Last week I had really a good opertunity. A customer located in Stavenger wanted to impliment SCRUM for their project management process. So I was just there to help them on that with a new project.
The customer didn’t have any matured project management methodologies, frameoworks or tools already in place. Therefore setting up the new process was much more easier.
When we arrived, they have already got the “Ideal place” for the scrum team. It was a very open spacious room with a round table , White board.. so everybody could sit there and dicuss ideas freely. The highlight was all the refreshments and foods (wont forget Cinnamon and honey muffins )and drinks and chocolotes.. wow I love this scrum team.
Ok How did I start?
I had an idea about the customer and the nature of business/Projects before I arrived.
1. First I explained them the difference between our normal traditional project management methodologies and scrum. As most the people i meet, some of this team members also thought Agile is Scrum. So I had to explain them Scrum is Agile and Agile is not scrum :) then again I made it very clear to them the difference between looking at software project management from the manufacturing angle instead of looking at the construction industry.
2. Once they had a good overview about the framework , I asked one of their team members to give an overview of the project which they have selected to manage using scrum as a Pilot Scrum project. The idea is to manage this project using scrum, get the Scrum culture introduced to the organisation , and then once the project is sucessful, to roleout the process to all the company projects.
(Another nice thing which I couldn’t mention about this scrum team is that they had 2 members from Stavenger and 2 Members from my SL team onsite .. so multi cultural team)
3. Then we started assigning roles.. Who is going to be a product owner , Scrum master and the team and their expertiese. We decided the software manager of the company as the product owner for this specific product as he has the ownership of the product and easy access to all the stakeholders.
4. The Teachlead of the team became the scrum master and my 2 guys and other developers were the scrum team.
5. So we started creating a product backlog. Before me arriving they have created one .. But it looked more like a task list to me. And it had 300 items.. So we started creating a product backlog to create a web application framework for the company .
6. Once we created the product backlog.. I trained them on how to play planning poker and weigh the product backlog. We were not prepared with a proper planning poker card set so we just created our own sets.
7. It was bit exausting excersise at first to get the team and the product owner in to Planning poker. But after 2 , 3 user stories there was really a good progress.
8. Then the product owner added the priority to each story. For this product owner everythign was 1st priority.. so there I am again.. Convincing :)
9. Then he mentioned at what points he needs releases.
10. We called it a day there as we all were exausted.. Specialy the product owner. :)
11. The next day .. we all met at 8 Am.. ( I had only 2 days allocated for this whole thing and I had to leave at 4 PM to the Airport to take a flight to Oslo back. So it was not easy..)
12. Ok the sprint planning meeting. The mangement had some concern ….do we have to spend this much of time for these planing sessions.?. My Answer was “Yes” Because in scrum, the time we spend for planning session is not just planning task. We ellaborate hell of a lot there when it comes to requirements and moderator can just document them as a base for requirement doc .
13. They wanted 5 day scprint first.. Quite strange but nice. Because the idea of the 1st sprint was to complete studying the exisitng framework and system and coming up with a new frame work design.
14. We selected the required user stories and then split them in to atomic level tasks.. The time was not right to play a planning poker game again to asign caleries for each task so the team disucsss and weigh the sprint ( Yes I don’t recommend this.. but some times we have to use shortcuts at trainings J )
15. Then the number of hours were also specified for the tasks. This was bit of a hard thing.
16. I explained them how they should start dailiy scrum meeting next day and thehow they should track caleries burned each day by each team member.
17. Then they asked me what tools to use, any scrum tools off the shelf, team system what? I said NO. because at this time what is important is the concept and how they use it to run the project. Not the tool. So I prepared some Excel templates for the product Backlog, Product Burn down velocity, Sprint back log, sprint burn down velocity , Impediment log and Sprint review template. So they have to work with XL first as it’s the most simplest way to do it.
18. It was time for me to depart.. they showed lot of confidence on the method.. it will take some time to establish as the main challenge of scrum is the mentality change and not anything else.
It was kinda sad to leave such a good team, but they can contact me at any time for any clarifications so there were no much risks.
Overall it was really nice 2 days and good workshop.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
What is a dumb question..?
Ok first of all I don’t believe there are any dumb questions.. Its only dumb people. No questions are dumb. But people who don’t question are really dumb.
As a project Manager /Scrum master you need your team members to ask questions. You need your product owner /customer to ask questions.. you need your senior management and other stakeholders to ask you questions. If they don’t question and if they don’t ask questions freely , the payback you have will be too much for you to handle at the end of the project.
So how do you get people around you to question you ..? Its very simple... Create that environment around the project. Make it a project culture.. Every team member should be able to question about each other and about the product.. and about the requirements.
To my surprise I have come across with many project managers who create a shield to prevent others questioning about the project by being defensive for questions. This is really a bad syndrome. They have no idea how others around them could really help them to get them on line. Early awareness about issues to the management and to the customer really help to find solutions before its too late.
I still cant understand why a project manger cannot show his or her application design to a business manager.. and questions such as .. by looking at from the outside , do you think that this is user friendly enough ? Do you see any risks in this schedule which I have not seen so far.. its really important for a project managers to create this situation in any project. We all know scrum facilitate this situation. But unfortunately all the projects under the sun are not proper scrum projects. So no matter what the methodologies you use or technologies you use, it’s totally up to you to create enough transparency about your projects to encourage questions.
As a project Manager /Scrum master you need your team members to ask questions. You need your product owner /customer to ask questions.. you need your senior management and other stakeholders to ask you questions. If they don’t question and if they don’t ask questions freely , the payback you have will be too much for you to handle at the end of the project.
So how do you get people around you to question you ..? Its very simple... Create that environment around the project. Make it a project culture.. Every team member should be able to question about each other and about the product.. and about the requirements.
To my surprise I have come across with many project managers who create a shield to prevent others questioning about the project by being defensive for questions. This is really a bad syndrome. They have no idea how others around them could really help them to get them on line. Early awareness about issues to the management and to the customer really help to find solutions before its too late.
I still cant understand why a project manger cannot show his or her application design to a business manager.. and questions such as .. by looking at from the outside , do you think that this is user friendly enough ? Do you see any risks in this schedule which I have not seen so far.. its really important for a project managers to create this situation in any project. We all know scrum facilitate this situation. But unfortunately all the projects under the sun are not proper scrum projects. So no matter what the methodologies you use or technologies you use, it’s totally up to you to create enough transparency about your projects to encourage questions.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Project Management in global economy crisis situation..
If you are a software company, depending on outsourced projects from western; USA, Europe, What may come along your way now ?How you should analyze the risk and get prepared to face the worst and still to deliver your projects as planned? Something to think about J
After hearing many things happening in the industry what I can see coming along our way are as follows;
1. Reducing resources of your projects which are in execution. This can happen if you are in to fixed price deals – Customer may ask you to reduce the number of heads in the project. Even internally, due to employee recession and recruitment freeze there will be corporate decisions to reduce the number of resources of your projects.
2. Requests for reducing the cycle time of the project- You may get requests to cut down on processes and documentation. You may get this request very often. A project which you spent 10 months to develop may have to be delivered within 6 months by cutting corners from your lengthy documentation and processes.
3. Even your teams may be over loaded with resources. – If you are in accompany where they have lost few projects due to the situation and still keeping the resources in house due to many reasons, your projects may get overloaded unless they get together and develop a specific product to the market.
4. You may have hear the news all of sudden “ we need to stop this project now because the customer or the investor stopped funding this project” What would be your position as the project Manager?
5. Some of your team members may not in focus and May not in their peak of productivity as they are so concerned about their lost hopes of increments, bonus, and even the stability of the company and their jobs.
6. Quality process may dropped drastically due to all these reasons
7. Sometimes only must have features will be requested.. If you are practicing scrum the product owner may satisfy with the project after first few sprints which delivers his core functionalities
8. You may have to cut down your project budgets dramatically, your team allowances, entertainments, team building activities will be a question mark.
Still you are a lucky PM ? why ? you still have a project to manage with all these problems and test your real PM skills of working under tremendous pressure.. .
As a PM nothing worst than not having any projects in your company to manage J
Lets discuss this further in a future post..
After hearing many things happening in the industry what I can see coming along our way are as follows;
1. Reducing resources of your projects which are in execution. This can happen if you are in to fixed price deals – Customer may ask you to reduce the number of heads in the project. Even internally, due to employee recession and recruitment freeze there will be corporate decisions to reduce the number of resources of your projects.
2. Requests for reducing the cycle time of the project- You may get requests to cut down on processes and documentation. You may get this request very often. A project which you spent 10 months to develop may have to be delivered within 6 months by cutting corners from your lengthy documentation and processes.
3. Even your teams may be over loaded with resources. – If you are in accompany where they have lost few projects due to the situation and still keeping the resources in house due to many reasons, your projects may get overloaded unless they get together and develop a specific product to the market.
4. You may have hear the news all of sudden “ we need to stop this project now because the customer or the investor stopped funding this project” What would be your position as the project Manager?
5. Some of your team members may not in focus and May not in their peak of productivity as they are so concerned about their lost hopes of increments, bonus, and even the stability of the company and their jobs.
6. Quality process may dropped drastically due to all these reasons
7. Sometimes only must have features will be requested.. If you are practicing scrum the product owner may satisfy with the project after first few sprints which delivers his core functionalities
8. You may have to cut down your project budgets dramatically, your team allowances, entertainments, team building activities will be a question mark.
Still you are a lucky PM ? why ? you still have a project to manage with all these problems and test your real PM skills of working under tremendous pressure.. .
As a PM nothing worst than not having any projects in your company to manage J
Lets discuss this further in a future post..
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Cone of Uncertainty
Uncertainty of project estimates (Specially the software projects) is the biggest problem we face when planning a project ahead. I’ve never made a perfect plan for a project (The preliminary plan to be valid till the project is completed and to complete the project successfully with the same exact number of hours I planned initially?? No I have never been lucky).. So how do we deal with this uncertainty of projects when planning? Yeah I hear you .. Agile .. Scrum.. NO in this post I’m not talking about that.. Im just talking about our normal pre planned projects.
“Cone of uncertainty” (research done by NASA) reflects the uncertainty at different points of sequential development of a project. It shows that
In feasibility study stage schedule estimate can be different in a range of 60% - 160%
After the requirement specifications - + or – 15%
Likewise when the project progress each stage of the project reduces the uncertainly of the estimate. However uncertainty of estimate becomes 0 when the software is accepted.
Ok this is a long discussed theory.. then what does PMI say about the project uncertainty ? I wanted to refresh my memory J
PMI also believe in progressive accuracy of estimation. PMI defines some asymmetric way of viewing the uncertainty of estimates.
Initial order of magnitude estimate can have a difference from +75% to -25%
Budgetary estimate can have a difference from +25% to -10%
Final definitive estimate reduce the difference up to +10% to -5% Most the time at the level of the budgetary estimate , we sign up the contract with the customer. So we have somewhat risk in the estimations to take in to consideration when preparation of the estimates.
Twice I worked with some pretty large projects where we had to agree on penalties for each day of the schedule over run if occurred in the project.. Both times I could manage it within the agreed schedule.. (So didn’t pay any penalty to the customer) But I didn’t complete the project with expected profit to the last cent. Because I had to do certain resource utilization variance to deliver a project which was confirmed based on the budgetary estimate.
But now that I need to think beyond what I see I just like to have some feedback from other readers about this situation.. One solution which we can do is to apply risk factor to the budgetary estimate and have the luxury of that provision. The other solution is revising the estimate in selected milestones. I have done that many times.. but this needs establishing trust , loads of negotiations and convincing with the customer and other stakeholders as most of the stakeholders don’t care about cone of uncertainly..:-) The Million dollar question is that how do you handle this situation in traditional project management methods without hurting your project bottom line ?
“Cone of uncertainty” (research done by NASA) reflects the uncertainty at different points of sequential development of a project. It shows that
In feasibility study stage schedule estimate can be different in a range of 60% - 160%
After the requirement specifications - + or – 15%
Likewise when the project progress each stage of the project reduces the uncertainly of the estimate. However uncertainty of estimate becomes 0 when the software is accepted.
Ok this is a long discussed theory.. then what does PMI say about the project uncertainty ? I wanted to refresh my memory J
PMI also believe in progressive accuracy of estimation. PMI defines some asymmetric way of viewing the uncertainty of estimates.
Initial order of magnitude estimate can have a difference from +75% to -25%
Budgetary estimate can have a difference from +25% to -10%
Final definitive estimate reduce the difference up to +10% to -5% Most the time at the level of the budgetary estimate , we sign up the contract with the customer. So we have somewhat risk in the estimations to take in to consideration when preparation of the estimates.
Twice I worked with some pretty large projects where we had to agree on penalties for each day of the schedule over run if occurred in the project.. Both times I could manage it within the agreed schedule.. (So didn’t pay any penalty to the customer) But I didn’t complete the project with expected profit to the last cent. Because I had to do certain resource utilization variance to deliver a project which was confirmed based on the budgetary estimate.
But now that I need to think beyond what I see I just like to have some feedback from other readers about this situation.. One solution which we can do is to apply risk factor to the budgetary estimate and have the luxury of that provision. The other solution is revising the estimate in selected milestones. I have done that many times.. but this needs establishing trust , loads of negotiations and convincing with the customer and other stakeholders as most of the stakeholders don’t care about cone of uncertainly..:-) The Million dollar question is that how do you handle this situation in traditional project management methods without hurting your project bottom line ?
Friday, December 26, 2008
Seasons Greetings !
Seasons greetings to all known and unknown blog readers and wish you all the best from my heart!
Thanks to projectized blog for connecting you with me from every corner of the world and thank Dilbert who keep me laughing and giggling all year long… :)
Thanks to projectized blog for connecting you with me from every corner of the world and thank Dilbert who keep me laughing and giggling all year long… :)
So this is one of my favorites this year which may bring a smile to you today…(Hopefully :-) ) and waiting to see so many good stuff in 2009.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Project Communication in Outsourced Project Management
We all know that, in average a project manager spend more or less 90% of his or her project management time for communication. Proper and effective communication is one of the most challenging areas in project management.. How about communication in outsourced project management..? that is any PM’s nightmare unless they manage it properly from day one.
This issue is not about language, either you do nearsoursing or outsourcing, nowadays most the professionals will speak good English. But poorly managed remote communication may increase the risk of project failures drastically. All aspects of remote communication should be carefully quality managed by a project manager who is in to outsourced project management. Unfortunately this needs quite lot of experience.
Over the years I’ve seen most the PM methodologies have matured, and processes has been introduced for project management.. New tools have come to the market., but still the challenge of remote communication remains the same.. How do we overcome it ?
Recently I had a chat with one of my project managers. He told me a story about a project he has managed while working in his previous company. It’s a very small sized project developed for one of the European countries. So him being the project manager sitting in the development company in Sri Lanka has communicated with customer via 600 emails. It gave me a fright.. Are we really doing something right here?
Have you heard about “Mad email Syndrome” which is very common in outsourcing operation. These are the symptoms;.
Project Manger from Venders company writes a mail to the customer about his questions regarding some requirement.. A nice email. Customer reads the mail., thinking why these people can’t even guess some simple thing like that …then he writes a reply in Blue color as comments for each question. ( yes we need to clearly separate the answer from the question)
Now that the Vendor's project manager who waited impatiently till he get all the answers to his questions receives the mail and he goes through the blue color comments made by the customer.. after reading that he find its disapointing and the customer has not answered half the things as he expected., most the points are not elaborated., so it creates much more questions for him now. Then what he does.. ? he uses another color., mostly seen is green , write comments in green color again under each blue color comments.. send this to the customer and CC to his whole hierarchy to save his back :-) and show them that he has still not got the answers right.
Customer receives the long email which is flashing in many color comments now.. He get really worked up.. certain symbols can give him a totally a different tone to the email. He write the comments in red color now.. and send it to the vendors PM again..
This doesn’t stop here… Is this situation new to you ? Im sure if you are in to outsourcing business you may have gone through this situation many times. This chain of email communication is a very strong risk trigger of project and relationship failure between outsourcer and outsourcee.. Why such a useful tool such as email can create this much of damage?
1. When communicating through emails , the other party doesn’t see your body language. They read exactly the meaning of word to word which may sound totally different to what you meant.
2. The other party don’t hear your tone of the voice. or your giggling . Recently I saw a customer commenting something like “Remove this field! “ with “!” what is that additional “!” is for ? these may create some unnecessary issues
3. Its very common that both parties think the other party is the idiot. They put less effort to understand each other. This may totally be different if you had a face to face discussion.
So how do you quality manage this remote communication? My advice for project managers are as follows;
1. Do not have email communication over 2 loops., if it goes over always try to use Voice via skype or telephone line. Or even use some tools such as Webex. Which is really good.(video con would be the best but unfortunately most of us do not have that facility )… Hmm How about Cisco TelePresence.???. I love to experience that !! :-)
2. Always read and re read your emails before sending.. do they mean something wrong to the reader.. make sure you communicate very clearly
3. Do not send too many emails. Try to summarize possible information in one email. Have your subject lines very clear.
4. If you need only 1 question mark have one .. But not three.. When you ask “can I have these replies by before end of business today? “ has a major difference between “can I have these replied before end of business today???????????”
5. Be very clear and elaborate on required points.. try to use tables as much as possible
6. Be warned when communication is not going right.. always ask help from your supervisors before it becomes too late.
7. Have the right attitude to respect the other party . if you read the mail in negative mind., you will end up with negative results.
8. Send customer status reports frequently., leave very little room for questions. Reports should be completed.
9. Always have project budgets to meet the customer face to face at least once in your project life. That will make your project communication much easier.
10. Understand that the time customer can spend for you is limited. That’s one reason why he or she outsource the project to you. Respect the fact and always think twice before you raising the question .Because you need to get the question right at the first time .
This issue is not about language, either you do nearsoursing or outsourcing, nowadays most the professionals will speak good English. But poorly managed remote communication may increase the risk of project failures drastically. All aspects of remote communication should be carefully quality managed by a project manager who is in to outsourced project management. Unfortunately this needs quite lot of experience.
Over the years I’ve seen most the PM methodologies have matured, and processes has been introduced for project management.. New tools have come to the market., but still the challenge of remote communication remains the same.. How do we overcome it ?
Recently I had a chat with one of my project managers. He told me a story about a project he has managed while working in his previous company. It’s a very small sized project developed for one of the European countries. So him being the project manager sitting in the development company in Sri Lanka has communicated with customer via 600 emails. It gave me a fright.. Are we really doing something right here?
Have you heard about “Mad email Syndrome” which is very common in outsourcing operation. These are the symptoms;.
Project Manger from Venders company writes a mail to the customer about his questions regarding some requirement.. A nice email. Customer reads the mail., thinking why these people can’t even guess some simple thing like that …then he writes a reply in Blue color as comments for each question. ( yes we need to clearly separate the answer from the question)
Now that the Vendor's project manager who waited impatiently till he get all the answers to his questions receives the mail and he goes through the blue color comments made by the customer.. after reading that he find its disapointing and the customer has not answered half the things as he expected., most the points are not elaborated., so it creates much more questions for him now. Then what he does.. ? he uses another color., mostly seen is green , write comments in green color again under each blue color comments.. send this to the customer and CC to his whole hierarchy to save his back :-) and show them that he has still not got the answers right.
Customer receives the long email which is flashing in many color comments now.. He get really worked up.. certain symbols can give him a totally a different tone to the email. He write the comments in red color now.. and send it to the vendors PM again..
This doesn’t stop here… Is this situation new to you ? Im sure if you are in to outsourcing business you may have gone through this situation many times. This chain of email communication is a very strong risk trigger of project and relationship failure between outsourcer and outsourcee.. Why such a useful tool such as email can create this much of damage?
1. When communicating through emails , the other party doesn’t see your body language. They read exactly the meaning of word to word which may sound totally different to what you meant.
2. The other party don’t hear your tone of the voice. or your giggling . Recently I saw a customer commenting something like “Remove this field! “ with “!” what is that additional “!” is for ? these may create some unnecessary issues
3. Its very common that both parties think the other party is the idiot. They put less effort to understand each other. This may totally be different if you had a face to face discussion.
So how do you quality manage this remote communication? My advice for project managers are as follows;
1. Do not have email communication over 2 loops., if it goes over always try to use Voice via skype or telephone line. Or even use some tools such as Webex. Which is really good.(video con would be the best but unfortunately most of us do not have that facility )… Hmm How about Cisco TelePresence.???. I love to experience that !! :-)
2. Always read and re read your emails before sending.. do they mean something wrong to the reader.. make sure you communicate very clearly
3. Do not send too many emails. Try to summarize possible information in one email. Have your subject lines very clear.
4. If you need only 1 question mark have one .. But not three.. When you ask “can I have these replies by before end of business today? “ has a major difference between “can I have these replied before end of business today???????????”
5. Be very clear and elaborate on required points.. try to use tables as much as possible
6. Be warned when communication is not going right.. always ask help from your supervisors before it becomes too late.
7. Have the right attitude to respect the other party . if you read the mail in negative mind., you will end up with negative results.
8. Send customer status reports frequently., leave very little room for questions. Reports should be completed.
9. Always have project budgets to meet the customer face to face at least once in your project life. That will make your project communication much easier.
10. Understand that the time customer can spend for you is limited. That’s one reason why he or she outsource the project to you. Respect the fact and always think twice before you raising the question .Because you need to get the question right at the first time .
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Saturday, December 06, 2008
All work and no play ???
few readers recently asked me the question.. "Why do you make such noise about planning Poker..We have been doing this all the time even long before SCRUM became popular.. we have been discussing with all our teams when estimating Instead having poker cards and playing poker.. …”.. Yeah.. Ok I will answer..
1. When you discuss with the teams about estimation at the meeting without poker.. Fine.. But will everybody’s opinions be highlighted? Or is it still the voice of few people in the team? Think about the last discussion you had with your team.
2. Sometimes work is uninteresting.. Have you heard that before? (Specially the estimation Yaiiik.. to me that’s not a very interesting part of PM J ) But that depends on exactly how you engage with those activities..Playing poker can help in this a lot. It’s fun!
3. When you just discuss with the team about the estimation for a functional point or for the user story, they just answer.. But there is no way that you can visualize their thinking with some relative weight at the time of the discussion.. This is where your Poker card set helps. And the each individual try to reason out their decision with lots of valuable points as they are exposed with the card they play every time.
4. Further this can eliminate chaos which happens in most the planning meetings. Can think lot more.. But these are the main reasons why I encourage my teams to play poker at the product backlog and the sprint backlog planning meetings.
I read an interesting paper by Jason Yip today about Project release planning with Poker..But this is not with our card set.. This is with real tokens.. J Interesting … you can find the paper here…
http://hillside.net/plop/2007/papers/PLoP2007_Yip.pdf
1. When you discuss with the teams about estimation at the meeting without poker.. Fine.. But will everybody’s opinions be highlighted? Or is it still the voice of few people in the team? Think about the last discussion you had with your team.
2. Sometimes work is uninteresting.. Have you heard that before? (Specially the estimation Yaiiik.. to me that’s not a very interesting part of PM J ) But that depends on exactly how you engage with those activities..Playing poker can help in this a lot. It’s fun!
3. When you just discuss with the team about the estimation for a functional point or for the user story, they just answer.. But there is no way that you can visualize their thinking with some relative weight at the time of the discussion.. This is where your Poker card set helps. And the each individual try to reason out their decision with lots of valuable points as they are exposed with the card they play every time.
4. Further this can eliminate chaos which happens in most the planning meetings. Can think lot more.. But these are the main reasons why I encourage my teams to play poker at the product backlog and the sprint backlog planning meetings.
I read an interesting paper by Jason Yip today about Project release planning with Poker..But this is not with our card set.. This is with real tokens.. J Interesting … you can find the paper here…
http://hillside.net/plop/2007/papers/PLoP2007_Yip.pdf
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Ok.. its kinda sad thing.. This time Im very unlucky with Amazon.. I ordered the book., Agile Estimating and Planning (Robert C. Martin Series)
by Mike Cohn. A book which I really wanted to have with me after going through many of his blog posts and the book reviews..
But it was never delivered to me. So I made the complain to Amazon.. they sent it again.. Didn’t receive yet.. its over one month now :( ....disappointing … Not a problem with Amazon.. but Im sure its something to do with our internal postal process.. As I checked with one of my colleagues and he said that they dont deliver the books to our doorsteps now . we have to go to a central post office and collect it .. ...:-( whyyyyy ????????????..............But I didnt get a letter like that either... So I dont know......
Do I raise the issue again.. hmmmm..
by Mike Cohn. A book which I really wanted to have with me after going through many of his blog posts and the book reviews..
But it was never delivered to me. So I made the complain to Amazon.. they sent it again.. Didn’t receive yet.. its over one month now :( ....disappointing … Not a problem with Amazon.. but Im sure its something to do with our internal postal process.. As I checked with one of my colleagues and he said that they dont deliver the books to our doorsteps now . we have to go to a central post office and collect it .. ...:-( whyyyyy ????????????..............But I didnt get a letter like that either... So I dont know......
Do I raise the issue again.. hmmmm..
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Good Bye..
Michael Crichton had died ??? No I dont think he will die ever....What can I say.. Cant find any words..
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
SCRUM practitioners in Sri Lanka ?
Today I heard some good news.. We are building some SCRUM community in Sri Lanka ? I heard that one company has already sent 2 IT professionals for Certified SCRUM master training to India and there is another company who has got some professionals down for training their whole team..Its very happy to see that SL IT industry is spending on PM profession more and more nowadays..I still can remember how hard it was for me to learn SCRUM when I practiced it first in 2005 with my very first SCRUM team..(Thanks to Dina Scott who gave me all the help at that time :) ).It has changed now to the positive side.. Its never too late. Recently another group of people in one reputed company went to Philippines for a very good SCRUM training too..
Not Only SCRUM I see lots of professionals get enrolled with PMI too.. The Only problem with PMP certification is that one needs to have minimum of 5 years Experience by managing farley good projects to face the exam well and lengthy study cycles. But for Scrum Master training its just 2 days course most the time.
Ok., for a newbie who is confused on for what to spend time and money its like this…
PMP certification is offered by PMI institute USA and it’s the largest Project Management institute in the world at the moment.
PMP exam covers almost all the aspects of Project Management, Starting from Ethics, soft skills PM technical skills etc …. And the framework is industry independent.
But SCRUM training covers only How you practice SCRUM. The basic guidelines. So you cannot expect to be a certified Project Manager by learning only SCRUM.. I think both these certifications together comes very handy for any good Project Manager in Software Industry.. Its matter of how you find time for all these :) Anyway I wish if we have enough SCRUM professionals in SL to build a SCRUM community.. Most the countries has that. Yes We have a PMI Colombo chapter already..
Not Only SCRUM I see lots of professionals get enrolled with PMI too.. The Only problem with PMP certification is that one needs to have minimum of 5 years Experience by managing farley good projects to face the exam well and lengthy study cycles. But for Scrum Master training its just 2 days course most the time.
Ok., for a newbie who is confused on for what to spend time and money its like this…
PMP certification is offered by PMI institute USA and it’s the largest Project Management institute in the world at the moment.
PMP exam covers almost all the aspects of Project Management, Starting from Ethics, soft skills PM technical skills etc …. And the framework is industry independent.
But SCRUM training covers only How you practice SCRUM. The basic guidelines. So you cannot expect to be a certified Project Manager by learning only SCRUM.. I think both these certifications together comes very handy for any good Project Manager in Software Industry.. Its matter of how you find time for all these :) Anyway I wish if we have enough SCRUM professionals in SL to build a SCRUM community.. Most the countries has that. Yes We have a PMI Colombo chapter already..
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
SCRUM ... Issues.. ?
I had an interesting SCRUM discussion lately.. With one of the visitors who came to office. We had some point to discuss the PM frameworks and then we were discussing SCRUM in detail. He came up with some interesting point …
Will SCRUM kill the creativity of the development teams… ?
Developers produce piece of code.. in SCRUM we go up to the atomic level planning..so this specific task can be done in X number of hours.. true.. But if there is no such time boxes can they be much more creative…….I mean if we don’t look at the daily velocity of the graph… what would it be?
Hmmmmm… Hmmmm….. Hm…. I was stuck…. Yeah there is a point..
While going home I was thinking about this...
I think its like this .. In SCRUM we discuss what the customer wants in detail and in more detail at the Product backlog meeting as well as in Sprint planning meetings.. So we understand what our customers expectations are to a greater extend. So what we all do is producing what customer wants.
No matter what the methodology or framework we use, we design the architecture and we develop the code..With long planned frameworks what I see is that the developers have more time for creativity.. true.. But it enables more risk of over engineering.. Which result much more risk of sacrificing quality or delivery times at the latter stage of the project which results the project failures. May be soem most important part of the project ... who knows...Especially those long planed methodologies commit on specific strict deadlines.
In this case I think by using SCRUM one can eliminate those over engineering and risk of schedule overruns at the latter stage..In the same time it enables the “Defined creativity” :-)
if somebody needs to be much creative about a features or a piece of code, they can even discuss this at the daily scrum meeting.. making it transparent.. adjusting the calories of the sprint backlog. “Yeah I hear you techies.. That’s not the tech thingies work right ...LOL...!!! But unfortunately that’s the way the “bottom line” works :-) there are tradeoffs …
Now that I wrote about this, I need to explain few problems I see in SCRUM.. I see some of the practitioners believe scrum like a religion.. But thats not right.,.. As I say in my own words. SCRUM is not god given.. Its still evolving as a framework and still we see many issues.. Following are some of the issues I saw when practicing scrum.
Agile doesn’t fit for everybody . we have few left alone people when we introduce Agile Practice to corporate
The customer needs to be well educated.. Yeah .. they say “Think Agile” but never works that way.. need proper discussions and the understanding with the product owner before providing that much of transparency. Otherwise this will make your project and life miserable.
In the same time it’s a stress to commit to 8 hour work tasks everyday.. I know few guys who plan their sprints with 6, 7 hour tasks. May be that’s a solution.. but teams need to mature a bit to work with that.
Sometimes introducing gaps between sprints also helps and teams needs to be cared more when practicing scrum.
Will SCRUM kill the creativity of the development teams… ?
Developers produce piece of code.. in SCRUM we go up to the atomic level planning..so this specific task can be done in X number of hours.. true.. But if there is no such time boxes can they be much more creative…….I mean if we don’t look at the daily velocity of the graph… what would it be?
Hmmmmm… Hmmmm….. Hm…. I was stuck…. Yeah there is a point..
While going home I was thinking about this...
I think its like this .. In SCRUM we discuss what the customer wants in detail and in more detail at the Product backlog meeting as well as in Sprint planning meetings.. So we understand what our customers expectations are to a greater extend. So what we all do is producing what customer wants.
No matter what the methodology or framework we use, we design the architecture and we develop the code..With long planned frameworks what I see is that the developers have more time for creativity.. true.. But it enables more risk of over engineering.. Which result much more risk of sacrificing quality or delivery times at the latter stage of the project which results the project failures. May be soem most important part of the project ... who knows...Especially those long planed methodologies commit on specific strict deadlines.
In this case I think by using SCRUM one can eliminate those over engineering and risk of schedule overruns at the latter stage..In the same time it enables the “Defined creativity” :-)
if somebody needs to be much creative about a features or a piece of code, they can even discuss this at the daily scrum meeting.. making it transparent.. adjusting the calories of the sprint backlog. “Yeah I hear you techies.. That’s not the tech thingies work right ...LOL...!!! But unfortunately that’s the way the “bottom line” works :-) there are tradeoffs …
Now that I wrote about this, I need to explain few problems I see in SCRUM.. I see some of the practitioners believe scrum like a religion.. But thats not right.,.. As I say in my own words. SCRUM is not god given.. Its still evolving as a framework and still we see many issues.. Following are some of the issues I saw when practicing scrum.
Agile doesn’t fit for everybody . we have few left alone people when we introduce Agile Practice to corporate
The customer needs to be well educated.. Yeah .. they say “Think Agile” but never works that way.. need proper discussions and the understanding with the product owner before providing that much of transparency. Otherwise this will make your project and life miserable.
In the same time it’s a stress to commit to 8 hour work tasks everyday.. I know few guys who plan their sprints with 6, 7 hour tasks. May be that’s a solution.. but teams need to mature a bit to work with that.
Sometimes introducing gaps between sprints also helps and teams needs to be cared more when practicing scrum.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Dealing with difficult people...
Today I got a very good opportunity to go through one of Margarat Meloni's online lectures about dealing with difficult people.
Im not so bad when it comes to dealing with difficult people..:-) been there done that !
But this lecture of Margarat is absolutely useful not only for project managers .. but for every corporate worker. She explains how someone shoul deal with "difficult Mammals" very professionally.
As project managers we work with different types of people every day.. People with different attitudes, different levels of knowledge, different level of maturity, different nationalities etc.. So working with all the people is not same every day. We find some jerks some times.. But she explains how we shouldn't be another jerk in such situations.
Some times we think people are difficult.. but may be we are difficult too.. But if you want to know how you get away with all these corporate difficult situations as professionals without loosing the focus on our goals and work.. I recommend you to go through the lecture.
Specially in Sri Lanka we dont find such PM soft skills improvement lectures easily.. So this may be an alternative to improve your PM skills... Just check that out...
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Implimenting SCRUM in my new company
I changed the job.. So what ?????
Changing the job was sort of a nerve breaking decision
But ….I did it again !..
not too bad .. for the 3rd time of my career:-)
With this decision I had to let go many things what I had.. Instead I got very interesting challenges and another new bunch of cool guys to work with....!..
Ok So I started at the new company.. I’m lucky enough it’s a startup so the start was not that hard. Lots of things to do at once… understanding the team members, skills, Projects, conflicts, risks, problems , issues…way forward , new processes (and more than anything getting used to some HR processes which I have never got used to J ) you name it !
I really appreciate the project centric culture which we are trying to build at the new company. But this needs little time to mature… No matter what.. Healthy corporate culture is very important for the people to be focused on their projects and not on other unnecessary facts and politics which I have”0” tolerance level...
Did you ask what I like the most about my new company?? Its my Note book bag.. :D Kind a cute…
Anyway that’s a different story..
What I thought to write here is that the experience of introducing SCRUM as the PM Framework to a totally new organization.
Its really a good experience. I started with one small team.. Who was quite corporative to adopt to a new way of doing things.. We created a very simple product backlog with all the user stories which need them to go through their research work. The PM (New SCRUM master )was very corporative and he found few cards which we could number as the Planning Poker card set. We started to play.. it was bit harder at first time.. But when it comes to 4th or 5th User story level the team was progressing so well. I was so thrilled to see all the silent team members talking in the planning poker session to back their idea about the user story weight.
Once we finished measuring the product backlog team created the Sprint back log. This project has only one sprint and that’s also 10 days.. Im happy that we started with a very small product backlog.
At the time of Sprint back log planning I could see some instant improvements from the team members. They worked so hard and actively as a team to get the sprint backlog planned. They decided to have the scrum meeting at 9 AM every morning..
Ok the very first Scrum day came … I was waiting… to observe their daily scrum meeting..few guys came .. they were having BF.. it was around 9.45AM still some guys are missing.. I thought.. I made a BIIG MISTAKE… Forget about scrum !! It doesn’t work…
I waited patiently till all the team members get together.. Had a very straight forward discussion.. To my surprise every team member accepted the importance of daily meeting at a specific time.. and they decided to have the everyday stand up meeting at 9.30 AM..
Ok lets see..
The next day the situation was so much better.. Almost all the team members were at office on time ready to have the meeting.. I got a skype message from the SCRUM master to come and observe the meeting.. It was a great start.. From that day onward the team progressed very well.. Understood the value of SCRUM, and value of their own team members.. Working on time boxes etc.. Currently they are about to complete the burn down of the sprint and seems they had a very good sprint.
Ok .. I think 10% of things I wanted to do was done with it.. the next task is to standardized the templates, artifacts and document the process and add them to the company process library..
The Next team situation was so much different. The Project was already initiated and that’s bit of a complicated case which I will study more and write in my next post…
Changing the job was sort of a nerve breaking decision
But ….I did it again !..
not too bad .. for the 3rd time of my career:-)
With this decision I had to let go many things what I had.. Instead I got very interesting challenges and another new bunch of cool guys to work with....!..
Ok So I started at the new company.. I’m lucky enough it’s a startup so the start was not that hard. Lots of things to do at once… understanding the team members, skills, Projects, conflicts, risks, problems , issues…way forward , new processes (and more than anything getting used to some HR processes which I have never got used to J ) you name it !
I really appreciate the project centric culture which we are trying to build at the new company. But this needs little time to mature… No matter what.. Healthy corporate culture is very important for the people to be focused on their projects and not on other unnecessary facts and politics which I have”0” tolerance level...
Did you ask what I like the most about my new company?? Its my Note book bag.. :D Kind a cute…
Anyway that’s a different story..
What I thought to write here is that the experience of introducing SCRUM as the PM Framework to a totally new organization.
Its really a good experience. I started with one small team.. Who was quite corporative to adopt to a new way of doing things.. We created a very simple product backlog with all the user stories which need them to go through their research work. The PM (New SCRUM master )was very corporative and he found few cards which we could number as the Planning Poker card set. We started to play.. it was bit harder at first time.. But when it comes to 4th or 5th User story level the team was progressing so well. I was so thrilled to see all the silent team members talking in the planning poker session to back their idea about the user story weight.
Once we finished measuring the product backlog team created the Sprint back log. This project has only one sprint and that’s also 10 days.. Im happy that we started with a very small product backlog.
At the time of Sprint back log planning I could see some instant improvements from the team members. They worked so hard and actively as a team to get the sprint backlog planned. They decided to have the scrum meeting at 9 AM every morning..
Ok the very first Scrum day came … I was waiting… to observe their daily scrum meeting..few guys came .. they were having BF.. it was around 9.45AM still some guys are missing.. I thought.. I made a BIIG MISTAKE… Forget about scrum !! It doesn’t work…
I waited patiently till all the team members get together.. Had a very straight forward discussion.. To my surprise every team member accepted the importance of daily meeting at a specific time.. and they decided to have the everyday stand up meeting at 9.30 AM..
Ok lets see..
The next day the situation was so much better.. Almost all the team members were at office on time ready to have the meeting.. I got a skype message from the SCRUM master to come and observe the meeting.. It was a great start.. From that day onward the team progressed very well.. Understood the value of SCRUM, and value of their own team members.. Working on time boxes etc.. Currently they are about to complete the burn down of the sprint and seems they had a very good sprint.
Ok .. I think 10% of things I wanted to do was done with it.. the next task is to standardized the templates, artifacts and document the process and add them to the company process library..
The Next team situation was so much different. The Project was already initiated and that’s bit of a complicated case which I will study more and write in my next post…
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Planning Poker - the problem continues…
Sorry guys still I didn't find sufficient answers to post here for the previous post I posted about problems when playing Planning poker.. I will provide answers once I find some good and logical explanations..
Now I have a new problem…. There you go… :
When Playing planning poker the team express ideas in front of the product owner to come in to a conclusion about the weight of user stories, clarifications, etc.
We do not have programmed robots in our teams to have same level of knowledge and skills. Though SCRUM is for good for good developers, ( Or even Software development is good for good developers according to Ken Schwaber - SCRUMforTEAMSYSTEM) in reality we get a mix to our teams..
So after observing the discussions going on …there is a product owner who says… Look I don't want guy X and Y in this team.. I need another like guy Z instead of X and Y . then we can burn down the back log more faster in sprints.. You guys agree to burn down only this amount in this sprint because your guys are not experienced. In traditional Project management what we do is we colour all our user front ending with really experienced and good guys and get the project delivered some way or the other. In SCRUM as we produce this much of transparency, Anybody who faced this issue and could you please explain how to overcome this issue..?
Now I have a new problem…. There you go… :
When Playing planning poker the team express ideas in front of the product owner to come in to a conclusion about the weight of user stories, clarifications, etc.
We do not have programmed robots in our teams to have same level of knowledge and skills. Though SCRUM is for good for good developers, ( Or even Software development is good for good developers according to Ken Schwaber - SCRUMforTEAMSYSTEM) in reality we get a mix to our teams..
So after observing the discussions going on …there is a product owner who says… Look I don't want guy X and Y in this team.. I need another like guy Z instead of X and Y . then we can burn down the back log more faster in sprints.. You guys agree to burn down only this amount in this sprint because your guys are not experienced. In traditional Project management what we do is we colour all our user front ending with really experienced and good guys and get the project delivered some way or the other. In SCRUM as we produce this much of transparency, Anybody who faced this issue and could you please explain how to overcome this issue..?
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