Hello, stakeholders, look at your PM, now back to me, now back at your PM, now back to me. Sadly, he or she isn’t me, but if he or she stopped making things up as they went along and switched to proven methods, he or she could deliver results like me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re in a meeting with the PM your PM could deliver results like. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s a a signed SOW with two features you love. Look again, the features are now delivered. Anything is possible when your PM uses proven methods and not make them up. I’m on a horse.
Thank you to Old Spice and the Old Spicy Guy for this inspiration.
Hello, ladies, look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using ladies scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again, the tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.
We’ve all had it happen to us. We were able to get a signed agreement in hand, identifying agreed upon scope of work. Everything for a fleeting moment is right in the world. Then it happens. That one stakeholder (you know who they are) comes to your desk and asks. “Can we add this one little tiny feature?” or “Can we make this one tiny little change?”
Are you kidding me? This reminds me of when my son asks if he can have dessert when he hasn’t eaten his dinner. Though you can’t be as abrupt with a stakeholder like you can with a 4-year-old, the answer should still be the same. No.
Though you should not be an obstructionist, we could all learn a little from Dr. Cox in this case. His (command) mitigated speech is all he needed. In the real world, stride to be a win-win negotiator and be aware of the mitigated speech being used to conduct your negotiations.
As I was reading tweets over the weekend, I discovered an awesome video by Hamid Shojaee, Founder and CEO of Axosoft. It’s an 8 minute introduction video on Scrum. With background music sounding a bit like Block Rockin’ Beats by The Chemical Brothers, this video is to the point and completely awesome.
I think this type of video is necessary to show to stakeholders, who have not had an introduction to Agile or Scrum. In this ADD world we live in, I think we need to deliver some information in the same way we would deliver features in a Sprint. Go for the items of highest value and deliver them in a short period of time. Additionally, deliver the information is a way that it can stand on its own.
I remember getting 50 government people in a room with an experienced Scrum Trainer, to introduce them to Scrum. After several hours, some still didn’t grasp the basics. If they were forced to watch this video in the first 8 minutes of the training, I bet the day would have gone a lot differently.
One rule that I have about meetings is it should start on time so it can end on time. We all know that is easier said than done. If you have a daily stand-up meeting, which is timeboxed at 5 to 15 minutes, you can not afford to have people showing up late. They need to show up on time.
But what if there is that one person on the team who does show up late… every… meeting? Do you punish him or her? Let’s make them pay a dollar every time they are late. Do you think that is a good idea or a bad idea? Have you tried it? I have. It surprised me when it didn’t change that person’s behavior. If anything, it just ensured they would be late. Why?
By paying me the dollar, that person no longer felt obligated to arrive on time. Everyone else, while still adhering to the culture of acceptable behavior, arrived on time. Everyone else on the team, felt equally obligated to arrive on time because I was on time. They felt that they owed it to me to be there on time.
So, how do you correct this negative behavior? I like to zone in on something that makes the violator uncomfortable. I’ve made them sing. I’ve made them dance. I’ve stopped the meeting when they’ve arrived late and then made them go from person to person on the team and say “I’m sorry for wasting your time”. This may sound a little over-the-top but they slighted everyone on my team. Everyone else was there on time; they should be as well.
I’m including a link to a TED video with Clay Shirky. You don’t need to watch the whole thing. What 4 minutes starting at 6 minutes 50 seconds. He mentions the study A Fine Is A Price by Uri Gneezy and Alfredo Rstichini in 2000. It is exactly what I’m talking about. It defined the difference between social constraints versus contractual constraints. Nothing like a research study to spice up the next meeting.
I just reviewed an Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) comprised of almost 5000 lines. I didn’t write the thing. I was just asked to review it. You might be saying to yourself that must be an absolutely awesome schedule, detailing every nuance of a project. Counter to that, you might be saying to yourself that is the most overdeveloped schedule ever creating, complicating the most trivial of work.
In the business of project management or leadership, you should always be asking yourself, “does this make sense?” If it doesn’t, you should be looking for the Goldilocks approach to documentation or process. Do something that is not too complicated or simple. Do something somewhere in the middle.
As I read through the IMS, I started to think of a Rube Goldberg machine and the OK Go video titled This Too Shall Pass. Rather than reading a very straightforward schedule, identifying all of the deliverables and a decomposition ad nauseam, I saw a schedule that both inveigled and obfuscated. A Rube Goldberg machine is the perfect analogy for this schedule.
A Rube Goldberg machine is irreducibly complex. It is a single system which is composed of several interacting parts, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to break down. If one component is missing, the machine doesn’t work; the whole system is useless. This is NOT how an IMS should be written. I see a schedule as a tool of transparency. It is a way to communicate if a project is on time in a passive manner. A fully resource loaded (properly decomposed) schedule can help you do a lot of other things. But 5000 lines? I don’t think so, not in this case.
Project Management | Derek Huether | July 26, 2010 | 
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