ALN Arin Sime and User Stories

A quick thank you to Arin Sime and the local Agile Leadership Network chapter for an excellent workshop.  Tonight, Arin Sime of AgilityFeat facilitated a workshop on User Story splitting.  What I felt was compelling was not the discussion about the best size of a user story, what INVEST was, or even the best way to write a user story.  What I liked the most about the workshop was Arin's purposeful misdirection early on, having us write bad user stories.  That's right. Arin gave us instructions and had us write bad user stories by way of anti-patterns.  In software engineering, an anti-pattern is a pattern that may be commonly used but is ineffective and/or counterproductive in practice.  Sometimes it's hard to write really good user stories.  Knowing if it's a good story usually falls under  IKIWISI (I'll know it when I see it), though people can commonly write really bad user stories and think they are great.  I'm not going to go into detail about what makes a "good" user story.  I'm about to turn into a pumpkin and I wanted to get this post out within hours of the event. If you get a chance, look up Arin and look up Agile Leadership Network.  Either way, you're going to walk away with something of value.

Image Source: My really sad Droid X

How to Claim PMP PDUs as a Non-PMI Member

Claiming PDU

How would I claim PDUs if I'm not a PMI member? This question keeps coming up in conversation.  I offer the hypothetical situation where someone sees value in the new PMI-ACP certification but is hesitant to become a member of PMI.  I guess it would be complete fantasy if not for the fact there are about 100,000 more PMI credential holders than PMI members*. PMI reported as of November 2011, there were 370,744 PMI members and 469,051 PMPs.  Add the CAPM, PMI-RMP, PMI-SP, and PgMP and I think we get to our 100,000.

100,000 people realized you don't need to be a member of PMI to maintain a PMI credential, particularly the PMP.  They save a $119 membership renewal fee in exchange for being charged more for PMI events and products or not having access to the Communities of Practices.  Granted, if they aren't really engaged in the Project Management or Agile community, maybe it's worth saving the $10. For the record, I think being a member of the PMI Agile Community of Practice is worth the cost of membership.  Seriously, it's only $10 a month!  But I digress.

The focus of this post is for those 100,000.  The key to claiming PDUs is having a PMI.org account. Yes, the glue that holds this all together is a free account, not a paid membership.  Your potential membership and credentials will be linked to this account.

If you're applying "project management" educational credit toward exam eligibility, there is a different way to claim those hours.  For example, if you take my PMI-ACP class, you can apply 21 PDUs toward any of the current PMI credentials and also apply 21 contact hours toward ACP eligibility.

But you still don't need to have a paid membership.

*Source: December 2011 issue of PMI Today

The Agile Mindset

As I look back at the last year, I am amazed at how much has changed in my life. I left my position advising the Federal Government for something that aligned closer to what I felt inside my heart and mind. I didn't want to "do" Agile. I wanted to "be" Agile. There is a profound difference.  Doing Agile is what you do externally.  Being Agile is what's on the inside.  Being Agile is defined by your values, guiding principles, and mindset.

Agilists tend to have very different ideas and attitudes in which we approach a situation, especially when the situation is seen as being difficult to alter.  We fall into that group of innovators, technology enthusiasts, early adopters, and visionaries.

A colleague and I just completely an Agile assessment, where we interviewed over 60 people in an organization.  When we told them we were hired to  shepherd them through an Agile transformation, the responses were pretty consistent.  They pretty much all agreed there was a need for a cultural shift within their organization.  They needed to begin leaning toward an Agile mindset.

I'm excited to see the benefits they will realize by doing Agile.  But, I'm even more excited to see what is possible, if they start being Agile.

Image Source: Pictofigo

PMI-ACP Numbers

As we get closer to the announcement of how many people passed the v1.0 version of the PMI-ACP exam, I want to congratulate everyone who participated in the process.  Regardless of how you did, you're an early adopter and should be commended on your efforts.  You helped make the exam better for others.

Last week while we were in Miami, the baton has been passed from the steering committee to the new ACP Support team.  As co-lead of the team, I look forward to future learners taking the v1.1 on Janauary 31 and v1.2 at the end of 2nd quarter.

I'll post other information about the PMI-ACP Support team at a later date.

Data Source: PMI Agile CoP Strategic Planning meeting

PMI Agile CoP Strategic Planning Team Wrap-up

Before we went our separate ways, the PMI Agile CoP Strategic Planning team did a retrospective (not depicted in the image enclosed). I had a few key comments. First, as a positive, I felt like I finally understood where the PMI Agile Community of Practice was in its evolution. Second, I honestly think we are going in the right direction. In the negative, my comment was a bit tempered. I thought the time we had was too short. But I understand the need for us to set short timeboxes and then deliver something of value. Without deadlines, we would probably debate things to death.

Right now, I am emotionally exhausted. I arrived mid-day Saturday (12/3) and I am returning home mid-day Tuesday (12/6). We had group discussions, sidebar discussions, and even discussions during and after every meal!

Everyone was passionate about his or her perspectives and I don't think there was a single topic that didn't require lengthy debate, reflection, and decisions. There were times I felt we were going down rat holes, debating the language that we should and would agree on. But, without those passionate conflicts, we wouldn't have explored the possibilities or arrived at better outcomes.

Thank you to PMI (Rory, Priya, and Brenard) for taking care of everything and allowing the team to come together and focus on the important work at hand. The Agile CoP is very young and it was important for us to focus on critical areas to continue growing a community that is self-sustaining, transparent, and supportive.

Thank you to the core team of Ainsley, Bob, Dean, Devin, and Sameer (alphabetical order) for speaking your minds and standing your ground.

A very special thank you goes to Jesse, Dennis, and Brian. Over the course of a few days, you accomplished great things. The community and PMI both owe you a lot.

Outside of our planning group, as our community grows even larger, I ask for patience and participation from both traditional and agile project managers. The Agile CoP leadership want to be as transparent as possible. As goals become more ambitious, the need for volunteers (and future servant-leaders) will grow.

In closing, I want readers to remember, we want the PMI members worldwide to be equipped to lead and thrive in a human-centric and ever changing world by embracing adaptive and empirical proactive practices.

I am left inspired.

PMI Agile CoP Strategic Planning Day 1

The first full day of the PMI Agile Community of Practice strategic planning session just wrapped up.  It's been an amazing day.  We discussed how we could help Project Management Practitioners, PMI Members, CoP Volunteers, and Agile Leaders. Topics ranged from increasing awareness of Agile, to the PMI-ACP, and a PMI-ACP Glossary. Though we all come from all over the country, different organizations, and different backgrounds, we have at least one thing in common.  We all have a passion for Agile.

Because the PMI-ACP certification is transitioning to an operational stage, myself and a few others focused deeply on what we wanted to see happen in 2012.  First, you'll be seeing the PMI-ACP v1.1 coming January 31.  You should see PMI-ACP v1.2 out the end of the second quarter.  I'll save the real good stuff for subsequent posts.  Until then, goodnight from Miami.

Protective Collaboration

I was recently asked my opinion about collaboration within an organization.  Being I just completed an organizational assessment for a client, I have a fresh perspective of the topic. I was specifically asked:

"Is it healthy for Scrum teams to work in a bubble protected from the business around them? Should collaboration go beyond the team?"

There are two common threads that I see time and time again. One, what is the goal? Two, is that goal communicated?  Until these two threads are tied together, you can't have good collaboration.  I don't see this being unique to the world of Scrum.  To help illustrate my point, I'll try to use terms people outside the Scrum community can understand.

Strategic Mission (Goals)

Executive Leadership, in order to lead, needs to communicate the strategic vision of the organization.  Strategic vision translates into strategic mission or long-term goals. Strategic mission should be understood by the entire organization.  If you don't know the mission, how will you be able to help the organization reach its goals?  From there, the leadership needs to empower people tasked to do the work to figure out how they will accomplish the goals.

Tactical Mission (Goals)

This is where you keep lines of communication open but insert a protective buffer.  If you're leveraging Scrum, that first buffer is called a Product Owner.  This person understands the strategic mission of the organization and is able to translate it into tactical mission.  You could also refer to this person as an organizational liaison.  This person or group of people don't need to know all of the answers.  But, they do need to be readily available to answer questions from the team and to reach out to the appropriation organizational subject matter expert(s) when necessary.  The second buffer, when leveraging Scrum, is called the ScrumMaster.  If not leveraging Scrum, they could also be known as a process manager.  This person understands organizational process on a team level and is there to ensure the team consistently follows that process.  They also work to keep those who do not aid in tactical execution from derailing the team from getting work down.

Collaborative Team

It's time for me to answer the first direct question. Is it healthy for Scrum teams to work in a bubble protected from the business around them?  Though I do believe the team should be protected from the business directly trying to change their tactical priorities, you should never operate in a vacuum. If people from within the organization do try to change team short-term priorities, the process manager (ScrumMaster) should be right there to impress upon them the needs of the organization and to respect the agreed upon processes.

Collaborative Organization

The second question was, should collaboration go beyond the team? My short answer is, yes.  Communications is different from collaboration and it needs to flow up and down the organization.  With information flowing freely, I've seen good (strategic) ideas become bad ideas overnight.  All it might take is one executive standing in the back of the room during a daily (stand-up) meeting.  Once the appropriate information is presented to the appropriate people, real collaboration can take place.  The entire organization, which includes all cost and profit centers, needs to collaborate to discover the best solutions and work toward common goals.

What do you think?

Did I miss anything?

The Future of Agile & PMI

During my session at the AgileDC conference, I talked about the past, present, and future of Agile. I drew a parallel between the adoption curve of Agile and Geoffrey Moore's adoption curve of technology.  Even before the Agile Manifesto was penned, there were Innovators introducing agile practices and mindsets.  In the last ten years, the early adopters and visionaries have taken Agile to the next step of market acceptance.  I'll admit, I only started using agile practices about 6 years ago.  During that time, as acceptance of Agile has grown, the Agile "mantra" has been relatively consistant.  I like to use the word mantra because Agile really does create a transformation.  If the values and principles of the Manifest resonate with you, you become an adopter, a proponent, and a member of a community.

The Agile community is a self-organized group of like-minded people and market adoption has been very organic.  So, back to my session at AgileDC.  I wanted to make a point of saying that Agilists do what they do because something resonates within them.  What we are doing, as Agilists, feels like it aligns with why we do it.  We want to deliver more value.  We want more interactions and collaborations. We respond to change.

Now, let's look at the Project Management community, specifically that group related to the Project Management Institute.  The primary difference between the PMI community and the Agile community is Project Managers don't appear to be joined by a common cause.  Rather, they are joined by a common certification. PMI's goal is

“Serve practitioners and organizations with standards that describe good practices, globally recognized credentials that certify project management expertise, and resources for professional development, networking and community.“

While I was doing research for my AgileDC session, I came across an interesting fact.  What Project Managers (associated with PMI) are doing does not align with why they are doing it.  Scan the blogoshere and you'll find less content about how to become a better project manager and more about how to pass the Project Management Professional (PMP®) exam.  Though the graph above about Agile Adoption is subjective, the graph below is not.

Something happened in February 2008.  It was the last time there were more members of PMI than there were PMPs. (260,458 vs. 259,694) Since then, the gap has widened to 366,854 PMI members and over 466,163 PMPs.  Project managers, associated with PMI, find more value in a certification than they do being a member of a community.  But can you blame them?  Job listings require certifications or accreditations.  Hiring managers search for acronyms and not people.  The simple truth is some are pursuing the mastery of performance-based objectives versus learning-based objectives (ie. getting a passing score on an exam versus getting better at a craft).  Since credential holders don't have to be a member of the community to maintain their PMP status, they dropped their memberships.  If not for the fact that I could not be a member of the PMI Agile Community of Practice without being a member of PMI, I would probably have ended my membership as well.  But, that alone is enough for me to stay.

The Agile Community of Practice (CoP) and it's leadership are self-organized.  I get a different vibe from them than I do others associated with PMI.  It's less about how do I maintain my certification and more about how can we help others.  It is my hope that as the Agile CoP grows, its servant leadership and passion will spread to other areas of PMI.

With the PMI-ACP certification, I'm very curious how this will impact the Agile community and the PMI community.  When I did my last PMI-ACP prep class, 66% of my learners were PMPs and 33% of the class was not associated with PMI at all.  Will the PMI-ACP just be another group of letters to appear in a hiring manager's keyword search or will it become more than that?  I truly hope it is the latter.

If you are a member of PMI, I strongly recommend that you join the Agile Community of Practice (it's free for PMI members).  The writing is on the wall, people.  It's a sign of things to come.  What if you are a PMP but not a member of PMI?  I think joining the Agile CoP is worth the price of the membership.  Regardless of what happens at PMI, Agile will continue to be an ever-evolving self-organized force.