A burndown chart to help you to study

Do you need a an easy tool to help you schedule, monitor and eventually replan your study progress?

In September 2011 I participated in the ALE-Agile Lean Europe 2011 un-Conference in Berlin.
Many sessions were delivered (most of them were really very interesting) and I tried to attend to most of them. One the most fun and gorgeous, has been held by an agile coach (I do not remember his name…) and he explained how he used some agile principles and techniques to help his son to study and do the homework during the summer vacations.

One of the thing he explained was that his son had some books to read and the total numer of the pages were really a big number. He knew that one of the main problem with students, is the famous syndrome that Goldratt invented. In order to avoid any problem with such a syndrome, he decided to use a burndown chart to help the son keep focused, seeing the progress in term of page read and how many were still to be read.

He also created three different trend lines representing the paces (in SCRUM “velocity”): low, sustainable, high, every trend counting for a predefined number of page that would be read daily (e.g. low 10, sustainable 17, high 25).
This last improvement helped primarily to forecast for the finish date the son would have hit in case of different velocity and, furthermore, when he started to study he had an immediate and easy way to compare his progress against these trend lines.

Actually, I used this suggestion when studying for the PMI-ACP certification. Infact, I had to study several books in few months (hundreds of pages) and I would be sure to finish within february 2012.

One of the most valuable effect of using the burndown chart to help you study, is the psychological one: your progress is continuosly and pitilessly compared to the reference velocities and it helps to remain focused and to recover in case of delay.

Here it is a great anti-pattern to the Goldratt’s students syndrome!

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AgileTour 2011 Brescia

October the 15th I’m participating to the AgileTour 2011 in Brescia.

I’m keeping the opening speach and I will facilitate a SCRUM session.

Let’s see in Brescia!

Leaving the comfort zone

Learn, practice, verify and correct: a parallelism between sport and project management, letting us help by the PDCA cycle of Deming.

The week just passed was very intensive.
With two other experienced project managers we taught in two different sessions of basic Project Management for an international bank.
The courses structure was very intensive: high level of involvement of the participants, short breaks, many workshops and exercises and, last but not least, the official language was English (participants were from different European countries and only for some of them English was their mother tongue).

During those days a great number of topics, concepts, processes, methods, tools, approaches, rules were covered and the participants remained astonished and in some cases discouraged because of the huge number of things to learn.
One of my colleagues, to motivate them, remembered when they learned to drive a car and how hard was it, even if now they are able to drive, listen to music, talk to the phone, together.

Effectively the first time I tried to drive was a mess: the steering wheel, the throttle, the clutch, the breaks. My first tentatives were completely disasters.

It seems that it is so, because our brain hardly manages different things in one shot: actually only about 5 things and, sometimes, it is even worst because it depends about the complexity of each one.
And so, how it was possible to learn to drive?
Well, it is possible because our brain merges together different movements and actions (pushing the clutch and engaging the first gear or accelerating and releasing the clutch) into one single chunk of knowledge and after many tries and refinements, it send this “chunk” or program, to the unconscious mind. Cool, isn’t it??!?

The same happens for every thing we want to learn, we have to study it, understand it and practice it many times and….the magic happens!
My opinion is that it’s “only” a matter of willingness, faith, persistence and courage.

Learning is primarily a matter of overcoming the boundaries and the perimeters of the status quo, leaving our comfort zone: this is the reason why we must be courageous.
Secondarily, is a matter of persistence (patience) because once we have chosen to change, before any improvements will appear, some water will have to pass under the bridge.
This last statements drives us to the next pillar of the learning process: the faith. Yes we must believe that such a change will happen, even more in the most critical moments.

Let me give you another example. This one is related to the sport (I love it!).
Let’s assume you want to run you first half-marathon. Today, you are already a runner, but you never run much more that sixteen kilometers and your average time is 6 minutes per kilometer.
Your pace is a “sustainable” and slow one and you kept that pace since the very beginning of your runner career, you already tried to achieve better results by running in the way you know, but you never got them.

Probably the main reason is that you never tried to vary your training, experimenting something new. You reached your “comfort zone” (running sixteen kilometers at a sustainable pace) and your body established its status quo.
Now it’s time to shock the system putting into the pipeline some fresh air.
To activate the learning process (sport training is also a learning process) is necessary to push us out of the routine, out of our comfort zone, creating new challenges and accepting them.

Coming back to the sport example, to see real improvements is fundamental to increase the anaerobic threshold: the threshold beyond which our body start producing more lactic acid than what it is able to dispose of.
To do that, we must leave our “sustainable pace”, the “same old way” of doing things, the current status quo and  we need to practice more and more and to vary our training introducing some changes.
We should start, for example, paying attention to our posture, the movements we do when we are running: feet, legs, arms and so on.  This is the base, the starting point:  our running style is paramount. Unnecessary movements bring to inefficiency, a correct posture means effectiveness that help us to run faster and run longer.
But it is not only a matter of “theory” it is a matter of improving performance by pushing up the anaerobic thresholds doing, for example, flat and uphill repetitions, fartlek sessions, aerobic power reinforcement sessions.
Yes I know, this is very tiring, but I can assure that the results will arrive soon.

This kind of work, helps you to achieve your objective, raising your performance and establishing a brand new and better personal status quo.

Improving our project management skills is something similar.
First of all we need the basis, the theory: we must study, understanding the basic concepts, creating relations between them, comparing the different techniques and trying to imagine the impact on our working environment.
Then, is time to decide about which area first necessitate to be practiced and improved: estimating? Planning? Communication? Risks? It is a matter of prioritization (do you remember Pareto and the 80/20 rule? See a previous post).
Yet, we must choose which practices, methods or techniques (do you remember the different running sessions?) put in place.

Finally: start practicing!

Continue even if small improvements, drive towards great results (do you know the kaizen word?)

Conducting the user requirements gathering interview

Do you know how to conduct that kind of interviews having success?

The most important rule is: forget about your technocratic vocabulary.
One of the most cited complaints from the users towards the IT staff is:

“I do not understand a word. Too many acronyms and tehcnical words.
When I’ve asked for explanations it seems they were so annoyed!“

With that in mind, prepare yourself to the interview, by studying as much as possible about the business domain the product will be applied.
Analyze the business processess, the input and output data.

Gather information from internet, look for any competitors’ solutions/products already existing. Talk with any experts in your company trying to better understand the logics of that area.
Compile a glossary containing any jargon, abbreviations and acronyms.

Ok, let’s move on the next step.

Arrange the meeting following these rules.

The meeting shouldn’t lasts more than one hour, the attention will drop down inexorably after that time.
Take into account an extra time of fifteen minutes before and after the interview, for collateral activities such as email sending, phone calls, etc.
Keep the last 10 minutes of the interview for a Q&A session.

Create the agenda of the meeting and send to the participant at least the day before.
The meeting shall be take place neither in your office, nor in the one of the interviewee, otherwise too many distractions will occur and, furthermore, the interviewee or you will not be confident to completely openly speak.

Now it’s time to proceed with the interview.
Create a calm environment.

Remember that you must instaurate an environment in which the comunication should freely flow: expose clearly the objectives of the meeting and what are your expectations. Be assertive and remember that your first goal is to listen and not to speak.

In general, try to pose short and simple questions: no hyperbole,
the technicalities are banned!
The questions itself should not influence the answers:

“Isn’t true that the application will be used only by the accountant users?”

but rather

“What kind of users will use the application?”

Remeber, during this phase you must remain concentrated on the problems: do not yet think about the solutions.
The user wants to be heard, s/he wants to be sure that you understood his/her problems.

Start asking general questions: your goal in this initial phase is to obtain as much information as possible,
posing fewer questions.
Avoid any questions to which is possible to answer with a yes or a no.

• What are the main necessities?
• To what problems is necessary to find solutions?
• What happens today that should be changed in your working enviroment?

When the overall scenario is well delineated and understood, pass to the second step by gathering detailed information about the most important points: what is unclear to you, what is more complex, what are the processes and data involved (probe questions).

During this phase try to catch any nuances, redundant concepts, any special emphasis in what the interlocutor is saying, because those things bring quality to the message.
Be aware also of any dissonances you feel, because it is a trigger that something is not clear or that you don’t agree with.

A well-structured process in conducting an interview should be:

• General questions
• Probe questions
• Explore any open points
• Gather data and examples
• Find an agreement by repeating the main points

Finally, during the interview, try using the same words, acronyms or abbreviations the interviewee uses.
Reflect his/her posture, gesture and voice tone, you should be well tuned with him/her.
Rephrase what s/he has said, giving and obtaining feedback.
Some healthy NPL never hurts, isn’t it?!

Vacation Time

Finally it is arrived, the time for vacation is here!

Someone said “the harder the year, the better should be the vacation” and for sure this year was a tough one.
I hope that staying in NY will be such a great time that will help to refill energies and motivations.

And so, see you again on September!
Have fun!

Playing Collaborative Games

It often happens that I teach in IT and project management courses.
What I’ve experienced is that one the of hardest thing to do in those situations, is to maintain high the level of interest and concentration of the attendees, allowing them to gather the greatest benefit from the course itself.
Actually there’s a secret…let them play!

On january I was in Scotland to attend to the SCRUM Master Certification Training Course.

In that occasion Simon, the trainer, organized some interesting games where the attendees, me included, were physically involved.
As usualy happens we were initially reluctant, but once the ice was broken the involvement of each one was really high, as well as the enthusiasm for the results.

Another occasion during which the collaborative games were used as training tools, was during the Italian Agile Coach Camp in Umbria. Unfortunately, I did not participate to those games because contemporarily there were other interesting tracks and I could not avoid to participate; it was really a pitty!

But, lucky me, we had retrospectives about those game sessions and I had the possibility to understand the actual worth of doing those games.

Both the two occasions were triggers for me. They helped me to deeply understand what such a powerful tool the collaborative games is!

Why?!?

1. First of all, they are games. People love to play games, even more if their company pays for it!
2. Second, players have still to pay for playing: you pay, leaving your comfortable zone and putting yourself into a new situation.
3. Third, the attendee is physically, not only mentally, involved. This helps the process of learning and facilitates the brain to store and consequently to remember and recover it.
4. Fourth, is a stimulus for the attendee to immediately activate the passive knowledge s/he has just learnt listening to the trainer.
5. Fifth, a game establishes a cheerful environment and creates a team building effect.

In other words, playing games help us to better understand because of the short feedback cycle (it sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).

Playing collaborative games is a quite sure way to energize the attendees, having them concentrated during the entire course. Which games I used to play in my courses?

A must game is the penny game, but also the specifiers and doers game using a set of role cards to introduce biases or, again, the alphabet games to consolidate what was learnt and the planning poker game.

Furthermore, I also use information radiators such as whiteboards, flipcharts, note cards stuck on the walls,  a task kanban board that shows the progress of each topic of the course, which helps the attendees to see progresses.

A successful and sustainable way to manage projects

What if a project management methodology will offer the possibility to be more efficient in conducing projects and, in the meanwhile cutting off paper, energy and time consumption?

Customers ask for better products, having less time available and with tight budgets.

The latest researches in terms of projects success (Standish Group, CHAOS Report 2009), shows that there’s a high percentage of projects that continue to fail (24%) and another 44% that are challenged. In other words: the customer expectations not ever (almost never) satisfied.

The main problems of those bad projects results, can be summarized as follows:

• Ineffective gathering requirements analysis (ambiguous or missing requirements, misunderstandigs, etc.)
• Bad requirements prioritization
• Continuous scope changes
• Lack of customer engagement and relative feedback
• Late deliveries and slow time to market

Why not considering agile as a possible answer? Yes, of course, agile!

Do you remember the agile manifesto?

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Main advantages:

1. The iterative and prototyping approach lets you to figure out, in advance, if the requirements you collected, are well understood and implemented; that aims to a general risks reduction.
2. Thanks to a well structured approach in prioritizing the customer/user necessities, avoiding of low/unuseful features implementation.
3. Thanks to a closely customer engagement, the feedback loop is reduced consistently.
4. Thanks to short deliveries and prioritization of the features, the customer is able to gather faster business results and ROI.
5. Thanks to short communication’s lines, team members co-location, free project’s information accessibility, the misunderstandings between the several stakeholders, are greatly reduced.
6. The scrum time-box approach, allows the members to be more focused and committed, not wasting time for ineffective meetings.
7. The short feedback loop gives an immediate evidence of problems and bugs, heavily reducing the reworking activities

Furthermore.

Take a moment considering that the optimizations derived from the points above, will aim to:

• reduction of the possibility of errors and consequent reworking (saving time and money)
• reduction of the compiled documentation (saving time, money and avoiding paper and ink consumption)
• reduction of sunk costs (cost deriving from meeting, travels, communication costs, etc.)

Can you evaluate what quantity of carbon monoxide won’t be produced?

Think green, be agile!