Scrum Gathering – Day 3

Day 3 of the Gathering started out with the follow up to Open Space. Around the room, participants shared their impressions of the Open Space and the gathering as a whole. There were a number of people who spoke up as being supportive of, or cautiously optimistic towards the PMI presence.

When PMI Agile Forum leader, Jesse Fewell gave his presentation exploring the differences between Scrum Masters and Project Managers, people were spilling into the hall. And this time, the attendees extended beyond the small cadre of folks who attended the Day 2 sessions and included folks like Jeff McKenna and Tobias Mayer. It was a lively discussion and raised a number of interesting ideas that seemed to center around the role of the PM/Scrum Master as an agent of change who is there to transform an organization, and enable them to become more “healthy”. If the PM/Scrum Master is to play that role, what is the best way to go about it? The session definitely helped bring to light the fact a lot of people are trying to figure out how to make sense of the whole idea of PMI and Scrum co-existing and how that impacts the person who is responsible for “leading” the effort.

After lunch there was a panel discussion with Ron Jeffries, Mike Cohn, Jim Coplien, Alistair Cockburn and Ken Schwaber. (For those of you keeping score at home, that is 3 of the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto.) This was a very special gathering of some of the brightest thought leaders in the software world. They held court, debating and answering all the questions thrown at them. One of the best lines of the afternoon came from Ron Jeffries “There is no really good idea that can be measured by the number of people who adopt it.”

Once the panel was over we had a chance to do some video interviews that will be showing up in video podcasts very soon.

From the moment I arrived I felt challenged by the people I got to speak with and the ideas that were shared. It was my second Scrum Gathering and I find that it truly is a very organic moment of really sharp people who aren’t afraid to push each other. The only real complaint I heard the whole time was from one attendee who just wanted to be pushed even harder than he had been.

In a week or so I will have the video podcasts edited and posted. Until then, I want to say thank you to Greg Balestrero, Mark Langley, the IS SIG, the IT&T SIG, the steering committee of the PMI Agile Forum. We did well. People seem to be thinking it is okay to talk about PMI in the context of the Scrum Gathering. It may not entirely make sense yet, but the message that it was okay to try and figure it out was clearly heard.

I also want to thank the folks from the Scrum Alliance – especially Ken Schwaber, Mike Cohn, Jeff Sutherland, Jim Cundiff, Jodi Gibson and Stacia Broderick. I hope that we will be able to return the support and hospitality shown to the PMI community over the past few days.

I’m not sure how I am going to dry out from my recently developed Twitter addiction, but I will probably have to keep posting messages to @msliger, @mcottmeyer and @jessefewell until I can shake it off.

Scrum Gathering - Day 2

Day 2 at the Scrum Gathering is about Open Space. If you’ve not been to one before, it is a very organic experience. There are very few rules, but one of them is that the attendees propose topics at the start of the day.

Jesse Fewell and I both stood up to propose topics. Jesse held a session for all the folks interested in PMIAgile and I held one that was intended to be a place where anyone who had issues or concerns with PMI attending the Scrum Gathering could come and talk about their issues with it. My hope was to capture the concerns and take them back to PMI.

There was a good turnout in the room and it was a very lively debate about the different ideas/concerns around the topic. These will all be posted to the wiki on the Scrum Alliance site as soon as I get home, but there were a few things that struck me today around the whole PMI and Scrum Alliance topic.

The first thing I noticed was that people keep getting hung up on the language issues and concerns about how to map which process to what in the other. This presents a significant hurdle for a lot of folks. “If I do X in your process what is that represented in my process?” The problem with this is that the real issue is not a semantic one, or a mapping one. The real problem is the fact that there is no focus on intent for the people in this conflict. Both approaches want to solve the project as quickly and efficiently as possible. There are different ways, but sadly, a lot of people are too busy making sure they are firmly planted in one camp or the other to understand that it really just does not matter because it is about doing the work.

Having typed all this, I should confess that I do have one concern coming out of day 2. I have had discussions with a number of folks about the role of a project manager in Scrum, or the role of a Scrum Master in project management. Each has a pure approach and for me, in what I do, I blend them together whenever and however I need to in order to get the work done. I do not feel compelled to take up for one side over the other and I don’t believe either is better than the other. I think it depends entirely on the people doing it. Two concerns here: 1) Most people are too caught up in semantics to worry about the intent to deliver and 2) How much of a threat is my approach to the purists? There are a lot of people worried about how PMI might impact the Agile space. There isn’t really anything in place to prevent something bad from happening beyond the people involved.

Anyway, I had some great conversations today, especially with Tobias Mayer, the folks who attended the Scrum Sessions and Michele Sliger.

One more day. I’m looking forward to getting some interviews tomorrow.

You can follow my twitter feed @pmiittelecom
Pictures will be posted to http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmiittelecom/
Or you can see both on the IT&T SIG website: http://www.pmi-ittelecom.org

Scrum Gathering… Day 1
It was a very good day and I’ve been twittering under @pmiittelecom for most of it and will do so on Tuesday as well.
Some of my favorite moments from today…
Jim Coplien and Jeff Sutherland presenting “Not your Grandfather's Architecture: How MVC has evolved into the Agile world”. I walked in a few minutes late… just in time to hear Coplien say that any member of any scrum team should be able to explain the architecture on demand at any time. He said, if you can’t your team is sub-optimal. I think any time you can go to a conference where, within 15 seconds of walking into your first talk, someone has challenged the way you manage your work and look at the world, it is a very good thing.
……
Throughout the morning, there were a number of us twittering about the presentations. This led to a sub-conversation that rode underneath the actual presentations being given. Later, in the halls, we got to talking about whether or not it was rude for us to be typing in session, while people were talking. The general consensus was that it is. But, what if someone is twittering about your presentation? It is, basically promoting you – and giving you free PR. The consensus here, was that if the speaker didn’t know whether or not you were answering email or twittering, then they would perceive it as rude and that is why it is not a good thing (which none of us stopped doing all day). So, I’m wondering if it matters that the driver of good behavior, in this case, may not be the desire to be present and focus on the speaker and engage in their presentation, but simply to not appear rude to them.
……
Last year, I came to the Scrum Gathering as a kind of emissary on behalf of the IT&T SIG. I wanted to see if we could build a bridge between the IT&T SIG and the Scrum Community. Today, Greg Balestrero, the CEO of PMI gave the lunchtime keynote presentation. He did a very good job of engaging the crowd and conveying the message that PMI is an evolving organization that is interested in learning how to work with the Scrum Alliance. The response was very largely positive. People seemed generally hungry for things to move forward. The best part of his talk was the end where he paraphrased a conversation he and Ken Schwaber had held the night before. The basic message they wanted to jointly get across today was to tell everyone in both camps to “stop whining” and that they “have permission to move forward”. From my perspective, this is a very, very good thing.
……
One thing I saw today, that is something I’ve never seen at a PMI conference, was when one of the CST’s left lunch early because he was so worked up about what he’d been running through in his mind that he needed to leave the lunch to go put it down. It is very energizing to be around folks who are genuinely turned on by what they do.

The only drag so far was that Michele Sliger and Gabrielle Benefield both spoke at the same time I did. I would have like to have seen both of them present.
I’ll be posting more tomorrow and will be shooting some video interviews as well.

Greg, Mark, Ken, Mike, Jeff, Jodi, Teresa, Jesse, Michelle, Stacia, Gabrielle, Bob, Laurentiu, the Board of the IT&T and IS SIGs, the PMI Agile Forum Committee, everyone at the Scrum Alliance, all who attended the special event this evening and most of all,

Jim C…

Thanks. There were two amazing launches this evening. I am quite proud to have witnessed both!

Dave

Hi,

I'll be hosting a webinar today with Ken Schwaber, co-founder of Scrum.

The webinar will take place at 12 PM Eastern.

Please join in if you are free - here are the details:
http://tinyurl.com/ITTSIG-SchwaberWebinar

Thanks,

Dave

Done Done and the Bag of Oranges

[BEGIN DISCLAIMER] This concept is not mine and I take no shame in having “borrowed” it because it works good enough to get a gig managing lighting on a Christian Bale movie. I first heard it referred to several months ago in an EMC training session that had veered off topic into deep Agile waters. James Shore uses it in his book “The Art of Agile Development” and I’ve seen postings online referring to Mike Cohn using it in his training classes. [END DISCLAIMER]

While it isn’t mine, it is something I’m using with increasing frequency on my projects and it has proven to be incredibly helpful in communicating with both the clients and the guys doing the development work on my projects. Here is a basic rundown of how “Done Done” works.

The Setup

1. Developer says the work on given backlog item is “Done”.

2. PM tells Client that Developer is “Done” working on the item.

3. Client checks to see “Done” work, finds out that it has not been implemented.

4. Client fills bag with oranges, which are then forcefully and repeatedly applied to the stomach of the PM. (According to the late great Jim Thompson, a bag of oranges to the gut provide massive bruising without too much internal bleeding... if you do it right. If you don't... bad things.)

5. PM, doubled over with pain, questions Developer and determines that, from the Dev’s standpoint, “Done” meant he/she/it was no longer working on said item.

So, how do you protect yourself from ending up like Lillie in The Grifters?

The Fix

Implement “Done Done”, which works like this: You bring all team members into a room and explain that all work will henceforth be categorized as existing in one of the following states:

1. Not Done – No one is doing anything at all with this right now.

2. In Process – Someone is doing something about this.

3. Done – Someone feels that they have completed working on something and has implemented it in a way that can be shown to someone who will have something to say about it.

4. Done Done – Work has been completed, implemented, checked, confirmed and approved. And throughout the valley, there is much rejoicing at the verified completion this amazing item.

In the Wild

On my current project, we have “Done”, which means the Devs declared, (usually at some point after 2 AM) that they had completed their work on said item. “Done Done” means that they have not only “Done” the work, but they have shown it to Damon. (Damon is the guy on the client side that we’ve designated as the Zuul of “Done Done”.) So, without Damon’s blessing, they are forbidden from declaring anything to be “Done Done”, unless they want to experience the bag of oranges.

Steering Clear of Bobo Justus

If you happen to be suffering from repeated encounters with the aforementioned bag of oranges, then I’d highly recommending giving “Done Done” a try.

For the past year, the IT&T SIG has been working together with the Scrum Alliance with the aim of fostering a stronger relationship between the PMI project management community and the Scrum and Agile communities. We started out by holding a series of Scrum and Agile webinars, and last fall we followed up with a special networking reception in Denver at the 2008 PMI Global Congress that celebrated the work we’ve been doing with the Scrum Alliance

The work we’ve done so far has been very successful in beginning to build a bridge between the two communities. But now we have even better news!

This Spring, at the Scrum Gathering in Orlando, Florida, top thought leaders from the Scrum and Agile community will meet with thought leaders from PMI to discuss ways in which we can continue to develop the relationship and increase the awareness on both sides of the fact that each of the approaches has benefits which can be realized across the others.

Here are the official details:
2009 Orlando Scrum Gathering - Scrum Alliance

March 16, 17, 18th, 2009 at The Gaylord Palms Resort, Orlando, Florida, USA

Featured Speakers include: Scrum co-founders: Ken Schwaber & Jeff
Sutherland, along with Mike Cohn, Jim "Cope" Coplien, Ron Jeffries, Alistair
Cockburn, Gregory Balestrero (PMI), Chet Hendrickson plus many more industry
leaders.

Space is limited, and the expectation is that it will SELL OUT very soon, so if you are interested, please sign up as soon as possible.

Because of the significance of the event, the Scrum Alliance is offering a special discount to members of PMI. If you are a member of PMI and register for the Scrum Gathering, you’ll get the same discount that you’d receive if you were a member of the Scrum Alliance. Click here to receive the discount:
https://www.regonline.com?eventID=680388&rTypeID=196410

If you would like additional information on the event, please visit:
www.scrumgathering.org

MacWorld Roundup

I’m just back from MacWorld and ready to get back to work. While I was there I had an opportunity to spend the week helping out in the ProjectWizards booth, showing folks some of the new things that Merlin has to offer.

While I spent most of my time in the booth, and didn’t see much of the other exhibitors, there were a few products there, which won awards, that I’ve already been using to help me manage my projects... so I thought I’d focus on them.

The Livescribe Pulse is a pen... oh, no wait... it’s a smart pen that costs almost $200. Which sounds insane, until you use it. Available on the PC for awhile, it only recently became available to Mac users. What makes it worth the price is the fact that when I am in a meeting, then pen records all the audio. At the same time, I capture notes in a special paper notebook. After the meeting, the pen can by synch’d up with a computer so that the notes and the audio are transferred to your computer for later review and storage. I’ve only been using this for a few weeks, but it has already proven its’ worth by allowing me easy access to critical information. I had a team member on a project who claimed he had not known about a particular action item which was assigned to him. I merely pointed the pen at the note I jotted down in the meeting, tapped the pen to it and it played back the audio of him saying “Ok, I’ll take that as an action item.”

I’ve written in here before about my continuing efforts to get better at using some version of GTD to manage all my work. There are a lot of products out there. Some of which are really good, some, not so much. Things, which has been receiving a lot of attention lately went to version 1.0 last week and is now able to sync with the desktop client on the Mac. Between the easy interface, the level of detail it lets you get to and the fact that I can now work off of either my desktop or iphone (or ipod touch), it is definitely my app of choice for managing the onslaught of tasks I am still not quite able to get done each day.

The last thing I want to mention today, is Merlin. I’m a huge Merlin fan and have been for a number of years. If you use a Mac, and do serious project planning, it is the most robust client available. For me, the line in the sand was the ability to separate work and duration. None of the competing products allow that level of planning. For a while now, the desktop has also allowed you to imbed things like register items and documents (project plans, change requests, etc.) right into the plan, making them available right from the client. It also lets you read and write MS Project files. But Merlin is making another huge leap with the ability to share to the web and iPhone (or iPod Touch) that allows a real time update back to the client or server version of the project plan. This means I can serve my project file from the desktop or server and have my Windows and Linux users update their tasks from the browser window and I can see updates the moment they make them. There is no check in process - it feeds directly in over the internet. With the iPhone (or iPod Touch) I can not only look at my Gantt Chart on the device, but I can make the same updates and they push across the internet back into my plan in real time. I can even view the documents I’ve embeded into my project schedule on the iPhone (or iPod Touch) if the file type is one the device can read (like PDF). 

It has been a few years since I’ve looked at trying to get Project Server implemented anywhere, but the last time I checked, the cost to get it set up for testing in an enterprise environment was upwards of $100K (US). With the new Merlin capabilities, I can get all that set up and running, including the cost of a new machine (it will run on anything that has 1 GB of RAM and can run 10.4.9 or higher) for under $2K (US).

My New Year's Resolution
A few weeks ago I was at P2P in Cairo, speaking with Philip Diab, the 2008 Chair of PMI. We were both about to give brief speeches at a conference and he brought up the idea of developing a consistent theme and using it as a sort of guiding idea when preparing for presentations over a period of time. It was great advice, and I have decided that I am going to start off by applying it to the blog.

Remix
In Lawrence Lessig's new book "Remix", he devotes a fair amount of time early on, to explaining how kids today are creating mashups with music and he goes on to detail what the legal ramifications are with this and the book goes on from there. If you like Lessig's work, or are at all into reading up on copyright law and intellectual property rights, I highly recommend it.

While I was reading it, I found that I kept drifting back to the idea of mashups and other places that they occur in modern life. The basic premise is that you take two existing things and push them together to create something new and (ideally) better. The site Mashuptown.com has a great video explanation of it in the upper right corner of their homepage.

Depending on your taste in music, this could be a good or a bad thing. But, in coming back to it, I started to think more about the other places in my life that this takes place - especially work.

So, jumping back to the whole consistent theme thing... for 2009 my focus is going to be on PM Mashups, or, bringing different (pm related or not) ideas and practices, etc., together in one's approach to project management with the end goal of coming up with a more cohesive, adaptive and ideally, creative way of managing work. My plan is to develop a series on the idea and hopefully, I'll be able to find a bunch of folks along the way who are also mixing their chocolate and peanut butter and don't mind talking about it.

PM Mashup #1 

For about 18 months I have been primarily using Scrum to manage my projects. For most of what I do, it works very well. It's adaptive, lightweight, and is great for developing trust with the clients. However, I have found that it for it to work best, I need to add some components from other approaches.

Traditional PMBOK type documentation is something I tend to get lazy about, so I am always trying to find ways to make it easier to get through. I do, however, think it is critical to have those artifacts and I am a very firm believer in keeping a historical record so that you can learn from your mistakes. It would be easy to get away without doing this in Scrum, but, as I mentioned above, I think that historical artifacts are critical and, even if there are no defined requirements at Go, I do think that they need to be locked down by the end of the project. (Always leave the room nicer than you found it.)

So now, when I'm working on Scrum projects, I generally try to make sure we have a wiki set up so that we can provide the client with documentation that will be current by the time we leave and which they will hopefully maintain as a living, organic version of the requirements doc. Now, I know that the requirements doc should be created up front, but the simple fact is that most of the time, what is being asked for initially, is not entirely definable and will probably change during development. I also know that once we create the initial requirements that I, as the PM am responsible for keeping it current. Unfortunately, in practice, what I've found is that the requirements doc becomes something that is either A) gathering dust the moment it leaves the printer or B) something I work furiously on updating so that it can gather dust the moment it leaves the printer.

My goal is to have a place to capture whatever we initially know in an informal, plain language manner and then build on it as we move forward. We usually start out by entering whatever use cases we have and we work with the product owner until they reach a level of comfort entering directly into the wiki themselves. Over the development cycle, the use cases are updated by the team as they evolve into a sort of post development explanation of what is in place. We evolve, with the product owner, from the initial need, to the realized product, which is documented in plain, simple language. It is not traditional requirements and may lack a lot of the structure that a traditional requirements doc includes, but if the objective of the traditional requirements doc is to define what is requested to a level of detail that can be executed and litigated against, then the wiki reqs, or Requirements 2.0 is intended to be easily digested by humans who may have a need for the information.

This mashup doesn't fit perfectly into Scrum or a PMBOK type approach. But, it does enable the workflow process and meets the informational needs of the client in a way that does not place an undue burden on the team.

I'll post more in about a week, but if you have any mashups of your own, I'd love to hear about them.

Happy New Year!

> New Podcast Videos have been posted to the IT&T SIG iTunes Podcast and Vimeo

It has been awhile since I've posted anything, but things are almost settled down and I am hoping to get better about that in the coming weeks.  

While I was in Warsaw I had a chance to shoot interviews with the PMI Poland Chapter President, Rafal Mielczarek and Andy Brandt from Codesprinters. (I am a huge fan of Banana Scrum.)

Since my last post from the PMI Poland Chapter's 3rd Annual Congress in Warsaw I have been traveling a bit. I was fortunate enough to be able to present at Øredev 2008 in Malmo, Sweden. It was one of the best conventions I have ever been to. The cross section of developer, project managers and tech geeks from all over the IT space made it an event that I'll probably be measuring every convention I go to from now on. The variety of ideas shared was what made it such a rich learning experience. Everywhere I went there seemed to be some kind of debate going on and everyone there was completely passionate about their craft.  Getting to meet Diana Larsen and Jeff Sutherland was very cool. I also had a chance to shoot a video interview with Gabrielle Benefield, which you can see if you follow the Vimeo link above or check out the IT&T SIG Video Podcast in iTunes.