Posts Tagged ‘Agile’

On October 22-25, PMI gathered its members and friends for the annual Global Congress in Dallas to discuss the core features and emerging challenges of the project management profession. One of the key areas of focus for the Congress was the new project management trends, i.e., those trends that may impact the industry in the coming years. Together with Elizabeth Harrin and Cornelius Fichtner, seasoned project managers, popular bloggers and my fellow PMI New Media Council members, we held a session addressing agile collaboration in virtual teams.  With over a third of projects being agile and more work being done by virtual teams, we aimed to look at how project managers can successfully combine the two. Having combined our expertise in managing distributed teams, we came up with a few practical, battlefield-tested tips in the area of communication practices, Web 2.0 tools and beyond, which can help bridge the gap for agile teams working across geographic boundaries.

In the first part of the session, Cornelius started with a case study of his own team, spread across 6 countries on 3 continents, and shared which tools and practices help them the most to collaborate efficiently. For instance, according to the experience of Cornelius' team, the best architectures, requirements and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

There's no doubt that virtual teams have some very strong benefits, but there are certain serious bottlenecks, too, like the risk of miscommunication, limited visibility, etc. In my part of the session, I highlighted 5 pain-relievers that help me overcome the most common challenges in managing my team. Some additional tips came up during the Q&A. For example, when your team members speak different languages, don't let accents influence your perception of a professional. This is especially critical in the initial conversations, when team members don’t know each other yet and haven't yet built social and professional trust. Make sure that you give your team members "trust credit" in this initial phase, and always remember that behind that email ID is a real person, who likely works as hard as you do and is as professional as you are. It’s also crucial to remember and respect the cultural differences, and while keeping this in mind, work toward building a shared culture. Last but not least, as with everything else, it’s hard to create an ideal collaboration pattern right from the start. However, if you keep your eyes and mind open, constantly communicate and gather feedback from your team members, you can continuously iterate and improve. Eventually, you'll find your secret sauce for efficient remote teamwork.

I believe that one of the main prerequisites for the success of a distributed team is to make sure that everyone is on the same page – not only in terms of the assigned tasks, but also the general vision, applied processes, cultural awareness, information sharing and trust. It’ll be extremely helpful for team members to know not just what to do, but why and what lies ahead. This will help a lot in asynchronous communications, when you’re not immediately available to answer all of their questions and course correct. You have to think and communicate proactively in distributed teams, making sure you’re your team shares the same mission and vision, and understands the goals. So meetings in virtual teams are very important. Not only are they important, they are different, and in the final part of our session Elizabeth named some important techniques for making virtual meetings productive.

I’ve posted our joint slide deck on Slideshare, so that you can adapt some of these practical takeaways to your team:

To learn more details about our session and other ones, too, you can also check out recent tweets with the hash tag #pminac. Here are a couple of them:

@pm4girls: "Don't just give them tasks, give them reasons to help them understand vision and goals" @wrike talking about empowering teams at #pminac

@LewisCindy: From @wrike don't let accents influence emotional feelings about the person. Nice reminder #pminac

By the way, Wrike has just opened an interesting survey about remote work and the way workers see its benefits and challenges. I would really appreciate if you could spend a few minutes to have your say in this survey. As soon as we get enough responses, I’ll analyze the results and share them with you. 
Project Management 2.0

Last week, PMI announced the launch of its new certification for agile project managers. Those who want to get a PMI agile certificate will have to pass a challenging exam to prove they are able to apply agile methodologies on a professional level. PMI will start accepting applications in May 2011. The Institute reports that the new certification was developed by established agile practitioners and is based on reliable ways to assess competence. You can learn more about the new certification and eligibility requirements at www.pmi.org.

Other organizations, like the Agile Alliance, have offered their own agile certifications before. But the Project Management Institute, with more than half a million members and credential holders in 185 countries, is definitely the most influential organization in the project management space, so it’s pleasing to see PMI now officially recognizing agile as a significant and undeniable trend in project management.
  Indeed, agile project management has come a long way from a novel approach to a mainstream project management methodology. It went beyond its mother field, software development, and is used in an increasingly broader set of industries nowadays. This certainly increases the demand for agile professionals, and employers want to make sure that they are hiring the right person for the job. This is where certifications prove useful.

That said, there are still lots of opponents to the whole idea of agile certification. For example, one of the main arguments for Michael Dubakov, an author at the Edge of Chaos blog, is that there are so many factors influencing the management process that they make any certification impossible. “Your company is special. You have special people on the development team. You have special conditions, rules and other external factors,” writes Michael.

What do you think of the new PMI certification? Will you consider it for yourself or your employees? Please post your thoughts in the comments below.
 
Project Management 2.0

The former Prime Minister of England, Harold Wilson said, "He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery."

Although there are a number of indications that the economy is improving, it doesn’t appear that organizations are inclined to expect less from project teams or project managers over the coming eighteen to twenty-four months. I don’t think there’s any question that the role of project managers is changing in most organizations, and the need to do more with limited resources will continue to be a priority.

Because of these economic realities, project leaders need to look at projects in the context of all work, along with adopting a more flexible (or agile with a small "a") approach to managing toward objectives. Rather than asking whether or not Agile, Waterfall, Six Sigma or any other methodology is best, we must determine which method is the "best" for any given project and ensure that we are working on the "right" projects in the first place.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that we need to look at the administrative burden associated with complex project plans and determine what can be eliminated and what must be maintained, so project leaders and project teams can focus on managing work to successful outcomes. If, as I’ve mentioned before, 20-55 percent of project requirements are really unnecessary, reducing or eliminating that burden on projects and project teams seems critical to me. Although there are projects where governance is mandated and important, I don’t believe that can be said of every project.

Our focus as project leaders must be on producing value (which may be different for every project). Nonetheless, projects are initiated in the first place because someone within the organization perceives that the outcome will produce some kind of value—whether or not it’s a cost saving project, an income-generating project, or some other anticipated value. What’s more, depending upon the project manager’s role within his or her organization, they may or may not have much input into this discussion now, but that does not mean that they shouldn’t have that input.

Regardless of your current role, the world is looking for project leaders who are willing to seize the opportunity to do more than simply follow a prescribed process, they are looking for people who actually lead project teams to consistently produce organizational value. The need for agile project leaders has never been more prevalent than it is now. It’s up to us to create that role in our organizations, if it doesn’t already exist. Project teams and project leaders in particular should be where organizations look for future leaders. After all, projects are where people are tried by decision-making and leadership fire.

To do this, we need to put aside our preconceived notions of project management methodology and become more agile (with the small "a"), or ultimately wind up in the figurative cemetery.

Please share what you’re doing to incorporate flexibility into your work management methodology.

Strategic Project Management