Agile strong -- a reveiw

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Trying to remember how you got here?
Perhaps
Understanding why you're sticking around is also important

So, here's my top ten reasons why agile has worked for me

1. Agile is a "best value" method: it's doctrine is centered on value and accomplishment for the customer and user, not so much adherence to cost and schedule--though the sponsor's investment can not be exceeded, so cost is at least capped

2. Agile respects the urgency and importance of priorities conveyed by the customer/user, most prominently by incremental delivery and flexible sequencing

3. Agile respects the power of emergence and iteration to drive innovation, provided the customer buys-in

4. Agile puts the customer in the driver's seat for the value agenda of the project.  By doing so, the project is more "Juran" than "Deming" in its quality orientation.
Thus the PM's mission: deliver the most value for the invested resources, taking reasonable risks to do so

5. Agile is more bottom-up than top-down as a matter of doctrine.  There's a bit of the "wisdom of the crowds" in the way that small teams are given opportunity to find solutions, and there's a bit of small unit tactics--as practiced by the largest command and control organization of them all....the U.S. military--that put a lot of minute to minute decision making with the bottom of the WBS.

6. Agile has the potential to more effectively align business planning-and-execute cycles with project cycles.  Business cycles are often scheduled well in advance and are often calendar driven [it's July, so let's kick-off the annual planning process for the next FY].

7. Consistent performance by small teams of participants that work together continuously is highly valued. Such consistency means that PMs can depend on throughput benchmarks that are statistically meaningful.

8. Agile respects the objective behind earned value: Say up front what you are going to do, and then do it.  No partial credit.  Either it works or it doesn't. 

9. Agile respects the common sense that all requirements can not be known at the outset, particularly when the outcomes are intangible and subject to an evolving understanding.

10. Agile gets the benefit stream flowing sooner, so the time displacement between need and delivery is manageable at lower risk.

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Bigger pie, or more slices?

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Leadership v Followership
I've been revisiting Michael Porter this week here at "Musings".
I was struck by Porter's description of leadership v followership in technology:

About that pie:

• Leadership increases the size of the "pie", but 
• Followership only reslices the pie.
   
• Followers accept "zero-sum"; 
• Leaders change the sum.

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F.W. Taylor: should we care?

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How many project managers are still laboring with the aftermath of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, more popularly known as F.W. Taylor?

Taylor Who?
You might ask: Who was Taylor?
Good question
F.W. Taylor was one of the first to study business systematically -- an original "operations research" guy. He brought 'Taylorism" into the business culture in the years leading up to World War I. By 1915, his ideas were considered quite advanced.

But, here's news you can use: much of what he divined is still around and affecting projects! Read on ....

Taylorism, so called
Taylor set about to invent "scientific management", a revolutionary movement that proposed the reduction of waste through the careful study of work.

Taylor came up with the original 'time-and-motion' studies, perhaps one of the first attacks on non-value work.

Peter Drucker, a management guru par excellence who coined the term 'knowledge worker', has ranked Taylor, along with Darwin and Freud, as one of the seminal thinkers of modern times. ["Frederick Taylor, Early Century Management Consultant", The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf, June 13, 1997 pg. A1].

Ooops, what about Agile?
The essence of Taylorism is an antithesis to agile principles but nonetheless instructive.

Counter to what we know today, Taylor believed that workers are not capable of understanding the underlying principles and science of their work; they need to be instructed step-by-step what to do and how to do it; and nothing is left to chance or decision. Rigid enforcement is required.

Managers have a role
However off-base that idea, Taylor was close to the mark with his doctrine about value-adding work. According to Taylor, managers must accept that they have responsibilities to design efficient and effective process and procedures.

Waste must be eliminated!
Every action requires definition and a means to measure results.

OMG! Not a popular guy
Taylor was not well like by workers and it's not hard to see why. But Taylor's ideas and practises brought great efficiencies and profitability while providing customers with products of predictability of quality.

Do it once, right
I like what Steve McConnell says about quality and the software relationship. Building off Taylor's ideas of 'do it once right', though he does not mention Mr. Taylor, McConnell, author of the respected book "Code Complete" states the " general principle of software quality is .. that improving quality reduces development costs .... the best way to improve productivity is to reduce the time reworking..."

Beck gets it right
Kent Beck, writing in his book "Extreme Programming Explained - Second Edition" has a pretty strong idea about the legacy of Taylorism and its lingering effects on the knowledge industry.

He says of Taylor that he brought a social structure we continue to unconsciously apply, and warns against the message that Taylorism implies: workers are interchangeable; workers only work hard enough to not be noticed; quality is an external responsibility

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Agile C.R.A.C.K. customers

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Dr. Barry Boehm, a noted software methodologist with a long and illustrative career at TRW, DARPA, and USC, and author of the COCOMO model and Spiral methodology, writes about the ideal customer for agile projects.

Boehm's perspective:

-- Collaborative: they will engage with their customer peers and with the development team
-- Representative: they know the product or system requirements and can represent their constituents accurately
-- Authorized: they can make the decisions needed to keep velocity up, and their decisions stick!
-- Committed: they take their job seriously and make every effort to advance project success
-- Knowledgeable: they can understand what the developers are telling them in the context of the business or market situation.

More from Boehm on Agile:
Take a look at other Boehm'isms about agile in his book, with Richard Turner, "Balancing Agility and Discipline: a guide for the perplexed", published by Addison-Wesley in 2004

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Dangling participle

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Still, as Hanson Baldwin summed up the Italian campaign, “All roads led to Rome, but Rome led nowhere.”

Hanson Baldwin, Historian
describing the WW II campaign in Italy, 1943 - 44

Accomplishment without purpose -- a dangling achievement
And, the lesson for project managers is:
Beware the strategic objective that isn't actually strategic at all.

• It looks strategic at the moment
• It's called strategic
• Perhaps just a tactical diversion?
• We go "there", but the dots don't connect; or, can't be connected; or there's nowhere to go from here

AKA: "The bridge to nowhere"; a dead end; wild goose chase? Down a rabbit hole? A floating apex? Perhaps ... some may be just tactics that didn't work; the real issue at hand is strategy that doesn't connect well to business objectives

Value adding?
And so, even if it dangles, could achievement have larger strategic value in some way, shape or form?

Yes, and no.
Which is the fate of -- and means to recognize -- such dangles: arguments in favor and and arguments against; seemingly forever on both sides of the issue; each with proponents, unconvinced and unconvincing. (The campaign in Italy is still argued to this day .... why did we do it? **)

What if?
History can not be rewound and replayed; there are too many unseeable connectors and influencers that might come into play in the alternative narrative. But, the broad strokes of "what if" might be instructive, and so why not play it through?

• We achieve the objective
• Now what?

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Dangling participle? An actionable activity without an identified actionee

** Churchill's strategic vision was to defeat Germany from the east, through the Balkans, holding back the Russians from overrunning eastern Europe, and yet driving through East Germany to Berlin. The Italian campaign was a necessary entry into the Balkans, according to Sir Winston
Roosevelt's strategic vision was to drive through France for a quicker and more economical victory than slogging through the Balkans and challenging the Russians in the bargain.

In the competition of these two competing visions, Rome -- captured the day before D-Day in France -- became an objective achieved, but unconnected to the grand strategy (Roosevelt won the argument)

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F.W.

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How many project managers are still laboring with the aftermath of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, more popularly known as F.W. Taylor? You might ask: Who was Taylor? F.W. Taylor was one of the first to study business systematically. He brought 'Taylorism" into the business culture in the years leading up to World War I. By 1915, his ideas were considered quite advanced, and they had significant impact well into the mid-20th century.

Taylor was a mechanical engineer who worked early-on in a metal products factory. Appalled at the seemingly disorganized and informal management of the time, and equally distressed by the costly throughput of poorly motivated workers laboring at inefficient processes , Taylor set about to invent "scientific management", a revolutionary movement that proposed the reduction of waste through the careful study of work.

Taylor came up with the original 'time-and-motion' studies, perhaps one of the first attacks on non-value work. Peter Drucker, a management guru par excellence who coined the term 'knowledge worker', has ranked Taylor, along with Darwin and Freud, as one of the seminal thinkers of modern times. ["Frederick Taylor, Early Century Management Consultant", The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf, June 13, 1997 pg. A1].

The essence of Taylorism is an antithesis to agile principles but nonetheless instructive. Counter to what we know today, Taylor believed that workers are not capable of understanding the underlying principles and science of their work; they need to be instructed step-by-step what to do and how to do it; and nothing is left to chance or decision. Rigid enforcement is required.

However, Taylor was close to the mark with his doctrine about value-adding work. According to Taylor, managers must accept that they have responsibilities to design efficient and effective process and procedures. Waste must be eliminated! Every action requires definition and a means to measure results.

Taylor was not well like by workers and it's not hard to see why. But Taylor's ideas and practices brought great efficiencies and profitability while providing customers with products of predictability of quality. Taylor most important legacy is perhaps his ideas of scientific management and the importance of process definition and process management as a means to control product and productivity.

I like what Steve McConnell says about quality and the software relationship. Building off Taylor's ideas of 'do it once right', though he does not mention Mr. Taylor, McConnell, author of the respected book "Code Complete" states the " general principle of software quality is .. that improving quality reduces development costs .... the best way to improve productivity is to reduce the time reworking..."

Kent Beck, writing in his book "Extreme Programming Explained - Second Edition" has a pretty strong idea about the legacy of Taylorism and its lingering effects on the knowledge industry. He says of Taylor that he brought a social structure we continue to unconsciously apply, and warns against the message that Taylorism implies: workers are interchangeable; workers only work hard enough to not be noticed; quality is an external responsibility
A project management tip
Fredrick Taylor was the first to study and quantify non-value work and put emphasis on eliminating wasteful and time consuming processes, procedures, and environmental impediments.

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The Fiduciary and the PM

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Consider this explanation of a fiduciary:

In a fiduciary relationship, one person, in a position of vulnerability, justifiably vests confidence, good faith, reliance, and trust in another whose aid, advice or protection is sought in some matter.

In such a relation good conscience requires the fiduciary to act at all times for the sole benefit and interest of the one who trust

So, what are we to make of that?
Certainly, the project manager is, or should be, is vested with confidence, good faith, reliance, and trust. So, that makes the PM a fiduciary watching out for the vulnerable.

And, in a project situation, who is vulnerable?

• The client or customer?
• The sponsor?
• Other project staff 

And, the PM is to hold all their interests in hand and find the best solution that optimizes interests for each of them? Good luck with that!

At some point, some ox is going to get gored. And then who blames the fiduciary? And to what risk is the fiduciary held?

The answer is: it's different in every project, depending on whether the client or sponsor is most supreme. And, of course, how does the PM get measured?

• Business satisfaction re the project scorecard
• Client satisfaction re business relationship

I think this why they pay the PM the big bucks!

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Buy them at any online book retailer!