Project Success

Continue reading Scrum – The Agile Practice Guide →

We’re looking at the Agile and Lean frameworks from the Agile Practice Guide, from the Project Management Institute and Agile Alliance.

What you’ll find is that there are many different Agile and Lean frameworks and ways of describing what are essentially very similar Agile practices. We’ve already looked at the core Agile practices and traditionally you could call yourself an Agile practitioner if you were doing those Agile practices, no matter what framework you were using in an organization. That’s why it’s important to understand what’s underneath these frameworks, and also the names of the frameworks that you might come across in your day-to-day work as an Agile practitioner.

There are a handful of core methods that you’ll definitely see in almost every Agile way of work, and then many auxiliary methods and even “scalable” methods because Agile has made its way out of software development, out of production in general and into the broader organization, into the Project Management Office and across the Enterprise as well. So we’re going to start with the core methods and the first one we’re going to look at is Scrum.

The Core Agile Framework of Scrum

Scrum is a single team framework for managing product development. In a project, we’re creating a product for a customer – something that delivers value for our customer. Now, we’ve already looked at this in the core Agile practice of the whole team approach, where it really matches up to what a scrum team consists of.

First we’ve got the Product Owner. The Product Owner represents the customer – they are responsible for maximizing the value of the product. The Product Owner represents the customer or represents the business and they help “groom the backlog of work” through the user stories, usually on a Kanban board (which we will see as well). In other words they put that work, in the form of user stories, into prioritization.

Leadership Quote – Set a Goal to be Happy

November 4, 2019QuotesDavid McLachlan

“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie

This is a great quote from Andrew Carnegie – who was once the richest man in the world. He came from humble beginnings and built a steel empire in the early 1900s, so you might say he knows a thing or two about setting the right goals.

Leadership Quotes set a goal to be happy

Why The Right Goal Matters

Everybody tells you about goal-setting. We all know we need to write down where we want to be, or else the winds of circumstance will take us down a remote and different path.

But taking it to the next level, we need to set a goal that really gives us energy. When you write down what you want to do – start a business doing this or that, write a book, speak on stage, become a leader – do you feel happy? Do you smile slightly? Or does your stomach sink a little bit. If it sinks, it’s probably not something you are going to be able to work towards for 15 hours a day to set yourself apart from the pack.

Take the time to write down different things and notice your body’s reaction. You might call it your natural intuition, or trusting your gut. Simply by noticing it, you can choose a goal that inspires your hopes, just the same way that Andrew Carnegie was talking about.

– David McLachlan

Get the Leadership Card Deck or the Lean CX Score Book:

- or - Have the Leadership Cards delivered for your next meeting

Get "The Lean CX Score" now, and start creating disruptors in your industry that completely annihilate your competition.

Oh and good news! You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time. Get the Lean CX Score now.

Demonstrations and Reviews – The Agile Practice Guide

November 3, 2019Agileagile, agile practice guide, David McLachlan, demonstrations, project management institute, reviewsDavid McLachlan

The Agile Core Practices

There are certain core Agile practices you might be doing as a team – and not necessarily calling yourself Agile or using the framework names, but still working in an Agile way. Knowing these core practices is a great way to get a deeper understanding of Agile as an approach.

One of the best places to update your skills in Agile is from the Agile Practice Guide, by the Project Management Institute and Agile Alliance. This one in particular is demonstrations and reviews.

Check out the video and article below!

Demonstrations and Reviews

As part of gathering early feedback, the team will complete features in the form of user stories. The team periodically demonstrates that work – the working product or the pieces that they’ve created – they demonstrate that to the customer or to the business or the product owner (remembering that the Product Owner in in the Agile Whole Team Approach represents the customer and the business).

So you could be demonstrating it to the Product Owner and they could relay that information, but usually it is best to go straight to the source and demonstrate your working increment to the customer or to the business who is ultimately getting the value that you’re creating.

Often this occurs at the end of an iteration of around two weeks to four weeks or when enough of those features have been completed into a set that’s coherent. For example maybe it takes a few of these features to be to be created to have something that a customer can see, feel and touch, and that you can actually demonstrate to a customer.

We demonstrate this increment or usable set of features so that we can start getting feedback on that increment. Team members can also get feedback that prevents them from heading in the wrong direction by using this approach, and that’s why it’s so valuable.

And that is Agile demonstrations and reviews.

– David McLachlan

Get the Leadership Card Deck or the Five Minute Lean Book:

- or - Have the Leadership Cards delivered for your next meeting

Want to learn about Lean? Get the book "Five Minute Lean", by David McLachlan - a wonderful book that blends teaching of the tools, culture and philosophy of traditional Lean with a modern-day Lean parable. You can get the whole book on Amazon here and enjoy your own copy.

Leadership Quote – Before You Become a Leader

November 2, 2019QuotesDavid McLachlan

“Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.”

This quote from Jack Welch describes the shift in mindset you need to take, as you move into the role of a leader – and that is to focus on growing your team, the people around you.

Leadership Quote before you become a leader

A Higher Level of Leader

John Maxwell has famously written about leadership for more than 20 years. In his “5 Levels of Leadership,” he describes what it takes to be at the top tiers as a leader. One of the biggest things that comes up time and time again is the ability to grow the people around you – to focus on them and help them become more than they are.

In fact, the great leaders will often see more potential in people than they see in themselves, and then they will go about helping them unlock it, helping them grow, and helping them get better.

Jack Welch was made the youngest CEO of General Electric in 1981.

And he didn’t get there by being flaky or unreliable. He got there by first growing his own skills, and then building up the people around him.

When you grow the people around you, it also makes your job easier. When you’re working with smart and collaborative team members, they will help you get what you need much faster and with less friction. It sure beats working with people who don’t have the skills and don’t have the ability to get them.

– David McLachlan

Get the Leadership Card Deck or the Lean CX Score Book:

- or - Have the Leadership Cards delivered for your next meeting

Continuous Integration – The Agile Practice Guide

November 1, 2019Agileagile, continuous integrationDavid McLachlan

Continue reading Continuous Integration – The Agile Practice Guide →

The Agile Core Practices

There are certain core Agile practices within Agile that can be used regardless of whether you call yourself an Agile team or not. Knowing these core practices is also a great way to get a deeper understanding of Agile as an approach.

One of the best places to update your skills in Agile is from the Agile Practice Guide, by the Project Management Institute and Agile Alliance. This one in particular is Continuous Integration and other execution practices.

Check it out!

Continuous Integration and other execution practices

As we’ve seen, Agile is the combination of an iterative approach – where we’re iterating and improving our product – and also an incremental approach where we’re delivering something at the end of those iterations.

Leadership Quote – Does Your Work Fulfil you?

October 31, 2019QuotesDavid McLachlan

“It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between 9 and 5. It’s whether or not our work fulfils us.”

This is a great quote from Malcolm Gladwell, a bestselling author and researcher. Do you know the key to fulfilling work, and the benefits it can bring?

Fulfilling work quote

Meaning and Fulfilment

Did you know that a recent study by Gallup business journal found nearly 50% of employees were not clear on what was expected of them at work? They did not have clear objectives, and they were 34% more likely to be disengaged as a result, costing their business time, money, rework and mistakes.

Researchers Jaqueline and Milton Mayfield also found that making things extremely clear for your staff (a clear objective, with a clear path to get there) and tying it to a higher meaning had the largest effect in improving the results of those teams.

Doing Your Favorite Thing as a Job Still Becomes “Work”

I have seen many friends who want to do something they love as a job – maybe it’s graphic design, web development, speaking engagements, working with animals. All those things sound like fun things to do, until you have to do them, and do them by somebody else’s rules. Now you might have to put a puppy down at a shelter, or tend to unhappy customers, or work with a boss’ needs that don’t make sense to you. That task you loved now looks a lot more like… work.

Contrast that to doing any old job, but where:

You have a very clear objective, with real meaning behind it (there is a greater good)
Your team checks in regularly once a day to see how you are going, help remove any blockers, and make sure you know they care about you and the work you do.
You are given free reign in helping improve the task and your broader skills – working towards becoming great at it.

Giving people growth, clarity, and checking in ticks a lot of boxes on their way to “Meaning”, even when the work might initially seem dull.

The good news is, you can design your work, and engineer these things within your teams to improve their meaning and seriously increase their engagement. And one of the fastest ways there is with the Lean CX framework, which goes through these things step-by-step.

– David McLachlan

Get the Leadership Card Deck or the Lean CX Score Book:

- or - Have the Leadership Cards delivered for your next meeting

Collaborative User Story Creation – The Agile Practice Guide

October 30, 2019Agileagile, project management, user storyDavid McLachlan

Continue reading Collaborative User Story Creation – The Agile Practice Guide →

The Agile Core Practices

One of the best places to update your skills in Agile is from the Agile Practice Guide, by the Project Management Institute and Agile Alliance. This one in particular is collaborative user story creation.

Collaborative User Story Creation

With collaborative user story creation, it’s important because poor specifications are usually a major reason for project failure. We may have specified what the customer wants, and then when they actually get their hands on it they may actually have wanted something different. Or we may have misinterpreted what they wanted in the first place. Al of this results in them not really being happy with the end result. So poor specifications are often that major reason for project failure.

In Agile development, user stories are written with with a lot of the people involved, from the customers through to the people creating the product. We’ve got the developers who are developing our product, testers, business representatives or the product owner in the whole team approach. We have frequent informal reviews of the things that they’re creating just to make sure that they’re right, and everyone who needs to be is always involved.

Leadership Quote – Doing Something Efficiently

October 29, 2019QuotesDavid McLachlan

Continue reading Leadership Quote – Doing Something Efficiently →

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

This is a great quote from Peter Drucker, who was one of the great modern management consultants and a man who helped shape modern business management.

Drucker on efficiency

Working on Wasteful Things

Have you ever worked on something you knew was going to end up in the waste basket? It sort of changes how you look at your work, if you know it’s ultimately a useless activity. Many companies end up doing things “because that is the way we’ve always done it,” and are losing time, productivity, and a big one – employee engagement as a result.

Worse still are the managers who micromanage every aspect of a person’s life or task, when a small amount of investigation would show that the task itself was not required.

What can we do?

Using Lean CX as a management framework, we can easily see the things that “should not be done at all.” First of all, value is determined by the customer. Does this task add value to your customers (either internal stakeholders, or external paying customers)? Would they be willing to pay for it? Can you add 100 times the value you are charging for, and guarantee the outcome?

When we are sure that our outcomes bring value to our customers and we have a clear, repeatable process to get there, then we can remove the wasteful steps that surround it. Luckily, Lean CX has outlined that waste for you already, so all you have to do is match it up.

Release and Iteration Planning – The Agile Practice Guide

October 28, 2019Agileagile, agile project management, David McLachlan, iteration planning, release planningDavid McLachlan