The Agile PMO: Leading the Effective, Value driven, Project Management Office Book Review

Every PMO I have seen created ended up being a dumping ground for the duds in the organization. This is especially true in government. It usually comes to fruition through the failed efforts of project managers throughout the organization getting bad enough that the business owners need to take action. Many times, not all the time, they staff the PMO with the PMs that were failing and shove some PMO certification training down their throats and expect that to be enough. They either hire a certified PMO director, or the PMO director emerges from the group by being the first to dazzle the business with all the new warm and fuzzy PMO buzz words they've learned. Other times I have seen consultants brought in to whip the failing PMs into shape. Organizing them, training them, and burning them out. The consultants set up new software that takes an army to man. They get meetings on the calendar. Lots of meetings, some with a ball standing in a circle, and some behind closed doors to handle all the issues that couldn't be resolved in 15 minutes while passing a ball around. By the time the consultants are done with them they are as busy as they can possible get updating the new software, having meetings, and generating reports. The business is happy. Their PMs are finally doing something. It says so right there in the new reports they are getting. No matter how the PMO comes about, everything looks great through the rose colored glasses everyone is wearing, but that never lasts. When the projects start coming in over budget, late, and buggy, that is when the PMO losses all respect, authority, and becomes a dumping ground for the duds no one knows what to do with. I have listed the books chapters below to give you an idea of the subjects covered. Section 1 – Colossal Failures of PMOs Chapter 1 – The Tactical PMO Chapter 2 – The Methodology PMO Chapter 3 – The Project Manager Home PMO Section 2 – Remarkable Mis-directions of a Value Based PMOs Chapter 4 – Biting into Cake (and chocking) Chapter 5 – Thinking in Tools and losing Perspective Chapter 6 – The obstacle-creating PMO – A true blunder Section 3 – Ultimately - how to construct and maintain a value adding PMO Chapter 7 – Breakthrough Change Leadership Chapter 8 – Reliably staying True to Value Chapter 9 – The Great and Simple Agile PMO – Delivering Value Easily Chapter 10 – Interfacing between Linear Waterfall and Agile Approaches When this book arrived and I saw the size of it, I did not think I was going to find much value in it, but I am glad the opposite is true. I found the examples and reasons for PMO failure to be the same I have seen over the years. I also agree with the concepts he presents for a successful PMO. The best part about it is that he get straight to the point and stays on point. The book is not bloated with a bunch of agile mantras, or a bunch of meaningless statistics collected by some obscure company who has a 3 page blog on the web, and the experiences he shares with us are all related to the topic at hand. This book does not take long to read so the investment on your side is a few bucks and minimal time, but it has the potential of helping you avoid going down the wrong road, or recognizing that you are down the wrong road. Over all I highly recommended it to all those that a part of a PMO, or are thinking about trying to bring one to live.

The Agile PMO: Leading the Effective, Value driven, Project Management Office (Volume 3)

The Agile PMO: Leading the Effective, Value driven, Project Management Office (Volume 3)

Downloadable Video: Achieving Agile Transformation with Kanban, Kotter, and Lean Startup

Change in IT is the only constant that you find in IT. Even the methods for managing change, change. Resistance to change is an open invitation to the Grim Reaper of software development projects in decent size companies.

I have mentioned this in other book reviews, and find that it applies here as well. I was sitting in a meeting some time ago with a company that was embracing Scrum like a ten year old being offered a warm plate of chocolate chip cookies. They were grabbing at it as fast as they're little hands could reach out and grab the goodies.

Watching this made me wonder what is was about Scrum that made them embrace it so emphatically. They had claimed to be an Agile shop for years, but were still failing to deliver quality software on time within budget. In past years they refused every single proposed process improvement recommendation made by consultants.

They literally went from zero process (using the name Agile to execute no process at all) to zealot Scrumbots overnight. They didn't even think once about the risk that is associated with change, or how much change really needed to happen in order for the project to be successful. The outcome of this project was very bad, job costing bad.

I have seen Scrum attempted multiple times. Depending on the perspective most failed or most succeeded. Watching from the sidelines, our consultant team's view was they failed miserably most of the time, but according to the internal managers that made the choice to go with Scrum they were a huge success. Depending on who was asking the development team, us, or the managers, they had completely different answers.

In most of these projects the most important party, the end user, saw no change to the quality of software delivered and sometimes slightly worse quality. They were never the wiser that the team was attempting Scrum, so their opinion didn't matter. What?

Yep, in most of these attempts I have witnessed, the end user's activities didn't change. Neither did the upper or middle management, sales, or marketing. It was a development team level attempt to implement a bottom up change that requires change at every level in any decent size organization for it to succeed.

Implementing new processes requires a lot of change and that means a lot of resistance. Change is stressful, even positive change is stressful. According to the original Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale marriage is number 7 on the stressful events list.

The way I see change is if you don't manage change, change will manage you. Have you ever been in one of those environments labelled fire mode. Constant chaos is the norm for the day. Everyone comes in grabs their fireman's helmet and runs to the brightest burning fire.

Watching this video series will show you how to avoid that. This videos series is more of a means to an end rather than an end in itself. If you choose to pursue the lines of thought in this series you will begin of a long, hard, fun, and rewarding journey.

I have copied the description of each lesson below from the LiveLessons site.

Lesson 1

”The Case for Lean Change” presents the case for Agile change and showcases why technology organizations should use it. Current management thinking is out of date and needs to be revamped for today’s uncertain markets. Agile and Lean methods provide the basis for modern technology organizations looking to succeed in the modern world. Agile change is risky, and many agile transformations fail. Lean change is an agile change management method that provides solutions to many of these challenges.

Lesson 2

”The Change Canvas” starts with a review of the canvas as a tool for collaboration. The lesson includes step-by-step instructions for using the candidates, allowing change agents to co-create and co-execute a change model with change recipients and other change stakeholders. The lesson explains the concept of a Minimum Viable Change (MVC), enabling small changes to be validated quickly. Finally, suggested techniques and best practices are described when applying the Change Canvas to change initiative.

Lesson 3

”Validated Change Lifecycle” describes a lifecycle that provides a structured way for change agents to learn their way through a successful agile change. Insight is provided as to how change agents can be at risk and it discusses agile change initiative using the Validated Change Lifecycle. Each step of the lifecycle is examined using a real world example. The last segment pulls the four stages together to give a complete Lean Change lifecycle view.

Lesson 4

”Managing Organizational Transformation” examines how the Lean Change method can be scaled to support large-scale Agile transformation. The lesson provides advice on how to structure and facilitate transformation planning sessions using a Transformation Canvas. Prioritizing MVC based on risks exposed on the Transformation Canvas is also covered. The lesson also provides a walk-through of a catalog of reusable MVC patterns, as well as examples. Finally, it gives advice on how to structure workshops, meetings, and synchronization to effectively manage a large-scale agile transformation.

The world has changed its demands on products and services in the IT world. It wants new innovation tomorrow not next year, and when they get it tomorrow, they want to be able to customize it to their individual needs.

There really is not much choice. You are going to have to start thinking about implementing agile processes in your organizations sooner or later, do yourself a favor and watch this video series first.

Get the Videos here!!

iPhone: The Missing Manual Book Review

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about my skill set is that because I can develop software for the iPhone, iPad, and Windows 8 tablets, I must know everything there is to know about using them. 90% of my time spent on a computer is spent in code, UML tools, and using basic Word functionality. I do not play games, make photo albums, or read books on them. In other words, I am not as computer savvy as the business user or teenager that use them to connect to the world and conduct their business or coordinate a gaming session. I am very grateful for the Missing Manual series because they put everything I need to know about my devices in one place, and I don't have to spend the time looking for features. I have listed the five parts of this Missing Manual and the chapters they contain below. The iPhone as Phone Chapter 1 The Guided Tour Chapter 2 Typing, Editing & Searching Chapter 3 Phone Calls & FaceTime Chapter 4 Speech Recognition—and Siri Chapter 5 Voicemail, Texting & Other Phone Tricks Pix, Flix & Apps Chapter 6 The iPhone as iPod Chapter 7 Camera, Photos & Video Chapter 8 All About Apps Chapter 9 The Built-In Apps The iPhone Online Chapter 10 Getting Online Chapter 11 The Web Chapter 12 Email Connections Chapter 13 Syncing with iTunes Chapter 14 iCloud Chapter 15 The Corporate iPhone Chapter 16 Settings Appendixes Appendix Signup & Setup Appendix Troubleshooting & Maintenance As with all the Missing Manuals, the book is on the Missing Manuals web site. It has links to all the sites, software, and white papers mentioned in each each chapter. They are organized by chapter so they are easy to find. One of the cool things I really like about this book is all the crazy little features I would never find on my own. Some of them are how to invert the colors on the phone, how to have the phone speak everything on the screen, how to make free ring tones, free texting with Google Voice, all the weird stuff you can do with Siri, how to tweak Spotlight results, and much much more. Another cool thing I like is how the author points out different ways to save money throughout the book. This Missing Manual is in full color. Not all of them are, and for a book about using an interface like the iPhone it makes a big difference. The index is very thorough and laid out really nice. This may seem trivial, but I am currently reading two programming books, and one of them has a horrible index, and the other has none. They are both great books, but they won't be very good references at all. I highly recommend this book to the user that wants to know how to use all the applications and features included with the iOS 7. The most amazing thing about this book is how many topics the author covers, and they cover them in detail giving lots of screenshots so you can see what they're discussing. If you are thinking about buying your first iPhone, this book is perfect for seeing what you'll be getting.

iPhone: The Missing Manual

iPhone: The Missing Manual