retrospective Archive

PMI Agile CoP Retrospective

– April 3, 2012Posted in: Agile, Project Management

When you think of spending a Saturday afternoon among friends and colleagues, do you picture yourself sitting in front of your computer, collaborating for three hours on a web-based tool and discussing what is working and what could work better? Well, that is exactly what a group of us did. It was time for the quarterly PMI Agile Community of Practice (CoP) retrospective. We couldn’t all be in the same physical location so some of us from the community jumped online and tried to make the world (or at least our CoP) a better place.
When you look at the graphic above (or click on the link to Cacoo), you may be left scratching your head, if you are neither an Agilist nor a member of the PMI Agile CoP. If you are either, I hope you nod in recognizing the mechanism we used to interact and make our Agile Community of Practice a better place for us all to belong.

Community of Practice

You could describe us as a motley crew of discontents and zealots. You could also describe us as a passionate group of Agilists drawn together, with the hope of helping the PMI community discover the value of Agile practices and approaches. We all hold a sense of belonging to our community. We all believe in the altruistic sharing of knowledge, methods, stories, cases, tools, and documents.

Retrospective

Generically speaking, a retrospective meeting is held at the end of a scheduled event or time interval. With the aid of a facilitator (in this case Brian Bozzuto), a team discusses what went well and what could be improved during the next interval or prior to the next scheduled event. The meeting is time-boxed to help ensure it doesn’t just turn into an out-of-control complaining session. When properly facilitated, you come out of the meeting with an actionable list for improvement. Though I always recommend doing retrospectives in person, actually having the retrospective takes priority. Do it wherever you can however you can. Successful teams need to take the time to have retrospectives if they have any chance of improving what they do.

PMI Agile CoP Quarterly Retrospective

The leadership of this community recognizes that as our community grows, some things will work and some challenges will need to be overcome (zoom into the graphic to see what we thought). One thing is for certain: with almost 14,000 members, our PMI community has a lot to offer both members and non-members. Every minute of that Saturday afternoon was well spent. I hope this post and the link to the Cacoo graphic provides some transparency into what we’ve been doing the last three months.

Interested in joining our community or becoming a volunteer? We’d love to have you!

Source: This post was originally written and published by me on the PMI Agile Community of Practice blog

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Tags: Agile, CoP, PMI, retrospective

PMO Analogy

Derek Huether

– May 12, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management

As my tenure with the PMO comes to an end, I’ve had an opportunity to reflect on the last two and a half years. What I realized was how much the PMO was like the U.S. Congress. If I imagine the organizational structure of the PMO I’ve been supporting, I can imagine the CIO as the President and the PMO Program Director as the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader. Beneath the Program Director are the Division Directors (Committee Chairs) and then members of the PMO (Congress in general). What I’ve found interesting is many (not all) have their own agendas and motives. Gridlock, not collaboration, is the norm. Now, am I talking about the PMO or Congress? I’m not trying to paint the PMO or Congress in an unfavorable light. To the contrary, these people are all SMEs in their respective areas. But they’ve seemed to have forgotten the common goal. They’ve forgotten who the customer is. In both cases, it’s the American people.

From my perspective, when you’re trying to deliver value, you need to consider all of the options, regardless of your convictions. I was the sole Agile evangelist in the PMO. Think of me as a lobbyist representing the American people. I did what I could to help the Government understand and to be receptive to new ideas. But what the PMO failed to grasp was Agile is much more than a way to deliver software products.

I think Michele Sliger put it very well:

Being agile means that teams are working in ways that allow for change in order to better work together and provide a more useful and meaningful product to the customer.

My final days with the PMO will be like a long retrospective. What went well during this engagement? What could be improved in the next engagement?

HT: Michele Sliger

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Tags: Agile, Analogy, Congress, PMO, retrospective, SME, Value

Intro to Value Stream Mapping

Derek Huether

– February 28, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management

I’m in the process of doing a Current State Value Stream Mapping (VSM) for the PMO. The big questions are, based on the current state, are there areas we can improve? Can we eliminate any waste (or increase efficiencies) from our current processes? The answer to both questions is YES. Everyone should be reviewing there processes on a regular basis, giving themselves opportunities to become more profitable. Though I’m advising a Federal Government project, the American people still deserve the most bangs for their bucks.

Today is the last day for one of my projects. It is done. Now is the time to see what worked and what did not. We now need to do a retrospective and see if we learned any lessons from the last go-around. I will give the vendor credit on this particular project. This small cross-functional team did a better job than others, in part, because we had a daily 15 minute status meeting. (otNay allowedway otay entionmay Agileway). One of the other program teams wastes so much time because they only communicate once a week in a 3 hour meeting. I hope my VSM will change that.

For those new to Value Stream Mapping, I included a 5 minute video that does a pretty good job of explaining its value. See how a process that took 140+ days to complete was shortened down to just 30 days.

If you don’t have your current process documented, you need to do it! As the saying goes, “What cannot be measured cannot be improved”. Don’t be complacent and accept the waste. Times are tough and we need to think lean!

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Tags: Agile, Lean, Lessons Learned, retrospective, Video, VSM

Week Retrospective 110130

Derek Huether

– January 30, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management

Posts this week

I was a guest of AgileScout Live. I really enjoyed myself. Check out my video interview and retrospective.

I wrote about how I’m always looking for ways to communicate with team members, vendors, and customers. When trying to understand the range of communications, I recently reassessed what I thought the opposite of communications was. I no longer believe it is silence. See some of my examples on why the opposite of communications is manipulation.

I loved this 10 minute video by Mike Cottmeyer, I had to write a post for it. Though I frequent the LeadingAgile website, I had to do a little more than just retweet a link in support of this post. For those who are new to Agile, Scrum, or Kanban, you need to carve out 10 minutes and watch this video on blending Scrum and Kanban.

After we published our first Scrum Posters, I was asked if we were going to create Non-Scrum Posters. The answer is YES! This week, we completed our (first) one-of-a-kind Pictofigo Project Management poster. The Project Management Process Groups poster is now available!

Like so many this year, I got snowed in. Unable to go into the office, I instead blogged about how our HOA handled the situation compared to the great snow storms of last year.

I recently read a pre-published copy of the Scrum Pocket Guide: A Quick Start Guide To Practical Agile Software Development by Peter Saddington of AgileScout. I’m giving away one free PDF copy of the book. Find out how to get registered to win.

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Tags: Kanban, Posters, retrospective, Scrum, Video

Just One Agile Thing

Derek Huether

– January 10, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management

I met with the Agile Influencers of DC, on Friday night. The focus of the conversations for the evening was Agile Adoption. One of the questions asked (I’m paraphrasing here) was

If you were on a project, and you could leverage just ONE “Agile” THING, what would it be and why would you choose it?

This is a little like the first episode of Surviver but it is a good exercise to make you think about what you find valuable in Agile. Would you choose the use of information radiators? Perhaps you favor retrospective meetings? Or perhaps, you love the use of cross-functional co-located teams?

When I was asked, I chose empowered teams. Look back at the Agile Manifesto and one of its principles. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

I believe if you build a team of professional and empowered people, you increase the probability of project success. Give your people some general rules to follow and have the faith they will make the right decisions. It beats the hell out of trying to control them! Empowering them also gives you more time to help them when they really need you, rather than making trivial decisions.

So, what would be the one thing you would choose? Why?

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