Transparency Allows Better Discovery

My friend and colleague Sameer Bendre and myself are currently serving as Co-Product Owners for the PMI Community of Practice (CoP) blog. Like any challenge I accept, I like to eat my own dog food.  What that means is if we're going to have a blog about Agile, we should take an agile approach to its creation.  Though I wouldn't say the following is exclusively Agile, I am listing some content from a Product Owner training deck. There will be three things I guarantee: Transparency, Inspection, Adaptation

Transparency -Honesty about progress & problems Inspection - Feedback will come from real customers & users Adaptation - Tweaking of blog based on feedback & goals

Because we're initiating a project, Sameer and I are going through some discovery.  First up is project orientation.   We're doing process analysis, we're understanding scope and objectives, and we're creating the initial product backlog.

But, are we ready to start blogging?   To do so, we need to ask ourselves Why, What, and How.

Why?

What are the stakeholders’ goals?

What?

What is the Outcome Vision?  What is the end result?

How?

What is the Implementation strategy?

Yesterday I heard an awesome quote, as I sat in on a Product Owner class.  My colleague Arlen Bankston quoted Peter Skillman.

Enlightened trial-and-error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius

I've never been one to silence that inner voice.  If I have a problem, I share it and have faith in the collective minds of my readers to propose a solution.  I'm not saying I don't have vision.  I do.  What I'm talking about here is an impediment or a problem.  When I looked at the web address of the Agile CoP blog, I noticed that it was deep in the PMI website.  There was no link from the homepage.  The Agile CoP blog can only be viewed by (logged in) PMI members.  So, the question I have to the CoP members is, how do we get the word out?  How do we blog about things that others (outside of our immediate group) will actually read?

My short term solution is to repost here, on the Critical Path blog.  The next thing I would propose is someone convince PMI to allow more people to post on the Voices blog.  It's the only PMI blog that appears to be open to the world.  If PMI wants Agile readers, they need to open the blogs to more readers.

In closing, I'm not lambasting PMI.  I'm bringing attention to both an issue and an opportunity.  I want more visibility to what our CoP has to say.  I want to have our voices be heard.

HT: Pictofigo for the drawing

C-3P0 Timebox

My family and I recently went to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. My wife was extra excited because it was going to be "Star Wars" weekend at Hollywood Studios while we were there. Imagine parades filled with Star Wars characters, Storm Troopers and Clone Troopers everywhere...and the force being with us (or maybe not). My wife was very excited when she found out she had a chance to get a picture taken with and get an autograph from Anthony Daniels of C-3PO fame. This is how it was to go down. When the park opened, a predefined amount of tickets would be given to those people standing in a line. Once those tickets were gone, there were 30 remaining "standby" tickets. There would be two autograph sessions, lasting one hour each. IF Mr. Daniels got through the "guaranteed" group of ticket holders in less than one hour, he would then start to greet the standby ticket holders in the order in which they arrived that morning. We were standby ticket holders #19, #20, and #21 (out of 30). Everyone was required to stand outside in the sun until their ticket number was called. They were then allowed into an air conditioned building to meet C-3PO. When they were done, the "beaming" fan exited the building.

Well, the morning session (in close to 90 degree heat) came and went. The first 10 or so standby ticket holders did get in. We were told to return in the afternoon. Upon returning in the afternoon, the guaranteed group came and went and as we watched the clock tick closer and closer to the one hour mark, they accepted standby after standby. We had convinced ourselves that certainly Mr. Daniels would understand that there were only a few people left in line and would stay the extra 5-10 minutes it would take to greet us and sign a quick autograph. Unfortunately, after #17, a representative walked outside and told us that Mr. Daniels had to leave for another scheduled engagement.

At first, I was pretty pissed. Seriously? He couldn't accept just a few more people and get through 100% off ALL of the people standing in line? No, later I thought about it. He had a timebox. He had exactly two one-hour sessions. He was going to get through as many autographs as he could but he still had to leave after one hour, regardless. He agreed to sign a specific amount of autographs and he met that commitment... and he exceeded it.

Have you had that situation happen to you as either a ScrumMaster, Project Manager, or Stakeholder? As a stakeholder you feel ripped off because someone else got something delivered and you didn't. As a ScrumMaster, you have to allow the team to commit to do the work. You can't force work upon them. As a Project Manager, you have to explain to everyone that if you let the time constraint slip, you would be asked to do that every time there was a commitment. You've heard it before. Please, just one more thing. Please, just one more day.

Mr. Daniels, you did the right thing. You kept your commitment. If that gig as protocol droid doesn't work out for you, I'd hire you.

Niko-Niko Calendar

niko-niko

While I was at the recent Agile Leadership Network (ALN) event earlier this month, Dave Nicolette presented a talk on metrics.  I'll admit, I'm fascinated by metrics.  I remember working on the NIH Executive Dashboard and then the NCI Dashboard between 2004 and 2007 .  But since then, I've grown to look at metrics differently.  Though I've taken steps to ask myself questions to ensure my metrics are worth something,  I've seen the Hawthorne Effect in action and it made me question how metrics can be easily manipulated. Don't you hate it when you're trying to measure team performance and then they start acting all crazy due to upcoming dates like the end of the sprint or the end of a deployment cycle?  I've seen developers start to rush.  Risk goes up and quality can go down, just to try and maintain a velocity.  Well, Dave showed a slide in his metrics presentation that really hit home for me.  It's called the Niko-Niko (mood) Calendar. Let's say your position in the company is to ensure customer satisfaction.  A useful unit of measure would be NPS (Net Promoter Score).  Think of it as a customer satisfaction or “happiness” metric.  NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories: Detractors, Passives, and Promoters. By asking one simple question — How likely are you to recommend [Company X] to a colleague or friend? — you can track these groups and get a clear measure of company performance through its customers’ eyes.  I've written about it before in a post titled Outdated Success Criteria.

That's all fine and good but what if your position in the company is to ensure employee satisfaction?  As a manager or a leader you should be working to keep your employees happy.  How would you measure their happiness?  You could use a Niko-Niko calendar.  Each individual on a team should identify their daily mood in one of three ways: happy, indifferent, or unhappy.  Because I keep a daily journal of what I do, I recreated a calendar to see if there were any trends.  Do you see any?  Can you see the the days I was working at my other job and I was dreading a particular meeting?  Can you see the days I spoke to LitheSpeed or when I was hired by LitheSpeed?  Though you can't make everyone on your team happy, as a manager or servant-leader, you should be creating an environment that will, in the end, make them happier and more productive.  If everyone on the team maintained a mood calendar, a manager or leader could take action before negative feelings become caustic to a team.

Theme Park Pull System

If you've been to a theme park like Disney World's Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios, you will quickly notice the lines.  Depending on the time of year (or day) the line to a ride or attraction could be anywhere from nonexistent to 90+ minutes long.  As you approach an entrance, you'll see a line marked on the grounds and a sign that reads "N minutes from this point". You want the sign to read 5 minutes.  That's the time it takes, with no wait line, to get to the actual attraction.  What you don't see from the line on the ground is the maze of lines snaking their way through the building.  If the volume of people is low, everything except the direct line to the attraction is roped off.  The more the people, the more "side" lines are open.  The line outside the attractions are deceasing.  The real delays start after you cross that line marked on the ground and are committed. I noticed that attractions usually lasted less than 5 minutes and people were divided into groups, just prior to onboarding some kind of transportation.  The transportation ran at a consistent rate of speed.  All these factors included, Disney World has to know the maximum throughput of a ride, before the line starts to back up. Why do you ask?  Well, to keep the customer happy by keeping them moving, of course.

When I saw all of this happening, I thought it was an excellent example of a pull system.  We went on a ride called "Star Tours".  The vehicle capacity was 40 people and the ride duration was 4:30 minutes.  We noticed the sign said 90 minutes from this point.  Can you imagine doing that with a 5-year-old?

Star Tours Capacity=40 people per load Lead Time=90:00 minutes Actual Duration=4:30 minutes

So, what does Disney do to help resolve the issue?  They call it the Fast Pass.  Yes, the golden ticket.  When you see the line at its worst, go up to a kiosk and get a Fast Pass.  It will tell you to return to the ride at a designated time.  In exchange for doing that, it will allow you to go to the head of the line, when that time comes.  I am assuming they are having you return at a predicted time of day in which the line will be shorter.  Regardless, it eliminated the bottleneck for us.  Whenever we saw a hellish line, we got a Fast Pass and came back later in the day.

To prevent the Fast Pass people from completely stopping the line, it appeared a certain percentage of seats per load were allocated for Fast Pass ticket holders.

I think this Fast Pass option may also work with non-theme park customers.  Let's say you are working on an application development project.  After you have an optimum cycle time, if you reserve a little capacity, you could potentially negotiate with a stakeholder to postpone an activity to a date or time in which you know the workload will be less.  I'm not saying you are postponing adding the work to your backlog.  It's still there.  But, you could agree to make it a lower priority until more of the backlog gets completed.  This could keep the rest of the work moving at an optimum pace and keep the customer happy.

Drawing by Pictofigo

P in your Network

I've recently been paying more attention to signs and indicators. Though Stop signs or Yield signs are a given, I'm talking signs that you find around homes (Welcome to our ool. Notice there is no "P" in it. Let's keep it that way) and businesses (Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster with energy). Last night, I attended the monthly APLN DC (Washington DC Chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network). When friend and colleague Manoj Vadakkan kicked off the event last night, he announced that both the name (APLN) and logo had changed.  It will now be known as the Agile Leadership Network.  After telling people for the last few years that they could leverage agile principles and values in areas other than software development or just projects, I'm happy to see the change.  It should certainly help reinforce concepts like servant-leadership, outside of the application development world.  I went to the "new" ALN website and read a message on behalf of the board of directors.

In keeping with the agile spirit, APLN has continued to evolve since its inception. Over the last year or so, the national board has had an ongoing discussion about “getting the ‘P’ out”. That’s ‘P’ as in ‘Project’; as in Agile ‘Project’ Leadership Network. Why do that?

As agile practices for software development projects have become more prominent, broader application of agile principles and values has come more to the forefront. It is not that we no longer want to talk about these projects; we do and will. But we also want to talk about more than projects and we think the 10-year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto is an appropriate milestone to recognize that evolution.

Let this be notice to everyone out there to start updating their websites or documents listing APLN.

Motivate Your Team

You should be looking for ways to motivate your team every single day. You could bring them donuts or bagels. You could give out monthly awards or public recognition. You could also give them a pep talk.  All it takes is one minute of encouragement to change their day for the better.  So, here is your pep talk for today.  Take 55 seconds, watch the video, and I challenge you not to have an awesome day.  This kids could be the next Tony Robbins!    

I Got a Feeling

I was sitting at my desk when this song by the Black Eyed Peas called "I got a feeling" came on Pandora.  My son rushed over yelling to turn it up. I attribute turning up the volume to the resulting earworm that has lasted the last few days.  There could be worse things in the world.  Each time I hear it, I think of the flash mob that danced in Chicago for Oprah.  It amazes me how so many (strangers) came together to create something that brings a smile to my face every time I see the video. As I was preparing for day zero for LitheSpeed (I don't officially start until tomorrow), I found myself singing the song and thinking about "the feeling".   After taking a week off, I was able to break the cycle that had me feeling a bit numb for so long.  Just a few weeks ago, I felt like I was trying to keep control of an uncontrollable situation.  That can become exhausting.  But today I felt completely different.  This morning I felt excited about what I was about to do.  I felt an entrepreneurial drive I haven't felt for a long time.  It's that feeling when you play offense not defense.

Tomorrow is day one.  I have my Kanban loaded.  I have my WIP limited.  I got a feelin' tomorrow is gonna be a good day.  Let's do it.

Walt Disney Quote

Disney Quote

As my family and I were walking through Disney World last week, we noticed a lot of construction going on.  Come to find out, Fantasyland is getting a big face-lift.  We could see what appeared to be another castle being built and some mammoth big top tents.  We were told that it will be completed in 2012.

But this post is not about Disney World construction, it's about giving credit where credit is due.  As we were racing to get from one side of the Magic Kingdom to the other, my wife said she saw the perfect sign for me.  I'm sure I shot her some kind of momentary puzzled look without slowing my pace.  I was focused on getting from point A (Frontierland) to point B (Tomorrowland) in the shortest time possible.  It's tragic that I was at the wonderful world of Disney's Magic Kingdom and I couldn't stop and soak in my surroundings.  Don't worry, I got better as the day went on.  But let's get back to this sign that my wife spotted.

Clearly my wife knew this sign was more important than getting to Tomorrowland in record time.  She was able to get me to look her right in the eye and this time she said "Honey, it talked about a project."  I paused, processed the new information, did an about-face, and made a B-line for the sign.  Yep, she was absolutely right.  The sign was awesome.  Too many times I get my blog post ideas from my wife and I never give her credit for them.  The sign said

"When we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way.  We have confidence in our ability to do it right."

- Walt Disney

So, let it be known, my wife gets full credit for spotting the sign and inspiring this post. Without her, it wouldn't have been.  If you're leading a team or just a member of a team, don't forget to listen to others.  You have to accept that some of the best ideas are going to come from them.  When those awesome ideas come your way, don't forget to give them credit.