Is creativity generated by partial disagreement in a team?

The four stages of a team

Every new team is bound to pass through four main stages before reaching what we could call a "productive maturity", namely Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.

Forming

Forming is the first stage of a team when people are selected and assigned. Team members start to know each other, usually in a low-engagement and low-trust environment. The stage is characterized by an artificially quiet mood, and people do not enter spontaneously into heated (and sometimes productive) debates. 

Storming

Storming is the second stage of a team. Now heated discussion starts to happen and people begin to get hurt by each others edges. 

It may appear a paradox but the storming phase is when the members of the team lay the foundation of trust. People are keen to confront each other openly just when they start to feel trusted and safe in the environment in which they work.

Storming is also a very delicate phase; if clumsily managed, the team may never be able to get to the next step, remaining stuck in an endless Forming purgatory.

Norming

Trust is established, safety validated, and people start to work together as a team. There is again some gray area to be explored, and some boundary have not been trespassed yet but results start rolling in with consistency.

Performing

The team is in its "productive maturity", and performances are consistently maintained. 

And then...What happens next?

In many cases, we can observe a kind of "performance plateau".

Throughput does not increase with time anymore, rather, it can decrease slowly but steadily.

Non-professional relationships strengthen, empathy increases, complicity gets in the way, and the team lacks the healthy level of antagonism which allows creativity to thrive.

Can too much harmony kill creativity and conscientiousness? 

It may seem so.

How can good performances be maintained in the long run?

The project manager shall keep alive the professional pride which allows excellency. It can be done in several ways

• Turnover If possible, let new professionals enter the team. The suggested approach will force the team to step back a little from its evolution plateau. My advice is to carefully select the new members of the team and not to exceed the number of new entries, otherwise, the team may run the risk to step back into the Storming phase.
• Training Push the members of the team to take training on project related topics. Moreover, encourage them to give presentations about their new competencies to other members of the team. The approach will stimulate good competition and, as a side effect, will benefit the project itself.
• Manage Conflict Do not suffocate conflicts, let them flare in a controlled and safe environment. Responsible and effective conflict management is the key to a team's cohesion. Please refer to my previous posts (Link1, Link2) on the topic.
  Also, I suggest reading the great book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni.
• Gamification Introduce gamification in some of the activities of the team, replicating in the work environment the very exact stimuli that keep people motivated in playing games.

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Practical Earned Value Management

Introduction

The Earned Value Management (EVM) is a well-known and widely used technique, to monitor and control the budget of a project.

Since there are a lot of good books and posts about the theoretical approach to EVM, we will walk through it following an applicative perspective. The followed approach will enable us to apply EVM concepts to real situations, right from the beginning. 

Let's consider the budget/cost situation of a project, as shown in Figure 1.
What can we say about the project's performance? Are we happy with it?

Figure 1. budget/cost situation of a project.

The truth is, simply we do not know. 

We do not even have a clue about the performances of the project, because we lack an essential dimension, other than Time and Money. We lack the percentage of scope implemented at any point in time.

Taking a look at Figure 1, we can clearly understand if we are ahead or behind the budget, but what about the schedule?

Point #1

We are underspending, which is good...but how about the deliverables completed so far? What about the schedule? We are spending, let's say, 40% less than expected, but maybe we just have delivered 15% of the planned scope.

Point #2

We are behind the budget, which is not good...but maybe we already have delivered 95% of the scope, and we are dramatically ahead of schedule.

Point #3

Ok, we saved some money, but have we delivered everything we were supposed to produce?

EVM comes into play to answer the questions raised in the previous points.

The Method

First, let's introduce a little bit of jargon. I know, it is a bit annoying but EVM, for historical reason, uses the terminology of its own to define standard variables.

Planned Value (PV)

The budget of the project. Budget is called PV in EVM techniques, to stress the idea that it represents the quantity of money we plan to have spent up to a precise moment of the project.

Actual Costs (AC)

The quantity of money spent so far in the project.

Earned Value (EV)

Earned Value is the dimension we lacked in Figure 1, that is to say, the value generated from the project up to a specific moment. We could also define EV as the budgeted cost of the work performed so far.

Figure 2. EVM.

The correct determination of the EV can be a little tricky; it is usually evaluated as the sum of the figures of the budget forecasted for the generation of the completed deliverables. The budget for partially completed deliverables may be counted in using an estimated percentage of completion. The effort for not directly measurable activities may be considered in the evaluation using an apportioned effort approach. 
We will come back more in detail to the topic in a future post of this series.

Obviously, EV at completion is by definition the budget of the project.

If scope is added or removed, the budget is modified to reflect the changes.

The assumption made here is that our budget is a meaningful figure and that the efforts for the comprised activities have been estimated reasonably well.

In any case, EVM technique gives us tools to prove the truthfulness of our assumptions, and to remodel the budget during the project's execution. 

Coming back to our previous example, we can now say more about the project's performance.

Point #1

We were underspending, and we completed more scope than expected. That's very good; ahead of budget and ahead of schedule.

Point #2

We were behind the budget but still ahead of schedule. Not bad, even if, in a situation like this one, there is the possibility to incur in a cash-flow problem for the project, if not enough funds had been allocated by the time.

Point #3

On schedule and ahead of budget. What else?

In the next post of the series, we will show how to use EV, AC, and PV to keep the project under control.

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Agile Projects & Lazy Contracts

Here is my speech about Agile Project Management and contracts at the Torino Agile Conference 2018.

The video is in Italian but slides are in English.

Agile projects & Lazy Contracts from Emanuele Passera

Enjoy and feel free to contact me for feedback, advices, questions, or just to say hello. 

Impact Mapping - How to Map Requirements to Business Value

Impact Mapping is a goal-oriented requirements practice, largely described in the book Impact Mapping - Making a Big Impact With Software Product and Projects by Gojko Adzic, on which this post is based.

Do not be deceived by the title of the book; the Impact Mapping technique can be applied proficiently to all kind of projects, in different industries.

The idea is that each deliverable in a project should be graphically linked to a well-defined business objective, which shall be achieved through the impact users will create by using the deliverable itself. 

The graphic representation is considered paramount, in order to clarify links that may be well defined just in the back of the mind of an executive and to show assumptions that may benefit from some investigation.

I believe Impact Mapping to be very close to the Prince2 view of "Outputs", "Outcomes", and "Benefits". So I recommend considering the Impact Mapping approach when using Prince2 Methodology.

Steps

1. Choose the Objective

To start creating an Impact Map, you shall begin fixing a business objective in the main node of a standard mental map. 

As an example, we could start with the objective "Increase our quarter sales of product A by a 10%".

Obviously, remember to consider just SMART objectives, to be able to create real value.

2. Identify Who 

The second step in creating an Impact Map is to identify key people that will help you to reach the objective. Basically they are internal and external stakeholders of the project, who will create the impact you need to achieve the goal.

Referring to the fictional objective stated in the previous paragraph, we could identify "Salespersons", "Marketing", "Retailers", and, obviously, "Customers". 

The ability of the stakeholders to create an impact through the utilization of the deliverable(s) is paramount. If stakeholders cannot produce the expected impact, the purpose is defeated.

3. Identify How

The third step consists in defining how the identified key people can make the impact we need.

Referring to the previous example, "Salespersons" could increase the frequency of their contacts with the customers, "Marketing" could start a new campaign on social networks, "Retailers" could promote our products in more efficient ways, and so on. Obviously, more than one "How" should be identified for each "Who". 

Pay attention to this point because it can be a little tricky. The definition of "How" is hard-wired with some assumptions. We assume that key stakeholders are able or willing to create the impact we need. Such assumptions must be continuously checked and validated and, if proved to be false, requirements dropped.

4. Identify What

The last step is to identify what we can do to enable stakeholders to create the impact we want from them. 

Coming back to our example, we could deploy a more sophisticated CRM to help "Salespersons" achieving greater efficiency, allocate some budget for a marketing campaign, and implement a bonus-based engagement program for "Retailers". 

When creating the map, I recommend a kind of brainstorming approach. Create a comprehensive map to start, and then prune the tree, removing redundant branches or parts not well sustained by solid business reasons. 

Moreover, compare Impact Maps with different central objectives, to find requirements that support more than one business goal. Search for synergies between business objectives, remove useless paths, enforce multi-purpose requirements, and remove duplicates. 

Benefits 

There are several benefits achievable by using a goal-oriented requirements practice, such as Impact Mapping. 

• Every requirement is strictly connected to a business case, so, If we drop the business case, or if we prove it to be no more valid, we can drop the feature itself.
• If a business case is already well-addressed by enough features, we can drop some requirements and invest in other areas of the project.
• Scope creek avoidance. The scope is controlled following a quantitative logic, so it is very difficult for pet-features to sneak in.

For a better insight in the technique, I recommend you to read the book, Impact Mapping - Making a Big Impact With Software Product and Projects by Gojko Adzic, which contains some very good points and insight in project management. 

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7 things that sailing taught me about project management

Sailing is a wonderful experience.

If you have never sailed in your life, you can hardly imagine the beauty of this sport.
The touch of the sun on the skin, the scent of saltwater, the splash of water on the hull, the majestic strength of the wind when it comes to the sail, and of course the sense of peace and freedom that you feel by rolling on the waves.

Whether you are passionate about sailboats, windsurf or, heaven forbids, kitesurf, I think you cannot deny the similarities that exist between sailing and managing a project.

I am not talking about the old team-work stuff, which is certainly genuine and undeniable but something more intrinsic to the experience itself.

1 - Route

You need one, definitely.
The need for a route is especially true if you are planning to go further than a few hundreds of meters from the beach. Also, take into account possible setbacks and think in advance to countermeasures (somebody said risk management?). What happens if the waves get high? Would you be still able to reach your destination? Would you be able to call for help?

What happens if the wind changes direction?
You have to be good and fast in drawing up a new course. The magic is not in the plan but in the planning effort.

2 - Knowledge of the environment

Investigate the environment you are moving into. Are there any rocks just below the water? Sometimes, a quick chat with a sailor (or a project manager) that has already been where you are going, it can be of the greatest help.

3 - The wind

You cannot sail without wind, no matter how big the sail you hoist.
The wind, for a project, is the sponsorship it gets inside a company.
If the project’s sponsor is not capable of offering adequate support and backing, the project will languish in the middle of nowhere. No matter how strong the business case or how well you organize and manage the activities.
Sometimes, there is nothing more you can do than sit and wait.

4 - Sailing Downwind

Who would ever let the opportunity of sailing downwind escape? Certainly not me.
You can have a lot of fun but pay attention, if the wind changes you run the risk to jibe accidentally and to have your heads knocked out by the boom.
Likewise, in project management, always stay focused and do not relax just because you feel that the project is perfectly aligned with the sponsorship. Projects are living being in an ever-changing environment. Always pay attention to what happens around you.

5 - Sailing Upwind

If necessary, It can be done.
Obviously, you cannot put your bow straight against the wind, but if you carefully plan your course, it is possible to reach virtually any location. Probably it will take more time and greater efforts, but still, you have the possibility to succeed.
Do not surrender to difficulties, think and plan carefully then act accordingly.  Still pay attention, if your bow gets exactly against the wind, be prepared to wait or to work hard. You won’t go anywhere.

6 - Steady See

When the sea is steady, any fool can be a good sailor.
This one is quite self-explanatory. Do not fool yourself not being realistic about your skills, and reach for help if you think you may need it. After all, sailing, especially if the boat is bigger than a Laser,  cannot be a one-man band activity.
Underestimate issues or overestimate your possibilities can lead to severe consequences.

7 - Where do you want to go?

Windsurf is great to have fun but if you plan to live for a 14-day cruise in the Mediterranean sea, well, maybe you should opt for a bigger boat and crew.
It is the same with projects. Small projects do not require significant infrastructure and, sometimes, the project management team and the project manager may coincide. Otherwise, when the size of the project increases, it is far better to create a project management team, supported by a well-structured project management methodology. When in doubt, refer to point 6.





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3 KPIs to Select a Project

In the last two posts, we talked about the utilization of KPIs in project management, identifying 10 simple KPIs, useful to keep a project under control from different perspectives.

In the present post, we will identify indicators, useful to select which projects in a portfolio are more worth to be executed.

Before diving into the world of indicators, we have to make a quick clarification.
It is common wisdom that one dollar today worths more than a dollar tomorrow. As a matter of fact, money’s values is affected by material factors, like inflation or borrowing interest rates, and by perceptional factors, like uncertainty related to collecting money.
Since in project management is quite common compare projects that span many years, with different cash flow statements, it is evident the necessity to have a method that makes possible compare cash flows and figures registered at various times. An actualization of numbers is the only fair way to compare different projects.
Fortunately, the needed method exists, it is called discounted cash flow and its mathematical formalization is quite straightforward.

Let’s assume we need to compare the value of 10 dollars today, with the value of 15 dollars three years from now, knowing that inflation rate is fixed at 5%. We can proceed in two ways, bringing the value of 10 dollars today in the future, or actualizing the value of 15 dollars three years from now.

Bringing the value of 10 dollars today, three years  in the future, considering a 5% fixed inflation rate

Actualizing the value of 15 dollars three years from now, considering a 5% fixed inflation rate

Having said that, please remember that, in the rest of the post, we will always refer to actualized values, when talking about figures and cash flows.

For your convenience, Figure 1 is a conversion lookup table that depicts how much is worth a dollar today, imagining a fixed discount rate (first column) and a given number of years (first row).

Figure1. Conversion lookup table. Rows are discount rates. Columns are years.

Net Present Value

You may have heard the adage “Cash is king!”, talking about a company’s balance sheet. It is almost the same about projects. When it comes to making a decision, an analysis of the cash flow generated by a project is almost always a good approach.
The purpose of net present value is to compare projects that accrue different expenditures and incomes in different times. The index is simply an algebraic summation of all the incomes/expenditures of a project for each year, actualized at a given time, using the discounted cash flow formula. In the following equation, C represents the cash flow accrued in year i, r the applied discount rate, and i the current year.

Let’s try a simple example, for the sake of clarity. We consider two projects which different cash flows, accrued in different times. Which of the two projects, making a decision based just on the net cash flow, would be more worth to be executed?
The foreseen cash flows generated by two projects are reported in Table 1, in thousands of Euros. From the presented view, it seems that both projects generate the same total amount of cash flow, even if displaced in time.

Table 1.

The actualization process will be performed on an annual basis, concerning 2017, considering a hypothetical, fixed discount rate of 5%. Remember, it is just an example. The rationale still holds if you do the math on a monthly basis, or if you apply compound and time-variable rates.
The actualized figures of the two projects are reported in Table 2. As we can see, Project B is preferable, since it is the only one that yields a positive return.

Table 2.

If you rely on the net present value as an indicator to select a project, choose the project with the highest value. Obviously, you cannot rely just on net present value to compose a sound portfolio of projects, still, is definitely an indicator to take in consideration.

Return on Investment

The first thing to know: it is return on investment and not return of investment.
The purpose of return on investment is to measure and evaluate the efficiency of one or more investments, taking into account returns and costs. What is a project, if not another kind of investment, which accrues costs and (hopefully) revenues?
The formula is a percentage, expressed as

The percentage form is incredibly useful to compare different projects easily.
Even in this case, revenues and costs shall be actualized using the discounted cash flow formula.
Applying the return on investment to the project described in the previous example, we obtain a -0.5% ROI for project A and a 2.15% ROI for project B.
If you rely on the return on investment as an indicator to select a project, choose the project with the highest value.
Again, my advice is not to rely on a single index, if you want to increase the opportunity to build a sound portfolio of projects.

Internal Rate of Return

The Internal rate of return is quite tricky an index to understand; at least, for me, it has always been.
Mathematically speaking, the internal rate of return is simply the discount rate that puts to 0 the value of the net present value of a project. So, to evaluate the IRR, you must solve the following equation for r (I know, it is not simple)

To simplify, think about the internal rate of return as the “velocity” with which the project will earn returns. The higher the index, the faster the company will receive the value provided by the project.
So, even for the internal rate of return, the higher the value, the better.
It is quite reasonable to use the internal rate of return as a companion for the net present value. The net present value shows how much the project will earn (or lose), the internal rate of return shows how fast the expected outcomes will be materialized.

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10 KPIs to Keep Your Projects Under Control

In the last post post of this series, we talked about the utilization of KPIs in project management.

We discussed the usefulness of KPIs to monitor the health status of a project, and we introduced some of the characteristics a KPI should have to be effective. 

We also stressed the point that, as project managers, we are not bonded to rigid financial formalisms. 

Obviously, when the time comes for proper financial reporting, it is better to rely on the financial and the accounting departments. Nonetheless, during day-by-day activity, there is no need to be ashamed by adopting a “quick & dirty” approach, even if just to understand when it is time to request a sound financial report.

In the following, we will skim through some KPIs, which you may find useful for monitoring purpose. 

We consider a project several months long, complex enough to have assets and a financial management more structured than a simple collection of invoices. In some case, an actualization of the figures before KPIs evaluation could be required.

Measures of efficiency

Area profitability ratio = Area revenues / Area expenditures

Where

• Area revenues are all the incomes accrued by the project in a single project management area (e.g. quality management, risk management…). The term revenue is used here in a very broad sense, considering actual incomes, avoided expenditures, cashable benefits, and monetization of not cashable benefits. 
• Area expenditures are all the expenditures accrued by the project in a single project management area (e.g. quality management, risk management…).

The ratio measures how many Euros the project gets back, for each Euro invested in a single project management area. The ratio should be greater than one; if it is smaller than one, you are losing money; if it is equal to one, you are at break even.

Work package profitability ratio = WP revenues  / WP expenditures

Where

• WP  revenues are all the incomes accrued by the work package. The term revenue is used here in a very broad sense, considering monetization of business value, actual incomes, avoided expenditures, cashable benefits, and monetization of not cashable benefits. 
• WP expenditures are all the expenditures accrued by the work package.

The ratio measures how many Euros the work package gets back, for each Euro invested in it. The ratio should be greater than one; if it is smaller than one, you are losing money; if it is equal to one, you are at break even.

The ratio could also be applied to iterations instead of work packages, provided you are using an Agile management methodology or framework.

Measures of productivity

Backlog of completed activities = Completed activities / Planned activities

Where

• Completed activities are all the activities comprised in the scope of the project and deemed as completed.
• Planned activities are all the activities comprised in the scope of the project.

The index represents the percentage of completed activities in the project’s scope.

In case there is a fair estimation of the effort of each activity (in man/hour or story points), these values can be proficiently used to evaluate the KPI. 

Late backlog = Activities behind schedule / Planned activities

Where

• Activities behind schedule are all the activities comprised in the scope of the project behind schedule.
• Planned activities are all the activities comprised in the scope of the project.

The index represents the percentage of activities that are running late and measures the efficiency of the management of the project, rather than the project status in term of schedule.

Measures of Financial Condition

Current ratio = Current assets / Current liabilities    

Where

• Current assets are cash plus assets of the project.
• Current liabilities are liabilities of the project.

The ratio measures the capability of the project to pay back its liabilities using its assets. 

If we consider just assets and liabilities that can be converted to cash in a short time (weeks), the ratio measures the capability of the project to generate enough cash to support operations under stress. 

A high ratio indicates that a project is able to face unexpected straits, even if it can suggest that the project is not putting enough capital at work to exploit a leverage effect.

If the value of the ratio is too low, the project run the risk to lose the great part of its assets quite fast. 

In any case, a current ratio below one is always something that demands further investigations.

Days sales outstanding = (Accounts receivable / Total supplied services)*Days

Where

• Accounts receivable are revenues to be collected, in front of products or services supplied by the project in the period.
• Total supplied services are the total value of products or services supplied by the project in the period.
• Days are the days in the evaluation period.

The index measures the average number of days in which the project is able to collect revenues. Obviously, a high value suggests low proficiency in collecting due credits and so, the smaller, the better.

Measures of Profitability

Gross margin = (Supplied services - Cost of services) / Supplied services

Where

• Supplied services are the total value of products or services supplied by the project.
• Cost of services is the total costs of products or services supplied by the project.

Measures the project’s capability to retain revenues as gross profits, and to cover its operating expenses. The index also accounts for the efficiency of the project in delivering its services and products. If project A has a better gross margin than project B, then project A is more efficiently managed than project B.

The higher the value of this KPI, the better.

Net profit margin = (Supplied services - Expenditures) / Supplied services

Where

• Supplied services are the total value of products or services supplied by the project.
• Expenditures are the total costs of products or services supplied by the project, expressed as a sum of expenses, cost of services, interests and taxes.

Measures the project’s capability to retain revenues and to generate profits. If project A has a better net margin than project B, then project A is more profitable than project B.

The higher the value of this KPI, the better.

Debt service coverage ratio = Supplied services / Debt obligations in the period

Where

• Supplied services are the total value of products or services supplied by the project.
• Debt obligations in the period are the regular payments that the project has to do.

The index measures the capability of the project to pay debt-related obligations, exploiting the revenues. 

A high value of this KPI suggests that the project will not face problem in repaying its debts, even if it may indicate a low working capital and an inefficient use of a leverage effect. A ratio smaller than 1 states that the project may be not able to generate enough cash flow to pay back its debts.

Return on equity = Net income / Invested money

Where

• Net income Revenues of the project detracting the costs.
• Invested money Money invested in the project.

The ratio measures the efficiency of the project in converting investments into profit.

In a future series of posts, we will dive into Earned Value Management (EVM), the prince technique to monitor the schedule and the budget of a project.

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6 questions about the use of KPI in project management

What is a KPI?

A Key Performance Indicator, or KPI, is an index that monitors the behavior of a process, be it the financial results of a corporation, the suitability of a mechanized production line, or the performances of a project.

Why use PKIs?

A KPI is a kind of medical check-up of a process, and, similar to medical tests, you get the maximum out of it if you perform a regular screening in time. The availability of historical values allows graphic representations, which easily shows past performances, current situations, and trends. 

Trends are powerful because they not just give you a clear insight into what has happened in the past, trends also give you clues about what is going to happen shortly. 

Exactly as it happens when you have to decide where to invest your savings, you do not want to rely on a single estimation, but you are likely to search for long time series. 

In addition, having clear benchmarks and opportunely chosen control limits, helps you in maintaining control over the process at hand.

KPIs and a non-financial approach?

Since you, as a project manager, do not have the restrictions and the formality required in a purely financial and economic environment, do not feel bound to stiff formalisms. Use what you need when you need it. If a KPI can give you the information you need, just use it. In some occasion, it is useful to have some easy tool to get a fast outlook of a project; even just to understand when it is time to require an appropriated financial report to the financial office.

Obviously, when you need an accurate and financially sound report, trust your controllers and accountants.

How many?

Few. This is the short answer.

The long answer is that too much information, if not well managed, could be a detriment to the project.

The more KPIs you got, the more it takes to evaluate them. Moreover, the more variables you try to control, the more it becomes complex to get a meaning out of them.

My advice is to select no more than 10 KPIs and to concentrate them in the most critical area of the project. 

If you need a better insight, once again, rely on controllers and accountants.

KPIs evaluation. How many times?

The answer, of course, depends on the time span of the project, and on the number and magnitude of the associated risks. Nonetheless, as a rule of thumb, I will recommend once a month. 

How should KPIs be?

Simple

A KPI should give a photography of a process understandable immediately. If you need ten minutes to figure out the meaning of a KPI, every time you look at it, well, you have defeated its purpose.

Keep it simple.

Self-contained

One KPI one information. 

If you need to compose two or more KPIs to get the information you need, well, you are not using a KPI anymore.

Timely

You need the information right when you need it. 

Otherwise, you are trying to predict tomorrow's weather with last week's forecasts.

Numeric

A number is a KPI.  A word is not. Enough can be interpreted in too many ways.

Look for information that can be represented by numbers. Quantitative information is the key.

Specific

One size fits all does not exist.

Be specific when it comes to choosing what you need to monitor.

In a future post, we will focus on a few KPIs that we could use to monitor different aspects of a project’s life cycle.

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Free e-book "What are the most common challenges with agile?"

My friend Alison Wood, from Knowledge Train, recently released this wonderful e-book about the most common challenges with Agile Project Management.

Six insights from six practitioners, whose I am proud to be part.

Don't wait, get your free copy right now!

"Jack, Jane, and the cat" AKA "The pragmatic project manager"

Jane, last year, gifted his boyfriend Jack, a kitten for Christmas.

Jack is a professional photographer, and his job, during the year, keeps him away from home for several weeks in a row.

In January, Jack went in Brasil for a 6 weeks photo-shooting job in the Amazonian forest. He did not give the cat in custody to someone, nor left food in some kind of automatic dispenser for the cat to eat.

When Jack came back from Brasil, on his way from the airport, he bought 40 liters of milk. That was enough for the kitten to eat for the previous 6 weeks with an extra bonus for its patience.

When Jack arrived home, with his great surprise, the cat was dead. Starved.

Jack burst into tears, shouting "Why did you die stupid cat? Why didn't you just wait?I have brought you more food to you than you would have never dreamed of in your entire life. You, selfish animal, would not believe it,"

Jane left him the very next day, as soon as Jack told her the whole story. 

Jack is still wondering what he did wrong.

What does this story teach us?

When a Sponsor (Jane) entrust you (Jack) a project (the kitten), be absolutely clear about 2 things

• That you share with the stakeholders the vision about when the project should start to deliver value or revenues, and
• That you can manage the project in such a fashion to cope with the stakeholders expectations.

If the stakeholders expect value or even revenues in the first 2 months, and you manage the project in such a fashion to deliver value not before 8 months, do not be surprised to be let down (Jane left you).

Sometimes you just need some early win, to keep interest in the project. In some cases, it doesn't matter what you would be able to deliver a year from now, if you cannot cope with earlier deliveries.

Some projects are just like pets; they need something early and cyclically in their lives.

Don't be like Jack, do not disappoint your stakeholders. 

Be clear about the expected time for delivering values or revenues, and prepare yourself to cope with the expectations.Consider to plan for some early win.

Kanban environment - An introduction - 02

In the first post of the series, we have introduced the concepts at the base of a Kanban system. In the following, we will show 4 easy steps to model any process and to represent it in a Kanban environment.

First step - Map the process

The first step to take is to map the process to be monitored and controlled with kanban. 

Care must be taken to describe the process as it is currently implemented and executed, and not as it was designed. Many times process design and implementation are found to be quite divergent. 

The level of details to which the process must be mapped is a delicate aspect. A too coarse-grained description won’t catch the process peculiarities and soft spots. A too detailed description, on the contrary, could be distracting and de-focus from what is worth to be mapped. There are no rules, a trial and error procedure could do the trick.

Please, take a look at Figure 1.

Figure 1. Examples of mapped processes.

The (a) column depicts an extreme coarse-grained description of a process, not useful for description nor management. It is absolutely impossible to understand what the process is doing; just its interfaces are mapped.

The (b) column, on the contrary, represents a too detailed description of the same process. Please, remember that we are trying to map and to model the process, not to decompose it into its smallest parts. If you model the world, you obtain an easy and useful tool, if you mimic it, you just obtain something as murky as reality itself. 

The (c) column is a well-balanced mapping of the process. Not too many stages, few interactions, a clear flow through the activities. This representation is suitable to monitor and control the process; if we need more details, we will be able to add them later.

Spend 20% of your time to put under control the 80% of your process, not the other way round. 

Improvement is always possible, and it should always be our target, but we need some solid base to take our first steps.

Second step - Map the process’s interfaces

To achieve a reliable application of Kanban, and to be able to keep the process under control, in a satisfying way, we need to understand and map all the process’ interfaces. 

First, we need to identify all the processes that provide inputs to the process we are mapping and the rate at which we are supposed to absorb these inputs. 

Second, we have to identify all the processes to which the process we are mapping provides inputs and the rate at which we are required to deliver them.

Finally, we have to reconcile reality with expectations, negotiating openly, not sacrificing quality nor getting too much in the way of other processes.

Please, remember that Kanban is not about fast delivery, it is about steadiness in delivery, continuous improvement and waste reduction. Still, some constraints must be respected, after all, we are part of a production system and not crazy mavericks.

Third step - Create the informations radiator

It is time to transfer the model of the process, created in the First step, in a suitable information radiator. The classic form of a Kanban Board divided into columns, full of small pieces of sheet. Each column of the board represents a stage of the process, as described in Figure 1.

Each column of the board, except the first one and the last one, represents a stage of the process. The first column represents the gate from which new activities enter the process. The last column represents a kind of archive in which accomplished activities are stored.

Each yellow square in the columns represents an activity in progress, ideally with no external dependencies and assigned to a single resource of the team.

Fourth step - Use Kanban to monitor the situation

Use the Kanban board to monitor the flowing of your process for a few weeks. Take note about how many activities are present in each column for how much time. The kind of analysis suggested here is paramount to process improvement.

In the next post we will go more in depth with the utilization of Kanban to monitor and control the process. Stay tuned.





Quest' opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Unported.

Kanban environment - An introduction - 01

There is a lot of interest, in the project manager community, about Kanban. Since I have noticed some degree of confusion about the topic, I have decided to write a series of posts about the argument. In the series we will examine the characteristics of a Kanban system, how it could be implemented to control a process, common pitfalls encountered during the transition toward Kanban, and advice for a smooth adoption.

What is Kanban?

A parking lot is a perfect description of a Kanban system.

You queue up waiting to be served.

You are allowed in the parking lot just when there is a vacancy.

When you leave the parking lot, someone else is allowed in.

All these events are regulated by the emission and withdrawal of tickets, ensuring that the number of cars in the parking lot never exceed its capacity.

There are many practical reasons for a parking lot to be managed that way. Let’s imagine what could happen if cars were allowed in the lot without any control. The parking lot would rapidly become congested. Many cars would enter the system just to be forced out of it since no place would be available. In the meantime, cars that would leave the parking lot would not be able to do it quickly, since the mass of entering cars will slow them down.

The behavior of an industrial process is surprisingly similar. Too many running jobs could hamper standard activities and sensibly lower the system’s throughput.

In a process monitored and controlled by Kanban, the work to be performed (called Work in Progress or WIP) is continuously maintained under a threshold, called the system’s capacity.

A Kanban environment is a system in which 

• WIP is limited, ensuring that the system never runs beyond its capacity.
• A system is in place to allow new work to enter the system.

Can Kanban be used just in a specific industry?

Kanban is a consistency standard; it can be used to monitor and control any process, help to achieve reliability about performances and takt time.

Kanban objective is to optimize processes, walking the path of continuous improvement.

To better clarify the matter, we will provide examples of Kanban utilization both in the manufacturing and the software industry. 

Can Kanban be used to manage Projects?

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is a little more complicated. Kanban can be used to manage projects if the projects is small sized, and it can be modeled as a constant flow of value through different stages. Many times it could be helpful to manage with Kanban not the entire projects but some of its work packages; this is especially the case in agile project management, where a Kanban is used to manage every single development cycle (Sprint if you are using Scrum).

Kanban - an empiric approach

What has to be always kept in mind, is that Kanban is an intrinsically empiric approach. 

Kanban implementation is a perfect example of how to apply the Deming’s cycle. 

• Plan Map the process that will have to be monitored and controlled through the Kanban approach.
• Do Dimension the process setting WIP limits. 
• Check Observe the system’s behavior.
• Act Map the process with greater/smaller accuracy, adjust WIP limits, Improve the process, or modify the process.

Tools & information radiators

See credit below

The objectives of Kanban are to manage effectively processes (or projects) and to provide complete transparency on what is going on at each stage. 

Given these ambitious goals, it is mandatory to have tools and instrument in place to manage efficient communication towards the process  (or project ) stakeholders.

The most common representation of a Kanban system, used both for process (or project) management and communication purposes, is a simple corkboard. The board is usually divided with vertical and horizontal swimlanes, crowded with pinned small, colored pieces of sheet. The cork board can be optionally substituted with a digital version, very useful when the team is geographically sparse in different locations.   

Nadjeschda via Compfight cc

Quest' opera è distribuita con licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 3.0 Unported.