Dead horses in the PMO

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The code of tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In the [project office], we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

• Buying a stronger whip;
• Changing riders;
• Saying things like ‘this is the way we’ve always ridden the horse;
• Appointing a committee to study the horse;
• Arranging a visit to other [PMOs] to see how they ride dead horses;
• Increasing the standards to ride dead horses;
• Declaring the horse is better, faster, cheaper dead; and finally 
• Harnessing the dead horses together for increased speed 

Thomas Penfield Jackson

I was recently shown this by Alex Walton, principal at 3PMLLC.com, a statement by U.S. District Court judge Jackson, while managing the Microsoft case in 1999. I've edited it with [ ] to apply it to project management.

I'm not sure that Jackson was a happy camper when he said this; a good deal of his ruling in the Microsoft case was reversed on appeal.

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Did you remember FDD?

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Stuck on stories? (As a user, I want to .... etc ). Maybe you're stuck on who the user is, especially if it's a system actor.

How about features? They're not stories in the SCRUM story sense, but useful nonetheless. How about FDD as a feature driven methodology? Mike Cohn at mountaingoat software has some similar thoughts about FDD.

Recall the feature syntax:

• Action ... do onto an Object
• Object .... which by the Action, returns a Result
• Result ... you did something to an object and this is what you have as a memorial

Oops! This is all strange stuff? Read my whitepaper on slideshare.net.

The one thing I've always liked about FDD is its emphasis on a domain model, which for all practical purposes is architecture. This is step one of the FDD process:

• Do the model -- what objects, what actions, what results?
• Build a features list (did someone say backlog?)
• Plan the release (but not by time boxes; there are no time boxes, so more conventional planning is required)
• Design by feature
• Develop by feature, where develop includes all the testing steps

Unlike some other Agile methods, FDD practices are built around feature teams that are charged with delivering certain backlog (features: action, object, result). And the teams work to more conventional schedules (no time boxes) but still deliver stuff early and frequently, just like other Agile practices.

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The nature of risk -- a white paper

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I guess this is Matthew Squair week here at Musings

Check out this very lucid white paper on the nature of risk. You'll like it.

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Agile -- shocking revelation!

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It shocks, shocks! the sensitivities to read something like this from "leadinganswers", a blog for the thinking agilest. First, the set-up [with my edits in braces]:

"Lots of this agile stuff is hypocritical, it preaches evolution and change, [and] ... Agile methods are supposed to facilitate innovation through iterative development followed by inspection and adaption. They [presumably agile teams] practice the scientific method of measurement and feedback on products and team work; so why are the agile practices themselves magically exempt from this precious evolution?

I believe there are two main reasons; first off, it is to protect inexperienced agile practitioners from themselves. ...."

[Now comes the shocking news!]

The other reason is a little more sinister. Most of the creators, proponents and promotors [SIC] of agile methods have interests in keeping the methods pure vanilla. This is so they can create training courses, certifications and web sites for them. While scrum, as one example, has its specialized ceremony names and products you can neatly market services for it. If you allow or encourage people to change it then the result is not so proprietary and more difficult to defend, promote and assert ownership over. 

Hello! Trying to exploit a somewhat proprietary methodology for the money ... simply beyond the pale!

But, then we get this news, later in the same posting:

First off, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should explain that I was involved with the creation of the agile method DSDM and have worked with agile groups like the Agile Alliance (I was a board member for a couple of years) and helped create several agile certifications (iCAgile, DSDM Leadership, PMI-ACP).

So, I am not immune from the pulls of standardization, but hopefully that adds some credibility to my encouragement to rise up and evolve your methods. The biggest threat to agile I see is not dilution and confusion, it is obsolescence and abandonment because they are not keeping up with new demand of collaborative teams.

Our lecturer goes on: "Agile teams often talk about “Shu, Ha, Ri” progression that describes a three-step process of increasing mastery that progresses as follows:
1.         Shu: Obeying the rules (shu means to keep, protect, or maintain)
2.         Ha: Consciously moving away from the rules (ha means to detach or break free)
3.         Ri: Unconsciously finding an individual path (ri means to go beyond or transcend)"

I associate myself with all of these sentiments. I think leadinganswers is spot-on. My book on agile methods, pictured below, and my book on managing project value, also below, are not methodology bigots. I unashamedly borrow the best. And, so it should be. Anybody who can afford two days in a hotel ballroom can buy the credential of "scrum master". Lets not be a slave to the proprietary.

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Risk managers

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Matthew Squair tells us this:

Risk managers are the historians of futures that never were

Wish that it were true, but: Not exactly!

"Futures that never were" never were only if the RM was successful at mitigation, or--on some probability--basis the future never got here. Otherwise, our historians are the prognosticators of futures that actually were--they put it on the risk register and it actually happened!

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The White House and Agile Methods

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I don't often look to the White House for guidance on project management, and less frequently (never?) for their view of agile methods. Nonetheless, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are on the case.

OMB in particular runs the gov's CIO Council which coordinates government IT throughout the executive departments by means of each department's CIO. OMB also runs the new (as of August, 2014) U.S. Digital Services.

In turn, the Digital Services has published two guidance documents that are targeted at deploying agile methods throughout the government.

The first is the "Digital Playbook" which describes a dozen or so "plays" (somewhat as a sports analogy of plays).  But the interesting one is the "TechFar Handbook" which you can read and download from this github location.

The TechFar Handbook subtitle is: "handbook for procuring digital services using agile methods". It is structured more or less in a Q&A format, divided among sections. It takes off from the authority in FAR 39.103 which is all about modular contracting authority and procedure. It then shows the compatibility between agile and the intent of modular contracting, and it gives hints on how to "stretch"-- within the law -- to be more modular.

Sounds like it is all going in the right direction. Let's all cheer the U.S. Digital Services

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It just takes too long

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Robert Gates, the former United States Secretary of Defense, in a September 2008 speech, said: 

“Our conventional modernization programs seek a 99% solution in years. Stability and counterinsurgency missions—the wars we are in—require 75% solutions in months. The challenge is whether in our bureaucracy and in our minds these two different paradigms can be made to coexist”.

Since that speech, the Defense acquisition management system has been revised twice. Now, there is official sanction for faster methodologies with lower overhead.

You can read about it here. Pay special attention to the six acquisition models, and particularly Model 3 for incremental capabilities.

Amen!

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We don't do manifestos

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You gotta love the first bullet from this conclusion by Stephen Welby, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering, speaking at the AFEI Agile for Government Summit, November 21, 2013

When he says in the 4th bullet point "upcoming revisions to 5000.2", he is referring to the DoD instruction for operation of the Defense acquisition system, revised in the fall of 2013, and then revised again in January, 2015. This latest version of the instruction describes six models of how to acquire systems, the third of which, Model 3, describes an incremental methodology that is "agile" like. Of course, there are a lot of non-development swim lanes and pre- and post- tasks, as you would expect in an organization accustomed to working at large scale.

There are, of course, a myriad of "how to" acquisition guides for the program manager. Mitre, a DoD think tank contractor, has a decent acquisition guide written in 2014. You can download a pdf here.

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About facts

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My favorite expression about facts and estimates--given to me by Dr. David Hulett who was the PMI chair for PMP Chapter 11--is this one:

There are no facts about the future

Now, I see this one posted at Critical Uncertainties, attributed to Friedrich Nietzcshe:

There are no facts, only interpretations 

And, so what do we make of this?
It's all about bias -- we all have a biases, and thus can we ever say anything with true objectivity?

Well, yes, of course, there are immutable international standards for measurements; and measurements certainly make up a lot of "facts", though even here we find arguments about angels on the head of a pin (See Einstein, and the theories of relativity that demonstrate the flexibility of time and space)

And, of course, just put a measuring probe on some things changes them so much that we can't objectively measure them.

And then there is quantum physics with those theories of non-deterministic location; and entanglements that seem provide connectivity where there is none.

Should I go on?

Probably Nietzcshe had it right.

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Negotiating: Are you at the table?

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I'll bet most of us have sat down to negotiate and have come away with war stories of the experience, perhaps feeling smug we got a good deal, but more likely feeling we did OK and got enough to walk away with head high.

Good show!

Ooops! Now we start hearing from the back bench or the the ankle biters about how they could have done so much better than you (snickering heard in the background)

Shimon Peres, the former Israeli leader, had something to say on this:

Those away from the table seem to think they are a better negotiator than those at the table

Hey! Don't blame me.
Another way to look at this is that those without the responsibility can always find what's wrong with what you did; those who are responsbility-free can wax on about "you should do this, or you shouldn't do that" without concern for burden of being actually being accountable for strategic and tactical consequences. It's easier when you not actually in charge.

Getting to the table
Of course, if you're not at the table and you feel the need to criticize, come with a solution or an alternative that's actually practical. Indeed, you might find that such insight might be your ticket to the table!

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2nd Edition -- later this year for sure!

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Hey! the 2nd edition is coming later this year, certainly before the snow flies too deeply (somewhere, but not here: I live in Florida, USA)

•  There's all new content in chapters 4 and 12 about "agile in the waterfall" and transitioning to agile in an enterprise context
• Of course, there's familiar content from the first edition, spruced up a bit with lessons learned, and made even more relevant to the enterprise context
•  And, the book's architecture has been restructured to look more like an agile project to facilitate learning and teaching: each chapter is like a release; each chapter is divided into modules -- like a sprint; and each module is a useful deliverable. 

The 1st edition made the list of best books on agile two years in row. I'm grateful for all the readers who voted for the book, and of course I'm most grateful for all the readers who bought the book and made it possible to update and issue the 2nd edition.

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