The 2nd Law ....

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Did you heat a cup of coffee in the office microwave, and then walk away and leave it there?

Sometimes you just forget.

And when you returned to get the cup, what did you find?

Crap! The coffee is cool again. In fact, the average temperature of all the elements in the microwave are about the same: the coffee, cup, and surrounding air. Whereas after first heating, the averages were quite distinctively different; the coffee was hot; the air was not so much. But after a bit, all discriminating differences are lost. 

Said another way: Over time, and in isolation, "waste" increased, where, in this case, "waste" is the heat (energy) that was usefully in the coffee, but is now wastefully distributed throughout the microwave. The former distinctly organized sources of energy have become homogenous, bland, without contrast and shades of complexion. In effect: disorganized and wasteful; almost without value.

What's happened?
Physics took over.
Yes but ..... Actually statistics is the underlying explanation for the increase in waste, and that idea will take us to project management (which constantly opposes waste)

So read on; I'll get to project management shortly. 

So, what do we make of this?

At the outset, there was order, structure, and organization to the energy in the container. 

But over time, this orderly organization disappeared.

Inexorably, over time, and in isolation (that is: no outside influences or help), "disorder" (as opposite of "order") always increases until some equilibrium is reached. Distinctive differences degrade, becoming homogeneous.

And, by the way, value is lost .... The utility of the disordered is usually less than the ordered. Keep that in mind, project people!

Don't forget the living:

And this phenomenon applies to biological sources also: Without some stimulus from time to time, when in isolation, biological systems all tend toward a low-energy minimum maintenance state.

Statistical formulation

I mentioned statistics.

Hardly was the ink dry on the thermodynamics explanation of the cooling coffee than others grasped the idea that there's a statistical explanation as well: 

The probability of a well ordered configuration is hugely less than a disordered one. Even for the coffee cup situation, there are very few ordered configurations; there are effectively infinite disordered configurations for the distribution of energy. 

Disorder is the more likely end-state.

Generally speaking, given isolation, the probability that disorder increases and order decreases is very high. 

And never the other way around!

The 2nd Law:

All of the above is a layman's explanation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (*), originally conceived as a law of physics to explain the distribution (and redistribution) of energetic molecules in a container. 

But given that there are many more useful concepts that arise from the statistics of disorder, perhaps the 2nd Law should be the Disorder Law.(**)

 

Maximize throughput ... project objective 

Another interesting tidbit, arising from the statistical interpretation, is that it is improbable for a system to be completely disordered or completely ordered. 

The 2nd Law predicts that statistically -- as things are approached asymptotically -- there will always be something missing; something lost; something wasted. 

Minimizing waste and lost value, and maximizing throughput thus becomes an exercise in working with the 2nd Law.

Isolated projects

You probably saw this bit coming: 

Projects that are highly isolated by security protocols, or physical remoteness, or by uninterest and lack of attention are vulnerable to the inevitability of  the 2nd Law. 

If external stimulus, energy, and interest are cut off, then the 2nd Law predicts blandness; lack of innovation, productivity, and morale; an increase of waste; and a general race to the bottom where a minimum effort is maintained. 

And, by the way, who among us have not seen such in the corners of large bureaucracies, oversized project offices, and similar locations? We're likely to say: Does anyone care?

.

Counter measures:

The only avoidance tactic for this decay into mediocrity and blandness is to selectively apply new energy from the outside. 

• In project terms, this means re-energizing individuals, individually. (Giving everybody a new T-shirt or coffee cup won't restore individual leadership, energy, and innovativeness). 
• This means aggressively combating wastefulness, non-value add activity, and a general acceptance of 'shit happens'
• This means allocating time and space, away from the project, for recharging.
• This means that selective (and genuine) attention to the project by outsiders is mandatory.
• And, this may require rotation to an outside activity to spark new behaviors.
• Not least: mitigating some physical remoteness and isolation.

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(*) There is a First Law: Energy is never destroyed; it may change form, but in total it is conserved. This is a handy bit of information, but for PM purposes the way in which energy distributes itself is where the action is; and that is the domain of the 2nd Law.

"Entropy" is the word physicists use for "disorder"

 

And, there is a Third Law: The 3rd Law says that there is actually a limit to how disorderly things can become. That's actually good news for PM! But this limit is so remote that it's of no practical consequence in projects, unless you are trying to squeeze the last bit from an information channel. 

(**) There is more about this topic as it affects human situations in Steve Pinker's book, "Enlightenment Now". Pinker uses the term "Law of Entropy" instead of 2nd Law

 

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Mixed methodologies: Agile and ....

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There comes a point where more planning can not remove the remaining uncertainty, instead execution must be used to provide data and remove uncertainty.

This quote comes from a nicely argued case -- from the agile blog 'leading answers' -- for mixing agile methods in rather traditional businesses, like the oil and gas exploration/production business

If ever there was a business that benefits from Boehm's Spiral Model, OGM (oil, gas, minerals) is certainly one. (Disclosure: I hold some OGM leases in Texas, so I've a bit of personal experience with this)

So, what have you got here?

• A lot of risk acknowledged up front (can't know everything -- thus the opening quote)
• A need to run with pilot projects before committing to production
• A need to tie into legacy systems (in the OGM case, distribution systems)
• A lot of deliverables that can be done incrementally and then integrated
• Small (it's all relative re small) teams, co-located (or the virtual version thereof), personally committed, with risk hanging on every move.
• A degree of local autonomy -- even if virtual -- required to meet the challenges of the moment

Sounds like an environment that needs agility, if not agile methods, on a lot of the stuff.

Of course, there's "one big thing":

You can't go around self-organizing (agile speak) willy-nilly! There are regulatory constraints everywhere and safety-first doctrine hanging on every move.

So, yes, there is a big bureaucracy that watches over... it's certainly more intrusive than a coach or a servant-leader (more agile speak)  (I'm sure they never heard this stuff in an oil field or an offshore rig!). In fact, I'll bet the rig boss is a force to be reckoned with!

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Risking the team

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Are you on one of those death march projects about to burn out. Want some time off? Perhaps it's in the plan

Formula  solution
Google among others -- Microsoft, etc -- are well known for the "time off, do what you want toward self improvement and personnel innovation" model; formulas like that lend objectivity to the process (not playing favorites, etc). Note: more on this in the "6x2x1" model discussed last

Productivity drop
Of course, the real issue is one that agile leader Scott Ambler has talked about: the precipitous drop in productivity once you reach about 70% throughput capacity of the team. Up to this point, the pace of output (velocity) is predictably close to team benchmarks; thereafter, it has been observed to fall off a cliff.

Other observers have put it down as a variation on "Brooks Law" named after famed IBM-370 project leader Fred Brooks: "Adding people to a late project makes it later" . In this case, it's too many people on the team with too many interferences. It's been observed that to raise productivity, reduce staff!

Wave bounces
In the physics of wave theory, we see the same phenomenon: when the "load" can not absorb the energy applied, the excess is reflected back, causing interference and setting up standing waves. This occurs in electronic cables, but it also happens on the beach, and in traffic.

Ever wondered why you are stopped in traffic miles from the interference while others up ahead are moving? Answer: traffic load exceeds the highway's ability to absorb the oncoming cars, thereby launching reflections of standing waves that ebb and crest.

So it is in teams: apply energy beyond the team's ability to absorb and you simply get reflected interference. Like I said: the way to speed things up is to reduce the number of teams working and the number of staff applied.

WIP Limits
In agile/lean Kanban theory, this means getting a grip on the WIP limits... you simply can't have too many things in play beyond a certain capacity.

Sometimes the problem arises with sponsors: their answer is universally: Throw more resources in, exactly opposite the correct remedy

6x2x1 model
One of my students said this:

"Daniel Pink  has an excellent book called Drive, the surprising truth about what motivates us. In the book, Pink talks about inspiring high productivity and maintaining a sustainable pace.

One of the techniques is the 6x2x1 iteration model. This says that for every six two week iterations the development team should have a 1 week iteration where they are free to work project related issues of their choice.

You can also run a 3x4x1 model for four week iterations. Proponents of this approach have observed that the development teams will often tackle tough problems, implement significant improvements and generally advance the project during these free play periods. Without the time crunch to complete the story points the team also refreshes itself."

I don't know, but Pink's thesis may have been the genesis of the Google and Microsoft "time off" plans I've already mentioned, or maybe the experience of those plans found their way into Pink's thesis. Either way, time off matters!

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Permanently remote?!

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You just got the memo: the project is transitioning from temporarily to permanently remote!

What does this mean?

• At a minimum, you've got to go in and clear out your physical office ... if you ever had one.
• And, you may need to go ahead and make an investment in renovating your home office 
• Or, maybe it's time to rent some desk space somewhere so you have a place to go other than Starbucks to work remotely, but yet get away

Relationships
On a larger scale, many of your relationships will fade from familiar to official. Many team members you will never meet in person. If you are a team leader, those career very personal counseling sessions, mentoring moments, and casual exchanges that build strength and trust into a relationship may be gone.

Trust, respect, and fear
Trust and fear are often counter-parties to many relationships. Fear may come first, then respect, then trust. Generally, we don't trust strangers, though we may respect them. If they are somehow different from us, unconscious fears about differences that are the drivers of survival instincts may kick in until we get to know them and they are no longer strangers.

Body language is 50%
They say body language is 50% of our communication mechanisms. Well, Zoom may fill in a lot of that, but not all. Consequently, other communication skills will have to be strengthened and given more weight. Yikes! We may have to take greater care in text and email messages. 

Velocity
And, it all slows down. There just isn't the bandwidth in a remote setting to duplicate face-to-face and the casual and fortuitous communications of the office espresso machine. 

Meanwhile
Meanwhile, get a big box, go to the office, and clear out!

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Maybe you shouldn't work from home

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From press clippings we get these bits about not working from home, which I've paraphrased:

What about social capital? 
The relationships currently sustaining business [and project offices] were built from face-to-face meetings before the lockdown. This "capital" that has been banked, to think in Stephen Covey terms, will erode over time if not refreshed. The longer people are apart, the weaker those bonds become.
So, how to build up the bank account will be a topic for the near future.

Remote hiring:
How would any new hire acquire the project [or business] culture; how would they made to feel connected? How do you do remote mentoring?

Of course, virtual teams have been dealing with this problem for years, so many protocols are already well developed for the new-but-remote person on the team

And, what about personal goals? 
Some predict a potentially destabilizing divide between workers who get ahead by going into the office and those who work remotely and miss out on career opportunities. “Everyone who wants to manage, to run things, to influence, to jockey, to make friends, to build a network — they will clamor to work in the office,” David Pogue writes. “Almost every single ambitious person in a company will be demanding a desk at HQ.”

I agree: when I worked for the military in Berlin, it was all about who could get closest to the flagpole.

What about the power relationships?
Like it or not, proximity to power is important, so if a project executive promotes a remote-first approach but then works mostly in the office, what's the power message there? And, ref to the above, who stays home while others get close?

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Saying it visually

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Visual communications, or communicating visually, are all the more important as the virtual workplace becomes the "new normal". There's a skill to be learned for effective communications with visual as the centerpiece.

Got these needs?

• Proposal
• Message
• ESL audience
• Virtual meeting?

Then this Khan Academy series on visual language is a place to start.
There's power in framing, stretching, shaping .... not to mention color, contrast, shading.

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Virtual agile teams?

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Somebody asked: can a virtual team do Agile?

• 20 years ago, at the dawn of Agile, the answer might have been no. 
• 15 years ago, more less at the peak of the AOL texting app Instant Messenger and the dawn of the smart phone and smart-phone personal networking and conferencing, the answer might have been yes, but with reservations. 
• Now, the answer is "Of course", with some adjustments. 

Here are my thoughts on this.

The communications channel:

Virtual teams often begin by emulating the behavior and circumstances of co-located teams. But can they?

The first thought is communications. Co-located teams can handle a much greater N-squared (*) communication intensity because much communication is person-to-person, and much of person-to-person communication is non-verbal.

(*) What is N-squared?  It's the approximate number of ways objects (people, systems) can communicate. The real formula is N*(N-1). As an example: There are 5*4 ways 5 people can talk among themselves.

Non-verbal face-to-face is a very high bandwidth channel -- speed of light really -- capable of communicating a large information message instantly, although the messages are often highly encoded and subject to inaccurate decoding among strangers or nearly strangers.

Nonetheless, it's much easier to sort out the cacophony of discussion if you can put face and voice and context together. (Anyone who's participated in a large video conference knows the difficulty of segregating voices and getting them associated correctly)

Consequently, when planning for virtual teams, bear in mind that virtual teams don't have the luxury of infinite bandwidth. Even with up to date AV conferencing, the non-verbal is communicated in a lossy channel.

And here's the thing: you don't know how much is lost; one of those known unknowns

Thus, virtual teams need more time in the schedule to compensate for the bandwidth constraints of not being face-to-face.

Velocity impacts:

Some teams relish the hub-bub of real time communications, and others do not. Good practice is to benchmark the virtual velocity before beginning the first iteration. Look for virtual velocity to be slower, and productivity less. 

Perhaps the virtual team needs to be larger, or given smaller bites to work on. (Ooops: Adding people to a slow team makes it slower ... Read: "The Mythical Man month, 20th anniversary edition")


Assigning team work:

Assigning work to virtual teams should follow this simple rule: partition work according to its natural boundaries that minimize and simplify interfaces.

Albert Einstein has been quoted to the effect: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple".

But over simplification is hazardous also. Who's got the "big picture" in mind? The solution can lose cohesion and the bigger picture becomes so obscured that effective solutions are not possible to build from the too-small parts.

Iteration Planning and tracking:

The iteration planning meeting is the agile mechanism for assigning work. All the team's complement attends. The same applies to a virtual team.

Tracking progress and identifying problems:

Only the daily stand-up meeting is affected by the communications unique to virtual teams. The less efficient electronic channels may have to be compensated by extending the time-box of the daily stand-up.

The burn-down and trending data is part of the team scorecard posted electronically as opposed to marking a whiteboard in a team space.

Will it work?
I end where I started:  "Of course", with some adjustments.

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Virtual teams ... now is the time

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“Virtuality is found in how team members work, not in where team members work.” Thomas P. Wise, "Trust in Virtual Teams"

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Thomas P. Wise is probably correct that virtual teams are more about "how" than "where", but as the covid-19 virus is about as I write this, everyone is scrambling for the playbook on virtual teams, and turning to the chapter on "how" without question. We know the "where": tucked away at home or some other remote location

By Wise's take, these are the main determinants of whether a team is really virtual:

• Geography
• Communications
• Culture

The culture thing
I line up big time on the culture thing.
I've always said: You can't push culture through the Internet cable all that well.

Commonly, you've got two identities: Remote and Local. And each identity has a personality and behavior that fits the either the local or remote culture. (Will the "real" you come forward?)

In this moment of crises, project teams suddenly made virtual carry their project culture home, so it's not like hiring virtual staff and hoping the culture will seep through the Internet.

So, values, customs, loyalties, and trusting relationships -- all components of the culture -- will persist for the relatively short time this event will be with us. The question will be: what's the tail on this? How will it be different when we all gather back together?
It's an unknown, or better yet: a known unknown.

Geography and Communications
But, the the others are important. For instance, if in the long run, this sudden surge of virtual teams returns to perhaps working from home a day a week pretty much means just a geographic separation: you're not going to lose your culture (beliefs and norms) in just a day at the house. But, given enough time in a remote geography, and you're going to "go native" as they say.

And, of course, if you can't effectively communicate visually, then there goes the body language and probably half your communications input.
Conference calls -- voice only -- are the worst in this regard (just put it on mute and go the kitchen for a snack ... will you be missed? Will you miss anything? And, how would you or anyone know?)

The good news: all kinds of communication apps are popping up. The bad news: in the short run, the physical channels in the Internet are stressed.

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Teamwork -- managing the white space

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One of the big differences between a team and a group is cohesiveness around the goal:

There's no success individually unless there is success collectively.

Inevitably, keeping the team together to promote cohesiveness raises the question: how to keep everyone busy all the time -- other than 'painting rocks' (which is the way the Army used to do it). In the popular vernacular of project management, keeping everyone productively busy means actively managing their downtime, aka 'white space', between and amongst their planned activities.

In organizations that are aggressively matrix managed, one approach to 'white space' management is to reassign people to another project with the intention of just a short assignment to 'keep them off the overhead' and always on 'billable hours'.  Of course, such practice breaks up the team for a short time so it kind of flies in the face of cohesiveness, team accomplishment, and team metrics.

And, aggressive matrix management assumes the F.W. Taylor model of management science: jobs can be filled by anyone qualified for the job description... interchangeable parts, as it were. In the era of team work where teams recruit their members, Taylorism is an anathema. Thus, aggressive matrix management is likewise seen as anti-team.

That all brings us to another approach -- more popular these days -- which is: manage the white space by managing the team backlog.

• Make sure that the backlog has all the technical debt and low priority requirements present and accounted for so that they can be fit to the white space opportunity.
• Develop and maintain a "parking lot" for off-baseline opportunities that might fit in the white space
• So also bring in mock testing, special event prototyping, and, of course, that bane of all:
• Maintenance of team records.

One big advantage of managing by teams: the cost is relatively fixed. Each team has a running cost, and so the total cost closely approximates the sum of the number of teams x the running cost of each. Of course, many PMs are NOT comfortable with the project staff being a fixed cost. They would much rather have more granular control. I get it, but the here's the main point about cost:

The cost of a project is not its value; in a "good project", value greatly exceeds cost

Here's the memo: Manage for value! (Oh!, did I say I wrote the book?)

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Time zone bubbles

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Sometimes, it's the simplest ideas that are the most effective. In the IT production control world, "bubble charts" are a common artifice to show the workflow of various scripts, user/operator interactions, and programs that have to run in sequence, or with dependencies, or a particular time (scheduler), or "on demand".

Fair enough, but no news there.

Then I read a blog post by agile guru Johanna Rothman about time zone bubble charts. So simple, but so effective as a communications device for the distributed team. It's a simple image, suitable for the war room or the background on some far flung work station.

Johanna offers six ideas for dealing with the myriad issues of time zones and teams. She writes:

• Show the timezone bubble chart to your managers so they understand what you are attempting to manage.
• Share the timezone bubble chart, so all the team members can participate in selecting planning and standup times.
• Share the timezone pain. Do not make only one person or only one timezone delegate always arise early or stay late.
• Know if everyone needs to participate.
• Ask people if they will timeshift. Make sure you ask in advance, so people can make arrangements for their personal lives.
• Make sure people either have necessary bandwidth to participate at home or food and beds to participate at work, if they need to participate outside of normal work hours

My experience was [India west coast (UTC +5:30)] to [US East coast (UTC -5)]. That's 10:30 hours difference in time, and not all that uncommon among software teams.

Here's what we did:

• Dedicated phone room with open line for about 4-6 hours per day (anyone could walk in and talk or set up an offline conference)
• Time shift (mostly by the India workers)
• Alternate early/late conferences so that both US and India shared the inconvenience
• Real-time document sharing via shared resources
• Teleconferences by video on a case by case basis. (We didn't have Skype or Facetime at the time)
• More care with documentation to compensate for ESL (English as second language)

Hey! you can make it work

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Can agile teams be virtual?

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Somebody asked: can a virtual team do Agile?

• 15 years ago, the answer might have been no. 
• Seven years ago, more less pre smart phone and smart-phone networking, the answer was probably yes, but with reservations. 
• Now, the answer is "Of course", with some adjustments. 

Here are my thoughts on this.

The communications channel:

Virtual teams often begin by emulating the behavior and circumstances of real teams. But can they?

The first thought is communications. Real teams can handle a much greater N2 communication intensity because much communication is person-to-person, and much of person-to-person communication is non-verbal.

What is N2? It's really N-squared. It's the approximate number of ways objects can communicate. The real formula is N(N-1). There are 5*4 ways 5 people can talk among themselves.

Non-verbal face-to-face is a very high bandwidth channel -- speed of light really -- capable of communicating a large information message instantly, although the messages are often highly encoded and subject to inaccurate decoding among strangers or nearly strangers. Nonetheless, it's much easier to sort out the cacophony of discussion if you can put face and voice and context together. (Anyone who's participated in a large video conference knows the difficulty of segregating voices and getting them associated correctly)

Consequently, when planning for virtual teams, bear in mind that virtual teams don't have the luxury of infinite bandwidth. Even with up to date video, the non-verbal is communicated in a lossy channel. And here's the thing: you don't know how much is lost. Thus, more time is needed in the schedule to compensate for the bandwidth constraints.

Velocity impacts:

Some teams relish the hub-bub of real time communications, and others do not. Good practice is to benchmark the virtual velocity before beginning the first iteration. Look for virtual velocity to be slower, and productivity less. 

Perhaps the virtual team needs to be larger, or given smaller bites to work on. (Ooops: Adding people to a slow team makes it slower ... Read: "The Mythical Man month, 20th anniversary edition")


Assigning team work:

Assigning work to virtual teams should follow this simple rule: partition work according to its natural boundaries that minimize and simplify interfaces.

Albert Einstein has been quoted to the effect: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple".

But over simplification is hazardous also. Who's got the "big picture" in mind? The solution can lose cohesion and the bigger picture becomes so obscured that effective solutions are not possible to build from the too-small parts.

Iteration Planning and tracking:

The iteration planning meeting is the agile mechanism for assigning work. All the team's complement attends. The same applies to a virtual team.

Tracking progress and identifying problems:

Only the daily stand-up meeting is affected by the communications unique to virtual teams. The less efficient electronic channels may have to be compensated by extending the time-box of the daily stand-up.

The burn-down and trending data is part of the team scorecard posted electronically as opposed to marking a whiteboard in a team space.

I end where I started:  "Of course", with some adjustments.

---

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Read my contribution to the Flashblog

Adding staff -- slowly

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First, we have "Brooks Law", as given in the classic case study "The Mystical Manmonth" by Dr. Fred Brooks:

"Adding staff to a late project makes it later"

I was no more thinking about that idea, than I read this missive in a history of the Civil War that I am engaged with:

“The veterans looked across the open ground at the newcomers with complete and unconcealed skepticism and hostility. In every line of their bearing—in the set of their jaws, the tilt of their heads, the look about their eyes peering out from under those valued hatbrims—they expressed for all to see the age-old, impersonal, unformulated feeling of the veteran for the recruit:

We have had it and you have not, and until you have been where we have been and have done what we have done we do not admit you to any kind of fellowship.”

Excerpt From: Catton, Bruce. “Glory Road.” This material may be protected by copyright.

OK, that might be tougher than the normal project team might be, but in my experience, until there is bonding over a common stress, there's not cohesion, and maybe not even functional integration.

So, as in war and most other things, to speed assimilation along, sometimes a bonding experience is needed. Thus, all the bonding games, etc, but it often works. Else, just put everybody in the deep end. Survival will do all that is necessary

And, did I mention virtual teams: there's really not a difference, not really.

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Did I mention: no more self-organizing teams?

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I like headlines that have a simple message

This one--No more self-organizing teams--caught my eye for three reasons:

• I agree with the sentiment
• It was written by Jim Highsmith, who rights some good stuff
• I have an interest in leadership per se

Now, to be fair, Mike Cohn has an excellent counter-point blog, except he more or less supports the thesis we present here when he (Mike) quotes Philip Anderson who writes in "Biology of Business"

Self-organization does not mean that workers instead of managers engineer an organization design. It does not mean letting people do whatever they want to do. It means that management commits to guiding the evolution of behaviors that emerge from the interaction of independent agents instead of specifying in advance what effective behavior is. (1999, 120)

But, back to the headline: What did Mr. Highsmith tell us? (Of course, he said more than these bullets, but these are the highlights)

• There is just too much experience and management literature that shows that good leaders make a big difference
• There is a contingent within the agile community that is fundamentally anarchist at heart and it has latched onto the term self-organizing because it sounds better than anarchy. However, putting a duck suit on a chicken doesn’t make a chicken a duck.
• Delegating decisions in an organization isn’t a simple task; it requires tremendous thought and some experimentation
• Leading is hard. If it was easy, every company would be “great,” to use Jim Collins’ term (Good to Great ).

What did he not tell us?

• Dominance is a human trait not easily set aside; thus the natural leaders will come to the fore and the natural followers will fall-in thankfully. There's no need and no practical way to rotate the leadership once dominance is established
• Like it or not, positional authority counts for something in all but the smallest enterprises. Thus, senior managers are senior for a reason. It's hard to establish credibility with the stakeholdes that hold the key to resources if the team is being led from the bottom of the pecking order.
• Self-organization may deny biases and bully the nemisis off the team. Group think, anyone?
• Delegation is a tricky matter: do only those things that only you can do

And the answer is: according to Highsmith, something called "light touch", but in reality it means leading and managing from a position of trusting the team, but mentoring the "self-organization" towards a better day.

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Paradoxes of business leadership in the digital age

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So, here we go again, yet another list. In this case: five paradoxes, but nonetheless attention-getting. As written by Tomas Nielsen and Patrick Meehan, we're told:

1. Radically innovate while optimizing operations
2. Compete in sprints while delivering long term value
3. Integrate external partners while acting as a single entity
4.  Recognize that providing immediate digital value plays a large role in sales but that more value is delivered over time.
5. Provide technologically enabled offerings while focusing on value, not technology

 Except for #1 -- which is kind of like 'keep the business running (we're going to need the cash)' --  it's almost as if these guys were looking over my shoulder as I wrote "Managing Project Value".  #2 is really just downtown agile. Agilists know it by heart.

It seems to me the hard stuff for project managers is #3: building mixed and virtual teams that you want to:

• Act more homogeneously than they really are; 
• Operate more efficiently than they really will do; and 
• Not change the culture too much (if you like your culture)

This last one is no small matter, especially if you bring in a big-time "integration partner" that may be much bigger and more experienced than your own people. Ideally, a contractor takes on the personality of its customer, but sometimes the partner simply overwhelms. And, then when their team has to collaborate with some of your legacy troops.... well, that may not go well.

Conflict resolution skills required here ....

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Let'em figure it out

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"Let them figure it out" is the mantra for small team management at its best. I'm constantly amazed at how fast and successfully small teams converge to a local optimization, finding a methodology for doing whatever they are doing that maximizes their interests.

In several recent situations I was an observer and a participant as 20 or teams of anywhere from 2 to 6 people were given the same task, given the same instructions, given the same resources, and had the same strategic goal.

What happened?

There were about a half dozen unique methods that were synthesized in real time, tested, and the most advantageous selected. What I noticed were several dynamics working nearly simultaneously:

• Self organization: who is going to do what -- mostly, a volunteer thing as to who does what, though informed by task, skill, and capability of the team members
• Convergence: fail quick, fix, and retry til it's working well. You can feel it when the non-value add stuff dissipates and it's all about value-add
• Local interests: Local interests are both personal and team oriented. Each person tends to maximize their own interests to the extent that they fit in the overall team envelop; and the team optimizes to max out their contribution to the strategic goal

And the PMO? The PMO was there to set the strategic goal; put the resources in place, having recruited the teams; and knock down the issues that were not foreseen. And, lest it not be forgotten: to provide feedback during and after -- both a real-time incentive, and a after-action atta-boy

This stuff actually works! But, did I mention virtual teams? Virtual teams have less bandwidth and so their velocity is correspondingly less. Convergence times are greater, etc. But, the principles apply

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Red rover, red rover, send ..... over!

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It's an old game but it's a way to choose a team:

• Everyone stands around waiting to be chosen
• The team leader chants: "Red rover, red rover, send { name } over!", and that person is chosen

Ooops! It's hell to be the last chosen... or worse, not chosen at all! Gives you a headache (take aspirin) and sometimes a heartache (Rejected!)

So, Carolyn O'Hara has some advice:

Do:

1. Check your own behavior and biases for tendencies that might make people feel excluded
2. Empower others — it makes them feel trusted and included
3. Continually work at creating an inclusive culture — it’s an ongoing process

Don’t:

1. Gloss over differences — people want their unique contributions to be valued
2. Assume diversity is the same as inclusion
3. Leave it to chance — be proactive about promoting inclusion
4. Gloss over differences — people want their unique contributions to be valued

Catalyst Research Center for Advancing Leader Effectiveness recently completed a survey of 1,500 workers in six countries that showed people feel included when they “simultaneously feel that they both belong, but also that they are unique..” So, no Taylorism here: no one is "plug and play"; everyone has their unique utility.

Of course, while you're busy being inclusive, be aware that you might also need to be tolerant. Tolerance and inclusion are actually different ideas ... you can be tolerant without bothering to include; and you can be inclusive while being intolerant to those included.

It's a bit tricky for some, but for a productive team, you really should try for both qualities.

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The TOGETHER thing

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Heidi Grant Halvorson tells us that being together, working together, and actually doing things together is a big deal.

This is news you can actually use

OMG! There's a magical elixir: Halvorson relates this bit:"... the feeling of working together has indeed been shown to predict greater motivation, particularly intrinsic motivation, that magical elixir of interest, enjoyment, and engagement that brings with it the very best performance."

So, we all work in teams.. at least that's been the preferred project organization for more than a generation.. thus, no problem? We're together all the time, or are we?

The take away from Halvorson's piece for me is that working in teams is not enough. You actually have to work together to do things together to get the benefit of "together". Indeed, is this true: "....the weird thing about teams: They are the greatest (potential) source of connection and belonging in the workplace, and yet teamwork is some of the loneliest work that you’ll ever do."?

If you've ever worked from home on a team, you know what this all about. Team work at home can be pretty lonely. Personally, I like the hub-bub of other people around, or at least some background noise to stir up the air.

Perhaps this is the real issue: ".. The word “together” is a powerful social cue to the brain.  In and of itself, it seems to serve as a kind of relatedness reward, signaling that you belong, that you are connected, and that there are people you can trust working with you toward the same goal."

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More on virtual teams

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“Virtuality is found in how team members work, not in where team members work.” Thomas P. Wise

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I picked up that bit from a book review posting of "Trust in Virtual Teams" by Thomas P. Wise.
Translation:

• Geography
• Communications
• Culture

By Wise's take, those are the main determinants of whether a team is really virtual.

What I think:
I line up big time on the culture thing. I've always said: You can't push culture through the Internet cable all that well. Commonly, you've got two identities: Remote and Local. And each identity has a personality and behavior that fits the either the local or remote culture. (Will the "real" you come forward?)

But, the the others are important. For instance, working from home a day a week pretty much means just a geographic separation: you're not going to lose your culture (beliefs and norms) in just a day at the house. But, given enough time in a remote geography, and you're going to "go native" as they say.

And, of course, if you can't effectively communicate, then there goes the body language and probably half your communications input.

But, these are my ideas; for Wise's take, read the book.

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Choking innovation?

The premise of agile teams is persistence: work like you train, and train and work together. These practices are the backbone of good benchmarks -- like velocity -- which is the heart of agile planning.

Then, of course, there is the counter argument: such familiarity drains the innovative spirit; there's not enough exposure to new stuff that comes with socialization -- it takes a village, etc.

And, then there's the counter-counter argument: with the right space planning, even persistent teams will wash up against many socialization opportunites from the lunch room to the rest room to the coffee bar (I don't think water coolers are much in evidence anymore, replaced by the K-cup machine)

So, is there a right answer: does persistence choke off innovation, or does the persistent team provide the vehicle to act on an innovative idea and get it into production more likely/more better?

I actually line up with the latter: persistence for quality benchmarking and effective work practices, but open plan work for the "osmosis of communication" as Alistair Cockburn would say.

And, of course, there's the Allen Curve that gives guidance on how "open" such open plan workspace should be. Innovation falls off dramatically (exponentially) with lack of socialization.

Back to the real world?

In one of the myriad prognostications on "the future" we've read around here, we learn that in 2012 we begin the great migration back to the real office, where real people collaborate, innovate, and create. In fact, we are told to expect these behaviors:

• The landline, the jacket [for men], the commute, the handshake, and above all the office itself.
• Out of fashion will be the virtual office in which employees sit hunched over laptops in their local Starbucks, joined to their colleagues by webcam and e-mail.
• Employees will turn up to work at predictable hours five days a week, and will comport themselves with greater formality than before.
• Face-to-face meetings will be preferred to video conferences; ideas will be exchanged not by tweet, but by the coffee machine.

The Economist, December 2011

Well, that's great news for agilists.

Agile is built around person-to-person face-to-face collaboration. It's pretty hard to do what Alistair Cockburn calls "communication by osmosis"--that is, absorbing what's going on around you--if you're not there to absorb.

Communication by osmosis is sort of the body language of office communication. There's something in the air,perhaps in the water, and you have to be there to get a sense of it. Otherwise, you're out of loop on some of the best stuff.

But of course everyone is not doing agile, so what's driving "back to the real world". Three things:

1. Defense: people with jobs want to be seen, and be seen productively engaged.

2. Culture: Remote working has been disastrous for spreading corporate culture, and

3. Inheritance: Virtual working has made it difficult for younger workers to pick up the tricks of the trade. And, that sword has two edges: older workers can learn from the young--new tricks, and all that!

And, to top it off, Volkswagen has turned off corporate email for most of its workforce during off hours. Good grief! Does that mean returning to a regular work day when stuff got done in the work place?  What's next?

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