Jesse Fewell

Last night at PMI’s DC chapter meeting, UMT Professor and former PMI board member David Framedelivered a keynote address discussing the relationship of Agile techniques to the PMBOK.

Did you catch that? A PMI board member, talking about Agile?!

Now, he gave a similar talk to the New York City Chapter earlier this month. But let’s be honest here, it doesn’t get any more non-Agile than Washington DC, the home of large federal waterfall projects. So you can imagine the sense of anticipation and showdown that was leading into the evening event. Well, he certainly delivered, showing off a wry sense of humor and a brief moonwalk demo.

He introduced with a challenge to the group to consider that reflective criticism is not bad. PMI has an obligation to consider industry trends in PM best practices. The current PMBOK Guide is over 400 pages long, and is at risk for growing even larger, without adding any value. However, to defray the risk of his own PMI defrocking, he jokingly quipped that he would also be critiquing the CMM and ISO 9000 standards in light of the Agile trend.

Dr. Frame continued with the observation that Agile techniques are not completely a new phenomenon. Indeed, he “felt a little like Rip Van Winkle” when he got pulled into Agile Project Management a little over a year ago. Pioneers like Fred Brooks, Barry Boehm, et al. were advocating non-linear project management in the 60’s and 70’s.

He also described his own analysis of 100 RAD projects, where he found that not a single RAD project was customer-rejected. By engaging customer feedback during the development of a prototype, you can be sure that what you deliver is what they wanted. Traditional RAD has a prototyping phase followed by a waterfall implementation phase. So, you get dynamic “agile” feedback during the highest-risk phase of requirements gathering. In fact, the prototype can be so compelling that, in some cases, it gets deployed before official development has begun.

He highlighted the common sense practice of “Opportunistic Scheduling”, and Agile’s heavy use of it. If a tester is available sooner than planned, wouldn’t you go ahead and use him, rather than wait for the planned start date? If a piece of hardware arrived a few days early, certainly you would have the team take advantage of it if they could. The plan is a guide, not a law. However, he asserted that the spirit of the PMBOK was to discourage such things, even if the letter of the guide actually permitted it.

In his overview, he grouped modern Project Management methods into three broad approaches: Waterfall, Iterative, and Agile. He observed that sometimes, there can be overlaps and combinations. For example, iterative methods can resemble successive mini-waterfall phases, or aggressive waterfall projects delivering frequently can look agile.

Towards the end, he walked through the 5 levels of CMM and contrasted their definitions with the philosophies of Agile. For example, having repeatable and defined processes is proscriptive and predictive in nature, which goes against the Agile tenants of adapting to your context. Interestingly, many Agilists disagree with this perspective, and assert that methods such as Scrum can be CMM compliant.

So at last he arrived at the final slide, declaring that the best approach was ….(drumroll)… all of them. Each approach brings different strengths to different environments. Management practices should be situationally specific. Indeed, cultural baggage and personality are legitimate factors. Some project members simply can’t work in a regimented environment and some will shrivel up in a highly dynamic environment.

Afterwards, I asked him his thoughts on those that believe you can reconcile the Agile techniques with the PMBOK (I would be one of those people). He disagreed, and only half-jokingly quipped that anyone trying to characterize PMBOK standards as Agile should be branded as a heretic. Wow…not exactly the response I would have expected from the guy who led the development of the original PMP exam. He agreed that the PMBOK motto “progressively elaboration” is a good tenant, but that the spirit of the guide is becoming more and more of a legislative tome, than an effective guide in PM best practices.

In the end, I am excited that Agile has gotten the devoted attention of a renowned expert and PMI insider like David Frame. However, I would contend, as I have in the past, that we do not have two mutually exclusive philosophies or communities. Indeed, the Agile method of Scrum has been shown to be fully CMM-3 and partially CMM-4 (see slide 99 of the Scrum intro course). PMI Global Congress speaker Mike Griffiths has shown that Agile focuses on project execution and control, where as the PMBOK devotes most of its process steps to planning.

All in all a very interesting event, and one that will motivate me to continue the conversation.

This week I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity of dedicated colocated teams. The cross-fuctional project i’m managing has team members distributed across 5 floors. Of course, each team is working on more than one project, all of which require multple meetings in a given week. What this means is the time-honored best practice of Management By Walking Around is just impossible. By the time I get to one team lead’s cube, they’ve been sucked into another meeting via their blackberry.

In a large IT matrix organization, the temptation is to optimize around funtional teams: the DB team, the GUI team, the mainframe team, etc. The teams all sit together, working on tasks organized around a specific functional knowledge, rather than the projects they work on. Of course, each functional team is working on several projects at once. As a result, I am exhausted trying to walk around getting questions answered. I’m beginning to appreciate the temptation to resort to “manage by email”…it’s just too hard to track everyone down face to face. So until I can convince the world at large to optimize around project teams, I have to utilize the secret weapon of large organizations: schedule a meeting of my own.

I have now scheduled one-on-one coffee breaks with each of my team leads, so that I can get an informal status from them well before the official weekly status meeting. In contrast, when I’ve worked on colocated Agile project teams, a quick sidebar gets me the answers I need in real-time. No hunting down people; No scheduling a conversation; just question-anwser. It also has the side-effect of updating the other team members with the same info.

Alas, in matrixed project organizations, you must journey vast and far to find your project members. So here I am, resorting to meetings to overcome everyone else’s meetings. It feels like schoolyard tactics: retaliating with the blunt instrument that I’m being clobbered with.

Michael Griffiths and I have talked to many of you recently about forming a PMI SIG dedicated to Agile Project Management. From what I’ve seen, there is a huge gap between the PMI and Agile communities, often tainted with stereotypes and even disdain. Chartering an Agile SIG within PMI will be a huge step forward in growing the penetration of human best practices into the larger PM community. Anyway, and I wanted to give you all an update, and a chance to participate.

Last week, I talked to Danielle Ritter at PMI about the topic. She informed me that PMI has frozen the creation of any new SIGs until the completion of its Virtual Communities Project (VCP) late this year. An offshoot of the larger Communities Transformation Project, VCP is revamping the way PMI does “communities”, by analyzing organizational models, processes and infrastructure needs for communities across the board. When all is said and done, some of today’s PMI colleges and SIGs will be re-chartered and renamed, while others will continue as-is.

Until then, she is taking requests from PMI members for communities that would address a specific area. Currently there are some 32 requests. Once the VCP project has completed, PMI will evaluate nominated communities be evaluated by an internal PMI group for interest, relevance, business value, and ability to move forward. Those passing this first filter, will be asked to participate in developing a business model.

So, we need to mobilize a critical mass of noisy, interested PMPs. I need you to spread the word: the squeaky wheel will get his SIG. Specifically, have people contact Danielle Ritter (communityformation@pmi.org), and tell her we want an Agile SIG/community. Here is a flyer that you can hand out at local/global APLN, Alliance, and PMI meetings. I plan on handing out dozens of these at the APLN summit in October. The flyer also contains talking points to help you and your colleagues articulate the potential of a PMI Agile community.

Thanks so much for your interest. Let’s go out there and build some buzz!!

One of the key requirements of any aspiring leader is to maintain focus. Usually, focus is discussed as a tool leaders use to sift away distraction and maintain momentum on a team’s most important goals. However, an internally-directed focus is at least as important: You need to know where your leadership is most needed.

Over the last year, I’ve been innundated with leadership opportunities. At home, I’ve been serving as the Neighborhood Watch coordinator for a 1,600 home community, participating in a School Board delegation for minority student achievement, leading a group Bible study, and mentoring engaged couples through pre-marital counseling. At work, I’ve been leading my company’s Project Management community, an internal training program, and an intranet migration, all of which are after-hours. Then, I was asked to head up the PTA for my son’s school, and nominated as Vice President for our civic association. If I were to attempt to add leadership value to these other organizations, my already weary schedule would just crumble. There are so many “good” things to do, “good” organizations to join, “good” growth opportunities, even the highest-capacity player can’t do it all. So, it’s time for me to exercise some internal-focus. Just like applying focus on the job or for the team, I have to ask hard questions like

• “What is Urgent?”‘
• “What Is Important?”
• “Which relationships do I want to develop?”
• “Which activities best fit my highest priorities?”
• “Which provide the most overlap with multiple priorities?”

In my example, volunteer activities that increase quality/quantity time with my wife and kids take highest priority, since that is a constant challenge for us. For those roles that don’t make the cut, I plan on recruiting a successor, or at least a deputy, to provide continuity for the people that have grown accustomed to my being there. Of course it’s much easier said than done. I’m already fighting the urge to mope and whine about things I “should” do, teams I “should” be a part of, and so forth. But that’s the whole crux of the focus we’re trying to achieve: sift awy the “should do” to gain clarity on the things I “must” do. It takes work, but it’s work that you have to do, in order to hit the right targets and the right time.

Recently, a colleague of mine at Excella reminded my project team that “your client’s perception is your reality”. You may be working dutifully on the task that you’ve been assigned, but if your client only sees you surfing at lunch, which is the reality that matters? The extreme counter example of this is the Seinfeld episode where George parks his car at Yankee stadium and never checks in to work. The early-birds are impressed that he’s already there, and the late people are impressed that his car is still there when they leave.

But I got to wondering, isn’t this the truth in all business relationships? If your boss or coworkers see you as a junior-level PM because they wear sport jackets and you don’t, which is the reality that matters? If the grapevine relays your insightful opinions awkwardly, aren’t they somewhat tainted? The best way to overcome this is through Proactive Communciation. Check in with people often, and get a sense of where you stand with them. Every interaction doesn’t have to be as on-the-spot as “So, how do you think I’m doing?”, but you want to make sure you’re aware of how people perceive you. When you start that kind of dialog, you open up opportunities to correct false perceptions. “Really? Let’s talk about how you came to that conclusion.”

Your sphere of influence is limited by how well people receive your input. If perceptions of you have gone askew, you won’t be an effective leader, or even an effective contributor for your cause.