GovernIT

This was the response a friend received from a respected MNC. Before you think that this organization needs people who have “impure thoughts”, let me put it on context.

The opening was for a Project Manager to lead projects in building large E-learning courses and associated Learning Management systems. However, as my friend discovered, they needed people who had a background in Instructional Design and/or professional teaching experience! This sort of thing is sort of understandable in high-tech domains, but is becoming more widespread in web-based projects too.

This leads me to think that Project Management as a profession is in danger in the near future – either be tech-savvy enough to write a few lines of code for the project when falling behind or know the business enough to converse with the Business Analyst.

[Reminded me of the scene in the movie "Defiance" - when one of the newcomers to the camp early on is asked what he does, he replies "I am an intellectual". People look at him incredulously!]

What do you think? Can someone be just a Project Manager – someone who can handle an ERP project one day and a telecom project the next?

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Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back

- Bruce Lee, while describing Jeet Kune Do (JKD)

Over the last couple of months, I have been reading a large number of blogs, discussions, arguments, between purists on either side of the “Process fence” as well as middle-of-the-road liberals on what development model is best suited.

There are thousands of successful projects delivered using Agile, CMMI, SPICE, RUP and the hybrids in between, so clearly there is no single silver bullet. That begs the question, is there a single best way to develop software? Increasingly, I feel the answer is No. Even if you decide to go one way due to the needs of the project, it is not necessary to abide by a rigid set of rules prescribed in general by experts in that model.

How then do you decide how to develop software? The answer may lie in adapting JKD’s “The Way of the intercepting fist” philosophy, which, I believe, is closely aligned to Lean “thinking.”

Some thoughts:

• Start with understanding the nature of the project, the clients, the project teams and management needs
• Let this understanding drive the selection of the overall framework. For instance, if the project is to develop against an evolving standard, one of the Agile methods may be suitable. But if the team is not mature in terms of development practices, one of the iterative-but-process-oriented methods like the 2I or RUP may be better
• For engineering practices, use concepts and tools proven within the organization
• For project management, the established way within the organization or PMI’s methodology would be a good start
• Don’t be afraid in discarding practices if they are not useful, but be sure to substitute them with more useful ones. The easiest example I could think of is integration. A big-bang integration is not the norm these days, even in most process-oriented shops, but you can institute multiple daily builds instead of weekly or monthly ones. Another example is using Failure Modes Analysis (FMEA) to drive design decisions in iterations to prevent too much refactoring

There must be a term in psychology to describe this behavior: the moment we associate ourselves with something, we start believing that we must adhere to it 10o%, else the skies will fall on our heads!

As project managers, we must be careful not to fall into this trap, but carry a “toolbox” of practices which can be used in different situations. I am told that successful managers have this toolbox subconsciously, but are unable to spell it out exactly.

What about you? Do you think it is advisable to go with a single system of tried-and-trusted practices or have an assorted toolbox?

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This blog is usually a mouthpiece for my ramblings, but sometimes it is good to simply listen to others. I found out that MSDN had a radio channel and considering that Kanban is the new black, this is a good interview of 3 lean/kanban guys. Exciting folks to follow!

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In previous posts, we have seen how to use the Six Honest Serving Men to define the elements of a process, while keeping it from becoming stupid. In the latter, one of the items we briefly touched upon was to make Process definition “Practitioner-led.” Today, we’ll dive into this inclusive way a little more.

[In industry jargon, Practitioners are the people who perform the tasks indicated by the process - software development teams, for example.]

Why Practitioners have to participate in process definition? Some common objections encountered are:

• They are not experts in process development
• It is not in their job description or they have other work to do
• If they do it, why do we need process specialists?

While these are valid to some extent, lack of ownership of the very people who have to use the process is the single biggest reason for failure of processes. This isolationist, ivory-tower approach results in processes that are out of touch with reality, do not take into account established practices and a general feeling of “process policing” among the development and project management community.

Most people that I encounter, including die-hard Agile champions, agree that some agreement on how things will be done is necessary when such activities involve many people. A process is such an agreement. When we trust people to develop mission-critical software for us, it is foolish to think that they cannot define an effective way of doing things!

Are you convinced yet? If yes, let us move on and see how we can implement this effective means of defining processes. The title points below are meaningful enough without me trying to elaborate on them.

• Assemble the right team
• Identifying process requirements
• Identifying current practices
• Defining the process
• Piloting
• Implementing

Assembling the right team is probably the most important part of this whole exercise. You need to bring in people of all kinds. You need process champions, critics as well as technical experts.

What about you? You are there to assist them in wording the process, doing the documentation work, creating simple flows and probably to see that process requirements are defined right.

One other thing I have found helpful is to incorporate as many current practices, documents and tools as possible. To do this, you as the process specialist have to talk to people, do the research and generally make it easy for the team to define the process.

A good Practitioner-led process improvement initiative reduces the inertia and encourages others to follow what has been defined by their fellow clan members.

In fact, many guidelines from the SEI show that the use of practitioner-led process improvement journeys lead to sustained improvements in appraisal ratings as well as in achieving project maturity.

Share with me your stories, criticisms and your experiences in the comments below.

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For those of you who celebrated Thanksgiving last week, here’s hoping you had a blast. For those of you who did not, well, have a nice week

I was reading Josh Nankivel’s How to be a Project Manager in 5 steps and was reminded of the time a team lead who had about 7-8 years of experience, came to me and asked the same question “I want to become a Project Manager, but need more experience. What can I do now?”

Of course, I did not have Josh’s post to point to then, so I gave him some suggestions on what he could do in the next 6 months and sent him on his way. I thought I would share them with you, just in case you have the same question. Oh, and he had another question immediately after his first, “Do you think I can become one?” The answer, dear reader, must wait until you have become one!

Okay, here are some things I told him he could do to gain more visibility and experience, while working on getting the formal education/certification. [My friend could do these things on a smaller scale since he was responsible for development tasks of a portion of the project]

1. Scoping, WBS and Change management

I know, these 3 are related but distinct areas, but the reason I grouped them is that these are related to understanding what needs to be completed and managing that till the end. I was not referring to the entire Requirements Management discipline here, but only understanding the boundaries of what was assigned, breaking them into smaller chunks and managing those chunks carefully.

We often see that once we start design and implementation, there are items that come up due to ambiguity in the specs and we start “interpreting” them. These can potentially become scope creep and hence needs to be watched carefully.

2. Estimation and validation of estimates

The team was asked to go through the assigned work and produce an estimate of time and effort to complete them. My friend was an experienced person and hence could quickly see if some piece of work was underestimated or padded up. Although, he had been doing this for some time, it was until later that he realized that tracking completion against estimates actually gave him more insight into accuracy of estimates.

3. Schedule planning and tracking

Historically, the project manager took the WBS and estimates given by the individual teams and prepared the schedule, which was then distributed back to the teams. In this case, I advised my friend to prepare a detailed schedule and send it with the WBS and estimates. This would enable him to see how much work could be allotted to different people with different capabilities and capacities, how to sequence task, how to adjust for early/late completion of tasks etc.

4. Reporting of project status

The project manager usually had a weekly meeting with all team members and compiled a status report based on different parameters. My friend could do the same – he can simply take the standard status report template and fill it based on his team’s inputs, add his own inputs/suggestions and send it to the project manager. You are right. This is what I suggested to him.

5. Identifying and tracking risks

The risk meeting was a chore to be done and after all, it was a PM’s responsibility. Moreover, the risks were generic and carried forward from project to project!

Of course, there were many things, especially at a technical level, that my friend cautioned his PM about – delay in procurement of the test bed for one week could push back the schedule by 2-3 weeks, licensing issues, less time for reviews or inspections could jeopardize quality of the work being produced etc, but these were mostly watercooler discussions. I suggested that he make this a little formal by entering it into the risk tracker the project had, so that it was interesting and valuable to the project!

I cheated a bit early on in this post – there is another one, but that’s because it is not just relevant to Project Management, but in any work stream. Maintain a personal journal: record every analysis that you made, every decision that you made along with the possible alternatives and record why you chose that, record every mistake you or your team made and why, record how the project manager handled a problem. The single most effective tool to learn something is to learn, try, introspect and learn.

If you were in my place, what would you have said? Better advise? Wisecracks?

Psst: If you are a wannabe Project Manager, read the Zombie series by Derek Huether or if you are contemplating a career move, start with this by Josh

One more Psst: The answer to the question “Do you think I can become one?” is another question, “Can you think of two things simultaneously while talking about a third thing confidently?” If yes, then…See ya

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