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?

Related posts:

1. Moving into Project Management? What you can do now
2. Series: Project, Program and Enterprise PMO

Then I got to watch this great interview of Gartner’s Daryl Plummer on Youtube

While I agree and understand Business’ frustration with IT, there are a few things that make IT behave the way it does. It cannot be a coincidence that most IT shops behave this way, right?

Some thoughts:

• Do Less with More – Supporting the same or increasing number of applications with less personnel, less money, outsourcing headaches, at a time when costs are going up is forcing IT to think about survival and not about innovation! If you are firefighting everyday, where is the time to think long-term?
• Technology Innovation and Adoption cycles don’t match – While new mobile platforms can come up quickly, supporting them in the Enterprise is a nightmare with untried devices
• Security Risks are discounted – with the qualification that the discount is valid till a breach occurs. For example, giving mobile support to Enterprise applications seems the way to go, but supporting Blackberry, iPhone and Android phones increases security risks manifold. There is very less experience out there on how to do it safely. Social Media, Cloud Computing/SaaS,  Data Storage are some other examples where security breaches can cost the company dearly
• Business still does not want to “own” decisions concerning IT. Moving to the cloud vs staying in-house is not IT’s sole responsibility. After all, if IT systems are down, the Enterprise is down!. In short, Business must move away from the “Get IT done somehow and don’t tell me about it” (pun intended!) mindset
• Like Business, IT has some processes and while they can be flexible, there are some constraints. Everyone has to live with constraints these days, so why be unreasonable only towards IT?
• Finally, the most important thing (at least, it seems that way to me) – the thinking that IT is a magical system that can bend however needed while Business processes are fixed in stone must be changed. I am reminded of my teacher in school, who admonished me – It can be done as long as the doer is someone else. When you have to do something, you get all the problems in the world!

So, who will bell the cat? (That’s just a saying, don’t take it literally folks)

IT. We must do a better job at communicating these to the Business. Much has been said about how to align IT with Business, but how should this alignment happen? Some case studies are listed here.

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s CIO does a good job of Governance in this CIO.com article
• This CIO’s team congregates to discuss every business project that has an IT component (I like that) – Read here
• This paper from SAP America discusses the challenges and offers some solutions (Needs free registration) – Link here

I wrote some shorter posts on this here and here last year, but this seems to be a perennial subject.

Do you have other things in defense of IT? Or are you, perhaps, from the Business? Me, you ask? I believe in this quote (I have quoted this earlier too on this blog):

None of you are in IT; all of you are in business.

-Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner fellow

Related posts:

1. Forrester research on what CIOs want in 2010
2. Business-IT Alignment (Yet Again)

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?

Related posts:

1. Practitioner-led Process Improvement:For “sticky” processes
2. PMO Series: Change Management

The 3 most common ways you can fail at Process improvement, that I have personally seen are:

1. Blind Adherence to Frameworks

Process frameworks such as CMMI or SPICE are intended as guiding principles to help

you develop processes that, in turn, help you achieve your business goals. Trying to incorporate each and every aspect of a framework without regards to its applicability in your organization can result in bloated processes that no one can or will follow.

Usually, process improvement begins with Gap Analysis of existing processes against the chosen Process Framework. This is where you can take a wrong turn.

Understand the intent behind the Framework when performing the Gap Analysis. One tried-and-trusted practice is to extract the objectives from the process (in CMMI, these are neatly defined in the Specific Goals) and then use them to see if the goals are met by your current processes.

2. Committees

Yes, Practitioner-led process improvement is the way to go. But that doesn’t mean that you try to get “representation from every section” of people into your process definition team! After a certain threshold, an increase in the number of people is only going to hold you back.

From my experience, the magic range is 3-5, but that may vary if you are in a business process improvement scenario. One symptom of a dysfunctional large team is endless bickering over every word and its intent when drafting the process – in one case, there was a 2-hour discussion on using “measurements” vs “Metrics”!

3. Endless Alternates

This can be a standalone issue or an offshoot of the first two. I have seen teams debate over different scenarios which they might face, when the probability of these scenarios occurring is really small! Usually, there are a few critical paths where the teams might need direction and then there is a catch-all section (which is usually an escalation path for more guidance).

This situation arises when

• People don’t trust themselves and others to do the right thing and/or
• Managers are not very forgiving when their teams take decisions using judgement and then mistakes happen. Only a learning environment is a growing environment and without it, you cannot help people become mature. Without mature people, you cannot have a high-maturity organization!

Yes, there are more ways in which you may fail, but I’ll follow my own advice and stop from listing out all other scenarios . That, however, does not prevent you from adding your own experiences in the comments. They may be a bigger cause of failure!

Do share in your experiences in process improvement and of course, subscribe to the blog.

Related posts:

1. Practitioner-led Process Improvement:For “sticky” processes
2. Process – How to develop one that is not stupid
3. Defining a Process? Use the Six Honest Serving Men

No related posts.

[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.

Related posts:

1. 3 Ways Your Process Improvement Initiatives Can Go Wrong
2. Process – How to develop one that is not stupid
3. The Model does not matter: Projects and JKD

Why: As I mentioned in a previous post, without stating clearly why we are doing something, it is pretty difficult to convince people to even read something, forget about following it. The Why is often stated in grand terms, and since people are not stupid, they understand it is just for the sake of having it! Have a simple description of the outcome and why following it will help them (in their daily life and not something like, “It will make the organization compliant with the GRAND THEORY OF NOTHING”. Who cares?)

What: What defines the activities that need to be completed to achieve a certain goal. The inputs for this can be based on existing team practices or from best practices in other teams or (God forbid!) from frameworks.

When: When here does not relate to time, but the sequence in which the above activities should be performed.

Who: Code does not get written just because we have defined “Write code”. Someone needs to write it and someone else needs to test it. Mr. Who helps us identify the people to perform the activities in the desired sequence.

Where: This is the easy one. You ask me to enter the bug – fine. Where? You get the idea (please don’t create forms for every small bit of information!  Funny one here – http://www.bureauofcommunication.com/compose/romanticintent)

How: This is the most difficult one. If you list out how to do an activity in great detail, your process will be cumbersome and if you don’t give any details, it will not be useful. Err on the less side, since you can always add detail. This is easy to say, but difficult to implement and unfortunately, the answer for how much is, “It depends, at least for me. By the way, do you have any good principles for this? Share with me.

One of the easiest ways to spell out a process is the System flow chart or activity diagram coupled with annotations for inputs/outputs of the process. This makes the process simple, visual and clear.

If you are wondering if this can be used in Agile methods (not using Agile process, in case you are offended. Ha.), the answer is yes. A process is just a structured method of representing what needs to be done and does not mean it needs to be “heavy”; it can be as light as you need. If you come from a process mature organization and want to find out if you can use Agile methods or not, read this interview and then buy the book (disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with the author and have not yet read the book completely).

Go on, become a process specialist. May the Force be with you.

Related posts:

1. Process – How to develop one that is not stupid
2. 3 Ways Your Process Improvement Initiatives Can Go Wrong

Lagging or Validation Metrics

These are “after the fact” metrics to show how we performed and if everything is going smoothly. These “validate” the current processes and may show deviation from the expected value. Typically, there is nothing we can do about the completed activities, but can take corrective actions for the next set of activities.

This is generally ok for repeated activities, such as bug-fixing, but not for activities that are unique in the lifecycle. For example, if we have metrics for measuring quality of design, having a report on the defects after the design phase (design defect density, phase containment defects etc) is not terribly useful (even in iterative projects).

Leading or Improvement metrics

These metrics give us early information on the quality or progress of activities that are currently being performed. Considering the same Design phase example, if we can get inputs on the quality of design as it is currently being done, there is scope to make corrections to the process. In software development, these tend to be more of engineering metrics, such as cohesion, coupling etc.

When defining a metrics program, we should be careful in having a balance between these two types of metrics. If Lagging metrics dominate, there is not much you can do if something goes wrong, except as Lessons learned (which I doubt are learned!). If leading metrics dominate, you don’t know how you performed against overall targets or compare against previous projects.

You must be wondering – what has satellite images of a storm got to do with metrics? An analogy that is possibly distant, but the intention is this – Your metrics must be able to show all 3 aspects – what has happened, where do we stand, what is going to happen in the immediate future. If you have defined the right metrics (its easy to define a lot of wrong metrics!), you will then be able to decide how to act.

If you are thinking on where to capture information on the type of metric, the Metrics catalog is a good place to put it in.

Related posts:

1. Metrics Definition – Gaining Agreement from your Stakeholders – Part 1
2. Metrics Definition – Gaining Agreement from your Stakeholders – Part 2
3. 4 different ways to use your Metrics

What is about the word “Process” that makes people run fro cover? I see a lot of people who turn to Agile, not because they realize its worth, but because they think it frees them to do what they want, how they want. Agile is discipline, folks and you can do it only if you have the maturity to handle that discipline on your own.

Here,  I am defending a process that is simple, provides clear roles and responsibilities, is changed appropriately when needed and most importantly, the one that is applied well. I am not defending a rule book written in circa 1800.

I hear you. You are saying that process as I defined is not the one that you see everyday in countless organizations. Right. But I ask you, is that the fault of the process? Did it slowly creep into your organizations? No, we wrote it. We are the ones implementing it. We are the ones hiding behind it.

A process is nothing but a set of steps we write to accomplish a particular task. We write it down so that others may follow the path easily and when we have thousands of people doing the same task, we don’t want everyone to do it differently, unless circumstances require.

These exceptional circumstances occur more frequently in the SW dev world than in other places like manufacturing (that is why concepts in manufacturing don’t lend themselves well to SW, but that is for another day).

So what do we need? We should define processes that result in desired outcomes. We need to create awareness that a process needs to be adopted and adapted as the situation changes to make it effective. Let us look at some things that we can do to define a process that is not stupid.

1. Define the Why

There is a better chance that people will follow the process if it is clear why and the why is “reasonable”

For example, for software configuration management, the “why” is to ensure that code is checked-in frequently (to avoid crashes or overwrites), follow naming conventions (to easily determine what the file does/belongs by looking at the file name), follow the structure (to modularize code) etc.

2. Minimize Forms

If people have to fill out forms for every step of the process, be sure that will never be followed. While some amount of paperwork is necessary, it should not detract from actually performing the task. The biggest mistake I see people make is trying to get a lot of information filled out, even when that information is not required or may not be used. There are two reasons for this:

• Incorrect interpretation of process frameworks like CMMI or ISO
• When something goes wrong, find out where and why. The failure points are minimal, but to have some documentation for those failure points

3. Practitioner-led

Every activity, whether defined by a process or not, has to be done by someone. Why not ask those people to define the process? It is well-recognized that when a team of practitioners own the process, the adoption is much higher. Do we want someone sitting in an ivory tower to tell me what to do? Nah.

4. Automate

Look for ways to automate as much of the process as possible. If you are capturing information, don’t provide forms for people to capture data. Use tools or write scripts to capture and present that information.

5. Teach people to change it

Make it clear that the process is not sacred. When people start to feel it is not working or not comfortable any longer, change it. Fiercely implement a culture where people can voice their concerns about something that is not working for them.

6. Never talk about the stick

We all know about the “Carrot and Stick”. In this case, however, never ever use the stick. Are we cattle to be driven ahead? Lead us and we’ll follow. What this means is don’t penalize when someone does not follow it. It could be that the process is not usable under stressful situations or the leadership does not care about it. If the manager asks the team to forget about the process just for this urgent request, it shows that the manager does not think the process is useful!

If we follow some of the common-sense principles, any process can be made simple and usable. Otherwise, we will end up defining a complex “Agile” process!

Do you still think Process is stupid? What would you do to help people follow a method that can help them be productive, yet have fun?

Related posts:

1. Defining a Process? Use the Six Honest Serving Men
2. 3 Ways Your Process Improvement Initiatives Can Go Wrong
3. Practitioner-led Process Improvement:For “sticky” processes

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

Related posts:

1. Series: Project, Program and Enterprise PMO
2. PMO Series: Change Management
3. Some thoughts on Risk Management