Project Junction

Are you a project manager or ScrumMaster? During your daily scrums to assess project status, you ask your team three basic questions:

1. What did you do for the project yesterday?
2. What are you planning to do today?
3. Do you have any obstacles preventing you from accomplishing your goal?

Given that the goal is to get in and get out of these daily status meetings in 15 mins or less, one of the toughest jobs for the ScrumMaster is to redirect team members that exhibit self oriented behaviors that derail the meeting (and suck all of the air out of the room).

The Digressor

For example, let’s say a person on your team can’t stay focused on the topic. We’ll call him or her “The Digressor. When I say, “The processor is running hot.” He says, “That reminds me of a trip I took to the Bahamas. The water was Azure blue and the sand was as soft as pillow. They served the most delectable Mai Tai drink with light rum, creme de almond, triple sec, sweet and sour mix and pineapple. [He takes a quick breadth] I wonder if pirates drank Mai Tais? Speaking of pirates …” Arrgghhh!

Has anyone ever hijacked a meeting you were in to pontificate about something that has no relevance to the topic?

The Redirect

The effective ScrumMaster is prepared to redirect self oriented behaviors. For example, every time a Digressor wanders off track, you might say, “We need to get back on topic or we won’t be able to cover our agenda today.” Or you might say, “That’s sound wonderful. Can we come back to it after we cover the rest of our agenda?” Before you return to the Bahamas topic make sure you dismiss everyone who has more urgent matters to attend to.  This visual of people walking out or disconnecting from the phone will usually que the digressor that his topic is not that interesting to everyone else.

You can find more useful tips for silencing a rambler under Top Tips on the front page of my website. Click Here

Do you have other examples of bad behaviors and possible ways to redirect the behavior? Share them with us.

CYNTHIA DANAHER divides the people she has worked with over the years into three types:

1. There are those who say, “There’s a rat in this room, and I’m going to kill it,”
2. A second group says, “There’s a rat in this room; let’s figure out a plan to kill it.”
3. And a third group asks, “Did anyone notice there’s a rat in the room?”

She forgot one category … “The rats in the room.”
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Source: Getting Noticed in A Far-Flung Outpost, the Wall Street Journal

I wonder how Apple runs their decision checkpoint meetings? If their meetings are like our meetings in IBM, here’s how the decision to charter the iPod possibly played out.  “Here ye. Here ye. Now that we’ve reviewed the project proposal for this music system, it’s time to vote.  Let’s go around the table and vote by function:”

Strategy
“A music player doesn’t fit into our business model. We’re a computer company.”
Vote:  Reject proposal

Market Intelligence
“Sony has a lock on the market.  We’ll never break it.”
Vote:  Reject proposal

Finance
“The expense is too high. We could use that money to make another Mac platform.”
Vote:  Reject proposal

Fulfillment:
“This would require that we build an on-line music store from scratch! Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to construct the IT Infrastructure?”
Vote:  Reject proposal

Steve Jobs’ then picked up a prototype, played with it for a few minutes and asked, “Have you tried this cool click wheel thing?”

Decision made.

Lessons: Sometimes you gotta go with your gut. And client centric usability trumps the stuff you can’t touch (like processor speed and memory) almost every time. Are there any other lessons here?

I am going to call out a team member in this post. To protect his identity, I won’t tell you his middle name. Anywhoo … Chuck [?] Bryan exhibits behaviors that deserve recognition:

• He calls people directly on the phone to discuss complex topics.
• Even when he disagrees with me, I feel like buying him a beer.
• He properly prioritizes the workload on his desk.
• He plays nice with the other kids in the sandlot.
• When he takes an action, he writes it down.
• He’s a closer - he gets things done.
• He knows when to start talking.
• He knows when to stop talking.
• He tells me ‘No.’

On the last point, who do you like better: a) the team member who tells you ‘yes’ and than chronically fails to deliver or b) the team member that flatly refuses to do some task? Today, Chuck told me, “Nobody cares about this particular deliverable, except you … I’m not going to do it.” After the initial jolt of indignation, I had to acknowledge to myself that he was right.

Did I mention that Chuck is the offering manager for six solutions that will announce 4Q? While shepherding those offerings, he’s engineering changes to our solution edition process to scale our operations with fewer resources. He’s relentless about finding ways to circumvent unnecessary Process Scope.

Give me 10 Chucks and 10 “Nums” and I’ll beat our competition senseless.

My daughter Katie picked her wedding photographer.  Before you ask,  Eric Von Bargen is his real name! Eric prefers candid shots with movement over formally posed portraits.

Here’s my daughter’s wedding from his eye Click Here. Remarkable.  He saw things I would never see.

Katie made a wise choice.

My lower back is genetically deficient. I’m not sure who to blame, both my Mom and Dad suffered from degenerate disk disease.

The other weekend, I heard my back “click” when I was lifting a heavy box out of the back of the truck to setup the wedding reception for my daughter. And I heard my back “click” again when I danced with my wife at the reception. Of course, I knew all along I was going to throw my back, but that weekend I followed my Mom’s advice to stop being a sissy and just live with it.

Since June 8th, I’ve been sleeping on the floor next to my bed annoyed by the uncomfortable numbness in my toes. Every night, my dog Andy saunters by to lick my face and burp. He’s kind of sweet in his own crude way. I know he’s thinking … well, if you aren’t using that thick mattress up there … can I?

I’ve resigned myself to a six week rehab on the floor with my nightly visit from Andy. It’s kind of touching that he cares enough about me to check in and give me a lick at 2:00 am during his nightly rounds. I may have bad back genes, but I’ve got a good dog.

As a parenting lesson learned, I said that I would never let a tiny turtle back in my house. However, my personal biography says “I love turtles.” My daughter Katie, noting the contradiction asked, “Which is it, do you love or hate turtles?”

Here’s my explanation. We have a box turtle that lives in our garden. I never feed that turtle. I never clean his aquarium. He’s very low maintenance. I haven’t even burned any mind calories giving him a name. My only obligation to that box turtle is to check under my truck tires and make sure that I don’t run over him when I back out of my driveway. I love that turtle.

“I have no respect for turtles on welfare.”

Katie’s turtle, Franklin, on the other hand was a Trojan horse. He entered my home the size of a quarter in a plastic dish that cost $1.99. We’ve since spent over $100 to upgrade his abode. Franklin consumes large quantities of expensive turtle food. And he poops that expensive food all over his expensive home. There’s not a filter system in the world that can keep pace with his effluence.

Franklin is a turtle on steroids. I swear she’s bred that mutant turtle just to keep me out of her room. I’m scared to step inside with Franklin standing guard.

So the short story is that I do love turtles. I love every self sufficient turtle that lives outside of my home.

I’m collecting your memories from Jamie and Katie’s wedding last weekend. Just press the comment link below to post your observations.

My daughter Katie married Jamie Ives yesterday. I can live with that. He’s the guy every parent wants their daughter to meet.

At a time like this, you can’t help but look back at the years and wonder if you met your responsibilities as a parent. I made quite a few mistakes along the way, but things turned out well despite my failings.

In the project management world, we document our achievements and mistakes in a file called lessons learned. Here’s my parenting lessons from raising Katie.

+ What went well

• Katie loves God and has a moral compass.
• Katie loves her mom and me.
• She loves animals. In fact, she’s been a vegan for some time now despite the fact that her mom and I eat meat.
• She didn’t get a single stitch or break a single bone growing up.
• She’s an incredibly graceful dancer.
• She’s a whiz on the computer. When I have a problem with the iPod, I can ask her for help.
• She appreciates the mathematical nuisances of baseball and the beauty of a staunch defense in football.
• She enjoys a wide variety of music including classical.
• She dresses smartly.
• She’s a hard worker.

++ What could have gone better

• I may have been a bit too restrictive. Ha. Ha. Too late!
• I could have used more of my “Reasonable Mind” to settle disagreements. I just don’t know where that reasonable mind goes when I go toe to toe with Katie.
• I’ll never home school a child again. As a side note: Teachers are WAY underpaid.
• I would have made Katie do more chores around the house.
• I would have never let her bring that 25 cent goldfish she won at the fair into my house. Thanks a lot for encouraging her to play that carny game, Jerry. That goldfish cost me a couple hundred bucks after I purchased an aquarium and all of the accoutrements.
• I would have never allowed her to buy the “tiny” turtle in the plastic tray. She’s had Franklin for years … he’s not little anymore and he scares me.
• We should have attended more Durham Bulls baseball and FSU football games together.
• We would have gone camping every year.
• We would have kept dancing after dinner (we stopped years ago).

My number one regret is that we don’t hug as often as we did when she young.

That’s something I can change. That is something I will change. From this day forward, she doesn’t get in my house without a hug.

A respected IBMer named Gia Lyons left our company to work for a smaller firm jive software. It takes nerve to leave the IBM safety net. I applaud her moxie.

The Newcomer Advantage

Should we worry that Gia is no longer an insider? After all, she’s knows our strategy and she’s could attack us in the marketplace. Pah.LEE.zzz! Get a grip my fellow beamers. Why should anybody worry about her taking our lunch money? We have brilliant minds in IBM and a war chest to fund our projects. Why is that we we fret about these small start ups?

The answer, I fear, is that they have a competitive advantage. That’s right. These nascent companies have a distinct advantage in bringing products to market. Their advantage has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with execution. You see they run “lean” while we run “heavy.”

The IBM Legacy Millstone

It’s hard to run lean in IBM when you are constrained by legacy checklists, legacy processes and legacy fulfillment systems. These new firms deploy small, self governed teams driven by direct customer feedback. There are some folks in IBM who wouldn’t know a customer if one knocked on the invisible door at their cubicle entrance.

There are other Beemers who welcome customer interaction and apply Agile development principles to their workflow. When these folks break out here in IBM, I suspect that we’ll run all over the upstart competitors. Here’s my keys for breaking out of our cubicle cells.

John’s Keys to Software Development

1. Stop playing it safe by running endless business cases when your gut already knows what you should do. Move. And move fast. Speed doesn’t kill. Speed wins!
2. Stop throwing money and people at problems. The CoCoMo model of software development long ago demonstrated diseconomies of scale. Keep your core team small and travel light.
3. Stop slowing down the players on the field with politics and endless status reporting through multiple layers of non value add executive overhead.
4. Stop gold plating requirements. Build a working model of the core requirements first before you add a single bell or whistle.
5. Start accepting measured risk. This is business. You’re paid to retain some risks.
6. Start using new development processes like Agile and lightweight project management tools.
7. Start dismantling legacy systems and systematically move to a SOA or SaaS model.
8. Stop jive talkin’ and start doing.

Are you telling me that we can’t do this in IBM? Of course we can. The only question is will we? The executives in our company need to put the key into the lock and open the door.

Did you notice that I didn’t include any Tools in my short list above? People and methods are the primary keys to success. In my opinion, collaboration is the nuclear fusion of business innovation. Gia figured that out long ago. And that’s why I’ll continue to listen to her even though she’s now outside of our IBM firewall.
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