Agile on Non-Software Projects

Regardless of where I coach or teach, there is always someone who approaches me and says something like, "Agile is great for software projects but what about projects that aren't software related?"  When asked the question, I usually give examples like a U.S. Marine fire team or air crew or a home construction site. (I'll save those stories for another time).  I now have a new story to tell about a cross-functional, highly collaborative team, which competed for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. While I was at Agile 2012, I met Joe Justice of Team WIKISPEED and had a chance to actually touch a car that was designed and built using Agile methods. (see cool photo enclosed)

Here is some back story from a 2011 press release:   Based in Seattle and led by Joe Justice, WIKISPEED is a collaborative team of over 50 experts and volunteers dedicated to offering ultra-efficient, ultra low-cost, mass-production road-legal vehicles. In 2010 the team's SGT01 prototype placed in the top 10 in their class out of 136 cars overall in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize.

Joe was able to build his first functional prototype in just three months.  The car that competed in the X Prize got 114 MPG (Highway). Compare that to the Toyota Prius which currently gets 51 MPG (Highway) and was introduced in 1995.  The reason auto manufacturers are so slow to "better" their products is because change is very expensive for them.  It is not uncommon for auto manufacturers to operate on 10 to 25 year development cycles.  Before Object-oriented programming methods were introduced, software teams used to operate much the same way.

By modularizing how we build software, we're able to shorten our development cycles down to days.  By shortening our development cycles down to days, we give ourselves the opportunity to get feedback from our customers and create things that they really want, not things that we think they want.  We save ourselves and our organizations countless dollars in wasted development, due to waiting too long to get feedback from our customers or by operating in functional silos.  My breaking our teams down into small, cross-functional, empowered teams, we shorted feedback cycles as much as we can.

Being Joe is a client facing software consultant, building Agile teams and practices, why would he limit the benefits of Agile to just his customers?  Joe and his team have a car that has a development cycle of seven days.  They do this by modularizing the car.  They can switch the gasoline engine to an electric one in about the same time it takes to change a tire. They could change the car body from a convertible to a pickup truck.  All of this allows them to make changes and develop quickly.

The car is safe (passes road safety standards), because Team WIKISPEED developed safety tests before building the actual parts.  This helps them lower waste (Lean).  Next time you say you can't afford to do test-driven development, think about that.  They do all of their work in pairs, avoiding time training that is not productive. (XP Practices) Again, the next time you say you cannot afford to pair people, think about that.  Pairing also helps lower the need for most types of documentation.  If everyone has a shared understanding, you have less need for it.  They visualize their workflow to help identify hidden delays and deliver something every seven days (Scrum).

So, do you still think Agile is only for software projects?  The fact that they use 7 days sprints on hardware, when I hear people say they can't do anything less than 30-days on software, just goes to show you where there is the will there is a way.

Check out Joe's session from TEDxRainier

Post originally appeared at LeadingAgile

Virtue of Humanity & Emotional Intelligence

I was updating my Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP) Training slide on Emotional Intelligence and thought of the relationship it has with our humanity.  A few clicks later, I found myself reading a passage on Wikipedia on "the virtue of humanity"

The three strengths associated with humanity are love, kindness, and social intelligence. Humanity differs from justice in that there is a level of altruism towards individuals included in humanity more so than the fairness found in justice. That is, humanity, and the acts of love, altruism, and social intelligence are typically person to person strengths while fairness is generally expanded to all.

Emotional Intelligence from ACP

To me, social intelligence is nothing more than social competencies of emotional intelligence. We need empathy and we need social skills.  I'm left conflicted from the Wikipedia passage where it says humanity and justice differ.  Fairness should be found in both social and individual competencies.  It just doesn't have to be explicitly stated. 

Image Source: LeadingAgile PMI-ACP Training

Speaking at the PMI Global Congress

Well, the wait is finally over. My paper, "Traffic Lights to Burndowns, an introduction to Visual Management Systems" was selected for presentation at the PMI Global Congress being held in Vancouver, British Columbia in October.  Now all I have to do is respond to this letter by Friday and fill out yet even more paperwork.

Chasing After The Latest Fad or Evolving

This last weekend, I had an interesting exchange on the PMIWDC LinkedIn Group discussions board.  This healthy exchange of viewpoints came about from the following message:

In June, PMPs numbers are down by over 4000 while the PMI Agile certification numbers are on a steady rise. What is preventing the ACP from really getting traction?  http://ow.ly/i/NRLD [link to graphic showing the upward trend of the PMI-ACP]

Because that LinkedIn group is not public, I won't include the persons name.  Rather, I will refer to him as "Mr. PMP, CSM, ITIL" and include his responses in red.  Even if I don't agree with everything he writes, I have to respect a differing viewpoint.

PMP numbers likely vary slightly throughout the year and 4,000 is less than 1%. Plus, in the current economy, I don't think a drop is surprising at all.

Now about PMI-ACP. In my opinion, the PMI-ACP has no market (no one asks for it and, as you note, no one is really seeking it even after PMI lowered qualifying standards to get it). It is simply a me-too certificate competing with already established certifications by Scrum.org and ScrumAlliance.org. Besides, it is mislabeled as Agile when all it talks about is Scrum without ever using the word Scrum--making it even less distinguishable.

Personally, I'd rather see PMI focus its efforts on strengthening the PMP, and the overall body of project management knowledge and practice, than chasing after the latest fads.

[Mr. PMP, CSM, ITIL], interesting opinions. I always find these "corrections" compelling. Everyone can read the August edition of PMI Today (the source of my numbers) and draw their own conclusions. It could be there were 4000 people who really weren't project managers in the first place, thinking they needed a PMP, and then realized they really did not. We'll never know for sure.

As for the PMI-ACP, the qualifying standards were corrected while the certification was still in pilot. I know this because I was in Miami with PMI when it happened. It just took several months to get the change implemented in the application process. At least there is a qualifying standard. You and I both have a CSM, yet we both know there is no qualifying standard for that.

The PMI-ACP is not all about Scrum. Again, I know this because I helped create the ACP and because I am the Co-Lead of the ACP support team at the PMI Agile CoP. I won't disagree that a large percentage of the ACP is Scrum related but in VersionOne's latest State of Agile survey, a majority of Agile practitioners are using Scrum to deliver value to their respective organizations. I think the certification is pretty representative of contemporary Agile practices.

If you'd rather PMI focus its efforts on strengthening the PMP, I'm curious how you will feel about the upcoming PMBOK Guide revision and Software Extension. Both include Agile knowledge and practices. Does that mean PMI is chasing after the latest fad or is it evolving?

Derek, I'll admit the 5th edition draft PMBOK is troubling--almost as if some folks are trying to sabotage the PMBOK or simply making changes for the sake of changes. Don't get me wrong, I am not against change but some of what is occuring is not good, doesn't fix some problems in the 4th Edition and introduces some new contradictions and confusion. Waiting to see what the final release settles on. 

Stats can be fun and too often misleading. I don't think month-to-month changes in active certificate holders is very meaningful and PMI-ACP's less than six month track record is nonetheless too short. It's 7 to 18% month-to-month increases are already faltering, losing 32% of it's growth rate in the latest month. During this same time, PMPs dropped just under 1%. If both of these two latest trends continue, PMI-ACP will max out around 6,923 and reach parity (with current month declining) PMP in just over 38 years. 

As a reality check, PMP and CAPM make up 99.2031% of PMI's certificate holders. I suspect the overall number of 'traditional' projects is a not too dissimilar ratio. Adding in the few thousand CSM and other certificate holders won't significantly shift this ratio. And traditional project management is, if practiced well, agile and not the caricature painted by Agile and Scrum advocates.

Listening to people who are participating in the PMBOK revisions sounds a lot like legislation in the government. In the beginning, a bill with a bold new idea or fix is presented. In order to close the deal, the bill gets watered down and new stuff that really has nothing to do with the original bill gets introduced. I can totally see that happening with the PMBOK. But I do think common agile concepts and practices should be included. The question is, will it be a square peg in a round whole, based on the format of the PMBOK?

Speaking to the certification stats, I once presented a correlation graph claiming an increase in ice cream sales caused deaths by drowning. It was merely illustrating that metrics can be used to support just about any claim. If PMI gets more market penetration in India and South America, I think the overall growth rate for the PMP (and ACP) will continue. With PMI being the marketing machine that it is, I see the ACP cannibalizing market share from ScrumAlliance and Scrum.org, not from the PMP.  Only time will tell.

It's my belief that "Agile" practices will be accepted as "Traditional" practices over time. Until then, the misinformed will believe it is a silver bullet. It's funny, when I coach new clients, I always have at least one project manager tell me that he or she proposed similar changes to leadership but was ignored. I've also had attendees of my training tell me that having PMI offer an "Agile" certification legitimizes it as a possible delivery mechanism. This isn't new stuff! Whatever gets people talking works for me.

HT: Project Management Institute

HT: VersionOne

Defining The Qualified User Story

User Story

Regardless of the client I work with, the teams seem to initially struggle with understanding how big (or small) a User Story is, relative to Epics, Features, and Tasks.  It doesn't help when they first ask how big user stories are and my first response is "it depends". It's not uncommon to find team members asking if they can call smaller stories a minor or sub-story or a larger story a major story.  But then they get distracted by colors of index cards or some ancillary attribute.

The Distinction

Those who identify what the business wants (you may call him or her a Product Owner) take a stab at breaking down stuff to manageable chunks.  You can call those chucks an A/B-level requirement, epic, theme, feature, or spike. It doesn't matter what you call it.  But when the team estimates that stuff, it is still sometimes (more often than not) too big to fit into a sprint or iteration or just isn't ready to be worked.

We need to label [this] to set it appart as work that will be committed to next.  Either it will be scheduled in an upcoming sprint or it will be pulled to the next step on a Kanban.  To be clear, I'm not saying the team should start working on [this], merely because they think it is small enough to be completed within a predetermined cycle.  Until your team has sufficiently defined and mapped requirements, developed acceptance criteria, and removed all known blocking dependencies, it is still not a Qualified User Story.

Though I still use the term User Story as that placeholder for conversations, I believe the Qualified User Story more appropriately identifies a placeholder for conversations that meets a definition of ready and allows the team to commit to complete something within an estimated period of time.

Image Source: Pictofigo HT: Originally posted at LeadingAgile

Glass Half Full

This morning, I tried to explain a very important concept to my son. I filled a glass with water to the half-way point. I then asked him if the glass was half empty or half full. This all came about because he was playing a video game. He placed fourth out of ten and the message better luck next time! appeared on the screen. I could hear him from the other room. That's so rude!

I asked him what the problem was and he read the message with a negative tone. I corrected him and said people misunderstand stuff like this all of the time. This is why we talk with each other, I explained. If you can't confirm what they meant, you need to assume they meant it in a positive way. Games are rarely sarcastic.

I know there are people out there who will always be looking for the cloud in the silver lining. Don't be one of them.

Image Source: Pictofigo

Agile or Waterfall (Podcast)

Back in late 2010, I was features on the Talking Work podcast. Then in early 2011, I appeared at the WorkOut 2011 conference.  Because Ty Kiisel and Raechel Logan were such gracious hosts each time, I couldn't help but say yes when they recently asked me to make another appearance.  Hear what I have to say, when Ty asks me, "Which is better, Agile or Waterfall?" I love being asked a provocative question and then given full liberty to articulate what I really think.  All too often, people already have their own set of beliefs on a topic. They're polite, but only to a point.  They aren't listening. They're waiting to talk.  Thankfully, Ty and Raechel are good listeners.

New PMI-ACP Classes Announced

I am happy to report that LeadingAgile is ramping up its Public Training Program.  We will now offer regularly scheduled public training classes in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.  Early bird registration (30 days or more before class start date) will be heavily rewarded, by way of a $300 discount.  The first class to be announced is the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner. For those unfamiliar with LeadingAgile, though all of us offer training, we're all actually Agile practitioners by trade, with years of real-world experience.  We come from a variety of backgrounds, allowing us to offer relevant training specific to the needs of the individual student. Both our public and private classes move at a steady but relaxing pace, delivering the right combination of applicable information, Q&A, and interactive exercises.

When it’s time for your respective exam, you will pass because you understand the concepts, not because you memorized questions and answers. When you go back to your organizations, you will have the confidence of knowing that you understand the fundamentals and how to apply then.

Why Us?

There are a lot of companies out there who offer training but do so from an ivory tower.  The trainers aren't actual practitioners so they aren't going to be able to answer your questions based on their experiences.  When it comes to knowledge about the PMI-ACP content, no company comes close to LeadingAgile.  Both Mike and Dennis were on the ACP Steering Committee and I was an Independent Reviewer.  After the exam pilot phase concluded, I transitioned to a new role as Co-Lead of the PMI-ACP Support Team at the PMI Agile Community of Practice.

Contact Hours/PDUs:

 21

CEUs:

 2.1

Public or Private:

 Both

Duration:

 3 Days - 9:00 am to 4:30 pm

DATE

LOCATION

 EARLY BIRD

PRICE

August 20-22

Tampa, FL

$1395.00

$1695.00

Register

September 10-12

Reston, VA

$1395.00

$1695.00

Register

October

Atlanta, GA

$1395.00

$1695.00

Register

Who Should Attend

Certainly, if you're interested in getting the PMI-ACP certification, you should take this class. But, it doesn't matter if you're an executive, traditional project manager, or a member of a team.  This class is going to give you a lot of value.  In a typical workshop, I've seen anyone from a CTO to an Extreme Programmer to a Tester.  Come with an open mind and you'll see how we're on the bleeding edge of Agile thought leadership.

Class Materials

Attendees will receive a complementary copy of the class training material, ACP practice exam, and ACP flashcards.

Course Content

Though this course was originally designed to be an exam prep course, it was enhanced to be an introduction into the principles, values, and practices of Scrum, Lean, Kanban, and Extreme Programming. Our course is developed around a fun 3-day exercise, simulation, and game driven curriculum that encourages signifiant interaction amongst everyone participating in the course. Topics include:

• Understand the Agile Manifesto Values and Principles

• Have an end-to-end understanding of Scrum, its key roles, artifacts, and meetings

• Understand what are and why we use big visible charts or information radiators

• Understand Scrum from a ScrumMaster, Product Owner, and empowered Team perspectives

• Know and understand the XP (Extreme Programming) roles and who does what

• Understand Test Driven Development. Know how it works and why it’s valuable

• Understand Continuous Integration. Know how it works and why it’s valuable

• Understand the Lean Software Development Principles

• Know what Lean Portfolio Management is and how your organization could benefit from it

• Understand what Value Stream Mapping is and how to do it

• Understand the basics of Kanban, WIP, and why it works

• Know how to write and identify good User Stories

• Know what Personas are and how to use them

• Understand what makes a Servant Leader and what they do

• Understand Velocity and its usefulness

• Know Agile Estimation techniques

• Know facilitation methods

• Understand how Agile deals with risks

• Understand the Definition of "Ready" and “Done”

• ...much more...

Private Training

If you are interested in private training for your organization or team, please contact us for more information.