Relationship Management as a Chief Experience Officer

I was fortunate enough to receive the PMI Eric Jenett Project Management Excellence Award in 2017 (PMI, 2017). One of the project management students that I was coaching approached me mentioning about having seen the video (Rajagopalan, 2017) and was curious about what the Chief Experience Officer meant in connection with the relationship management in project management. I am capturing briefly my responses to this person. 

When people think of managing relationships with project teams, customers, partners, and other stakeholders, l feel that they focus mainly on the soft skills. I don't feel soft skills is an appropriate term at all as it makes technical skills or analytical skills to be a hard skill. Technical solutions solve a business problem, and analytical skills unearth patterns in both technical and business arena. Such division of domain specific skills is against cross-functional skills. We all understand that technology is critical to business and business supports technology. If such symbiotic relationship is understood, then these skills should be called interpersonal skills. Once we recognize that, we focus our relationship on how we sail ("Solution Agents of Implementing Change") through enterprise environmental factors and organizations process assets. This is when we are becoming the "Chief Experience Officer (CEO).

So, what are the things a CEO (regardless of who you are in the organizational hierarchy) must think through when they suggest any change, implement any work, or experience something outside of the organization (like bringing new knowledge back to the team or organization, lowering total cost of ownership, experimenting a new way of working)? 

1. Understand why this change or task is important. Connect with the business strategy and customer impact. I am sure everyone can understand Stephen Covey's principle of "Start with the why".
2. Evaluate the impact of the pain points we solve (or not solve) for the organization or client. This area is where the concept of "risk management" is non-negotiable. Just like the message "If you see it, say it" in many public places promote everyone to be the 'eyes and ears' of managing order, everyone should be able to understand the main tenets of risk management. The more one can assess the impact, the more it helps with prioritization of efforts. 
3. Ask ourselves how we make clients feel valued. Customers and clients are as smart as we are. Instead of thinking that our clients can't articulate requirements or customers change scope, understand why they did that and pivot accordingly. Always know that "No is not Never" and "Yes is not Now". Be able to rationalize both emotionally and logically with clients. 
4. Every one of us should understand what our unique value proposition is. Just like the candidates are expected to differentiate themselves in the interview where one is different from the other candidates (like "Why should I hire you?"), we should always think of answering the unasked customer's question, "How are you different from the competition?" This question is not for sales but for everyone in the organization as value flows in all directions within the organization to the client. 
5. Frequently, many think they are not salespeople. Yes, sales require a unique set of skills (one of which is handling objections). Nevertheless, everyone contributing to value creation should think of how we market our brand. Now, this marketing is not just about product marketing but how we worked together in value creation. Looking from this angle, we can see that different persona exists in the clients and so adjusting the message according to the person is important. 
6. Trust is a like bank account. It pays interest when we continuously invest in it. It assesses penalty when we don't follow through. Clients trust us because of what we invest in the relationship account. Like reaching out to tell our clients what they can do differently to accelerate time to market or how the competition is performing. They look up to us because we bring 'market intelligence' to them. Recall that "we are the face of the product and process" to them! And that is gold! They appreciate us by coming to us in providing testimonials, acting as references, and supporting with up-and-cross-sales. 
7. It is also important to know that we may develop deeper roots within a client organization as we build on this "CEO mindset". While we may think we have superpowers to connect with different members of the client organization, it is important to understand our 'audience language'. Sometimes, we may be cross-functional with enough knowledge to talk with a technical member of the team as well as the management member of the team. That is great but challenges arise when we don't know what we don't know. So, understanding the audience language also means where we may need to augment our limitations with extended knowledge from other team members. So, relationship management also means we connect other members of the team with appropriate members of the client organization. This approach mitigates risks and builds the 'opportunity' surround sound system.
8. Finally comes the intense focus on the story we want to tell! In each of these above interactions, we should focus on this story of how we started, how we progressed, and where we have landed. Furthermore, where we are going! Feedback is one part of this story telling process but there should be tangibles (like whitepaper, presentation in symposiums, testimonials, case study) should all emerge along with intangibles (working relationships, cross-partnership opportunities, references, etc.) 

To me, this is what is the 2-step plan-do-study-act like cycle like how design-thinking works (double diamond) or the infinity loop is practiced in DevOps lifecycle. 

The student I talked to walked with enough satisfaction! What about you? What do you think of my response? Anything you want to add, refine, or remove?

References

PMI (2017). PMI Eric Jenett Award Person of the Year. https://www.pmi.org/about/awards/winners/past-year/2017

Rajagopalan, S. (2017). PMI Eric Jenett Award Recipient video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kESHH2mVkdk

Influence of Linguistics on Project Leadership

There is a common saying that 80% of the project manager's job is communication. Frequently, many think that this communication is about working with a team and writing status reports. On the contrary, most of this communication is working with both project management stakeholders and project team members. I always say that people's non-verbal communication carries more meaning. With various remote ways of working, it is important how the verbal and non-verbal communication play together in the leading people as the concept of communication is centered on five critical elements - clarity, correctness, completeness, cohesiveness, and conciseness. 

Fortunately, I had my son who was studying linguistics in his college and sharing his thoughts on what he was learning. He mentioned to me that linguistics in a nutshell has five major elements which include phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It was shocking to me how much language plays a pivotal role in leadership level communication and here are my connections on the influence of linguistics on project leadership. 

Phonology: This area focuses on the study of sounds implemented within a language. It differs from phonetics where abstract sounds that may or may not have any meaning associated. For instance, the letter "s" takes the sound of "z" while saying "cars". Particularly in verbal communication, this is very critical for people to understand each other as it lays the foundation for clarity. Especially when team members are from different culture or a technical communication channel is used with remote team members, clarity may be compromised, and it is important for one to actively listen to avoid the risk of assumptions of what one thought they heard. In project meetings, I often ask people to summarize what their actions items are before meeting again, and this helps me ensure that they heard me right.  

I normally say, "writing is for the eyes and speaking is for the ears." However, even with written reports, if project managers do not think through how the report will sound to others, then, they may risk misinterpretation. Therefore, taking the time to read out the reports aloud eliminates how the report may sound to someone. 

Morphology: This area focuses on the study of words within a sentence. The history of culture itself may influence how words are formed differentiating agglutinative, fusional, and polysynthetic structure. Now, just like morphology builds on phonology, I see correctness in project communication builds on clarity. When relying on bad news such as schedules delays, cost overruns, or resource challenges, the appropriate placement of words in the sentence may assuage fears. In other words, I feel that morphology addresses the "What's in it for me?" types of questions in both ,verbal and non-verbal communication.   

Syntax: This area focuses on the study of sentence formation with words and punctuation. Using an example of a syntax tree, the different parts of the sentence are constructed. I recalled how lexical analysis was integral in computer science in assemblers, interpreters, and finally compiler design in computer science. To me, this syntax builds on morphology for larger level decision-making. For instance, the connections of various elements in project charter, the strategic connections between project charter and the business case, and the connections between business requirements document and functional specifications document are all examples of syntax analysis required for "completeness" in communication through the multiple artifacts. 

Semantics: This area focuses on the study of meaning. Since meaning is interpreted by people, culture comes into play. This culture may not necessarily be limited to geographical cultures (e.g.: Hofstede Dimensions) but also role specific communication. For instance, the type of meaning people associated with words among various people. A business analyst sees "value" to be with customer whereas the same "value" relates to technical stability by a systems engineer. We can see how project delivery members mix up words such as "iteration" from Agile and "sprint" from Scrum. The semantics elements therefore play a critical role in push, pull, and interactive communications because of their use either for dissemination of information (broadcasting) or for alternative generation (brainstorming) for problem solving or decision-making, the concept of semantics brings "cohesiveness" in communication. So, semantics must be considered excessively by project managers to lead others.

Pragmatics: This area is the study of the social aspects of language semantics. All the essential above elements are codified in informal or formal language registers and take on additional focus especially with many areas such as the dialect, age groups, respect, etc. For instance, generational considerations may have to be incorporated in both verbal and non-verbal communication differentiated in informal and formal communication. When conflict resolutions come up, groupthink behaviors may have to be addressed in favor of smoothing and collaboration approaches. During all these interactions, pragmatics avoids unnecessary confusions by focusing on "conciseness."

Interesting to see how much the discipline of leadership is critical for project leadership! What do you see? 

Five critical roles for Career Management

Frequently, people ask about how to manage their career brand and what to do. I can't remember a single professional training that I have already trained in project management, agile, scrum, contract management, risk management, product development, and leadership where one or more members ask this question. Based on some of my experience managing ~50 people in my PMO with numerous products and programs that I have managed or supported through the portfolio function, I have come up with five critical roles. Ask yourself the quality of people you have in your individual career development plan. That will tell how serious you are about your career development.

1. Sponsor(s) – is usually a senior person within the organization who is your supporter.    Ensure that your sponsor is kept updated on your accomplishments and successes – tell your sponsor the GOOD, the GOOD and the GOOD.  Frequently, this person could be your manager or in a projectized organization both the functional and other stakeholders. Do you know who your sponsor is within this organization?

Almost always, people stop right here. Their manager is their world for career development. If one is serious about career development, then, more support is required.

2. Advisor(s) – play an important role in providing advice and guidance.  Note that an advisor can be a peer, a junior person or a senior leader within the organization.  It is normal to have many advisors as it depends on what type of advice you are seeking.  The Advisor role is separate from Mentor and Sponsor roles, however there may be times when your mentor or sponsor end up giving you valuable advice. Frequently, advisor focuses on the performance more than the potential.

I often even recommend that people should develop their personal RACI. In other words, if career development is your project (part of individual development plan), then, having the RACI is non-negotiable. Who are your advisors in your career plan today?

3. Mentor(s) – are a trusted person with whom you can share the GOOD, the BAD and the UGLY. A mentor shares experience (I have been there, done that) and knowledge (Let me show you what worked for me). A mentor focuses both on performance and potential offering guidance and advice, but the perspective is more to develop others compared to advisors within a company. Therefore, while it is perfectly fine to have mentors within an organization, it is also recommended to select mentors who are outside the organization where you work.

A good mentor will have the following attributes:

1. Willingness to share skills, knowledge, and expertise
2. Demonstrates a positive attitude and acts as a positive role model
3. Takes a personal interest in the mentoring relationship
4. Exhibits enthusiasm in the field
5. Values ongoing learning and growth in the field
6. Provides guidance and constructive feedback
7. Respected by colleagues and employees in all levels of the organization
8. Sets and meets ongoing personal and professional goals
9. Values the opinions and initiatives of others
10. Motivates others by setting a good example

Often, it is recommended to have 5-10 mentors both internal and external to the organization. Seek out mentors in fields where you want to grow and not limit yourself to where you are currently.

4. Power Brokers:  are typically very senior, well connected / networked people who can help you in many ways.  People in this category are extremely busy and so it is difficult to get airtime with them.  Power Brokers can provide you with great introductions and other new and powerful connections that can be instrumental in your professional development and success. 

These are not people who are in your social media network! These are people that know you for your career brand and can speak for you in your absence! They open opportunity doors. Do you have power brokers in your network?  

5. Coaches: are instrumental in unearthing things that one may not be thinking of to maximize both personal and professional potential. They help you see much beyond your current 'status-quo' limitations (so limited time spent on past) and support you in coming up with solutions for future.  Whether it is managing personal challenges, life challenges, health challenges, financial challenges, strategic growth challenges, business challenges, coaches are the sounding-board to make you wear multiple dysfunctional hats (hope you are thinking deBono's six hats now). Coaching engagements need to be specific with clear objectives and can come and go as needed so that the engagement is fruitful. Depending upon what areas one wants to focus on, it is not uncommon to have multiple coaches simultaneously. A typical recommendation is to have at least one coach for one main area of growth objective.

How many such people do you have in your network? If you are not having 1-2 sponsors, 3-5 advisors, 5-10 mentors (most of them should be outside your role/department/company), 15 to 20 power brokers (all of them outside your company), and at least one coach, then, you can see how you are managing your career. 

Start that list if you don't have them. Everyday counts!

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2019). What color is our communication? https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2019/11/what-color-is-our-communication.html<

Risk Management in Agile

Extending observations from one of the classes I facilitated on digital project management, I was wondering how to address the impact of risk management in agile initiatives. Earlier this month, I had a family emergency and I traveled to India to meet a family member who was critically admitted to the hospital. As I discussed the medical condition of my family member with the physician, I remembered one of my earlier speeches where I had discussed the notion of ECG waveform as the warning trigger of risk in monitoring one's health daily.

I resonated with the ECG waveform and its principles to agile approaches to project management or product development. The ECG waveform represents the heart pumping a certain volume of blood every fraction of a second (varies from person to person due to many reasons). From a physiological standpoint, the P wave represents the atrial contraction pumping oxygenated blood into the ventricular chambers. The QRS wave represents the ventricular contraction denoting the rate of  blood distribution. Finally, the T wave represents the ventricular relaxation before the heart is ready for another cycle. It is, therefore, no wonder, that one can think of every PQRST cycle as an iteration. The amount of blood consistently bumped represents the velocity.

Now, if this analogy is true, then, we can relate to risk also in an agile iteration. When we contract work to other teams or depend on others to complete the work, the functionality of the other organs (e.g.: respiratory systems) to deliver oxygenated blood without any challenges arising from circulation is critical. It is not surprising, therefore, why project managers always relate to the risk domain when procurement domain is involved because non-delivery per contract or non-performance of contracted work leads to the risk of resource overloading.

When one doesn't take care of their personal health properly by following quality policies (such as dieting or exercise), challenges arise such as a heart attack. The same concepts apply when the team compromises on technical excellence in design or addressing quality by design principles in their workflow. The escaped defect therefore represents the heart attack or an emergency trip to the hospital.

When the team members in the team fail to work together, that leads to failure. For instance, the block within heart system causes to resistance to smooth flow. Similarly, resistance to agile practices and lack of the team's self-organization introduces the risk of failure.

When the team is not self-organized or demonstrating high levels of team maturity, the scope compromises in velocity demotivates the team. Although the heart is much more resilient, overwork or imbalance introduces anxiety and stress, and people react differently. Similarly, lack of product vision or constant changes to iteration backlog compromises the team's ability to deliver. Many business challenges can impede the team's ability to deliver as well and become a high-performing team.

Such challenges, when go unchecked, impact the team's ability to deliver over a longer timeframe. The emergency visits to hospital leads to a loss of trust for caretakers requiring external intervention in the form of medicines or medically recommended rest. Stakeholders can lose confidence in the team's ability to consistently deliver on the strategic product roadmap when costs increase more than the benefits realized. Customer satisfaction fatigue can be seen in the voice of customer feedback and lack of adequate referrals.

In summary, I can see how this simple ECG waveform that we can all relate to proves to be emphasizing how risk is pertinent to everyone's health in daily life. If every day is a project, then, every heartbeat is an iteration which has the seeds of risks. The warning triggers must be understood and appropriately managed even in an agile project.

Thoughts? Please share with me.

Agile Iterations also involve cost

I was recently facilitating a class on digital project management and bringing references to both agile and traditional frameworks. While the concepts of fixed scope within the time-boxing principles was readily understood, many people in the digital media class mentioned that agile projects don't involve cost or have principles of cost baseline! The students didn't resonate with risk management also in agile iterations. These misrepresentations of agile framework continue to surge and are not accurate representations of agile approaches to project management or product development.

For instance, consider that an agile team is made up of 9 team members. The product owner, agile coach or scrum master, and the development team spend time and are compensated by their performing organization. So, when these 9 members spend approximately 6 hours per day (at 75% commitment to the project), they spend 54 hours (9 members x 6 hours) per day. Considering a 10-day iteration, the team has spent 540 hours (54 x 10 days) with one iteration. By allowing this iteration to continue with this agile approach to meet the strategic objective, the performing organization has, therefore, spent 540 hours; this time represents the opportunity cost of the organization choosing to allow these resources to work on this initiative compared to another initiative. So, how could an agile iteration not cost anything to the organization?

Let us drill a little more here. Often, people are unable to come up with the cost of an iteration. Now, this may be associated with the fact that agile doesn't favor big upfront planning. In traditional approaches to project management, we come with the WBS with the breakdown of activities worked on by specific resources and associate resource-level pricing. It is therefore possible to come up with a cost. Similar logic can still be done in an iteration easier because agile is all about team level commitments. Instead of looking at individual resource level pricing (such as what's the hourly rate of product owner?), the agile team can work with the finance department to come up with a blended resource-loaded rate. The financial units within many organizations have such a blended rate and I have received immediate responses to my requests in my experience from the financial department for such a blended rate. Now, assuming the blended rate is $100, one can easily apply this blended rate to the 540 hours in our previous example and come up with a cost of $54,000 (540 hours x $100). So, the cost of an iteration can be found out easily.

Using other heuristics or analogous experience of delivering multiple iterations, one can also come up with a cost of a story point. Now, it must be mentioned that a few iterations should be done before we can come up with a reasonable and consistent velocity as the team matures. Assuming a median velocity of three iterations, if we hypothesize that the team must deliver approximately 150 story points in every iteration, then, the baseline cost of $54,000 can be divided by this hypothesized 150 story points to come up with $360 ($54,000/150). When the team misses out on completing a 3-point story because of not proactively identifying and addressing the risks, managing stakeholder communication, or promoting the daily collaboration between business and technical users, then, the missed velocity in that iteration costs $1,080 ($360 x 3 story points) of non-delivered value.

By monitoring velocity delivered per iteration against this baseline projection, one can evaluate the CPI (Cost Performance Index). Again, extending the example above, the baseline projected velocity is 150 story points (with $54,000 or actual cost). When the team didn't deliver 3 user stories, the value delivered (Earned Value) is 147 story points (147 story points x $360 cost per point = $52,920). Since CPI is computed as a ratio of Earned Value/Actual Cost ($52,920/$54,000 = 0.98). This means the team is not delivering 2% of the committed value. Agile teams compute this as the Burn Rate, which is the reciprocal of CPI (1/0.98 = approximately 1.02). This burn rate represents how the agile team is meeting the projected budget and since it is >1, it indicates the team requires 2% more budget at a minimum for this iteration. Since agile uses time-boxing principles, as each iteration fails to deliver the minimum required velocity, each iteration costs more money towards the end in meeting the minimum viable product (MVP).

Hope these points are clear in explaining why and how agile projects do not exclude cost. It is critical to understand these concepts and subsequently have a plan to quantify value delivery using good return on investment principles.

Thoughts? Please share your comments.

Feedback should be FACT driven

As the impetus for increased levels of communication is felt by organizations, the need for being able to address project failures leading to schedule slips, quality compromises, cost overruns, and scope creeps become the sine qua non for effective project managers! Is this communication effectiveness limited to project management? Absolutely not! Agile approaches to product development and project management also constantly seek people to communicate. Even the recent state of agile claims increased transparency has not resulted in increased software quality and some contributions come from being able to communicate.

It is true that one needs to engage in several types of communication, but communication is a one-way street if there is no engagement from the audience! While I did my doctoral studies, I learned about dialogic communication (Innes, 2007) of staying the ground while holding the dialog but consistently practicing active listening to use experience in knowledge creation. This ability to come up with ideas of one's own is critical without which we only support others (like piggybacking on someone's experience, seconding another person's thought, etc.) This is also the reason why I emphasize communication is a 1-way street whereas collaboration is a 2-way street. 

During corporate training as well as in classroom facilitation, I find that the lack of engagement from the audience makes it difficult for the facilitator or speaker to create a dialog around concepts. Therefore, the collaboration between two or more people is inexorably critical for communication to be effective. And there lies the challenge in continuous engagement because people must be open to feedback.

Recently, I heard in one training that one group (say Group A) was following agile and releasing features for the internal teams. But many of the internal teams asked for features that Group A claimed are already there. When asked for better communication of these updates from Group A, the response was reading the release plan documents or seeing the dashboard. In a world of high-tech dashboards, the need for communicating updates in the language that others understand is equally important! Otherwise, communication has failed. High-Tech is not a substitute for High-Touch and people should be open for feedback.

So, I present my "FACT" driven feedback as a quick check-and-balance. I am not just referring to numbers and stories in the FACT approach. Instead, I am suggesting that feedback be frequent, accurate, constructive, and timely.

1. Frequent feedback means both parties can get incremental updates faster. The context of the challenge is fresh in people's memory to make corrective actions.
2. Actionable feedback relies on evidence-based data rather than opinions that the listener can use to make changes. This element avoids the halo effect from colored thoughts that are not actionable but shifts the focus on the truth with an actionable mindset. 
3. Constructive feedback is focusing on the continuous improvement mindset with actionable outcomes that the listener can implement as either proactive risk mitigation steps or corrective actions to exacerbate the problems.
4. Timely feedback centers around the ability of the person providing the feedback to feel the sense of urgency to elevate the feedback faster than relying on status or standup meetings.

When these four elements of feedback can be learned by both parties in a dialog, then, active listening is at its best. This is when collaboration happens for communication to be efficient and efficient.

Thoughts?

References

Innes, R.B. (2007). Dialogic Communication in Collaborative Problem Solving Groups. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. 1(1), 1-19. 

Requirements Management: A Value Mapping Exercise

The requirement management exercise is very closely related to the needs assessment producing the required artifacts while documenting the decision-making. It is critical to understand how the value, benefit, and output get mapped in a few critical documents namely the business case, charter, roadmap, and benefits register.

In a nutshell, the business case is the first point of entry in the requirement management. In this document, the accountable stakeholders for product strategy or the business strategy justify the company’s decision to take up the strategic initiative and formally declares the benefits expected out of the initiative. This decision is supported by documenting the specific short-term and long-term benefits by executing the initiative, the extent of market research to justify the need for this initiative, the amount of funding and funding schedule required to carry out the initiative, and finally the specific measures such as the payback period, net present value, to justify return on investment and future opportunities.

When such initiatives are rolled out, these initiatives could be done as a program containing multiple projects because of the extent of management and control required to integrate the benefits gathered from carrying out this initiative as an integrated program rather than as a set of stand-alone projects. Either way, this is when the program charter or project charter is created appropriately. This document names the program or project manager confirms the decision to execute the project outlining the high-level outputs and outcomes, and the authorizes the use of the company’s resources to carry out the work.

Now whether one is developing a product roadmap or program roadmap, you can think of the roadmap as a visual, hierarchical and powerful representation of the what high-level functionalities make up that initiative, dependencies among functionalities or projects within a program, and how the product will grow over time, how to acquire the required funding to support the product or program, and how to align the various stakeholders to ensure the required benefits are realized.

Finally, the benefits register is an artifact that lists all the planned benefits expected to be delivered at various points in the releases or iterations or program and its component projects. 

Having talked about value so much, I have come up with my own way of categorizing value. I call these CVA, BVA, TVA, PVA, and NVA.

The first category is the customer value add. For instance, what does the paying customer want? And what exciting things can we add to keep the customer with us?

Then, we move to the next level of business value add. Examples could be looking at the types of documentation required to sustain the business or training needed for internal and external users.

This business value-add can also manifest as a technical value add. Here, we look at technical debt maintenance. On the hardware side, we can look at keeping the infrastructure current to avoid any risk from using any product beyond their shelf-life. On the software side, we can look at ensuring the code is stable, manageable, and scalable by refactoring the code, automating areas that could benefit from automation, etc.

Another way the business value add can manifest is on the process value add. The processes themselves should act as a catalyst for transforming the inputs to outputs but not add too much overhead. The efficiency improvements through continuous improvement and effectiveness augmentation through operational excellence become the focus here. 

If it is not the customer, business, technical, or process value add, then, most likely this leads to a non-value add. The requirements in this category are to be avoided as they are contributing to some type of waste. In lean management, we discuss the uneven demands or overburden of resources that may lead to eight types of waste (Rajagopalan, 2016).

What are your thoughts on this blog article?

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2016). Management Debt: Costs of Non-Delivery. http://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2016/10/management-debt-costs-of-non-delivery.html

5A Principle - A mindset about managing change

As organizations strive to increase productivity and reduce total cost of ownership, the reasons to jump on the “agile” train expecting it to solve all challenges seem to raise. Social media has scores of posts questioning agile practices. In my mind, agility is simply a “mindset about managing change”. At the end of the day, if one is truly nimble about embracing the right change at the right time the right way, then, agility should result in a) increasing value to the customer, b) increasing quality to the product, c) reducing speed to market, and d) reducing cost to operations. To achieve these goals, I propose a 5A principle to truly being ‘agile’ These 5A’s are “Awake, Arise, Adopt, Adapt, and Adept”. These stages are cyclical in nature. Let me illustrate these in the sections below. While reading this, think of the “change management framework” in mind rather than treat this as a methodology to implement agile.

Awake

Change is the only constant today. All the five competitive forces suggested by Michael Porter are a reality today.  The potential entry of new players, competitive pressures of the consumer, global market refinement and product differentiation of existing players, innovative distribution channels, and intense rivalry among competitors are making the famous economist, Schumpeter's notions of "Creative Destruction" a reality. In addition, disruptive innovation suggested by Clayton Christensen is taking industries over with ideas opening new avenues of doing business. Unless we wake up to smell reality, we will eliminate ourselves.

Arise

John F. Kennedy once asked people to think of what they can do to the country instead of what the country can do to them. Most of today's workforce is still expecting their employers to train them and tell them what to do. People fail to take their future in their hands and wait for the right opportunity. An anonymous quote reads, “If opportunity does not knock, build a door.”  Successful people are those that are not only awake but arise by training themselves with the required knowledge and volunteering to gain the required experience for the right opportunity to knock.

Adopt

Many fear that if they will make the right decision and stumble to move forward. If we walk back on our memory lane in the past, are we all certain that we always made the right decision? If we did, we wouldn’t have the expression, “In hindsight, vision is 20-20.” No one can predict what the future can bring. If fear had ruled, would anyone of us now know the depths of the ocean or the height of space? What we are today is the result of overcoming fear and not yielding to it. So, don’t worry about making the right decision but proactively work towards making the decision right. We can do that by adopting individual strategies that meet our goals.”

Adapt

A wise man once said, "Show me a person that has not failed, and I will show you a failure." Life is not about what happens to us but how we react to it. If one has learned from failure and applied the lesson learned from such failure, then, one has turned failure into success. Did you know that Walt Disney was fired from his job for lack of imagination? It was only thousands of failed attempts that got Edison to get us the light bulb. Failure is not when you fall but when you don’t get up again. So, adapt to the trends, refine your approach, and create your voice.

Adept

No matter how much you know there is room for growth. The wise also shares the responsibility to train the next generation. The value of knowledge lies when it is shared. Many people claim luck is the special ingredient available only to the privileged. I always used to say, LUCK is also "Labor Under Correct Knowledge." So, find a mentor to enrich your knowledge, spread your knowledge by training and coaching others, and better yet become adept at being a student of knowledge. The more you know the more you understand how little you know. That awareness awakes you to a new reality where learning continues.

I have used this 5A principle during my training and teaching and have found my proprietary 5A principle is a good reference framework for people to improve themselves personally and professionally.

Share your comments and let me know if you would like to hear more!

Growing Leadership Talent: Four Practitioner Lens

I was fortunate enough to engage in an independent short engagement to work on talent management for an organization. Many talent management initiatives focus on roles and responsibilities grouped under levels and bands for career enablement and growth opportunities. The focus of this talent management initiative was that leadership belongs to everyone. I firmly believe in such principles and put together a framework based on my experience. To grow leadership talent across the organization, I created four different lenses that one can use to grow leadership.  

Depending upon the personal preference to career growth motivation and subsequent on-the-job performance (Managing Talent - 9 quadrants), I came up with four practitioner focused leadership lens. These lenses are visually represented below.

"People Enabler" and "Process Leader" may have some blind spots. These areas may impede their ability to become a value strategist as both people and process dimensions need to be delicately balanced. So, effective talent management for leadership development should focus on both areas. For instance, the process leader (Star Performer) must be trained in people dimension like emotional and cultural intelligence, conflict management. Similarly, the people enabler (High Performer) must be trained in process dimensions such as market research, risk management, opportunity and sunk costs, etc.

To further illustrate what roles mean and how they map to the classical job-based roles, I have tabulated my thoughts below.

Lens	Description	Classical Roles
Domain Expert	The people in this role are individual contributors with no direct reports. However, they may have deep domain knowledge in one or more areas. This role aligns with the "Core Performer" in the 9-Quadrant approach.	Engineer, Designer, Script Writer, Line Worker, Tester, Help Desk Support Analyst, Data Analyst
People Enabler	The people taking on this role deliver through people. They could be team supervisors or managers. This role aligns with the "High Performer" in the 9-Quadrant approach.	Test Leader, Engineering Manager, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Product Owner, Line Supervisor, Marketing Manager, Operations Manager
Process Leader	The people taking on this role collaborate with more people across the company. Their focus is not projects but also holistic policies, processes, and procedures to ensure outcomes are integrated for benefit delivery and sustenance. This role aligns with the "Star Performer" in the 9-Quadrant approach.	Director, HR Manager, Program Manager, Portfolio Manager, Product Manager, Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Data Scientist
Value Strategist	The people taking on this role are senior leaders of the organizations. They architect the vision and mission paving the foundation for values, direction, culture, alignment of the entire organization. This role aligns with the "Effective" in the 9-Quadrant approach.	Vice President, Senior Vice President, C-Level Executive

  

What are your thoughts? Would you agree with this thinking? Please let me know.

3 Basic Things to know about Copyrights

In one of the classes that I was facilitating, I saw people putting images from other sources in the discussion questions. Sometimes, people don't even credit sources and think citations (APA, MLA, IEEE, etc.) are not overhead and useless. It is these practices in the academic and volunteer work settings that continue in professional practices where such practices frequently attract risks that impact the project schedule or sometimes company reputation.  

Little do people realize the importance of the basics of intellectual property protection. In fact, in one of the projects that I managed around 1997, a developer used a 3rd party shareware to build a spreadsheet like grid within a Windows application! The challenge was that the developer of the 3rd party shareware required a copy of his physical book to be purchased for every runtime machine! We were glad we identified the risk before releasing the application as the legal department required us to remove the shareware and rework the logic completely! It put the project behind schedule, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Right? 

Considering the discussion that came up, I am documenting five important things that I consider basic information about copyrights. Now, I am not a legal representative or a final authority on this topic and so please consult your own legal counsel regarding intellectual property protection.  Copyright is only one of the approaches to intellectual property protection. There are many other things like patent laws, trademarks, and service marks. The implications may vary based on jurisdictions and country. The following are basic things to keep in mind based on my exposure to project management. 

1. The copyright gives exclusive rights to the authors. These may involve an innovative idea, a reference framework, detailed drawings, graphical design, music production, translated work, and the list is endless. Copyright provides the authors the rights for them to use their work and protects the author's reputed connection with others.  For instance, the scholar and economist, Schumpeter came up with the word, "Creative Destruction" and is considered a seminal author on the topic. So, the two words when used together is protected (granted copyrights are also controlled by a timeframe). So, when in doubt about utilizing some work like logo, pictures, or music in your work, be careful and ask.

2.  The copyright may not necessarily be registered. While it is optional for the author to register the work, it is not required. As soon as an original idea is published in a book or reputed publication, it is protected. For instance, music created by Sony, or the characters created by Disney are protected.  For instance, Daniel Goleman introduced "Emotional Intelligence" and while concepts of multiple intelligence and social intelligence exist, the concept is associated with Daniel Goleman. The exclusivity sometimes may run out (such as a patent protection for a drug running out in 20 years). So, sometimes, the products (like scotch tape belonging to 3M being used more commonly) and concepts (like Google it! Xerox it) may be used without any citation but that doesn't remove the original ownership.

3. There are always exceptions and limitations. These discussions often lead to the 'fair use' condition. The idea here is to engage in a scholar-practitioner debate on questioning some work or extending ideas without completely infringing on the original author's copyright rights and provisions. Fair use often includes the purpose of use, the type of copyrighted work, the extent of original author's work taken (this is why we recommend that if any more than 3 words in succession are taken from one's work, they should be cited) and the planned use of the copyrighted work in a targeted market. 

Technology has made it possible for anyone to publish a page on the Internet. So, just because something is in a public domain, it does not mean that we can forego the appreciative enquiry required to do enough research. So, don't assume anything from any place can be reproduced anywhere. Protect yourself and the authors. After all, in writing new work, you are becoming an author too!

What else do you think we should call out for basics of intellectual property? Share your thoughts.

Identifying Stakeholder Groups in Projects, Programs, and Portfolios

I am sure many recognize that there is a stakeholder register where important characteristics of stakeholders, such as the power, influence, interest, tolerance, threshold, engagement strategy, and communication preferences are captured. Sometimes, I find that both practitioners and students only identify individuals or external members identified. The concept of stakeholder groups, like the service operations, marketing, data analytics, are missed. 

But why is stakeholder group important? Simply put, assigning stakeholders into groups helps them classify the optimal type of communication that can suit a group of stakeholders. Additionally, such a stakeholder grouping can also help see patterns of relationships among the stakeholders within that group to engage these stakeholders within that group more effectively. This group's ability to influence can then be very effective for the alternative generation and problem-solving, enabling the decision-making due to the power of the plurality. This powerful decision-making not only helps in project management but also in the strategic and operational governance at the program management and portfolio management.

So, stakeholders can also be grouped by other characteristics based on their ability to exercise such influence. Hence, to assess the influence within the stakeholder groups, some powerful questions to ask are: 

1. What types of members are generally required for the governing body? 
2. What are the tolerance and threshold levels for the various stakeholders in the governance body towards specific decision-making criteria (like increasing revenues, reducing costs, increasing customer satisfaction, accelerating cycle-time reduction, improving operational excellence, and augmenting knowledge retentions?)
3. How frequently do people require information?
4. Who is looking for more quantitative metrics and qualitative metrics? 
5. Can stakeholders be categorized also as thought-leaders, early adopters, risk takers, change resistors, or comfort-zone-conservatives?  

While there may be other criteria based on the product or service the project delivers, outputs, outcomes, and benefits the program produces or the strategic value the portfolio generates, these starter questions make one think of the stakeholder groups differently so that one can come up with an effective communication plan to effectively manage the stakeholders.

Do you have any thoughts? Please feel free to share.

Agile Metrics Proposal

The Chief Product Officer in my company was asking me what metrics can be used to measure value delivery in any Agile project. He approached about measuring time logged by the individuals and the amount of story points, number of user stories, etc. I felt that such a metric driven mindset is an anti-pattern to self-organization and working agreements in a team. Recalling what Einstein said about not measuring everything countable as they won't count, I emphasized that we should measure what matters. 

Agile projects are predominantly characterized by the iterative nature of delivering incremental value to the customer by a self-organized team. So, it is important to measure value delivered through the iterations and releases rather than measuring individual contributions. I proposed four categories so that we can unearth the rationale behind them and not use the metrics to count against the team. 

Efficiency: This category is tactical in nature and aims at measuring how well the team is delivering value to the customer. Some example measure include:

1. Team Velocity - Work done by the team over sprints
2. Cycle Time - Conception to Value
3. Burn Rate - Rate at which releases are consuming backlog

Collaboration: This category is self-organization. With the growing popularity of virtual and remote teams, it is important to measure the collaboration among the team members. Some measure include:

1. Number Retrospective Items in Backlog - How many retrospective items identified are included in backlogs?
2. Processes Improvement Rate - What types of processes are improved as noted by training, documents, and continuous improvements?
3. Backlog Growth Rate - How much and what types of stories (Customer Value, Business Value, Technical Value, Process Value) are being added to the backlog and refined?

Effectiveness: This category is strategic and focuses on business value. Some measures include:

1. Velocity Variance - Planned (Committed) to Actual (Delivered)
2. Value Delivery - Measure Value in terms of Customer Satisfaction and Business Benefit
3. Technical Debt - Quantify Value of work not done in the interest of pushing customer value stories

Quality: This category aims at how good a quality is produced as sprints evolve and should be evaluated at multiple levels for continuous improvement and optimization. Here, we can go into more detail. Some thoughts include:

1. Automated Test Cases: Number of test cases that are automated
2. Defect Detection Rate: Number of incidents detected in a release
3. Test Case Reusability: Number of modular test cases reused within the test steps
4. Test Case Coverage: Number of requirements that are covered by test cases excluding summary use cases

These quality specific metrics can be further broken into additional areas for ongoing optimization and improvement, such as the following

Metrics at the Test Case Level

1. Test cases created for each user story
2. Test cases reworked (based on clarification of requirements)
3. Defects reported against the requirements (called defect density)
4. Defects reported against the test case for modification of test case
5. Test cases executed by passed, failed, blocked, etc.

Metrics at the Defect Level

1. Defects by Severity (Show stoppers that impact the release or client)
2. Escaped Defects (Indication of Internal Failure)
3. Defect Reopen Rate
4. Defects unidentified by internal users and clients
5. Number of Exploratory or unscripted testing in an iteration or release

What are your thoughts? What would you remove or add? 

Reflections on a Group Discussion: 4 Fs of Success

As the Vice President of Proposition Delivery and Operational Excellence, I was part of a major program initiative to revamp product management for emerging healthcare products. Several senior members of the organization along with some technical delivery members were present in multiple discussions over the last three months defining value delivery and success. Some of these definitions seemed generic and appeared applicable for any person, team, or business entity. Deidentifying some of the information and reframing them in simple terms, I am synthesizing my thoughts here as 4 Fs of Success.

1. Firm and Flexible

We live in a VUCA world. As technology becomes more accessible to customers and consumers, we should be willing to unlearn and relearn continuously. Sometimes, our 'bitterness of failures' may close opportunities that may otherwise be available for us. At the same time, our earlier 'sweetness of success' should not embolden us to avoid proactively looking at risk management. While balancing these two ends of the spectrum, one should also evaluate what one should stand for. Not all requests can be handled, and we should also know where our boundaries stop and when we should reevaluate opportunities.

2. Focus and Feedback

"Prioritize and Deliver" on agreed commitments! Often, we play the victim of attributing failure to methodology. Agile, Project Management, Scrum, Product Management, XP, or DSDM, for example, themselves do not fail because they are frameworks. Everyone needs to demonstrate leadership in delivering on their commitments. "Walk the Talk" is not reserved for the leaders at the top. As we have our commitments, it is important for every one of us to be accountable for the experience that we allow our customers to feel. If there is any potential adverse impact, be willing to give feedback. Risks and Quality are everyone's responsibility. So, stop playing the victim role based on framework!

3. Fostering and Feelings

A nurturing team environment is not an after-thought. For teams to own the commitments, they need to be part of creating the team charter where working agreements are made. Instead of forcing team behaviors, mentor and coach people to think customer value. Actively listen to others, practice empathy, and build an environment where people can "fail forward" fearlessly! Confidence and Competence develops only with commitment in a nourishing environment. Apply systems thinking concepts to let everyone see the future. 

4. Follow Up and Follow Through

Be both transactional and transformational as the situation warrants! This is where follow-up and follow-through come along. Follow-up is about seeking ongoing updates. Having a conversation about an issue is a follow-up but does that conversation alone guarantee completion? As the famous saying goes, "A person that won't read is no better than a person that can't read," one needs to see issues to closure. That is the definition of done and not leaving anything partly done or inadequately addressed. Therefore, follow-up is more like communication (one-way street like broadcasting) but follow-through is more like collaboration requiring one to take on initiatives to ensure that the items are complete and marked "DONE". This is why follow-up is transactional management mindset whereas follow-through is transformational leadership mindset. 

What do you think? To what extent do you agree or what would like to add/remove? 

Coaching Essentials: Helpful Guide

I have spoken in a few places and have got good feedback. Being a non-native English speaker and as an immigrant trying to land some comments and jokes incorrectly, I felt I could do better in terms of delivery. So, I worked with a coach in mid-2017 to help me become a better public speaker. He always made me comfortable as part of the initial discussions concluding with asking me permission to engage in the coaching activity. He continued to emphasize that he would only expand on what I discussed seeking clarity as I spoke. Then, the discussions focused on activities both of us should in the engagement and then the specific problem to resolve. As we continued to discuss how to be a better speaker, we both explored alternatives. It was a great engagement!

Recently, I attended a meeting within my company where there was an external speaker who was helping us with brainstorming ideas to bring a more concerted effort to product management within my company. This speaker laid out in one of the slides the following five steps to coaching us as a group. 

1. Get Permission to be a coach
2. Ensure Psychological Safety
3. Agree on a Common Goal
4. Converge on a Specific Problem
5. Evaluate Alternatives

Oh my God! It dawned on me only then that my coach from the year before was doing exactly those five steps except that he didn't specifically mention that. As an Agile Coach, I knew mentorship and coaching differed fundamentally. However, this group coaching engagement made me I realize the power of powerful questions in coaching for deeper appreciative enquiry based on open-ended dialog requiring active listening where the coached controls the charter and the coach guides the coached. I connected coaching as a leadership skill based on transformational leadership (individual consideration and inspirational motivation are critical here) and situational leadership (the four levels based on the extent of team maturity and direction needed). These thoughts connect with the curiosity, compassion, and courage paramount in a coaching engagement. 

I have done my best to capture some of the questions that I remember being asked for the benefit of the larger community. You can see from the questions that coach believes that the coached has answers and focuses on bringing these answers to the forefront making one to think beyond the blind spots. As the coach focuses mainly on the future, they shouldn't be judgmental (avoid all biases) and promote accountability.

Get Permission

1. Are you willing to work with a coaching engagement?
2. Do you give me permission to work with you as a coach?
3. What do you plan to achieve in our time together today?
4. What are you planning to walk away with from our discussion today?

Ensure Psychological Safety

1. How do you want me to work with you so that you can best contribute to our discussion?
2. What is distracting you from discussion and why does it bother you?
3. If there is one thing that we can do differently which you are willing to discuss openly, what would that be?
4. What is the best thing I should do to best support our discussion?

Agree on Goal

1. What would you like to discuss?
2. What is eating your mind (figurative way of saying what's bothering you)?
3. Among the topics you mentioned, what is the one thing we can discuss in more detail today?

Converge on Problem 

1. How does this problem bother you? (Understand the impact)
2. What makes this problem rank the highest? 
3. What is the benefit of addressing this for you? 
4. Can you give me an example?
5. Tell me more how this impacts you?
6. What have you tried that is working or not working? 
7. What have you learned from these attempts or problems?
8. What does success look like?
9. What would you like to see happen instead?
10. What do you think is the cost of taking any action or not acting on it?
11. What comes in your way?
12. What are you willing to give up resolving this problem?
13. What impediments, obstacles, blockers, or issues stand in your way?

Explore Alternatives

1. What else can we do?
2. How do you feel about the options we have discussed so far?
3. What options have we not talked about that you think we should?
4. What are you learning towards? Why? 
5. What do you plan to do before we meet again?
6. What would you like me to do before we reconvene?

Hope this helps! Let me know.

 

Managing Talent - 9 Quadrants

Managers and Leaders are always facing the dilemma of attracting, retaining, and managing talent. The cost of recruiting a new candidate and the cost of onboarding the candidate makes a huge impact on the organization's ability to deliver value and the project's ability to maintain flow of benefit. As a result, even project managers and program managers, who may not have the authority to hire talent based on the PMO structure must maintain a diligent focus on managing talent. 

In my capacity managing five direct employees who have a span of up to 5-10 people besides the various stakeholders as part of the projects and products they manage, I have taken on this role of talent management. Bringing my scholar-practitioner outlook of servant leadership that has four ways of categorizing talent (D1 to D4) and similar quadrant approaches in the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for product management, Ansoff Matrix for product diversification, and Blue Ocean Leadership for thinking big, I have created an approach based on one's job performance and their potential for the organization. Accordingly, I have iterated on this approach below and am sharing it.    

This is not a recommendation and may have to be modified as the situation warrants. 

Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind.

1. I consider the green middle quadrant to be the "Meet the expectations" (like a 3 out of 5). These people will be hungry for reward and recognition. The responsibility lies with their manager to evaluate (accountability is with the individual) potential versus performance and move them to be a high-performer or star performer. Recommendation is always to focus on people skills  (high-performer) than strategy skills (star performer)
2. The lower and top quadrant on the low performance scale indicate process problems in not hiring the right talent or not providing the right environment for them to perform. But, if there is a clear people problem (not a team player, performing things that are clearly against the professional code of ethics or demonstrating competence to perform), then, think of eliminating the person but tighten up the processes (never waste a failure). If the candidate has high potential but is not performing for various HR reasons, then put them on PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) or move them to a better role/department where their potential can be advantageous for them and the organization.
3. The lower quadrant on the high-performance low potential means they are efficient in doing things assigned to them but lack motivation or demonstrate a lack of career development (comfort zone). If they have comfort zone issues, they represent a potential flight risk, and the manager must be relentless in backing that individual. If the person is having career promotion interest but a lack of motivation, dig deeper to find out. Assigning mentors and advisors to support them in addressing their blind spots (weaknesses) is good. Focus on leading with their strength as it gives them confidence and is a morale booster.
4. The top quadrant (high performance, high potential) is an efficient leader. Now, this is based on competence and capability; therefore, be careful in premature promotion. One has to spend time coaching this individual. 
5. The yellow quadrants require managerial intervention. The individual may not be at the level to articulate their career ambitions clearly. So, this is where the manager truly shines in bringing them up to the level of competence required. 
6. The orange quadrants require managerial supervision.   According to the situational leadership, these areas may represent directing, supporting, delegating, and coaching depending upon the maturity of the person and the extent of direction needed. Frequently, these areas require the manager to serve as a coach. 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any comments.

Global Leadership and Project Management

I am currently in Paris, France. As I was strolling through as part of my regular walks, I was particularly struck by the number of construction initiatives and establishments with several technology companies, hotels, fast food chains, fashion accessory companies, etc. I could not help starting to think of all the types of projects and leadership involved in such projects establishing these companies across the globe. I saw the same establishments in Vietnam, India, and the US.

While still upholding global branding, these companies and establishments need to cater to local markets leveraging funding options specifically relevant, yield to local laws and regulations, and show demonstrated leadership in each of these projects. It was at this time that I also saw announcements about tariffs from the US on steel and aluminum. These external influences emphasize the need to understand PESTLEED approaches to analyzing SWOT further.

As project and program managers start working on global initiatives introducing change, it is pivotal to understand that global leadership is beyond just understanding cultural diversity. Global leadership must extend to working in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world where project and program managers need to understand all the ten knowledge areas of project management but also go deeper in understanding the program management domain in strategic alignment and the benefit delivery lifecycle.

This generation of focus on value maximization is the foundation of glolocalization, i.e. global leadership with a localization that much beyond just culture and diversity.  In other words, “think global, act local” philosophy integrating leadership and management needs to be woven into grooming upcoming talent as well as existing talent.  Several strategies have failed when people didn’t think globally factoring cultural conditioning.  Let us learn from these lessons and avoid repeating the same failures. As I always say, “Fail forward!” 

Characteristics of Effective Written Communication

Having facilitated several training courses, particularly in project management training and in graduate level project management classes, I often find that people fail to effectively communicate. When it comes to effective communication in writing, truly understanding the basics of the communication model is critical.

The communication model involves a sender passing information through a channel with the goal that that this is received and interpreted by the receiver. Now, right in that communication model explanation lies the important requirement of communication - It is not about what the sender planned to send but what the receiver interpreted from the message.

Consider, for instance, the difference between two messages that I heard from my math teacher several years back while I was preparing to enter college. Both messages A and B have the same number of words in the same location except for the placement of the comma, which changes the entire meaning of the message. Although my Math teacher was teaching this to construct the right mathematical equation by placing the mathematical symbols correctly, he also communicated the powerful message of the importance of punctuations.

Message A: "Hang him not, leave him"
Message B: "Hang him, not leave him"

So, as we write anything, let us not read from what we wanted to communicate but read our thoughts on how the reader will interpret. When you are not present next to the reader to interpret the message, what areas will you focus on?

1. Use of correct "Grammar and Spelling" will be a simple critical building block. Even if you use a spell checker, proof-read words like "their" and "there" will not be caught by spell-check utility unless you have advanced grammar checks also built in. Proof-reading will also help in ensuring the right use of the subject/verb agreement.

2. Say it concisely - Your message must be concise and yet comprehensive. If I were to use my agile mindset here, if you were to remove all the words from your idea-tank and add only the required words, how many and what words will you add to ensure that you provide enough information concisely and yet provide the required context.

3. The coherent flow of ideas - Have you read your email or report after a day or attempted to read it from the bottom-up? Does the introduction properly give the required backdrop based on the conclusion drawn? Does every paragraph or bullet point really add-up.

4. Clarity in purpose - What's the action you want the reader to take? Is it informational, promotional, directional, or action-oriented? If you are not clear what you want the reader to do, how would you ensure that the reader can understand your written report? Focus on "who does what by when" as a minimum criterion and discuss the "why" for not only doing it but also the impact of not doing it. Depending upon the content of the written communication, you can add details about "How."

5. Control the flow of ideas - Sometimes, additional data or words will be required. If one example has proved the point, then, additional examples are irrelevant as the communication will take the reader's attention. If the example provided is inadequate, then, perhaps that's not the right example. Similar thoughts can expand to using diagrams to better support your ideas and using some legends and footnotes for the charts for better interpretation.

I have always found that these five simple areas are critical to communication! It not only puts the sender responsible for correct and complete delivery of the intended message but also put the onus to ensure correct interpretation of the delivered message. It also puts the recipient equally responsible for ensuring complete delivery of the full message and the acknowledge the correct interpretation of the message. It is great to see Project Management Institute (2017) acknowledge these 5Cs of effective written communication in its latest version of the Project Management Book of Knowledge.

Have you ever considered these 5C's of effective written communication?

References
Project Management Institute (2017). A guide to project management book of knowledge. 6th Edition. New Town Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

PICTURE your way to understand Program Manager responsibilities

Frequently, people keep asking what the role and responsibility of a project or program manager is. While the project manager focuses on generating the outcomes contributing to the benefits for the organization, the program manager focuses on integrating the benefits towards the strategic value. Therefore, both the project and program manager should understand the strategic focus of their role in tailoring their responsibilities. 

As the program manager is also held accountable for the operations as part of the benefit management, the primary value the program manager offers is their readiness to adopt strategies to optimize the delivery of benefits to the performing or sponsoring organizations.

Have you heard of the saying, “Picture speaks a thousand words?” So, I used PICTURE as an acronym to describe a few key responsibilities of the role. 

P – Program Definition. This covers the key elements of formulating and planning the program.

I – Interdependencies among program components including operation
C – Communication with the right stakeholders at the right level at the right time facilitating governance

T – Tailor the program management activities and processes by evaluating the outcomes against planned benefits and adapt as frequently as necessary.

U – Comfortable around Uncertainty 

R – Resolve challenges and constraints using a proper governance structure

E - Empower team by enabling them to deliver

How do you relate to this acronym to understand the program manager responsibilities?

If Data is King, Data Analytics is the Queen

In concluding one of the project management classes, where I had to assess the understanding of the process stability using control charts with some design of experiments requiring data collection and data analysis, it became quickly apparent to me that amidst the many types of classifying and categorizing data, the fundamental characteristics of data itself is not adequately understood. While people look at objective and subjective data of details collected from the documentation, surveys, interviews, and observations, there is not a strong understanding of the classification of data as continuous or discrete, categorical or numerical, nominal or ordinal, interval or ratio, etc. On top of it, the datatype as mentioned in programming and database systems, such as the integer, float, double, Boolean, string, varchar, identity, and datetime have added enough murkiness for many middle management roles to delegate their responsibility of understanding the data to subordinates, such as the data analyst, business analyst, etc.  

As I pondered over this dilemma, I found out that even professionals were unavailable to differentiate the three critical things in any descriptive data analysis. The measures of central tendency, symmetry, and dispersion were not readily coming up in one of my talks touching on the house of quality. If the business is collecting so much data, how can the lack of understanding of the classification, categorization, and type of data be taken for granted? If the information contained in data is meant to be serving the management to make decisions, then, how can the lack of basic data analytics be an optional criterion in the job descriptions for roles managing products, projects, programs, and accounts? 

According to Standish Report (Hastie & Wojewoda, 2015), the number of failed projects is decreasing, but the number of projects challenged from inception to closure has increased while the number of successful projects has remained flat. The same story is entirely different if we take the size of the project into account where a higher proportion of large size projects embrace failure. With so many tools available for middle management, such as earned value metrics, failure mode effect analysis, and six sigma, why is the attention to detail missing? While such a detailed review is beyond the scope of this blog article, brief research on data and business intelligence (n.d.) from QGate provides a compelling summary of data may be speaking but we may not be understanding.

We don't stop at addressing this complexity with more mandatory education and training on understanding data and using data analytics for business solutions. Instead, we compound it further by introducing big data with its own value, volume, velocity, veracity, and variety. Press (2014) notes twelve different definitions for big data that one can choose from which doesn't address the fundamental requirements of how to systematically identify the right data to look at, analyze it, and make proper decisions using hypothesis testing, regression analysis, etc. 

There is a world outside with data analytics focusing further on multivariate analysis, ANOVA studies, factor analysis, and selecting various distributions to choose from based on how the samples represent the population. While such advanced requirements may be referred to data analyst professionals, can we not mandate a good understand data (classification, categorization, and type) and fundamental data analysis (central tendency, dispersion, and symmetry)?

After all, if we all agree data is King to business, data analysis is the Queen of business operations. Both the King and Queen are critical to making the right decisions, sustaining the proper business operations, and maximizing the right business opportunity. With the explosive growth of data due to the advances in technology, as noted by Ginni Rometty (2016), CEO of IBM in her speech to World Health Congress, digital [data] is becoming the foundation and data analytics so is the basis for subsequent cognitive understanding. 

References

Data and Business Intelligence (BI) (n.d.) QGate. Retrieved February 27, 2018, from https://www.qgate.co.uk/blog/data-speaks-but-do-you-understand/

Press, G. (2014, September 3). 12 Big Data Definition: What's Yours? Retrieved Feb 18, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2014/09/03/12-big-data-definitions-whats-yours/#7a5f1f813ae8

Hastie, S. & Wojewoda, S. (2015, October 14). Standish Group 2015 Chaos Report - Q&A with Jennifer Lynch. Retreived February 24, 2017, from https://www.infoq.com/articles/standish-chaos-2015

Rometti, G. (2016, April 12). Ginni Rometty Speech Archives. Retrieved January 31, 2018, from https://www.ibm.com/ibm/ginni/04_12_2016.html

Meetings: Tool for Managing Benefit Realization and Stakeholder Engagements

Every organization uses the meeting as a tool to accomplish many things. This concept of a meeting has become so mundane in today's business context. Whether we are leading a project, designing a product, coordinating a program, or supporting the operations, there are meetings galore on everyone's calendar! Meetings exist to collect & share information, review progress and risks to delivery, updates to management or team such as kill gates, management checkpoints, or health check reviews, manage changes to the projects or programs or problem-solve a technical or management challenge among many other reasons to have a meeting.

However, when you ask the question of how effective the meetings are in accomplishing the outcome the meetings are supposed to address, there is a wide spectrum of comments and objections one can hear! How often is the organization or even a project using the meeting as a stakeholder engagement tool? 

There are several books, blog articles, and training guides on conducting effective meetings. Then, why are some organizations advocating against meeting free days (hickey, n.d.) or email free days?  Synthesizing major recommendations of many of these recommendations come down to three things: 1) have an agenda, 2) involve the right people, and 3) have an effective facilitator. Let us look at these principles a little closely.

The first recommendation espoused was the golden principle of having an agenda to begin the meeting. This recommendation emphasized the focus on the purpose of the meeting.  I am sure some of us can relate to not attending any meeting without an agenda. However, despite having a written agenda published several days back, how conclusively we can agree that all these effective meetings had an agenda and so were efficient? The fundamental root cause is that productivity is associated with outcomes. A mere attendance at the meetings or raising a viewpoint doesn't accomplish anything except burn people's time! The goal of every meeting is to have clear outcomes that advance towards the benefits to be realized for the benefit of the project, team or organizational objectives. This means there should be decision points agreed on and actions items articulated with a clear accountable and responsible owner and with a definitive timeline to provide an incremental update on the action items! Meetings are an effective source of productivity loss (Rajagopalan, 2014a) if there is no laser focus on outcome management.

The second recommendation we listed involved the right people! In a world that appreciates "less is more", is involving too many people in a meeting appropriate use of people's time especially if the meeting's purpose is not to disseminate information (multicast)? A successful meeting is the one that has carefully identified the right parties with the decision authority to advance completion of the agenda/objectives towards an outcome or take accountability to follow up with an action item to close (Rajagopalan, 2016). Meetings are also an effective stakeholder engagement tool because unengaged or non-participating members are also contributing to the cost of a meeting (Rajagopalan, 2014b)! These members can be released from the meeting completely or early on so that they can be productive in what they do the best! Not managing this rightful audience and measuring the contribution effectiveness of the delegates in a meeting is a leadership failure on the organizer/facilitator of the meeting.

The third challenge we noted was having a good facilitator! Especially in meetings where participation from meeting attendees is required, this facilitation is critical. While we need to allow innovation, creativity, and problem-solving to continue, we also need to make sure that we allow tangential discussions and gut-feel thoughts that derail the meeting. Depending upon the value of such ideas, the organizer may have to put this parking lot, or delegate or seek the support of a leader with the decision authority to address that right away. Having another person to be a scribe (meeting notes taker) or a scheduler to keep up with the time is also an important element of facilitation, particularly considering today's virtual meetings where the facilitator may be presenting on the screen and can't have the luxury of taking notes! Not having a timebox to ensure that outcomes are identified, or action items are listed is a disservice to the other members who are attending the meeting.

So, next time you call for a meeting or organize a meeting, think what outcomes the meeting should accomplish, what attendees with the right decision authority are present, how much are the meeting attendees able to delegate their work, and how you will facilitate the meeting to ensure that action item are identified to advance every meeting incrementally and iteratively towards realizing the benefits for the organization. 

References

Hickey, K.F. (n.d.) How to take back your productivity with no meeting Wednesday. Retrieved January 31, 2018, from https://wavelength.asana.com/workstyle-no-meeting-wednesdays/

Rajagopalan, S. (2014a). Enhancing productivity. Retrieved January 31, 2018, from http://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/03/enhacing-productivity.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2014b). Effective virtual meetings. Retrieved January 31, 2018, from http://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/05/effective-virtual-meetings.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2016). Agile or Traditional: Productivity management still has basic roots. Retrieved January 31, 2018, from http://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2016/06/agile-or-traditional-productivity.html