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| | This is mostly a test of the APLN SharePoint site, but I'd also appreciate your feedback on the content.
I am putting together some material on Flexible Product Development, which is bacically agile development applied to the development of non-software products.
I find that agile principles and values translate to the non-software world well, but the specific agile tools do not generally translate,... |
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| | I forgot to add that I've also added a Wikipedia entry on "Flexible product development," which has a link to the APLN site. |
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| | Preston, I'd be interested in chatting about this subject. Like you, I come from the non-software world and have been working to adapt agile software methods to other types of product development.
Give me a call, I'd like to chat about this.
303-448-9852 |
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| | I've been watching the Yahoo! APM group I founded 3 years ago evolve, and I'm not sure how it benefits members and participants. I understand from Communities of Practice that there will always be some active participants, some passive, and some that go from active to passive and vice-versa. So, in spite of 3 years observing the APM group, I'm still not sure how to reach the passive... |
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| | Well, I am running a project collaboratively where all decisions are made as a group. Now, one person wants a raise. Any suggestions on how to handle this? Is this a group decison as well? Or should there be a group measurement?
Thanks!
-Pollyanna. |
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| | It's true that a lot of the traditional, individual performance metrics that HR departments like aren't applicable to the agile environment. But my experience with group voting on raises leaves a lot to be desired.
My suggestion would be that the project manager should take direct responsibility for deciding raises, but it would be OK to poll the team as one input to the decision. ... |
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| | Sanjiv, this looks like good advice! In my experience, when a small group has a strong sense of purpose, individuals will participate when they have the skills and the time to do so. |
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| | I'm trying to provoke some replies here. We all believe agile methods improve financial results, but I haven't seen any hard models or even quantifiable examples.
The agile movement will be much stronger if we can show business minded executives the financial benefits. I'm working to build a financial model of Agile benefits based on anecdotal evidence.
If you know any examples,... |
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| | Sanjiv,
Interesting observation: it works very well in person but not as a "virtual" group! This would make a valuable academic research project: why does an in-person discussion group work well and a dispersed one on the same subject not work? What are the key factors involved? If we knew this, perhaps we could structure dispersed groups to work better. At least, we would understand when... |
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| | It seems to me that software developers are lucky with agile, because software has some attributes that make agile methodologies possible. These include:
- Object technologies, which allow subdividing a project into modules and developing different features independently in separate iterations.
- Automated builds, which allow continuous testing at a low cost.
- The logic basis of software,... |
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| | Most examples of agile to date have involved a team that is all in one location. But increasingly, real-world teams are dispersed, say some members in the USA, some in Europe, and the rest in Malaysia. You might argue that this shouldn't happen, but it does. So, how can you cope with it when it does?
What tools or approaches help such teams to succeed? Are there good books or articles to help you... |
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| | Here are some anecdotes about communications on dispersed agile teams.
- Dispersed teams agile are maybe only 75% as effective as colocated agile teams, but they are still more effective than non-agile teams of any sort.
- An advantage of dispersed agile teams is that you can have access to experts that you wouldn't otherwise have. That is, the advantage of expert access outweighs the disadvantages...
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| | John,
Where does the 75% number come from? |
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| | Jim, that was an intuitive response from the software development manager I was talking to. I asked him how he judged the cost of dispersed agile compared to colocated agile.
What he meant was that if an ideal colocated team profided 100 "points" of improvement over a waterfall process, a dispersed agile team still provided 75 points.
This manager thought that working... |
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| | Case 1:
There are limits to the detail that I'm allowed to provide, but here is the story. A project with 25 developers was 6 months late after a 2 year development effort. The project had lapse into that unfortunate state where the stakeholders had lost their excitement for it and were looking for alternatives, the developers where exhausted and ducking for cover, and the... |
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| | Lowell, can you tell me if this was an internal IT project or an external, for sale product?
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| | John,
I've been in contact with a guy who is working on his PHD dissertation in this area. I'd be happy to put you in contact with him.
Jim |
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| | The ability to tap expertise located at a distance is a real plus. I need to take it into account. The effectiveness of this expertise will depend on how well the expert is wired into the vision of the project and committed to it. He/she could just be a loose cannon. |
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| | Flexible development simply doesn't work if you don't have the whole team wired in. One of the big barriers to flexible development is that organizations have become so dependent on formalized communications - reports and forms - that they have lost he fluid communications to make teams flexible. |
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| | I've been around this one a bunch. The answer is: How did they set it up in the beginning? Oh, they forgot to talk about this one before they all started pitching in and comparing efforts? Oops!? That happens all the time.
First lesson -- negotiate how individuals will be measured up front.
Generally, if you go down the path of equal pay for everyone, someone feels out of whack with the market... |
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| | WL Gore and Associates separates the compensation discussion from the workteam and leader. They use a compensation committee. Each employee selects and prepares a compensation advocate to represent their value to the committee. Anyone can be an advocate. The advocate need not come from the same area and should be someone other than the work-team leader. Most associates will therefore end ob advocating... |
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| | What you're describing as WL Gore's system is a very collegial approach. The big pitfall is that the system can become politicized. Without anyone clearly responsible for compensation decisions, employees may lapse into simply trying to impress public opinion with the most showy accomplishments, or to take public credit for things.
The most collegial compensation review system... |
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| | Sanjiv,
Interesting post.
To me there are two things to say:
1. Local Chapters. It is quite obvious to me that we are social animals, and in-person interactions are key to, say, developing APLN as a stronger organization. But people will not come "to make APLN better", they will come because, well, they want to. Ex: If I could really explain why I bought Dove soap over Palmolive,... |
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| | Hi Preston - I'm a new member of APLN, and like you, very interested in learning how I can apply Agile methods to non-software development projects. I am getting ready to start a very interesting project where we would be moving into a new market (outside of the US) and our execs are extremely interested in getting up and running as soon as possible. There are a lot of unknowns in this project... |
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| | A friend in Hong Kong has seen a graph that relates project uncertainty to a rise in schedule inaccuracy, but he can't find it now. Does anyone have anything like this?
It occurs to me that measuring uncertainty in general will be tough. |
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| | It sounds like your project is highly exploratory - lots of interdependent unknowns. There's another approach that I call Fuzzy Project Management. It draws a lot from agile software and can be very effective for exploratory projects.
Basically, traditional project management methods serve well for incremental innovation are toxic to exploratory projects.
With a lot of... |
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| | Jim Highsmith has that "exploration factor" scale in his Agile Project Management book. It's not entirely quantitative, but it does score the uncertainty of a project on a scale of 1-10. |
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| | One of the "objections" we get to the introduction of agile is that "we don't so software" (because there is a lot of integration / network hardware).
We beleive that agile still has things to offer albeit some of the s/w engineering practices are more difficult to place. We encourage the customer involvement, team, communication and iteration aspects recognising... |
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| | Hello everyone!
I'm Bob Owen and am studying for a PhD at the RAE 6* rated Salford Centre for Research & Innovation (SCRI) UK under Prof Lauri Koskela. My background is varied: electronics engineer, pilot, intelligence officer, defence information collection and processing systems. I am lecturing on APM around the world, largely to construction people but have also run several seminars... |
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| | Bob, I don't have direct experience with architecture projects, but I do have experience with two other approaches to flexible project management in non-software projects.
One is what I call Fuzzy Project Management, an approach to highly exploratory projects based on some work by Jim Highsmith. This approach recognizes that traditional, deterministic project management is toxic to innovative... |
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| | You may want to check out a book titled "Software by Numbers". It mainly describes the incremental funding model, but has a chapter addressing agile.
Bob Schatz |
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| | Let's talk about the APLN Board resolutions (Feb 2007) for creating, implementing, and evolving an accreditation program for agile project leaders. They are posted in the announcement section of this site.
Is it a good thing?
Are we up to the task?
Do folks want it?
How do we do it well?
Let us know,
Christopher Avery
APLN Secretary |
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| | Is the intent of this program to cover non-software projects as well as pure software?
There's some good work being done in making hardware projects agile, but most of the people I talk with seem to mean only pure software projects when they talk about Agile.
There are big differences between pure software and hardware projects, driven primarily by huge differences in the costs of... |
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| | John -- Great question. I can speak for the APLN Board in saying that our intent is to build agile project leadership (IT related or not) into any accreditation standards that we publish. The challenge you raise is noted -- APLN stands for more than the IT space. |
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| | I'm a bit surprised at how little discussion I've seen of this announcement.
As I understand this action, the APLN is endorsing or at least acquiescing to the idea of certifying agile coaches. I read the context document as saying that if we don't get involved, someone else will create a certification program that will be far worse than any we would create, and without ours as an alternative,... |
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| | I know this is a strange question, but does the APLN has an agreement in place with the PMI for PDU recognition? We meet, share thoughts and have speakers discussing project management, why not getting some PDU credit? That way, we might attract some PMP's to come and join. |
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| | Hi Jochen,
You are correct, APLN meeting attendance qualifies for PDU’s under the PMI self study category. We advertise this at my local Calgary APLN chapter, but we could probably do a better job of making it widely known across the general APLN site. Thanks for suggesting it.
I guess we have to be a little careful how we present it, while we want to attract more PMI folks, I imagine... |
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| | I think this is a great idea. As I understand it, there are two ways for a PMP to get PDU credit. One is to claim anything, even if it isn't approved (but this one is harder to do). The other is for the source to become approved so that PMI recognizes it automatically.
This would attract PMPs, it would give us some legitimacy with PMI, and it would show willingness to be part of the project management... |
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| | Hi Preston,
That’s right, if you get approved by the PMI people can then just quote the training course number to claim their PDUs. I went through the process of becoming a PMI Registered Education Provider (REP) and accredited to award PDU’s for a course a 2 day course about 3 years ago.
You have to submit your materials and document how they align to the PMI process areas. Despite... |
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| | So instead of having each chapter go through this procedure, could APLN in general acquire such "course number" for each APLN chapter meeting. All we would need to do would be charge the time against the very same course. |
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| | I am sorry if I caused confusion between meetings and courses. APLN meetings on different topics would qualify under the general self-directed learning category. By their nature they are each different and so you can not get a general code approved for their content.
If/when the APLN create or endorse training materials for agile project leadership, we could submit that course for approval... |
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