Sustainable Pace

From Maria Matarelli
Sustainable Pace --  It is important for teams to find their sustainable pace. This applies to individuals and businesses as well. Sustainable pace is working at a rate that can be maintained long term, not just for a short period of time working at full capacity, rather a reasonable rate that can be sustained.

   

"Endless business requirements, desired features, market pressures… There is always more work that needs done. Sometimes, it may feel like endless sprints where you thought you saw the finish line, but every time you round the track they tell you there’s another lap. You dig deep and pull together the energy to continue to sprint, but again, you round the last turn and push forward toward the end and people on the sidelines are yelling “another lap, another lap” and you check to see if you can find the energy to keep going, but you can’t. You keep thinking you’ll have a break but it never ends. The sprints are seemingly endless back-to-back cycles and you see no end in sight. You need to catch your breath, you need water, you’re getting blisters… You’ve burnt out"... Read the full article on Sustainable Pace: Trusting Your Teams on the Scrum Alliance Website.

Innovation Games - Prioritization

From Scotty Bevill, IGQI, IGTF

Talking today about one of the most common issues we see in the project and program management prioritization issues. Let's explore a couple of collaborative games that exploit two and three point prioritization to alleviate and understand this conundrum.  Another impact of the lack of prioritization for project managers is a scope creep that exists from customers with rapidly changing requirements and market dependent products.  By prioritizing and time-boxing these functions, the product team provides a servant model for managing the new features that emerge throughout the life of the product and not the life of the project.

As we all have been in the position of complex prioritization when programs are interdependent, the results of this are difficult to see at the project level when determining what to work on and when. Because there are different power distances in different organizational structures, and referent power inherently impacts the decisions we make, we have a need to avoid this type of pressure in the work.  We can put all of the individuals into the prioritization process interactively. (I will say that referent power and negotiation may still be present, but it will be in front of everyone else in the room driving a consensus by culture and avoiding the blame game while the work is performed.)

In our first example, we'll discuss simple, but very effective games called, 20/20 Vision from Innovation Games®

Figure 1.1 © 2011 The Innovation Games® Company 

Luke Hohmann describes the 20/20 Vision in comparison to the eye doctor and his work comparing different lenses until YOU decide which lenses best suit your vision needs.  Once this is complete, the glasses are made and TESTED for fit, tweaked for quality, and a follow up (RETROSPECT/DEMO) is scheduled.  Depending on the results of the follow-up, the new glasses are accepted or iteratively modified and additional follow-ups are scheduled.  You can see by this example that the customer (YOU) need to be sure of what you want, but it's a process to ensure you get what you are asking for; and that's a natural value management system.

So how does it work?  Once the parties involved are invited to the same room, the facilitator has the opportunity to solicit feedback and build understanding with the entire group represented.  Features or projects, depending on the level you are working (e.g. project vs. program management) are written on cards and put on the board one at time.  Each card is either less important or more important the previous cards placed on the board.  The ever widening complexity is then introduced to the group gradually and prevents overloading the prioritization process with too many features and draws the picture and the participants into the consensus over a short period of time.  Click Here to Learn more about the specific game play.

Each feature is discussed in relation to previous features as the list builds into a complete picture of what's important.  While everyone has their opinion of what's important, negotiations and conversations begin discussing different points of prioritization allowing for team building and cross-functional consensus.  When the business drivers are not explicitly defined (as with many large enterprise efforts) This understanding will prevent changes in the scope and expectations from the team by increasing the understanding of the product based on the outcomes of the engagement versus a command decision from above.

In a second example, we employ one of my personal favorite game types with many different options.  The 2x2 grid.  By comparing two variables you can get individuals to understanding by coming to the decisions on their own.  Examples include Important/Urgent, as with the Merrill Covey Matrix in First Things First, Effort/Cost, Cost/Value, etc...  In this example, we talk about creating a quadrant diagram and have the attendees place the each card (feature) in the quadrant that best represents it's influence in the company's interests.  Quadrant planning, Agile Bang for the Buck, Merrill Covey Matrix, or whatever your customer game, this method provides a means to have the influence drive the priority in the context of the business.

In our example, you can see we've used Impact/Effort.  In this example, there is a hidden layer unknown to the first-time players.  The business can predetermine that anything that has low effort, high positive impact should be done now, low impact, low effort can be done later, higher effort tasks should be left to be discussed or removed from the backlog as new priorities are added to the backlog over time.  The primary advantage of this prioritization is a focus on productivity for the team while gaining the most "bank for the buck" in the project's CPI (Cost Performance Index), however, prioritization becomes a by-product.

Remember that the games are a means, not an end.  If you are taking into consideration your company, it's culture, and it's power structure, you can easily put the decisions on the business where they belong and successfully facilitating the engagements, the project team can remain focused on quality and value.  Lastly, remember that as a facilitator, the games rules and roles are shared with the players.  The results will be presented when the games are over and processed.  If you spend time explaining all of the by-product value of the games themselves, you may lose your audience.  So just start playing and embrace the discussion.  Good Luck.

Innovation Games Understanding Buy A Feature

From Scotty Bevill, Innovation Games® Qualified Instructor / Trained Facilitator

So you asked, we'll deliver.  Luke Hohmann (http://innovationgames.com) CEO provides a video in the context of sales support allocation process.  Whether you are an agile team, marketing team, a scrum product owner, functional manager, brand manager, or a stakeholder in the product development process, this is for you.

Buy A Feature In the following video we explore the sales acquisition process and how a sales account manager gains insights from the team, feedback for the customer, and an understanding of multiple perspectives.  Using this video as the example, I want to translate some of the value a  product owner would glean from this type of engagement while understanding the stakeholder prioritization and the impacts from the team perspective in a virtual market game.  I will cover these in Alternative Contexts I & II.




You may begin to see similarities with your environment as developers and stakeholders are separated in the early phases of project & portfolio management and resource allocation constraints depending on your type of organization. (Time Code: 1:00)

Alternative Context I: Program Managers, Brand Managers, and PMO
Using this type of interface from a program management perspective allows for a deeper understanding in what the customer (stakeholders) would pay for and opening a door for understanding why the priorities are what they are.  Bridging the gaps in the big picture for the team enables the company to get behind the strategic initiatives using a system designed for feedback without the complex overhead of distributed team meetings and weak agendas.

• Roles
• Emily: Program Managers
• Engineers: Stakeholders
• Objective: To prioritize projects projects using a virtual market for international and distributed teams by acquiring real-time in put from cross-functional stakeholders.
• Alternative approaches: Instead of using historical project costs or high level initiation budgets, Emily could price the projects too expensive or any one stakeholder to implement the vote requiring the functions to collaborate and negotiate on which project are the highest priority and therefore getting additional commitment to the budget necessary to execute successfully.
• Initial Insights
• Initial willingness to support a project without negotiation
• Likelihood of resource support and allocation in weaker matrix environments
• A clearer understanding of what's important to whom and a conversation describing how it came about
• Direct observation of the conversations that led to the prioritization

Alternative Context II: Product Managers, Marketing Managers, and Scrum Teams

Using this type of interface from a project perspective, whether agile or not, the team gains the insights directly from the stakeholders, but this time, let's assume the features were sourced from a customer/end user engagement that created a diverse group of features (i.e. Product Box, Prune the Product Tree, or Buy 'Em a Hot Tub) that may or may not make it into the release plan.  In most organizations we've seen there are disconnects between the product ownership (the business) and the development team working to understand the requirements.  This process of Buy A Feature allows the team and the stakeholders to interact visually and collaboratively, even with distributed, offshore, and international team members or stakeholders.

• Roles
• Emily: Product Manager or Project Manager
• Engineers: Stakeholders and Development Team Members
• Objective: To prioritize features within a single product backlog or project documentation and obtaining buy-in and understanding of "what" the team will work on first
• Alternative approaches: Emily could include the perceived value of features or the perceived complexity (cost) of the features to be implemented.  While this may not be available this early in the process, iterative planning may allow for a window of opportunity for this technique is major risk occurs with market deviation or unknown organizational impacts occur)
• Insights:  
• Conflict Arrest: A clear understanding of what the team will work on from the stakeholders perspective
• Technical Debt and Risk Mitigation as Developers provide initial input to the feasibility and capability of the organization to implement more complex features before they are anticipated and expected by the business
• Immediate feedback and commitment by the business to customer of upcoming features 
• Uniform Cross-Functional Product Vision
• Stakeholders and testers bought into a product are generally more available to speed up acceptance testing and ensure quality implementations to production