Project Management is a life skill

In one of the blog entries earlier, we had discussed the need for mindset change for project management. If we truly understand the principles of project management, we can appreciate how relevant this skillset is in managing one’s own life. This discipline is perhaps the only pervasive profession that has tight coupling as a life skill.

For instance, let us evaluate how the ten core knowledge areas espoused by the Project Management Institute are integrated with the circle of life using an example of planning a vacation. These areas involve managing time, cost, scope, integration, procurement, human resources, communication, risk, quality, and stakeholder. When we are planning to go on a vacation with our family, we plan how many days we can go on a vacation based on the number of days available from our work. Depending upon whether spouse and children are joining, we engage with additional stakeholders at School and integrate our activities around time. Every activity that we plan during the vacation is scoped out by the amount we can spend on the vacation and the risk tolerance to adventures we can engage in. 

We also engage with multiple types of vendors to book our travel and hotel arrangements. We continue to engage several people in evaluating the vacation spots and activities that we can do to ensure that the value of the time and money spent is of acceptable quality. Finally, we manage several other activities such as taking care of bill payments, watering the plants, taking care of pets, preparing transition plans at work by communicating with the involved stakeholders. Now, is everyone traveling on vacation a project manager? However, as you can clearly see, these skills are still essential outside of the project management profession. Is there any reason why we shouldn't call these project management skills critical life skills? 

The significance of project management principles outside of the project management profession is not new. On May 4, 2013, the Chicago Tamil Sangam staged a historical play, “Ponniyin Selvan” in the regional Tamil language. Centered on a course of events that took place around the 11^th century Chola Dynasty in ancient India, staging the play presented several unique challenges that were overcome by applying some basic project management principles. Each of the following activities were considered interdependent projects that was coordinated as a large program with several milestones, conference calls, demos, rehearsals, and marketing demystifying how these life skills were executed by many non-project professionals. 

As a result, the principles of agility can apply much beyond software development (Rajagopalan, 2013). In fact, the Agile Manifesto shouldn't have even said "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" limiting agility to software development. It shows the lack of diversity in the Agile Manifesto contributors from the application of agility beyond their background domain knowledge. For instance, imagine if we had said "Working Products over Comprehensive Documentation". The product can be replaced by any benefit that could be translated into value!

1.    Preparing rich costumes, jewelry, and artifacts to differentiate the Emperor, the Kings, Queens, Ministers, and workers that required coordinated efforts to identify the needs among the actors, procure items necessary from India, and get them shipped from India.

2.    Identifying the needs of the auditorium based on the play requirements, distance, transportability and audience needs including law and order maintenance.

3.    Designing several high-end artifacts that were transportable with easy assembly, such as preparing backdrops suitable for the play, two boats that moved on the state, a ship with effects to display shipwreck, a palanquin as an entry point for the character, and pillars establishing the authenticity of the 11^th century.

4.    Rehearsing the play spread over five volumes perfecting dialogue delivery, enunciation of words, clarity of voice projection, light cues for various spots on the stage differentiating progress of characters and events through various backgrounds, preparation and coordination of musical clues, singing and dance choreograph appropriate to the characters, body language clues collaboration such as when to pass the message card or the crown, how various characters should see during critical scenes, 3 full length exams including a daylong marathon practice sessions.

5.    Advertisement and marketing efforts on social media, press, and soliciting appreciation from prominent external representatives, such as the President of India, increasing the reach.

6.    Subsequent preparation for the main event date with food and supply for the crew, makeup needs, and transportation of goods, stage preparation, and coordination of light clues with the auditorium crew that didn’t speak the regional language, backstage line up of cast during the play informing what scene is in progress.

7.    Addressing challenges for audience lineup, food distribution, parking lot and law & order challenges on the day of the event.

As an extension to the change in mindset on what the misconceptions around project management, let us arise to learn the tools and techniques recommended by this discipline so that we can enhance our own quality of life as well as the voluntary community efforts several of us support. In the next session, we will discuss further on a unique framework from my post-doctoral pursuit of how we can focus on what we need to learn. 

What are your thoughts? Please share and spread the knowledge.

References: 

Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Agility outside of software development: A case study from a theatrical play. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/05/agility-outside-of-software-development.html

Servant Leadership starts with forming a habit to spread the knowledge

I was volunteering at the #Agile2016 conference this week in Atlanta, Georgia and had an opportunity to support another volunteer friend who was trying to organize an open space session. What was so impressive was this friend's willingness to get over the comfort zone to get in front of a crowd to facilitate this session with the only goal of creating a stickiness of the information gained from attending the conference to others. It was so wonderful to see how this friend exemplified servant leadership forming a habit to facilitate this session.

Marshal Goldsmith (2007) published a classic book where he advanced 20 habits for fast forwarding one's career by identifying habits that may be bringing themselves down creating trust erosion in the team. These behavioral traits may be in our own blind spots that we may easily fail to recognize how we are sowing the inappropriate seeds for our own professional growth while simultaneously bringing the team down. Joshua Arnold (2016) referred to some of these behavioral traits as HiPPO (HIghest Paid Person's Opinion) in one of this presentation at the Agile 2016 conference. Readers are advised to check this classic to get more insights.

It was a classic example for me to see in action how one individual took the initiative to form a habit not only to benefit from his own reading of a classic book but also push the individual limits to get over the stage fear because of the belief that there was something he had the world should know to benefit from. Now, servant leadership is exactly that - leading with others in mind encouraging the drive to excel, acting with humility, and strategically advancing long term benefits over short term quick wins.

This friend proposed the idea at the open space session providing an elevator pitch creating an interest for about a dozen people as he described the 20 habits creating an activity for people to form a group and select one of the habits that resonated with them in groups, create visual images of these habits, and identifying strategies on the impact of this habit and recommendations to eliminate this habit. The amount of time this friend spent at evenings and nights to form the elevator pitch and create stickiness for anyone that may come for his open space session applying the techniques suggested by Laura Powers (2016) really hit a homerun as the attendees to the session appreciated the new packaging on these habits as they emphasized how this session helped them. I was so glad to be part of supporting him in his endeavors.

As I continued to support this friend in this session, I really renewed my own interest in the coaching of such down-to-earth individuals who not only try to improve themselves but attempt to leave the world in a better place than they found it by avoiding excuses. As Kish (2016) and Jurgen (2016) pointed in the various leadership stages of genius tribes and managing for happiness respectively in their keynote address, it is the knowledge that we gain from such selfless individuals and their friendship.

What are we doing today to get ourselves out of any comfort zone that we have encapsulated ourselves in advancing the great experience and knowledge that we have gained? Servant Leadership is a lot bigger than teaching someone to fish! It is teaching someone to serve society by creating a community pool and teaching everyone to be self-organizing and self-sustaining. It is applying leadership beyond the individual, team, and the organization. 

Reference

Arnold, J. (2016). How to train your HiPPO.  Atlanta, GA: Agile Alliance.

Goldsmith, M. (2007). What got you here won't get you there. New York, NY: Hyperion Books.

Kish, C. (2016). Leadership for genius tribes. Atlanta, GA: Agile Alliance.

Jurgen, A. (2016). Managing for happiness. Atlanta, GA: Agile Alliance.

Powers, L. (2016). The neurology of learning: Your brain on agile games. Atlanta, GA: Agile Alliance.

Agile or Traditional - Productivity Management still has basic roots

Having managed a few initiatives in both agile and traditional settings, I often find people thinking the agile culture enhances productivity many times over the traditional thinking. The principles of collaboration, limiting work in progress, lean thinking over scope, and focusing on value generation may lead one to think that agile is much better than traditional. Still traditional approaches to management don't mean that these processes should be avoided to sow the seeds of productivity. Agility is, in the end, only a mindset to managing productivity towards value generation. In my experience, I have found a few techniques that have withstood the test of time to produce predictable productivity in any team.

1. Manage meetings
There is a lot of practical literature around how to run effective meetings. Instead of going into microscopic details on meeting management, can we not focus on ensuring that every meeting has a clear outcome to accomplish at the end of the meeting? Whether it is a 15-min or a daylong meeting, having a clear outline of planned outcome will establish evaluating the necessity of the meeting in the first place. Not having a meeting unnecessarily or accomplishing meeting objectives earlier releases so much time that could be used for other productive tasks.

This is where agile thrives because it timeboxes all ceremonies and avoids meetings not necessary. Project and Program Management can also apply the same techniques.

2. Correct your course
Whether it is running meeting or managing the client, things don't always go the way you plan! So, plan for course correction? What's the point in all this "Failing to plan means planning to fail" when we fail to apply it in principle! When a meeting goes on a tangent, correct your course by bringing attention to your outline. When customer requests come out that emphasize lack of understanding or you get a project where you don't know the underpinning the technology, make course corrections yourself by taking an initiative to learn the technology!

In the world of Khan academy, Plural Sites, Course Era, Open2Study, Bright Talk, and so many other MOOC - not to mention YouTube or Vimeo - there is plenty of information available already for people to gather information! So, correcting your own course is totally on you and not doing so is taking the team's time away! Be warned, however, that not all information on these sites is correct and credible. Do your own research!

Here is also an approach from Agile where there is retrospective at the end of every iteration! Did traditional approaches ask not to have frequent lessons learned sessions? Absolutely not! It is a restriction that project management forced themselves on and the management failed to react to it. In other words, they chose to learn from the lessons and hence succumb to failure! Furthermore, retrospective is the last moment to capture lessons learned in that iteration. Lessons are learned every day and captured every day! 

3. Focus on Training on "Done" criteria
Having a constant baggage on the trunk creates so much drag in an automobile which slows the automobile and burns unnecessary fuel! That's why we don't drive - at least technically - with unnecessary baggage, right! Doesn't that principle teach us to focus on getting tasks completed! Coming from lean management philosophy, it is a principle of waste in over-engineering anything to the point that it is not getting done! So, project management can extend these principles to apply simple heuristics in managing their WBS or have user stories that apply the INVEST principle.

In my experience, I have always applied the golden rule of no task having a duration longer than the risk that I can live with the task completing. Most often, no tasks are longer than 40 days and some work package are always delivered every two weeks. So, milestones are not 3 months apart! Such thinking still applies earned value principles to make course corrections if a project slips!

Here is where the INVEST principle from agile comes to help where every user story is independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable! So, don't add tasks just for the sake of adding and use the hammock tasks productively.

4. Establish Stretch goals
No matter how much one knows, there is always room for improvement! This is one of the reasons change management principles advocate continuous improvement. The self-organizing theme behind teams in agile setting really ensures that team members are adequately skilled cross-functionally to pick up other people's task to support the sprint commitment! In a traditional setting, we create unnecessary layers. Every team in a traditional setting should have a stretch goal to learn another team's work and practice. Not only does this avoid central dependency on another, but it also helps appreciate the tricks of trade and appreciate the service level agreements and standard operating procedure enhancing adherence to protocols. It also lets creative juices flow as one challenges the status quo to do things differently! Only by learning more does an individual become part of a group and evolve to be a self-organized team.

5. Use the tools of communication effectively
Although we all appreciate a wrench and hammer have their distinct purposes, we also realize overly abusing the tools for the wrong purposes damages what we are trying to accomplish more than the tool itself. The same analogy goes with the tools. I wish we could monitor the use of the "Reply to all" button that creates so much email for an organization. People reviewing the emails out of sequence, replying to them in random order understanding parts of pieces, and eventually ignoring it will only cause so much productivity loss - time that can be used for other productive tasks. So, learn to manage by walking around, collaborating using better tools, and avoiding creating so much electronic dialogue that provides no clearly documented decision making.

In my experience, these simple techniques have helped build constant productivity regardless of the approach. In the end, what matters is only the results.

Thoughts?

Agile needs to understand and focus on agility more

Over the last few weeks, I overhead a few practices such as the following while claiming to practice agile.

a)       Not finding the tasks in the sprint backlog for sizing the user story

b)      Evaluating the definition of done during almost every sprint

c)       Focus on the sprints and lose the value not delivering on committed time

d)      Not factoring capacity into account in a velocity driven planning

The major focus of agile is on maximizing value to the customer. This is stated as, “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” To accomplish that goal, it is imperative to ensure that we exhibit agility rather than claim to practice the so-called Agile paradigm. When the focus is on this value maximization to the customer, how could the above practices that fail to add value to the customer be considered agile practice?

Maximization of value means within the agreed timebox, the team self-organizes to add the appropriate tasks. The scrum master acting on the team’s behalf needs to hold the definition of done articulated ambiguously by the product owner. Similarly, the product owner needs to be held accountable to the larger committed timeline to the customer not losing focus on the slips in the timeline due to losing velocity in every sprint.  The scrum master needs to hold the product owner responsible for capacity planning in a velocity driven team rather than a commitment driven team.

If the principles recommended above are not upheld, then claiming to be agile is an understatement. This is because the maximization of value delivery with a focus on customer is falling apart. Some of the root causes are the following:

a)       Thinking that a team is agile just because of the use of a specific tool or adoption of a specific recommended ceremony.

b)      Merging the crucial roles of scrum master and product owner in one person who keeps neither role in check.

c)       Addition of new team members not sharing the same norms disrupting operating rhythm.

d)      Allowing the flexibility to let the team not meet the required commitment because it can always be picked up in the next sprint.

Going to the basics, if the focus is on value delivery to the customer, then, it is important to not lose the focus of time, scope, quality, and cost and the risk of non-delivery on these elements. Increasingly, as agile gains mainstream focus, it is indispensable for the agile team to understand these considerations and not just adhere to agile terminologies. Only when one understands these principles can one appreciate when to stay agile, when to adapt practices, and when to recommend going with traditional approaches. 

Project Management – Mindset Change

I recently published an article in a Chicago Tamil Sangam's newsletter in my native language, Tamil on the change in the mindset about project management. Based on requests received to see this message translated in English, I am posting this blog entry.

Once upon a time when someone didn’t get a job the people recommended those to get a computer engineering job. Similarly, the prevalent thought of project managers among today’s workforce is that these project managers can’t do anything other than updating tasks in the project plan. Although the experts familiar with project management profession can laugh and ignore these comments, these comments are regrettable when the experts think these comments deeply.

The Project Management Institute describes this profession suggesting that project managers should exhibit multifaceted skills to enter any industry. If you check out the responsibilities of the roles such as the healthcare software engineering, retail database administrator, or financial QA analyst on the Internet, do you think one can get these jobs without the required experience for that job? Even if one gets this job, can one continue to retain that job without keeping skills current? I am sure you know the answer.

Like these jobs, the project management profession also has been mandating the project managers to possess the specific domain knowledge and basic technical skills for a long time. Despite that, why do people feel the way expressed above about this profession? There may be many reasons for this. However, one important reason is the project manager’s lack of self-initiative! The resulting lack of attention to details leads to team members spending their time in unnecessary meetings, correcting customer complaints, and collecting required documents eroding trust and earning aversion on the project manager. These mixed feelings about the project managers manifest as a mocking smile at the project manager’s incompetency.

Analogous to the dialogue from the very popular Tamil movie, Parasakthi “Whether our voice is heard in heaven or not, it should be heard by the management,” the Project Management Institute also introduced several changes through the Talent Triangle. This requirement mandates the project manager to continuously improve their technical project management, strategic business management, and leadership skills potentially leading to the losing their certification when these skills are not maintained.

Many of you may be a project manager, member of a project team, hiring managers, or their friend or family. Your cooperation is also required to change this mindset about project management. If you are a project manager, begin to participate in the local chapter meetings and join advanced classes to improve your skills and competencies. If you know a project manager, create volunteer opportunities and encourage project managers to practice their skills. When such attempts lead to making the project managers better at their professional skills, you will also reap from the benefits of the projects managed successfully. So, let us stop feeding the earlier thoughts, think of what we can do and act on it!

Reference
Project Management - Mindset Change (2016, April). Palagai, 1, 8-9.

Agility in Negotiation: Focusing on the “Why” behind mixing strategy with scenario

Negotiation is a strategic and learned skill. Whether one is negotiating terms of compensation for a gainful employment, partnering with a vendor, or evaluating merger or spin-off arrangements, the principle of negotiation is a critical managerial skill applicable for individual contributors or managerial roles. The agile principles of iterative and incremental are equally applicable in this strategic negotiation. Two simple ways this agility can manifest in negotiation turning out to be strategic involve in getting back to the root cause before taking a collaborative or assertive stand and having the self-organizing mindset to adapt the negotiating style.

For instance, consider that a negotiator always has a predetermined style. Within the organization, when negotiating for a resource or budget such as the distributed negotiation, the predetermined style makes the person too predictable. Such a predictability provides a competitive disadvantage for the negotiator as the other party can deftly predict the questions and be ready with the counter responses. Agile principles recommend the self-organized team where the team determines how work executed after the user stories are explained by the product owner. The team adapts to the operating rhythm within every release and sometimes within every sprint as not all sprints and releases are the same. Similarly, not all negotiations are the same and having an adaptive agile mindset is critical for the negotiator as no two negotiations are the same.

Let us look at the root cause. The goal of the negotiator is to get to the basics of why the other party wants to engage in a negotiation. Trying to understand the fundamental interest takes precedence over taking a position based on power or seniority. This position is the outcome of what the negotiator wants in the negotiation but to make the negotiation successful and satisfactory the focus is on the “why.” Now, lean management principles have come to the rescue here with the 5-why approach to not taking the immediate statement at face value and questioning them further repeatedly thereby developing an incrementally better view of the root cause.

Prior to coming to the table for negotiation, there needs to be just enough research done on the problem. This research gives you the best alternative to negotiating agreements (BATNA). While the interest is to have a win-win solution, often negotiations may end in “win some” – “lose some” situation. Knowing the BATNA helps with the zone of potential agreement (ZOPA) so that agreement is made on what is necessary (Opresnik, 2014). Otherwise, one can be tempted and led into the agreement trap! 

As you can see, a strategic negotiation therefore is rooted in adapting the skill to the scenario much like the project manager adapting to the demands of the new project and understanding the requirements more than a solution. 

References

Opresnik, M.O. (2014). How You Learn to Successfully Negotiate. In: The Hidden Rules of Successful Negotiation and Communication. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham.

Project Closure – The final frontier!

I recently observed comments on project management not updating the project plans and performing administrative closure on a project that was part of a larger program. It prompted me to think how critical the processes related to closure when all scoped deliverable of a project is completed. There are many reasons for project closure even when the book of accounts itself needs to stay open such as being able to invoice against the other projects making up the larger program. However, the most notable are evaluating the project profitability, lessons learned, and customer satisfaction which are integral to the organizational project assets.

Listed below is some of my own experience in performing proper project closure and the project plan is just a gentle reminder that this is a responsibility of the project management.

1. Has the contracted scope of delivery been met? If not, why?
2. How efficiently were the project objectives delivered?
3. How effectively did the project stay on schedule? If not, what contributed to the delays and what processes need to be in check to avoid future schedule slips?
4. How well did the project management proactively forecast changes and adjust the estimation process?
5. How satisfied are customers and project stakeholders?
6. How did the actuals compare to the final baseline plan?
7. How did resource availability changes impact the delivery to adjust for capacity planning?
8. Did the team work together effectively?
9. What individual contributions positively or adversely impacted the project’s quality? How were performance expectations managed?
10. What attempts were made to strategically manage the customer?
11. Did any work start late and if so, why?
12. What improvements must be made on an individual, team, and process levels to positively impact future projects?

Thinking from an agile or lean perspective, the definition of ‘done’ includes the completion of the work planned. Including a task to be completed in the plan and leaving it incomplete shows the lack of agility. Even from a plan driven approach, the administrative closure on a project is a checklist guaranteeing completion of deliverable against contracted scope, documentation of performance results, recognition and performance evaluation of team members, updates to risk register, and release of resources from contingent actions. 

As the saying “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” goes, if the lack of time is the reason for not updating the project plan and performing the administrative closure, then not doing so is going to take more time when such essential knowledge is not disseminated. If processes are the bottleneck to performing this closure, then, these processes are at best questionable towards continuous improvement.

In the spirit of how Star Trek introduced Space as the final frontier, I view Project Closure as the final frontier to ensure knowledge capture to make course corrections in the existing projects for future projects to benefit immensely. Whether practicing agile or plan driven approaches, learning from projects is the origin of learning organizations. 

Thoughts?

Career Management starts with managing oneself for competencies required for the new role

We must all recognize that time has moved well past the industrial revolution into digital explosion. Let us all look around and we can see that new industries have surfaced, and new business models have evolved. Yet, how often can we all say we have developed new skills and competencies to compete not obsoleting ourselves. We are all still looking for promotion and increased pay but has anyone refused a promotion because they need to sharpen themselves for the new competencies required to succeed in the new role. I would like to share in this blog a few simple techniques that I have found working well as well as observed others do to managing the career.

1. Establish your brand by thinking strategically big

Simply put, in your absence when people think of a new structure for the organization, a new venture to consider, or a bigger problem to solve, will many people think positively of you to be the ombudsman? Here are a few powerful questions to establish your brand.

·         What quantifiable results have you consistently produced in the current organization?

·         How much does your organization remember of your previous work experience when a challenge arises?

·         What references can the customers internal and external to the organization provide consistently that elevates the perception of you?

2. Come to terms that you are a salesperson for your unit, product, and organization

This was difficult for me to relate to! Evolving from being a software engineer to a project and program management career, I never conceived myself to be a salesperson until I heard in a networking event on how I was referring attendees to a local restaurant that I have frequented! We may not know that we are not a salesperson but when we interface with the other units within the organization, we are selling the quality in code, good design in the architecture, positive returns on the product features, and solutions through out products for customers! Some questions to ask ourselves to expand our competencies are:

·         What new business problems will your existing skills solve for the organization or customers?

·         How much do you know what new competencies are required for your growing organization?

·         Given the same pay and terms and conditions, are your skills on par with the consultants in your discipline?

·         What business value have you added beyond your current role to stretch yourself out of the comfort zone?

·         How much reputation precedes you among your peers, customers, and employees in your problem-solving skills?

3. Continuously focus on becoming an expert

Too often, people rest in their comfort zone because they have a job or just got one! This is an expectation mirage as what we know is frequently replaced by new information, business paradigms, changes in technology, or tools used in their chosen professional discipline. Every year fresh graduates come to the candidate pool and experienced candidates that amass new knowledge come to the job market. It is inexorable for individuals and management to ignore the competencies required of themselves and of their team. A few ideas to take a pulse check are as follows:

·         What outside organizations are you actively involved in to learn new concepts?

·         What new team management skills have you gained if you are a manager in a balanced or functional organization?

·         What additional skills and competencies have you developed to further your knowledge of your own discipline?

·         Have you been asked to speak or write in journals, trade events, or conferences in your field of interest?

·         What specific challenges does your organization face where you bring expertise to the table from your previous experience without depending on on-the-job-training?

·         Have you been proactively able to challenge the status quo where customers and peers recognize your voice and instituting changes?

·         What opportunities have you explored moving laterally within the organization expanding your cross-functional knowledge and expertise on products, processes, and people in your own organization?

4. Bringing out the best in others

I once heard a definition of success that read, “My success is defined by how soon I eliminate myself.” It struck me so much that I never focus on job security by staying in the comfort zone of siloed expertise. Instead, I focus on employability where I develop others to expand on the paths that I have found or allow them to find a new paths to make things even more productive. This succession planning is critical for one to be unplugged from one’s current responsibilities and be available for the next opportunity that may knock. A few suggestions to consider at this point on this forefront are below.

·         Do you have a mentor yourself to help you see beyond your own blind spots?

·         Do you have succession planning in your individual development plan where you have identified someone and mentoring them to be where they can be?

·         Have you helped someone see the long-term impact of the project that they are working on, the challenge they are solving, or the opportunity they are resolving and its relationship to their own career through the eyes of the customers and organization?

·         What’s your professional life’s mission or philosophy?

No one can entirely predict what fluctuations can change the way businesses operate or technologies evolve. Just like financial institutions say past performance is not an indicator of current or future performance, the skills and competencies that got an entry into an existing role or maintain the existing role is not an indicator of what the organization or industry is demanding. The longer these skills and competencies are not on par with the industry, the deeper the experience gained will lose its significance. So, develop a quest to do your own assessment and wake up to the competition. 

What are your thoughts on these observations? Please share.

Starting the Problem Half solved: Strategic about Successful requirements gathering

In one of the recent round table discussions that I spoke on the differences between traditional and agile approaches, it became apparent to me that there was some disconnect in the notion of what constitutes a requirement. The software development approaches leveraging traditional plan driven approaches to project management focuses on scope planning activities that centers on requirement definition because it is well known that a successful definition of the problem means we have the problem half solved.

Considering the developments in agile approaches to project management where change is welcome even at later stages in the development, the gathering of up-front requirements is often frowned upon. Although the requirements definition may be a daunting task when there is ambiguity around it, value delivery happens only when an attempt is made to eliminate such ambiguity. When client facing members fail to ask powerful probing questions and engage the expertise to eliminate some level of ambiguity, the business goals are often compromised.

For instance, a requirement should at a minimum address what the software must to do satisfy what the users need so that the value is maximized, and benefit is realized. On the contrary, if the requirements are conflicting and attempts made to eliminate ambiguity are thwarted, then neither the traditional nor the agile approaches to software development will benefit. As the movie, Apollo 13 calls its mission at the end, such requirement gathering from the beginning can only lead to "Successful failure."

Readers are directed to check out an interesting video at this point to gather some insights into the incomplete requirement gathering This video is on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg. What went wrong here? A few thoughts are as follows. Share your thoughts.

• Is starting immediately with a “No” a good approach?
• When trying to ask what the end result will look like, is attempting to over-please rather than understand the business goal appropriate?
• Is both the client facing person and the project manager on the same team as the expert?
• Were any attempts made to negotiate for an acceptable best alternative?
• Is this project setup to succeed?
• Is this a productive meeting?

What powerful questions can you add to ensure that redefine the requirements correctly? Stepping outside of this video into our own projects or products, what additional questions can we ask to understand the client’s requirement and the reasons behind the requirements better to position ourselves for success?

Negotiation: Tactical Conflict Resolution to Strategic Transcendent Eloquence

Managers and leaders can always recognize that they may not always get what they want when working with stakeholders. Whether it is working with external vendors and clients or internal business units and employees, negotiating for the right resources, contractual agreements, time, cost, scope and even risk is omnipresent in today’s business environments. The fundamental reason for negotiation is to agree on a term that allows both parties in the negotiation to perform better or produce something on relatively better terms than in the absence of the negotiation agreement.

Those that have worked on negotiation may very well know the common techniques like issue resolution, democratic dispute resolution, bargaining, and litigation. But some may relate to the term phrase best alternative to a negotiating agreement (Fisher and Ury, 1981). Depending upon the root cause that led to a disagreement or conflict, the negotiation may have to morph from simple dispute resolution to a transcendent eloquence. For instance, the discussions such as negotiating for an extension to a project or salary negotiations for a new job may involve evaluating the BATNA from the following areas:

• Opportunity cost of the existing status quo relative to the alternative arrangement
• Impact of the alternative arrangement on the immediate needs that caused the dispute
• Timely feasibility of executing the alternate arrangement
• Risk of the alternative arrangement not providing the promises relative to the status quo
• Evaluating the risk profile and thresholds of the appropriate stakeholders who can be enablers of the best alternative 

However, when the disagreement is no longer simple and arises due to differences of opinions that are both equally valid and respectable, then the resolution to such disputes may involve strategic negotiation techniques like transcendent eloquence. This is a technique where the parties to conflict themselves develop a framework for understanding and addressing their conflict (Freeman, Littlejohn, Pearce, 1992). This approach fosters a constructive dialogue evaluating the strategic fit of these incompatible yet morally valid disagreements. Such beyond-the-normal discourses need to philosophical, comparative, dialogic, critical, and transformative, says Pearce and Littlejohn (1997, p.157). While it is generally recommended to apply this technique in extreme scenarios like military negotiations and high corporate decision-making involving spin-off, merger, etc., this technique can also be beneficial for middle management to exercise their strategic skills.

The philosophical nature of this approach looks beyond the root cause analysis to evaluating the fundamental belief system that gives raise the conflict. Such a journey can encourage both parties to educate themselves on the paradigm shifts in the industry to think outside the box to raise the bars on performance measures. Similarly, the comparative nature of this approach attempts to resolve differences of opinions arising from incorrect frames of references, such as those in differing geographical cultures or vendor relations where each party may have different operating rhythm in software development. As a result, both the parties may establish common patterns of language that serve as the framework of reference on the roles and responsibilities moving further beyond eliminating conflict to addressing productivity.

The dialogic nature of transcendent eloquence engages active listening steering towards breaking a new ground by using powerful questions towards exploring the root causes. Both parties are now engaged in not only establishing common ground but collaborating towards alternative generation that neither party could have arrived at working alone. On the contrary, the critical nature of this technique applies the concepts of power and influence each party can exercise in implementing the solution by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the espoused solutions to ensure that the best alternative is not only a strategic fit but also is rooted on operational efficiency promoting changes that also need to be provided to the appropriate managers and leaders in successfully implementing the solution. 

Finally, the transformative nature looks beyond the conflict into applying the alternative agreement and seeing if the costs of winning justifies being in the game. In other words, should we even be engaged in resolving this situation? For instance, if continuous investment for a product losing its market share may be justified to some extent but if the massive adoption of a new technology is acknowledged in the macro-environment, should alternatives to sustain the product be even considered?

Have you applied any of these approaches in addressing your challenge? How do you think you can apply these negotiation techniques in addressing your challenge?

References

Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1981) William Ury. Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin Books.

Freeman, S.A., Littlejohn, S.W, and Pearce, W.B. (1992, Fall). Communication and Moral Conflict. Western Journal of Communication, 56, 311-329.

Pearce, W.B. and Littlejohn, S.W. (1997). Moral conflict: When social words collide. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications 

Project is a verb in Project Management

Project Management is one profession that has grown from practice. While education and some experiences were the only prerequisites for one to be considered a project manager, the surge of accidental project managers has really led to the loss of the fundamental skills and competencies of a project manager. The project management role is a conduit to projecting a voice backed with action managing and leading change using projects as a vehicle in managing all areas of project management.

Therefore, I view “Project” as a verb and not as a noun. This is one way to make project managers move much beyond cookie cutter project management. Each character of "Project" therefore defines the competencies expected in a project manager.

• P - Passion for people. Project management is all about people management. This is where the transformational leadership elements of a project manager is displayed.
• R – Resourceful around Risk management. Seeing proactively the risks and managing them by maximizing opportunities and minimizing threats  
• O - Organized around self to manage all aspects of the project. As the saying goes, if you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage the people that do not work you in the project.
• J - Justified in constant review of resource utilization including both the human and non-human resources keeping in mind the total cost of ownership on the project managing scope and quality
• E - Effective in leading change seeing it as a vehicle to improve scalability and as a liaison to other business units within the performing and client organization
• C - Collaborative in bringing ideas together letting the individuals become groups and then evolve as teams to support each other
• T - Trustworthy to transform people’s career. This completes the cycle of project where one’s passion for people makes them servant leaders.

Abuser Stories:What shouldn't the software do?

The general tendency of the requirements document has predominantly focused on what the software should do. In project charters and scope control documents, sometimes we also write what features will be out of scope. The UML diagrams and use cases discuss how the classes should interface, and modules should interoperate, for instance. The agile paradigm discusses persona approaches drilling down DEEP property for describing backlog features and INVEST principle elaborating on the characteristics of a user story. Even test cases that focus on negative testing use a requirement traceability matrix to the requirements limitedly testing the functionality of what a system shouldn't do.

But, when a system is hacked or inappropriately accessed, the loopholes rests on the inefficiencies in how the system was designed to allow such loopholes to exist. So, how do you avoid these vulnerabilities so that the hacker doesn't exploit these "working as designed" gaps?

While volunteering at the Agile 2015 conference, I chose to attend a section on Abuser stories by Judy Neher from Celebrity Technical Services. It was a great session introducing the concept that a persona of a hacker or disgruntled employee could potentially have a malicious intent to deliberately break the system. The speaker suggested describing user stories that specifically could break the system or expose the system for malicious intent. The participants in an activity gave examples for a simple user authentication such as the stringent password recycle policy, the use of a double password and picture identification, the use of external devices such as phone, email, or mobile texting to use tokens for validation within a short timeframe before the account is locked, the creation alerts for maintenance for incorrect and frequent access to multiple accounts, the enforcement of HR exit policies on employment dates before the role based access can be authenticated, the validation of human versus robot logging by tracking the speed of password entry, etc. Imagine having such stories to bulletproof the system against malicious attacks on standard user stories and have automation capabilities to constantly check for these loopholes.

I am sure one would say that this would add more time to the scheduled release or limit the stories written per iteration/sprint. Of course, like non-functional stories that add some time, the abuser stories also will add time. The need to develop hunches on the type of regulations in the industry, the type of technical platforms used, the time to market considerations, etc. However, the question shouldn't be whether to do them or not but when to do them. If we fail to do them, we are increasing the technical debt. A couple of alternatives are to dedicate a sprint or a portion of every sprint to address these abuser stories.

I really think this is an important component of combined technical and product ownership to ensure we see the persona of other types of users and see the system from that view. As good project managers turn assumptions into risks and control quality, the technical and product owners should be accountable for products that preclude vulnerabilities by design. Abuser stories are a great start. Don't you think so? Share your thoughts.

References

Neher, J. (2015). Abuser Persona. Agile 2015 Conference. 

Attention or Time Management

Flying over India returning from Mumbai to Chennai, I was browsing the Jet Airways magazine. Often filled with travel recommendations and shopping suggestions, these in-flight magazines have only created a browsing pleasure. But this magazine had a topic on achieving more with less perking my interest to explore.

It was an interesting read as the article began discussing how  time management pretty much shouldn't be the focus of smart managers. Instead, the article focused on attention management. Based on the time of the day, people can manage difficult tasks that require deep thinking, strategy, etc. when their attention to detail is at its peak. Then, as the energy winds down, their attention takes a deep dive. This time should be used for tasks that require less critical thinking.  Between these extremes is the reactive attention seeking time zone that should be used for other tasks that require a balance of the two.

I agree that it is a good idea and that tasks require different levels of thinking. For instance, planning for the project, evaluating strategies to grow accounts, or grooming the product backlog with new features based on the market and reactions from customers and users require thinking different from task or resource management.

However, the article said the urgency of the tasks shouldn't be a criterion for attention management.  This begs some thinking as depending upon the role of an individual manager, the urgency of the task, such as a grieving customer on the phone, an infrastructure deficiency leading to business continuity management, or a delayed or poor-quality work impacting deployment readiness of a project is not something that can be ignored.

The earlier approach on using Scrumban to think a couple of steps ahead and plan can be combined with attention management to better compartmentalize take at hand and energy/attention requirements to better manage productivity.

Thoughts?

Client Management: The Influence of Powerful Questions

I had a wonderful opportunity to be with one of my mentors in three different client settings. I am sure people in project, account, product, and sales setting have gone through the stakeholder management aspects. Whether it was a formal status meeting, casual hallway conversation, informal dinner meeting, or an internal project evaluation meeting, I found it very inspiring to see how my mentor was skillfully weaving these questions to eliminate ambiguity and establish a solid business relationship. 

While I added a few of my own color from account and project management, I felt such a strong reinforcement of these questions that I felt compelled to package these questions for the community at large. So, here goes the list. Feel free to add - focus however on strategic account & project management and not bury with technical aspects of platform and feasibility here!

1. What are your goals and objectives? Are you interested in market expansion, market penetration, or both? What's your timeline? 
2. What are your challenges to meeting these goals and objectives? How would addressing these challenges benefit you and your organization financially?
3. What are the profiles of stakeholders that you are looking at to satisfy with your campaign?
4. What types of population are you planning to target? Why are these targets important to you?
5. What types of channels are you planning to use? What data points do you have to support these channels to effectively reach your population? 
6. How much of your budget are you willing to spend on these channels? What's your exit strategy?
7. How would meeting these goals and overcoming challenges enhance the competitiveness of the product?
8. If you were to meet your goal, what would this mean to you? 
9. If these challenges are not met or goals accomplished, what does this mean to you?
10. What's an example of a successful campaign or meeting? What data points are you looking at to evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign or efficiency of the meeting? 
11. What's your communication style? 
12. What's your risk profile? Are you adventurous and creative to try new things? 

Future of Project Management in the Next few years

In the Professional Development Day (PD Day) conducted by Project Management Institute Mass Bay chapter on June 19, 2015, there was a great introductory session with more than 100+ participants representing many industries that broke into numerous tables. One of the questions that all the attendees worked on was the top challenges that are facing the field of project managers in the next 10 years.

Synthesizing the various thoughts from these discussions, the following set of challenges evolved where project managers should equip themselves with more knowledge.

1. Become more business- oriented learning strategic thinking
2. Having to work with remote multinational teams learning the cultural nuances
3. Become more involved with futuristic technologies on just enough automation, delegating even creative tasks to relieve human capacity, and learning new ways of doing things with mobile, service orientation, and security areas
4. Learning to work with multiple tools for both process and analytics bringing focus into application lifecycle management and total cost of ownership
5. Understanding agile framework as much as traditional project management framework learning to know when to apply each or a hybrid form
6. Learning to manage external and internal stakeholders in the business learning to negotiate better
7. Getting better at managing risks in multifaceted areas (PESTLE) besides just SWOT
8. Being more accountable for quality to compete with the agile thinking
9. Promoting project management in organizations much beyond PMP certification
10. Understanding the impact of growing regulatory environments on projects

These thoughts present insightful forecasting of what is to come both in the project managers that face the clients and the account managers (Ryals, 2012) that should exhibit project management thinking. So, the landscapes around the evaluation of project management competency are rising. For instance, the Project Management Institute is looking at PMI Talent Triangle (Know the details, n.d.) incorporating technical project management as integral component to continuing credit requirements. 

Similarly, Computerworld in an independent study (Pratt, 2014) forecasts the growth of project managers as part of IT skills emphasizing project managers to exhibit both business and technical acumen to oversee large enterprise projects, growth of security and compliance skills, demand for skills in the mobile application and device management and increase in the knowledge of big data analysis. 

So, competition is rising! How equipped are we in rising to this challenge stepping out of our comfort zone? One or two years from now if we come to read the same blog, what new skills by training and experience would we have gained?

References

Know the details (n.d.) Project Management Institute. Retrieved  from http://www.pmi.org/certification/ccr-updates/know-the-details.aspx

Pratt, M.K. (2014, Nov 18). 10 hottest IT skills.  Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/article/2844020/it-careers/10-hottest-it-skills-for-2015.html

Ryals, L. (2012, July 13). How to succeed at key account management. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/07/how-to-succeed-at-key-account/#sthash.0YH3ELKn.dpuf 

Extreme Productivity: Basic principles to doing more with less

Having been in a managerial capacity as a functional manager and having led several complex programs and projects as a project manager in many industries, I have seen challenges from people on work life imbalance and from organizations for maintaining business productivity by doing more with less. However, in my experience, the percentage of the population that seek continuous growth pursuing the professional certifications or attending the networking events or conferences is slim.  

Having taught more than 150 classes through various academic institutions for adult learners, I observe learners missing classes because the academic institutional policy allows missing 20% of classes or accepting a “C” in their courses as that guarantees employer compensation. So, why should organizations invest in people that won’t invest in themselves by integrating their professional and personal life by managing time to acquire knowledge? By the same token, how could organizations allow mediocrity with a "C" and expect stellar performance? Aren't the organizations then enabling a behavior that allows individuals to be satisfied with the knowledge in their chosen fields that doesn't scale with the growth?

Remember that the growing organizations in the future will no longer be characterized by 8 to 5 jobs but will require one to be digitally connected.  So, waking up to reality to know the demands of your profession is critical for career success. In this blog, I present three simple and powerful principles that I have found useful. I would like to call them “Extreme Productivity” unleashing people’s energy towards what the organizations are going to be looking for in the future amid growing business challenges so that the value the individuals add becomes indispensable.

Principle #1: Look for a role and not for a job

You interview for a job and so getting a job offer is just the beginning. But, if you continuously do what you in your job, you continuously get what you get.  Will the same compensation and career challenge keep you satisfied? Even if you say, “yes,” because of personal challenges, comfort zone, or unwillingness to change, will that be good for the organizational growth that provides for you?  The organization is constantly changing to meet the market conditions and so the conditions under which one got a job can no longer be the same. When the economy shifts and the organization sees the need for sustaining growth with competitive high performers, they look for those that have already proven their multifaceted skills in the organization. It is not time for them to skim the individuals resume for past experiences because current performance paints an accurate picture. They look for those that exceeded their job responsibility and went the extra mile. These members succeed because they look around, prepare themselves early, and take on a role to make themselves useful. This is not a role given by the organization but assumed by the individuals,

Principle #2: Business Impact is measured by results and not the efforts

Sometimes, the business may demand someone to put in more hours. But, from a business perspective, long hours don’t always mean more productivity. It may also mean that you are not doing your job efficiently or expanding the work to fill the time. If ambiguities in task, missing analysis in backlog grooming, lack of adherence to process control, or deficiency in the required knowledge domains surface to the organization, then, one is not only wasting their own productivity but also that of others. Depending on your role, the earlier principle will be extended so that you are becoming efficient by analyzing the market for latest trends and being ready, investing in a tool that the businesses use, learning about the trends being used in your practice to make you more success-friendly, or setting effective time management practices for yourself to manage personal and professional balance.  

Principle #3: Pack value in your day for the team

Everyone must have heard the saying about seeing things from others point of view. Those that really look at productivity will focus first to ensure that other’s time is not wasted. For instance, should the people copied on the email be copied, are those meetings necessary, will that person receiving the task know what to do? When the other person is more productive and you are not, you have just created a producer-consumer imbalance. One can avoid this imbalance and other’s dependency on them by first planning the day others will need those deliverables. This will add time to our schedule. By putting a timebox around activities on what takes less than 10 min, 15 to 30 min, more than 60 min, etc., one can start addressing these tasks efficiently. Readers are advised to an earlier post on Scrumban approach (Rajagopalan, 2014) on personal productivity.

In the end, any professional must be productive to some extent. Everyone believes that they are worth more in money and career status. If this is true, then everyone should understand that their value to the business should always exceed the economic value the business can derive. When that happens, the business will always find new ways to benefit from your talent. The only way to satisfy this equation is when one can be “extremely productive.” In today’s digitally expanding, virtually global, and multicultural distributed workforce, one’s value is constantly challenged every day that can only be addressed by a continuous improvement mentality. Are we ready to take on this challenge? 

How well do you relate to these principles? Please share your thoughts.

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2014). Adapting Scrumban to Personal Productivity. Retrieved from http://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/10/adapting-scrumban-to-personal.html

What is a successful meeting?

Meetings are everywhere.  External meetings, internal meetings, individual meetings, group meetings, team meetings, daily sprints, sprint reviews, retrospectives, etc. Then, there are governance meetings, steering committee meetings, change control board meetings, etc.

Often, people claim a meeting is successful. There are meeting notes distributed too. But what determines a successful meeting and at what cost (Rajagopalan, 2014)? I am not focusing on conducting an effective meeting on meeting etiquette but evaluating the success of a meeting.

I recall a great book on How I raised successfully from failure to success in selling (Bettger, 1992). that gave the tip. A successful meeting is one that has the next meeting identified.  But wait a minute, is that it? So, if recurring meetings are set, then aren't all meetings successful?

There lies the myth. The successful meeting is the one that needs to have clear action items identified with action owners and due dates so that the next meeting serves as a follow up. The follow through happens in between these two meetings ensuring incremental and iterative progress closing the sale, improving processes, updating progress, identifying risks, lessons learned, and removing obstacles.  If every meeting does not continuously contribute the successful outcomes desired, then, is having a meeting itself considered successful? 

If follow up meetings are proving to be action owners not providing updates or providing vague updates, then it is time to evaluate if the right owner was identified or if the owner is capable and having bandwidth. Identify escalation paths if necessary. Of course, this is true when that action item is still applicable.  If a solution is identified or closure is recommended, then it is also important to ensure collaborative commitment and if any additional follow-up would be required now or later.

Would you look at your meetings and evaluate if your meetings are successful?  What other criteria would you add outside of meeting etiquette to evaluate the outcome of a meeting?

References

Bettger, F. (1992). How I raised myself from Failure to Success in Selling. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. 

Rajagopalan, S. (2014b). Effective virtual meetings. Retrieved from http://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/05/effective-virtual-meetings.html

Value of Microsoft Project Schedule in Agile Environment

One of the biggest wars in today’s software development community is the choice to use Microsoft Project Plan. In a traditional plan driven approach, the value of Microsoft project plan to know the higher-level milestones, traceability of hammock, resource leveling, earned value, project and resource calendar, unit of work, impact of delay, critical chain versus critical path, network analysis, early/late start/finish, lead/lag discussions, and multi-project/program dependency are all very well understood. 

But, when you turn the attention to agile, the story shifts! Agile focuses fundamentally on self-organized teams that manage their own tasks who are empowered to try different approaches. This is one of the reasons why the Scrum methodology doesn’t even mention a project manager role but only the scrum master role and product owner roles. But, in a truly agile environment, or a matured scrum practice, the team is almost on an autopilot! The only two needs for the team are to get clear direction and business need on what features to develop (product owner) and the support to keep deviations minimum to work on the delivery (scrum master).

But how often are the teams so self-reliant that they think of the feature outside of their business unit on the delivery? When the team is depending on the other leaders to drive this priority, interface with the product development to provide the clear direction (business need and business impact) among other things, the project manager role emerges again.  If this need exists, then, what’s the question behind the MS Project in agile methodology?

Let us think from agility. The goal of Agility is to focus on burn rate and velocity. These are good key performance indicators (KPI) in agile world in a product development setting. For instance, if we have 500 story point worth of user stories with each sprint taking up ~50 stories over 2 weeks, then, at the end of 10 iterations (discounting the hardening iteration), we expect all features to be completed. Now, say at the end of third sprint (6 weeks have gone), you are at 120 story points. We use the velocity to look for patterns in what types of commitment can be delivered by this agile team or the burn rate to project when the project can be delivered. The project managers that understand the earned value management (EVM) principles can utilize planned value, earned value, and actual cost to analyze patterns. Properly utilized, these values can come directly out of the Microsoft Project Plan even in the absence of a Project Management Information System (PMIS).

If the individual iterations are a major milestone with additional hammock activities focusing on specific user stories, then, the Microsoft Project can still be a value-added tool for the project manager to use in an agile setting. In such cases, if required, the Project Manager can still limit the focus only to the user story level tracking and should the user story become a showstopper (DONE criteria not going to be met), then, it is possible to move this story to subsequent release. Using MS Project, commitment planning can be forecasted better. Using project reports and earned value techniques, one can do similar analysis as velocity tracking and burn rate!

At the same time, think about the transparency of work required not at the team level but at the organizational level. If every team starts using their own tool, then, how do we tell the full story to the program and portfolio management, business units, and to the senior executives? This is where the use of a good integrated application lifecycle management tool comes, such as SpiraTeam, very handy (Rajagopalan, 2012). As the Vice President of Program Management Office with many different projects and programs, even though Microsoft Project, Jira, and OnTime were used originally, we found more value in replacing it with SpiraTeam (Inflectra, n.d) that supported almost all the needs of single source of truth (SST) while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) further. The incremental updates we have seen in SpiraTeam based on some of our recommendations and the support we have received seem to emphasize our right choice of investing in the ALM tool rather than work with a myriad of tools and spend time in using data in the backend to discover patterns.

The tool is only a means to accomplishing the work. If simple Excel or white board can be used for Agile tracking, then, to discard such a power-loaded tool as a non-agile tool is a premature exclusion of the tool without considering its benefits. The winds are changing on how the tools have emerged and so it is also time to change the sails. Otherwise, the winds will alter the course of our voyage. 

Thoughts?

References

Inflectra (n.d.). SpiraTeam. Retrieved from https://www.inflectra.com/Products/SpiraTeam/

Rajagopalan, S. (2012). Leading Change: Remote Teams can collocate on the right ALM tools. Retrieved from https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2012/04/leading-change-remote-teams-can.html