis & planning, benefits delivery, benefits transition, and benefits sustenance) are done throughout the program lifecycle (program definition, program delivery, and program closure). Benefits are not related to financial ROI alone as customer satisfaction and employee morale are intangible benefits that can't be measured in financial value. I recall reading about Infosys being the first Indian company to ever record human resources capital and brand value as an asset in the balance sheet. Similarly gain can be increase in non-human capabilities, such as the facilities, equipment, materials, infrastructure, and supplies that can come through vendors, consultants, partners, and suppliers among many things. Companies launch programs constantly to address these types of customer and employee satisfaction initiatives as well as non-human resource capabilities (partner expansion, new vendors in the horizontal and vertical integration, mergers & acquisition, strategic expansion initiatives, etc.) So, to say that programs focus on financial metrics alone is incorrect. </li></ul><p></p><p>So, benefits are realized only in the operations and programs as well as the component initiatives are focused on benefit transition ( I am sure the Steven Covey's "Start with the End in Mind" is so relevant; this is all the more reason, why program management becomes a leadership role). When I managed my PMO, through experience and lessons learned, I created a mnemonic to help my team. It is called, "TREAD" which helps with project/program managers to think of transition activities. These include:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: red;">T</span>ransfer of Risks</b>: Risk Register is maintained throughout the program and its components. When we are ready to transition outcomes to operations, some of the risks may not be closed, some risks may be residual, and new risks may be present during the transition (e.g.: Training delivered needed to include subtitles because of the new operational team members have hearing disabilities and will have to have video subtitles for training to be effective).</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">R</span>eview Documentation</b>: One of the things that very frequently slips through the cracks is the documentation. Whether it is system or user documentation required for operational success or as part of contractual agreements or for training and maintenance, ensuring that these documentations are accurately reflecting the reality is important. Please don't limit yourself to thinking of software specific documentation alone. For instance, in order for some benefits to be valuable, there may have to be consumer specific documentation (Patient Guide), physician specific documentation (Important Safety Information, Prescribing Information) and branding documentation (brand guide, style guide, annotated visual aid, etc.) will be mandatory. </li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>E</b></span><b>valuation of performance</b> against acceptance criteria and metrics. Now, these are not just test execution and inspection but a deeper governance review with critical success factors (CSF), objectives and key results (OKR), and the key performance indicators (KPI). Ensuring such acceptance criteria against the business case along with potential lessons learned is important.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>A</b></span><b>pproval and Readiness</b>: Emerging from all the above is the readiness of the governance to validate against traceability, auditability, and compliance to approve the transition to operations. Based on lessons learned and retrospectives, additional process may have to be reviewed and modified to facilitate continuous learning and continuous improvement.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>D</b></span><b>isposition of Resources</b>: Finally, matching against the guarantee and warranty requirements aligned with the procurement domain as well as resource domain, existing resources (people and non-people resources) may have to relieved. This makes these resources either available in the resource pool for other capital projects or avoid accumulating costs unnecessarily to the performing organization. </li></ol><p></p><p>So, <b><span style="color: red;">TREAD </span></b>carefully when transitioning benefits and don't fall victim to benefits are no longer relevant in Agile approaches or benefits only represent the financial ROI.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2020). Lessons Learned on Strategic Project Management from a Dental Visit. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2020/08/lessons-learned-on-strategic-project.html</p><p>Singh, J.V. & Trivedi, B. (1999). Infosys Technologies Limited (A). The Wharton School of Management, University of Pennsylvania. </p><p><br /></p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-54788660186607987712023-09-12T16:02:00.001-04:002023-10-16T08:44:07.188-04:00Barista Language: Communication Lessons from Local Coffee Shop Visit I was spending my vacation with my son traveling through places in Colorado. We stopped by a local coffee shop for a little break and support the local economy instead of the franchise shops! I ordered a regular black coffee and got a Mexican strong roast coffee. It was not Americano. I said that this is not what I ordered and the shop asked for what I needed and gave me an alternative. As I started to sip my coffee, my son mentioned that I made an assumption about what a regular coffee meant and should learn about the barista language to order coffee. <div><br /></div><div>"Barista language" echoed in my ears loudly! As part of the people management aspects, I always used to say, "Communication is not what you say but what the other person understood!" (Rajagopalan, 2018). I often emphasize them in my trainings about managing stakeholder engagement by push, pull, and interactive communications in formal and informal settings relating to both verbal and non-verbal clues. But, my thoughts in all these areas were implicitly focused on formally recognized scripted languages used by people to speak and write! But, I missed that connection to the glossary of terms that people use naturally as part of their business.</div><div><br /></div><div>For those that are not familiar, coffee could be served as "Latte, Coffe Mocha, Iced Coffee, Red Eye, Americano, Cortado, Cold brew, Cafe con Leche, Cappucion, Caffee Macchiato, Flat white, Pour over, and Long black." Each and every type of coffee has a different way of preparation, different origin of beans, different types of mixes, etc. Where is "Regular" here that I asked of the Barista asking for my coffee order? I assumed "Regular" is always the standard Americano! As I pondered over what my son was trying to emphasize, "Coffee is like a culture with each variation being a tribe of its own!" Naturally, therefore, there is a Barista language. No wonder the "Regular" that this coffee shop served was local to their culture and business! I am sure the same can be said for tea, wine, and other hot drinks. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is a new learning twist for me! I have always described communication as not what you said but what the other person understood (Rajagopalan, 2017). Unlike many that may think that this thought process may be aligned with people's personality, I based my thought mainly people's big picture vs details mindset, the attention span orientation, and their emotional connectivity to the topic! While the personality instruments, such as the most popular MBTI and DiSC are reliable and validated, it is an individuals' self-scoring mechanism. People change and so does their personality! So, if people use these instrument's labels, then, they may bring their bias that may not characterize others.</div><div><br /></div><div>For instance, while I was studying in India, I never talked with others because I came from a Tamil instructional medium. I felt difficult to put my thoughts in words and embarrassed to speak due to the inability to speak and respond. Naturally, I felt like an introvert but I changed to be an extrovert. Actually, I feel like an ambivert because that level of quiet thinking is required for big picture abstract thinking (without which I couldn't have completed my PhD, pursued several certifications for my growth, or supported a PMO for 10 years) but lobby with many stakeholders and regulators for numerous projects and initiatives.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet, with all this understanding, how complacent sometimes I have been! How complacent and sometimes reticent people can be when they lack some of this understanding and fail to make deeper connections! I understand Risk means Hazard, Harm, Issue, Impediment, Obstacle, Blocker, etc. Depending up on businesses, each sector comes up with its own language specific to that company. Let us practice in real life how to do this as I will try my best moving forward. Yes, communication is not about you think and say but what others perceive and understand! Learning is fun! Continuous learning is exciting! Thanks to my son reemphasizing this thought!</div><div><br /></div><div>Thoughts? Anyone want to express additional insights on? I am sure there are tea aficionados and wine connoisseurs? Let us enrich communication with languages yet to be recognized formally or not yet adopted widely!</div><div><br /></div><div>References</div><div>Rajagopalan, S. (2017). Organized Common Sense. Outskirts Press.</div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-70700494102751657422023-08-21T15:03:00.121-04:002023-09-24T17:21:01.513-04:00Risk Management: Birds' Eye View of some Standards and RegulationsI have been doing management training for several years preparing professionals in multiple industries for their career certifications and corporate training as well as mentoring some professionals. Through all these interactions and my personal desire for viewing standards and regulations from the lens of risk management, I have been exposed to some ISO standards and some regulations. At the same time, it has also become increasingly clear to me that many professionals are not aware of these standards and regulations. So, as I wrapped up another PMP session, I decided to capture some of these standards and regulations. <div><br /></div><div><div><b>ISO Standards</b></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>From my own understanding of the standards and their implementation in multiple industries, I feel some standards are universally applicable to multiple industries. I am calling these standards as "<b>core</b>" standards. Such standards include ISO 9001 on Quality, ISO 27001 on Information Security, and ISO 14001 for Environment considerations. </li><li>The core standards may not be sufficient for certain industries and "<b>additional</b>" standards are required to put in place guidelines and guardrails to support projects, programs, and portfolios to support the industry specific compliance to operate as a business to serve their targeted customers. For example, the ISO 28005 for giving electronic port clearance before a ship/cruise leaves the port. I call these standards as "additional" standards mandatory for that industry.</li><li>Furthermore, some reference standards give clearer guidance for multiple industries to benefit from overarching principles. The exact choice of guidance applicable may vary from one industry to another and therefore serve as "<b>supporting</b>" the companies in those industries depending upon the specific products and services. The ISO 31000 gives the risk management fundamentals with many techniques but not all techniques (such as the Fault Tree Analysis may not apply in small enterprises focusing on IT software products) may extend to all the small, medium, and large enterprises. I call them as "supporting" because they serve as an additional reference. </li><li>The core and additional standards may act as either a <i>de jure</i> standard (i.e., required legally). Some of the additional and supporting standards may act as a <i>de facto </i>(used as a default best practice guideline) standard. </li><li>When I list "Multiple" in the "Industries" column, the appropriate standard can apply to any industry, such as the IT, Construction, Telecommunication, Transportation, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Agriculture, Aviation, Event Management, Food Safety, Banking, Financial Services, Investment, Insurance, Automotive, etc.</li></ol><i><b><u>NOTE: </u></b>The "core", "additional", and "supporting" are just my own reference classification to guide aspiring professionals in their own industry to gain adequate knowledge as part of their continuous improvement! </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Here is my high-level summary of ISO standards for people to look into. This table is not a complete summary of all standards in every industry. In fact, some of these standards have so many sub-standards that I will not be able to balance any justification if I go into any more detail. So, please consult the appropriate ISO standard or the appropriate standard body.</div><div><br /></div>
<table border="3">
<tbody><tr><td width="15%"><b>Standard</b></td><td width="50%"><b>Description</b></td><td width="15%"><b>My Classification</b></td><td width="20%"><b>Industries</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 9001</td><td>Quality Management</td><td>Core</td><td>Multiple</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 27001</td><td>Information Security</td><td>Core</td><td>Multiple</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 14001</td><td>Environment</td><td>Core</td><td>Multiple</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 31000</td><td>Risk Management</td><td>Core</td><td>Multiple</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 45001</td><td>Occupational Health & Safety: Physical Risks</td><td>Supporting</td><td>Multiple</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 22301</td><td>Business Continuity</td><td>Additional</td><td>IT Industry</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 20000</td><td>IT Services</td><td>Additional</td><td>IT Industry</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 45003</td><td>Occupational Health & Safety: Psychosocial Risks</td><td>Additional</td><td>Engineering</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 28805</td><td>Electronic Port Clearance</td><td>Additional</td><td>Shipping, Cruises</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 50001</td><td>Energy Management Services</td><td>Additional</td><td>Energy</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 27701</td><td>Privacy Extension</td><td>Additional</td><td>IT Industry</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 26000</td><td>Social Responsibility</td><td>Supporting</td><td>Multiple</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 17025</td><td>Testing and Calibration Laboratories</td><td>Additional</td><td>Healthcare</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 13485</td><td>Medical Devices</td><td>Additional</td><td>Healthcare</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 22000</td><td>Food & Saftey Management</td><td>Additional</td><td>Restaurant and Food Safety</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 37001</td><td>Anti-bribery Management Services</td><td>Supporting</td><td>FinTech</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 20121</td><td>Sustainable Events</td><td>Supporting</td><td>Event Management</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 14971</td><td>Risk Management for Medical Devices</td><td>Supporting</td><td>Healthcare</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 15854</td><td>Aircraft Equipment</td><td>Additional</td><td>Aviation</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 17944</td><td>Banking Security</td><td>Additional</td><td>Banking</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 12812</td><td>Mobile Financial Services</td><td>Additional</td><td>Banking</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 15782</td><td>Certificate Management</td><td>Additional</td><td>Investment Services</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 17989</td><td>Agriculture Tractors and Machinery</td><td>Additional</td><td>Agriculture</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 22002</td><td>Food Safety & Farming</td><td>Additional</td><td>Agriculture & Farming</td></tr>
<tr><td>ISO 22005</td><td>Traceability in the Feed and Food Chains</td><td>Additional</td><td>Agriculture & Animal Safety</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br /></div><div><b>
Additional Industry Standards </b></div><div> While the above ISO standards are a good reference for the global community, there are also specific standards from other non-profit standards issuing organization (<i>e.g.: IEEE, ANSI</i>) and government entities (<i>e.g.: Department of Defense, Food & Drug Association, Federal Trade Commission, etc.</i>). Given below are some of standards issued by these organizations (The following is neither a complete list nor presented in any priority order). </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>CMMC – DoD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is a standard proving risk management structured designed to ensure defense contractors are complying with the current security requirements while dealing with public information </li><li>NIST CSF – National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has many standards and is frequently known for the NIST Cyber security framework (CSF), which is a risk driven quality management standard for private firms to improve their processes and products while focusing mainly on maturity of security related processes </li><li>CMMI – It is a Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI) structural quality guidance, called Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) with multiple levels, targeted at the processes and products. Its focus is not only on security but also on overall organizational processes and policies. </li><li>SOC2 – Has a series of audit controls from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) on a company’s system and organization controls (SOC) as part of their internal risk assessment and treatment plans. SOC1 controls are mainly on financial controls while SOC2 controls are on CIA triad as well as security and privacy controls. </li><li>FedRAMP – It is a US based Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) focusing on standardized approach to security assessment, authorization and continuous monitoring for cloud related products and services. </li><li>FIPA is an IEEE Computer Society standards for Physical Agents and similar agent based technology interoperability. </li><li>COBIT represents a set of control objectives for information technology from an international association on computerized security governance (ISACA) and is prevalent in may industries. </li><li>ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) represents a collection of service delivery guidelines as a library for the entire lifecycle of any IT services within a company. </li><li>PCI DSS is a set of data security standards (DSS) for the payment card industry (PCI) to address vulnerabilities for point of sale (POS) devices, mobile devices and computers, wireless hotspots, web shopping applications, and transmission of data. </li><li>Six Sigma is a framework of qualitative and quantitative tools and techniques to aid the quality from an operational excellence perspective feeding prescriptive and predictive data analysis.</li><li>DICOM represents a set of digital communication (DICOM) standards for the level of encryption required for data transmission and storage for PACS (picture archiving and communication systems) systems used for medical diagnostic images.</li><li>PMBOK is a collection of business processes governing the management of projects, programs, and portfolios from the Project Management Institute for unique delivery of products, services, and results in any industry or organization. </li></ul><div><b>Regulations</b></div><div><br /></div><div>In addition to the standards discussed so far, there are regulations. Similar to standards, there are too many regulations. Given below are a few for consideration</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to protect patient health information</li><li>SOX - Sarbanes Oxley Act responsible for internal and disclosure controls</li><li>GDPR - General Data Protection Regulation from European Union governing the privacy rights of individuals</li><li>CCPA - California Consumer Protection Act governing the privacy rights of individuals</li><li>TCPA - Telephone Consumer Protection Act amended to protect the individuals against unsolicited text message, robot calling, do not call registry violations, etc.</li><li>COPA - Children's Online Protection Act governing the rights and responsibilities for protecting children from abuse and cybercrimes</li><li>PDMA - Prescription Drug Marketing Act governing the responsibilities for fair balance, efficacy, indicated use, black box warning, and adverse event consideration </li><li>GAMP - General Automation Manufacturing Protocol in healthcare and allied industries governing the entire GxP (General Lab Practices, General Manufacturing Practices, etc.)</li><li>CSA - Computer System Assurance related practices governing the design, development and testing of requirements (regardless of project delivery frameworks</li><li>ASPICE - Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination to govern the detailed processes related to the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) whose products are included in the vehicles including but not limited to self-driving autonomous vehicles</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Disclaimer</b>: I am not a qualified professional to go into the details of any of these standard or regulations. I have captured them from my own limited understanding very briefly in this blog. For all, references, please consult the appropriate ISO reference guides or the appropriate governing body for details. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Do you think I should mention any other standard? Do you know of any industry that I can add to this standard? </div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-90768213523004689202023-07-08T19:12:00.001-04:002023-09-24T12:03:08.125-04:00Parenting Lessons: Managing for Happiness while focusing on Relevance<p>I had a friend visiting my family. With a smaller child who was requiring some attention for food and later for occupying time, both my friend and I were readjusting to ensure that the child stayed happy. After the child had its food, we were showing the limited toys I had or the TV shows the child saw. The friend ensured that both the toys or the shows were relevant and age-appropriate. After my friend left, I was thinking about how parents had that innate thought process of managing for happiness while delivering playful things with meaning! We understand that people learn when they are happy. That learning is channeled for relevance for value. But, how much we practice this "Managing for happiness while focusing on relevance" in managing ourselves, our team, our products, etc.? </p><p>If experience had taught me one thing, then, that is that we don't see things as they are but we see things as we are. We put our own lens through which we see everything! This is the reason why people with scientific facts and evidence claim there is global warming and then others refute it because of extreme cold and snow in unpredictable places! The truth does not lie but we see the portion of the truth and not the entire truth! Good managers and great leaders see beyond the abstraction and see where things could be! Whether it is people for skills and competency improvement or processes for experimentation and continuous improvement, nothing gets accomplished when people collectively don't collaborate and challenge themselves to share the need to be a part of something bigger than themselves. </p><p>When a child is happy the learning occurs. The parent does not give everything the child wants but drives the focus for relevance. Somewhere along our professional journey, people become complacent with the status quo. This could be due to other life priorities or unwillingness to commit to learning! If learning stops, growth stops! If we want to grow, learning should continue! So, why are we limiting ourselves what we can learn in the early childhood days but fail to continue that childhood like curiosity continuously in personal and professional lives? </p><p>As I thought through this process, I thought that product management and project management as part of program and portfolio management should also look at people and process in a different light! "Manage people for happiness and focus processes for meaning" is my thought. If we ensure people are happy and the processes are meaningful (avoiding mura, muri, and muda), then, people will self-organize, challenge the status quo, and demonstrate leadership. If people are unhappy and processes are bureaucratic or confusing, people get demotivated, settle for mediocrity, and withdraw! Yes, there are many motivation theories (Maslow's Hierarchy, Hertzberg 2-Factor theory, McClelland Theory of Needs, Vroom's expectancy theory, McGregor's Theory of X & Y, Ouchi's Theory of Z) and each has a solid base on multiple fields with their proven track record. </p><p>In my humble opinion, none of these theories are adequately accommodated in today's middle management or executive leadership. The rush for quick wins to keep the business afloat seems to have seized the day. Ethics are compromised and design patterns are deprioritized to fit methodologies (not, I didn't say framework). To some extent, the middle management and executive leadership needs to hit the "reset" button and rethink how to manage for happiness and focus on processes for meaning." Here is my blueprint for these steps.</p><p><br /></p><p>
</p><table border="6">
<tbody><tr><td width="25%"><b>Suggested Step</b></td><td width="75%"><b>Brief Explanation</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>Build for Happiness</td><td><ul><li>Think of Ikigai that focuses on profession, passion, mission, & vocation)</li><li>People are not going to be happy if one focuses only on profits, products, platforms</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>Manage for Innovation</td><td><ul><li><span>Innovation need not be tied to roles & responsibilities. </span></li><li><span>Remember that a good innovation management means roles & responsibilities are across multiple departments.</span></li><li>Incorporate innovation in everything we do - incremental, continuous, and radical. </li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>Accelerate for Learning</td><td><ul><li><span>Don't promote a fail fast culture that compromises learning</span></li><li><span>Don't build methodologies (company specific processes) that deters learning</span></li><li><span>Fail forward all the time. This is when you learn! Failure is too great an opportunity to miss learning. </span></li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>Experiment for Customer</td><td><ul><li>Relentlessly focus on customer. The world today is more about the customer's customers than just the paying client!</li><li>Don't rush to product persona without creating a market persona!</li><li>Persona is not people and so does not represent the voice of customer or voice of business. Actively Listen!</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>Play for Success</td><td><ul><li>Promote "role" swaps. Don't just think in other's views but walk a mile in their shoes. </li><li>Incorporate alternative thinking (risk management) with explorative experiments </li><li>Explore childlike testing (unscripted, adhoc) for quality from the beginning (this is beyond manual and automation testing)</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>Nurture for Growth</td><td><ul><li><span>Create the culture that you want</span></li><li><span>Operate as though your work is your own business</span></li><li><span>Lead for transformation and not for transaction</span></li></ul></td></tr>
</tbody></table><p></p>
What are your thoughts? Would you agree? Add, Change or Modify anything? Share your thoughts!Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-60327839291019787312023-06-11T14:33:00.001-04:002023-09-23T18:04:32.660-04:00Does Agile Mandate CICD? Lessons from ADO West 2023<p>I was presenting at the Agile DevOps West in 2023 on business agility. Twice during this conference, I heard people say another presentation where they heard people say that continuous-integration and continuous-delivery (CICD) is required as part of the DevOps and teams are not practicing agility without implementing the CICD. I feel that these are clear misinterpretations of how Agile is still misconstrued and how the principles of Agile and DevOps frameworks are viewed improperly from the technical lens of CICD. </p><p>First, Agile is about self-organized team empowered culture adapting to change, experimenting with innovation, failing forward, and focusing on value maximization. When Takeuchi and Nonako (1986) first laid the foundation for Scrum, much before the Agile Manifesto was ever written, their focus of new product development was not isolated to IT industry or software development. However, one of the biggest issues with Agile is that all the 17 contributors were men and came from IT industry representing very little diversity. Their myopic thinking and ignorance can be therefore be felt in three areas when they limited Agile to Software.</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Opening the Manifesto with "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it."</li><li>Including a statement, "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" in the Agile Manifesto.</li><li>Including the principle, "Working software is the only measure of progress" as part of the 12 principles.</li><li>Including the principle, "Deliver working software frequently from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale" as part of the 12 principles.</li></ol><p></p><p>In my webinars and training, I question these statements. If you replace the word, "software" with "<b>workware</b>" (a term I coined indicating that workware could be software, hardware, firmware, healthcare, Construction contracts, FinTech processes eliminating overhead and waste), the statements do work absolutely fine to represent agility. These are the reasons why agility can be applied to individual career management and at home, religious places, and other industries where software is not part of their work at all. While it applies well in software development, it is not limited to software development. In fact, I have applied principles of agility outside of software development in a Theatrical context (Rajagopalan, 2013) and have practiced it at home.</p><p>Now, let us look at CICD. As part of the V-Model, any solution developed goes through various stakeholders that shape the solution. Clear and concise representation of the requirements by the business analyst, design of the overarching architecture by system analyst and system engineer, the development of the solution by the engineer. Testing therefore is checking at multiple levels to check for solution developed and system designed against the requirements requiring multiple levels of testing itself. The idea is to minimize waste by incrementally test every increment to the solution and also ensure that the increment is a good candidate for deployment. Here is where a few principles have to be kept in mind.</p><p>The Continuous Integration (CI) is required to ensure that every solution increment is integrated and regressed with already working and previously released functionality. This aspect is the first area of CI to ensure the new code has required boundary checking (no uninitialized variables, no memory leak, all code paths are covered) in addition to running automated test cases confirming all previous functionality so that the automation tests can run on the changes. </p><p>Not all new code can't be deployed to a production environment from CI functionality. Many reasons, such as multiple staged environment (like test, staging, pre-production, and production) may be required before additional tests like penetration testing and load testing may be mandated. Some industries may require a special group to handle validation as a separate activity outside of quality control, such as in healthcare and life sciences, for performance qualification (PQ handled frequently by the QC team), Operational Qualification (OQ) and Installation Qualification (IQ) that may be handled by a validation team and/or installation team appropriately. Therefore, CD may also mean continuous delivery to other environments in a linear pipeline. So, Continuous Delivery precedes Continuous Deployment. </p><p>Furthermore, even if the continuous delivery succeeds in all the environments or the validation (OQ, IQ, for instance), the new increments can't be released. In some organizations, such as in pharmaceutical companies, new increments can not be released to production until approval to distribute (ATD) is provided from the OPDP (Office of Prescription Drug Promotion) after medical, legal, and regulatory review and approval. Any functionality released to production prior to this ATD (sometimes called AFD - Approval For Dissemination) is considered violation of OPDP protocols. </p><p>Alternatively, it is possible that multiple teams are working together. So, it is possible that an additional level of release level testing of all the functionality consolidated from each team's outcomes will have to be assessed. These are called single cadence release at the release level (containing multiple iterations from multiple teams). </p><p>When you factor all these thoughts of why CI is required and the various instances of CD (continuous delivery and continuous deployment), the CICD itself is focused on the continuous improvement (which is also abbreviated sometimes as CI) of software development life cycle processes. So, CICD is definitely supporting agility but agility does not require CICD at all as agility is not restricted to software development in the IT industry. </p><p>Now, let us extend the discussion to DevOps. The fundamental principles behind DevOps is also a team based culture focused on collaboration, data-based decision-making, customer-centric decision-making, constant improvement, responsibility throughout the lifecycle, automation, and treating failure as a learning opportunity (Roddewig, 2021). The DevOps institute (n.d) itself proclaims in their CALMS (culutre, automation, lean, measurement, sharing) these principles outlining DevOps as a team-oriented culture enabling framework. While CICD is part of DevOps infinity cycle to have the delivery team and the infrastructure team to collaborate on their collective accountability, CICD is only one part of the DevOps framework. </p><p>When all these ideas are integrated together, let us tell the right story. Just because a team does not use CICD or deploy increments to production frequently and directly after successful CI, it does not mean the team is less agile. Agile and DevOps serve as two book ends including Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment. All elements of CICD support Agile and DevOps but Agile itself does not mandate CICD. </p><p><b>References </b></p><p>DevOps Foundation Blueprint (n.d.). DevOps Institute. https://www.devopsinstitute.com/certifications/devops-foundation/</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Agility outside of Software Development: A case study from Theatrical Play. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/05/agility-outside-of-software-development.html</p><p>Roddewig, S. (2021). 7 Principles of DevOps for Successful Development Teams. https://blog.hubspot.com/website/devops-principles</p><p>Takeuchi, H. & Nonaki, I. (1986, January). The New New Product Development Game. Harvard Business Review, 64(1), 137-146.</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-13939574940601141812023-05-12T16:02:00.073-04:002023-10-22T21:31:29.445-04:00Ingredients of a Growth Mindset: Connecting with Movies<p>I was watching a few movie clips to pass the time after a long week. And, I watched the Harry Potter and Sorcerer stone clip on how Harry Potter was chasing one of the flying keys among many other masquerading keys. I had an idea at that point about having not one key but many keys that have to work together to unlock the door of "Growth Mindset." In Lean framework, we categorize the growth mindset as the ability to learn about anything required by learning from failure, growing from challenges, and focusing attitude and efforts towards continuous growth. </p><p>Inspired from this movie clip, I thought of various attributes of a growth mindset. In a fun way, I brainstormed with my sons on what growth meant to them in their school and career. I even discussed some of my ideas with my wife. Interestingly and unknown to me, I came up with eight different attributes that seemed to follow a pattern that were alphabetically sequenced. Now, I engaged with some creative fun to model these attributes as a key pointing towards the center (if the key looked like a carrot or radish, that demonstrates my creative ability 🤣) I added five concentric circles. Think of them as the Likert-5 scale with 1 at the outer ring and 5 being at the inner ring. The idea is that all the keys must be locked in simultaneously towards the inner core for growth to completely materialize.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihjpIK5zYf5IBFquTOsUK3Ea6UuXP3cVrPEfzDvgMJpA-jVb06tbWpxLIX8ba9gD3XJNuLWiW8HQVm9LWLN7dzyP2-Og2vhY_z5xrGFJBVpQnnEu0BCc4OCjthuUw6T9go7_nhhZdOhsF62Raj-5cmK2w5q-TmQAZFA5wjE2SQ95PQnq-2goxXJ5EuRhQ/s847/EightKeysOfGrowth.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="731" data-original-width="847" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihjpIK5zYf5IBFquTOsUK3Ea6UuXP3cVrPEfzDvgMJpA-jVb06tbWpxLIX8ba9gD3XJNuLWiW8HQVm9LWLN7dzyP2-Og2vhY_z5xrGFJBVpQnnEu0BCc4OCjthuUw6T9go7_nhhZdOhsF62Raj-5cmK2w5q-TmQAZFA5wjE2SQ95PQnq-2goxXJ5EuRhQ/w480-h414/EightKeysOfGrowth.png" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's depiction of Eight Keys to a Growth Mindset </div><p><b>Attitude </b>is having that "Power of Now" contagious enthusiasm. I am not saying it is being always optimistic but being a realist to "<i>practice the choice to see the brighter side of things</i>" while "<i>mitigating the risks or blind spots</i>" (After all, isn't that what the Johari Window talks about without mentioning the word "Risk!"). As you can see, one's attitude is a function of their ability to recognize that failure is a stepping stone to success. <b><i>It is like that "Moana" who choose to fight!</i></b></p><p><b>Balance </b>is having the emotional stability to "<b>continuously play both yin and yang to be the best one can be.</b>" That is, have the delicate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state of mind. It is a demonstration of your practice to choose the right attitude every day. True that life gets along our way and no plans work out as planned. Balance is recognizing this inner need! <b>It is like that Po in Kung Fu Panda managing to find "inner peace" of "Aladdin" figuring a way out calmly when Jafar locks him in a cave</b>. Robert Schuller calls it, "Tough times never last but tough people do!"</p><p><b>Commitment </b>is "<i>following up and following through with actions to deliver results</i>." (Please follow my <a href="https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2018/08/reflections-on-group-discussion-4-fs-of.html" target="_blank">blog </a>on what follow-through is and how it differs from follow-up) It is laying the foundation with training, having mentors and coaches, facilitating and practicing to walk the talk. Commitment derives from attitude and balance. Commitment shows character as we put SMART plans to grow and be an example for others. <b>Woody in Toy's story demonstrates commitments towards his other team toys even when the going gets tough. At the same time, Woody demonstrates the right attitude when necessary (when other toys need help) and demonstrates the balance to keep Lightyear in check on his mission</b>.</p><p><b>Divergent </b>is having that "<i>open mindset towards alternative thinking" </i>(T, Pi, E-shaped skill development). Concepts like design thinking and system thinking require one to have a big picture mindset. Our ability to grow will be limited if we are comfortable with what our strengths are. The longer we practice this "comfort zone" approach, the sooner <i>our strengths will become our weakness</i> and threat reducing or removing the opportunities. Be comfortable with discomfort and that is the only way to guarantee success. I always say that the best way to guarantee my stability is how I eliminate myself by leaving behind a legacy while seeking new ways to serve. <b>Edna from Mr. Incredible exemplifies creating suites that best meet the super character needs with divergent thinking applying multiple experiments.</b></p><p><b>Empathy </b>is showing that we care! <i>Empathy is demonstrating our commitment (action) towards causes that matter as well as people that matter</i>! It is the "Pay it Forward" (which is a movie by itself) mindset that demonstrate not only divergent mindset towards people. <b>Who else but Cinderalla can demonstrate such kindness and empathy with actions to support all the animal friends! She is the perfect example for Empathy! Rafiki in Lion King has to demonstrate that empathy and seek Simba out!</b></p><p><b>Focus </b>is letting "<i>distractions not impede commitment to actions!"</i> Learning from mistakes and applying fail-forward thinking taking responsibility for actions are traits of focus. Not multitasking but getting jobs done even when risks and challenges throw a wrench! <b>Po demonstrates continuous learning from every failure (although he needs his team to keep his balance) and Master Shifu learns from his mistakes that his teaching has to be modified to teach Po.</b></p><p><b>Global </b>thinking is thinking beyond the local constraints and limitations. <i>It is looking at the macroscopic impact ethically and morally rather than conventional limitations.</i> It requires one to raise above the constraint with "divergent" thinking. While "selfless" attitude brings a combination of "empathy" and "focus," the resulting commitment also requires one to "balance" themselves in their honest pursuit of results. <b>Mulan may have left as an impostor to save her father from King's orders, but the pursuit was due to a need to serve the entire country. She never gave up even when her identity was revealed. That's a commitment to global thinking.</b></p><p><b>Honesty </b>is a<i> commitment to character, integrity, and ethics</i>. <i>"You are your own benchmark, right!"</i> Even when you did something wrong, it takes courage to stand up for your failure or lack of actions. Only then anyone can help you heal so that you don't feel continuously hurt. <b>If Simba was honest about why he thought he was a failure from the stampede fiasco with Rafiki, would Rafiki have been successful?</b> No. It is that commitment to character that stands tall as honesty. <b>Maui and Moana had to be honest with each other reconciling their fear and goals before they could emerge victorious as a team.</b></p><p>As you can see, each attribute feeds on each other.<i> If Kaizen or Continuous Improvement is important, all these elements are required! </i>But, not all of us may be at the level we need to be at to lock in to the inner core and unlock opportunities. Whether it is a personal ambition or professional goal, all these elements should be at their maximum before they can be near the field-force of the inner core and bring the <i><b>ikigai </b></i>(the reason for existence or the famous questions like "what makes you happy?" or "what makes your heart sing?") to you!</p><p>What do you think? This was a fun exercise for me! Look forward to your thoughts on what other attributes I may have missed and how it may be unique and different from any of the eight attributes. I am all ears! </p><p><b><i>Disclaimer</i></b>: All the characters to movies are referenced only to make connections with the principles. The movies and the character names belong to the respective owners. </p><p>References</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2018). https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2018/08/reflections-on-group-discussion-4-fs-of.html</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-61608838880745591352023-04-21T16:58:00.007-04:002023-09-21T13:52:54.282-04:00Evolution and Revolution of Change Management<p>As I was in the last training session with my current project management professional training batch, I was discussing about how change sticks within an organization. As I differentiate governance processes for managing changes within the context of a project or program related from introducing large scale change management, questions emerged on what is change management. Some members who had attended a 2-day Scrum Master class mentioned about ADKAR and another management learner discussed about Kotter's change management. </p><p>And, both these change management frameworks are good and relevant. While both the ADKAR and Kotter's change management frameworks are powerful and relevant in today's organizational environment, the knowledge of the change management evolution can help understand how change is perceived, planned for, and implemented. One can then appreciate the richness of the history in connections with both the influence and impact of change management framework. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr5nV5cMM2wqmIse8HewnicF6xdE3E0crCqlR4W2prXJ0IscNdkCzp_cLq0LfuBAYCALQhqHc-8icOknnvODW0muafY5W3flDKyexUNcIZVy5L5zBiLud5UBo42DkCkndddZolOJMDqjkmaznCtxj0FCqfDpZCfcq4yXsC45aqmBRkuicKw-tzjJee0Ps/s1554/ChangeManagementFrameworks.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="1554" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr5nV5cMM2wqmIse8HewnicF6xdE3E0crCqlR4W2prXJ0IscNdkCzp_cLq0LfuBAYCALQhqHc-8icOknnvODW0muafY5W3flDKyexUNcIZVy5L5zBiLud5UBo42DkCkndddZolOJMDqjkmaznCtxj0FCqfDpZCfcq4yXsC45aqmBRkuicKw-tzjJee0Ps/w577-h266/ChangeManagementFrameworks.png" width="577" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's Synthesis of Change Management Framework Timeline</div><div><br /></div>
<table border="5">
<tbody><tr><td width="10%"><b>Year</b></td><td width="35%"><b>Model Name</b></td><td width="55%"><b>Brief Explanation</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>~1947</td><td>Kurt Lewin 3-Stage</td><td><ul><li>Kurt Lewin (1947) used the sociology and social science concepts to introduce a 3-stage process.</li><li>These 3-stages are unfreeze, change, and refreeze.</li><li>Before change can take place, a period of time has to be allowed where no changes are allowed and change is internalized. </li><li>Then change takes places as employees show involvement. This leads to knowledge sharing, leadership involvement to support the experiments, and then plans are put in place to implement the change. </li><li>As change slowly sticks, more change may be required where time has to be allowed for the new changes to be internalized before the cycle repeats.</li><li>Lewin used the analogy of a block of ice to be unfrozen to become water and then the water put in desired containers to be frozen again into ice. </li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>~1969</td><td>Kuber-Ross Change Curve</td><td><ul><li>Elisabeth Kuber-Ross (1969) ap<span>6</span>roached change from how people on the dying bed teach about change. </li><li>This change theory comes from medical field particularly in hospice and hospital care. </li><li>Ross introduced the Change curve to demonstrate how people process change through their emotional lens of nearing end of life or seeing their loved ones or patients approach end of life. </li><li>People process the emotions of shock, denial, and disbelief of death. This frustration may turn into fear or anger. Then, they accept the immutable reality and slowly commit to adapting to the required change.</li><li>During the first two stages of shock or frustration, no amount of motivation or feedback will be processed (because they are not actively listening - emotions have taken over).</li><li>Slow and steady support and constructive feedback will help in the next stages rather than rushing through change. </li><li>While the stages of the Change Curve is very distinct from this field, these concepts really are analogous to how changes to have be unfrozen (not introduced too quickly) in the first two stages and slowly introduced in the change (accept) and freeze (commit) stages.</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>~1980</td><td>McKinsey 7S Model</td><td><ul><li>Starting around mid 1970's, Waterman, Peters, and Phillips (1980) from McKinsey (a consulting organization) introduced the first organizational change management framework. </li><li>The seven stages were (no particular order) are strategy, structure, systems, skills, style, staff and shared values. </li><li>Strategy related to firm's alignment of their resources and capabilities to create competitive advantage.</li><li>Structure focused on the way the firm is organized to deliver value using hierarchical relationships and roles and responsibilities.</li><li>Systems tied the business and technical infrastructure to realize the goals and objectives.</li><li>Shared values emphasized the display of behaviors supporting the firm's mission and vision.</li><li>Style highlighted how the company's leaders demonstrated an inclusive culture for leadership to thrive.</li><li>Staff comprised of the capabilities, skills, and competencies as well as the firm's ability to manage capacity, transition, and sustenance.</li><li>Skills showed the firm's ability to deliver work and evaluate performance improvements. </li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>~1991</td><td>Bridges Transition Model</td><td><ul><li>Bridges (1991) Transition model differentiates change from transition. It states that changes [anyway] happen to people. Transition, [however], is internal - it's what happens in people's mind when facing and experiencing change. </li><li>This model draws parallel with the Kuber Ross' Change Curve Model in terms of emotions felt as change is processed.</li><li>The three stages in this model include Ending, Neutral Zone, and New Beginning. </li><li>In the ending phase, people feel frustrated, show anger, demonstrate low morale and productivity, and are worried about future. They find it hard to lose and let go. </li><li>But, this ending phase has to end before they can arrive at the neutral zone. They are not ready for change yet as they feel adrift and lost. More listening ears are required similar to the other models in this stage.</li><li>As they begin to leave the neutral zone, they feel they are facing a new beginning. The promise of the future brings new energy and a willingness to learn. With support and feedback, the change begins to stick with their renewed commitment. </li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>~1996</td><td>Kotter 8-Step Model</td><td><ul><li>Kotter (1996) underpinned an action-oriented steps for change to stick within an organization. It improves on 7S framework in that the steps are actionable. </li><li>The steps are cyclical and iterate progressively on small increments of change. (Perhaps why more Agile practitioners like this approach)</li><li>The 8-steps in the same sequence include the following. They are self-explanatory. </li><ol><li>Creating a Sense of Urgency</li><li>Forming a Guiding Coalition</li><li>Developing Vision and Strategies</li><li>Communicating the Change</li><li>Remove Barriers to Action</li><li>Accomplish Short-Term Wins</li><li>Build on the Change</li><li>Make Change Stick</li></ol></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>~2006</td><td>Hiatt's ADKAR Model</td><td><ul><li>More frequently called as Prosci's Model due to its adoption in Prosci, this model is relatively recent. The model builds on five stages.</li><li>These include in the same sequence.</li><ol><li>Awareness - Creates conscious need for change (Similar to creating sense of urgency)</li><li>Desire - Shows intent to participate and support change (Similar to forming a guiding coalition)</li><li>Knowledge - Demonstrates the skills and competencies on planning for change (Connects with developing vision & strategies and communicating the change)</li><li>Ability - Highlights the desired skills and behaviors to implement change (Connects with removing barriers, accomplishing short-term wins, and building on change)</li><li>Reinforcement - Shows steps needed to sustain change (Connects with building on change and making changes stick).</li></ol></ul></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />Have I missed out on any model or misinterpreted any connections to models? Share your thoughts.<br /><p><b>References</b></p><p>Bridges, W. & Bridges, S. (1991). Managing Transitions. Boston, MA: Da Capo Lifelong Books.</p><p>Hiatt, J.M. (2006). ADKAR: A model for change in business, government, and our community. Loveland, CO: Prosci, Inc.</p><p>Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, MA: Barvard Business School Press</p><p>Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy & their own families. New York: Scribner, An imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.</p><div>Lewin, K. (1947). Field theory in social science. New York, NY: Harper & Row</div><p>ADKAR Model (n.d.) Prosci. https://www.prosci.com/methodology/adkar</p><p>Waterman, R., Peters, T. and Phillips, J. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business Horizons, 23 (3), 14–26</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-53016107387240583422023-03-10T12:25:00.001-05:002023-09-20T16:57:56.338-04:00Quality is a function of Risk<p>I was recalling the statement, "Quality = f (Risk)," in one of my PMP training sessions and one of them asked how quality is connected with risk. The premise behind this thought was on the iron-triangle thinking that quality is controlled by scope, schedule, and cost! It seems like we have a lot of work to do still in understanding about risk and its impact! </p><p>As this person was in the semi-conductor space, I reasoned risk is like the hard-wired interrupt that takes precedence over soft-logic in the way microprocessor operates. That got the attention. So, I continued to make connection on the immediate topic of the "Cost of Quality" we were discussing and reasoned out the importance of risk.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLGJeBCrTri_q8Jc8igkneyctnJ-g-O6rjQyOoJYeSBA-aBciBqsXJhHwiCnKlv77dpSN4sP8fzPs43_6hOEIjtGAdyqBrHHA0PrGWf2VEAkILPMPQqD9OPRLy6tjOgxKo6A8YR3dxLI6UgZBnGIvC1zByaSOnLKk-XMmqCYcvipM9lMP1-0eqG30kztA/s1864/CoQfRisk.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="923" data-original-width="1864" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLGJeBCrTri_q8Jc8igkneyctnJ-g-O6rjQyOoJYeSBA-aBciBqsXJhHwiCnKlv77dpSN4sP8fzPs43_6hOEIjtGAdyqBrHHA0PrGWf2VEAkILPMPQqD9OPRLy6tjOgxKo6A8YR3dxLI6UgZBnGIvC1zByaSOnLKk-XMmqCYcvipM9lMP1-0eqG30kztA/w638-h315/CoQfRisk.png" width="638" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's rendition of Quality is a function of Risk</div><br />In the diagram above, I have presented the cost of quality made up of two important branches. These are cost of conformance to avoid risks happening in the first place and the cost of non-conformance to address risks that have happened. <p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>To avoid risks as part of the cost of non-conformance, the best approach is to practice the "wisdom of the ages" saying, "Prevention is better than cure!" Here we take proactive steps to ensure quality planning (as part of the Quality trilogy) includes preemptive measures. This involves building quality using quality assurance (QA) with process oriented and proactive steps to train people, have multiple documentation (caters to multiple modes of learning), the appropriate equipment required and the required amount of time to do things correctly (e.g.: right-sizing stories to fit into the timebox, risk driven development methods to prioritize). </li><li>The next step is to evaluate how well our controls are working by performing quality audit on the work (PM/PO owns the quality audit). Here, quality control (QC) comes from delivery team comes in with reactive and product oriented methods like testing (product testing), inspection (Gemba Walks), etc. </li><li>Now, if the errors are released such as not missed compliance or security considerations or misinterpreted requirements, or other forms of requests like change request or enhancements are noted, depending upon the triaging process, these could be show-stoppers disallowing the user to realize the intended benefit thus risking value delivery. So, rework may be required or products may be have discarded (prototyping or physical products) as scrap. These corrective actions are adding more time and cost and increases the opportunity cost of people unavailable for improving the benefit in the current project (working on newer functionality) or other business initiatives. Time may translate further into budget risks as available funding may be depleted to pay for contractors and infrastructure. </li><li>Finally, if these internal errors were not caught and were released to the customer, they become escaped defects! This impacts now the customer's value delivery life cycle as our faulty products may be used in their product assembly or our faulty code may be impacting their applications built. These translates into liabilities for the company, Warranty claims (ongoing free support, recall for the products at our expense) and perhaps even the business lost to competitors. </li></ul>As you can see, there are various forms of risks that interface the quality assurance, quality control, and escaped defects side of the equation with some additional risks foundational to the entire quality function in the company through its projects, program, and portfolio functions. The sooner they are addressed (as noted in the green color), the lesser the expenses are. As time passes through this cost of quality function from left to right, the intensity and visibility of risks through corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) to the business is high (as noted in color gradient going to red). <p></p><p>So, am I not correct to say, "Quality = function(risk)"? Share your thoughts.</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-28312889636094713922023-02-05T19:19:00.004-05:002023-09-20T14:26:53.504-04:00Risk Driven Prioritization: Challenges to Prioritization Techniques<p>I have always felt that if value is the focus of prioritization, the value should be prioritized equally by the risks to delivery. In other words, engaging in the powerful questions (Rajagopalan, 2015) helps a lot and this behavior is driven from the leadership mindset (Rajagopalan, 2013). When sufficient focus of risks to delivery or risks to non-compliance exists, value is not delivered as the benefits are not realized! Instead, we run into the challenges of techniques without understanding risks.</p><p>Given below are most frequently used prioritization techniques and a brief discussion on what they miss that should be factored if not done consciously. </p><p><br /></p>
<p></p><table border="4">
<tbody><tr><td width="12%"><b>Technique</b></td><td width="44%"><b>Description</b></td><td width="44%"><b>Risk Thoughts</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>RICE</td><td><ul><li>Uses four different variables (Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort).</li><li>Reach (R) is an estimate of number of people that will be impacted.</li><li>Impact (I) is an estimate the extent of impact (like 5-high, 3-medium, 1-low).</li><li>Confidence (C) is the team's confidence on the estimates given for reach and impact.</li><li>Effort (E) is an estimate of time in number of months.</li><li>The formula is: <b><span style="color: red;">(R*I*C) / E</span></b></li></ul><br /></td><td>On a positive note, it uses some level of analysis to compute the estimate. But, this is a very ambiguous approach for the following reasons. <br /><ul><li>The scale used for R, I, and C are very arbitrary (somewhat ordinal in nature)</li><li>There is not any data driven or risk planning on the number of people reached. Many organizations even find it difficulty to quantify the reach and come up with a guess.</li><li>Impact could be subjective in people's mind and there is no risk breakdown structure like explanation of what a 5-High is. </li><li>Confidence is also subjective and can not replace the margin of error (or standard deviation).</li><li>So, the result, while helpful can't truly help prioritization. </li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>WSTF</td><td><ul><li>Weighted Short Job First addresses is somewhat analogous to RICE approach except that it uses different variables. </li><li>It focuses on business value in terms of the cost of delay and job size.</li><li>The cost of delay includes perceived Business Value (BV), Time Criticality (TC) and Risk Reduction (RR) (or Opportunity Enablement (OE).</li><li>The formula is:</li><ul><li><span style="color: red;"><b>(BV+TC+RR or OE) / Job Size</b></span></li></ul></ul></td><td>This approach has the same challenges as RICE but also improves on RICE somewhat significantly.<br /><ul><li>It recommends the use of a Fibonacci type of scale for BV, TC, and RR/OE. That is an improvement compared to the ordinal type of subjective ranking. </li><li>Unlike RICE that uses a product of reach, impact, confidence, WSTF uses a summation. </li><li>Time Criticality is measured as sense of urgency without any due consideration for risks. </li><li>Risk Reduction or Opportunity Enablement is specifically listed here risk exposure scores are often a product of probability, impact, and sometimes detectability. So, adding risks do not help with true risk driven prioritization.</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>MoSCoW</td><td><ul><li>Uses approaches similar to the Eisenhower Matrix.</li><li>Uses four categories Must, Should, Could, and Wont (This is WONT, i.e., NOT do) to address prioritization.</li><li>Must is associated critical element without which the project can't provide value</li><li>Should is associated with important elements but not a must and can be deprioritized or postponed. </li><li>Could is considered non-essential or more of a nice to have enhancements or change requests.</li><li>Won't have are anything not going to be addressed now or in the near future.</li></ul></td><td>All these four levels (Must, Should, Could, Won't) are subjective interpretations. Granted that there is some amount of categorization but several ambiguities remain.<br /><ul><li>The approach is biased based on subjective priority. </li><li>There is no evaluation of impact (or severity).</li><li>How are the relative priority between two Must items determined? </li><li>Why is a Must Item a must? </li><li>When will a Should Item be picked? </li></ul><br />As you can see, this approach is a good start but not a good one for prioritization at all. It only helps with a first level of categorization and is not the final level of prioritization. This is the reason why this approach is sometimes associated with Eisenhower Matrix which President Eisenhower used for decision-making on what he needs to address and what he needs to delegate! <br /><br />Another technique I have heard is Yes-No-Not now-Never. To me, this is analogous to MoSCoW and not much different.<br /><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>Kano Model</td><td><ul><li>This model uses delighters, performance, and basic as the drivers from a consumer market perspective.</li><li>Basic features are those that are normalized and expected. Doing them does not give an edge but not having them will be a competitive disadvantage. (Similar to Hygiene factors in Motivation Theory)</li><li>Performance features are those that are required. It is minimal expectations of the market. </li><li>Delighters are those features that people want to see or didn't expect that will see! Doing them gives a competitive edge. (Similar to the Satisfiers in Motivation Theory) </li></ul></td><td>This model is driven from the market research. Almost like a persona expectations of the market behavior. However, while it may serve as an external risk triggers, it does not quantify further (e.g.: deeper dive of PESTLEED, TECOP, etc.) and meet the individual risk driven considerations (e.g.: VRIO) for a product. Again, it is a good categorization for product backlog but not help with prioritization of the individual items. </td></tr>
<tr><td>100-Points</td><td>This approach is actually an approach to engage stakeholders to prioritize when more than one is influencing or impacted. <br /><ul><li>Each stakeholder has 100-points to begin with. </li><li>Each requirement (or feature) is associated with a value that the team things will take to implement. (More like a price of a feature; hence this approach is also called 100-Virtual Currency Method)</li><li>The stakeholders place their 100-points spread out on these features.</li><li>A new cumulative sum is computed for each feature based on the stakeholder input.</li><li>The highest value items are prioritized based on this cumulative sum (descending order).</li></ul></td><td>This approach is fine but still has the challenge of how risks are communicated to the stakeholders and how much risks are factored by the stakeholders. <br />Bias and influence can help a feature be prioritized that the team can't handle or deliver.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Relative Prioritization</td><td>This approach is for the team to prioritize items already prioritized. </td><td>This helps with relative prioritization (for instance if two features are high, which one should be delivered first.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><p></p><p>As you can see, each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses. If it works for you, great! But, risks are something that one has to quantify and evaluate. In fact, I call such approach to risk based prioritization as risk driven development (RDD). Here, the risks are identified, assessed, and evaluated with a risk exposure score. These risks are associated with requirements as well as the test cases (conformation criteria) as not all requirements are easy to test. Based on the sum of the risk scores on a requirement and test cases, the features can be prioritized. It is possible to use other methods in conjunction with this so long as risk are considered and there is a ratio level scoring mechanism included or at least a good risk breakdown structure included to avoid bias or subjective interpretation. </p><p>What are your thoughts? Please share.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Essential Leadership behaviors for Agile Transformation. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/12/essential-leadership-behaviors-for.html</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Client Management: The influence of powerful questions.</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-87689448362511836722023-01-15T16:37:00.004-05:002023-09-20T08:43:27.240-04:00Model Based System Engineering (MBSE): Relating Systems to Value<p>As part of the product analysis methods, I was discussing that besides the product breakdown splitting a product into separate components for MVP and MBI/MMF and the requirements analysis splitting stories into smaller chunks for estimation and delivery, the model based system engineering (MBSE) concepts, such as the system engineering, systems analysis, value engineering, and value analysis, are tightly integrated looking at the technical subsystem as nucleus of a secure, safe, stable, and sustainable product. Some of the familiar concepts of model based system engineering were unclear which is foundational to product development as emphasized by the agile principle, "Business and Technical stakeholders must work together daily!" While each industry may create different models depending on the specific products and its impact on clients and customers, a few generic MBSE concepts apply in all the industries. </p><p>The MBSE concept is analogous to the fable that I heard in India about six blind children touching an elephant and describing the elephant. If elephant is the system and the blind children are the various stakeholders, we are describing the system from what we think we see/feel. Security, for instance, has a different meaning for the technical team members compared to the end users.</p><p>For simplicity, let us define the model as a feature-box (functional requirements and non-functional specifications) that adequately represents the set of inputs that can interface requiring the model to prioritize and the set of outputs it will generate. The model's behavior is controlled by a set of complex rules that are manageable. This model now represents the system that must be viewed closely and from far! This requires the system architect not only to see the auditability of the system for diagnosis (such as behavior, paths taken and trail left, considerations for gracious shutdown, etc.). So, how does the system analysis and system engineering differ? </p><p>The system analyst will use a combination of techniques (e.g.: data modeling, interface analysis, data flow diagram, and alerts & event triggers) to refine the model! This is reviewing the model at a close distance. So, the system analyst frequently will consider using class diagram, functional decomposition, sequence diagram, network diagram, entity-relationship model, and deployment diagram as well as the total-quality-management (TQM) foundations like the flowchart, scatter diagram, checklist, root cause analysis, and histogram. But, the system engineering discipline observes the model from a long distance. </p><p>Therefore the system engineer focuses on interference defining the boundary of the system (where the system can no longer sustain itself to be valuable), behaviors that exposes the system's vulnerabilities (model is no longer safe or secure without subjecting itself for damage or causing harm to others). The system engineer then uses market analysis, business rules analysis, concept modeling, scenario analysis, risk analysis, state modeling, interface analysis, decision-modeling, Gemba Walks, workshops, focus interviewing, SWOT/TOWS analysis, benchmarking, and brainstorming further supplemented by TQM techniques like control chart and pareto charts. Please note that these are additional techniques beyond the techniques used in the system analysis.</p><p>Now, both the system analysis and system engineering concepts can be extended to the extent of benefit (value) derived by the users and the performing organization. These values can be looked at from multiple angles. One approach is the approach that I normally recommend as custom value, business value, technical value, and process value (Rajagopalan, 2019). The goal of these exercises are not only to protect the customers and business but also look at efficiency gains through the combination of both the process and technical value giving a competitive market value! When all these areas are reasonably protected, they also enhance the future value (that can be measured using ROI, NPV, IRR) of the product within the product portfolio. The short-term focus will be value analysis and the long term focus will be value engineering. </p><p>Another lens, that in my humble opinion, extends from the previous discussions is how the model is sustained and supported. From this lens, we can evaluate model from flow (hence Lean), governance (hence Change Management), behavior (Systems Engineering and Value Engineering concepts mentioned earlier) and decision-making (hence Risk Management discipline, Costing Principles, and Costs of Quality considerations). A few refinements are required here.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Flow is often thought of as work progressing across the various status. This is horizontal flow. Flow also should be looked at vertically between projects, programs, and portfolios and multiple systems or projects that have to work together. </li><li>Change Management concepts extend in such vertical value flow in terms of risk management, decision-making, funding, and resource planning that happens in program management, PI planning in scaling agile approaches, etc. </li><li>Governance can be supported at a lower level with workflows that enable faster decision-making and system traceability & auditability. </li><li>Behavior can vary very widely depending on the organizational processes as well as the maturity/direction required by the team. Hence, it could range from as simple as time tracking, waiting time evaluation, burn rate as well as evaluating negotiation considerations, team health, conflict resolution, etc. </li><li>The decision-making can be supported by some of the governance considerations but it could also transcend other work authorization systems based on extensive funding considerations (e.g.: Efficient Frontier, portfolio balancing, resource optimization, etc.). </li></ul><div>What else I may be missing in MBSE definition? Please expand.</div><p></p><p>References</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2019). Requirements Management: A value mapping exercise. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2019/02/requirements-management-value-mapping.html</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-69344761401633414542022-12-14T11:40:00.087-05:002023-10-15T08:56:15.842-04:00Overview of Stakeholder Engagement Techniques<p>Inspired by the quote, "Tell me about your friends, I will tell you who you are!" I used to tell any project manager "Tell me about stakeholder engagement strategy, I will tell you how successful your project will be!" This is the same message when a group of learners in a project management professional certification asked about which models to use in stakeholder engagement. Since projects come in many sizes of varying complexity and not all stakeholders are the same, there is no one correct answer for selecting the model that fits! </p><p>Furthermore, Palan (2020) provides four different stakeholder persona which is a very interesting way to look at how stakeholders may be categorized. These include the following. So, each stakeholder persona focuses on several areas of the problem and their overall perception needs to be managed. Finally, in the end, all stakeholder engagement approaches are getting people to identify, deliver, and sustain value maximization (Barth, Ulvenblad, & Ulvenblad, 2017).</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>HIPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion), </li><li>WOLF (Working on Latest Fire), </li><li>RHINO (Really High-value New Opportunity), and </li><li>Zebra (Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant).</li></ul><p></p><p>In my book on Organized Common Sense (Rajagopalan, 2018), I expand on a basic technique on the ABC of Stakeholder. It is understanding the authority (power), behavior (influence) they have on people, and the extent of concern or care (interest). Over the years of my experience managing stakeholders, I call these principles the ABC of stakeholders. Now, as the project size varies and depending on the stage the project is in, there are many techniques. Some are very common and some are not very common. </p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Power-Interest Grid</b></li><ul><li>This is a very common technique (PMBOK, 2017) where people map the stakeholder engagement strategy with four quadrants. The X-axis has a interest on low-to-high scale and the Y-axis has the power on a low-to-high scale with (low, low) at the origin. Accordingly, four strategies emerge.</li><ul><li>High-Power, High-Interest 👉Manage Closely (Sponsor, Regulators)</li><li>High-Power, Low-Interest 👉Keep Satisfied (Other Decision-Makers, Suppliers)</li><li>Low-Power, High-Interest 👉Keep Informed (Delivery Team, Operational Team)</li><li>Low-Power, Low-Interest 👉Monitor Marginally (Employees, Users)</li></ul><li>This approach is good for small-to-medium projects but doesn't scale very well for larger projects unless only critical stakeholders are captured. </li></ul><li><b>Stakeholder Map</b></li><ul><li>While the Power-Interest Grid is a good one to identify the way you engage with people, one can draw significant stakeholder-to-stakeholder influence, such as who has the listening ears of another, who has more trustworthy relationship, who can gather insights from other sources, etc. </li><li>The knowledge of these behavioral influence map is inferred and observed and not necessarily drawn from the title or hierarchy in the organizational chart. </li><li>People can use arrows, colors, and size of the stakeholder circle in the quadrant to draw such influence directions so that this knowledge furthermore can be used (Anonymous, personal communication, PMI MassBay Chapter Meeting, 2014). </li><li>Since "influence" is about leadership and leadership is not just with a title, I prefer the Power-Interest over "Influence-Interest" or "Influence-Impact" or "Power-Influence" diagrams. </li><li>This approach is good for small-to-medium projects but doesn't scale very well for larger projects unless only critical stakeholders are captured.</li></ul><li><b>Stakeholder Cube</b></li><ul><li>This approach is an attempt to scale power-interest gird (PMBOK, 2017) with the influence making three dimensions and evaluating the engagement strategy.</li><li>This approach, in my experience, is more theoretical than practical as it is very hard for people conceptualize the strategy in three dimensions with influence being an observed behavior that can't be mapped to a quantitative or qualitative scale.</li></ul><li><b>RACI</b></li><ul><li>This is a popular tabular structure indicating responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) (PMBOK, 2017) that maps people or the role to four areas. They include responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (Rajagopalan, 2014a). </li><li>There are many conceptual errors people inculcate due to the lack of understanding the power of this tool. Please read Rajagopalan (2014b) for more details.</li><li>This tool will work well for larger projects, programs, and portfolios but care is required in capturing more critical stakeholders. </li></ul><li><b>Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix</b></li><ul><li>This is another good tool to evaluate the perception of the stakeholders' journey (PMBOK, 2017) in your project. Typically, these perceptions are that they are unaware of the project, negatively influenced and so resistant, neutral about supporting the project due to lack of connection with the project outcomes, supportive of project's outcome, or champions of the project. Depending upon what stage of the stakeholder journey they are in, the strategy may involve informing, educating, or committing them. </li><li>This is also a good tool for small-to-medium projects. It can scale well for a larger project, program, or portfolio with some modifications of the critical stakeholders captured.</li></ul><li><b>Stakeholder Register</b></li><ul><li>This is another popular tool and is more of a tabular structure (PMBOK, 2017) summarize essential details. It may be difficult to read the diagram and charts and so this structure helps with stakeholder-engagement to communication management plan. </li></ul><li><b>Salience Model</b></li><ul><li>This is a good model that makes the first attempt to scale to larger initiatives (PMBOK, 2017). Here, three variables are evaluated and these include power, legitimacy, and urgency. </li><li>It uses the Powe∩Legitimacy∩Urgency diagram to demonstrate seven types of stakeholders. </li><li>These involve dormant, discretionary, demanding stakeholders at the external side of power, legitimacy and urgency.</li><li>The dominant stakeholder is between power and legitimacy, the dependent stakeholder is between legitimacy and urgency, and the dangerous stakeholder is between power and urgency. </li><li>The definitive stakeholder is at the intersection.</li><li>The model does not recommend removing any type of stakeholder but expects one to evaluate the characteristics of when to engage them.</li></ul><li><b>CATWOE Analysis</b></li><ul><li>This model recommends (Bergvall-Kåreborn, Mirijamdotter, Basden, 2004) looking at the categories of stakeholders and evaluate perceptions from their viewpoint. </li><li>It stands for customer, actor, transformation, worldwide view, owner, and environment. </li><ul><li>Customer 👉 Mostly made up of company paying client or the client's customers or the company's direct end-users</li><li>Actor 👉Any person or group responsible for delivering the solution (product, service, or result) </li><li>Transformation 👉Any process, tool, or method that the actors use to convert input to outputs (This could be executional, decision-making, or operational processes)</li><li>Worldwide view 👉 This aspect corresponds to high level policy and associated standards and regulations that they need to adhere and be compliant with. </li><li>Owner 👉This member or group is responsible for collective decision-making </li><li>Environment 👉The internal and external environment that facilitates all the above to work together (the people, process, product)</li></ul><li>In practice, the order of events should be Worldwide View, Transformation, Customer, Actor, Owner, and Environment </li><ul><li>Worldwide view binds the reasons why projects or programs started (e.g.: regulation)</li><li>Transformation looks into the internal and external processes that support the projects and programs to deliver</li><li>Customer provides the requirements that the actors must evaluate to understand, fill the gaps, and prioritize (Backlog or scope)</li><li>Actors work together to deliver the output, capability, outcome and benefit for value realization</li><li>Owner approves the project for the team to continue their work </li><li>Owner and actor are also responsible to create the environment conducive for delivery </li></ul><li>This model is more to ensure that everyone is on the same page in terms of the project scope and no shocks or surprises are present. It is more of a stakeholder perception management tool.</li></ul><li><b>I-C-ICE</b></li><ul><li>This framework is large-to-larger projects mostly in the public services (IAP2 Spectrum, n.d.), such as building a city, highway or railway management, new supply chain route, airport and telecommunication network, etc. </li><li>It stands for Inform-Consult-Involve-Collaborate-Empower and predominantly derives support from many of the previous techniques such as Power-Interest Grid, Salience Model, RACI, etc.</li></ul><li><b>Onion Diagram</b></li><ul><li>Just like the layers of onion, (some of you may be familiar with the layers of onion used in the Agile approaches), this approach derives its approach from identifying the stakeholders or stakeholder groups closer to the delivery team (Alexander, 2004). </li><li>Think of the core as the "Customer Operating System". The people closer to this core are the business analyst, product owner, project manager, developers, and testers. </li><li>The group in the next outer layer are operational team members, customer support, help desk, users, and some of the extended business teams (marketing, for instance).</li><li>The next layer will be decision makers mostly internal to the company such as the sponsor and governance committee</li><li>The next layer could be internal or external influential experts, consultants, suppliers, vendors, or regulators </li><li>The final layer could be market research team focusing on competition, users, market segments, etc.</li><li>While there are benefits to this approach, it also distances people and unless there is a good communication cadence to regularly collect voice of customer and voice of business feedback and ongoing market intelligence, there could be challenges. </li></ul><li><b>Proximity Chart</b></li><ul><li>This model is a revision of the onion diagram with some level of stakeholder engagement assessment matrix. </li><li>It has emerged from data analysis techniques on how closely data points related together on the central tendency.</li><li>It sill uses the layered approach but brings the SEAM approaches like who opposes the project and who supports the project to evaluate strategies.</li><li>Stakeholder Map ideas can be brought here to draw influence directions. </li><li>It still has the same challenge of distancing people and requires a frequent communication to ensure that stakeholders feel engaged and connected.</li></ul><li><b>Resistance Pyramid</b></li><ol><li>This approach emerged from the change management context on understanding how humans perceive and deal with change. The model was introduced by Nieder and Zimmerman (Galpin, 1996). Instead of using a layered concentric circle approach, this approach builds on a pyramid.</li><li>The layers of the pyramid list people that are not knowing about the project, not able to deliver on the outcome, and not willing to support the initiative. </li><li>On either side of the pyramid, the reasons for their current state and the potential actions that can be taken are listed. </li><li>I have seen people that breakdown the reasons with root-cause-analysis and further extend by force-field-analysis. </li><li>While this is a good one in concept, some of the earlier techniques like Power-Interest grid and Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix are simpler and more manageable!</li></ol></ol><p></p><p>So, after reviewing these frameworks, that have been present for a long period, which is good? There is no one-size-fits-all. The more we look at these techniques, the more we can see that there are a lot of similarities and differences. Depending upon the specific project, pick what matters and improvise! If we recommend one as the best, then, it is like saying agile or traditional approach is a good candidate for all projects. </p><p>What are your thoughts? I am sure I may have missed a technique in a specific industry. Let me know your thoughts.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (2017). Project Management Institute, 2017. APA, 7th ed. Project Management Institute.</p><p>Alexander, I. F. (2004, June). A Better Fit-Characterising the Stakeholders. In CAiSE Workshops (2) (pp. 215-223).</p><p>Barth, H., Ulvenblad, P. O., & Ulvenblad, P. (2017). Towards a conceptual framework of sustainable business model innovation in the agri-food sector: A systematic literature review. Sustainability (Switzerland), 9(9), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9091620</p><p>Bergvall-Kåreborn, B., Mirijamdotter, A. & Basden, A. (2004). Basic Principles of SSM Modeling: An Examination of CATWOE from a Soft Perspective. Systemic Practice and Action Research 17, 55–73.</p><p>Galpin, T (1996). The Human Side of Change, San Francisco, Jossey Bass.</p><p>IAP2 Spectrum (n.d). https://iap2usa.org/resources/Documents/Core%20Values%20Awards/IAP2%20-%20Spectrum%20-%20stand%20alone%20document.pdf</p><p>Palan, H. (2020). The dangerous animals of product management and how to tame them. Customer Think. https://customerthink.com/the-dangerous-animals-of-product-management-and-how-to-tame-them/</p><div>Rajagopalan, S. (2014a). RACI: An important tool to manage project outcomes and stakeholder expectations. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/06/raci-important-tool-to-manage-project.html</div><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2014b). RACI: Errors and Implications in building the right one. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/07/raci-errors-and-implications-in.html</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2018). Organized Common Sense. Outskirts Press.</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-10187508544510566542022-11-24T18:27:00.001-05:002023-09-18T19:03:55.027-04:00Gift of Teaching: Why it should matter to anyone?"Why do you like teaching so much?" asked my son as I was wrapping a call with one of my students. It was not on a regular work day or during the evening that I teach. He has known me to teach at colleges and universities as well as through my own training organization (Agile Training Champions) that I founded with the only purpose of "Making a Difference." Yes, both my parents were teachers. So, I could say "Teaching runs in my blood!" To me, teaching is not for time-passing but building the society! <div><br /></div><div>Teaching, to me, is the way people create leaders! Teaching demonstrates one's love for the subject and builds character through that subject in students. In my humble opinion, if a student doesn't like a subject, it tells volumes about the teachers and their way of teaching! Why do people claim "Phobia for Math" in early grades in school? Scientists call Math as the Language of the Universe and how are we promoting quest for knowledge in the younger minds? How are we creating the love for the subject if we sow the seeds of fear for a subject? Teachers who love teaching teach their children to love learning! </div><div><br /></div><div>I had a good friend's sibling in school fail a subject back in India. This was many years back. I took it upon myself to teach this subject to the student and get the student to register for the exam again and finally succeed. I may not be available for every star fish that is washed ashore, but I made a difference to that one person's life! When this person managed to contact me several years later (as we got separated due to my stay abroad), the expression of how I mattered is priceless. </div><div><br /></div><div>Furthermore, teaching is not about showing the expertise to students but being able to demonstrate our ability to learn from the students. It is a highest form of displaying modesty and humility! At a level that others see you as an expert, you demonstrate your vulnerability and willingness to learn from the students. In the movie, "Taare Zammen Par," the teacher takes an interest in a young student's way of expression and changes the perception of the school, the student's parents, and the life of the child by relating the autistic children! Good teachers do not categorize students as 'slow poke," as one of the teachers talked about my son. I wish the teacher who called Edison as unable to learn anything can know how wrong the teacher was about Edison. As Dale Carnegie says in his book, (paraphrased) "Even He does not judge us until after death; so, who are we to judge others?</div><div><br /></div><div>Good teachers owe their students to own 'continuous learning' and 'learning at every moment!" My classes focus on movies and anecdotal thoughts from such movies on many topics. "The ideas get cemented in my mind," said a few students from people that hear learning by association is a daily event! Students learn better when they experience their teacher's love for the subject and care for their students! That's why I continue to study not only fill my own gaps in knowledge but also demonstrate my love for making a difference. And, trust me, students monitor our progress and get motivated "Fuel their fire for growth" is what teaching to me means! </div><div><br /></div><div>"Passion feeds knowledge and knowledge feeds passion!" No other profession other than teaching comes closer in this symbiotic relationship. Even thought I know the subject at the back of my hand, I prepare for changes in the market place, new events that are relevant, and the type of audience in the class. So, every class is a project and so requires just enough planning to deliver the message better. And, the students bring their rich experience and help you fill the gaps between sentences, words, and characters in your own subject! I am better in my concepts today because my students taught me! </div><div><br /></div><div>Good teachers enable their students to support their ongoing journey! They share their knowledge willingly and copiously through any and many forms as possible. In fact, to me, teaching is the best form of demonstrating servant leadership, situational leadership, and transformational leadership! In the movie, Hitchki, I remember a great saying about the teachers. </div><div><br /></div><div>"A normal teacher teaches, </div><div> a good teacher makes one understand, </div><div> a great teacher demonstrates how to apply the concepts, but </div><div> only some teachers inspire us to take a message forward"</div><div><br /></div><div>If I can make a difference in one person's life by spreading through my life experience, teaching is the way I continue to "make a difference" by inspiring everyone that I have an opportunity to interface with.</div><div><br /></div><div>To my parents, siblings, friends, family, all the teachers and the students that taught me and continue to teach me, thanks!</div><div><br /></div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-84820174999137287142022-10-02T16:30:00.001-04:002023-09-18T17:26:59.527-04:00Powerful Communication: Lessons learned from High School Essay Writing As part of my projecting leaders of tomorrow (PLOT) initiative, I try to introduce the concepts of project management and agility to high-school students and sometimes non-project managers. One opportunity presented itself to me when a student approached regarding preparing to write a compelling essay for the scholarship. The student had some knowledge about the essay types such as argumentative, expository, narrative and descriptive styles but was still was having 'writer's block'. I viewed this problem analogous to how many professionals communicate leaving the stakeholders to wonder what is being asked of them! Any artifact, project status report or graphical widgets, similar to essays written in school should focus on what is the outcome desired from the report, graph, or essay delivered. <div><br /></div><div>Let us first differentiate the four essay types. The <b>argumentative </b>essay is using credible research to develop a factual or evidence supported opinion. For instance, "Did remote team environment exist before the COVID-19 pandemic?" To some extent, this argumentative essay builds on an hypothesis or a thesis statement. Instead of asking a question, one can make a statement that "Remote team environment exist before the COVID-19 pandemic" and use research from credible sources to support or refute it. In statistical circles, we call this approach as the null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis where we use data to support the evidence. The difference in this argumentative essay is that we are not building statistical or empirical data analysis to support but to use insights and opinions using qualitative research. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <b>expository </b>essays come from a position of knowledge or sometimes to test the understanding of your subject. These essays are more of "an expert's take" approach. The goal here is not to evaluate whether you are using your analytical skills to support your thesis. Instead, the approach takes on bringing a delicately balanced views so that the knowledge to avoid any appearance of motivational or cognitive bias. For example, "The COVID-19 pandemic tested everyone's digital literacy to work remotely!" is a statement that you would like to test your understanding. While you may prove the plethora of tools that came up during the pandemic and how it facilitated people to maintain relationships, you can also discuss the challenges of computer literacy and security issues that made many people vulnerable to hacking. Again, this essay can leverage from both qualitative, quantitative, or a mixed research style. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <b>narrative </b>essays are building on a personal touch! This essay is more of an opinion piece! They could be emotional or factual depending upon the specific story. For instance, the "Heroes Journey" to story telling (Rajagopalan, 2020) is a narrative essay approach. One can write "Global Warming was reduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic where people worked remotely!" Most of the movie-making is a story telling exercise that weave a personal message. I recall a technique (Skip Weisman, personal communication, Jun 13, 2018) from my coach. This approach here is to leverage curiosity by setting the characters in the circumstance, existence or development of conflict, definition of cure, appearance of change during the pursuit of cure, ability to callback or carryout the activities amid the challenges and finally come to the closure. </div><div><br /></div><div>The <b>descriptive </b>essay is becoming a creative artist in telling a part of the narrative essay. It frequently is making emotional connections! We all know Yoda and Dark Vader or Simba and Pumpaa. As soon as you read these character names, they appear in your mind! When you think of Spiderman, you think of his lifestyle in a busy New York downtown. You are not thinking of Simba in the downtown New York or Spiderman in Pride Lands in Africa! Such an artist's rendition of the place the story took place or the object/person that had the challenges is brought in the form of powerful words. I recall one of the best opening statements from Jeffrey Archer's book, Kane and Abel, that reads, "She only stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream" describing how a mother gave up life during childbirth. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, how do these four essay types compare with project level communication (or for that matter communication in professional lives)? I have mentioned in my book on organized common sense that the communication falls under <b>persuasive, informatory, or exploratory </b>(PIE) communication. I call this the communication PIE. </div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The persuasive communication is required when you are recommending a decision (terminating a project, funding a program, etc.). These types of communication are therefore either argumentative or expository depending on the level of subject matter expertise you bring to the table. </li><li>The informative communication is more of a status quo balancing multiple elements (scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, procurement, stakeholders, resources, change) and so is often an expository level of communication. </li><li>The exploratory communication is often taking some level of persona to try out an experiment and so I view them as narrative essays. </li></ol></div><div><br /></div><div>The descriptive can be used in combination with the narrative essays for larger level vision and direction to motivate people! For instance, by integrating our processes around one application lifecycle management tool, we benefit from reducing the operating expenses by 30% increasing our likelihood of employees receiving annual bonus. Imagine what would that extra bonus in your hands can do! Fund your children education, make that dream vacation possible, etc. Now, you are painting a picture of what is to come and what people need to do to realize that reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>What are your thoughts? Thoughts? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>References</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Rajagopalan, S. (2020). Leaders are good story tellers. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2020/03/leaders-are-good-story-tellers.html </div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-12618260592632921862022-09-12T13:24:00.029-04:002023-09-18T13:46:05.818-04:00Team Management Guidelines: Treasure from my Archives<p>As I was doing Fall clean up of my room, I felt ecstatic when I found one of my scribbled notes on an old journal record on the guidelines on team management. It was one of the preparations I had done for a PMO round table on team management. The guidelines were the recommendations of Jerry Wellman (2011). While the concepts were straight forward here, I decided to put this here with some additional thoughts and share it for the community. All the eight habits are recommendations from Wellman (2011) and although these are recommendations for project team, I feel that it applies to any type of strategic and executional team.</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Shared Vision</b></li><ul><li><i>Establish Clear Roles </i>- This is not to indicate titles but roles with broader responsibilities</li><li><i>Develop the Objectives together to foster buy-in </i>- Teams work together better if they co-author the working agreements</li></ul><li><b>Set Expectations</b></li><ul><li><i>Translate overall vision into specific objectives </i>- Discuss in clear unambiguous terms how the vision is mapped into strategic objectives (product, program, portfolio, etc.)</li><li><i>Discuss commitments - availability, updates, process checks</i> - As people commit to work, ask them to think about other elements that will endanger their commitment. </li></ul><li><b>Integrated Plan</b></li><ul><li><i>Decide on deliverables for the project</i> - What, when, who, how, why? - While we discuss about deliverables within in the project context, explore alternative thinking on these same thoughts for backlog refinement and phased approaches to rolling wave planning.</li><li><i>How do you measure success?</i> - Ensure that we agree on what matters to the team's health! Measure what matters rather than what can be measured.</li></ul><li><b>Measure Performance</b></li><ul><li><i>Synchronous and asynchronous touch-base on status </i>- With remote teams, don't ask for meetings at hours that make it difficult for team members in other timezones to meet. Use both synchronous and asynchronous means to validate success. Promote unambiguous written communication.</li><li><i>Act as each other's eyes </i>- Don't just see what you want to see - Yes, it is a cliche that it takes a whole village to build a village! But, it is not just a cliche and is fact! </li></ul><li><b>Allow for Uncertainty</b></li><ul><li><i>Be flexible - Identify risks and prepare for them</i> - What more can I say here that I have not already said!</li><li><i>Discuss risks and treatment plans identify triggers in advance </i>- Identify triggers that can make the risks materialize! Have a plan to monitor risks!</li></ul><li><b>Manage Change</b></li><ul><li><i>Identify slips proactively and have a plan to manage change </i>- There are supposed to change management protocols and governance. Use an audit based governance mechanism to promote expedited approvals. </li><li><i>Monitor change with client and internal teams</i> - Remember change occurs everywhere all the time. So, be an agent of change from both the external and internal environments! </li></ul><li><b>Continually Influence</b></li><ul><li><i>Think outside the box</i> - clients are reasonable and understanding - Don't compliant about unreasonable clients. Are you ready to listen to their "unreasonable vendors"? </li><li><i>Think laterally to influence</i> - Influence is all about leadership bringing behavioral changes to others - external and internal to the delivery team.</li></ul><li><b>Regularly Over-Communicate</b></li><ul><li><i>Understand various means to communicate and use all channels effectively </i>- Be comfortable with writing/speaking on all the channels of communication</li><li><i>Even it is common sense, communicate.</i> - Let others be the judge of the information they receive!</li></ul></ol><p></p><p>Thoughts not in bold and italics but after the hyphen in every element are my extension of ideas! Happy to hear your thoughts.</p><p>References</p><p>Wellman, J. (2011). Eight habits of successful project teams. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan </p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-15086098496186622522022-08-11T11:57:00.050-04:002023-09-18T13:18:37.219-04:00Product Backlog is not a Queue<p>Following up with a few PMP certification candidates during their preparation, I heard people say "We put any idea into a queue in the backlog." In general, lean management thinking discards the concepts of large queues or batch sizes as these large queues increase the risk of non-delivery and non-compliance. I am sure we have all write a large list of things to accomplish in a day or week only to find that we accomplished only a percentage of them. Fundamentally, queue and backlog serve different purposes and to say that we queue up ideas in a backlog means we may set ourselves to fail without clear understanding of these terms. </p><p>Both the backlog and queue are containers for work. But the type of work in them are different. The fundamental difference is that the backlog continuously grows requiring prioritization but the queue fixed and work in progress. Consequently, the backlog contains future oriented ideas to develop the product. It could be change requests, experiments, enhancements for currently working functionality, and non-functional features. But the items in the queue are work in progress items frequently mentioned in the iteration backlog or the release backlog depending upon how agile is practiced in an organization (single cadence due to the nature of the product, for example).</p><p>Items in the backlog therefore require research and evaluation by both stakeholders and team members to assess their market fitness of these capabilities on a number of different attributes such as alignment to strategic initiatives (objectives and goals) as well as the ability to deliver (infrastructural considerations and team's ability to deliver and sustain). So, backlog items are often evaluated for desirability, viability, and feasibility. The prioritization techniques could involve Kano Model, MoSCoW model, etc.</p><p>Items in the queue are supposed to avoid buildup. This is the reason why Lean Manufacturing introduced the Work-In-Process (sometimes called Work in Progress) or WIP to limit them. The idea is that the flow is maintained. Everybody should be able to remove the WIP and pick up the next prioritized item, thus requiring the cross-functional orientation (Here is where T, Pi, V- and E-shaped skills came into existence). I am sure people can relate to the notions of FIFO or LIFO queues with the goal that we are constantly cleaning the queue. These are items committed to be done by the team and hence prioritization may be already addressed. But, their ability to block themselves can not be ruled out so that people ensure that other techniques like RICE (Reach-Impact-Confidence, Effort) or WSTF (Weighted Short Job First) are used. </p><p>Last but not the least, the product backlog, release backlog, and iteration (or sprint) backlog are the same containers. </p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>When no release/iteration is assigned to an item in the backlog, the backlog is called the product backlog. This could contain a high-level use case good for research, experimentation, exploration, or spike, or a major epic that is a breakdown of the capability which is still too big for the team to do anything about it. It could also contain other features or user stories that the team decided to park it for later consideration. </li><li>When a group of iterations are packed due to the need to integrate the increments from each release and release as part of a single cadence, then, the items assigned to a release belong to the release backlog. Frequently, features and user stories are part of this release backlog.</li><li>When backlog items are in fact assigned directly to an iteration rather than a release, these items belong to an iteration (or sprint) backlog. Items in the iteration backlog could be part of the single cadence, multiple cadence, or release on demand. Iteration backlog contains both the user stories (Iteration Planning - Part 1) and tasks (Iteration Planning Part 2). </li><li>Queues apply in the iteration backlog as that is where work happens to create the increments.</li></ol><p></p><p>The diagram below illustrates. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidZk0EJz_3OwHnweig_Q1dIAS-JqwYCIyryfpwvgkK-WuhXS6wngs2jq1H_4fH3yAwY-WfUzhAoImc1kx5YD8rH3mxNOnve7U5AV-B2ZkycPUuNugrtfksDQzWHjo18_lNNHqGEFPqZNjR-H4ymusAaKs2ntwcQe_OV3aF5KL0atWMT9b2w--WJjWIgsE/s1769/BacklogQueue.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1769" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidZk0EJz_3OwHnweig_Q1dIAS-JqwYCIyryfpwvgkK-WuhXS6wngs2jq1H_4fH3yAwY-WfUzhAoImc1kx5YD8rH3mxNOnve7U5AV-B2ZkycPUuNugrtfksDQzWHjo18_lNNHqGEFPqZNjR-H4ymusAaKs2ntwcQe_OV3aF5KL0atWMT9b2w--WJjWIgsE/w580-h190/BacklogQueue.png" width="580" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's synthesis of Backlog and Queues</div><p>So, let us make sure that we understand the terms right so that we don't propagate confusion and compromise clarity. </p><p>What are your thoughts? Have I missed, misinterpreted, or miscommunicated any concepts. I am all ears! </p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-89306136395893579362022-07-13T09:06:00.001-04:002023-09-18T11:22:11.963-04:00Critical Path: Does it still apply in today's digital projects?<p>Some of the questions that come up in my project management training oscillates between when to use the critical path techniques and why to use critical path in an agile context. My analogy to these questions are, "If the job required a wrench, why use a screw driver? If the job really required a screw driver, why not use a screw driver?" I am sure some of you may recall the inspiration behind my question comes from the very old discussions on the common object request broker (CORBA) where one of the cartoon pictures summarized, "If every problem is a nail, a hammer is the only tool required!" So, the question to ask ourselves is if all the projects are the same! The project management framework identifies several techniques and tools (not commercial tools) that must be evaluated for its purpose to solve. </p><p>Extending this analogy, let us first understand critical path. This technique has been present for several decades and was introduced in the middle of the 20th century around mid 1950s. Construction, Defense, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Transportation industries were predominant during that period building infrastructure like raising huge cities, shipping yards, rail roads, hospitals, defense systems, and highways. While there were also limited amount of computer based software and research and design initiatives, the mindset was that most of the projects should have a detailed breakdown of jobs to ensure resources were lined up when needed to avoid delay. </p><p>For instance, when certain workers were required to offload shipment when the ship arrived, these project was staffed with these workers around that time period rather than waster their capacity waiting for the ship to arrive. Such a concept of just-in-time (JIT) costing models were pivotal to using the capacity and capability and so projects required understanding what types of activities are crucial. So, finding the longest path in the project that can't afford to slip (hence the term Float came up) was required given the two sets of book ends (early start, late start and early finish, late finish). This is the reason why the concept of critical path emerged. </p><p>Now, let us fast forward about 50 years! We still build/upgrade infrastructure, we are also building new innovative products in the digital sphere. Software has completely eaten the world where there is not a single industry that does not have some kind of software tool or software simulation. The notion of plan-driven (Traditional), change driven (Agile) and flow-driven (Kanban) are coexisting today. In the case of Adaptive or Agile initiatives, the same team is working on the functionality in a timeboxed manner and so why is critical path required? Similarly, when flow driven initiatives apply, it is still the same core team working to eliminate queue and streamline flow invalidating the need for critical path as the focus is only on one or two items in the swimlane. One of the very reasons why the INVEST property come into picture is to eliminate the dependency among the work committed by the team (Independent). Consequently, these approaches eliminate dependency in the first place invalidating the need for critical path (activity sequencing) and using the critical chain (schedule based). </p><p>Nevertheless, still some projects may benefit from critical path. This may involve projects in the early stage that evaluate the approximate cost required or the approximate time required to deliver. So, when Agile itself is an overhead as projects need not have such an increased interaction (e.g.: A continuous email marketing project) or the risk of experimentation may be too high (not doing the soil study before laying the foundation for a skyscraper), then, the critical path foundations may still apply. </p><p>So, critical path is just one more tool. Use it wisely where it is needed. Not apply it in all types of projects. </p><p>Thoughts? </p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-80988663222880314462022-06-12T09:28:00.038-04:002023-09-18T09:03:41.642-04:00Am I Ready to Manage? Lessons from Risk Management<p>One of the persons I was mentoring mentioned to me that there is a possible promotion with the expectation of managing people. Having been a project manager for some time, the person asked me if the person is ready to manage people. I have always felt that "P" in "Project" is all about managing "People" (Rajagopalan, 2015). So, naturally I felt that this person had the capabilities, skills, and competencies. The larger question is not being ready but being good enough to manage people. There are things about managing people's performance and having responsibility for their career, some of which can be known. Then, there are areas about equal employment opportunity, diversity and harassment considerations, and many other human resources related concepts. The lack of knowledge about unknowns morph the question of being ready. </p><p>I reasoned with the concepts of risk management discipline that this person was fairly confident about. In my mind, Risk Management is about using change management principles to balance chaos and control. The risk management discipline promotes the notion of risks that we know about and the risks that we know about their impact on objectives. Consequently extending the risks that we don't know or we don't know the impact of, we come up with four categories of known-known, known Unknown, Unknown-Known, and Unknown-Unknown. </p><p>I view the unknown-unknown as a category of risks that belong to chaos. Due to the unpredictable nature and the unknown impact on our objectives, we need to be diligent. Regardless of how well diligent we are, we can never be prepared enough. So, this is where we connect with probing for what happened, analyze what we could have done, and we can sense them better in the future. As you can see, the more we do this type of probe-analyze-sense, the more we are becoming of the impact and so moving them towards the right to establish chaotic control. So, when such similar risks hover in the horizon, we can now probe but our prior knowledge helps to categorize (risk breakdown structure) and sense the preemptive treatments. So, although it is somewhat chaotic, we are establishing some level of chaotic control. </p><p>On the other hand, if we can study the chaos and understand its root cause, we know more about its existence but require more understanding of these risks manifest. These types of risks are then becoming controlled chaos requiring us to sense-analyze and then categorize. The more we analyze both these chaotic control and controlled chaos, the more we are controlling the influence (both their likelihood and impact) of risks on the on the project objectives. I am sure some of you can relate to the similarities of categorizing projects like the Fog (Unknown-Unknown), Quest (Known-Unknown), Movie (Unknown-Known) and Paint by Numbers (Known-Known) (Rajagopalan, 2018) based on risk management discipline. These concepts are illustrated below.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHijLZxUR9lvkb_oCBh79Jk9vEKXErTjI6glvejq6u29cbbNYgRhNgiXPyfadmtYZ05IVtTVEc2PuKKbZZLABH3WocieAz2dCGG8aolgl0Xt1JIzJSXadUtVbXKJrUHpsB2vn8rf1kViiQV0Df6mzl9Rf1KZa3GVRN5c3rjHSEl66wdL1gl5yI1C2-ao/s774/ManagingOneselfRiskManagementThoughts.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="774" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHijLZxUR9lvkb_oCBh79Jk9vEKXErTjI6glvejq6u29cbbNYgRhNgiXPyfadmtYZ05IVtTVEc2PuKKbZZLABH3WocieAz2dCGG8aolgl0Xt1JIzJSXadUtVbXKJrUHpsB2vn8rf1kViiQV0Df6mzl9Rf1KZa3GVRN5c3rjHSEl66wdL1gl5yI1C2-ao/w438-h424/ManagingOneselfRiskManagementThoughts.png" width="438" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's synthesis of Emotional Intelligence Concepts with Risk Management</div><p>So, how does this risk management discipline help with our questions of assessing if we are ready to manage or lead? The important thing in managing people is to illustrate to ourselves that we are good leaders. This means that we use ourselves as the instrument of emulating the behaviors we want in the people we manage. That thought borrows from emotional intelligence by first becoming consciously aware of ourselves (self-awareness is rooted in known-known) and then engaging in self-management (known-unknown). Consequently, we move on to Unknown-Unknows (social skills) and work with people instilling trust to get them to known-known (relationship). </p><p>I recall an excellent article by Hill & Lienback (2011) guiding us in this space. They recommend that we ask ourselves questions relating to how we manage ourselves, how we manage the network, and how we manage our team (Hill & Lineback, 2011). The list of questions they promote in this area are as follows:</p><p><b>Manage Oneself [Known-Known]</b></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Do you use your formal authority effectively?</li><li>Do you create thoughtful but not overly personal relationships?</li><li>Do others trust you as a manager?</li><li>Do you exercise your influence ethically?</li></ol><p></p><p><b>Manage Network [Unknown-Known]</b></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Do you systematically identify those who should be in your network?</li><li>Do you proactively build and maintain your network?</li><li>Do you use your network to provide the protection and resources your team needs?</li><li>Do you use your network to accomplish your team's goals?</li></ol><p></p><p><b>Manage Team [Known-Unknown]</b></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Do you define and constantly refine your team's visions for the future?</li><li>Do you clarify roles, work rules, team culture, and feedback about performance for your team?</li><li>Do you know and manage your people as individuals as well as team members?</li><li>Do you use your daily activities and problems to purse the three imperatives?</li></ol><div>All these questions are exactly from Hill & Lineback (2011). As you engage in this experiment, you are consciously using your network and team to elevate unknown-unknown (blind spots). So, instead of being complacent that you know everything or sometimes even overdoing the strengths, you use humility and trust to let your team. I recall Barbara Trautlein's change intelligence concepts here as she asked people to ask themselves the following four questions:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>What is your primary change leadership style - Using Hearts (People), Head (Purpose), or Hands (Process)?</li><li>What are the strengths of your style as a change leader?</li><li>How do you sometimes overdo your strengths making you less effective as a change leader?</li><li>What are the blind spots of your styles making you miss or neglect elements as a change leader? </li></ol></div><div>The more we become complacent or comfortable as a manager without continuous improvement on our self, the more we turn our strengths into weaknesses. As the recommended strategy is to always lead with your strengths, the less you sharpen your skills as Stephen Covey (1987) says, the more you are not ready. As my Chief Operating Officer once told, a good manager lets the team manage the manager. When we rate each of these questions on a scale of 1-5 and get 3 or more in each question, we are just ready. If any section is <=12, then, we have to evaluate improvement opportunities. Check with a better mentor or coach and a good manager will sometimes find them in their own people they manage! </div><p></p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Covey, S. (1987). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon & Schuster.</p><p>Kent, L.A. & Lineback, K. (2011). Are you a good boss - or a great one? Harvard Business Review, January-February, 3-8.</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Project is a verb in Project Management. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2015/10/project-is-verb-in-project-management.html</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2018). Organized Common Sense. Outskirts Press.</p><p>Trautlein, B. (2016). Communicating Change: Tell your story (Handout). Distributed in the PMI MassBay Professional Development day 2016.</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-30714102938140117932022-05-13T21:10:00.004-04:002023-09-16T17:59:14.121-04:00Agility and Scrum: Conversations outside of IT Software World<p>Through some of the corporate training work I had done, I got a referral to work with a couple of professional evangelists in India. They were trying to introduce efficient ways of working through a combination of process improvement concepts and tools in the construction space. As part of the initial interview, I found out there was an executive level interest on increasing focus on building people up with experimental ideas to pilot and pivot! Naturally, I explored the notion Scrum or Agile and there was an almost immediate dismissal of these concepts. The two people echoed, "I am not sure how much these IT thoughts apply in improving ways of working!"</p><p>Although our conversations never materialized in any work after 3-4 months, I felt compelled to wring about how much work Agile and Scrum has to deidentify themselves from their use mainly in the IT industry. I guess the Agile Manifesto principle, "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" has served itself to exclusively apply to the software product world. Perhaps the lack of diversity and inclusive thinking in the original Agile Manifesto thinkers has created a stigma about the Agile ways of working to the IT industry. However, as I have already mentioned about Agile being applicable in a non-IT setting (Rajagopalan, 2013), agility can be extended to healthcare (Rajagopalan, 2021). For example, replace "software" with "healthcare" to read as the "Working Healthcare over Comprehensive Documentation," and it can be seen that the principles can extend outside of software development.</p><p>Both Agile and Scrum is about empowering the teams to have a working agreement to solve a problem identified (or self-identified) for them by the organization. If the organizational culture is conducive to failing forward rather than punitive, any industry can apply these frameworks, which by definition shouldn't be restricted to any industry. Consider, Andon Chord, that originated in the manufacturing assembly where all works stops to ensure that the team collectively engaged in problem solving! Soon, such Andon Chord from the Lean Manufacturing has found itself applicable in many industries with the simplest example of "Stop Requested" in public buses! So, Agile and Scrum is both about the 'ways of working' where the teams are enabled to improvise with experiments to pilot and changes to pivot. </p><p>Now, if you look at Dalmia cement, there is a lot of information they talk about their partnership engagement with KKR (2016) that made them prosper. In that video they talk about five pillars such as learning & humility, teamwork, speed, excellence, and transparency (Alchemy: The Dalmia Bharat - KKR Partnership, n.d.). These are directly related to principles of courage, focus, openness, respect, and commitment of Scrum which emerge from the agile empirical pillars namely transparency, inspection, and adaption. Similar concepts can be seen in the US based Holcim Group, one of the famous cement producers where the very first sentence talks about the industry's focus on using agile management.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRFoXKsEtkqrl40IyDFBjsO5MPFGfytStetDJ3yQCFokScsnk-i1Zz9nQ-0qakFIMcfsoHnUjNuZ5MT6dQGqZC_AEszpeewvHZnQF9qAKaRpYyLaCSH8Al-KBhxtX94i_7yhD_FevU_XKWhk8Z7TLSHJOy8qcrr__eluJ5sfSF24WglDSvcWHPlwsEP-M/s1299/AgileNonITScenarios.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="1299" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRFoXKsEtkqrl40IyDFBjsO5MPFGfytStetDJ3yQCFokScsnk-i1Zz9nQ-0qakFIMcfsoHnUjNuZ5MT6dQGqZC_AEszpeewvHZnQF9qAKaRpYyLaCSH8Al-KBhxtX94i_7yhD_FevU_XKWhk8Z7TLSHJOy8qcrr__eluJ5sfSF24WglDSvcWHPlwsEP-M/w532-h334/AgileNonITScenarios.png" width="532" /></a></div>Example Scenarios presented by Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan (Users deidentified, personal communication, Feb 15, 2022)<br /><p>Transparency is already identified in the Dalmia/KKR partnership as pillar #5. When you look at the thoughts on speed, they talk about having a 100-day plan, metrics, process, roadmap, and experimentation! It is about the ways of working which enable the second pillar of teamwork. The focus of experimentation without the fear of failure is already mentioned that talks about trust, communication, and teamwork without which excellence does not come in. I challenge that the principles of agile and scrum are already applied but not understood. If the right tool and the framework is further identified, think about how it could improve! </p><p>Similar examples are in other industries as well. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) allowed the use of Agile in Life Sciences and Healthcare (Deloitte, 2020). Here, there were focus on adopting risk based governance in an iterative way addressing toxicology and pharmacology safety in clinical studies, adverse reaction protocols in later phases, and occupational hazard protection before, during, and after drug development. Centrus Energy, an international commercial nuclear power plant completed their R&D initiatives using Agile approaches (Stracusser, 2015). Telpak (n.d.) using the robotic process automation (RPA) for good manufacturing practices (GMP) and CSol's (n.d.) focus on laboratory insights for good laboratory practices (GLP) are all examples of Agile mindset. In fact, I see these agile approaches pave their foundation for the general automation manufacturing protocols (GAMP) as well. </p><p>But, such non-IT industry focuses need to be highlighted more! The stigma that Agile and Scrum applies to IT and Software product development is continuously emerging with DevOps and SAFe with too many technical terms proliferating solution-mindset in non-IT industries. So, many practitioners have more work to do! Who is willing to partner with me to write such case studies? </p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Alchemy: The Dalmia Bharat-KKR Partnership (n.d.). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXxtMYKprg</p><p>CSols (n.d.) Agile development in Laboratory Informatics. https://www.csolsinc.com/blog/agile-development-in-laboratory-informatics/</p><p>Deloitte (2020). Validation using Agile in the Life Sciences and Healthcare Industry. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ie/Documents/LifeSciences_Healthcare/IE_RA_Agile_0320_.pdf</p><p>KKR strengthens association with Dalmia (2016, Jan 15). PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/kkr-strengthens-association-with-dalmia-565397881.html</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Agility outside of software world: A case study from a theatrical play. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/05/agility-outside-of-software-development.html</p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2021, Mar 8). Agility in Healthcare Services: Insights from Clinical and Surgical Settings.</p><p>Straçusser, G. (2015). Agile project management concepts applied to construction and other non-IT fields. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2015—North America, Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute</p><p>Tekpak (n.d.). Pharma Competency. https://tekpakautomation.com/pharma-competency/</p>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-84784465143775044122022-04-25T21:03:00.046-04:002023-09-16T11:19:11.684-04:00History is Rich: Synthesize the lessons rather than promote inconsistencies<p>I participated in the 4-day Scaled Agile Frame Program Consultant (SPC). Jennifer Fawcett and Mark Saymen facilitated this wonderful session. As part of the structured slides while furthering the discussion on the double operating system concept, discussions emerged regarding the Deming's PDCA cycle. Later during the discussions, I heard participants discuss the need to give up project management principles towards the product management mindset. As the class continued, I heard root cause analysis discussed more as a technique rather than as tool to further the discussions in SAFe approaches that were introduced by Leffingwell (n.d) in 2011 almost 10 years after the original Agile Manifesto was published to scale up agile in teams of teams at the business level. I echoed in the class and wrote to the facilitators the importance of how unsafely we are promoting techniques over principles without truly connecting with history. Here is my brief summary of these thoughts. </p><p>First of Deming did not conceptualize the PDCA cycle (Moen, 2010) and neither claimed ownership nor embraced it. Edward Deming worked under Walter Shewart, who iterated on his model of "specify, produce, inspect" around 1939 coming up with a "Design, Produce, Sell, Redesign" in 1950's as a starting point to initiate conversations around the need to have interactions across the value chain. Shewart drew his inspiration from two different sources (Moen & Norman, 2009). The first was John Dewey's pragmatic principles of product design. These pragmatic principles were called in four stages, "Discover, Invent, Produce, Observe." Separately, Clarence Irving Lewis was promoting a 3-step pragmatic learning concept "Experience, Application, Susceptibility" contributing to Shewart's inspiration of specify, produce, inspect. </p><p>Deming didn't package Shewart's cycle as Plan-Do-Check-Act at all. He called the Shewart's cycle only as Shewart's cycle in honor of his mentor. However, as the word spread around, the concept of Plan-Do-Check-Act emerged among the Japanese manufacturers crediting Deming who mentioned the Shewart's cycle. So, although the Shewart's cycle was later called as Deming's PDCA Cycle, no one specifically created the PDCA cycle. Contrary to the practitioners' thinking, such as Agile that prescribed "individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and SAFe that continue to build its premise on PDCA, that keep emphasizing PDCA cycle as Deming cycle, Deming himself did not prescribe to this concept because he felt that this approach didn't promote the much needed learning that is required in both the people and processes. </p><p>Separately, several contributors such as Alan Graham and Karou Ishikawa promoted many other concepts laying the foundation for quality to be a movement (Schneier, Russell, Beatty, & Baird, 1994) to promote continuous learning (hence Kaizen was born) but not limiting quality to be only incremental actions but also innovative big picture thinking (hence Kaikaku was born). So, many concepts like the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and House of Quality (HOQ), Quality Circles, 5S principles, Design Thinking and Systems Thinking emerged (Senge, 1992). All these authors converge on the learning organization should inculcate building a shared vision, personal mastery, working with mental models, team learning and systems thinking. Empowered by these thoughts, Deming in 1993 conceptualized the need to 'study' creating the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA). </p><p>So, the question is, why do practitioners continue to miss out history and go back to antiquated non-existing theory only to rest their blames on theory? Seems like this is the same thing that happened with Royce (1970) who iterated with dozens of pictures for a system development lifecycle (SDLC) model but people stopped at the second figure in the first page creating a waterfall theory that never was proposed by Royce (Rajagopalan, 2014) to begin with!</p><p>Another thing to keep in mind is the principle of force-field analysis. This notion was promoted by Kurt Lewin (1939) who said a cause could be coming from forces that oppose (resistors) and support (enablers) a cause. We can see that all the time in any change - those that support and those that resist! Ishikawa approached the manufacturing context using his 4M (men, machine, method, materials) introducing the fish-bone diagram (Watson, 2004). Instead of only looking at Fishbone, many practitioners have incorporated the force field analysis over the root cause analysis as a combined approach to allow prioritization rather than just move forward with dot voting as the SAFe classes promote.</p><p>Now, let us ask ourselves. Do we work with various <b>stakeholders </b>and <b>team </b>members, sometimes with <b>contracted </b>workers, in product development? Is there some level of known <b>scope </b>of work we are with committing to deliver on a specific <b>schedule</b>? Are we all working probono and getting materials free or do we incur direct or indirect <b>costs</b>? Does <b>quality </b>factor into the way we work delivering value to the customers? Aren't we impacted by assumptions that prove to be wrong or <b>risks </b>that come from known/unknown areas impacting us positively or negatively? Don't we hold ourselves to <b>communicate </b>through various means keeping everyone abreast of what's going on in our product development? When anyone of these elements <b>change</b>, aren't we embracing them to evaluate how to pivot? Everyone of these highlighted words represent a knowledge area in project management that product management can not live without! The goal is not to give up these project management principles but adopt them and elevate to higher level systems thinking towards benefit sustenance and value delivery. Product Management mindset builds on Project Management basics!</p><div>So, a larger question to practitioners! Please synthesize the history first! If not, we will only promote inconsistencies!</div><div><br /></div><div>What are your thoughts? Please share.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>References</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Burnes, B. & Cooke, B. (2012). Kurt Lewin's Field Theory: A Review and Re-evaluation. International Journal of Management Review, 15(4), 359-469. </div><div><br /></div><div>Leffingwell, D. (n.d.). https://scaledagileframework.com/about/</div><div><br /></div><div>Lewin, K. (1939). Field theory and experiment in social psychology: concepts and methods. American Journal of Sociology, 44, pp. 868–896.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moen, R. & Norman, C. (2009). “The History of the PDCA Cycle.” In Proceedings of the 7th ANQ Congress, Tokyo. https://elfhs.ssru.ac.th/phusit_ph/pluginfile.php/48/block_html/content/Moen-Norman-2009%20PDCA.pdf</div><div><br /></div><div>Moen, R. (2010). Research Seminar. http://neuplace.net/PDSA_history_ron_moen.pdf </div><div><br /></div><div>Royce, W. W. (1970). Managing the development of large software systems. Proceedings, IEEE WESCON, pp 1-9.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rajagopalan, S. (2014). Review of the myths on original software development model. International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, 5(16), 103-111.</div><div><br /></div><div>Schneier, C.E., Russell, C.J., Beatty, R.W., & Baird, L.S. (1994). The Training and Development Sourcebook. 2nd Edition. Amherest, MA: HRD Press.</div><div><br /></div><div>Senge, P. (1992). Building Learning Organizations. Journal for Quality and Participation, 15(2), 30-38.</div><div><br /></div><div>Watson, G. (2004). The legacy of Ishikawa. Quality Progress, 37(4), 47-54.</div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-17302453803266712172022-03-21T16:26:00.002-04:002023-09-15T20:45:44.428-04:00Does EVM apply in Agile<p>One of the best things that I love is interacting with people. When they ask questions, I always go back to the basic principles! That's what happened to me when a few learners in the corporate training I delivered asked if traditional EVM principles are even required in Agile principles. Here are some thoughts, first explaining the EVM concepts and then extending them to Agile.</p><p>Earned Value Management has two parts. The first part is lagging indicators that tell how the project is performing at a snapshot in time. The second part is the leading indicators that forecast how much more time and money will be required to finish the project! </p><p><b>Lagging Indicators</b></p><p>This involves the Schedule Variance (SV) and Cost Variance (CV) expressed in currency units and Schedule Performance Index (SPI) and Cost Performance Index expressed as ratios. In order to compute any of these four measures, there are three things that are required. The first is the planned value (PV, <i>sometimes also called budget at completion (BAC) or budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP)</i>) of what we expected to compete, the second is the earned value (EV) of what we have earned at a snapshot in time and the actual costs (AC, <i>sometimes also called the actual cost of work performed</i>) incurred to generate the EV. Then, the lagging indicators can be computed as follows: </p>
<table border="3">
<tbody><tr><td width="30%"><b>Formula</b></td><td width="70%"><b>Explanation</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>SV = EV - PV</td><td><ul><li>If SV is zero, progress is on schedule</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">If SV is -ve, progress is behind schedule</span></b></li><li>If SV is +ve, progress is ahead of schedule</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>CV = EV - AC</td><td><ul><li>If CV is zero, progress is on track</li><li>If CV is -ve, progress is under budget</li><li><b font-color="red"><span style="color: red;">If CV is +ve, progress is over budget</span></b></li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>SPI = EV / PV</td><td><ul><li>If SPI = 1, progress is on schedule</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">If SPI < 0, progress is behind schedule</span></b></li><li>If SPI > 1, progress is ahead of schedule</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>CPI = EV / AC</td><td><ul><li>If CPI = 1, progress is on track</li><li>If CPI < 1, progress is under budget</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">If CV > 1, progress is over budget</span></b></li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Now, let us think about the applicability of lagging indicators in Agile. While the focus of Agility is on the team to manage itself, we need to ensure that the team is able to commit reasonably (and no external influence exists on the team to pressed for commitment) and self-organize themselves to deliver on the commitments (of course, there are always deviations). In the daily standup, when the team is marking completion of stories (task) for the user story to be ready for testing and marking validation complete (test cases) and the stories are accepted incrementally through the iteration, they are demonstrating earned value (velocity based on stories completed) towards the planned value (planned velocity). There is always a cost to the iteration (Rajagopalan, 2019) representing the actual costs. <div><br /></div><div>So, if we have all the elements of planned velocity, earned value (actual velocity at the end of the iteration), and the actual cost (incurred at the end of the iteration), can EVM lagging indicators? The answer is Yes. But, the goal in Agile should be drive team's health, estimation accuracy, environment, and commitment for them to deliver.<div><br /></div><div>Now, there is a question on the leading indicators. In traditional projects, there is a known scope of work and depending upon the lagging indicators, the estimate to complete (ETC) and the estimate at completion (EAC) can be evaluated. In agile projects, the product backlog is emerging constantly and the fixed scope of work is not always known. Nevertheless, if one looks at the agreed scope of minimum viable product for the release according the product roadmap, there is some anchor in the known scope of work within the MVP. If that MVP level stories are reasonably estimated (even if they were in the Affinity Estimation (i.e., T-Shirt or Coffee Cup)), then, it is possible to project the MVP backlog size. Then, for this known scope of MVP size, it is possible to apply the leading indicator concept from EVM. <div><p>First, let us look at the leading indicators. There are four formulas depending upon the level of accuracy and confidence required. </p>
<table border="3">
<tbody><tr><td width="40%"><b>Formula</b></td><td width="60%"><b>Explanation</b></td></tr>
<tr><td>EAC = AC + ETC</td><td><ul><li>In this approach, accuracy and confidence are low. The project manager often approxmiates o the additional level of effort and cost. Sometimes, it could involve parametric estimates or expert judgment to come up with an estimate to complete.</li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>EAC = BAC / CPI </td><td><ul><li>This approach is slightly better because the focus is on the cost more than the scheule. The project manager uses the current rate at which costs accrue and uses this rate against the budgeted planned value (BAC) and projects the amount required. Since CPI will be less than 1, the EAC will be more than BAC and the difference is the additional amount required to deliver on the remaining scope. But, it doesn't take into account work already delivered (EV). It is possible to increase accuracy by using the slight revision existing work delivered must be removed.</li></ul><ul><ul><li>EAC = (BAC-EV)/CPI</li></ul></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>EAC = AC + (BAC - EV)/SPI</td><td><ul><li>Here the focus is on the team's ability to deliver on the remaining scope. Cost is not an issue, perhaps because the team members are salaried employees. In this case, the team's ability to deliver on the remaining scope of work at the rate the team delivers (BAC-EV)/SPI is computed and the actual costs already incurred are included. </li></ul></td></tr>
<tr><td>EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) / SPI * CPI</td><td><ul><li>Here, the focus involves both the rate at the rate costs have accrued as well as the rate at which the team can deliver on the remaining scope. The only difference from the previous formula you will notice is that the denominator includes a product of both CPI and SPI.</li></ul></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>As you can see in the above explanation, forecasting (i.e., leading indicators) is a business need. Regardless of whether a team is focused on plan-driven or change-driven approach, the business always has the question of how long it will take for you to deliver on the remaining scope or MVP. </p><p>If the lagging indicators (SPI, CPI, EV, AC) exist, and BAC (PV) is focused more on the remaining backlog size for the MVP, is there a reason why EAC calculations do not apply in Agile? The answer is Yes. In fact, Agile uses the burn rate to compute the rate at which the team burns through the backlog. Furthermore, there is one more leading indicator that people compute. That is To-Complete-Performance-Index (TCPI). This is computed as follows. Does the work and cost remaining relevant to Agile? Then, why question whether EVM extends to Agile or not? </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>TCPI </b>= Work Remaining / Cost Remaining</li><li><b>TCPI </b>= BAC - EV / BAC - AC</li></ul><div>The following diagram further illustrates graphically the thoughts. If you look at the abscissa (X-Axis), I have put both the timeline (T5, T10, T15, etc.) for a phased traditional approach and R1, R2, and R3 indicate the releases that may be comprised of individual iterations (single cadence where increments have to be consolidated and delivered). So, Agile or Traditional, don't get mixed up on terms! Focus on the principles of delivering customer and business value. Use EVM as it applies in your own context. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcgmypPGeBjIv0whsaA-BRExSc9WauD_ahcgr7xelpzKvCaMz4Kka4RjFBCAdq0j9ZqoKFQ5xlG2gA3ycUwmWkJeEdJAz9n6GM17AQGuoPjyuU9zgzn0998NzhG4UVKiGz0Cly4I1JuQDchS8QMcHLXDs-D_EzpXKsXTo6UAr7F-7HQx3-pQ1L3XZVZMM/s816/AgileEVM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="816" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcgmypPGeBjIv0whsaA-BRExSc9WauD_ahcgr7xelpzKvCaMz4Kka4RjFBCAdq0j9ZqoKFQ5xlG2gA3ycUwmWkJeEdJAz9n6GM17AQGuoPjyuU9zgzn0998NzhG4UVKiGz0Cly4I1JuQDchS8QMcHLXDs-D_EzpXKsXTo6UAr7F-7HQx3-pQ1L3XZVZMM/w610-h474/AgileEVM.png" width="610" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's approach to EVM in Agile</b></div><p>It should, however, be pointed out very clearly that in Agile, we should measure a few more things. These include cycle time, lead time, WIP, and Backlog Size (Remaining work). This is because, as mentioned before, the scope of work is constantly changing in Agile because of the constant feedback mechanism and the notion of embracing change.</p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Rajagopalan, S. (2019). Agile iterations also involve cost. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2019/04/test-post.html</p></div></div></div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2578983100371472491.post-70227579899263704522022-02-07T14:18:00.003-05:002023-10-15T09:18:24.221-04:00Essential Games for Agile Ceremonies<p>As I was teaching about the principles of Agile, a question came up from one of my participants about the compelling reason to play games in Agile and what are the essential games. The foundational element of Agility is the self-organized teams. The expectation is that the team is empowered to ask powerful questions and enabled to act in a way conducive to deliver on product strategy. To emulate this self-organization, games are generally recommended as people's creative juices come in when you infuse fun ways of working. </p><p>I reasoned that there are many games to play based on the specific challenge to be addressed. Each game is analogous to a medicine! Not all medicines treat the symptoms and based on specific patient chemistry, what works for one (ibuprofen for headache) may not for another! The Tasty Cup Cakes (n.d.) is an organization that summarizes the details of many games and the rules to play the game!</p><p>In general, there are four ceremonies. These are Iteration Planning, Daily Standup, Review and Retrospective. There is also a backlog refinement (that some call as backlog grooming) which is required to refine and prioritize stories in preparation for the iteration planning. So, here are some games that can apply to one or more of these ceremonies.</p><p><b>Product Box:</b> The goal of this game to simulate the functionality that is minimally required to be released. It appears a long time back that people used to buy software that came in a CD wrapped within a box. It would give details about the minimum system requirements, major features, details around customer support, and helpful documentation using up all the six sides of the box! The product box comes with the same notion of asking the stakeholders and team to prioritize absolutely minimally required features for a release by allowing people to place these features on a blank product box canvas. It can be used in backlog refinement and also on the release (MVP) /iteration planning (MMF/MBI). </p><p><b>Buy a Feature:</b> The goal of this game is also help stakeholders align on priority. Every stakeholder will be given a certain amount of virtual currency (or virtual points). Each feature (not one story but a feature) will be given a price (or point) depending upon the complexity and/or size based on team's input. The stakeholders can then use their money to buy the most important feature they need (just like how we don't waste money on every frivolous thing but on the necessary things alone). People change the rules of the game sometimes where stakeholders can pool their money to buy a feature when they don't have enough left to buy a feature or restrain such money-pool recommending 'use it or lose it but not combine it!'. This is also a good game for backlog refinement, release, and iteration planning. </p><p><b>Prune the Tree: </b>This game lets team members position various features and other experiments based on priority or value to the customers/business. This game can be used by the team to engage in more powerful questions on the customer's actual needs based on the priorities and unearth the actual needs and differentiate the nice to have from the must to have just like a tree is pruned. The goal is to validate the absolutely minimum needs, prioritize accordingly, and come up with the other use cases (technical value, process value) to ensure that these customer value stories can be delivered. This game is primarily beneficial in the iteration planning. </p><p><b>Paper Airplanes:</b> This game is more about how people practice agility! The goal is not what anyone can do (regardless of the role like the product owner, coach, developer, tester, etc.) but what everyone collectively can deliver. That's the idea behind how everyone can support creating how many flying paper planes that fly past a certain boundary can be created. The game brings that together everyone achieves more (TEAM) mentality. It is ideal in daily standup.</p><p><b>Daily Scrum Game: </b>This game helps the team member to understand certain behavioral patterns people may have and how they will identify and collaborate in such a place. The goal is furthermore to understand the failsafe environment. In this game, the agile coach asks some team members to assume certain behavioral role (monopolizing conversations, refusing to give feedback, etc.) and ask the team to practice playing the daily stand up that must be finished in the time allocated. Then, they discuss if they were able to identify the persona people took and how they should work with such a disruptive patterns if displayed. </p><p><b>Matchup Canvas: </b>This game is frequently a good one when team is in the early stages of Agile team (Like Forming, Norming). The goal is to conceptually think of ourselves having a "business card" that displays who we are and what we bring to the table in the team. For example, the card canvas can have our name, goals, what you offer ((skills, knowledge, help) or can't offer but willing to learn, who can benefit from your skills and competencies, what you need from others and where you will go for help. If such a card is placed on your cube (or part of your signature for virtual teams), it would help people when they need support or guidance. </p><p><b>Speed Boat: </b>This game focuses on learning! The analogy here is that a speed boat can accelerate going forward, stall not making progress, or decelerate going slow or receding backwards. The logic here is to extend this to say what are we doing that helps us progress faster and deliver on commitments, what we should stop that does not add value, and what we should do that will helps us pick up pace! Sometimes, we also call this 'keep doing,' 'start doing,' and 'stop doing.' Another variation of this game is also called "mad, sad, glad" which associates with being mad about what happened (stop doing this), being somewhat sad about what happened (start doing something to avoid this), and glad about what happened (keep doing what we we are doing). This game is applicable in both the review and retrospective ceremonies. </p><p><b>Pass on Perfection: </b>This game is about giving feedback. The game emerges from the coaching principles of using "Yes, And" rather than "No But". So, when someone tells something and you have an alternative view, instead of saying "No this will not work but if you do this it might work," you change your approach. "Yes, I can see how this will work and if you consider this it might work better!" </p><p><b>Feedback Game: </b>This game is also about giving feedback. In fact, it is about practicing to give/receive feedback. The goal is not to be always clever and all-knowing but also be modest and be on the receiving end of feedback. The game is played with a pile of cards (carefully chosen with questions or scenarios). Each person takes a card, chooses to keep the card and answer the question or the scenario with opportunities to hear what they could have done differently. If the person chooses not to keep the card, the person can pass it to others who can then choose to keep it. The game ends when all the pile of cards are answered. </p><p>Given below is a quick summary of what games apply to what scenarios. I am sure there are many others that can be played. But, these games are more than enough, in my humble opinion, to get Agility working in the teams.</p>
<table border="3">
<tbody><tr bgcolor="orange"><td width="30%"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Game Name</span></b></td><td width="15%"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Backlog Refinement</span></b></td><td width="10%"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Iteration Planning</span></b></td><td width="15%"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Daily Standup</span></b></td><td width="15%"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Review</span></b></td><td width="15%"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Retrospective</span></b></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Product Box</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Buy a Feature</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Prune the Tree</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Maybe</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Paper Airplanes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Daily Scrum Game</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Matchup Canvas</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Speed Boat</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mad, Sad, Glad</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Pass on Perfection</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;">Feedback Game</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">No</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td><td align="center"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br /><div>
<b>References</b><p>Tasty Cup Cakes (n.d). https://tastycupcakes.org/)</p></div>Dr. Sriram Rajagopalanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07013553261106048459noreply@blogger.com0