Nesta história a equipa estava a trabalhar no lançamento de um produto para o mercado. O projecto já dura à um ano e é gerido com técnicas “tradicionais”* de desenvolvimento de software. Uma das iniciativas (ou sub-projecto, ou projecto no contexto de um programa) inclui um site,  um blog e um perfil no Facebook, no Twitter e no Youtube, onde se irá anunciar o grande lançamento do produto para o mercado.

Um mês antes do grande lançamento a equipa responsável pela comunicação pergunta ao desenvolvimento: “Quando é que o produto vai estar pronto? Precisamos de uma data para comunicar ao público o grande lançamento”.

A equipa de desenvolvimento respondeu qualquer coisa como: “Já está 85% feito.”

Com uma contas, o gestor de projecto prevê que dentro de um mês o produto estará pronto para o mercado. E foi com esse pressuposto que a equipa de comunicação anunciou a data do lançamento “imprevisível” do grande lançamento no site, no blog, no Facebook, no Twitter e no Youtube.

Mas será que aconteceu o pior?

No dia de lançamento (segundo as expectativas da equipa de comunicação), a equipa de desenvolvimento diz que não é possível lançar o produto hoje.

Infelizmente para a equipa, a data de lançamento calhou a uma Sexta-Feira, quando já todos andavam atacados com o stress pre-release. Depois do problema escalado, a direcção da empresa pede gentilmente que se esforcem ao máximo durante o fim de semana para lançar o produto na próxima Segunda-Feira. Até lhes ofereceu recompensas financeiras.

O produto é lançado na Segunda-Feira, mas apesar do incentivo financeiro,  a equipa perdeu muita motivação com este acontecimento. O overtime e sensação de “falha” é sempre um desmotivador e não há dinheiro que “mexa” nessa psicologia.

Agora, porque é que eu gosto das metodologias ágeis para desenvolvimento de software? Não vou aqui falar de tudo, é claro, mas apenas de um ponto que acho importante no contexto desta história tão comum.

Disciplina nas entregas (e tudo que o processo traz de borla)

• A trabalhar com iterações que produzem Software “utilizável”  e com um conjunto de funcionalidades conhecidas, a equipa ganharia disciplina nas datas de entrega (Com uma gestão apropriada da equipa).
• Se as iterações tivessem duração de 3 semanas e a equipa confiasse que necessitava de uma iteração para atingir um conjunto de funcionalidades, que somadas às produzidas nas iterações anteriores igualavam as funcionalidades mínimas para lançar o produto, então a equipa de comunicação poderia estar confiante ao anunciar a data do grande lançamento

Será este ponto importante para repensar algumas metodologias de desenvolvimento de Software? Ou assumimos a postura da  negação: “Ahh, podia ser pior se tivéssemos marcado um evento com a comunicação social e grandes investidores.”?  :)

* Refiro-me aqui às técnicas que apenas são reconhecidas como boas práticas dentro da empresa um por um grupo restrito de empresas.

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Acho que existe um poder psicológico no “E” e no “Mas”. O “E” tem um poder positivo, de criatividade e colaboração enquanto o “Mas”  tem um poder negativo e cria barreiras para a criatividade e colaboração.

Para o demonstrar, considerem as seguinte conversas:

Programador – “Vou conseguir terminar o módulo A a tempo”

Gestor de Projecto – “Sim, muito bem. Mas conseguirás fazer também a documentação a tempo?”

Pensem que isto vos está a acontecer e tentem perceber o roadblock que foi colocado apenas no vosso caminho?

Agora no mesmo cenário mas como uma atitude mais positiva:

Programador – “Vou conseguir terminar o módulo A a tempo”

Gestor de Projecto – “Sim, muito bem e agora temos de nos focar também em entregar a documentação a tempo? Do que precisamos?”

Pensem agora nesta última conversa. Qual delas será a mais construtiva, colaborativa, positiva e inteligente?

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Num artigo do Financial Post de Setembro, pode ler-se o seguinte:

“An effective team has to be able to respond quickly[...] And for that, we need a forum for robust dialogue.

A formally constituted team comes from the desire to work collaboratively [...] There is a shared commitment to goals that has the support of individual team members, and in turn supports them.

An effective team [...] contrasts with a more common hierarchical approach to business goals, “the command-and-control approach.”

The effective team are [...] The Magnificent Seven rather than The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

To have and effective teams [...]Businesses need to shift from individual bonuses to team-based bonuses, to flatten out their reporting structure.

What may not be a Team? [...] A committee is a weak variant of a team [...] A team [...] is the opposite of a committee in that it has a unifying purpose and values to which all members ascribe, despite their position within the organization.

How to build a team? [...] Peer mentoring is a team learning system that lets people teach each other [...] Workshops have their place in leadership development, but most corporations don’t have a significant way to transfer that knowledge into skills.”

Peer Mentorig [...] challenges people to take ownership of their careers. As long as no direct reporting is involved, it works magically.

How a effective team looks like?[...] include enough people, and a good cross-section of skills. We call it collective intelligence. The worst thing to do is try to figure out things by yourself.

Ainda no mesmo artigo são sugeridas oito características de uma boa equipa:

EIGHT TEAM MUST-HAVES

1. Must have a meaningful purpose that all members care about.
2. Can’t be too large. Some experts suggest capping at 20. Field cautions against there being too little work for all members.
3. Needs a diverse set of skills appropriate to the goals.
4. Needs to be physically together. Even having some team members on different floors can hurt the team.
5. Succeeds or fails together. No stars or scapegoats.
6. Shares leadership. Of course there is one leader, but he or she should be willing to step aside when another team member’s skills are required.
7. Has strong shared norms and expectations of behaviour. These are soft skills that often need to be taught.
8. Needs time. “You lose advantages if you hurry,” Prof. Field says. “Slow it down for the process to work.”

Artigo original:

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2258320

jpereira Agile, Business, Gestão, Gestão de Projecto, PMP, SCRUM Agile, Business, Gestão de Projecto, Gestão de Projectos, PMP, Project Management, SCRUM, Software Development

Ken Schwaber escreveu em Maio de 2009 o Scrum Guide. É uma excelente introdução ao Scrum pelo seu inventor.

O Scrum Guide: http://www.scrumalliance.org/resource_download/598

Para uma rápida introdução ao Scrum deixo também este vídeo:

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It’s now available for review the 8th chapter of the book “Agile Product Management: Turning Ideas into Winning Products with Scrum“.

I’ve introduced this book here in Portuguese.

I haven’t read it, but I will, I promise and I hope you, as an agile wannabe, read it too so you will not make anything stupid when planning your releases .

This chapter deals with release management.  What is covered:

• Planning the release and creating the release plan
• Estimating product backlog items
• Determining velocity
• Managing cost
• Dealing with risk
• Tracking and reporting the progress
• Practices for large projects including lookahead planning and pipelining

Have a nive reading.

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You’re in London in a conference assisting to a lot of talking about spreadsheets online. Everyone agrees that they suck in user experience. You’re feeling the agreement from audience that Excel is the standard in that matter.  (You can argue against this, but it’s not the point here!).

You have one team available to start working right now on this great new idea you have about spreadsheets online. You decided to take the risk and tweet  your team:

Our project is to build the next generation Online spreadsheet, that runs everywhere, every time and offers the ultimate user experience.

Wow. What a project.

“But what does it mean?” – your team tweet you back a minute later. Maybe they hit some analysis paralysis state and are wondering “wtf ultimate user experience is??”

Read more…

jpereira Agile, Empreemdedorismo, Gestão de Projecto, SCRUM, Uncategorized Agile Project Management, linkedin, SCRUM, Software Development

Yeah, it’s true. I’m in a process of leaning and relearning. Fortunately I have the time to think about the usefulness of things we use in software development.

This week I came across the question:

“For what are Gantt charts useful?”

And because we live in knowledge the wisdom of the crowds era, I decided to throw an message in LinkedIn’s IT Project Manager group.

Let me start to quote my self in that question:

Are gantt charts useful for software projects?

Software projects are complex not only because the technology but mainly because the human behaviour. Humans collaborate to create solutions for complex problems, are Gantt charts useful to model human behaviour and collaboration?

It seems to me that Gantt charts are well suited for very predictive projects or production lines with machines, and software projects are everything but predictive. What is the point of using a technique that assumes a predictive future in a environment in constant change?

As far as I know, Henry Gantt worked with Frederick Taylor and I assume they had the same way of thinking. Now, if Taylor is a Theory X manager what’s the point to use their tools when you are a theory Y manager? Does it make any sense to use gantt charts to manager projects, specially SW projects?

Additionally, I heard from someone that the first time Henry Gantt introduced what we today know as Gantt charts never used the word projects, mainly because those charts were used to manage assembly and production lines… why are we using Gantt charts to manage the complexity of projects?

I received two answers, till now. One from Maryann Snider, PMP and other from William W. (Woody) Williams in the discussion.

These answers led me to think again in the usefulness of Gantt charts. My current opinion about Gantt charts is (as seen in LinkedIn discussion):

Ok, so a Gantt chart is only a communication chart, right? We can think of it as a tool for visual management if the stakeholders are educated in that way, I guess.

I understand that Gantt charts can be used to show critical path/s calculated with CPM (Critical Path Method).A lot of more tools and techniques exists to assist us in creating a tentative schedule, like the critical chain method as William mentioned. But at the end, a Gantt chart is only a tool for communication, right?

IMHO, there’s a risk with Gantt charts

PMI, for instance, as well as Agile Manifesto, promote face-to-face communication. The heavy use of Gantt charts can be seen as a risk when they start to flow, more than desired, through email within your organization.It’s not only a question of everyone seeing different versions of a project, it’s also a question about the wrong message your organization can be passing to stakeholders: email-communication culture is Ok.

I think we’re loosing sight of what its important in projects, the People. So, the use of Gantt charts for communication of project status, progress, etc should be revisited, IMHO. Moreover, I think that a “Go see” culture is the most effective way to access progress.

I’m not against the use of gantt charts in any way. I just have to believe in their utility before using them.

And you, how do you feel about the uselfulness of Gantt charts?

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I’m back from the Certified ScrumMaster Course + and heard a lot of Craig Larman’s bad jokes

Last year I wrote this article where I expressed my feelings about the usefulness of the ScrumMaster. During the last three days I learned a lot useful and funny stuff about Scrum and Lean. I enjoyed leaning that the ScrumMaster is responsible to help the organization change to a more Lean mode of operation where, among other things, teams are self organized and self managed. I’ve also leaned that the ScrumMaster is not useless! ScrumMaster is a temporary but necessary waste!

And if you think about this, it is probably the truth. If you have a truly agile and lean organization for what you need a  ScrumMaster? To help in a goal already accomplished?

jpereira Agile, Gestão de Projecto, SCRUM Agile, Project Management, SCRUM, Software

Para o Outono de 2009, está previsto o lançamento do livro “Agile Product Management – Turning ideas into Winning Products with Scrum“. Na minha opinião, é um livro que faz falta.

Com cada vez mais organizações a adoptarem SCRUM para o desenvolvimento de software,  é importante que as responsabilidades do Product Owner sejam clarificadas e entendidas por todos.

De acordo com o autor Roman Pichler, este é um livro para todos os interessados em Agile Product Management, principalmente para os actuais Product Owners ou para quem está a pensar assumir essa função.

Já se podem ler o capítulo 1 e 2, e claro, dar o vosso feedback

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Are you willing to have a surgery with a surgeon that has taken a two days course in surgery?

Think about that for a moment. If you answer “No” (which I believe you do unless you’re a suicidal crazy person) I’m also sure you will not believe that a Certified Scrum Master (or a bunch of them) will save your projects and your business.

SCRUM is simple. SCRUM is hard. There is no ambiguity here. It is simple but it is hard.

Most of the organizations implementing SCRUM do not bother to find out why the “old” processes haven’t worked and simple jump into SCRUM because it is simple. People tend to judge that simple things are also easy thinks.

I think is a mistake, when you’re the adopting SCRUM framework (or any other agile process/methodology/practice/framework) to jump into it and trashing everything you learned from the past failures. This is a warning of continuing the failure path.

SCRUM, and any other agile methodology or process is not about the process or methodology itself, it is about a change in mindset and organization values and principles. SCRUM will help your organization to change, but will not change it by itself. Do not expect that SCRUM will solve all of your problems but expect it to show you all your problems.

What about the good engineering practices? Will SCRUM save your project if you are constantly building garbage? Probably SCRUM will help you to build garbage more quickly. That’s great if your business is all about building garbage.

I am just starting with this stuff of Agile Software development, so do not take what I have said here too seriously . I am sure your certified surgeon, with a two days course, will do a great job to your brains after a surgery to your head.

jpereira Agile, Gestão de Projecto, SCRUM, Software Agile, Project Management, SCRUM, Software Development