Life in the fast lane
You see them on the freeway, driving in the left lane, 5 feet behind the next car, staring at their cell phones and eating breakfast. Their driving style limits their ability respond to changes in road conditions or to react to the actions of other drivers. They take an excessive amount of risk in order to save a couple of minutes. There is a good chance that, if they make it to the office safely, their driving style will carry over into their work.
Excessive speed is standard operating procedure in business today. Staff levels have been cut but workloads have not, leaving no resources to maneuver around obstacles and pursue new opportunities. There is an excess of activity and a shortage of results. As the Eagles (the band, not the football team) would say, life in the fast last will “surely make you lose your mind.” Is it time to back off the throttle? Following are a few thoughts how to slow down and still improve performance.
- Challenge the thinking behind deadlines. Is there a business need for to hit this particular date? Or is the date merely a means to create a sense of urgency?
- Adjust your project portfolio to make sure it is complete and matches your capacity. It is common for people to work on projects that have not yet been identified, approved and prioritized. Even if they are working on approved projects, the sequence of those projects may result in bottlenecks while awaiting the availability of key subject matter experts. Try to stagger project start dates to minimize the risk of colliding priorities.
- End a project and declare victory. When employing an agile project approach, business value is delivered incrementally according to priorities set by the business owner. After a point, the incremental business value for a given project may be lower than that of a competing project. You do not need to complete every deliverable on the backlog list. Take a look at the entire portfolio of projects and identify those that can be considered complete, then close them out and free up the resources for other work.
- Partner with business process outsourcers for new products. Why develop new systems and processes for an unproven new product when an outsourcer is already supporting that type of product? If the product takes off, the outsourcer can scale to handle it. If not, the risk of new product launch is limited.
- Work with your suppliers to identify ways they can be of greater service to your organization. For example, the retail segment utilizes Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). With VMI, the manufacturer, not the retailer, manages the inventory and reduces inventory costs.
- Develop a flexible staffing model. During the recession, internal staffing was trimmed to levels that were barely sufficient to keep the lights on. There is no capacity to expand, so you will need to develop relationships with a manageable group of staff augmentation firms and consider these firms as extensions to your own staff.
- The product owner periodically prioritizes the list of fixes and enhancements, thus ensuring greater business value from the investment in maintenance
- The software applications are upgraded via scheduled releases rather than one-off fixes, thus eliminating daily surprises as business users log in to the application
- Testing and software development run in parallel, increasing the quality of the software release
- The software releases are managed as projects, thus increasing management visibility and accountability
- Organization
- Discipline
- Emotional Maturity
Help Wanted – Adaptable Executives
The August 9, 2010 Wall Street Journal includes an article titled, “Top Recruiter Finds Adaptable Executives in High Demand.” The article features an interview with recruiter Clarke Murphy, who has found that corporate boards are increasing their executive search efforts, but they are not interested in a “grand vision.” Instead, they are searching for CEOs who can “… adapt quickly and gain the confidence of employees and shareholders.”
Why are boards interested in adaptable leaders instead of visionaries? Blame it on the times in which we live. A long term strategy is based on assumptions regarding the economy, customer preferences, regulation, taxes, and trade. Today those assumptions change quickly. Long term plans require a level of certainty, and certainty has been in short supply in recent years.
In the current environment, leaders who are able to anticipate and respond to the next obstacle will inspire confidence and help keep their companies in business until the marketplace stabilizes.
It’s hard to grow when you’re inside that box
As the economic recovery plods along, what are your plans to handle growth? Will you hire new staff, upgrade systems, and streamline processes? In other words, will you increase the size of the box that defines the capacity of your current organization? That is a logical response to growth, but it assumes that your customers will continue to demand your current products. If your current customers demand different products or if you identify new market opportunities, you may find yourself limited by your organization’s box. Your systems may lack the flexibility to quickly adapt to new products and your people may lack expertise in new technologies. Further, expanding the box raises fixed costs and increases financial risk if growth prospects do not materialize. Is it time to de-couple the growth of your business from the size of your box? Here are a few tactics to accomplish this.
There are numerous tactics that you can add to this short list, but the key point to remember is do not allow your business to be constrained the “box” of your existing capacity.
Agile and Software Maintenance
Within corporate IT organizations, there often exists a division between software maintenance and software development. It is not unusual for 80% of the software budget to be allocated to maintenance of legacy software applications. This large investment is viewed as a cost of doing business and it is assumed that little can be done to improve it. Meanwhile, the smaller budget item, software development, is the focus of process project management improvements such as Agile.
As corporate IT budgets become tighter than “lug nuts on a 1957 Chevy,” it is worth considering an Agile project management approach to software maintenance. Following are some of the potential benefits:
Software maintenance has long been regarded as a necessary evil. Perhaps it’s time to start to regard it as a source of business value.
The Power of a Good Example
After an argument with a defiant teenager, an exasperated father was heard to say, “He’s not completely worthless – he can always serve as a bad example.” Just for the record, I was not the defiant teenager in question. While this father was able to find some good in a bad example, there is much greater power in a good example, particularly in an agile culture which runs on interpersonal relations rather than formal authority. A project manager who arrives at meetings on time and looks after the best interests of his team members will have greater success in meeting project objectives. A developer who consistently meets commitments and deals well with customers will have her choice of new project assignments. A product owner who publicly praises the accomplishments of the team will receive better response to requested changes.
All these people can wield considerable power in their organizations. Why? The reason is simple. Knowledge workers have a great deal of latitude in their daily work and they will use this latitude to support those who treat them respectfully and get even with tyrants, micro-managers, and political animals.
Giving Orders – The Thrill is Gone
In the book The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker quotes President Truman who said: “Poor Ike; when he was a general, he gave an order and it was carried out. Now he is going to sit in that big office and he’ll give an order and not a damn thing will happen.” If a United States president is unable to assume his orders will be followed, an executive in a modern, agile organization should not be surprised if his orders are met with the sound of crickets chirping.
In an agile organization, power comes from expertise rather than organizational rank. The subject matter expert with 20 years experience in the industry will act as product owner, prioritizing new features and determining when the product is ready to ship. The veteran software engineer will share best practices with colleagues, thereby enforcing programming standards. The senior project manager will mentor other project managers as they transition to agile methods. The entire organization will mature and improve without the need for a single order from senior management.
What Makes Project Management So Difficult?
Projects, particularly IT projects, have a notoriously high failure rate even in organizations with mature project management processes. Why is project management so difficult? In my experience, there are four reasons:
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1) The project objectives are often given to the project manager rather than negotiated
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2) The project manager is entirely dependent on the performance of team members to achieve the project objectives, but has little control over who is assigned to the project
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3) The project team members are not directly accountable to the project manager
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4) The project team members have other jobs that conflict with their project duties
In spite of this, some project managers are successful because they have mastered the use of power and influence within their organization. This will be the topic of future posts.
Are those storm clouds ahead?
Cloud computing, which allows users to rent software applications rather than buy or build, has been the subject of myriad articles recently. Publications that target software developers and system integrators position cloud computing as the next big opportunity for the software industry. They focus on the business benefits and the fact that the sales process can bypass IT decision-makers. On the other hand, publications that target corporate IT managers focus on the technical challenges associated with cloud computing and say very little about the benefits.
In order to make well-informed decisions about cloud computing, you will need both perspectives. Consider the following as you collect data and opinions.
1) Business needs drive technology solutions, not the other way around
2) Technical issues need to be translated into risk events
3) Risk mitigation plans must be developed for the risk events
If you come to the conclusion that cloud computing makes business sense, start small, proceed incrementally and be prepared to adapt. The IT department will need to adapt its processes, services and culture. Security processes will need to be revised. The focus of the development teams will transition from processing to data integration. The service philosophy will need to change from being a control point to becoming a trusted advisor. IT professionals have adapted to new technology trends in the past and they will adapt to cloud computing if necessary. But it may be a bit stormy for a while.
Three Traits of an Agile Manager
An agile organization needs managers who can receive and quickly respond to feedback from customers, peers, and team members. Some managers will be unable to adapt to an agile culture while others will be quite successful. It has been my experience that successful agile managers will have the following traits.
In a fast-paced, adaptive environment a manager receives a barrage of information from multiple sources – email, texts, meetings, wikis, etc. The manager must have an innate sense of organization to ensure that information does not “fall between the cracks.” A successful manager will build and continually refine a system for managing information. The type of system used is less important than the manager’s desire to organize.
In a dynamic environment, it is easy to give in to the temptation to follow each “bright shiny object” that comes into view. A successful manager must have the ability to distinguish between what is important and what is interesting and the discipline to focus only on the important. The manager must also have the discipline to honor commitments and thereby instill the same discipline in the team.
An agile culture promotes face-to-face communication, and that communication can sometimes be unpleasant. The new feature does not meet the customer’s expectations. Priorities have changed – again. A developer fails to meet a commitment. A successful manager must have the maturity to control his own emotions and deal with issues calmly, objectively, and professionally.
You may be thinking that these are traits that ANY manager should have – agile or not. And you would be right. However, it is possible for a manager to be successful in a traditional organization without all three traits. In an agile organization, all are required.
A Perspective on Stress
Many years ago, I was speaking with a relative who had just taken a management position at the Pentagon. Paul had been a bench scientist for decades, and was completely unprepared for the stress. Congressional staffers were demanding information, budget cuts were a constant threat, yet he noticed that a co-worker came to work every day whistling and in good spirits. He asked the co-worker, who was a retired colonel, how he was able to handle the stress. The colonel replied, “Easy – no one is getting shot here. What are they going to do to me? Yell at me? Call me names? Fire me? I’m okay with that. Last I checked, they aren’t taking us out in the parking lot and shooting us!”
The old colonel’s words are worth remembering.
