Zombies Archive

Understanding Zombie Leadership

– March 15, 2011Posted in: Project Management

As I work furiousness to complete the first installment in my Zombie PM series, which I plan to release at the end of March, I’m also working on my presentation for the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference, which I will be appearing at in April. Both are linked in an interesting way. What do you think is the opposite of Servant-Leadership? You guessed right: Zombie Leadership.

The figure above will be included in the Zombie PM series and perhaps my presentation in Michigan. Though servant-leadership is altruistic in nature, zombies are their own special classification. They are beyond the polar opposite of an altruist. Even the worst of egotists are no match for the zombie. I can’t even include them on the chart! So, I had to change this classic chart. Everyone wants to know their place in the world. I’m sure zombies are no exception. Oh, who am I kidding!?

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Tags: GLSEC, Servant-Leadership, ZombiePM, Zombies

And so the Party Begins

Derek Huether

– March 11, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management, Video

I’m sitting backstage, enjoying the show. Ty Kiisel and Raechel Logan are onstage and doing an awesome job. The Keynote today, at the conference, is actually going to be the Talking Work podcast. There’s a live band, several hundred people in the audience, and the stage looks like the set of The Tonight Show. I’m sitting backstage, sipping my water and listening to Donna Fitzgerald speak. I wonder to myself, what is Ty going to want to talk about? Before I answer my own question, I notice one of the people backstage approaching me, as he mouths something into his radio. He smiles at me and says, “They’re about ready for you, Derek. If you would please, got ahead and get into position.” I remember from the rehearsal the night before that I was to go stand on an X and wait for the lights to come on. …and so the party begins.

The entire WorkOut 2011: TalkingWork Keynote lasted about 1 hour and 26 minutes. I modified the embedded YouTube link so that it would advance to just before I came on. But, I would really recommend you go back to the beginning and watch the whole thing. Donna had some excellent talking points. I don’t want to say what anyone talked about. It’s so much better letting them speak for themselves, via the video. Ty and Raechel were amazing hosts and AtTask blew me away by the level of quality this event had.

So, sit back and enjoy the show. And could someone please tell me where the hell that green feather went!? (Don’t worry, you’ll find out)
Since this post was written, the Keynote video has been changed to “private”. It looks like each of the interviews will have their own video on YouTube.

I have a quote by Seth Godin that has recently become my mantra. He wrote

Go, give a speech. Go, start a blog. Go, ship that thing that you’ve been hiding. Begin, begin, begin and then improve. Being a novice is way overrated.

Thank you again to Ty and Raechel for inviting me out to Utah, to enjoy your event and share in the wonderful conversations.

What I’ve heard Ty say rings true.

It doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t matter what industry we’re in or even what our role is. We all share one thing in common. And that is we all work.

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Tags: AtTask, Conference, YouTube, Zombies

Veni Vidi Loquor

Derek Huether

– February 18, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management

Julius Caesar, in recognition of his overwhelming victory against Pharnaces II of Pontus, sent a simple, but powerful message back to Rome and the Senate: “VENI VIDI VICI“, I came, I saw, I conquered. My message back to Washington DC and my Project Management colleagues: “VENI VIDI LOQUOR”, I came, I saw, I spoke.

It’s now been a solid week since I left for home from the AtTask Work Management Summit (WorkOut2011), in Salt Lake City. I was asked to come out to Utah and be a speaking guest of the conference. I basically ran two themes: [1] Balanced project management through the use of Agile concepts [2] Project Management Zombies.

I had the opportunity to participate on a panel the first day I was there and then was part of the keynote the next. The keynote was by far the highlight of my trip, sharing the stage with Ty Kiisel and Raechel Logan (The hosts of TalkingWork), Donna Fitzgerald (Research Director at Gartner), and Scott Johnson (Founder and CEO of AtTask).

WorkOut 2011 was nothing short of spectacular. From the exceptional venue (The Grand American Hotel), to the passionate and approachable people, to the forward thinking product design, I am in awe of what AtTask delivered.

Because I spoke completely unscripted, I’ll have to wait until the YouTube videos comes out (I’ve been told by the Firm Snapp Conner PR, my panel talk and the Keynote will be out soon) to see exactly what I said. Fortunately, a few people in the audience quoted me in their tweets.

“One of our failings in this day and age is we forget we’re working with people.”

“Inspire more people from the bottom up, empower them to become leaders”

“Remember you’re not managing resources – you’re managing people”

“Don’t judge zombies [on a project] they don’t know what they’re doing”

Thank you, everyone, for the memories! I look forward to seeing you all again.

Photo: Bryant Livingston

Zombie Elephant

Derek Huether

– February 17, 2011Posted in: Agile, Project Management

I read a REALLY compelling post by Philippe Kruchten, who among others, was at the 10 years agile celebration meeting in Snowbird, UT, organized by Alistair Cockburn on February 12.

Philippe stated on his blog post, after covering the walls with a couple of hundred issues cards, David Anderson noted that there was “an elephant in the room”. [read Philippe's post to find out what it was] …A small group identified a few other such “elephants in the room”, i.e., other topics that the agile community is not really willing to tackle for a variety of reasons. They ended up with a long list of about 12 such “undiscussable” topics (or at least not discussable in the open).

The elephant that jumped out at me was number eleven.

11. Certification (the “zombie elephant”)
This massive elephant was reported dead a few times, but seems to reappear…

Now, I don’t want to beat this proverbial dead horse but I do think it’s important to talk about this. The idea of “Agile” Project Management certification seems to drive some people super crazy. There are arguments against certifications (in general), saying they are just a way to make money; that they don’t offer any real value. Like it or not, certifications ARE out there and they ARE here to stay. This argument is not unique to the Agile Community. There are almost daily debates in the blogosphere on the subject of certification value. There is a distinct difference between wisdom and knowledge and I think the Agile community has a lot of wisdom to offer the “traditional” project management community. If you don’t have the wisdom, you need some basic foundation of education in order to help projects (and people) reach their goals.

The ongoing problem I see is some people outside our project teams perceive those with certifications as experts. It’s either that or the Hiring Managers are so damn lazy that they go looking for certifications rather than actual people who will make good culture fits. Either way, we have the same results. People who don’t know the first thing about project management or leadership, with certifications, get hired. This is not an issue with the certification itself. It’s a marketing issue. The message is being controlled by the wrong people. The communities as a whole need to be more vocal and shape the correct message.

In my post for Agile Scout, about the State of Agile, I called it mastery-based learning and the paradox of the certification. What is the goal? Are we trying to discover better ways to deliver value to our customers or are we just trying to get a piece of paper and a few extra letters after our names? Some only care about getting a passing score on a certification exam versus being a good manager or leader. I would argue that certifications do offer some value but we may need to do away with terms like “Master” or “Professional”, in order to help control the message.

So, why certification and not traditional higher education? In preparation for writing another blog post, I was reading a University of Maryland textbook on Systems Analysis. The section on Agile & Scrum were flat out wrong! In addition, this college textbook used Wikipedia as its reference source.

I would argue, the respective communities introduce themselves to the elephant in the room and get to work on better ways to educate people and measure proficiency. You better do it soon, before that elephant becomes an 800 pound gorilla.

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Tags: Certification, CPM, CSM, PMP, Zombies

Office of Zombie Personnel Management

Derek Huether

– February 2, 2011Posted in: Project Management

A few days ago, we had a snow storm come through the Washington DC area. Just a few hours before it hit, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced Federal Employees should depart 2 HOURS earlier than their normal departure time from work. Unfortunately, if you were anyone in the Washington DC metro area and you left 2 hours earlier, you were screwed! I heard of people being stuck in traffic for up to 12 hours, trying to get home. It was a combination of people not using their own brains and OPM not knowing how to react to the weather. There were a lot of people angry at OPM for making the late call and underestimating the volume of people leaving at the same time (due to the storm).

One issue is the Federal Government has been really slow to adopt telework. When there was a threat of pandemic flu, they appeared to be paralyzed with fear, at the thought of people actually working from home. Many of us (contractors) tried to explain we would actually get more work done, if we had the opportunity to telework. If more people were teleworking, fewer would be out there messing up traffic. Last year, when the Federal Government shut down for 4 days due to snow, many of us sat at home and did nothing. It wasn’t by choice, mind you. We were not authorized to do any work outside the office.

Part of my frustration rests with the fact that in the corporate world, teleworking or having distributed teams is not uncommon. It’s not perfect but I would say it works. We’ve figured it out, leveraging a combination of communication tools and approaches.

The other main issue is the lack of practical wisdom or the desire to just take care of people supporting the Federal Government. I’ve previously quoted the definition of Practical Wisdom as

Have the moral will to make right by people.
Have the moral skill to figure out what doing right means.

As a contractor, for the last 2 days, I’ve been in the office. If I was not, I won’t be paid. For the last 2 days, this notice has gone out.

With forecast conditions for [date] highly variable and may include ice, sleet, and freezing rain, concern for safety is paramount. To protect the safety of Federal workers and our community, maintain continuity of operations and assist employees in planning accordingly, OPM has announced for [date], the option for unscheduled leave/telework.

Well, the freezing rain did not come. Yes, the parking lots yesterday morning were icy. But, the roads were fine yesterday and they were fine today. If fact, the forecasted high temperature for today is 54 degrees!

Because OPM announced all Federal workers could either take leave or telework, most did.

Let’s see how much work gets done today.

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Tags: Communications, OPM, Rant, Telework, Zombies