Parenting Lessons: Managing for Happiness while focusing on Relevance

I had a friend visiting my family. With a smaller child who was requiring some attention for food and later for occupying time, both my friend and I were readjusting to ensure that the child stayed happy. After the child had its food, we were showing the limited toys I had or the TV shows the child saw. The friend ensured that both the toys or the shows were relevant and age appropriate. After my friend left, I was thinking about how parents had that innate thought process of managing for happiness while delivering playful things with meaning!  We understand that people learn when they are happy. That learning is channeled for relevance for value. But how much do we practice this "Managing for happiness while focusing on relevance" in managing ourselves, our team, our products, etc.? 

If experience had taught me one thing, then, that is that we don't see things as they are, but we see things as we are. We put our own lens through which we see everything! This is the reason why people with scientific facts and evidence claim there is global warming and then others refute it because of extreme cold and snow in unpredictable places! The truth does not lie but we see the portion of the truth and not the entire truth! Good managers and great leaders see beyond abstraction and see where things could be! Whether it is people for skills and competency improvement or processes for experimentation and continuous improvement, nothing gets accomplished when people collectively don't collaborate and challenge themselves to share the need to be a part of something bigger than themselves. 

When a child is happy the learning occurs. The parent does not give everything the child wants but drives the focus for relevance. Somewhere along our professional journey, people become complacent with the status quo. This could be due to other life priorities or unwillingness to commit to learning! If learning stops, growth stops! If we want to grow, learning should continue! So, why are we limiting ourselves to what we can learn in the early childhood days but fail to continue that childhood like curiosity continuously in personal and professional lives? 

As I thought through this process, I thought that product management and project management as part of program and portfolio management should also look at people and process in a different light! "Manage people for happiness and focus processes for meaning" is my thought. If we ensure people are happy and the processes are meaningful (avoiding mura, muri, and muda), then, people will self-organize, challenge the status quo, and demonstrate leadership. If people are unhappy and processes are bureaucratic or confusing, people get demotivated, settle for mediocrity, and withdraw! Yes, there are many motivation theories (Maslow's Hierarchy, Hertzberg 2-Factor theory, McClelland Theory of Needs, Vroom's expectancy theory, McGregor's Theory of X & Y, Ouchi's Theory of Z) and each has a solid base on multiple fields with their proven track record. 

Suggested Step	Brief Explanation
Build for Happiness	Think of Ikigai that focuses on profession, passion, mission, & vocation) People are not going to be happy if one focuses only on profits, products, platforms
Manage for Innovation	Innovation need not be tied to roles & responsibilities.  Remember that good innovation management means roles & responsibilities are across multiple departments. Incorporate innovation in everything we do - incremental, continuous, and radical.
Accelerate for Learning	Don't promote a "fail fast" culture that compromises learning; instead, nurture the "fail forward" culture where learning thrives.  Don't build methodologies (company specific processes) that deters learning. Fail forward all the time. This is when you learn! Failure is too great an opportunity to miss learning.
Experiment for Customer	Relentlessly focus on customer. The world today is more about the customer's customers than just the paying client! Don't rush to product persona without creating a market persona! "Persona" is not people and so does not represent the voice of customer or voice of business. Actively Listen!
Play for Success	Promote "role" swaps. Don't just think in other's views but walk a mile in their shoes.  Incorporate alternative thinking (risk management) with explorative experiments  Explore childlike testing (unscripted, ad hoc) for quality from the beginning (this is beyond manual and automation testing)
Nurture for Growth	Create the culture that you want Operate as though your work is your own business Lead for transformation and not for transaction

In my humble opinion, none of these theories are adequately accommodated in today's middle management or executive leadership. The rush for quick wins to keep the business afloat seems to have seized the day. Ethics are compromised and design patterns are deprioritized to fit methodologies (note, I didn't say framework). To some extent, the middle management and executive leadership needs to hit the "reset" button and rethink how to manage for happiness and focus on processes for meaning." Tabulated above is my blueprint for these steps.

What are your thoughts? Would you agree? Add, Change or Modify anything? Share your thoughts!

Does Agile Mandate CICD? Lessons from ADO West 2023

I was presenting at the Agile DevOps West in 2023 on business agility. Twice during this conference, I heard people say another presentation where they heard people say that continuous-integration and continuous-delivery (CICD) is required as part of the DevOps and teams are not practicing agility without implementing the CICD.  I feel that these are clear misinterpretations of how Agile is still misconstrued and how the principles of Agile and DevOps frameworks are viewed improperly from the technical lens of CICD. 

First, Agile is about self-organized team empowered culture adapting to change, experimenting with innovation, failing forward, and focusing on value maximization. When Takeuchi and Nonako (1986) first laid the foundation for Scrum, much before the Agile Manifesto was ever written, their focus of new product development was not isolated to IT industry or software development.  However, one of the biggest issues with Agile is that all the 17 contributors were men and came from IT industry representing very little diversity. Their myopic thinking and ignorance can therefore be felt in three areas when they limited Agile to Software.

1. Opening the Manifesto with "We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it."
2. Including a statement, "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation" in the Agile Manifesto.
3. Including the principle, "Working software is the only measure of progress" as part of the 12 principles.
4. Including the principle, "Deliver working software frequently from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale" as part of the 12 principles.

In my webinars and training, I question these statements. If you replace the word, "software" with "workware" (a term I coined indicating that workware could be software, hardware, firmware, healthcare, Construction contracts, FinTech processes eliminating overhead and waste), the statements do work fine to represent agility. These are the reasons why agility can be applied to individual career management and at home, religious places, and other industries where software is not part of their work at all. While it applies well in software development, it is not limited to software development. In fact, I have applied principles of agility outside of software development in a Theatrical context (Rajagopalan, 2013) and have practiced it at home.

Now, let us look at CICD. As part of the V-Model, any solution developed goes through various stakeholders that shape the solution. Clear and concise representation of the requirements by the business analyst, design of the overarching architecture by system analyst and system engineer, the development of the solution by the engineer. Testing therefore is checking at multiple levels to check for solution developed and system designed against the requirements requiring multiple levels of testing itself. The idea is to minimize waste by progressively testing every increment to the solution and ensure that the increment is a good candidate for deployment. Here is where a few principles must be kept in mind.

Continuous Integration (CI) is required to ensure that every solution increment is integrated and regressed with already working and previously released functionality. This aspect is the first area of CI to ensure the new code has required boundary checking (no uninitialized variables, no memory leak, all code paths are covered) in addition to running automated test cases confirming all previous functionality so that the automation tests can run on the changes. 

Not all new code can be deployed to a production environment from CI functionality. Many reasons, such as multiple staged environment (like test, staging, pre-production, and production) may be required before additional tests like penetration testing and load testing may be mandated. Some industries may require a special group to handle validation as a separate activity outside of quality control, such as in healthcare and life sciences, for performance qualification (PQ handled frequently by the QC team), Operational Qualification (OQ) and Installation Qualification (IQ) that may be handled by a validation team and/or installation team appropriately. Therefore, CD may also mean continuous delivery to other environments in a linear pipeline. So, Continuous Delivery precedes Continuous Deployment. 

Furthermore, even if the continuous delivery succeeds in all the environments or the validation (OQ, IQ, for instance), the new increments can't be released. In some organizations, such as in pharmaceutical companies, new increments cannot be released to production until approval to distribute (ATD) is provided from the OPDP (Office of Prescription Drug Promotion) after medical, legal, and regulatory review and approval. Any functionality released to production prior to this ATD (sometimes called AFD - Approval For Dissemination) is considered a violation of OPDP protocols. 

Alternatively, it is possible that multiple teams are working together. So, it is possible that an additional level of release level testing of all the functionality consolidated from each team's outcomes will have to be assessed. These are called single cadence release at the release level (containing multiple iterations from multiple teams). 

When you factor all these thoughts of why CI is required and the various instances of CD (continuous delivery and continuous deployment), the CICD itself is focused on the continuous improvement (which is also abbreviated sometimes as CI) of software development life cycle processes. So, CICD is supporting agility, but agility does not require CICD at all as agility is not restricted to software development in the IT industry. 

Now, let us extend the discussion to DevOps. The fundamental principle behind DevOps is also a team-based culture focused on collaboration, data-based decision-making, customer-centric decision-making, constant improvement, responsibility throughout the lifecycle, automation, and treating failure as a learning opportunity (Roddewig, 2021). The DevOps institute (n.d) itself proclaims in their CALMS (culture, automation, lean, measurement, sharing) these principles outlining DevOps as a team-oriented culture enabling framework. While CICD is part of DevOps infinity cycle to have the delivery team and the infrastructure team to collaborate on their collective accountability, CICD is only one part of the DevOps framework. 

When all these ideas are integrated together, let us tell the right story. Just because a team does not use CICD or deploy increments to production frequently and directly after successful CI, it does not mean the team is less agile. Agile and DevOps serve as two book ends including Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment. All elements of CICD support Agile and DevOps but Agile itself does not mandate CICD. 

References 

DevOps Foundation Blueprint (n.d.). DevOps Institute. https://www.devopsinstitute.com/certifications/devops-foundation/

Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Agility outside of Software Development: A case study from Theatrical Play. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/05/agility-outside-of-software-development.html

Roddewig, S. (2021). 7 Principles of DevOps for Successful Development Teams. https://blog.hubspot.com/website/devops-principles

Takeuchi, H. & Nonaki, I. (1986, January). The New New Product Development Game. Harvard Business Review, 64(1), 137-146.

Ingredients of a Growth Mindset: Connecting with Movies

I was watching a few movie clips to pass the time after a long week. And I watched the Harry Potter and Sorcerer stone clip on how Harry Potter was chasing one of the flying keys among many other masquerading keys. I had an idea at that point about having not one key but many keys that must work together to unlock the door of "Growth Mindset." In Lean framework, we categorize the growth mindset as the ability to learn about anything required by learning from failure, growing from challenges, and focusing attitude and efforts towards continuous growth. 

Inspired by this movie clip, I thought of various attributes of a growth mindset. In a fun way, I brainstormed with my sons on what growth meant to them in their school and career. I discussed some of my ideas with my wife and children.  Interestingly and unknown to me, I came up with eight different attributes that seemed to follow a pattern that were alphabetically sequenced. Now, I engaged with some creative fun to model these attributes as a key pointing towards the center (if the key looked like a carrot or radish, that demonstrates my creative ability 🤣) I added five concentric circles. Think of them as the Likert-5 scale with 1 at the outer ring and 5 being at the inner ring. The idea is that all the keys must be locked in simultaneously towards the inner core for growth to completely materialize.

Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's depiction of Eight Keys to a Growth Mindset 

Attitude is having that "Power of Now" contagious enthusiasm. I am not saying it is being always optimistic but being a realist to "practice the choice to see the brighter side of things" while "mitigating the risks or blind spots" (After all, isn't that what the Johari Window talks about without mentioning the word "Risk!"). As you can see, one's attitude is a function of their ability to recognize that failure is a steppingstone to success. It is like that "Moana" who chooses to fight!

Balance is having the emotional stability to "continuously play both yin and yang to be the best one can be." That is, have the delicate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state of mind. It is a demonstration of your practice of choosing the right attitude every day. True that life gets in our way and no plans work out as planned. Balance is recognizing this inner need! It is like that Po in Kung Fu Panda managing to find "inner peace" or "Aladdin" figuring a way out calmly when Jaffar locks him in a cave. Robert Schuller calls it, "Tough times never last but tough people do!"

Commitment is "following up and following through with actions to deliver results." (Please follow my blog on what follow-through is and how it differs from follow-up) It is laying the foundation with training, having mentors and coaches, facilitating and practicing walking the talk. Commitment derives from attitude and balance. Commitment shows character as we put SMART plans to grow and be an example for others. Woody in Toy's story demonstrates commitments towards his other team toys even when the going gets tough. At the same time, Woody demonstrates the right attitude when necessary (when other toys need help) and demonstrates the balance to keep Lightyear in check on his mission.

Divergent is having that "open mindset towards alternative thinking" (T, Pi, V, E/M shaped skill development). Concepts like design thinking and system thinking require one to have a big picture mindset. Our ability to grow will be limited if we are comfortable with what our strengths are. The longer we practice this "comfort zone" approach, the sooner our strengths will become our weakness and threat reducing or removing the opportunities. Be comfortable with discomfort and that is the only way to guarantee success. I always say that the best way to guarantee my stability is how I eliminate myself by leaving behind a legacy while seeking new ways to serve. Edna from Mr. Incredible exemplifies creating suites that best meet the super character's needs with divergent thinking applying multiple experiments.

Empathy is showing that we care! Empathy is demonstrating our commitment (action) towards causes that matter as well as people that matter! It is the "Pay it Forward" (which is a movie by itself) mindset that demonstrate not only divergent mindset towards people. Who else but Cinderella can demonstrates such kindness and empathy with actions to support all the animal friends! She is the perfect example of Empathy! Rafiki in Lion King must demonstrate that empathy and seek Simba out! Everyone needs to empathetically look out for others. Don't show sympathy as part of post-mortem but demonstrate empathy as part of ongoing lessons learned!

Focus is letting "distractions not impede commitment to actions!" Learning from mistakes and applying fail-forward thinking taking responsibility for actions are traits of focus. Not multitasking but getting jobs done even when risks and challenges throw a wrench! Po demonstrates continuous learning from every failure (although he needs his team to keep his balance) and Master Shifu learns from his mistakes that his teaching has to be modified to teach Po.

Global thinking is thinking beyond the local constraints and limitations. It is looking at the macroscopic impact ethically and morally rather than conventional limitations. It requires one to rise above the constraint with "divergent" thinking. While a "selfless" attitude brings a combination of "empathy" and "focus," the resulting commitment also requires one to "balance" themselves in their honest pursuit of results. Mulan may have left as an impostor to save her father from the King's orders, but the pursuit was due to a need to serve the entire country. She never gave up even when her identity was revealed. That's a commitment to global thinking.

Honesty is a commitment to character, integrity, and ethics. "You are your own benchmark, right!" Even when you do something wrong, it takes courage to stand up for your failure or lack of actions. Only then anyone can help you heal so that you don't feel continuously hurt. If Simba was honest about why he thought he was a failure from the stampede fiasco with Rafiki, would Rafiki have been successful? No. It is that commitment to character that stands tall as honesty.  Maui and Moana had to be honest with each other reconciling their fear and goals before they could emerge victorious as a team.

As you can see, each attribute feeds on each other. If Kaizen or Continuous Improvement is important, all these elements are required! I am not talking about continual activities which are events that happen repeatedly which are transactional. I am talking about continuous where we can review, reflect, and do things differently. That is the seeds of Kaizen! But not all of us may be at the level we need to be to lock into the inner core and regain our strengths and unlock opportunities. Whether it is a personal ambition or professional goal, all these elements should be at their maximum before they can be near the field-force of the inner core and bring the ikigai (the reason for existence or the famous questions like "what makes you happy?" or "what makes your heart sing?") to you!

What do you think? This was a fun exercise for me! Look forward to your thoughts on what other attributes I may have missed and how it may be unique and different from any of the eight attributes. I am all ears! 

Disclaimer: All the characters in the movies are referenced only to make connections with the principles. The movies and the character names belong to their respective owners. 

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2018). Reflections on a Group Discussion: 4 F's of Success.  https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2018/08/reflections-on-group-discussion-4-fs-of.html

Evolution and Revolution of Change Management

As I was in the last training session with my current project management professional training batch, I was discussing how change sticks within an organization. As I differentiate governance processes for managing changes within the context of a project or program related to introducing large scale change management, questions emerged on what is change management. Some members who had attended a 2-day Scrum Master class mentioned about ADKAR and another management learner discussed about Kotter's change management. 

And both these change management frameworks are good and relevant. While both ADKAR and Kotter's change management frameworks are powerful and relevant in today's organizational environment, the knowledge of the change management evolution can help understand how change is perceived, planned for, and implemented. One can then appreciate the richness of history in connections with both the influence and impact of change management framework. 

Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's Synthesis of Change Management Framework Timeline

Year	Model Name	Brief Explanation
~1947	Kurt Lewin 3-Stage	Kurt Lewin (1947) used the sociology and social science  concepts to introduce a 3-stage process. These 3-stages are "unfreeze, change, and refreeze." Before change can take place, a period must be allowed where no changes are allowed, and change is internalized.  Then change takes place as employees show involvement. This leads to knowledge sharing, leadership involvement to support the experiments, and then plans are put in place to implement the change.  As change slowly sticks, more change may be required where time must be allowed for the new changes to be internalized before the cycle repeats. Lewin used the analogy of a block of ice to be unfrozen to become water and then the water put in desired containers to be frozen again into ice.
~1969	Kuber-Ross Change Curve	Elisabeth Kuber-Ross (1969) ap6roached change from how people on the dying bed teach about change.  This change theory comes from the medical field particularly in hospice and hospital care.  Ross introduced the Change curve to demonstrate how people process change through their emotional lens of nearing end of life or seeing their loved ones or patients approach end of life.  People process the emotions of shock, denial, and disbelief of death. This frustration may turn into fear or anger. Then, they accept the immutable reality and slowly commit to adapting to the required change. During the first two stages of shock or frustration, no amount of motivation or feedback will be processed (because they are not actively listening - emotions have taken over). Slow and steady support and constructive feedback will help in the next stages rather than rushing through change.  While the stages of the Change Curve are very distinct from this field, these concepts really are analogous to how changes to have been unfrozen (not introduced too quickly) in the first two stages and slowly introduced in the change (accept) and freeze (commit) stages.
~1980	McKinsey 7S Model	Starting around mid-1970's, Waterman, Peters, and Phillips (1980) from McKinsey (a consulting organization) introduced the first organizational change management framework.  The seven stages were (no order) are strategy, structure, systems, skills, style, staff and shared values.  Strategy related to firm's alignment of their resources and capabilities to create competitive advantage. Structure focused on the way the firm is organized to deliver value using hierarchical relationships and roles and responsibilities. Systems tied the business and technical infrastructure to realize the goals and objectives. Shared values emphasized the display of behaviors supporting the firm's mission and vision. Style highlighted how the company's leaders demonstrated an inclusive culture for leadership to thrive. Staff comprised of the capabilities, skills, and competencies as well as the firm's ability to manage capacity, transition, and sustenance. Skills showed the firm's ability to deliver work and evaluate performance improvements.
~1991	Bridges Transition Model	Bridges (1991) Transition model differentiates change from transition. It states that changes [anyway] happen to people. Transition, [however], is internal - it's what happens in people's mind when facing and experiencing change.  This model draws parallel with the Kuber Ross' Change Curve Model in terms of emotions felt as change is processed. The three stages in this model include Ending, Neutral Zone, and New Beginning.  In the ending phase, people feel frustrated, show anger, demonstrate low morale and productivity, and are worried about the future. They find it hard to lose and let go. But this ending phase must end before they can arrive at the neutral zone. They are not ready for change yet as they feel adrift and lost. More listening ears are required like the other models in this stage. As they begin to leave the neutral zone, they feel they are facing a new beginning. The promise of the future brings new energy and a willingness to learn. With support and feedback, the change begins to stick with their renewed commitment.
~1996	Kotter 8-Step Model	Kotter (1996) underpinned action-oriented steps for change to stick within an organization. It improves on 7S framework in that the steps are actionable.  The steps are cyclical and iterate progressively on small increments of change. (Perhaps why more Agile practitioners like this approach) The 8 steps in the same sequence include the following. They are self-explanatory.  Creating a Sense of Urgency Forming a Guiding Coalition Developing Vision and Strategies Communicating the Change Remove Barriers to Action Accomplish Short-Term Wins Build on the Change Make Change Stick
~2006	Hiatt's ADKAR Model	More frequently called Prosci's Model due to its adoption in Prosci, this model is relatively recent. The model is build in five stages. These include in the same sequence. Awareness - Creates conscious need for change (Similar to creating sense of urgency) Desire - Shows intent to participate and support change (Similar to forming a guiding coalition) Knowledge - Demonstrates the skills and competencies on planning for change (Connects with developing vision & strategies and communicating the change) Ability - Highlights the desired skills and behaviors to implement change (Connects with removing barriers, accomplishing short-term wins, and building on change) Reinforcement - Shows steps needed to sustain change (Connects with building on change and making changes stick).

Have I missed out on any model or misinterpreted any connections to models? Share your thoughts.

References

Bridges, W. & Bridges, S. (1991). Managing Transitions. Boston, MA: Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Hiatt, J.M. (2006). ADKAR: A model for change in business, government, and our community. Loveland, CO: Prosci, Inc.

Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press

Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy & their own families. New York: Scribner, An imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Lewin, K. (1947). Field theory in social science. New York, NY: Harper & Row

ADKAR Model (n.d.)  Prosci. https://www.prosci.com/methodology/adkar

Waterman, R., Peters, T. and Phillips, J. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business Horizons, 23 (3), 14–26

Quality is a function of Risk

I was recalling the statement, "Quality = f (Risk)," in one of my PMP training sessions and one of them asked how quality relates to risk. The premise behind this thought was on the iron-triangle thinking that quality is controlled by scope, schedule, and cost! It seems like we have a lot of work to do still in understanding about risk and its impact!  

As this person was in semi-conductor space, I reasoned risk is like the hard-wired interrupt that takes precedence over soft logic in the way microprocessor operates. That got the attention. So, I continued to make a connection on the immediate topic of the "Cost of Quality" we were discussing and reasoned out the importance of risk.

Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's rendition of Quality is a function of Risk

In the diagram above, I have presented the cost of quality made up of two important branches. These are the cost of conformance to avoid risks happening in the first place and the cost of non-conformance to address risks that have happened. 

• To avoid risks as part of the cost of non-conformance, the best approach is to practice the "wisdom of the ages" saying, "Prevention is better than cure!" Here we take proactive steps to ensure quality planning (as part of the Quality trilogy) includes preemptive measures. This involves building quality using quality assurance (QA) with process oriented and proactive steps to train people, have multiple documentation (caters to multiple modes of learning), the appropriate equipment required and the required amount of time to do things correctly (e.g.: right-sizing stories to fit into the timebox, risk driven development methods to prioritize). 
• The next step is to evaluate how well our controls are working by performing quality audit on the work (PM/PO owns the quality audit). Here, quality control (QC) comes from the delivery team that comes in with reactive and product-oriented methods like testing (product testing), inspection (Gemba Walks), etc. 
• Now, if the errors are released such as not missed compliance or security considerations or misinterpreted requirements, or other forms of requests like change request or enhancements are noted, depending upon the triaging process, these could be show-stoppers disallowing the user to realize the intended benefit thus risking value delivery. So, rework may be required, or products may be discarded (prototyping or physical products) as scrap. These corrective actions are adding more time and cost and increase the opportunity cost of people unavailable for improving the benefit in the current project (working on newer functionality) or other business initiatives. Time may translate further into budget risks as available funding may be depleted to pay for contractors and infrastructure.  
• Finally, if these internal errors were not caught and were released to the customer, they become escaped defects! This impacts now the customer's value delivery life cycle as our faulty products may be used in their product assembly or our faulty code may be impacting their applications built. These translates into liabilities for the company, Warranty claims (ongoing free support, recall for the products at our expense) and perhaps even the business lost to competitors. 

As you can see, there are various forms of risks that interface the quality assurance, quality control, and escaped defects side of the equation with some additional risks foundational to the entire quality function in the company through its projects, program, and portfolio functions. The sooner they are addressed (as noted in the green color), the lesser the expenses are. As time passes through this cost of quality function from left to right, the intensity and visibility of risks through corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) to the business is high (as noted in color gradient going to red). 

So, am I not correct to say, "Quality = function(risk)"? Share your thoughts.

Risk Driven Prioritization: Challenges to Prioritization Techniques

I have always felt that if value is the focus of prioritization, the value should be prioritized equally by the risks to delivery. In other words, engaging in powerful questions (Rajagopalan, 2015) helps a lot and this behavior is driven from the leadership mindset (Rajagopalan, 2013). When sufficient focus of risks to delivery or risks to non-compliance exists, value is not delivered as the benefits are not realized! Instead, we run into the challenges of techniques without understanding risks.

Given below are most frequently used prioritization techniques and a brief discussion on what they lack that should be factored if not done consciously. 

Technique	Description	Risk Thoughts
RICE	Uses four different variables (Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort). Reach (R) is an estimate of the number of people that will be impacted. Impact (I) is an estimate of the extent of impact (like 5-high, 3-medium, 1-low). Confidence (C) is the team's confidence on the estimates given for reach and impact. Effort (E) is an estimate of time in the number of months. The formula is: (R*I*C) / E	On a positive note, it uses some level of analysis to compute the estimate. But this is a very ambiguous approach for the following reasons.  The scale used for R, I, and C are very arbitrary (somewhat ordinal in nature) There is not any data driven or risk planning on the number of people reached. Many organizations even find it difficult to quantify the reach and come up with a guess. Impact could be subjective in people's mind and there is no risk breakdown structure like explanation of what a 5-High is.  Confidence is also subjective and cannot replace the margin of error (or standard deviation). So, the result, while helpful, can't truly help prioritization.
WSTF	Weighted Short Job First addresses are somewhat analogous to RICE approach except that it uses different variables. It focuses on business value in terms of the cost of delay and job size. The cost of delay includes perceived Business Value (BV), Time Criticality (TC) and Risk Reduction (RR) (or Opportunity Enablement (OE). The formula is: (BV+TC+RR or OE) / Job Size	This approach has the same challenges as RICE but also improves on RICE somewhat significantly. It recommends the use of a Fibonacci type of scale for BV, TC, and RR/OE. That is an improvement compared to the ordinal type of subjective ranking.  Unlike RICE that uses a product of reach, impact, confidence, WSTF uses a summation.  Time Criticality is measured as sense of urgency without any due consideration for risks.  Risk Reduction or Opportunity Enablement is specifically listed here. Risk exposure scores are often a product of probability, impact, and sometimes detectability. So, adding risks do not help with true risk driven prioritization.
MoSCoW	Uses approaches like the Eisenhower Matrix. Uses four categories Must, Should, Could, and Wont (This is WONT, i.e., NOT do) to address prioritization. Must is associated critical element without which the project can't provide value Should is associated with important elements but not a must and can be deprioritized or postponed.  Could is considered non-essential or more of a nice to have enhancements or change requests. "Won't" is anything not going to be addressed now or soon.	All these four levels (Must, Should, Could, Won't) are subjective interpretations. Granted that there is some amount of categorization, but several ambiguities remain. The approach is biased based on subjective priority. There is no evaluation of impact (or severity). How are the relative priority between two Must items determined? Why is a Must Item a must? When will a Should Item be picked? As you can see, this approach is a good start but not a good one for prioritization at all. It only helps with a first level of categorization and is not the final level of prioritization. This is the reason why this approach is sometimes associated with Eisenhower Matrix which President Eisenhower used for decision-making on what he needs to address and what he needs to delegate!  Another technique I have heard is Yes-No-Not Now-Never. To me, this is analogous to MoSCoW and not much different.
Kano Model	This model uses delighters, performance, and basic as the drivers from a consumer market perspective. Basic features are those that are normalized and expected. Doing them does not give an edge but not having them will be a competitive disadvantage. (Similar to Hygiene factors in Motivation Theory) Performance features are those that are required. It is minimal expectations of the market.  Delighters are those features that people want to see or didn't expect to see! Doing them gives a competitive edge. (Similar to the Satisfiers in Motivation Theory)	This model is driven from the market research. Almost like a persona expectations of the market behavior. However, while it may serve as an external risk trigger, it does not quantify further (e.g.: deeper dive of PESTLEED, TECOP, etc.) and meet the individual risk driven considerations (e.g.: VRIO) for a product. Again, it is a good categorization for product backlog but does not help with prioritization of the individual items.
100-Points	This approach is an approach to engage stakeholders to prioritize when more than one is influencing or impacted.  Each stakeholder has 100-points to begin with.  Each requirement (or feature) is associated with a value that the team things will take to implement. (More like a price of a feature; hence this approach is also called 100-Virtual Currency Method) The stakeholders place their 100-points spread out on these features. A new cumulative sum is computed for each feature based on the stakeholder input. The highest value items are prioritized based on this cumulative sum (descending order).	This approach is fine but still has the challenge of how risks are communicated to the stakeholders and how much risks are factored by the stakeholders.  Bias and influence can help a feature be prioritized that the team can't handle or deliver.
Relative Prioritization	This approach is for the team to prioritize items already prioritized.	This helps with relative prioritization (for instance if two features are high, which one should be delivered first.)

As you can see, each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses. If it works for you, great! But risks are something that one must quantify and evaluate. In fact, I call such an approach to risk-based prioritization "risk driven development (RDD)". Here, the risks are identified, assessed, and evaluated with a risk exposure score. These risks are associated with requirements as well as the test cases (conformation criteria) as not all requirements are easy to test. Based on the sum of the risk scores on a requirement and test cases, the features can be prioritized. It is possible to use other methods in conjunction with this so long as risks are considered and there is a ratio level scoring mechanism included or at least a good risk breakdown structure included to avoid bias or subjective interpretation. 

What are your thoughts? Please share.

Rajagopalan, S. (2013). Essential Leadership behaviors for Agile Transformation. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2013/12/essential-leadership-behaviors-for.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Client Management: The influence of powerful questions.

Model Based System Engineering (MBSE): Relating Systems to Value

As part of the product analysis methods, I was discussing with my project management training class when these discussions really made me feel that there is a lack of fundamental understanding on model- based system engineering (MBSE) and its relationship to value. Much of the value decomposition was conceived by the professionals in my training class relating to the product backlog breakdown splitting a product epic into separate components and subdividing them into features and user stories for MVP and MBI/MMF. The focus was of requirements analysis splitting stories into smaller chunks for estimation and delivery lost the connections to the model-based system engineering (MBSE) concepts, such as the system engineering, systems analysis, value engineering, and value analysis, and their tight coupling to technical subsystem interfaces for a simple, secure, safe, stable, and sustainable product. 

Some of the familiar concepts of model-based system engineering also pave their connections with the processes for procurement and agreement management, project enablement and related outcome management, technical management, and the technology related management itself. Such concepts can be found in the ISO 15288 on how system related processes are mapped not only in designing the system but also in designing the processes around the system (Hall, 2018), which is not the product alone but the processes around operations (which is a portfolio component), programs (which focuses on benefits management) and projects (which focuses on outcome management). 

The concepts of managing these processes within a software context can be seen in the capability maturity model integration (CMMI) and the processes of continuous quality management (both QC and QA) can be seen in 6-sigma concepts. Even ISO 9000 umbrella of the ISO 9001 series to total quality management espouse these processes related to both technology and management of technology to ensure quality in numerous standards and regulations (Rajagopalan, 2023). This is what is emphasized by the agile principle, "Business and Technical stakeholders must work together daily!" While each industry may create different models depending on the specific products and their impact on clients and customers, a few generic MBSE concepts apply in all the industries. 

The MBSE concept is analogous to the fable that I heard in India about six blind children touching an elephant and describing the elephant. If elephant is the system and the blind children are the various stakeholders, we are describing the system from what we think we see/feel. Security, for instance, has a different meaning for the technical team members compared to the end users.

For simplicity, let us define the model as a feature-box (functional requirements and non-functional specifications) that adequately represents the set of inputs that can interface requiring the model to prioritize and the set of outputs it will generate. The model's behavior is controlled by a set of complex rules that are manageable. This model now represents the system that must be viewed closely and from far! This requires the system architect not only to see the auditability of the system for diagnosis (such as behavior, but paths also taken and the trails left, considerations for gracious shutdown, etc.). So, how do the system analysis and system engineering differ? 

The system analyst will use a combination of techniques (e.g.: data modeling, interface analysis, data flow diagram, and alerts & event triggers) to refine the model! This is reviewing the model at a close distance. So, the system analyst frequently will consider using class diagram, functional decomposition, sequence diagram, network diagram, entity-relationship model, and deployment diagram as well as the total-quality-management (TQM) foundations like the flowchart, scatter diagram, checklist, root cause analysis, and histogram. But the system engineering discipline observes the model from a long distance. 

Therefore the system engineer focuses on interference defining the boundary of the system (where the system can no longer sustain itself to be valuable), behaviors that exposes the system's vulnerabilities (model is no longer safe or secure without subjecting itself for damage or causing harm to others). The system engineer then uses market analysis, business rules analysis, concept modeling, scenario analysis, risk analysis, state modeling, interface analysis, decision-modeling, Gemba Walks, workshops, focus interviewing, SWOT/TOWS analysis, benchmarking, and brainstorming further supplemented by TQM techniques like control chart and pareto charts. Please note that these are additional techniques beyond the techniques used in the system analysis.

Now, both the system analysis and system engineering concepts can be extended to the extent of benefit (value) derived by the users and the performing organization.  These values can be looked at from multiple angles. One approach is the approach that I normally recommend as custom value, business value, technical value, and process value (Rajagopalan, 2019).  The goal of these exercises is not only to protect the customers and business but also look at efficiency gains through the combination of both the process and technical value giving a competitive market value! When all these areas are reasonably protected, they also enhance the future value (that can be measured using ROI, NPV, IRR) of the product within the product portfolio. The short-term focus will be value analysis and the long-term focus will be value engineering. 

Another lens, that in my humble opinion, extends from the previous discussions is how the model is sustained and supported. From this lens, we can evaluate model from flow (hence Lean), governance (hence Change Management), behavior (Systems Engineering and Value Engineering concepts mentioned earlier) and decision-making (hence Risk Management discipline, Costing Principles, and Costs of Quality considerations). A few refinements are required here.

• Flow is often thought of as work progressing across various statuses. This is horizontal flow. Flow also should be looked at vertically between projects, programs, and portfolios and multiple systems or projects that must work together. 
• Change Management concepts extend in such vertical value flow in terms of risk management, decision-making, funding, and resource planning that happens in program management, PI planning in scaling agile approaches, etc. 
• Governance can be supported at a lower level with workflows that enable faster decision-making and system traceability & auditability. 
• Behavior can vary very widely depending on the organizational processes as well as the maturity/direction required by the team. Hence, it could range from as simple as time tracking, waiting time evaluation, burn rate as well as evaluating negotiation considerations, team health, conflict resolution, etc. 
• The decision-making can be supported by some of the governance considerations, but it could also transcend other work authorization systems based on extensive funding considerations (e.g.: Efficient Frontier, portfolio balancing, resource optimization, etc.). 

What else I may be missing in MBSE definition? Please expand.

References

Hall, D. (2018). Systems Engineering Guidebook. Toney, Alabama: Hall Associates. https://www.incose.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/systems-engineering-guidebook---isbn-9780692091807bb88028572db67488e78ff000036190a.pdf?sfvrsn=365365c7_0

Rajagopalan, S. (2023). Risk Management: Birds' Eye View of some Standards and Regulations. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2023/08/risk-management-birds-eye-view-of-some.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2019). Requirements Management: A value mapping exercise. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2019/02/requirements-management-value-mapping.html

Overview of Stakeholder Engagement Techniques

Inspired by the quote, "Tell me about your friends, I will tell you who you are!" I used to tell any project manager "Tell me about stakeholder engagement strategy, I will tell you how successful your project will be!"  This is the same message when a group of learners in a project management professional certification asked about which models to use in stakeholder engagement.  Since projects come in many sizes of varying complexity and not all stakeholders are the same, there is no one correct answer for selecting the model that fits! 

Furthermore, Palan (2020) provides four different stakeholder persona which is a very interesting way to look at how stakeholders may be categorized. These include the following. So, each stakeholder persona focuses on several areas of the problem and their overall perception needs to be managed. Finally, in the end, all stakeholder engagement approaches are getting people to identify, deliver, and sustain value maximization (Barth, Ulvenblad, & Ulvenblad, 2017).

• HIPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion), 
• WOLF (Working on Latest Fire), 
• RHINO (Really High-value New Opportunity), and 
• Zebra (Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant).

In my book on Organized Common Sense (Rajagopalan, 2018), I expand on a basic technique on the ABC of Stakeholder. It is understanding the authority (power), behavior (influence) they have on people, and the extent of concern or care (interest). Over the years of my experience managing stakeholders, I have called these principles the ABC of stakeholders. Now, as the project size varies and depending on the stage the project is in, there are many techniques. Some are very common and some are not. 

1. Power-Interest Grid
• This is a very common technique (PMBOK, 2017) where people map the stakeholder engagement strategy with four quadrants. The X-axis has a interest on low-to-high scale and the Y-axis has the power on a low-to-high scale with (low, low) at the origin. Accordingly, four strategies emerge.
• High-Power, High-Interest 👉Manage Closely (Sponsor, Regulators)
• High-Power, Low-Interest 👉Keep Satisfied (Other Decision-Makers, Suppliers)
• Low-Power, High-Interest 👉Keep Informed (Delivery Team, Operational Team)
• Low-Power, Low-Interest 👉Monitor Marginally (Employees, Users)
• This approach is good for small-to-medium projects but doesn't scale very well for larger projects unless only critical stakeholders are captured. 
2. Stakeholder Map
• While the Power-Interest Grid is a good one to identify the way you engage with people, one can draw significant stakeholder-to-stakeholder influence, such as who has the listening ears of another, who has more trustworthy relationship, who can gather insights from other sources, etc. 
• The knowledge of these behavioral influence maps is inferred and observed and not necessarily drawn from the title or hierarchy in the organizational chart. 
• People can use arrows, colors, and size of the stakeholder circle in the quadrant to draw such influence directions so that this knowledge furthermore can be used (Anonymous, personal communication, PMI MassBay Chapter Meeting, 2014). 
• Since "influence" is about leadership and leadership is not just with a title, I prefer the Power-Interest over "Influence-Interest" or "Influence-Impact" or "Power-Influence" diagrams. 
• This approach is good for small-to-medium projects but doesn't scale very well for larger projects unless only critical stakeholders are captured.
3. Stakeholder Cube
• This approach is an attempt to scale power-interest grid (PMBOK, 2017) with the influence making three dimensions and evaluating the engagement strategy.
• This approach, in my experience, is more theoretical than practical as it is very hard for people conceptualize the strategy in three dimensions with influence being an observed behavior that can't be mapped to a quantitative or qualitative scale.
4. RACI
• This is a popular tabular structure indicating responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) (PMBOK, 2017) that maps people or the role to four areas. They include responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (Rajagopalan, 2014a). 
• There are many conceptual errors people inculcate due to the lack of understanding the power of this tool. Please read Rajagopalan (2014b) for more details.
• This tool will work well for larger projects, programs, and portfolios but care is required in capturing more critical stakeholders. 
5. Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix
• This is another good tool to evaluate the perception of the stakeholders' journey (PMBOK, 2017) in your project. Typically, these perceptions are that they are unaware of the project, negatively influenced and so resistant, neutral about supporting the project due to lack of connection with the project outcomes, supportive of project's outcome, or champions of the project.  Depending upon what stage of the stakeholder journey they are in, the strategy may involve informing, educating, or committing them. 
• This is also a good tool for small-to-medium projects. It can scale well for a larger project, program, or portfolio with some modifications of the critical stakeholders captured.
6. Stakeholder Register
• This is another popular tool and is more of a tabular structure (PMBOK, 2017) summarize essential details. It may be difficult to read the diagram and charts and so this structure helps with stakeholder-engagement to communication management plan. 
7. Salience Model
• This is a good model that makes the first attempt to scale to larger initiatives (PMBOK, 2017). Here, three variables are evaluated, and these include power, legitimacy, and urgency. 
• It uses the Powe∩Legitimacy∩Urgency Venn diagram to demonstrate seven types of stakeholders. 
• These involve dormant, discretionary, demanding stakeholders at the external side of power, legitimacy and urgency.
• The dominant stakeholder is between power and legitimacy, the dependent stakeholder is between legitimacy and urgency, and the dangerous stakeholder is between power and urgency. 
• The definitive stakeholder is at the intersection.
• The model does not recommend removing any type of stakeholder but expects one to evaluate the characteristics of when to engage them.
8. CATWOE Analysis
• This model recommends (Bergvall-Kåreborn, Mirijamdotter, Basden, 2004) looking at the categories of stakeholders and evaluate perceptions from their viewpoint. 
• It stands for customer, actor, transformation, worldwide view, owner, and environment. 
• Customer 👉 Mostly made up of company paying client or the client's customers or the company's direct end-users
• Actor 👉Any person or group responsible for delivering the solution (product, service, or result)
• Transformation 👉Any process, tool, or method that the actors use to convert input to outputs (This could be executional, decision-making, or operational processes)
• Worldwide view 👉 This aspect corresponds to high level policy and associated standards and regulations that they need to adhere and be compliant with. 
• Owner 👉This member or group is responsible for collective decision-making 
• Environment 👉The internal and external environment that facilitates all the above to work together (the people, process, product)
• In practice, the order of events should be Worldwide View, Transformation, Customer, Actor, Owner, and Environment 
• Worldwide view binds the reasons why projects or programs started (e.g.: regulation)
• Transformation investigates the internal and external processes that support the projects and programs to deliver
• Customer provides the requirements that the actors must evaluate to understand, fill the gaps, and prioritize (Backlog or scope)
• Actors work together to deliver the output, capability, outcome and benefit for value realization
• Owner approves the project for the team to continue their work 
• Owner and actor are also responsible to create the environment conducive for delivery 
• This model is more to ensure that everyone is on the same page in terms of the project scope and no shocks or surprises are present. It is more of a stakeholder perception management tool.
9. I-C-ICE
• This framework is large-to-larger projects mostly in the public services (IAP2 Spectrum, n.d.), such as building a city, highway or railway management, new supply chain route, airport and telecommunication network, etc. 
• It stands for Inform-Consult-Involve-Collaborate-Empower and predominantly derives support from many of the previous techniques such as Power-Interest Grid, Salience Model, RACI, etc.
10. Onion Diagram
• Just like the layers of onion, (some of you may be familiar with the layers of onion used in the Agile approaches), this approach derives its approach from identifying the stakeholders or stakeholder groups closer to the delivery team (Alexander, 2004). 
• Think of the core as the "Customer Operating System". The people closer to this core are the business analyst, product owner, project manager, developers, and testers. 
• The group in the next outer layer are operational team members, customer support, help desk, users, and some of the extended business teams (marketing, for instance).
• The next layer will be decision makers mostly internal to the company such as the sponsor and governance committee
• The next layer could be internal or external influential experts, consultants, suppliers, vendors, or regulators 
• The final layer could be a market research team focusing on competition, users, market segments, etc.
• While there are benefits to this approach, it also distances people and unless there is a good communication cadence to regularly collect voice of customer and voice of business feedback and ongoing market intelligence, there could be challenges. 
11. Proximity Chart
• This model is a revision of the onion diagram with some level of stakeholder engagement assessment matrix. 
• It has emerged from data analysis techniques on how closely data points related together on the central tendency.
• It still uses the layered approach but brings the SEAM approaches like who opposes the project and who supports the project to evaluate strategies.
• Stakeholder Map ideas can be brought here to draw influence directions. 
• It still has the same challenge of distancing people and requires frequent communication to ensure that stakeholders feel engaged and connected.
12. Resistance Pyramid
1. This approach emerged from the change management context on understanding how humans perceive and deal with change. The model was introduced by Nieder and Zimmerman (Galpin, 1996). Instead of using a layered concentric circle approach, this approach builds on a pyramid.
2. The layers of the pyramid list people that are not knowing about the project, not able to deliver on the outcome, and not willing to support the initiative. 
3. On either side of the pyramid, the reasons for their current state and the potential actions that can be taken are listed. 
4. I have seen people that breakdown the reasons with root-cause-analysis and further extend by force-field-analysis. 
5. While this is a good one in concept, some of the earlier techniques like Power-Interest grid and Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix are simpler and more manageable!

So, after reviewing these frameworks, that have been present for a long period, which is good? There is no one-size-fits-all. The more we look at these techniques, the more we can see that there are a lot of similarities and differences. Depending upon the specific project, pick what matters and improvise! If we recommend one as the best, then, it is like saying agile or traditional approach is a good candidate for all projects. 

What are your thoughts? I am sure I may have missed a technique in a specific industry. Let me know your thoughts.

References

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (2017). Project Management Institute, 2017. APA, 7th ed. Project Management Institute.

Alexander, I. F. (2004, June). A Better Fit-Characterising the Stakeholders. In CAiSE Workshops (2) (pp. 215-223).

Barth, H., Ulvenblad, P. O., & Ulvenblad, P. (2017). Towards a conceptual framework of sustainable business model innovation in the agri-food sector: A systematic literature review. Sustainability (Switzerland), 9(9), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9091620

Bergvall-Kåreborn, B., Mirijamdotter, A. & Basden, A. (2004). Basic Principles of SSM Modeling: An Examination of CATWOE from a Soft Perspective. Systemic Practice and Action Research 17, 55–73.

Galpin, T (1996). The Human Side of Change, San Francisco, Jossey Bass.

IAP2 Spectrum (n.d).  https://iap2usa.org/resources/Documents/Core%20Values%20Awards/IAP2%20-%20Spectrum%20-%20stand%20alone%20document.pdf

Palan, H. (2020). The dangerous animals of product management and how to tame them. Customer Think.  https://customerthink.com/the-dangerous-animals-of-product-management-and-how-to-tame-them/

Rajagopalan, S. (2014a). RACI: An important tool to manage project outcomes and stakeholder expectations. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/06/raci-important-tool-to-manage-project.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2014b). RACI: Errors and Implications in building the right one. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2014/07/raci-errors-and-implications-in.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2018). Organized Common Sense. Outskirts Press.

Gift of Teaching: Why it should matter to anyone?

"Why do you like teaching so much?" asked my son as I was wrapping a call with one of my students. It was not on a regular workday or during the evening that I teach. He has known me to teach at colleges and universities as well as through my own training organization (Agile Training Champions) that I founded with the only purpose of "Making a Difference." Yes, both my parents were teachers. So, I could say "Teaching runs in my blood!" To me, teaching is not for passing time but building society! 

Teaching, to me, is the way people create leaders! Teaching demonstrates one's love for the subject and builds character through that subject in students. In my humble opinion, if a student doesn't like a subject, it tells volumes about the teachers and their way of teaching! Why do people claim "Phobia for Math" in early grades in school?  Scientists call Math the Language of the Universe and how are we promoting the quest for knowledge in the younger minds? How are we creating love for the subject if we sow the seeds of fear for a subject? Teachers who love teaching teach their children to love learning!  

I had a good friend's sibling in school fail a subject back in India. This was many years back. I took it upon myself to teach this subject to the sibling, motivate continually and get the person to register for the exam again and finally succeed. I may not be available for every star fish that is washed ashore, but I made a difference to that one person's life! When this person managed to contact me several years later (as we got separated due to my stay abroad), the expression of how I mattered is priceless. Such "meaningful thank you" is what I am after when I say, "making a difference!"

Furthermore, teaching is not about showing expertise to students but being able to demonstrate our ability to learn from the students. It is a highest form of displaying modesty and humility! At a level that others see you as an expert, you demonstrate your vulnerability and willingness to learn from the students. In the movie, 'Taare Zammen Par,' the teacher takes an interest in a young student's way of expression and changes the perception of the school, the student's parents, and the life of the child by relating the autistic children! This is why I emphasize my reason for continuous learning as "The more I know, the more I understand how little I know. In that I learn continuously!"

Therefore, good teachers do not label or categorize students as 'slow poke,' as one of the teachers talked about my son. I wish the teacher who called Edison as being unable to learn anything can know how wrong the teacher was about Edison. As Dale Carnegie says in his book 'How to win friends and influence people?' emphasized, (paraphrased) "Even He does not judge us until after death; so, who are we to judge others?"

Good teachers owe their students the drive to let them own the 'continuous learning' and 'learning at every moment!" My classes focus on movies and anecdotal thoughts from such movies on many topics. "The ideas get cemented in my mind," said a few students from people that hear learning by association is a daily event! Students learn better when they experience their teacher's love for the subject and care for their students! That's why I continue to study not only fill my own gaps in knowledge but also demonstrate my love for making a difference. And, trust me, students monitor our progress and get motivated. "Fuel their fire for growth" is what teaching to me means! 

"Passion feeds knowledge and knowledge feeds passion!" No other profession other than teaching comes closer in this symbiotic relationship. Even though I know the subject at the back of my hand, I prepare for changes in the marketplace, new events that are relevant, and the type of audience in the class. So, every class is a project and so requires just enough planning to deliver the message better. And the students bring their rich experience and help you fill the gaps between sentences, words, and characters in your own subject! I am better in my concepts today because my students taught me!  

Good teachers enable their students to support their ongoing journey! They share their knowledge willingly and copiously through any and many forms as possible. In fact, to me, teaching is the best form of demonstrating servant leadership, situational leadership, and transformational leadership! In the movie, Hitchki, I remember a great saying about the teachers. 

"A normal teacher teaches, 

  a good teacher makes one understand, 

  a great teacher demonstrates how to apply the concepts, but 

  only some teachers inspire us to take a message forward"

If I can make a difference in one person's life by spreading through my life experience, teaching is the way I continue to "make a difference" by inspiring everyone that I have an opportunity to interface with. In the professional setting, this "teaching" may have additional forms like training, mentoring, and coaching (all of these have fine differences) but focus on making the other better while focusing on making ourselves better.

To my parents, siblings, friends, family, all the teachers, the students, coworkers, volunteers, and others that taught me and continue to teach me, thanks!

What are your thoughts?

Powerful Communication: Lessons learned from High School Essay Writing

As part of my projecting leaders of tomorrow (PLOT) initiative, I try to introduce the concepts of project management and agility to high-school students and sometimes non-project managers. One opportunity presented itself to me when a student approached regarding preparing to write a compelling essay for the scholarship. The student had some knowledge about the essay types such as argumentative, expository, narrative and descriptive styles but was still having 'writer's block'. I viewed this problem analogous to how many professionals communicate leaving the stakeholders to wonder what is being asked of them! Any artifact, project status report or graphical widgets, like essays written in school should focus on what is the outcome desired from the report, graph, or essay delivered. 

Let us first differentiate the four essay types. An argumentative essay uses credible research to develop a factual or evidence supporting opinion. For instance, "Did remote team environment exist before the COVID-19 pandemic?"  To some extent, this argumentative essay builds on a hypothesis or a thesis statement. Instead of asking a question, one can make a statement that "Remote team environment exist before the COVID-19 pandemic" and use research from credible sources to support or refute it. In statistical circles, we call this approach null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis where we use data to support the evidence. The difference in this argumentative essay is that we are not building statistical or empirical data analysis to support but to use insights and opinions using qualitative research. 

The expository essays come from a position of knowledge or sometimes to test the understanding of your subject. These essays are more of an "an expert's take" approach. The goal here is not to evaluate whether you are using your analytical skills to support your thesis. Instead, the approach takes on bringing a delicately balanced views so that the knowledge to avoid any appearance of motivational or cognitive bias. For example, "The COVID-19 pandemic tested everyone's digital literacy to work remotely!" is a statement that you would like to test your understanding. While you may prove the plethora of tools that came up during the pandemic and how it facilitated people to maintain relationships, you can also discuss the challenges of computer literacy and security issues that made many people vulnerable to hacking. Again, this essay can leverage from both qualitative, quantitative, or a mixed research style. 

The narrative essays are built on a personal touch! This essay is more of an opinion piece! They could be emotional or factual depending upon the specific story. For instance, the "Heroes Journey" to storytelling (Rajagopalan, 2020) is a narrative essay approach. One can write "Global Warming was reduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic where people worked remotely!" Most of the moviemaking is a story telling exercise that weaves a personal message. I recall a technique (Skip Weisman, personal communication, Jun 13, 2018) from my coach. This approach here is to leverage curiosity by setting the characters in the circumstance, existence or development of conflict, definition of cure, appearance of change during the pursuit of cure, ability to callback or carryout the activities amid the challenges and finally come to the closure. 

The descriptive essay is becoming a creative artist in telling a part of the narrative essay. It frequently makes emotional connections! We all know Yoda and Dark Vader or Simba and Pumpaa. As soon as you read these character names, they appear in your mind! When you think of Spiderman, you think of his lifestyle in a busy New York downtown. You are not thinking of Simba in downtown New York or Spiderman in Pride Lands in Africa!  Such an artist's rendition of the place the story took place or the object/person that had the challenges is brought in the form of powerful words. I recall one of the best opening statements from Jeffrey Archer's book, Kane and Abel, that reads, "She only stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream" describing how a mother gave up life during childbirth. 

So, how do these four essay types compare with project level communication (or for that matter communication in professional lives)? I have mentioned in my book on organized common sense that the communication falls under persuasive, informatory, or exploratory (PIE) communication. I call this the communication PIE. 

1. The persuasive communication is required when you are recommending a decision (terminating a project, funding a program, etc.). These types of communication are therefore either argumentative or expository depending on the level of subject matter expertise you bring to the table. 
2. The informative communication is more of a status quo balancing multiple elements (scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, procurement, stakeholders, resources, change) and so is often an expository level of communication. 
3. The exploratory communication is often taking some level of persona to try out an experiment and so I view them as narrative essays. 

The descriptive can be used in combination with the narrative essays for larger level vision and direction to motivate people! For instance, by integrating our processes around one application lifecycle management tool, we benefit from reducing the operating expenses by 30% increasing our likelihood of employees receiving annual bonus. Imagine what that extra bonus in your hands can do! Fund your children's education, make that dream vacation possible, etc. Now, you are painting a picture of what is to come and what people need to do to realize that reality.

What are your thoughts? Thoughts? 

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2020). Leaders are good story tellers. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2020/03/leaders-are-good-story-tellers.html 

Team Management Guidelines: Treasure from my Archives

As I was doing Fall cleanup of my room, I felt ecstatic when I found one of my scribbled notes on an old journal record on the guidelines on team management. It was one of the preparations I had done for a PMO round table on team management. The guidelines were the recommendations of  Jerry Wellman (2011). While the concepts were straight forward here, I decided to put this here with some additional thoughts and share it for the community. All the eight habits are recommendations from Wellman (2011) and although these are recommendations for project teams, I feel that it applies to any type of strategic and executional team.

1. Shared Vision
• Establish Clear Roles - This is not to indicate titles but roles with broader responsibilities
• Develop the Objectives together to foster buy-in - Teams work together better if they co-author the working agreements
2. Set Expectations
• Translate overall vision into specific objectives - Discuss in clear unambiguous terms how the vision is mapped into strategic objectives (product, program, portfolio, etc.)
• Discuss commitments - availability, updates, process checks - As people commit to work, ask them to think about other elements that will endanger their commitment. 
3. Integrated Plan
• Decide on deliverables for the project - What, when, who, how, why? - While we discuss deliverables within in the project context, explore alternative thinking on these same thoughts for backlog refinement and phased approaches to rolling wave planning.
• How do you measure success? - Ensure that we agree on what matters to the team's health! Measure what matters rather than what can be measured.
4. Measure Performance
• Synchronous and asynchronous focus on status - With remote teams, don't ask for meetings at hours that make it difficult for team members in other time zones to meet. Use both synchronous and asynchronous means to validate success. Promote unambiguous written communication.
• Act as each other's eyes - Don't just see what you want to see - Yes, although is a cliche that it takes a whole village to build a village, it truly a fact! 
5. Allow for Uncertainty
• Be flexible - Identify risks and prepare for them - What more can I say here that I have not already said!
• Discuss risks and treatment plans identify triggers in advance - Identify triggers that can make the risks materialize! Have a plan to monitor risks!
6. Manage Change
• Identify slips proactively and have a plan to manage change - There are supposed to change management protocols and governance. Use an audit-based governance mechanism to promote expedited approvals. 
• Monitor change with client and internal teams - Remember change occurs everywhere all the time. So, be an agent of change from both the external and internal environments!  
7. Continually Influence
• Think outside the box - clients are reasonable and understanding - Don't complain about unreasonable clients. Are you ready to listen to their "unreasonable vendors"? 
• Think laterally to influence - Influence is all about leadership bringing behavioral changes to others - external and internal to the delivery team.
8. Regularly Over-Communicate
• Understand various means to communicate and use all channels effectively - Be comfortable with writing/speaking on all the channels of communication
• Even if it is common sense, communicate. - Let others be the judge of the information they receive!

Thoughts not in bold and italics but after the hyphen in every element are my extension of ideas! Happy to hear your thoughts.

References

Wellman, J. (2011). Eight habits of successful project teams. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan 

Product Backlog is not a Queue

Following up with a few PMP certification candidates during their preparation, I heard people say, "We put any idea into a queue in the backlog." In general, lean management thinking discards the concepts of large queues or batch sizes as these large queues increase the risk of non-delivery and non-compliance. I am sure we have all written a large list of things to accomplish in a day or week only to find that we accomplished only a percentage of them. Fundamentally, queue and backlog serve different purposes and to say that we queue up ideas in a backlog means we may set ourselves to fail without clear understanding of these terms. 

Both the backlog and queue are containers for work. But the type of work in them is different. The fundamental difference is that the backlog continuously grows requiring prioritization, but the queue is fixed and work in progress. Consequently, the backlog contains future oriented ideas to develop the product. It could be a type of change requests, experiments, enhancements for currently working functionality, and non-functional features. But the items in the queue are work in progress items frequently mentioned in the iteration backlog or the release backlog depending upon how agile is practiced in an organization (single cadence due to the nature of the product, for example).

Items in the backlog therefore require research and evaluation by both stakeholders and team members to assess their market fitness of these capabilities on several different attributes such as alignment to strategic initiatives (objectives and goals) as well as the ability to deliver (infrastructural considerations and team's ability to deliver and sustain). So, backlog items are often evaluated for desirability, viability, and feasibility and these concepts are discussed as part of Design thinking as well (Chasanidou, Gasparini, Lee, 2025).  The prioritization techniques (Rajagopalan, 2023) could involve Kano Model, MoSCoW model, etc.

Items in the queue are supposed to avoid buildup. This is the reason why Lean Manufacturing introduced the Work-In-Process (sometimes called Work in Progress) or WIP to limit them. The idea is that the flow is maintained. Everybody should be able to remove the WIP and pick up the next prioritized item, thus requiring the cross-functional orientation (Here is where T, Pi, V- and E-shaped skills came into existence). I am sure people can relate to the notions of FIFO or LIFO queues with the goal that we are constantly cleaning the queue. These are items committed to be done by the team and hence prioritization may be already addressed. But their ability to unblock themselves cannot be ruled out. Therefore, people employ other techniques like RICE (Reach-Impact-Confidence, Effort) or WSTF (Weighted Short Job First) as well (Rajagopalan, 2023). 

Last but not the least, the product backlog, release backlog, and iteration (or sprint) backlog are the same containers. 

1. When no release/iteration is assigned to an item in the backlog, the backlog is called the product backlog. This could contain a high-level use case good for research, experimentation, exploration, or spike, or a major epic that is a breakdown of the capability which is still too big for the team to do anything about it. It could also contain other features or user stories that the team decided to park for later consideration. 
2. When a group of iterations are packed due to the need to integrate the increments from each release and release as part of a single cadence, then, the items assigned to a release belong to the release backlog. Frequently, features and user stories are part of this release backlog.
3. When backlog items are in fact assigned directly to an iteration rather than a release, these items belong to an iteration (or sprint) backlog. Items in the iteration backlog could be part of the single cadence, multiple cadences, or release on demand. Iteration backlog contains both the user stories (Iteration Planning - Part 1) and tasks (Iteration Planning Part 2). 
4. Queues apply in the iteration backlog as that is where work happens to create the increments. Based on the working agreements negotiated within the team's ways of working, many activities may exist for some release level tasks or activities that make up the definition of done for the user stories, etc. The more cross-functional and self-organizing the teams are the better the queues will be managed.

The diagram below illustrates.  

Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's synthesis of Backlog and Queues

So, let us make sure that we understand the terms right so that we don't propagate confusion and compromise clarity. 

What are your thoughts? Have I missed, misinterpreted, or miscommunicated any concepts. I am all ears! 

References

Chasanidou, D., Gasparini, A.A., Lee, E. (2015). Design Thinking Methods and Tools for Innovation. In: Marcus, A. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability: Design Discourse. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9186. Springer, Cham.

Rajagopalan, S. (2023). Risk Driven Prioritization: Challenges to Prioritization Techniques. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2023/02/risk-driven-prioritization-challenges.html

Critical Path: Does it still apply in today's digital projects?

Some of the questions that come up in my project management training oscillate between when to use the critical path techniques and why to use critical path in an agile context. My analogy to these questions is, "If the job required a wrench, why use a screwdriver? If the job really requires a screwdriver, why not use it?"  I am sure some of you may recall the inspiration behind my question comes from the very old discussions on the common object request broker (CORBA) where one of the cartoon pictures summarized, "If every problem is a nail, a hammer is the only tool required!" So, the question to ask us is if all the projects are the same! The project management framework identifies several techniques and tools (not commercial tools) that must be evaluated for its purpose to solve. 

Extending this analogy, let us first understand the critical path. This technique has been present for several decades and was introduced in the middle of the 20th century around the mid-1950s. Construction, Defense, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Transportation industries were predominant during that period building infrastructure like raising huge cities, shipping yards, rail roads, hospitals, defense systems, and highways. While there was also a limited amount of computer-based software and research and design initiatives, the mindset was that most of the projects should have a detailed breakdown of jobs to ensure resources were lined up when needed to avoid delay. 

For instance, when certain workers were required to offload shipments when the ship arrived, this project was staffed with these workers around that time rather than wasting their capacity waiting for the ship to arrive. Such a concept of just-in-time (JIT) costing models were pivotal to using the capacity and capability and so projects required understanding what types of activities are crucial. So, finding the longest path in the project that can't afford to slip (hence the term Float came up) was required given the two sets of book ends (early start, late start and early finish, late finish). This is the reason why the concept of critical path emerged. 

Now, let us fast forward about 50 years! We still build/upgrade infrastructure, we are also building new innovative products in the digital sphere. Software has completely eaten the world where there is not a single industry that does not have some kind of software tool or software simulation. The notion of plan-driven (Traditional), change driven (Agile) and flow-driven (Kanban) are coexisting today. In the case of Adaptive or Agile initiatives, the same team is working on the functionality in a timeboxed manner and so why is critical path required? Similarly, when flow driven initiatives apply, it is still the same core team working to eliminate queue and streamline flow invalidating the need for critical path as the focus is only on one or two items in the swim lane. One of the very reasons why the INVEST property come into picture is to eliminate the dependency among the work committed by the team (Independent). Consequently, these approaches eliminate dependency in the first place invalidating the need for critical path (activity sequencing) and using the critical chain (schedule based). 

Nevertheless, still some projects may benefit from a critical path. This may involve projects in the early stage that evaluate the approximate cost required or the approximate time required to deliver. So, when Agile itself is an overhead as projects need not have such an increased interaction (e.g.: A continuous email marketing project) or the risk of experimentation may be too high (not doing the soil study before laying the foundation for a skyscraper), then, the critical path foundations may still apply. 

So, the critical path is just one more tool. Use it wisely where it is needed. Not apply it in all types of projects. 

Thoughts? 

Am I Ready to Manage? Lessons from Risk Management

One of the people I was mentoring mentioned to me that there is a possible promotion with the expectation of managing people. Having been a project manager for some time, the person asked me if the person is ready to manage people. I have always felt that "P" in "Project" is all about managing "People" (Rajagopalan, 2015). So, naturally I felt that this person had the capabilities, skills, and competencies. The larger question is not being ready but being good enough to manage people. There are things about managing people's performance and having responsibility for their career, some of which can be known. Then, there are areas about equal employment opportunity, diversity and harassment considerations, and many other human resources related concepts. The lack of knowledge about unknowns morphs the question of being ready. 

I reasoned with the concepts of risk management discipline that this person was confident about. In my mind, Risk Management is about using change management principles to balance chaos and control. The risk management discipline promotes the notion of risks that we know about and the risks that we know about their impact on objectives. Consequently, extending the risks that we don't know, or we don't know the impact of, we come up with four categories of known-known, known Unknown, Unknown-Known, and Unknown-Unknown. 

I view the unknown-unknown as a category of risks that belong to chaos. Due to the unpredictable nature and the unknown impact on our objectives, we need to be diligent. Regardless of how diligent we are, we can never be prepared enough. So, this is where we connect with probing for what happened, analyze what we could have done, and we can sense them better in the future. As you can see, the more we do this type of probe-analyze-sense, the more we are becoming of the impact and so moving them towards the right to establish chaotic control.  So, when such similar risks hover on the horizon, we can now probe but our prior knowledge helps to categorize (risk breakdown structure) and sense the preemptive treatments. So, although it is somewhat chaotic, we are establishing some level of chaotic control. 

On the other hand, if we can study the chaos and understand its root cause, we know more about its existence but require more understanding of these risks manifest. These types of risks are then becoming controlled chaos requiring us to sense-analyze and then categorize. The more we analyze both these chaotic control and controlled chaos, the more we are controlling the influence (both their likelihood and impact) of risks on the project objectives. I am sure some of you can relate to the similarities of categorizing projects like the Fog (Unknown-Unknown), Quest (Known-Unknown), Movie (Unknown-Known) and Paint by Numbers (Known-Known) (Rajagopalan, 2018) based on risk management discipline. These concepts are illustrated below.

Dr. Sriram Rajagopalan's synthesis of Emotional Intelligence Concepts with Risk Management

So, how does this risk management discipline help with our questions of assessing if we are ready to manage or lead? The important thing in managing people is to illustrate to ourselves that we are good leaders. This means that we use ourselves as the instrument of emulating the behaviors we want in the people we manage. That thought borrows from emotional intelligence by first becoming consciously aware of us (self-awareness is rooted in known-known) and then engaging in self-management (known-unknown). Consequently, we move on to Unknown-Unknows (social skills) and work with people instilling trust to get them to known-known (relationship). 

I recall an excellent article by Hill & Lineback (2011) guiding us in this space. They recommend that we ask ourselves questions relating to how we manage ourselves, how we manage the network, and how we manage our team (Hill & Lineback, 2011). The list of questions they promote in this area are as follows:

Manage Oneself [Known-Known]

1. Do you use your formal authority effectively?
2. Do you create thoughtful but not overly personal relationships?
3. Do others trust you as a manager?
4. Do you exercise your influence ethically?

Manage Network [Unknown-Known]

1. Do you systematically identify those who should be in your network?
2. Do you proactively build and maintain your network?
3. Do you use your network to provide the protection and resources your team needs?
4. Do you use your network to accomplish your team's goals?

Manage Team [Known-Unknown]

1. Do you define and constantly refine your team's visions for the future?
2. Do you clarify roles, work rules, team culture, and feedback about performance for your team?
3. Do you know and manage your people as individuals as well as team members?
4. Do you use your daily activities and problems to pursue the three imperatives?

All these questions are exactly from Hill & Lineback (2011). As you engage in this experiment, you are consciously using your network and team to elevate unknown-unknown (blind spots). So, instead of being complacent that you know everything or sometimes even overdoing the strengths, you use humility and trust to let your team. I recall Barbara Trautlein's change intelligence concepts here as she asked people to ask themselves the following four questions:

1. What is your primary change leadership style - Using Hearts (People), Head (Purpose), or Hands (Process)?
2. What are the strengths of your style as a change leader?
3. How do you sometimes overdo your strengths making you less effective as a change leader?
4. What are the blind spots of your styles making you miss or neglect elements as a change leader? 

The more we become complacent or comfortable as a manager without continuous improvement on ourselves, the more we turn our strengths into weaknesses. As the recommended strategy is to always lead with your strengths, the less you sharpen your skills as Stephen Covey (1987) says, the more you are not ready. As my Chief Operating Officer once told, a good manager lets the team manage the manager. When we rate each of these questions on a scale of 1-5 and get 3 or more in each question, we are just ready. If any section is <=12, then, we must evaluate improvement opportunities. Check with a better mentor or coach and a good manager will sometimes find them in their own people they manage! 

References

Covey, S. (1987). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kent, L.A. & Lineback, K. (2011). Are you a good boss - or a great one? Harvard Business Review, January-February, 3-8.

Rajagopalan, S. (2015). Project is a verb in Project Management. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2015/10/project-is-verb-in-project-management.html

Rajagopalan, S. (2018). Organized Common Sense. Outskirts Press.

Trautlein, B. (2016). Communicating Change: Tell your story (Handout). Distributed in the PMI MassBay Professional Development Day 2016.