Thursday, February 17, 2005

Thoughts on DOI #4 - Innovation

And more explanation of the Declaration of Interdependence with the fourth statement focused on innovation.

#4 - Innovation

• We unleash creativity and innovation by recognizing that individuals are the ultimate source of value, and creating an environment where they can make a difference

We wanted to capture something in the DOI which expressed the notion that we view individuals as assets in a business rather than faceless resources which are somehow magically interchangneable and fungible in a 3-sided iron traingle tradeoff. People are the ultimate source of value is a recognition that modern work is knowledge work. Knowledge is value. People create that knowledge. The creation of new knowledge is an act of creativity which generated innovation. This happens better when you create an environment where people are viewed as assets and encouraged to take risks and make a difference. This isn’t really a project management practice rather a good modern management practice

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Thoughts on DOI #3 - Uncertainty

More explanation of the Declaration of Interdependence with the third statement focused on uncertainty.

#3 - Uncertainty

• We manage uncertainty through iterations, anticipation and adaptation

The key term here is uncertainty and its scope. We had to settle on one word to capture the essence of variation, change, unknowns and chaos. We settled on uncertainty as the one single word which best captured the essence of the problem. Uncertainty in this context means from variation to chaos, as defined by De Meyer et al, Managing Project Uncertainty: from Variation to Chaos, and shown in this diagram

By embracing uncertainty into the new paradigm, we’re clearly making a split from traditional project management theory. There is no concept of uncertainty in critical path. In the PMBOK uncertainty is handled through the notion of risk. Variation in the latest 2004 addition is handled through positive and negative risk. Positive risk? I hear you say. What the heck? Indeed!

The DOI embraces uncertainty. It’s a reality of the universe we live in. It’s fundamental. No model of project management can deny it or go without it.

We deal with uncertainty by iterating often, providing control and feedback points to make corrections based on the effects of uncertainty. We also anticipate uncertainty. It is the inclusion of “anticipate” in this statement which allows it to encompass Critical Chain. And finally, we learn from our feedback and adapt. This can mean adjusting future anticipation or simply reacting to current events with adaptive planning. In the new paradigm, uncertainty is a facet of planning and scheduling. Planning can be anticpatory or reactive or both. It’s not a risk management problem.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Lean Design & Development 2005

Are you going to Lean Design & Development 2005 in Chicago? If so you can come see me speak at 12 noon Tuesday March 22nd. I need to speak to the organizers about the title of my presentation. Somehow they’ve inserted a spurious “Microsoft”. Believe me, Microsoft is not attempting to brand Feature Driven Development. I do intend to talk about my experience with FDD and how it is influencing MSF v4.0 and Visual Studio 2005 Team System with the inclusion of cumulative flow diagrams (which will be known as Work Remaining Charts) as a standard feature.

I’m particularly excited at the opportunity to meet the Lean community and to spend some time with Donald Reinertsen who is a key note speaker on the first day. I’m hoping to get some quality time to trade CFD war stories with Don. I wonder if my namesake will also be there?

Thoughts on DOI #2 - Customers

Continuing my explanation of the Declaration of Interdependence with the second statement focused on customers.

#2 - Customers

• We deliver reliable results by engaging customers in frequent interactions and shared ownership

We wanted to capture the idea of close partnership with customers. The term partnership tends to get misused. In the same way that executives want you to “delight customers”, they often also want you to “partner” with them without fully understanding what that means. Partner means to align the supply chain’s interests and focus on the end consumer. This is how Japanese keiretsu work. It creates a mechanism to treat the whole value chain as a single system and optimize for the system not the parts.

We also wanted to capture the quality assurance that comes from frequent customer touch and feedback.

Together these two aspects of putting the customer’s skin in the game through (inter-)active partnership and high touch gives us a mechanism to deliver reliable results. The word reliable embraces concepts like repeatable, dependable and trustworthy without the historical baggage that the word repeatable carries in process circles.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Great Boss Dead Boss

If you only read one book this year, it has to be this one, Great Boss, Dead Boss! I saw Ray Immelman speak at the TOC ICO Word Conference in Miami last October. His work came highly recommend from Alan Barnard. So I thought there had to be something in it worth learning. I didn’t get around to reading it until this past month due to the recent upheaval in my personal life. So when January came, I started riding the bus to work rather than battling the SR-520 bottleneck to Redmond. It was worth the sacrifice.

This book has changed the way I think about organization and communication down, across and up. If management is about two things then organizational structure and communication are perhaps the two most basic. Great Boss, Dead Boss has made me rethink both of those. I’m deliberately not telling you what the book is about because that would spoil it for you. What I can say is that it takes the form of a novel similar to Eli Goldratt’s The Goal. However, despite the fact that Ray Immelman is part of the TOC community and works for Realization Software, this is not a TOC book. It’s a book about people, about relationships, about affiliation, motivation, loyalty and leadership. It’s a book which is very applicable to the agile community. If agile’s unique contribution to software development was the inclusion of people related factors then Great Boss, Dead Boss offers us that same contribution for management.

And finally, if you recently went through a merger or acquisition or are about to then you cannot miss the advice in this story of the merger of two silicon chip manufacturing companies. [Buy it from Amazon at 15% off]