Strategic Management: Between Value and Waste I (Introduction)

 

Independently on whether Lean Management is considered in the context of Manufacturing, Software Development (SD), Project Management (PM) or any other business-related areas, there are three fundamental business concepts on which the whole scaffolding of the Lean philosophies is built upon, namely the ones of value, value stream and waste. 

From an economic standpoint, value refers to the monetary worth of a product, asset or service (further referred as product) to an organization, while from a qualitative perspective, it refers to the perceived benefit associated with its usage. The value is thus reflected in the costs associated with a product’s delivery (producer’s perspective), respectively the price paid on acquiring it and the degree to which the product can fulfill a demand (customer’s perspective).

Without diving too deep into theory of product valuation, the challenges revolve around reducing the costs associated with a product’s delivery, respectively selling it to a price the customer is willing to pay for, typically to address a given set of needs. Moreover, the customer is willing to pay only for the functions that satisfy the needs a product is thought to cover. From this friction of opposing driving forces, a product is designed and valued.

The value stream is the sequence of activities (also steps or processes) needed to deliver a product to customers. This formulation includes value-added and non-value-added activities, internal and external customers, respectively covers the full lifecycle of products and/or services in whatever form it occurs, either if is or not perceived by the customers.  

Waste is any activity that consumes resources but creates no value for the customers or, generally, for the stakeholders, be it internal or external. The waste is typically associated with the non-added value activities, activities that don’t produce value for stakeholders, and can increase directly or indirectly the costs of products especially when no attention is given to it and/or not recognized as such. Therefore, eliminating the waste can have an important impact on products’ costs and become one of the goals of Lean Management. Moreover, eliminating the waste is an incremental process that, when put in the context of continuous improvement, can lead to processes redesign and re-engineering.

Taiichi Ohno, the ‘father’ of the Toyota Production System (TPS), originally identified seven forms of waste (Japanese: muda): overproduction, waiting, transporting, inappropriate processing, unnecessary inventory, unnecessary/excess motion, and defects. Within the context of SD and PM, Tom and Marry Poppendieck [1] translated the types of wastes in concepts closer to the language of software developers: partially done work, extra processes, extra features, task switching, waiting, motion and, of course, defects. To this list were added later further types of waste associated with resources, confusion and work conditions.

Defects in form of errors and bugs, ineffective communication, rework and overwork, waiting, repetitive activities like handoffs or even unnecessary meetings are usually the visible part of products and projects and important from the perspective of stakeholders, which in extremis can become sensitive when their volume increases out of proportion.

Unfortunately, lurking in the deep waters of projects and wrecking everything that stands in their way are the other forms of waste less perceivable from stakeholders’ side: unclear requirements/goals, code not released or not tested, specifications not implemented, scrapped code, overutilized/underutilized resources, bureaucracy, suboptimal processes, unnecessary optimization, searching for information, mismanagement, task switching, improper work condition, confusion, to mention just the important activities associated to waste.

Through their elusive nature, independently on whether they are or not visible to stakeholders, they all impact the costs of projects and products when the proper attention is not given to them and not handled accordingly.

References:
[1] Mary Poppendieck & Tom Poppendieck (2003) Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, Addison Wesley, ISBN: 0-321-15078-3

Project Management: Agile Manifesto Reloaded II (Requirements Management)

Independently of its scope and the methodology used, each software development project is made of the same blocks/phases arranged eventually differently. It starts with Requirements Managements (RM) subprocesses in which the functional and non-functional requirements are gathered, consolidated, prioritized and brought to a form which facilitates their understanding and estimation. It’s an iterative process as there can be overlapping in functionality, requirements that don’t bring any significant benefit when compared with the investment, respectively new aspects are discovered during the internal discussions or with the implementer.

As output of this phase, it’s important having a list of requirements that reflect customer’s needs in respect to the product(s) to be implemented. Once frozen, the list defines project’s scope and is used for estimating the costs, sketching a draft of the final solution, respectively of reaching a contractual agreement with the implementer. Ideally the set of requirements should be completed and be coherent while reflecting customer’s needs. It allows thus in theory to agree upon costs as well about an architecture and other important aspects (responsibilities/accountability).

Typically, each new requirement considered after this stage needs to go through a Change Management (CM) process in which it gets formulated to the needed level of detail, a cost, effort and impact analysis is performed, respectively the budget for it is approved or the change gets rejected. Ideally small changes can be considered as part of a buffer budget upfront, however in the end each change comes with a cost and project delays.

Some changes can come late in the project and can have an important impact on the whole architecture when important aspects were missed upfront. Moreover, when the number of changes goes beyond a certain limit it can lead to what is known as scope creep, with important consequences on project’s costs, timeline and quality. Therefore, to minimize the impact on the project, the number of changes needs to be kept to a minimum, typically considering only the critical changes, while the others can be still implemented after project’s end.

The agile manifesto’s principles impose an important constraint on the requirements - changing requirements is a good practice even late in the process – an assumption - best requirements emerge from self-organizing teams, and probably one implication – the requirements need to be defined together with the implementer.

The way changing requirements are handled seem to provide more flexibility though it’s actually a constraint imposed on the CM process which interfaces with the RM processes. Without a proper CM in place, any requirement might arrive to be implemented, independently on whether is feasible or not. This can easily make project’s costs explode, sometimes unnecessarily, while accommodating extreme behavior like changing the same functionality frequently, handling exceptions extensively, etc.

It’s usually helpful to define the requirements together with the implementer, as this can bring more quality in the process, even if more time needs to be invested. However, starting from a solid set of requirements is a critical factor for project’s success. The manifesto makes no direct statement about this. Just iterates that good requirements emerge from self-organizing teams which is not necessarily the case. 

The users who in theory can define the requirements best are the ones who have the deepest knowledge about an organization’s processes and IT architecture, typically the key users and/or IT experts. Self-organization revolves around how a team organizes itself and handles the various activities, though there’s no guarantee that it will address the important aspects, no matter how motivated the team is, how constant the pace, how excellent the technical details were handled or how good the final product works.

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Project Management: Agile Manifesto Reloaded I (Introduction)

 

There are so many books written on agile methodologies, each attempting to depict the realities of software development projects. There are many truths considered in them, though they seem to blend in a complex texture in which the writer takes usually the position of a preacher in which the sins of the traditional technologies are contrasted with the agile principles. In extremis everything done in the past seems to be wrong, while the agile methods seem to be a panacea, which is seldom the case.

There are already 20 years since the agile manifesto was published and the methodologies adhering to the respective principles don’t seem to provide the expected success, suffering from the same chronical symptoms of their predecessors - they are poorly understood and implemented, tend to function after hammer’s principle, respectively the software development projects still deliver poor results. Moreover, there are more and more professionals who raise their voice against agile practices.

Frankly, the principles behind the agile manifesto make sense. A project should by definition satisfy stakeholders’ requirements, ideally through regular deliveries that incorporate the needed functionality while gradually seeking to get early feedback from customers, respectively involve the customer through all project’s duration, working together to deliver a feasible product. Moreover, self-organizing teams, face-to-face meetings, constant pace, technical excellence should allow minimizing the waste, respectively maximizing the efficiency in the project. Further aspects like simplicity, good design and architecture should establish a basis for success.

Re-reading the agile manifesto, even if each read pulls from experience more and more pro and cons, the manifesto continues to look like a Christmas wish-list. Even if the represented ideas make sense and satisfy a specific need, they are difficult to achieve in a project’s context and setup. Each wish introduces a constraint that brings with it its own limitations. Unfortunately, each policy introduced by a methodology follows the same pattern, no matter of the methodology considered. Moreover, the wishes cover only a small subset from a project’s texture, are general and let lot of space for interpretation and implementation, though the same can be said about any principles that don’t provide a coherent worldview or a conceptual model.

The software development industry needs a coherent worldview that reflects its assumptions, models, characteristics, laws and challenges. Software Engineering (SE) attempts providing such a worldview though unfortunately is too complex for many and there seem to be a big divide when considered in respect to the worldviews introduced by the various Project Management (PM) methodologies. Studying one or two PM methodologies, learning a few programming languages and even the hand on experience on a few projects won’t fill the gaps in knowledge associated with the SE worldview.

Organizations don’t seem to see the need for professionals of having a formal education in SE. On the other side is expected from employees to have by default some of the skillset required, which is not the case. Besides understanding and implementing a technology there are a set of knowledge areas in which the IT professional must have at least a high-level knowledge if it’s expected from him/her to think critically about the respective areas. Unfortunately, the lack of such knowledge leads sometimes to situations which can impact negatively projects.

Almost each important word from the agile manifesto pulls with it a set of concepts from a SE’ worldview – customer satisfaction, software delivery, working software, requirements management, change management, cooperation, teamwork, trust, motivation, communication, metrics, stakeholders’ management, good design, good architecture, lessons learned, performance management, etc. The manifesto needs to be regarded from a SE’s eyeglasses if one expects value from it.

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Project Management: Projects' Dynamics II (Motion)

Motion is the action or process of moving or being moved between an initial and a final or intermediate point. From the tinniest endeavors to the movement of the planets and beyond, everything is governed by motion. If the laws of nature seem to reveal an inner structural perfection, the activities people perform are quite often far from perfect, which is acceptable if we consider that (almost) everything is a learning process. What is probably less acceptable is the volume of inefficient motion we can easily categorize sometimes as waste.

The waste associated with motion can take many forms: sorting through a pile of tools to find the right one, searching for information, moving back and forth to reach a destination or achieve a goal, etc. Suboptimal motion can have important effects for an organization resulting in reduced productivity, respectively higher costs.

If for repetitive activities that involve a certain degree of similarity can be found typically a way to optimize the motion, the higher the uncertainty of the steps involved, the more difficult it becomes to optimize it. It’s the case of discovery endeavors in which the path between start and destination can’t be traced beforehand, respectively when the destination or path in between can’t be depicted to the needed level of detail. A strategy’s implementation, ERP implementations and other complex projects, especially the ones dealing with new technologies and/or incomplete knowledge, tend to be exploratory in nature and thus fall under this latter type a motion.

In other words, one must know at minimum the starting point, the destination, how to reach it and what it takes to reach it – resources, knowledge, skillset. When one has all this information one can go on and estimate how long it will take to reach the destination, though the estimate reflects the information available as well estimator’s skills in translating the information into a realistic roadmap. Each new information has the potential of impacting considerably the whole process, in extremis to the degree that one must start the journey anew. The complexity of such projects and the volume of uncertainty can make estimation difficult if not impossible, no matter how good estimators' skills are. At best an estimator can come with a best- and worst-case estimation, both however dependent on the assumptions made.

Moreover, complex projects are sensitive to the initial conditions or auspices under which they start. This sensitivity can turn a project in a totally different direction or pace, that can be reinforced positively or negatively as the project progresses. It’s a continuous interplay between internal and external factors and components that can create synergies or have adverse effects with the potential of reaching tipping points.

Related to the initial conditions, as the praxis sometimes shows, for entities found in continuous movement (like organizations) it’s also important to know from where one’s coming (and at what speed), as the previous impulse (driving force) can be further used or stirred as needed. Metaphorically, a project will need a certain time to find the right pace if it lacks the proper impulse.

Unless the team is trained to play and plays like an orchestra, the impact of deviations from expectations can be hardly quantified. To minimize the waste, ideally a project’s journey should minimally deviate from the optimal path, which can be challenging to achieve as a project’s mass can pull the project in one direction or the other. The more the project advances the bigger the mass, fact which can make a project unstoppable. When such high-mass projects are stopped, their impulse can continue to haunt the organization years after.

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Project Management: Projects' Dynamics I (Introduction)

Despite the considerable collection of books on Project Management (PM) and related methodologies, and the fact that projects are inherent endeavors in professional as well personal life (setups that would give in theory people the environment and exposure to different project types), people’s understanding on what it takes to plan and execute a project seems to be narrow and questionable sometimes. Moreover, their understanding diverges considerably from common sense. It’s also true that knowledge and common sense are relative when considering any human endeavor in which there are multiple roads to the same destination, or when learning requires time, effort, skills, and implies certain prerequisites, however the lack of such knowledge can hurt when endeavor’s success is a must and a team effort. 

Even if the lack of understanding about PM can be considered as minor when compared with other challenges/problems faced by a project, when one’s running fast to finish a race, even a small pebble in one’s running shoes can hurt a lot, especially when one doesn’t have the luxury to stop and remove the stone, as it would make sense to do.

It resides in the human nature to resist change, to seek for information that only confirm own opinions, to follow the same approach in handling challenges, even if the attempts are far from optimal, even if people who walked the same path tell you that there’s a better way and even sketch the path and provide information about what it takes to reach there. As it seems, there’s the predisposition to learn on the hard way, if there’s significant learning involved at all. Unfortunately, such situations occur in projects and the solutions often overrun the boundaries of PM, where social and communication skills must be brought into play. 

On the other side, there’s still hope that change can be managed optimally once the facts are explained to a certain level that facilitates understanding. However, such an attempt can prove to be quite a challenge, given the various setups in which PM takes place. The intersection between technologies and organizational setups lead to complex scenarios which make such work more difficult, even if projects’ challenges are of organizational rather than technological nature. 

When the knowledge we have about the world doesn’t fit our expectation, a simple heuristic is to return to the basics. A solid edifice can be built only on a solid foundation and the best foundation in coping with reality is to establish common ground with other people. One can achieve this by identifying their suppositions and expectations, by closing the gap in perception and understanding, by establishing a basis for communication, in which feedback is a must if one wants to make significant progress.

Despite of being explorative and time-consuming, establishing common ground can be challenging when addressing to an imaginary audience, which is quite often the situation. The practice shows however that progress can be made by starting with a set of well-formulated definitions, simple models, principles, and heuristics that have the potential of helping in sense-making.

The goal is thus to identify first the definitions that reflect the basic concepts that need to be considered. Once the concepts defined, they can be related to each other with the help of a few models. Even if fictitious, as simplifications of the reality, the models should allow playing with the concepts, facilitating concepts’ understanding. Principles (set of rules for reasoning) can be used together with heuristics (rules of thumb methods or techniques) for explaining the ‘known’ and approaching the ‘unknown’. Even maybe not perfect, these tools can help building theories or explanatory constructs.

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Project Management: Redefining Projects' Success I

A project is typically considered as successful if has met the beforehand defined objectives within the allocated budget, timeframe and expected quality levels. Any negative deviation from any of these equates with a project failure. In other words, the success or failure of a project is judged as black or white with no grays in between, which is utopic, especially for mid to big software projects, typically associated with lot of uncertainty. According to this definition a project which had a delay of a few months, or the budget was overrun by 10%, or the users got only 90% from the planned functionality, or any combination of these negative deviations, can be considered as failed.

If a small project needed 6 instead of 3 months to complete, which is normal for projects with reduced priority, as long the project costs haven’t changed, then the increase in duration can be ignored. In exchange, 3 months of a delay for a 2 years project is normal, especially when the project is complex. Even if additional costs incurred within this timeframe, as long they are a small percentage in comparison with the overall project costs, then the impact can be acceptable for the business. On the other side, when the delays have an exponential growth with further implications, then the problem changes dramatically.

Big projects have typically a strategic importance. It’s the case of ERP implementations, which besides the technology changes have in theory have the potential to transform an organization pushing it to reach further performance levels. Such projects are estimated to take on average one to two years for a medium organization, however the delays can easily reach 50% to 100% from the initial estimation. Independently of what caused the delay, as long the organization achieved the intended goals and can cover project’s costs, one can say that the project made a (positive) difference.

Independently of project’s size, if 90% of the important functionality is available, then more likely the 10% can be covered in a first step with manual work, following in time to further invest into the system as part of a continuous improvement process. It’s maybe not ideal for the users, however the approach incorporates also the learning curve of working with the system and understanding ist possibilities and limitations. Of course, when the percentage of the available functionality decreases below a given limit, system’s acceptance is endangered, which users eventually start looking for alternatives.

There are also projects which opened the door to new possibilities and which require more investments to leverage the full capabilities. Some ERP implementations have this potential, despite overruns. Some of such investments are entitled while others are not. Related to this last category, there are projects which are on time, on budget, and the deliverables satisfy the quality criteria and objectives, however they make no difference for the organization despite the important investments made. Sure, some of the projects from this category are a must (e.g. updates, upgrade, technology changes), however there are also projects which can be considered as self-occupational hazard. In extremis such projects run in the background and cost organizations lot of energy and resources, while their effects are questionable.

At least from these examples the definition of a project's success needs to be changed or maybe standardized to consider not only intrinsic but also extrinsic aspects. In theory, that is the role of a Project Management Office (PMO), however it’s challenging to find an evaluation methodology that fits all needs. Further on, from same considerations, benchmarking projects across organizations and industries can prove to be a foolhardy attempt.

Project Management: Planning Correctly Misundersood IV

The relatively big number of Project Management (PM) methodologies considered nowadays makes it more and more difficult to understand the world of PM and make oneself understood, in the context in which terminology is used in explanations that defy the logic, in which people are stubborn in persisting that their understanding is the ultimate truth and, that between white and black there are no degrees of gray. Between all PM concepts project planning seems to be the most misunderstood, and this probably because all the activities revolve around it, while each methodology brings its own planning philosophy. Each methodology comes with its own story, its own imaginative description of what a perfect plan is about.

Independently of the methodology used there are three levels of planning. At highest level, the strategic one, the project is put in the context of other strategic activities – other projects and initiatives, as well business operations, competing altogether for the same financial and human resources.  At this level are the goals identified and put the basis for the successful execution of the project, including establishing the ground and integrating the main aspects of a project – risk, quality and communication. Here is decided which projects will be considered, in which sequence, how and when resources will be assigned. 

A project plan is typically written and further executed by having the tactical horizon in mind – the individual engagement of resources and actions, the actual means to reach the objectives set at strategic level. It’s the level where the actual project plan is detailed, where activities are sequenced and prioritized. Here each methodology has its own approach – whether the planning is done per deliverable, work package or any other approach used to partition the activities. It’s the level at which the various teams are coordinated toward specific targets. Thus the manageable unit is the team and not the individual, the deliverables or the work packages and not the individual tasks.

The operational level equates with the execution of a project’s activities. Even if the project manager oversights the activities, it’s in team’s duties to plan the activities having the set deliveries in mind. The project manager doesn’t need to know all the details, though he should be updated on a timely manner on the progress, the eventual risks and opportunities that arise in each area. This requires continuous coordination on vertical as well horizontal level.

The project manager typically oscillates between the strategic and tactical views of a project, while the operational level appears in the view only when operational themes are escalated or further coordination is needed. Even if this delimitation is clear in big projects, in the small projects the three levels melt into each other. Therefore the sprung from small to big projects and vice-versa can create issues when the approach is not tailored to project’s size and its further characteristics.

Attempting to plan each activity in the project at the lowest level of detail obscures the view, the complexity of the project kicking back sooner or later. Maintaining such a detailed plan can become a waste of time on the long term. In extremis a resource is used to update a plan, which easily can become obsolete by the time all activities were reviewed. This doesn’t mean that the project plan doesn’t need to be updated regularly, though the pace can be decided on each project’s specifics.

Therefore, one of the most important challenges in projects is finding the appropriate level of detail for planning, and there’s no general rule that works for all projects. Typically the choices alternate between work packages and deliverables. 

Project Management: Some Thoughts on Planning II

A project’s dependency on resources’ (average) utilization time (UT) and quality expectations expressed as a quality factor (QF) doesn’t come as a surprise, as hopefully one is acquainted with project’s triangle which reflects the dependency between scope, cost and time in respect to quality. Even if this dependency is intuitive, it’s difficult to express it in numbers and study the way it affects the project. That was the purpose of the model built previously.

From the respective model there are a few things to ponder. First, it’s a utopia to plan with 90% UT, unless one is really sure that the resources have enough work to bring the idle time close to zero. A single person can achieve maybe a 90% UT if he works alone on the project, though even then there are phases in which the input or feedback from other people is necessary. The more people involved into the project and the higher the dependency between their activities, the higher the chances that the (average) UT will decrease considerably.

When in addition there’s also a geographical or organizational boundary between team members, the UT will decrease even more. In consequence, in big projects like ERP implementations the team members from customer and vendor side are allocated fully to the project; when this is not possible, then on the vendor side the consultants need to be involved in at least two projects to cover the idle time. Of course, with good planning, communication, and awareness of the work ahead one can try minimizing the idle time, though that’s less likely to happen.

Probably, a better idea would be planning with 75% or even 60% UT though the values depend on team's experience in handling similar projects. If the team members are involved also in operational activities or other projects, then a 50% UT is more realistic.

Secondly, in the previous post was considered in respect to quality the 80%-20% rule which applies to the various deliverables, though the rule has a punctual character. Taken on the average the rule is somehow attenuated. Therefore, in the model was considered a sprung between factors of 1 to 2 with a step of 0,25 for each 5% quality increase. It's needed to prove whether the values are realistic and how much they depend on project's characteristics.

On the other side, quality is difficult to quantify, and 100% quality is hypothetical. One discusses in theory about 3 sigma (the equivalent of 93,3 accuracy) or 4 sigma (99,4 accuracy) in respect to the number of errors found in the code, though from there on everything is fuzzy. In software projects each decision has the potential of leading to an error, and there’s lot of interpretability as long there’s no fix basis against to compare the deviations. One needs precise and correct specification for that.

I think that one should target in a first phase 80% quality (on average) and further build from there, try to improve the quality iteratively as the project goes on and as lessons are learned. In other words, a project plan, a concept, a design document doesn’t need to be perfect from the beginning but should be good enough to allow working with it. One can detail them as progress is made into the project, and hopefully their quality should converge to a value that is acceptable for the business.

Thirdly, in case a planning tool was used, one can use the model backwards to roughly prove timeline’s feasibility, dividing the planned effort by the estimated effort and the number of resources involved to identify the implied utilization time.  

Project Management: Some Thoughts on Planning I

One of the issues in Project Management (PM) planning is that the planner idealizes a resource and activities performed by it much like a machine. Unlike machines whose uptime can approach 100%, a human resource can work at most 90% of the available time (aka utilization time), the remaining 10% being typically associated with interruptions – internal emails and meetings, casual communications, pauses, etc. For resources split between projects or operations the utilization time can be at most 70%, however a realistic value is in general between 40% and 60% on average. What does it mean this for a project?

So, if a resource has a volume of work W, the amount of time needed to complete the work would be at best W/UT, where UT is the utilization time of the respective resource. “At best” because in each project there are additional idle time resulted from waste related activities – waiting for sign off, for information, for other resource to complete the time, etc.

The utilization time is not the only factor to consider. Upon case, the delivered work can reach maybe on average 80% of the expected quality. This applies to documentation and concepts as well for written code, bug testing and other project activities. To reach in the range of 100% one more likely will need 4 times of the effort associated with reaching 80% of the expected quality, however this value is dependent also on people’s professionalism and the degree with which the requirements were understood and possibly achievable. Therefore, the values vehiculated can be regarded as “boundary” values.

Let’s consider a quality factor (QF) which has a value of 1 for 80%, with an increase of 0,25 for each 5% of quality increase. Thus, with an initial effort estimation of 100 days, this is how the resulted effort modifies for various UT and QF values:

Considering that a project can target between 60% and 95% UT, and between 80% and 95% quality, for an initial estimation of 100 days the actual project duration can range between 117 and 292 days, where the lowest, respectively the right bound values are more realistic.

The model is simplistic as it doesn’t reflect the nonlinear aspect of the factors involved and the dependencies existing between them. It also doesn’t reflect the maturity of an organization to handle the projects and the tasks involved. However, it can be used to increase the awareness in how the utilization time and expected quality can affect a project’s timeline, and to check on whether one’s planning is realistic.

For example, at project’s start one can target an UT of 70% and a quality of 85%, which for 100 days of estimated effort will result in about 178 days of actual effort. Now diving the value by the number of resources involved, e.g. 4, it results that the project could be finished in about 44,5 days. This value can be compared then with the actual plan in which the activities are listed.

During the project it would be useful to look on how the UT changed and by how much, to understand the impact the change has on the project. For example, a decrease of 5% in utilization time can delay the project with 2,5 days which is not much, though for a project of 1000 days with talk already about one month. Same, it will be helpful to check how much the quality deviated from the expectation, because a decrease in quality by 5% can result in an additional effort of extra 8 days, which for 1000 days would mean almost 4 months of delay.

Project Management: Methodologies (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)

The Good: Nowadays there're several Project Management (PM) methodologies to choose from to address a project’s specifics and, when adapted and applied accordingly, a methodology can enable projects to be run and brought under control.

The Bad: Even if the theoretical basis of PM methodologies has been proved and perfected over the years, projects continue to fail at a disturbing rate. Of course, the reasons behind their failure are multiple, though often the failure reasons are rooted in how PM methodologies are taught, understood and implemented.

Same as a theoretical course in cooking won’t make one a good cook, a theoretical course in PM won’t make one a good Project Manager or knowledgeable team member in applying the learned methodology. Surprisingly, the expectation is exactly that – the team member got a training and is good to go. Moreover, people believe that managing a software project is like coordinating the building of a small treehouse. To some degree there are many similarities though the challenges typically lie in details, and these details often escape a standard course.

To bridge the gap between theory and practice is needed time for the learner to grow in the role, to learn the does and don’ts, and, most important, to learn how to use the tools at hand efficiently. The methodology is itself a tool making use of further tools in its processes – project plans, work breakdown structures, checklists, charters, reports, records, etc. These can be learned only through practice, hopefully with some help (aka mentoring) from an experienced person in the respective methodology, either the Project Manager itself, a trainer or other team member. Same as one can’t be thrown into the water and expected to traverse the Channel Tunnel, you can’t do that with a newbie.

There’s a natural fallacy to think that we've understood more than we have. We can observe our understanding's limits when we are confronted with the complexities involved in handing PM activities. A second fallacy is not believing other people’s warnings against using a tool or performing an activity in a certain way. A newbie’s mind has sometimes the predisposition of a child to try touching a hot stove even if warned against it. It’s part of the learning process, though some persist in such behavior without learning much. What’s even more dangerous is a newbie pretending to be an expert and this almost always ends badly.

The Ugly appears when the bad is brought to extreme, when methodologies are misused for the wrong purposes to the degree that they destroy anything in their way. Of course, a pool can be dug by using a spoon but does it make sense to do that? Just because a tool can be used for something it doesn’t mean it should be used for it as long there are better tools for the same. It seems a pretty logical thing though the contrary happens more often than we’d like. It starts with the preconception that one should use the tool one knows best, ignoring in the process the fit for purpose condition. What’s even more deplorable is breaking down a project to fit a methodology while ignoring the technical and logistical aspects.

Any tool can lead to damages when used excessively, in wrong places, at the wrong point in time or by the wrong person. Like the instruments in an orchestra, when an instrument plays the wrong note, it dissonates from the rest. When more instruments play wrongly, then the piece is unrecognizable. It’s the role of the bandmaster to make the players touch the right notes at the right time.

Project Management: Agility under Eyeglasses II

Continuation

Employees are used to follow procedures and processes, and when they aren’t available insecurity rules - each day there’s another idea advanced how things are supposed to work. Practically, the Agile approaches (incl. Agile Prince2) focus on certain aspects and ignore specific Project Management activities that need to be performed inside of a project – releasing resources for the project, getting users on-board, getting management’s buy-in, etc. Therefore, they need to be used with a methodology that offers the lacking processes. Problematic is when is considered that the Agile approaches are self-consistent and the Project Management practices and principles don’t apply anymore.

It’s true that the Agile methods attempt reconciling disciplined project execution with creativity and innovation, however innovation is needed typically in design (incl. prototyping) , while in programing there isn’t lot of room for creativity per se. The real innovation appears when the customer lists the functionality it needs from a system and the vendor, after analyzing all the related requirements, is capable to evaluate and propose a solution from the industry trending technologies. That’s innovation and not changing controls in user interfaces!

User stories are good for situations in which an organization doesn’t know what’s doing or the tasks have a deep segmentation and specialization. Starting from user stories and building upwards to processes can prove to be a waste of time the customer pays for, while the approach leaves few room for innovation. In big projects it’s also difficult to sense the contradictions from user stories or their duplication. Even if the user stories allow maybe (but not necessarily) a better effort estimate the level of detail can become overwhelming for any skilled solution architect.

It’s also true that an agile approach needs a culture with certain characteristics. A culture can’t be changed with one project or several projects running in parallel. Typically, is recommended to start with a pilot test, assert organization’s readiness, disseminate knowledge, start several small to medium projects and build from there. For sure starting a big project with an agile methodology  will involve more challenges to the extent the challenges will push back.

One sign of agility is when self-organizing teams emerge within projects, however it takes time and training to build such teams. The seeds must be planted long before, for such teams to emerge. The key is being able of working in such teams. In extremis, conflicts appear when multiple self-organizing teams appear, each with its own political agenda, agendas that don’t necessarily match project manager or stakeholders’ agendas, and from here a large range of potential conflicts.

The psychological effect of tight sprints (iterations) and daily status meetings for the whole duration of a project is not to neglect. It builds unnecessary stress and, unless the planning reaches perfection, the programmer or consultant will often find himself in the position to be in defensive. The frequent meetings can easily become a source for nuisance and in extremis can lead to extreme behavior that can easily affect the productivity and involved persons’ health.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend using an Agile methodology for a big project like an ERP implementation unless it was adequately adapted to organization’s needs. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the Agile methods aren’t suitable for big projects, it means that the risks are high because in big projects there’s the chance for all these mentioned issues to occur.

Despite the weak points of the Agile methods, when adequately applied, they have the chance of better performing than the “traditional” approaches. Even if people tend to see more the negative sides there’s lot of potential in being agile.

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Project Management: Agility under Eyeglasses I

There are more and more posts in the cyberspace voicing against the agile practices, the way they are understood and implemented by organizations. Some try to be hilarious [5]; others try to keep the scholastic seriousness [1] [2] [3] [4], and all of them make some valid points. In each remark there’re some seeds of truth, even if context-dependent.

Personally, I embrace an agile approach when possible, however I find it difficult to choose between the agile methodologies available on the market because each of them introduces some concepts that contradict what it means to be agile – to respond promptly to business needs. It doesn’t mean that one must consider each requirement, but that’s appropriate to consider those which have business justification. Moreover, organizations need to adapt the methodologies to their needs, and seldom vice-versa.

Considering the Agile Manifesto, it’s difficult to take as serious statements that lack precision, formulations like “we value something over something else” are more of a wish than principles. When people don’t understand what the agile “principles” mean, one occasionally hears statements like “we need no documentation”, “we need no project plan”, “the project plan is not important”, “Change Management doesn’t apply to agile projects” or “we need only high-level requirements because we’ll figure out where we’re going on the way”. Because of the lack of precision, a mocker can variate the lesser concept to null and keep the validity of the agile “principles”.

The agile approaches seem to lack control. If you’re letting the users in charge of the scope then you risk having a product that offers a lot though misses the essential, and thus unusable or usable to a lower degree. Agile works good for prototyping something to show to the users or when the products are small enough to easily fit within an iteration, or when the vendor wants to gain a customer’s trust. Therefore, agile works good with BI projects that combine in general all three aspects.

An abomination is the work in fix sprints or iterations of one or a few weeks, and then chopping the functionality to fit the respective time intervals. If you have the luck of having sign-offs and other activities that steal your time, then the productive time reduces up to 50% (the smaller the iterations the higher the percentage). What’s even unconceivable is that people ignore the time spent with bureaucracy. If this way of working repeats in each iteration then the project duration multiplies by a factor between 2 or 4, the time spent on Project Management increasing by the same factor. What’s not understandable is that despite bureaucracy the adherence to delivery dates, budget and quality is still required.

Sometimes one has the feeling that people think that software development and other IT projects work like building a house or like the manufacturing of a mug. You choose the colors, the materials, the dimensions and voila the product is ready. IT projects involve lot of unforeseen and one must react agilely to it. Here resides one of the most important challenges.   

Communication is one important challenge in a project especially when multiple interests are involved. Face-to-face conversation is one of the nice-to-have items on the wish list however in praxis isn’t always possible. One can’t expect that all the resources are available to meet and decide. In addition, one needs to document everything from meeting minutes, to Business Cases and requirements. A certain flexibility in changing the requirements is needed though one can’t change them arbitrarily, there must be a concept behind otherwise the volume of overwork can easily make the budget for a project explode exponentially.

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Resources:
[1] Harvard Business Review (2018) Why Agile Goes Awry - and How to Fix It, by Lindsay McGregor & Neel Doshi (Online) Available from: https://hbr.org/2018/10/why-agile-goes-awry-and-how-to-fix-it
[2] Forbes (2012) The Case Against Agile: Ten Perennial Management Objections, by Steve Denning  (Online) Available from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/17/the-case-against-agile-ten-perennial-management-objections/#6df0e6ea3a95 
[3] Springer (2018) Do Agile Methods Work for Large Software Projects?, by Magne Jørgensen  (Online) Available from:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-91602-6_12
[4] Michael O Church (2015) Why “Agile” and especially Scrum are terrible  (Online) Available from:
https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-and-especially-scrum-are-terrible/
[5] Dev.to (2019) Mockery of agile, by Artur Martsinkovskyi (Online) Available from: https://dev.to/arturmartsinkovskyi/mockery-of-agile-5bdf

Project Management: Planning Correctly Misundersood I

It is sometimes helpful to take a step back, observe, and then logically generalize the extremes of the observed facts; if possible, without judging people’s behavior as there’s more to it as the eyes can perceive. In some cases however one can feel that the observed situations are really close to extreme. It’s the case of some tendencies met in project planning - not planning, planning for the sake of planning, expecting a plan to be perfect, setting a plan as fix, without the possibility of changing it in utile time, respectively changing the plan too often.

There are situations in which it’s better to be spontaneous and go with the flow. Managing a project isn’t one of these situations. As Lakein’s Law formulates it succinctly: “failing to plan is planning to fail”, or paraphrasing Eisenhower (1) and Clausewitz (2) - plans are useless as no plan ever survived contact with the enemy (reality), but planning is indispensable - as a plan increases awareness about project’s scope, actions, challenges, risks and opportunities, and allows devising the tactics and logistics needed to reach the set goals. Even if the plan doesn’t reflect anymore the reality, it can still be adapted to fit the new requirements. The more planning experience one has the more natural it becomes to close the gap between the initial plan and reality, and of adapting the plan as needed.

There’s an important difference between doing something because one is forced to do it and doing it because one sees and understands the value of planning. There's the tendency to plan for the sake of planning, because there's the compel to do it. Besides the fact that it documents the what, when, why and who, and that is used as a basis for action, the plan must reflect project’s current status and the activities planed for the next reporting cycle. As soon a plan is not able to reflect these aspects it becomes thus in time unusable.

The enemy of a good plan can prove to be the dream of a perfect plan (3). Some may think that the holy grail of planning is the perfect plan, that the project can’t start until all the activities were listed to the lowest detail and the effort thoroughly assigned. Few plans actually survive the contact with the reality and there can be lot of energy lost by working on the perfect plan.

Another similar behavior,  rooted mainly in the methodologies used, is that of not allowing a plan to be changed for a part or whole duration of the project. Publilius Syrus recognized more than two millennia ago that a plan that admits no modification is a bad plan (4) per se. Methodologies and practices that don’t allow a flexible way of changing the plan make no service to projects. Often changes need to occur immediately and not at an ideal point in time, when maybe the effect is lost.

Modern Project Management tools allow building the dependencies between the various activities and it’s inevitable that a change in one place will cause a chain reaction and lead to a contraction or dilatation of the plan, and this can happen with each planning iteration. In extremis the end date will alternate as the lines of a seismograph during an earthquake. It’s natural for this to happen in projects in a first phase, however it’s in Project Manager’s attribution to mitigate such variations.

The project plan is a reflection of the project and how it’s managed, therefore, one needs to give it the proper focus, how often and how detailed required.

Referenced quotes:
(1) “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” (Eisenhower quoted by Nixon)
(2) “No plan ever survived contact with the enemy. ” (Carl von Clausewitz)
(3) “The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” (Carl von Clausewitz)
(4) "It's a bad plan that admits of no modification." (Publilius Syrus)

Project Management: The Butterflies of Project Management

Expressed metaphorically as "the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas”, in Chaos Theory the “butterfly effect” is a hypothesis rooted in Edward N Lorenz’s work on weather forecasting and used to depict the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in nonlinear processes, systems in which the change in input is not proportional to the change in output.  

Even if overstated, the flapping of wings advances the idea that a small change (the flap of wings) in the initial conditions of a system cascades to a large-scale chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena (the tornado) . The chain of events is known as the domino effect and represents the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a chain of similar events. If the butterfly metaphor doesn’t catch up maybe it’s easier to visualize the impact as a big surfing wave – it starts small and increases in size to the degree that it can bring a boat to the shore or make an armada drown under its force. 

Projects start as narrow activities however the longer they take and the broader they become tend to accumulate force and behave like a wave, having the force to push or drawn an organization in the flood that comes with it. A project is not only a system but a complex ecosystem - aggregations of living organisms and nonliving components with complex interactions forming a unified whole with emergent behavior deriving from the structure rather than its components - groups of people tend to  self-organize, to swarm in one direction or another, much like birds do, while knowledge seems to converge from unrelated sources (aka consilience). 

 Quite often ignored, the context in which a project starts is very important, especially because these initial factors or conditions can have a considerable impact reflected in people’s perception regarding the state or outcomes of the project, perception reflected eventually also in the decisions made during the later phases of the project. The positive or negative auspices can be easily reinforced by similar events. Given the complex correlations and implications, aspects not always correct perceived and understood can have a domino effect. 

The preparations for the project start – the Business Case, setting up the project structure, communicating project’s expectation and addressing stakeholders’ expectations, the kick-off meeting, the approval of the needed resources, the knowledge available in the team, all these have a certain influence on the project. A bad start can haunt a project long time after its start, even if the project is on the right track and makes a positive impact. In reverse, a good start can shade away some mishaps on the way, however there’s also the danger that the mishaps are ignored and have greater negative impact on the project. It may look as common sense however the first image often counts and is kept in people’s memory for a long time. 

As people are higher perceptive to negative as to positive events, there are higher the chances that a multitude of negative aspects will have bigger impact on the project. It’s again something that one can address as the project progresses. It’s not necessarily about control but about being receptive to the messages around and of allowing people to give (constructive) feedback early in the project. It’s about using the positive force of a wave and turning negative flow into a positive one. 

Being aware of the importance of the initial context is just a first step toward harnessing waves or winds’ power, it takes action and leadership to pull the project in the right direction.

Project Management: The Choice of Tools in Project Management

“Beware the man of one book” (in Latin, “homo unius libri”), a warning generally attributed to Thomas Aquinas and having a twofold meaning. In its original interpretation it was referring to the people mastering a single chosen discipline, however the meaning degenerated in expressing the limitations of people who master just one book, and thus having a limited toolset of perspectives, mental models or heuristics. This later meaning is better reflected in Abraham Maslow adage: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”, as people tend to use the tools they are used to also in situations in which other tools are more appropriate.

It’s sometimes admirable people and even organizations’ stubbornness in using the same tools in totally different scenarios, expecting though the same results, as well in similar scenarios expecting different results. It’s true, Mathematics has proven that the same techniques can be used successfully in different areas, however a mathematician’s universe and models are idealistically fractionalized to a certain degree from reality, full of simplified patterns and never-ending approximations. In contrast, the universe of Software Development and Project Management has a texture of complex patterns with multiple levels of dependencies and constraints, constraints highly sensitive to the initial conditions.

Project Management has managed to successfully derive tools like methodologies, processes, procedures, best practices and guidelines to address the realities of projects, however their use in praxis seems to be quite challenging. Probably, the challenge resides in stubbornness of not adapting the tools to the difficulties and tasks met. Even if the same phases and multiple similarities seems to exist, the process of building a house or other tangible artefact is quite different than the approaches used in development and implementation of software.

Software projects have high variability and are often explorative in nature. The end-product looks totally different than the initial scaffold. The technologies used come with opportunities and limitations that are difficult to predict in the planning phase. What on paper seems to work often doesn’t work in praxis as the devil lies typically in details. The challenges and limitations vary between industries, businesses and even projects within the same organization.

Even if for each project type there’s a methodology more suitable than another, in the end project particularities might pull the choice in one direction or another. Business Intelligence projects for example can benefit from agile approaches as they enable to better manage and deliver value by adapting the requirements to business needs as the project progresses. An agile approach works almost always better than a waterfall process. In contrast, ERP implementations seldom benefit from agile methodologies given the complexity of the project which makes from planning a real challenge, however this depends also on an organization’s dynamicity.

Especially when an organization has good experience with a methodology there’s the tendency to use the same methodology across all the projects run within the organization. This results in chopping down a project to fit an ideal form, which might be fine as long the particularities of each project are adequately addressed. Even if one methodology is not appropriate for a given scenario it doesn’t mean it can’t be used for it, however in the final equation enter also the cost, time, effort, and the quality of the end-results.

In general, one can cope with complexity by leveraging a broader set of mental models, heuristics and set of tools, and this can be done only though experimentation, through training and exposing employees to new types of experiences, through openness, through adapting the tools to the challenges ahead.

Project Management: Planning Correctly Misundersood II

Even if planning is the most critical activity in Project Management it seems to be also one of the most misunderstood concepts. Planning is critical because it charters the road ahead in terms of what, when, why and who, being used as a basis for action, communication, for determining the current status in respect to the initial plan, as well the critical activities ahead.

The misunderstandings derive maybe also from the fact that each methodology introduces its own approach to planning. PMI as traditional approach talks about baseline planning with respect to scope schedule and costs, about management plans, which besides the theme covered in the baseline, focus also on quality, human resources, risks, communication and procurement, and separate plans can be developed for requirements, change and configuration management, respectively process improvement. To them one can consider also action and contingency planning.

In Prince2 the product-based planning is done at three levels – at project, stage, respectively team level – while separate plans are done for exceptions in case of deviations from any of these plans; in addition there are plans for communication, quality and risk management. Scrum uses an agile approach looking at the product and sprint backlog, the progress being reviewed in stand-up meetings with the help of a burn-down chart. There are also other favors of planning like rapid application planning considered in Extreme Programming (XP), with an open, elastic and undeterministic approach. In Lean planning the focus is on maximizing the value while minimizing the waste, this being done by focusing on the value stream, the complete list of activities involved in delivering the end-product, value stream's flow being mapped with the help of visualization techniques such as Kanban, flowcharts or spaghetti diagrams.

With so many types of planning nothing can go wrong, isn’t it? However, just imagine customers' confusion when dealing with a change of methodology, especially when the concepts sound fuzzy and cryptic! Unfortunately, also the programmers and consultants seem to be bewildered by the various approaches and the philosophies supporting the methodologies used, their insecurity bringing no service for the project and customers’ peace of mind. A military strategist will more likely look puzzled at the whole unnecessary plethora of techniques. On the field an army has to act with the utmost concentration and speed, to which add principles like directedness, maneuver, unity, economy of effort, collaboration, flexibility, simplicity and sustainability. It’s what Project Management fails to deliver.

Similarly to projects, the plan made before the battle seldom matches the reality in the field. Planning is an exercise needed to divide the strategy in steps, echelon and prioritize them, evaluate the needed resources and coordinate them, understand the possible outcomes and risks, evaluate solutions and devise actions for them. With a good training, planning and coordination, each combatant knows his role in the battle, has a rough idea about difficulties, targets and possible ways to achieve them; while a good combatant knows always the next action. At the same time, the leader must have visibility over fight’s unfold, know the situation in the field and how much it diverged from the initial plan, thus when the variation is considerable he must change the plan by changing the priorities and make better use the resources available.

Even if there are multiple differences between the two battlefields, the projects follow the same patterns of engagement at different scales. Probably, Project Managers can learn quite of a deal by studying the classical combat strategists, and hopefully the management of projects would be more effective and efficient if the imperatives of planning, respectively management, were better understood and addressed.