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Keep Calm & We’ll All Get Through This
By Chad Greenslade I went to get my car inspected on Fri Mar-20, as part of renewing its yearly state registration. The lady at the car shop said to me, "You might want to wait, because with all this craziness and everything shut down, if they can't process your registration renewal in time, you're just going to have to get it inspected again!" I thought about it for a quick second, taken aback, the only response I could think of was, “Yeah, but it’s a mail-in application.” I knew it wasn’t a very strong retort. She again says, “Everything is shut down; the driver’s license office is shut down!”, as if she was actively trying to get me engaged in her hysteria. Having a very skeptical view of her impassioned argument, along with my quick determination that she appeared to be hysterical and ignorant, and given the fact that I had already taken the time to drive there, considering the mere $25.50 inspection fee, I decided to risk it. My renewal application hit the mail on Sat Mar-21. Yesterday, Fri Mar-27, I received my sticker. When you subtract mailing time, that’s a three (3) day turnaround for the county tax assessor’s office to deliver my registration sticker, which apparently, is still functioning. My point with this anecdote is that everyone needs to remain calm. Here’s a lady, right in the middle of Prosper, TX, actively spewing uninformed garbage like it’s gospel, stating the government is shutdown and I should forego my legally required automobile inspection and registration. How many other people did she convince of her narrative? The world is not ending. Do you know what I’ve done since this quarantine began? Work. Work every day. Long hours. It has upended the Clients that my company serves and we’ve had to pivot sharply. We all have a role to play. Go to work, if you can. Pay your bills, buy your groceries. I think we can all manage to keep ourselves indoors if we’re sick and only venture out for essentials for a while. Take a socially distant walk. Exercise. Listen to the leaders that you trust; you know that you have a few whom you consider to be moderate or reasonable. Pay attention to what’s happening at the federal level so that you can take advantage of the $2 trillion in cash that’s about to hit the market. If we all don’t freak out, we can adapt to this crisis with grace and class. I’m fortunate to have a job I can do from home. My Clients, however, are in all industries, and are all struggling to make sense of the new world. As a leader in my company, I have to act level-headed at all times. The biggest call to action for me was to keep everyone focused and on-task. Find ways to push forward. Listen to Clients and Employees and quickly adjust. Succinctly communicate facts and limit opinion. Be open and honest, diligent and principled. New opportunities will present themselves that can benefit everyone. My largest account is shrinking by 50%, but I have other Clients that are increasing demand. I know that my company can’t effectively respond to these changing conditions without leadership at all levels, acting like leaders. We are all leaders of something or someone in life. Maybe it’s your children. If you have the word “manager” in your work title, someone in an actual business, that participates in the actual economy, is looking to you for direction. Step-up. Engage. Don’t indulge in fear and paranoia. There will be no nationwide martial law, no FEMA concentration camps. There will be no nationwide suspension of habeas corpus. If the military does get deployed, it won’t be nationwide and it won’t be for long periods of time. When it does happen, remember, THEY ARE AMERICANS AND THEY ARE THERE TO HELP. Trust me, they’d much rather be in the US helping people than in a war zone. Look at what the National Guard is doing in NY State; building hospitals, distributing aid. No one’s coming for your guns. Governor Abbot just clarified his order that gun stores can remain open; god bless him. There’s no place I’d rather be for this crisis. Texas is a proud, strong state. We pull together in times of crisis, not push apart. We’ve seen it time and time again. Every time a disaster happens, neighbors help neighbors. We don’t pillage and loot. We don’t take advantage of others. Our Republican government is clearly focused on getting our economy restarted, above all else. Economies don’t work when society is in a state of civil unrest. No one wants that. Everyone is pulling in the same direction; care for the sick and get the economy restarted. In third-world countries ran by actual dictators, they’d simply round up all the sick and burn them to death. Think about that and why it will never happen in the US. We’re armed to the teeth. There are more civilians than soldiers. Eventually, it’s just a numbers game. No pilot is going to fly a bombing campaign over their own people; it’s an illegal order, and pilots know that. Finally, I highly doubt any service member would ever take up arms against fellow American citizens. The government, the military, FEMA, everyone – it’s all us. It’s you and me. We all know (or were) someone in the military, someone that works for the city, county, or state, someone who is a police officer, etc. In this particular crisis, we’re seeing state and local leaders step-up, at least as much as the federal government. Democrats and Republicans may be bickering, but I believe that most are trying to do their best and protect the citizens under their jurisdiction or representation. Both Democrats and Republicans are being forced to work together. Our government may be slow, but we will eventually rise to the challenge. Fellow Gen-Xers, I’m looking at you. We are uniquely qualified to navigate this crisis. We’ve lived through countless other crises. Not much fazes us. We have a duty to help those who are struggling to cope with this crisis. This is our opportunity to step-up. At best, this is just momentary blip at the midpoint in your life; at worst, decisions we make now will impact the remainder of our lives, and most likely the lives of others. Consider this weight when acting. Seventh in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the seventh in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 7: Engage Stakeholders & Supporters Once you have executive buy-in, you’re now ready to engage your supporters. It’s imperative to get the right people on-board early on. The Agile Champion requires a group of people around them that are dissatisfied with how work is currently performed and are willing to make a change. Stakeholders and supporters fall into three (3) broad categories: Executives: Executives will approve and / or sponsor the agile project. You'll want support from an executive that has a vested interest in the success of new projects. If possible, try to find an influential executive, one that is seen as a leader amongst their peers, someone they trust to bring great vision and planning to the organization, and try to get him or her to sponsor your agile project. Individual Contributors: Your Individual Contributors are the folks that will actually be carrying out the agile project. These are the guys who will need the agile training to execute the agile work processes. You’ll want good representation with this group of people. If your organization has certain disciplines (application development, database, project management, etc.) or product lines, you’ll want though leaders representing these groups. Middle Management: Every Individual Contributor on your team reports to someone. You’ll want to figure out who those people are and talk to them. After all, these people write the performance reviews of your Individual Contributors. Even the strongest Individual Contributor still must do what their manager asks; that's how they retain their position. It’s extremely important to gain middle management buy-in because very often, middle management is directly responsible for executing the operation of the IT department and are unlikely to pose future, unforeseen process barriers if they are engaged early. Once you’ve identified your stakeholders and supporters, schedule meetings to discuss the agile transformation initiative. Educate them on what you’ve learned about agile and how it can meet their objectives. Discuss your plan and key milestones in the agile transformation initiative. These meetings are not the “one-and-done” type. Expect to have multiple conversations as people learn more. You must give people time to learn, to think through agile concepts and how they will impact their day-to-day. Everyone learns at different speeds, so be prepared to be patient. You will be doing ongoing research in order to answer everyone’s questions. If you’re able to answer everyone’s questions and sell them on the benefits, they will follow your lead during the changes ahead. Sixth in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the sixth in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 6: Gain Executive Buy-In Executives have motivations and you must work to understand their nuanced agendas and how they are measured while getting them to agree on a specific course of action. You’re going to need a coalition of aligned executives if you wish to get your agile transformation effort off the ground. Discuss the problems that you are attempting to solve, help them understand why a change is required, and educate them on how you came to explore agile as a solution. The first step of executive alignment is gaining consensus on the problem statement. If executives have differing opinions on what the problem is, they will naturally have differing opinions on the solution. Conversely, executive consensus on a problem statement makes it much easier to gain concurrence on the problem’s solution. You should be able to articulate the problem using actual results from previously completed projects. Empirical evidence such as budget, schedule, and quality data can be examined and used to justify the problem statement. If existing project intake and / or request management processes cannot keep up with demand, this can be further used as justification for change. Many of today’s software products are subscription based with regular updates included as part of the service. A traditional waterfall approach may not support the quick release cadence demanded by your customers. Whatever your justification may be, it’s important to not only cite the problem statement, but to also provide concrete, salient examples of the problem; incidents that everyone can point to and agree that they are actual examples of the problem statement. Once you have executive alignment on the problem statement, next you must help executives understand how agile solves the problem. Reiterate the benefits of agile from lesson #3 as you map them to the problem statement. Solving the problem statement also involves addressing the, “what’s in it for me?” question. When having this discussion with executives, frame it in terms of cost, risk, and rewards. The agile transformation can expect hard costs for training of the pilot team, and an agile coach, if you choose to use one. You can expect to encounter soft costs for staff transitioning to a new methodology and tools as their productivity temporarily slows until the new processes are institutionalized. You must do your homework to ensure these costs are accurate, complete, understood, and accepted. In my opinion, there is more perceived risk than actual risk in an agile transformation. Fundamentally, we’re not changing the way software is written, we’re simply changing the way we organize the work of software development. Sure, if you don’t have a plan for how to get from point A to point B, you’re going to get lost, but if a plan (like the one outlined in these lessons) is followed, risks only materialize in a few areas. Risks should be logged and managed with a mitigation plan for each that is regularly reviewed with the executive team. Doing this builds trust that risks are being managed and confidence that the effort will succeed. The most common risk is insufficient buy-in from executives or team members. This can clearly be managed before an agile transformation initiative is undertaken by additional training and education. Healthy skepticism of a new process is welcome, but active sabotage will be detrimental to the effort so it’s important that the right people are on-board and all pulling in the same direction. Risk of business impact can be mitigated by executing a pilot agile project first, and then using the results of the pilot to further refine the rollout. Everyone likes to look good to their boss and executives are no different. You’ll want to figure out each executive’s performance drivers, but like everyone else, executives want to be valuable and promotable. Like all leaders, they want to demonstrate their leadership skills, achieve faster product delivery, lower operating costs, and in increase profits. You’ll want to again re-emphasize the speed of product delivery reward expected from an agile transformation and highlight how their sponsorship and / or support of a major organizational shift, such as this one, will demonstrate their leadership abilities and increase the bottom line. Fifth in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the fifth in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 5: Be Prepared to Address Difficult Questions & Refute Key Concerns Moving to a completely new way of doing things can be scary, especially when the folks that will be carrying out the work have no advanced knowledge of how they will be carrying out the work. To the uninformed, Agile can be synonymous with little or no process, tools, documentation, commitments, or planning. The truth, however, is quite the contrary. These concerns and misconceptions must be met head-on if they are to be overcome. Below I discuss a few common questions & concerns that you’ll most likely encounter on your journey. Question #1: Will we be trained in Agile? Anyone who is unfamiliar with agile concepts but is asked to carry them out will immediately ask when they will receive the training required to execute the concepts. There's nothing more intimidating than being asked to complete a project with a methodology that you don't understand, and on which you've received no training. Further, an organization’s commitment to change can be measured in its willingness to invest in the education necessary for their employees to successfully carry out the change. As a leader in an organization’s agile transformation, you’ll need to immediately understand funding constraints relative to the agile training required for the team. You’ll need to be able to explain to each and every team member, as quickly as possible, when and how they’ll be trained. Open communication in this area will go a long way in allaying fears that arise from an uncertain path forward. Question #2: Is the company hiring an agile coach to help us? It’s important to understand advantages and disadvantages of using an agile coach before you decide to use one. A coach will undoubtedly provide value to the initial teams tasked with carrying out an agile project. Keep in mind that an agile coach is a temporary role, typically hired from outside the company, and is generally no longer required once a few agile teams are up and running and the organization has built some internal agile expertise. Despite the temporary nature, you’ll still want someone who can establish rapport, build relationships, and motivate both agile team members and executive-level stakeholders to follow their lead. Experience matters. Be aware that due to the temporary nature of the role, some internal stakeholders may resist the coach’s direction based on their conclusion that the coach lacks standing to implement lasting change. Conversely, a coach can be unencumbered by internal organization politics allowing them to deliver an honest assessment of the actions required to launch the agile initiative. Whatever your reasons for or against a coach, be ready to explain them to the team. Question #3: How is this different from our past attempts at change? Most organizations have tried to implement a quality improvement program. In many cases, there are employees in an organization who have been involved in a failed process improvement attempt. It’s important to understand your organization’s past successes and failures and be able to compare and contrast them to the agile transformation at hand. Be prepared to discuss the roadmap you’re following and the champions that you have on-board. Ask for feedback to the plan. Keep a list of the questions received and answers delivered. This list will continue to grow as the transformation unfolds and keeping a readily distributable log of questions and answers will be a valuable time-saving resource as more persons become involved. Concern #1: Agile teams don’t use any process or tools. While the first tenet of the Agile Manifesto is to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, anyone with a cursory understanding of the methodology knows that Agile, in and of itself, is a process, and there are many tools on the market today to assist with facilitating and automating the agile processes. The bottom line is that Agile does contain processes and does promote the use of tools, however, the interactions amongst team members and the customer is more important than the use of any specific tool or process. Concern #2: Agile teams do not produce documentation as the project progresses. The reality here is that a documentation-heavy, waterfall approach to writing software has been proven time and time again to be fraught with waste and rework. In today’s software development environment, it is much more valuable to begin with a high-level design approach and then refine this design as development unfolds. Agile teams will not spend hours attempting to document and control every single variable that they will encounter with on their development journey. Lightweight design tools will be employed including whiteboards and diagrams to produce just the right amount of design at just the right time such that development can begin and the design can be iterated. Agile teams will spend more time documenting the design of what’s been built versus attempting to fit development into a pre-engineered design. The effect is that design, development, and documentation happen at the same time. Concern #3: Agile teams do not make customer commitments. In the old paradigm, the customer would deliver their requirements to the development team, the development team would provide an estimate, the customer would approve the estimate, and then the development team would commit to a release or implementation date. The customer would largely be absent throughout the design and development process, only to be re-engaged for user acceptance testing and release. In this process, the commitment is clearly visible and is part of the development methodology. The issue, however, is that a vast number of the commitments made by the development team were missed. Agile attempts to solve for this issue in a couple of different ways. First, Agile teams ask the customer to remain engaged throughout the design, development, and testing processes to ensure that constant feedback and collaboration occurs. This collaboration has the effect of ensuring that what is built actually solves the business problem and delivers the value requested. Second, Agile discards the big commitment made up-front in the old paradigm for a series of smaller commitments made incrementally towards the larger goal. The same rules still apply in that the overall project end-date cannot be determined until all customer requirements are defined and delivered upon. However, Agile realizes that in today’s software development environment, requirements evolve over time and are more conducive to a product development lifecycle versus a project lifecycle. Requirements don’t stop coming in once a software development project completes. Agile recognizes this and accounts for it via continuously updating roadmaps and release plans, which drive the lower, sprint-level commitments that are hallmark of the methodology. Concern #4: Agile teams do not plan. As mentioned in Concern #3 above, you can clearly start to discern the tenets of Agile planning. The key difference between traditional Waterfall planning and Agile planning is that Agile embraces what is known as “horizon planning”. Horizon planning means that you can only plan, with any degree of accuracy, as far you can see. In other words, if you look at the horizon, you can make a plan for how to get to where you can see on that horizon, but you can’t plan with any degree of certainty for how to travel beyond that horizon. With each passing day, the horizon changes, and as such, your plans for how to get to the horizon should also change. Agile embraces the planning horizon and anticipates changing requirements by placing a top-down structure around the uncertainty. At the top level, a more high-level approach to planning is employed whereas at the bottom level a more realistic and time-bound commitment is made. The five levels are as follows:
In this lesson I’ve discussed some common concerns and how each of these is refuted. While it can take some time to persuade everyone to get on board, it’s clear that planning & process is not absent in Agile, simply better tailored to today’s software development environment. Fourth in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the fourth in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 4: Understand Common Environmental Constraints There are some common organizational environmental constraints that you will encounter when moving to an Agile delivery model. Each of these must be considered and addressed for your Agile transformation effort to take root and flourish. Each of these should be considered “difficult” to address and requires ongoing effort to engage key players in the organization and change their perspectives to align with transformation goals. The first and most common constraint is simply the one of management “style”. Management style can either be a hindrance or an enabler to the transformation. If your organization is an older one, especially one that has been around since before the Agile manifesto was published in the early 2000’s, the management “style” is most likely a top-down, “command-and-control” model. In this model, the methods by which lower-level employees carry out work are dictated by higher-level management personnel. “Command-and-control” is also frequently used in smaller organizations that may have no knowledge of Agile principles or practices. Agile requires collaboration. Collaboration necessitates that decision-making occur at the level where the work is taking place. Agile believes that the resources performing the work are best equipped to guide their own work and successfully navigate obstacles when they present themselves. In simple terms, the folks doing the work must be empowered to make decisions about the work. Since collaboration is a bed-rock principle of the Agile manifesto and “command-and-control” does not foster collaboration, the “command-and-control” management style must be regarded as detrimental to an agile transformation in that it stifles collaboration. Shifting from a “command-and-control” model can be difficult, especially if the next three constraints are not adequately addressed. The second constraint to overcome is your organization’s willingness to accept change. In a “command-and-control” environment, the notion of, “we’ve always done it that way” may be prevalent. Clearly this won’t work when attempting to institutionalize a culture shift. In this type of environment, you’ll need to confront unwillingness to change head-on. You’ll want to tout expected Agile benefits (Lesson 3) and reasons for moving to Agile (Lesson 2) and ensure they are well understood by key leaders, stakeholders, and resources. You should be looking for the, “let’s give it a try” response to your transformation proposal. When you lay out the case for Agile and start small, you will be able to build confidence on your successes and get more folks on-board with your vision as your experiment progresses. A major environmental constraint that exists in many organizations is a “process-heavy” culture. Process-heavy organizations are those with rigid activities that must be completed in order to progress an effort. This typically manifests itself with paperwork, and lots of it. Agile requires lightweight processes. This means that unnecessary or “non-value add” steps are skipped. Agile is focused on just enough process to get people what they need to complete the work at exactly the right time. If you’re in a process-heavy culture, you’ll need to reset management’s expectations relative to the process rigor that will be employed. It’s not that no process will be used; it’s simply that required process will be employed. For example, if there’s a process that must be followed to introduce new changes to the production environment, you’ll most likely want to follow it. However, if the traditional waterfall process dictates that a full-blown detailed technical design be completed before any actual coding begins, this can be problematic and antithetical to Agile’s tenets. You’ll want to thoughtfully analyze existing process and have a meaningful, collaborative discussion with oversight bodies to gain agreement on exactly which processes will be followed and which will not. When having these discussions, stress the benefits of “speed-to-market” and reduced costs associated with an Agile effort. You may also find yourself in the position of re-writing the “rules of the road”, specifically for Agile initiatives. The last key environmental constraint that you must address is trust. Trust is an absolutely essential component to Agile. A key item to keep in mind is that trust is earned over time. When trust does not exist, management tends to micro-manage the engaged resources. When trust exists, management will get out of the way and let the workers carry out the work. Trust is required to start an Agile pilot project, and management, including the Scrum Master, must trust the folks carrying out the Agile project to get the job done with quality. By starting small and demonstrating value delivery, trust will be gained and increased over time. Third in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the third in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 3: Understand Expected Agile Benefits Agile implementations produce benefits for both the team members executing agile and the managers of agile teams. These benefits, however, can only be realized when company management commits to making the changes necessary to realize them. Further lessons will expand upon the changes and buy-in required, but for now, understand that teams that adopt agile practices must move away from traditional “command-and-control” and “wishful-thinking” (a.k.a. “predictive”) management philosophies. Agile can appear to be simple, but key concepts such as self-organization and continual inspection and adaptation have subtle implications that require a change to management's status-quo approach. Industry studies show that approximately half of software features developed are never used. These studies indicate that required features can be developed in half the time by avoiding unnecessary work and waste. Via continuous prioritization of development requests, agile teams avoid building features that will never be used and focus only on delivering those with the highest business value. Prioritization is further extended to impediments (a.k.a. “roadblocks”) that surface during daily meetings. Discovered roadblocks are prioritized and removed resulting in a further increase in quality and productivity. Agile is known to improve the quality of life for the team members executing it through elimination of the pressures inflicted on the team by management personnel. A sense of autonomy is instilled when teams are allowed to select their own work and then self-organize around the best way to complete the work. This fosters the development of innovation within the team, produces higher team productivity, and delivers higher customer and team satisfaction levels. Allowing the team to deliver a functional and effective product that achieves the market and financial goals of the company produces team spirit, ownership, and results in increased employee retention. Finally, agile is known to improve the profitability of the company by affecting components of the profit margin. These include customer retention, innovation, timely and accurate delivery, and workforce motivation. Customers are retained when they are cared for and provide critical referrals necessary to grow the business. Accurate and timely delivery of exactly what customers need, when they need it, enhances customer satisfaction and revenue streams. Innovation ensures synchronization with market trends and anticipation of future customer requirements. A motivated workforce is a productive workforce and one that provides an edge over the competition. Second in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the second in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 2: Understand Common Reasons for Moving to Agile I believe there are three (3) common reasons for moving to an agile delivery methodology. These reasons have nothing to do with IT specifically, but rather align themselves more generally with the common goals of product delivery. These are timely delivery, resolving quality deficiencies, and speed to market. In the traditional waterfall model, an IT project could have a duration of several months or years and not produce anything of value for the business, if it produces anything at all. A common stakeholder complaint is that they rarely, if ever, know when anything will be delivered. Sponsors and stakeholders become reluctant to allow the project to continue when there is no end date or discernible deliverables in sight. An obvious and common risk is that a new opportunity or project will present itself resulting in the original project being cancelled, ending the work before anything of value is delivered. An agile delivery methodology alleviates concerns related to timely delivery by producing incremental product units on a pre-defined timescale. Today’s business environment is constantly changing. Whether it’s new products being developed, old products being retired, competitors being acquired, divestitures, market expansions, new legislation or regulations, the only constant is change. This has an overwhelming and obvious effect on the information needs of the organization required to make accurate business decisions. Furthermore, a business is often willing to invest in building a solution to meet these information needs before all of the needs are fully known or understood. The traditional waterfall model is not conducive to the ebbs and flows of today’s business environment. It creates a situation in which a project team attempts to collect all requirements at the beginning of the software development effort, even though they may be unknown at the time of collection. The project team then takes the requirements as defined (or undefined) and attempts to build the solution over the course of months or years while discouraging changes to the requirements during the development process. This invariably breeds an environment in which the product delivered not only fails to meet the initial requirements, but also fails to address the changes in business conditions that occurred since the original requirements were collected. Stakeholders regard these as quality deficiencies even though the system may be coded exactly as the requirements specified. An agile delivery methodology alleviates quality concerns by continuously engaging the consumers of the information system throughout the development lifecycle and embracing the inherent changing requirements of today’s business environment. A key theme of a successful business is continuous innovation. A common complaint from an executive whose business is failing to innovate could be, “our competitors are consistently beating us to market with new products or features.” An agile delivery methodology keeps the organization focused on product release milestones via the inherent cadence that accompanies the methodology. It also seeks to discontinue the use of non-value add activities such as unnecessary documentation or process which further refines the focus of the product delivery team. First in a Fifteen Part Series
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked about my lessons learned in delivering Agile transformations. Below is the first in a fifteen part series examining my lessons learned while instituting Agile concepts & practices. I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to Agile nirvana. Lesson 1: Identify the Agile Sponsor & Champion Before you start your Agile journey, you must identify a Sponsor or a “champion” from the ranks of the executive team. The Sponsor will be similar to the captain of a ship. You will work with this person to define the destination and ensure the “ship” (the Agile transformation effort) is on the right course. The sponsor will keep the larger executive team up-to-date on a regular basis. In order to identify a Sponsor, you’ll want to find someone that is involved in several high-profile, important initiatives within the company. You’ll want someone who is approachable and understands the importance of relationship building. You’ll also want someone who is familiar with, and has influence over, gaining the funding you need to make the transformation. Finally, you’ll want someone who identifies the fact that the transformation you seek won’t happen without training the folks involved in the transformation and is willing to throw his / her support behind an Agile education initiative. Your Sponsor will be tasked with selling the need for proper training for both the teams executing the Agile practice and the executives consuming the Agile product. Your Sponsor will be the organization’s representative for the transformation effort. You’ll want to work with this person to establish tenets of the transformation vision and clearly articulate why the organization is undertaking the initiative. The development of “talking points” and “elevator speeches” will be critical to effectively allay concerns of folks involved with, and affected by, the initiative. The Sponsor will be the person that removes the “roadblocks” encountered during your journey. For this reason, it’s important to select a person who is comfortable with people at all levels of the organization. The Agile transformation team must be comfortable with sharing honest and open feedback with the Sponsor and requesting his or her assistance in accomplishing their objectives. Like any good leader, your Sponsor must possess active listening and follow-through skills in order for team members to feel heard. The Sponsor does not have to be a “technical” person but they should have a firm grasp of the delivery process. The Sponsor should be universally regarded as a leader throughout the organization and someone who has the influence, not necessarily the power, to get things done. Lastly, it’s critical that the Sponsor have a firm grasp of the “big picture” and understand the cultural mindset shift that must occur. Prior organizational rewards mechanisms may need to be changed in order to properly incentivize people to make the changes necessary. It will be important to measure the transformation effort against established success criteria and publish successes, or setbacks, as required via development of necessary publication materials. Open recognition and publication of successes is critical to boosting team morale and enforcing the change that you need in order of the transformation effort to be successful. Gaining the Buy-In You Need to be Successful
By Chad Greenslade I have often been asked how I have been able to drive adoption of project management methodologies, tools, and templates. Below is a high-level strategy that you may find useful. How were you able to drive adoption of a project / program methodology templates & standards? This is the whole stick and carrot analogy of getting folks to change behaviors. In general, I have found that most folks buy into the concept of a uniform delivery methodology for projects and programs. The key items that drive folks away from following a uniform delivery methodology is if they perceive or witness the methodology either (1) not being followed by their peers, or (2) not adding value, or not being valued by management, when followed. When presenting the case for following the methodology, for the carrot portion of the analogy, I have started with the top-down view and began the discussion with, “this is what will give ‘Executive Smith’ the most insight into the project investments being made across the organization.” I start with a high level dashboard, and explain to the project leaders how the various reporting elements are changed as the project progresses through the methodology lifecycle. The next item that I stress is the tailoring options for the project. No two projects are 100% identical and the ability of the project leaders to tailor the methodology based on project complexity places the rigor decision squarely with the team executing the project. Tailoring allows the skipping of templates that provide no value (given appropriate justification) while allowing the overall project to remain compliant to the methodology. Finally, related to the “stick” aspect of the analogy, I emphasize the audit aspects of the methodology. Ideally, you will have either an internal or external auditor conduct an audit of completed projects. I have wrapped incentive items (recognition awards, small prizes, etc.) around successful completion of each of the items above, especially when initially getting the process started and institutionalized. I have also incorporated completion of these items into project manager performance evaluations. Bonus Lesson in a Ten Part Series
By Chad Greenslade Given the points made in the ten lessons learned, you may be wondering what my strategy recommendation would be for launching a new ITSM platform. Well, as I mentioned, each organization is different and will have differing levels of ITSM knowledge within it. Similarly, you may have IT executives who don’t see the value of defining services and CIs prior to launching the platform. ITSM platforms can be expensive and executives are eager to show value for money as quickly as possible. This will most likely translate in a directive to get “Incident”, “Problem”, and “Change” launched ASAP. There may be no change management system currently in place and the organization’s viability depends on getting a handle on changes in the IT environment. You’ll need to tailor your approach to the organizational dynamics at play, but give deference to the items I’ve mentioned above. If you’re being forced into the market without a properly defined service catalog or configuration management database (CMDB), setup your service management processes to allow for the eventual introduction of these pieces. Keep in mind that a new ITSM platform can be relegated to simply a “ticketing” system if services and configuration items are not defined. The true power of the ITSM platform is “Service” management, not Incident or Change Management. If you’re allowed the time and the money to “do it right” from the beginning, here’s my recommendation: - Phase 1: Discovery, CMDB, & Asset Management. Many ITSM platforms will perform a network scan of your environment and automatically discover configuration items (CIs). When you first turn this on, it will be like drinking from a fire hose. There will be a lot of data that will need to be sifted through. Many data points of a CI will be pre-populated, but these will need to be reviewed for accuracy against underpinning contracts. You may see duplicate CI entries. For example, duplicate entries may be the result of scanning a Windows domain controller that may not be properly configured or up-to-date. There will most likely be components that cannot be scanned, or components that can only be scanned upon completion of appropriate troubleshooting. Some scanning will require credentials whereas others may be discoverable without them. There may be add-on components that you can purchase to make discovery easier. You’ll want regular scanning to be enabled so that when new devices are found, appropriate action can be taken. Using the underpinning contracts, you’ll want to populate warranty, maintenance, and depreciation information. A properly setup CMDB and asset management practice will serve as a solid foundation from which to build your service catalog. - Phase 2: Service Catalog, Self-Service Request Fulfillment. Once you have all of your IT assets properly defined, you’re now able to use them in the construction of services to be consumed by your customers. The “menu” by which a customer can order a service is the “Service Catalog”. Some services are running all the time and need not be ordered, and some may need to be ordered only once. The key thing to keep in mind is that IT assets are used in delivering services, so the underlying principle to developing a service is the mapping of configuration items to business outcomes. For example, a service could be “Messaging”, which could entail email, mobile phone, desktop telephone, and instant messaging. A number of configuration items are responsible for delivering the “Messaging” service. Development of the Service Catalog involves mapping these CIs to the “Messaging” service. Keep in mind that a single CI can be mapped to more than one service. Once the service is defined, Request Fulfillment entails the definition of one or many service requests that can be logged against the defined service. A Service Requests differs from an Incident in that a Service Request is a request from a customer to run a service as it’s designed, versus an Incident entails a service being degraded or broken. An example of a service request for the “Messaging” service would be creation of a new user mailbox. - Phase 3: Incident, Problem, Change, and Release. Only after Services & CIs are properly defined can true service management occur. As mentioned, you may experience pressure from executive to skip straight to this step in the deployment of your ITSM tool. If this is the case, you’ll want to make room in your process for the eventual introduction of the items in phases 1 and 2. The proper configuration of Category, Sub-Category, & Item as discussed in Lessons 2 & 6 becomes even more important if you’re not allowed to complete phases 1 & 2 first. Again, the goal of this exercise is to implement “service” management and not simply a “ticketing” system. You’ll want to ensure that you have process models created for Incident, Problem, Change, and Release. ITIL foundations will provide you with basic models that can be tailored to your organization. - Phase 4: Project Management (Waterfall & Agile). With a solid ITIL operating platform established via the first three phases of your rollout, you are now ready to “bolt-on” project management modules. In most organizations, the management of an IT project will culminate in the raising of one or more Requests for Change (RFCs) to implement one or more releases into the production environment. Project management modules will assist you in managing these efforts. Having project management as a part of your ITSM platform will also facilitate integrated resource management across all work types within IT. The ideal situation is one in which an IT resource can access a single application (e.g. the ITSM tool) and see all of their work items. Whether it’s a trouble ticket (Incident), a Service Request, a Problem, a task associated with a Change or Release, or a task associated with a project, your ITSM platform is intended to be the one-stop-shop for all work within IT. Integrated time tracking will also facilitate labor capitalization for qualifying work. - Subsequent Phases: Service Level Management, Reporting, Governance, Risk, Compliance, Cost Management, Knowledge & Content Management, and User Survey. With each of the subsequent phases, you are “tightening the screws” on your ITSM platform. Increasing service availability and IT operational efficiency are the overarching themes while managing risk, enforcing compliance, collecting knowledge, publishing content, and polling users for satisfaction. The approach above is intended to be comprehensive and is the ideal scenario. Rarely do we get to implement exactly how we want. Don’t let perfection get in the way of being good enough. In general, modules are flexible and your implementation can be tailored to your specific organization’s dynamics. |
AuthorChad Greenslade studied Information Systems at the University of Texas at Arlington and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Archives
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