PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE KNOWLEDGE REVOLUTION

The future ain’t what it used to be.

--Yogi Berra

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN TODAY

What does the new flexibility of building knowledge products mean

for the evolution of project management?

What strategies have emerged in conjunction with the knowledge

revolution?

How can you begin using these concepts in your organization?

Building physical products in the industrial revolution focused on the constraints of replication and reconfiguration, but these constraints are not nearly as limiting when building knowledge products today.

Replication (mass production) of physical products Eli Whitney –

interchangeable parts Henry Ford –

assembly line Frederick Winslow Taylor –

optimized production, separated thinking from doing

Tyson Foods example today Reconfiguration (change) of physical products

Physical product examples – fixing defects: … in middle of a production run … after product is in the distribution pipeline … after products are sold to consumers

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION FOCUSED ON PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

WHY THE SEQUENTIAL WATERFALL METHOD?

Sequential

Waterfall

Pressure

Constraints

Standard

IN TRADITIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT, CHANGE IS THE EXCEPTION, NOT THE RULE

Employs a big-design-up-front (BDUF) approach

Uses sequential phases

Freezes requirements early to prevent scope creep

Does nothing to lower the cost of changes that arrive after phase is completed

Prematurely estimates, budgets and commits to costs for the whole project as if they are accurate

EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THE OPPOSITE: CHANGE IS THE RULE, NOT THE EXCEPTION

Fallacy of frozen requirements

Change is a fact of life in project work…at any point in the project and for many reasons

LUCKILY, IN THE KNOWLEDGE REVOLUTION, EMBRACING CHANGE IS NOT AS DIFFICULT

Knowledge products are easy to replicate. Knowledge product reconfiguration is not

inherently expensive. Because embracing change became possible,

the seed was planted, and ideas were tried. Today, agile approaches have at their disposal

a number of practices that support embracing change.

By designing the ability to make

frequent changes as part of the process’s

natural rhythm, change becomes less expensive and less disruptive to the project’s velocity.

By using small iterations instead of BDUF.

By not being a slave to requirements freezes.

Final product can better reflect the customer’s needs when the product is delivered.

Change still has a cost, even if it is lower than before.

PROS AND CONS OF EMBRACING CHANGE

Changes discovered during one

iteration are added to the

Product Backlog and may only be

included in a future iteration, not the current

one.

Think of each iteration as a

complete mini-project, even if just two weeks

long.

HOW AN AGILE APPROACH LIKE SCRUM USES ITERATIONS TO EMBRACE CHANGE

WHY AGILE? WHAT DOES AGILE REALLY MEAN?A word about agile…• “Ready ability to move with quick easy grace”

Agile does not mean• Delivering faster• Fewer defects or higher quality• Higher productivity

Agile does mean agile, the ability to change• Faster than your competition• Faster than you ever could before

Perhaps get faster delivery and higher quality, but• Raison d'être of agile is…it’s agility

Changes – the kind we expect and the kind we do not expect – are finally acknowledged.

Uncertainty – lack of information or unpredictability – is at least partially addressed.

The fundamental difference between industrial projects and knowledge projects is recognized.

The command-and-control management style is replaced with a collaborative management style where Team leaders view information as the catalyst for invention

and adaptation Team members are treated as competent contributors and are

given decision responsibility in return for more accountability These are profound changes for the teams and leaders

and, ultimately, organizations.

What does the new flexibility of building knowledge products mean

for the evolution of project management?

ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY CANNOT BE ACHIEVED BY A PROJECT TEAM IN ISOLATION

Agility, once adopted by a project team, will over time cause a ripple effect into all parts of the organization that the project team touches.

Just as general team support requires organizations to change, so does agile team support, only more.

This becomes a system challenge for organizational redesign making use of Thinking tools (including systems thinking, lean,

queueing theory, information theory, more) Organizational tools and policy changes (possibly

feature teams, real teams, large-scale Scrum, a new organizational model)

IF YOU SEE A FORK IN THE ROAD, TAKE IT.

-YOGI BERRA

THE AGILE MANIFESTO: FOUR VALUES

Individuals and interactions

Over processes and tools

Working product Over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration Over contract negotiation

Responding to change Over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

CourageRespectOpennessFocus

EXAMPLE: SCRUM’S FIVE VALUES

Commitment

THE TWELVE AGILE PRINCIPLES1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.

2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter time scale.

9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.

5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

AGILE MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES

1. Deliver something useful to the client; check what they value.

6. Use short timeboxed iterations to quickly deliver features.

2. Cultivate committed stakeholders.

7. Encourage adaptability.

3. Employ a leadership-collaboration style.

8. Champion technical excellence.

4. Build competent, collaborative teams.

9. Focus on delivery activities, not process-compliance activities.

5. Enable team decision making.

DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE FOR AGILE AND ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT

We increase return on investment by making continuous flow of value our focus.

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

We expect uncertainty and manage it through iterations, anticipation, and adaptation.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 boost performance through group accountability for results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness.We improve effectiveness and reliability through situation-specific strategies, processes, and practices.

AGILE LEADERSHIP PRACTICES

Use organic teams

Provide a guiding vision

Establish simple rules

Provide open information

Control with a light touch

Practice adaptive leadership

LEAN STRATEGIES Lean has two well articulated pillars of management commitment:

Respect for People: to continuously invest in its people Continuous Improvement: to promote a culture of continuous

improvement. Lean is a complete system & all parts must be working for success

Many attempts to duplicate have not been as successful Lean is famous for its surprisingly broad definition of waste:

anything that is NVA, not value added, that is, anything that does not directly increase immediate value to the customer, a long list.

Lean principles apply to production as we would expect, but also to development. These are the two main processes at Toyota. Development – out-learn the competition Production – out-improve the competition

Continuous improvement, mentoring, lateral information sharing, cadence, and retrospectives are lean concepts that have corresponding concepts in agile.

QUEUEING THEORY STRATEGIES

Relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) Throughput cycle times – baton not the runner

Work in progress (WIP) queues tend to be invisible in product development Problem because they increase average cycle

time Better to eliminate a queue than to manage it For queues that must be managed

Reduce batch size Make each batch equally sized Limit queue size Provide visibility into queue if hidden

ARTFUL MAKING STRATEGIES

Artful making is new product development where the product to be made is not pre-specified• Applies equally to software development, strategic planning, and

producing a play• Emphasizes emergence of the product during design/build• Requires creativity, innovation, collaboration, and repeating

iterations to get the desired outcome

Industrial making is building from a set of plans with the product fully pre-specified• Applies equally to manufacturing cars or building a house from

plans• Emphasizes planning; design of the product previously done• Uses sequential phases and replication to get outcome

ARTFUL RECONCEIVING VS. INDUSTRIAL REPLICATING

A SAMPLING: Iterations vs. phases Embracing change vs.

requirements freeze Customer collaboration and

provide open information vs. limited access

Self-organizing teams and use organic teams vs. command-and-control

Value-driven vs. compliance-driven Making use of talent vs. rigidly

defined roles Test-driven development vs. test

late development Continuous improvement and

practice adaptive leadership

Eliminate waste vs. waste-blind processes

Respect for people (lean, agile) vs. traditional approach

Casting vs. traditional staffing Control with a light touch Provide a guiding vision

(commander’s intent) Establish simple rules Reduce cycle time Eliminate queues Learn to see into invisible queues Limit queue size Reduce batch size Reduce variability in batch size

What strategies have emerged in conjunction with the knowledge

revolution?

How can you begin using these concepts in your organization?

I want you all to become systems thinkers. Gerry Weinberg is an excellent systems thinker.

The hardest errors to overcome have become buried in our assumptions underlying our de facto operational mental models.

Weinberg-Brooks Law: More software projects have gone awry from management’s taking action

based on incorrect system models than for all other causes combined.

Causation Fallacy: Every effect has a cause…and we can tell which is which.

The Japanese warn us against using false dichotomies.

In short, be a life-long detective for what is really going on so that you can make the best decisions possible.

Thanks for coming out!