Leadership and Agile Project Management

— Starting an Agile Project within a Traditional Framework

(Thursday, 25 February 2010 03:16)

Agile methods typically don’t cover the early stages of projects very well. They often assume you are ready to start gathering requirements as user stories, or that you even have some candidate features or stories magically ready to go. This...

— Smart Metrics Slides

(Tuesday, 16 February 2010 19:45)

This article summarizes my “Lessons Learned in Project Metrics: Are you Metrics Dumb or Smart?” presentation. It covers the following six topics 1) Measurement Troubles Metrics are like fire. They make good servants but poor masters. When controlled properly and...

— 2010 Training Courses and Events

(Friday, 05 February 2010 05:42)

2010 is shaping up to be a good year for training courses and events. I have the following public enrolment courses available through the PMI. March 10-11 Anaheim, CA April 13-14 Scottsdale, AZ September 15-16 Las Vegas, NV November 10-11...

— Are Your Metrics Dumb or Smart?

(Friday, 29 January 2010 04:43)

On February the 16th I will be presenting at the Calgary Software Quality Discussion Group. This was the first group I presented for when I moved to Calgary nearly 10 years ago and I am very happy to go back...

— Building Trust and Respect

(Sunday, 24 January 2010 18:03)

I have just started my second season of mentoring for our local PMI chapter. This week’s launch workshop was facilitated by Right Management and they introduced a great model for building (and rebuilding) Trust and Respect that I would like...

— PMI Agile Survey

(Saturday, 23 January 2010 04:01)

It is time to tell the PMI what Agile project management resources they should be developing. Please take a moment to answer this 7 question survey and help direct the PMI in 2010. In 2009, the PMI Agile Community of...

— Six Project Trends Every PM Should be Aware Of

(Saturday, 02 January 2010 00:58)

As we start 2010, the second decade of the 21st century, project managers really should be embracing 21st century technologies and approaches. While developers and other project members have been benefiting from improved communication and collaboration via new technology in...

— Project Progress, Optical Illusions, and the Simpsons

(Tuesday, 29 December 2009 18:32)

My last post was on modifying Parking Lot Diagrams to use the area of boxes to show the relative effort of differing parts of the system. The idea was that while traditional Parking Lot diagrams are a great way of...

— Parking Lot Diagrams Revisited – Using Area to Show Effort

(Monday, 07 December 2009 03:13)

Parking Lot diagrams are a great way of summarizing an entire project’s progress and status onto a single page. They illustrate work done, work in progress, work planned and identify what is behind schedule. In this example we can see...

— The Science of Empowerment

(Thursday, 19 November 2009 06:05)

Solving problems with innovative solutions is fun, exciting and rewarding. Yet, being told what to do is generally boring and not very motivating, but why is this? Why exactly do some ways of working seem enjoyable and satisfying while others...

— Hiring for an Agile Team

(Tuesday, 27 October 2009 04:17)

What characteristics do you look for when hiring for an agile team? Our next Calgary APLN meeting is a panel discussion on the topic and looks set be a great one. Some broad characteristics identified in the planning emails for...

— Zombieland Project Management

(Friday, 23 October 2009 02:36)

Zombies and Project Managers; to many people the images are synonymous, fools blindly shuffling from one goal to the next. Not too smart, but a major annoyance if you are trying to get somewhere, or get something done. Yet, as...

— Scrum, Bikram Yoga and The Attention Economy

(Wednesday, 21 October 2009 03:07)

What do Scrum and Bikram Yoga have in common? They both cater for the attention economy. Humans derive a lot of their sense of security and confidence, what psychologist Albert Bandura calls “self-efficacy,” from predictable routines. Without these predictable routines...

— Agile Business Conference 2009

(Wednesday, 14 October 2009 22:33)

I attended the Agile Business Conference in London this week and presented on Tracking Project Performance. I missed this conference last year and so it was especially good to catch up with people again and hear what they have been...

— PMBOK v4 and Agile mappings

(Thursday, 08 October 2009 03:28)

For the attendees of my recent Las Vegas course, below is a link to the PMBOK v4 to Agile mappings we discussed. My previous course material mappings were based on PMBOK v3, and before that the 2000 edition, which are...

— Calgary APLN Social

(Wednesday, 30 September 2009 03:55)

The Calgary Agile Project Leadership Network (Calgary APLN) 2009/2010 season kicks off this week with a social at the Barley Mill in Eau Claire, Thursday Oct 1, 4:30 – 6:30pm. “To help build a vibrant Agile community in Calgary, we...

— Passion and Talent

(Thursday, 03 September 2009 04:59)

Passion is infectious; we are drawn to people who are passionate about topics and goals. We share their excitement and feel the rush, it is authentic and attractive. You cannot really fake passion, it is the raw unfiltered outflow that...

— PMI Agile Launch Event

(Saturday, 29 August 2009 15:11)

On Tuesday I was in Chicago for the PMI Agile Community of Practice launch event. It was hosted by Thoughtworks and kicked off by Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith. Jesse Fewell and I introduced the community and outlined the goals....

— Small Books on Big Ideas

(Friday, 07 August 2009 04:43)

Life is short, people are busy. We don’t get time to read as many books as we would like to. Yet we could probably miss a TV show now and again. Here are a couple of really short reads (1...

— Back Blogging Again

(Friday, 07 August 2009 04:23)

OK, I'm back and I really need to post here more often. Summers in Canada are so short that I try to pack a year’s worth of adventures into 3-4 short months. We (hopefully) still have plenty of summer left,...

— Launch of the PMI Agile Community

(Wednesday, 08 July 2009 05:06)

The “PMI Agile Community” will be officially launched at the Agile 2009 Conference in Chicago, August 24. This has been made possible by Jesse Fewell and the strong team of volunteers pushing through the red tape of the PMI and...

— Agile Project Management Viewed from Behavioral Science

(Monday, 22 June 2009 03:37)

Background Earlier this year I attended an interesting talk by Tony Parrottino on Applied Behavior Analysis Science and posted a short write up. Recently I have had a couple of follow-on meetings with Tony and have become fascinated by the...

— Assessing Your Emotional Capital

(Sunday, 24 May 2009 05:00)

IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and IQ tests that attempt to measure intelligence are well known. However, IQ is not a good predictor of how successful you will be in life, or how effective and valued you will be at work. Emotional...

— Project Success?

(Wednesday, 29 April 2009 01:26)

What defines project success? On “time and budget”, or “to specification and quality requirements”, maybe all of these? No, we are missing some less tangible, but critical components; how do people feel about the project once it is done. On...

— The Simple Guide to Earned Value

(Thursday, 09 April 2009 03:15)

I have written a couple of posts now on agile alternatives to earned value, but lots of people still do not understand traditional earned value. So here is a simple worked example and a one page .PDF summary... Let’s imagine...

— Upcoming Events

(Thursday, 09 April 2009 02:48)

After returning from teaching a PMI class in New Orleans, the PMI have added some additional venues for the course later in the year. This is a good sign for agile methods within the PMI community; the course sold out...

— Non-Functional Requirements - Minimal Checklist

(Sunday, 29 March 2009 17:45)

All IT systems at some point in their lifecycle need to consider non-functional requirements and their testing. For some projects these requirements warrant extensive work and for other project domains a quick check through may be sufficient. As a minimum,...

— Agile in New Orleans

(Sunday, 22 March 2009 02:01)

Next week I’ll be teaching a two day Agile Project Management course for the PMI in New Orleans. The class sold out quickly; I only teach 3 or 4 times a year for the PMI and I wondered if registration...

— The "Realization, Suck, Advance" Progression

(Wednesday, 18 March 2009 03:29)

Many skills go through a familiar progression: 1) Poor Performance 2) The Point of Realization 3) The “Sucking” Phase 4) The Advancement Phase I went through this with TDD, then with a switch from management to leadership, more recently with...

— VUCA Lessons For Agile

(Thursday, 12 March 2009 02:27)

Bob Johansen author of “Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present” outlines the challenges of VUCA projects. VUCA is a military term used to describe environments characterized by: Volatility Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity In such environments standard...

— Reinvigorate Your Retrospectives

(Wednesday, 25 February 2009 03:02)

Come and see Jennitta Andrea present on how to reinvigorate your retrospectives at the Calgary APLN meeting this Friday 27 February. From the outline: “You know you should be performing regular retrospectives, but you can't convince management or the team...

— Agile Organizations

(Monday, 16 February 2009 06:27)

The week before last I was in Regina teaching a two day Agile Project Leadership course for the Regina .NET User Group. One of the side conversations we had there was about Agile Organizations. Companies who not only embrace agile...

— Batch Size and Velocity Fluctuations

(Tuesday, 27 January 2009 15:13)

I recently wrote a post on Velocity Signature Analysis and have been looking at how undertaking large chunks of work as a complete team impacts velocity. We are currently three quarters of the way through a major (4 months long)...

— Lifecycle Variables

(Saturday, 20 December 2008 17:06)

I have written a couple of posts now (here and here) about the new PMBOK v4 guide due out soon. One of the new graphs included helps describe how project characteristics change over the project life time. The top blue...

— Velocity Signature Analysis

(Wednesday, 10 December 2008 19:35)

Most agile projects track their velocity. For the past 10 years or so I have been studying the velocity profiles of my projects and any other projects I can get data from. Velocity profiles tell a story about the project,...

— Living the Theory of Constraints

(Tuesday, 02 December 2008 15:51)

This past week I have had an opportunity to experience some hospital process control and contrast it with traditional project process controls. In doing so, I saw many instances of where today’s projects that exhibit uncertainty could be better managed...

— Upcoming Calgary APLN Meeting

(Saturday, 22 November 2008 20:27)

The next Calgary Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) meeting will be on Wednesday November 26 at the 5th Avenue Place Meeting room. At the meeting Mike McCullough from Quadrus Development will be presenting a re-run of his Agile 2008 conference...

— PMI Opening the Doors to Agile

(Friday, 31 October 2008 19:14)

“To deal with complex projects there is an increased need for agile and flexible project management… In future, ‘people’ and leadership skills will be viewed as more important than technical skills.” Statements like these hardly seem surprising to regular readers...

— Teaching in Costa Rica

(Friday, 17 October 2008 00:59)

Next week I will be teaching two one-day agile workshops and an executive summary session in Costa Rica. The courses are organized by Invenio University Research and Education and will be taking place in the capital, San Jose. I will...

— Three Dimensions of High Performance

(Monday, 06 October 2008 03:37)

To be truly effective you need ability and passion. Some people use the formula: Performance = Ability * Passion However, you also need time to dedicate to the work at hand; and so Availability factors in also. In the volunteer...

— Agile Project Management in Alaska

(Tuesday, 23 September 2008 03:34)

I have just returned from a great trip to Alaska. It was made possible by a request to speak at the PMI Alaska chapter and deliver two one-day training courses. Alaska is one of those places I have always wanted...

— PMI Agile SIG Getting Ready For Launch

(Thursday, 28 August 2008 00:34)

The PMI Agile SIG is gathering speed. This Special Interest Group (SIG) is set to be launched later this year and is very timely. While currently the interaction between agile and traditional project management approaches in most organizations may be...

— Team Size, Velocity and Specialization

(Tuesday, 19 August 2008 14:00)

(Well actually a bunch of hiking stories) Do large teams bog-down, do delays propagate, is specialization harmful or desirable? In today's knowledge-worker environment we process intangible information rather than physical products, and so seeing the impact of good and bad...

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