Agile approaches to product development and project management
are growing exponentially. I have been a proponent of the lean approaches even
at my house chores and recently found that such approaches were discussed even
in the Agile 2014 conferences. Unlike Scrum’s requirements to have self-organized teams with timeboxed iterations within which changes are generally
frozen and disallowed, the project management approaches do not rejoice the
dedicated team. Often, the members may be spread across multiple projects
like project managers having multiple projects. So, how do we manage time
effectively in multi-project and program initiatives?
An approach that I have found useful is adopting Scrumban to
proactively manage myself and build on the team’s innate strengths to empower
themselves to do better. Sounds great, but how? Let me explain.
Scrum
|
Kanban
|
1.
Scrum focuses on timeboxed iterations with
self-organized cross-functional teams.
2.
Team decides on what can be accomplished in a
2-week sprint and emphasizes continuous improvement by retrospectives
3. The customer representative is expected to be
sometimes on-site and be multi-functional with skills in product, project, account,
technical, business analysis, etc.
4.
Measure of progress is working software
delivery
|
1.
Team visualizes the workflow in queue
2.
Anyone can pull (i.e., take) any task that is
in the queue
3.
Tasks are generally not dependent
4.
Balances work in progress
5.
Reduces waste between tasks
|
In traditional project management where resources are not
procured for the duration of the project or in balanced matrix organizations where
projects inherently face wait times, such as in regulated and construction industries,
the project team may not be multi-functional. Therefore, it is not possible for
any member of the project team to take on any project or tasks within the project.
For instance, can a tester write code? Can a database architect develop
deployment requirements? Can a project manager be a business analyst? While
technically these are all possible in high performing organizations, other organizations
may not have resources that have multitude of skills where roles can be effectively
merged eliminating waste.
Here is where Scrumban comes to help. It combines the best
of both the Scrum and Kanban worlds. Tasks become structured (design a
program overview, develop the stored procedure, test interactive voice response
for a specific Voice XML flow, etc.) to be executed by anyone within a specific
group. The group or functional leader is entitled to provide the guidelines and
process direction for continuous improvement reducing cycle time increasing predictability in productivity. Example,
regardless of who develops the program or tests the campaign, in the given
service level agreement of 5 days, the program will be developed or tested. Yet,
workflow need not be limited to changes only between iterations thereby allowing
new tasks to be created eliminating wait time and allowing the team to
prioritize projects.
While Scrumban is a great alternative where neither Scrum nor
Kanban can be effectively applied, I found out that I can use it to manage
myself to be productive better in multi-project, program, and portfolio
management. I have illustrated this in the above figure. From my point of view, the team is the expert, and I am just a
facilitator. So, when the team has been provided with a task, it is in progress
(Yellow sticky). Now, what am I doing when the team is working on it?
I don’t need to hold a meeting to check on progress – that’s
project management by unnecessary meetings. But I shift my gears to what the
team may be requiring next – eliminating all ambiguity for the potential next
task. As a project manager, I focus on the upcoming milestone working a step
proactively ahead (Blue sticky) and work with the stakeholders to get that
ready so that when the work in progress is done, I am servicing the team with
the next unambiguous task. This comes in handy when the team is virtually
distributed because in such cases where communication needs to be both pull-
and push forms, I have time to over-communicate! This is an example of what I
label as 6P principle (Proper proactive planning prevents poor performance!)
Now, the more I work at this the more effective I become and
so I work another step – 2 steps ahead
– and work with the client, product, account or other teams to push them to
deliver on their deliverable ahead so that there is no impact to critical path
(Green sticky). I stop at 2 steps only because in my mind I am 1 sprint ahead
and my agility hat tells me that there may be change coming that I need to prepare
for.
Let us take it to the next level. May be the green sticky
(Product, account, client, or other teams) can’t do anything because they are
waiting on something else. Then, so much of time becomes unfrozen. Immediately,
that means productive hours can be provided to another project. This is an
approach to doing more with less.
This next project could be part of the same program, product, portfolio or a
totally different project for a different client or even developing a hobby, helping
another team member, writing this article, or dedicating time for a cause.
This
is an approach I have used to timebox all the incoming work so that within the given
time available, I am still able to keep multiple things moving!
