Category: Project Management

Agile Retrospective and Lessons Learned

When facilitating an agile retrospective as a scrum master or a project lessons learned session with a team, I like to use the following questions to cause the teamcartoons,communicating,communications,conversations,people,persons,Screen Beans®,string cans to reflect and generate discussion. The categories are those that I like to the team to consider. By putting the two together you can ask for a multitude of ideas and thoughts. If the team gets stuck during a retrospective, I will simply ask some questions to open up the lines of communication.

For instance:

What went well related to our planning?
What went well related to our resource management?
What did we learn about testing?
What still puzzles us about our testing?

Questions

  1. What went well?
  2. What did we learn?
  3. What did we struggle with?
  4. What should we do differently?
  5. What still puzzles us?

Categories

  • Planning
  • Resources
  • Project Management/Scheduling
  • Development, Design, Specifications
  • Testing
  • Communication
  • Team, Organization
  • Product
  • Management (Group and Program Managers)
  • Tools and Practices
  • General

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16 – The Law of the Big Mo

Momentum is a Leaders Best Friend

In John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (2007), John shares the law of buy-in.

So what happens when you have developed a compelling vision that you are passionate about and gathered the right people but you can not get the team moving in the right direction? You need to leverage the law of momentum. I used this law to my advantage before ever reading about the law in a formalized way like that by John Maxwell.

In 2003, I worked on a team that supported an enterprise-wide project management suite. Business teams often beat our team to the punch, delivering applications needed by the business. The business teams were unencumbered by information technology processes and focused only the needs of a specific business. Unfortunately, the business specific applications failed to satisfy the needs of other corporate businesses so duplication was the norm. We were faced with a challenge to deliver the ability to report on a specific business metric with charting capability using data stored in the project management system. I made a bold statement to my supervisor and department manager, “give me one business expert and one software developer and we will deliver the needed functionality in 30 days.”

Despite some doubt and apprehension, the management agreed to test my boast. The business expert interfaced with the businesses to understand their needs and the developer and I built the software components to deliver on those needs. We met frequently throughout each day to design just enough to begin software coding and to integrate developed code. Every Friday, we demonstrated our progress to business representatives to ensure we were meeting their reporting needs and used the feedback to make course corrections the following week. After a grueling month, the team delivered functional software that provided the most important features desired by the business representatives. The success and momentum of the first month proved the team could deliver as promised and garnered additional funding for three additional months to address emerging customer needs. A few months later we learned about a process called scrum that felt very similar to our process used in this project. I completed scrum master training and implemented the process within our extended team. Scrum is integral to our team’s development process even today.

When on a roll, everything seems to go just right, but when in a slump even the most simple tasks seem impossible. Leaders try to control momentum because momentum has such a great impact on success. Momentum changes the way people look at leaders. People tend to overlook small leadership issues, when overall the leader is on a roll. People desire to associate themselves with leaders that win. Leaders that build momentum in an organization discover that people find motivation and inspiration that drive them to higher levels of performance and achievement.

Gaining momentum is more difficult than maintaining momentum. Every leadership situation is different, but the leader must find ways to gain wins early, even if those wins are small. I have witnessed far too many projects waste opportunities in the early phases of the project to make the small wins that build momentum. Creating momentum takes a leader with vision and the ability to motivate other people. The leader’s passion, enthusiasm, and energy is motivational and leads to the small wins that build momentum.

I wish you well on your personal growth journey. I appreciate your additional insight, so feel free to comment to share your thoughts and experiences.

Links
Links to other posts in this discussion on the laws of leadership.
Mind map of the 21 laws of leadership.
Introduction to the leadership laws | 1 – The Law of the Lid | 2 – The Law of Influence | 3 – The Law of Process | 4 – The Law of Navigation | 5 – The Law of Addition | 6 – The Law of Solid Ground | 7 – The Law of Respect | 8 – The Law of Intuition | 9 – The Law of Magnetism | 10 – The Law of Connection | 11 – The Law of the Inner Circle | 12 – The Law of Empowerment | 13 – The Law of The Picture | 14 – The Law of Buy-in | 15 – The Law of Victory

Reference
Maxwell, John. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: Follow them and people will follow you. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

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4 – The Law of Navigation

In John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (2007), John shares the importance of navigation to the leadership arsenal. Leaders plan the route to the desired destination, which is much more that simply controlling the direction of travel. Navigation incorporates vision, strategy, planning, and execution. The vision represents the mental model or picture of the desired end-state. The strategy provides the approach and the plan captures the considerations of all aspects potentially affecting the attainment of the goal. Those leaders that follow the law of navigation, see more than, see farther than, and see before others do (Eims, as cited in Maxwell).

Leaders that navigate draw on information from a variety of sources as shown in the graphic below. Leaders consider past success that build confidence for tackling a new venture. Leaders consider their own past failures and the failures of others. Leaders tend to look forward, forgetting the past. Great leaders learn from the past and the lessons that those experiences provide and apply them to future endeavors.

Leaders that navigate consider the current conditions before embarking on the path. What is the cost in terms of finances, time, and resources? What is the level of commitment to this action? Does the culture support this endeavor? Does the action carry any momentum? Is this the right time for this action?

Leaders that navigate solicit and consider the input and counsel of other people. One person rarely has all the answers to every question or issue that arises when tackling a major initiative.

Leaders that navigate balance their optimism, intuition, and faith with the realism, planning, and fact surrounding any major initiative.

Leadership-MixBooks abound that contain detailed approaches information related to visioning, strategic planning, and project planning and execution, but Maxwell (2007) shares a simple acrostic – PLAN AHEAD – that provides a reminder of the major steps involved in navigational leadership.

  • Predetermine a course of action
  • Lay out your goals
  • Adjust your priorities
  • Notify key people
  • Allow time for acceptance
  • Head into action
  • Expect problems
  • Always point to the successes
  • Daily review the plan

Over the years, I committed many hours to learning various processes and planning techniques. My personal library (physical and virtual) contain many books on those topics. I recognize the important contribution that process definition and planning provides to reaching goals successfully. Some try to convince me that the current environment does not lend itself to thorough planning but I am not convinced. I firmly believe that going slow to move fast comes into play for any project of consequence. I recognize the need to balance the plan’s level of detail with the level of project complexity. I also witness the tendency of many to rush into implementation with an appropriate level of planning.

I regularly create project workbooks that contain the project’s charter, plans, decisions, and results. The workbook includes the plans for risk management, resources, development approach, artifact library, testing, deployment, and others. Those workbooks capture many of the concepts highlighted in this post and in Maxwell’s book. I use the workbooks at work and in my volunteer activities. My experience supports the approach that planning contributes to the successful execution of the project. My observations also support the fact that ineffective planning nearly always results in projects that take longer and cost more than expected or results in project cancellation or project deliveries that fail to meet stakeholder needs.

In 2007, the leaders of the church where I attend requested that I lead an effort to organize the ministry leaders with organizational planning to improve the efficacy of the various church programs. This group and I spend many Saturdays over five months, which culminated in documented plans for each ministry. I began with a strategic planning session to assist these leaders with solidifying the organization’s vision and mission, understanding their strengths and weaknesses (SWOT Analysis), and aligning the various programs with overall organizational objectives. I presented a planning template for each ministry leader to develop that identified the ministry goals and the plans to achieve those goals. Each leader presented their respective planning to the other leaders and collectively refined the plans to ensure alignment and support. At the beginning of the new year, each leader presented their plan to the entire membership and sought volunteers to assist with the execution. The entire process garnered positive feedback from the leaders and church members. The benefits and results of the effort also caught the attention of other people and groups seeking to leverage the approach. With navigation applied, the group benefited by gaining a thorough understanding of each program’s contribution to the overall success of the organization.

Links
Links to other posts in this discussion on the laws of leadership.
Mind map of the 21 laws of leadership.
Introduction to the leadership laws
1 – The Law of the Lid
2 – The Law of Influence
3 – The Law of Process

Tools
Six Hats – a tools for group or individual thinking that assists with evaluation from a variety of perspectives.
SWOT Analysis – an approach for evaluating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to gain greater perspective for evaluation of a venture.

Reference
Maxwell, John. (2007). The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

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The Portfolio Effect

At the personal or organizational level, we all realize multiple demands for our time. We often process these multiple demands independently but collectively many of these demands are organized and prioritized using a portfolio. Within the organization, project managers typically focus on a limited number of projects. However, the organizational portfolio contains all projects ranked by a variety of inputs, desired outputs, and strategic objectives.

The effective project manager addresses assigned projects while keeping a big picture view and understanding the organizational portfolio. The organizational portfolio presents risks to an individual project by through explicit or implicit constraints, such as resources and money. As a result, I recommend reviewing, understanding, and considering the effect of the applicable portfolio to your project. The more you understand about the portfolio and the risks the portfolio contributes to your project, the better prepared you are to plan, schedule, and manage your project.

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Introduction

My project management experience lies within product software development and information technology. In product development, I developed test software for military systems. In the information technology space, I develop applications that support an enterprise project system system delivering services and capabilities to project managers around the globe. The applications require integration at the system level to provide seamless delivery of capabilities to the user community.

While a software developer for most of my career, my interests span the entire life-cycle of software develop – concept to retirement. As a dedicated, life-long, learner, I spend countless hours reading and learning to better understand the concepts and apply to successful delivery of services to clients.

I also enjoy sharing information with others. First, to learn from the experiences of other professionals and second, to share my experience for the benefit of others. I will use this forum expressively to achieve those purposes.

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