James King

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Archive for the ‘Reflection’ Category

Ask the team about technical debt – the creeping doom graph

Posted by James King on July 31, 2010

I was just talking about the sad state of affairs where some teams know they are making life harder by taking shortcuts or creating workarounds that will slow the team down in the future. In fact, my grandma had some pretty good advice on this:

There never seems to be time to do things properly – but don’t worry, there will be time tomorrow to react to the crisis that resulted from  what you didn’t do properly today.

To avoid this crisis management though, here is a simple way to measure the “technical debt” we are creating today.

Put the following table up on a white board and have each team member put their vote into the appropriate box.  For politically charged projects youmay even have a secret ballot.

When we deploy our changes, the system will be … -2 -1 0 +1 +2
More complex (-) or simpler (+) than before          
Harder (-) or easier (+) to maintain and support          
Harder (-) or easier (+) to enhance or build on next time          

Rather than voting out of 5 however, they are comparing the system before they touched it to the way it will be after they deploy their changes.  Specifically their votes will be as follows

  • 0 means that there is no real change in the measure;
  • + 1 means things are better than before and +2 means a lot better; and
  • - 1 means things are worse or more complicated than before and -2 means even more so.

Now simply average the answers to give a score for each question. 

Hold regular retrospectives or reflection sessions should highlight the ongoing impact of building (or removing) complexity from your life.  But if you want a solid predictor of the impact is will have over time, try using this creeping doom graph (which can also be a virtuous circle graph if you are actively making things better each week).

Creeping doom or virtuous circle of improvement?

Or better yet - give me a call.  I will come and run a couple of workshops for the team to help them see where they are creating un-needed complexity for themselves.  And more importantly I can help them turn the creeping doom graph into a graph of positive improvement – honestly … it can be done.

Posted in Consulting, Measurement, Reflection, Techniques | Leave a Comment »

Growth or reduction in technical debt – why not just ask the team

Posted by James King on July 31, 2010

I just posted an article on measuring quality and maintainablity.  But I am waiting for my tea to boil so I thought I would start a new article.

One of the things that often interests me is that teams feel like they need to cut corners this week to get their work done even though they know it will make life harder next week.

Everyone in the team would say that what they are doing and yet everyone feels like they have to do it. So why do they keep making life harder for themselves (or for the team inheriting what they do).

One theory is that people are evil and will therefore eagerly and knowlingly make the world a worse place. But I have an alternative theory – I think that people are focusing on the things we measure – the things that are top of mind.

So I think one of the causes of stress in the world is simply that people are measuring and focusing on the time it takes to complete each task in front of them, without having time to meausre (or focus on) taking the time to make things better for the team next week.

As a partial antidote to this problem, I propose that we apply an easy measure of the impact we are having on the future ability of our team (and others) to support the work we are doing this week.

In IT teams there are ways of doing this – using measures such as code complexity and function points for example.  But they can be hard and I am lazy.  They also focus on the code and not the data, the overall design or the process changes we are making.

Another approach is to create and update a system (or process) heat map. But on top of this, we can also predict the impact we are having by simply asking the team what they think will happen with the work they are doing.

I will post a couple of ways of doing this – but more importantly, why not just do it?  Next time your are in a team meeting, implementation planning session or restrospective, just ask the crew

  • Whether what they are doing this week is making life easier for themselves and others next week; and
  • What they would do about it if it was up to them.

I bet they can answer both questions quite clearly … and I bet life would get better if they (and you) acted on the answers.

Posted in Measurement, Reflection | Leave a Comment »

Questions for project audits – part two

Posted by James King on July 24, 2010

When auditing a project (or taking over a project or even taking on a senior role in a team) I like to go and talk to everyone in the team.

When I do, I generally ask them the same questions to get a better feel for what is going on.

I really liked a set of questions I picked up from a book called “The First 90 Days”, so I use a modified set of them:

What is your role?

  • What does that mean?
  • How would you explain it to my mother?
  • How would others explain what you do?

How confident are you the project will meet it’s objectives?

  • What are the objectives?  Really?
  • How clear are you on the objectives?
  • What do management think the project is doing?
  • What do others think?
  • If it fails, where will it probably have gone wrong?

What is the biggest issue facing the project?

  • What would happen if we could get rid of that problem?
  • What would need to change to get rid of it?
  • How could we deal with that problem?
  • How is it impacting us/the project?  How does it impact you?
  • How are we currently dealing with it?
  • Why is it still there?  What is stopping us deal with it?
  • What should we do about it now?

What is the biggest unexploited opportunity in the team?

  • What would have to change for us to exploit it?
  • What would happen if we did?

What would you do if you were me?

Most projects are really really complicated.  But most people know how well it is going or how scary it is if they have time to think about it.  So I find you get a pretty good overall understanding if you just ask everybody these questions.

Posted in Investigation, Reflection, Risk | Leave a Comment »

Questions for project audits – part one

Posted by James King on July 24, 2010

I was talking to a colleague recently and promised to share some of the questions I ask when auditing a project (or taking one over).

My first question is generally “what is the project about?” But that generally leads to a vague answer.  So I use my “question compass”:

My question compass

These are the questions I use to get a basic orientation when analyzing just about anything.  By way of explanation though, I don’t always use the exact wording shown.

When asking “what do you mean” I use a technique that sounds really simple and is surprisingly effective – the “nouns and verbs” technique.

I listen for a noun in a sentence and then ask “what do you mean by ‘noun’?”.  When I get a response I ask about one of the verbs in the response “How do people currently ‘verb’?” or “How do you envision people will ‘verb’”.

I keep doing this for a little while even if I think I know what people mean because it is amazing how often it clarifies my understanding.  Then I pick one of the things the person said and ask “why are we doing this project?”.

I do use the famous 5-whys technique to probe more deeply (ie ask why several times) but I also add the question “why else?”.

I was once told that we do things for two reasons – the right reason (the one we tell people) and the real reason.  I think it is a quote from someone famous.  But it certainly clarifies my thinking when I ask this question.

My next question is “Is that true?” and I ask this one in a number of ways:

  • What would the team say the purpose is if I asked them?
  • Do all the steering committee share the same understanding?
  • How do you know that is true?  How do others know?
  • How would you know if that was not the case? (my favourite question).

Almost there – but I still have one last question – “So what?”.  Like asking if something is true, asking so what can seem a bit blunt.  So I ask it in a couple of different ways:

  • What impact is that having?
  • What would happen if we didn’t do it?
  • What would the impact be over the long term if we don’t do it?
  • What will happen if we do it?  What else will happen? What won’t happen?
  • What are you hoping won’t happen if we do that?
  • What will the team/customer say when it happens?

After these questions I generally at least have some idea of what is going on – which is often the best place to start.

Posted in Investigation, Reflection, Risk | Leave a Comment »

Ask yourself if you can do it – don’t tell yourself

Posted by James King on May 29, 2010

I just came across some interesting research on motivation.

Apparently it is more effective to ask yourself “Will I succeed” than to say to yourself “I will succeed”.

Will I apply that lesson next time I want to achieve something important?

Posted in Capability growth, Observations, Reflection | Leave a Comment »

They need to fix accountability

Posted by James King on February 26, 2010

My favourite comment for the week was me and a friend talking about a project we were consulting on. We agreed that “they need to fix their accountability”.

While we might be right, we realised that it is a bit wimpy to suggest that someone else has to fix accountability for a project you are on.

So we had a long discussion about what we could do on the project and we concluded we just needed to make sure we were clear on
- what we delegate (including escalate or ask for);
- when we are ambiguous about our own accountability for something and our own authority for getting things done
- when we were assuming someone else was “handling something” and when we thought we were.
- Next project we will go back to basics and insist on a session where we sit down and explain our roles and responsibilities to each other and then debate them.

We have already had improvements in less that a week. It was so simple that I am wondering if it is worth creating a one day course that covers nothing more than delegation, follow up and expectation setting. Would you come to a course like that or is it something you already know and do?

Posted in Consulting, Reflection | 1 Comment »

Why do the good project managers doubt themselves?

Posted by James King on September 13, 2009

I was coaching a project manager last week and we worked through several of the issues he is facing.

He was probably hoping that there were some cool new Lean or Agile tools that he could use to deal with some seemingly really difficult problems.  In fact I always hope the same thing – it makes coaching and work easier.

Sadly, and predictably, he didn’t need cool new techniques.  He was already applying common sense, accountability and a real focus on getting the best outcome for the project (best for the team, the organisation and the customer).  He was also treating people like people, risks like risks and even status reports as a way of communicating status.

Yet he was still struggling.

As we worked through his issues a couple of things came out of the conversation.  He noted that he rarely gets time to sit and reflect on the project because it is too important and too urgent.  He also noted that if it is so importantly maybe he does need time to think.

But for me what came out was the crystalisation of a pattern I was vaguely aware of.

Most good project managers struggle.

  • They start out runing small projects successfully;
  • So they get bigger and harder projects; and then
  • Eventually they either get blown up or find a sustainable rhythm between nightmare project (that they often seem to want every third project) and cruisy project (that they need every third or more projects but rapidly get bored with)

Now if they blow up, they often give up or get shunted out because they failed or struggled with something really hard.  But ironically this is exactly when they can learn to be a great project manager for future projects.  I often say I won’t hire project managers who have no scars because they need to learn from the struggles of being out of their depth or making mistakes, but I would rather someone else pay for that part of their education.

Also ironically, the good project managers seem, like the one I was coaching, to feel apologetic about struggling with really difficult projects.  They seem to feel that if they were better and more experienced the project would not have been such a struggle.

This is proabably true, but then we usually don’t know until half way through what a project will be like. So is is hard to avoid being a project manager and being in trouble.

On the other hand there are also many “sub-optimal” project managers who never feel apologetic.  Sometimes they choose easy projects, usually they ask for far more time, money and resources than a better project manager would need and still struggle to deliver, and every project they blame all problems on the complexity of the project  and claim they did an amazing job simply because the project was always in trouble and they were there to rescue it.

So it seems to be the project managers who doubt themselves that become better project managers, while the ones who blame the complexity of the project and the “dumb” stakeholders who fail to learn and yet costing their projects a lot of money for having the same problems they should have learned to avoid last project.

Posted in Observations, Reflection | 2 Comments »

On reflection

Posted by James King on September 12, 2009

Action without reflection soon turns into panic, yet I don’t know anybody who has serious time to reflect each day at work.

For example, I know of several teams who run small iterations on IT projects and still haven’t had time to sit down and think through how they plan their releases.  So in addition to having the team properly trained, I now run a training game called The Agile Release Planning Game.

The game helps people to experience the process of planning releases and iterations without getting caught up in the detail of their own projects.  So let me know  if you would like me to run the game, or would like to purchase a copy to run for your own teams and customers.

Back in the real world, I facilitate post implementation reviews for projects and post incident reviews for teams who have recently responded to a major incident.

More generally, I provide coaching to individuals in how to better deliver their projects, lift their performance or make the transition to a new (or growing) role.

I also provide workshops and coaching for teams in the areas of process and business consulting, business analsyis and effective project delivery.

You can also call me on +61 4 21 058 459, or email me at james@kingsinsight.com

Posted in Reflection | Leave a Comment »