Overcoming Fear as a Non-Techical Project Manager with Kay Keizer

 

The 2024 Digital PM Summit is just days away and Kay Keizer will be there leading a session called "Leading with Confidence: Overcoming Fear as a Non-technical Project Manager".  In this interview, she shares a few key takeaways from her DPM Summit presentation.

You can find the video version of the interview here.

You can find the audio version of the interview here.

Unleashing the Power of Project Management with Val Hinze

Mighty Citizen's Val Hinze joins the podcast to offer a preview of her upcoming 2024 Digital PM Summit Talk "Unleashing the Power of Project Management: A Path to Scalable Growth"

You can watch the video interview here

You can listen to an audio version here

The 2024 Digital PM Summit will take happen in Austin, TX on October 14-15, 2024. To learn more about the Summit and come attend Val's talk go here: https://bureauofdigital.com/event/digital-pm-summit-2024

Abby Fretz - Your Clients Are Your Students

You go to conferences… and there are moments when you pick stuff up that can help you do your job. But, once and awhile, there are those special moments when people share things in sessions that permanently change how you look at the work you do. It’s rare… but it’s awesome.

That happened for me this September in Memphis at the 2018 Digital PM Summit. I attended a session led by Abby Fretz called "Sustaining the Project Honeymoon Phase: How to Build Effective Client Education.” In the session, Abby drew a connection between the relationship we have with our clients and the relationships students have with teachers. She reminded everyone that all of our clients are not just emotional humans, but they are also family members, friends, and experts, and that we need to care for them as a teacher would care for a student. Moreover, she reminded everyone that as much as we are the teachers of our clients, they are our teachers as well.

I wish someone had said this to me 20 years ago.

In this podcast, Abby and I discuss her session from the 2018 Digital PM Summit, what led her to her metaphor, and how it has impacted her work. There is some powerful stuff in this interview and I hope it will be as valuable for you as it was for me. I am very indebted to Abby for teaching me something that seems like such common sense— I’m a little ashamed I had not though of clients this way before.


Here are some of the links mentioned in the podcast:
Digital Pm Summit: https://bureauofdigital.com/abby-fretz-1/
DPM Philly Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/DPM-Philly/
Louder Than 10: https://louderthanten.com
Eastern Standard: https://www.easternstandard.com


If you'd like to get in touch with Abby you can reach her at:
Web: http://abbyfretz.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbyfretz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbyfretz/

Suze Haworth at 2018 Digital PM Summit

Suzanna Haworth gave a talk at the 2018 Digital PM Summit called "Adapting Agile: How to Make a Blended Agile Approach Work For You". Agile and Digital can be an odd fit. In her talk Suze focused on how digital agencies can begin introducing agile practices into their workflow in order to realize some of the benefits that agility can provide.

The talk was very popular. So popular in fact, that I wasn't able to get in.
Fortunately Suze was kind enough to let me interview her about her session once she got back home to London. In this interview she shares some of the key points from her session and explains her take on hybrid approaches to bringing agile and a traditional (waterfall) approach together.

If you work at a digital agency and you're trying to figure out how to make agile fit, there are some great tips in here for you.



(Also, apologies for some of the background noise - they were doing construction in the apartment above mine and it could not be helped.)

If you'd like to get in touch with Suze to ask her some follow up questions, here is her contact info:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanna-haworth-55073616/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/suzehaworth
Web: https://suzannahaworth.com

Patrice Embry - Finessing Retrospective - 2018 Digital PM Summit

Patrice Embry gave a lightning talk called “Finessing a Retrospective to Get Results” at the 2018 Digital PM Summit. After her talk Patrice and I had a chance to sit down and talk through some of the ideas she shared that you can use to hep you get more value out of the moments where you and your team stop to inspect and adapt how things are working on your project. The tips Patrice shares in the interview (and in her talk) will work for you whether you are holding a more traditional review (like a Post-Mortem or a Project Review), or if you are working with Agile and holding a Retrospective Meeting. (Including how to hold these meetings if you are working remotely.)

If you’d like to get in touch with Patrice with follow up questions, here is how you can reach her via her website: http://www.patrice-embry.com.

2018 Digital PM Summit - An Interview with Aaron Irizarry on Creating Personas

A few weeks ago the 2018 Digital PM Summit was held in Memphis. This is the 6th year the conference has been held and the Bureau of Digital put together another incredibly inspiring conference. The event focuses on helping PMs in who work in the Digital space amp up their ability to practice their craft. During the conference, Aaron Irizarry gave a presentation called “Laying the Groundwork: Building Foundations for High-Performing Teams”. Aaron is currently working as a Design Director at Capital One.

After Aaron’s session we had the chance to sit down and record a podcast on how to create Personas. During the interview we talk about why personas are so important how to go about creating archetypes, personas, how to conduct proxy interviews and keep your own bias from influencing your results, and how much detail you should include when you are putting them together.

Aaron is also the co-author of Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique. 

If you’d like to get in touch with Aaron with additional questions or to hear more about his session at the Summit, you can reach him via Twitter at https://twitter.com/aaroni

Edward Kay - Making Agile work in Digital

Edward Kay, the Founder of Tall Projects, has been managing software and digital projects for over 14 years. A few months ago Edward posted an article on The Digital Project Manager called “Agency Agile: 10 Agile Methods for Agencies”. In this interview, Edward and I discuss his article, some of the key things you need to do in order to get agile to work in digital, and why Scrum may be the one thing that just won’t work in an agency model.

SHOW NOTES 

04:04 - Interview Begins
04:48 - Background on Edward and Tall Projects
05:55 - How Edward got started doing agile
06:31 - How Edward’s clients develop a desire to try Agile
09:11 - Are the clients who want to “Go Agile” aware of what that will require and willing to take the steps needed to implement the change?
11:25 - Where in the organization is agile getting started?
12:17 - Why the clients bring Edward in
13:34 - There is no one true way
14:50 - Critical challenges facing Digital Agencies trying to adopt Agile
16:32 - Understanding how to look at work across the portfolio
17:32 - Different ways of measuring work in agencies that are using Agile
20:07 - “Why don’t we just smoke crack at work?”
23:52  - Tracking Happiness
25:10 -  Quantifying value and limiting WIP
28:26 - What is the client actually paying you for?
30:50  - Determining value at the project deliverable level
32:40 - Having a conversation about limiting WIP
35:38 - Getting the client to trust the practices agile team’s employ
36:16  - Multitasking is bad and doesn’t work… but it is still expected
37:45 - What Agile practices just do not work in an Agency model
38:49 - “The on system that is not well suited for Digital Agencies in Scrum”
41:15 - Kanban as an alternative for Digital Agencies
42:10 - What Agile tool/technique is the key to making it work in an Agency model?
43:17 - What is the piece that is missing when trying to make Agile fit in an Agency model?
44:18 - How to get in touch with Edward

CONTACTING EDWARD

Website - https://www.tallprojects.co.uk/
Email: edward@tallprojects.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardkay/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/edwardkay or https://twitter.com/tallprojects
Edward’s article on The Digital Project Manager: Agency Agile: 10 Agile Methods For Agencies 

CSM Training and the 2017 Digital PM Summit

For information on the Certified Scrum Master class being held right before the 2017 Digital PM Summit, click here. Special Discounts are available for conference attendees. Contact training@leadingagile.com for more information.

For information on the 2017 Digital PM Summit, click here.

Making Agile work in a Digital Agency w/ Darren Petersen

Darren Petersen is a Senior Technical Project Manager at Lullabot. He’s also incredibly knowledgeable about Agile. In this interview Darren and I discuss how Agile has been implemented at Lullabot. We dig into what works, what doesn’t, why he moved away from Story Points and all, and how Lullabot has been able to get dedicated teams in place.

Note: During the interview Darren and I have a brief conversation about why it makes no sense to force yourself into the

As a (some user)
I want to (some action)
so I can (some benefit) 

format just for the sake of using it. I promised to get him an official answer. You can find that here.

SHOW NOTES

00:08 Interview Begins
00:47 Background on Lullabot
01:33 Managing 50 distributed team members
03:04 Using social media tools to stay connected with remote staff
05:57 Using Agile at Lullabot for client work
12:02 Making the case for some upfront planning, before using Agile during Development
12:50 Taking on the cost of teaching Agile to the client (who doesn’t care about Agile)
14:22 The way Lullabot sets up Teams to use Agile for client work
15:22 How can a digital agency maintain the business with dedicated teams
20:35 How dedicated teams impact the staff members morale and performance at Lullabot
23:27 Teaching customers to write decent User Stories
28:07 Should you force yourself into a User Story format when it doesn’t make sense? *
29:32 Why Darren doesn’t like using Story Points
33:00 How did Darren get so deep with Agile and what drives him to keep learning about it
36:19 Getting in touch with Darren
37:01 Interview Ends

CONTACTING DARREN

Twitter https://twitter.com/dsayswhat
Email: darren.petersen@lullalbot.com
About: https://www.lullabot.com/about/darren-petersen
Lullabot https://www.lullabot.com

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST

User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn http://amzn.to/2vKv4JI
Troy Magennis & Focused Objective http://focusedobjective.com
User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton http://amzn.to/2wckyOg
Agile Manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org

What happened to October?

October got away from me. There were grand plans for blog posts and podcasts.

It’s good to plan things out. That’s how you know what isn’t going to happen.

At the beginning of this month I had the pleasure of speaking at the Digital PM Summit 2014. It was an inspiring two days that left me feeling more excited about the work I do than I have in a long time.

If you weren’t able to attend, you can check out the presentations here: http://dpm2014.com/speaker-slides/

I was at the conference to give a talk called Personal Kanban - Less Guilt, More Finishing. The presentation was based on my Personal Kanban experiments. The experiment was a success, but not the success I was aiming for.

I wanted to be good at Personal Kanban. What I ended up being was someone with a much deeper understanding of how completely of the rails his approach to work is. But, they say knowing you have a problem is the first step. 

In my classes I always say that learning about project management is something you can’t undo. It is etched onto your soul. I could no easier stop being a guy who grew up in an Irish Catholic home in Philly than I could stop seeing everything I do as a project with a measure of success and a WBS. (It just takes a few seconds for the Agile mods to kick in and turn it into a backlog now.)

And now, I’m finding that practicing Personal Kanban is changing the way I look at work on as deep a level as project management did. What I am learning is that no matter how I try to get better at it, I’m still not getting to a point where I’d feel okay saying I’m good at it. What is happening though is that I'm discovering that being good at it is not the point. In fact, getting the items into the Done column isn’t really the point for me right now either. The point is learning more about how and why I am working, and using that information to make conscious, responsible decisions about what to change and what experiments to run.

My favorite moment at the Digital PM Symposium was when Mike Monteiro gave his presentation on “What Your Client’s Don’t Know and Why It’s Your Fault”. Mike is a compelling speaker and even though he comes from a design background, his message is just as applicable for those of us who manage projects. We need to be aware of what we are doing, make conscious decisions and take ownership of the impact. I’ve run across a number of project management professionals over the past few months who have expressed frustration about all that is dumped on them and all the roadblocks placed in their path and (insert your excuses here). We all have this… me too. I think it is normal and completely okay to have moments where we each play the role of victim and have our little “woe is me” party. (Because let’s face it, no one is ever going to do that for a PM.) But when that part is over, we need to shake it off and dig in. So, when I say that I'm still not good at Personal Kanban, the important thing is to realize why I work the way I do and to be conscious and mindful about what choices I am making. If you are a PM Managing projects, when someone asks you to do something that is impossible, you've got a choice to make. Whether you say yes, or no, the two screenshots  below from Mike’s presentation apply.

...and I’ve got them tacked up on the wall next to my desk to remind me every day.

DPM Radio Interview

< Begin Shameless Plug...
The 2014 Digital PM Summit IS ONLY TWO WEEKS AWAY! Sign up at http://www.dpm2014.com/ and you'll spend two day in the company of a few hundred project managers and digital media professionals who are part of a growing community of passionate, committed, creative people who are incredibly energizing to be around.
...end shameless plug>

If you'd like more detail on why this conference is so inspiring, check out the Digital PM Radio interview I did.  It was a little weird to be the one being interviewed for a change, but I had a great time. Carl Smith a great interviewer.

Digital PM Summit 2014 - Interview with Brett Harned

Click here to go straight to the interview on ProjectsAtWork

Digital PM Summit is coming up fast. It takes place in Austin on October 6-7. If you're needing project management inspiration, this is your Philomath.

Check out my ProjectsAtWork interview with Brett Harned who in addition to being the VP of Project Management for Happy Cog, is one of the primary organizers of the event.

Taking Care Of Your Clients By Putting Your Team First

At the DigitalPM 2013 Summit, Rachel Gertz gave a presentation called “Your Clients Matter, So Put Your Team First”. During the presentation she made the case that if you really care about giving the client your best, the most important thing you can do is make sure that the people who create the stuff you give to the client are well cared for. Deep with the Servant Leadership is this one.

Rachel’s approach to project management is heavy on the empathy, individuals and interactions“agile” side of things. But what makes Rachel’s work even more unique is that over 90% of her interactions with people are virtual, and most of that is just voice.

So, if you are among the crowd who has been struggling with the communication challenges that come with distributed teams, theStrayMuse=Yoda.

Rachel works at Louder than Ten
She tweets as The Stray Muse
She blogs here  (warning, not always 100% SFW)
And she’s all about the unicat

Sam Barnes has turned to the Dark Side

Click here to go directly to the podcast

My favorite presentation at DigitalPM2013 was given by Sam Barnes. After years working as a PM in Digital, Sam turned to the DARK SIDE… he became a client. Suddenly, he was taking bids from all the companies he was used to competing against. Given his years of experience leading projects from the agency side of the table, he walked into it thinking it would be a bit of a cake walk. What he found was maybe not so much with the cake … or the walk.

In this podcast interview Sam and I talk about his experience being on the client side, his presentation at DigitalPM 2013, the challenges for those working in the Digital PM space who have to be able to work in both waterfall, and Agile, but find that neither really fits as well as one would hope and the upcoming DigitalPM UK conference

If you’d like to learn more about Sam:
He’s got him some blog
He’s on the twitter
And his presentation from Digital PM 2013 is here

Scrum in the Waterfall at DigitalPM 2013 (slides)

I've posted slides from my presentation at Digital PM 2013 here.

Digital PM Summit 2013 - Day 1 Recap

Day 1 of the inaugural Digital PM Summit is in the books and it was impressive. The event is being held in Philadelphia and is billed as "The first conference for a community of people who manage all things digital". I've attended and spoken at a lot of IT and PM related conferences in the past and there is definitely something unique going on here. There are a lot of conferences that focus on design and a lot that focus on development, and what they offer covers a wide range of subject matter and are delivered in a variety of formats. There are also a lot of PM conferences that focus on project management from the more formalized approach to managing work. And there are the Agile conferences which cut a slice across those areas. However, those conferences don't really speak to the audience that is present here in Philly this week. For the folks who manage projects at digital agencies, there is a different need. The agencies tend to be small to medium sized businesses with projects that can last anywhere from a month to a year (on average). The teams tend to be smaller in nature and many of them are caught in a space where a "just do it" can work for awhile, but it brings a lot of the pains you'd expect (stress, marathon last minute efforts, and technical debt). They could go the route of moving towards a more formal approach (like PMI), but the process burden doesn't really fit with the needs of the client or the work culture. They could also address a lot of their challenges with Agile, but this is not an ideal fit for many of their clients who are often more traditional minded and aren't compelled to change. So, what they end up with are a need to be able to manage work using a variety of approaches based on the needs of each specific project and client. At a larger organization (upwards of 50), it might be possible to bear the overhead of staff who are expert in different areas and approaches, but most of these organizations have a more lean approach that requires them to be able to develop a broader range of options in how they manage work. Coupled with that is the fact that the medium they work in is in a constant state of flux and they are expected to always be on the edge of what is the new, best way of designing things that leverage the latest tech.

The PMs in this space have to have one eye on design (maybe one and a half) and the other eye on technical practices. And somewhere in the middle, they still need to develop PM skills. Going back 10-20 years, my experience in this space was that the project management side of things involved a lot of floundering around, establishing a new approach every time things went really side-ways. The agencies that garnered all the attention back in the boom were places like Razorfish that kept a keen eye on the design side of the medium. That was, and remains, a valid approach, but this field has grown and evolved and is hungry for a better way. Unfortunately, none of the primary options can holistically solve the challenges they face.

What I have found to be truly unique about this event is the programming and the attendees. The way yesterday began offers a great example of what I believe makes this event a valuable and interesting alternative. The day started with Jeffrey Zeldman giving a talk that was rooted in design and UX standards. It was followed by Jared Ponchot that also skewed towards design as well, but dealt a lot with the creative process and how to approach creative work. The third speaker was the Conference Chair, Brett Harned, who gave talk called "How to be a Better Project Manager". Each of these talks would be at home in a variety of separate conferences, but putting programming like that together for this sold out event is what set the tone. These are not PMs who want/need to spend an hour learning about a better way to do Earned Value or, Critical Chain or managing projects that deal with Sarbanes-Oxley, CMM, ISO or (insert process here). These are design centric PMs who are deeply involved in the creative process who, while they may not self-identify as servant leaders need an approach that enables and supports their creative and technical leaders. Agile has a place here, but these folks are not Agilists. Traditional practices have a place here, but these folks are not PMPs (mostly). They are also not (mostly) designers or developers. They are creative PMs in the digital space. While it would be great to be able to develop expertise in each individual area (design, development, traditional PM and Agile), the years of work that could take would definitely be at odds with the realities of serving their clients.

One of the things I found most impressive yesterday morning was that for during the first 3 talks, there was the level of attentiveness and engagement of the people present at the conference. That is not to say that people who attend other conferences aren't engaged and attentive, but this was different. My experience has been that at a traditional PM event, career PMs look for a few new ideas and go to validate what they think they know. At an event like Øredev, technically savvy knowledge workers who are more on the advanced end of the spectrum go to be challenged with new ideas and ways of working that are often a few years ahead of the curve. At an Agile Conference or Scrum Gathering practitioners of Agile get together to work on how to get better at applying Agile. What I saw yesterday was a room full of people who were all there to find better ways to help the work that are fully respectful and supportive of the creative and technical process. They were not so much looking for ways to change how others work, but more for ways to change how they approach their own work.

Five or ten years ago, I'm not sure if something like this would have sold out so quickly to an audience that includes attendees from all over the US and some from Europe as well. But this community of Digital PMs is a segment of the PM community is definitely hungry for the opportunity to share and hone their unique spin on the field of project management.

Kudos to Greg Hoy, Brett Harned, Allison Harshbarger and the folks at Happy Cog for having the vision to create this event and for having done such a great job with it. #bigdamnheroes