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.

It it's Monday, this must be Warsaw

Greetings from Poland! I still have a lot of updates to post from Denver, and a slew of great video, but between trying to catch up from being away, watching the Phillies restore my long lost belief in Philly sports teams and getting ready for Warsaw... I'm still working on catching up.

Right now I am in Warsaw at the 3rd International PMI Poland Congress. Things got off to a great start this morning and I am truly honored to be here. Rafal Mielczarek kicked things off this morning with an introduction that set the tone for what promises to be two days of great networking and learning. Just a few highlights... The Poland Chapter is something of a star in the PMI world, due to its very successful implementation of the Chapter with Branches model. They've done so well that the PMI Poland chapter has grown to 500 members since it received it's charter from PMI just five years ago, and this includes 25% growth just since the summer. Rafal joked, as the Dow goes down, their membership goes up.

In the first session, Alexandre Rodrigues, gave a presentation called Dynamic Risk Management. It covered all the basics of Risk Management and then launched into some very detailed explanations of the different tools, how they work, etc. In his talk, he urged the group to approach at Risk Management from a mindset that would allow them to see the opportunities as well as the negatives. He went on to recommend doing all they could to become aware of the opportunities and learning how to take advantage of them. My favorite line was when he said, "The project is not for the project, but for the business results." I think we (PMs) often lose sight of that when we are in the thick of things. He also explained to the participants why you can't manage risk my responding to deviation, but rather, you need to take action before the deviation occurs. 

I'll try to post something again this evening. I'm also going to be posting to the IT&T SIG Twitter Feed (http://twitter.com/pmiittelecom)

Right now I have to get back in there because I'm missing Alfonse Bucero's presentation on How to Upgrade a Weak Project Culture.

Before I go, I do want to say a special thanks to Kamila Siebierwska for all her help while I was preparing to come to Warsaw for the Congress. She’s been a great help!

PMI North American Leadership Institute Meeting 2008 

I’m listening to Mark Mulally’s Keynote presentation for PMI’s 2008 North American Global Congress. The work that he, and others, have been doing for the past year is a critical part of making the case for why project management is needed and what value it can provide.

This Leadership meeting is probably going to be one of the most important sessions that has been held for the SIGs and Colleges. The state of the Virtual Communities Project, and what impact it will have on SIG/College communities is probably going to be the main discussion topic in the sessions and the halls here at the Denver Convention Center. As for what this will mean to IT&T SIG members, I’m going to try and hold off on commenting until the sessions are complete… the key word being try.

We’ve got a lot of great things happening on the SIG website that all focus on keeping our members up to date on what is happening in Denver. We will be posting video podcasts every day, blog updates, twitter feeds and flickr feeds the whole time we are here.

On Monday evening we will hold our Annual Member Networking event. It is something I always look forward to because it gives us the best opportunity we have all year long to sit down with our members and the friends of the IT&T SIG and find our how we are doing. Each year, the feedback has helped us drive forward with new projects and programs that, hopefully, add to the member value we are providing.

And without a doubt, the part about this week that I am most excited about is our event on Saturday night where we will co-host a reception with the Scrum Alliance to promote the work we are doing with them. We’ve been getting a great response to our Scrum webinars and we have even greater things in store for next year.

This is going to be a very exciting week.

It has been awhile since I posted anything, but a lot has been going on. I’ve been working on preparing for PMI’s Congress and the other events happening this fall, as well as the project that the IT&T SIG is doing with the Scrum Alliance.


Scrum Alliance Webinars


So far we’ve held four webinars with the Scrum Alliance and they’ve gone quite well. We’ve had good attendance and great questions. There will be another one this coming Tuesday at 8 PM Easten and the beginning on October 7 we will switch to a 12 Pm Eastern start so that we can make the calls easier for our friends in the EMEA region.


I’ll be posting a listing of events that the SIG is putting on in Denver and beyond sometime over the weekend. In the meantime, if you are planning on attending the PMI Congress, will be there on Saturday night (10/18) and find yourself often waking in the week hours, in a cold sweat because you can’t stop thinking about how to make Scrum and traditional project management work better together, please send me an email and let me know (dave.prior@pmi-ittelecom.org) we’ve got something in the works you might like to get involved with.

My Name is Dave and I Suffer from an Organizational Dependency

I have organizational issues. I give GTD a bad name. I have tried many different systems; paper based, electronic, writing on my hand in Sharpie (not so helpful if you also suffer from a Purell habit). There was a brief period a few years ago when I owned a Palm T3… now I love my iPhone and it helps, but the Palm T3 was, for my money, the greatest PDA ever made and I will never forgive the Geek Squad at Best Buy for rendering it beyond use while trying to fix it.


Then, a few months ago… Jott. And throughout the valley, there was much rejoicing. I could Jott myself all day long…in public, while driving, whenever. It was awesome. I finally felt like I had things on the road to being sorted again.


Then, this week, those Capt. Hammers at Jott had the unmitigated nerve to move out of beta. And now, they have the audacity to want me to pay them… with actual money… for what basically has become “organizational crack”. (Do those quotes make it look like there is such a thing?). I am in dire need of either rehab or something better… or someone who can convince Palm to put the T3 back into production.

Good Cop/Doom Cop

I am working on a project right now with a practice lead that grew up in Melbourne. What this means is that in the part of the US that I live in, as long as he is smiling and ends every few sentences with the phrase "no worries mate", regardless of what he says, folks are just plain happy to talk to him. He is a very positive guy. He lives in a world where he doesn't have "challenges", he has "opportunities". He is the power of positive thinking. It is an amazing thing to witness... and sometimes, being afflicted with the terminal ailment of project management, it leaves me feeling like I'm from an alien race.

We got into a bit of a debate today regarding the whole good cop/doom cop thing. Typically, when we are discussing things related to the project, a shard of jagged glass nowhere remotely near the table is, to him, a glass half full of the most profound vino known to man. He looks at things through a lens of what will be, when things line up perfectly... which, they naturally will... no worries mate. I think, for what he does, this is completely necessary and a very good thing in that someone with that positive, can-do mindset is absolutely needed.

Me? Well... lets just say, you can have a glass filled to the brim, resting safely in the center of a table designed to keep it from spilling a drop and all I see in a very fragile risk factor that will most certainly crash to the floor, spill everywhere and result in deadly sharp fragments of glass hiding all about on the floor just waiting to start cutting into everyone who comes near. But the way I look at it, that's kind of the gig. One of our jobs, as PMs, is to see the risks before the others do and be ready for whatever can, and will, go wrong. In a perfect world, we are all Radar O'Reilly, hearing the choppers minutes before anyone else does.

The conversation left me wondering, is it better for a PM to be optimistic and able to approach the project through the smiley, shiny happy people lens, or are we doing a better job of serving our projects and clients looking at the world like a bunch of Schleprock's and preparing for the inevitable... and, are there actually people out there who have been able to find themselves some kind of balance or middle ground?

The Post Modern PM

During MITPM in Kuala Lumpur I got to listen to Dr. David Frame give a talk in which he explored a number of PM methodologies and how none of them served every purpose. The general gist of it was that there are lots of methodologies/tools available and that you need more than just one.


This is something that I consider to be a big deal in the evolution of a project manager. Getting past the point where you consider one approach to be the “one true way”, and on to a place where you see each approach as viable and important is a huge leap. It is also where the creative part comes in and when being a PM gets to be an actually fun job.


In his talk, Dr. Frame used the phrase “post project management”. It seemed to fit, but at the same time, to beg for just a bit more. It started rolling around in my head as post-modern project management. If the post modern movement was a reaction against what had become standardized forms and something which achieved success by the ironic blending of the dissimilar, then wouldn’t the blending of things like Scrum and PMBOK fit that same bill? (Yes, I took just enough postmodern film classes in college to make me dangerous.) If so, then I’d argue that for a PM to success in today’s’ job market, a PM has to evolve to this post modern state in which all tools hold equal weight and are only as good (or bad) as the way in which they are implemented.