Practice Makes Perfect - Release Planning Day 3

It's an amazing feeling to notice that something you have deeply invested in has started to become routine. Not for you, but for the organization. I had the pleasure of experiencing that today.

We had our third Release Planning Day. I've told more in detail about the previous two times in my earlier posts. This time the agenda was pretty much the same as on the previous try. Day began with a look at our markets and business. I like to see how things are connected. It's easier to justify your daily work when you can fit it into the big picture. What ever actions we might take should in my opinion bring us closer to our Vision. The message was delivered by our Chief Portfolio Officer. (SAFe model suggests getting some high ranking executive to signal the importance of the meeting. I think we've already seen the usefulness of Release Planning but it doesn't hurt to have powerful people involved.)

Then our five Product Managers presented their updated Product Roadmaps. Most of the contents in the Roadmaps were pretty much the same as last time. This makes sense since the Roadmaps should cover long term development needs and shouldn't maybe live as much as the Backlogs. There were some comments which I hope spawned even more lively conversations after the meeting.
One impressive moment was when I realized that we have around thirty people sitting in Helsinki and the PM presenting his Roadmap from Asia over Lync. And you really could not tell much difference from a case that the person would have been there live. Except for the fact that one couldn't see him. :)

After the Roadmaps I gave brief instructions on what I expected us to achieve during the rest of the day. Then people simply disappeared. Almost before I had even finished talking. But that was good. They knew what to do and were determined to do it.

During the Team Breakout session I wandered around our premises. That was the second time a slight smile suddenly appeared on my face. There were groups of people here and there discussing the coming Release. Exactly those necessary conversations that need to take place! What should we do? Why should we do it? How should we do it?

Later in the afternoon we gathered back to the meeting premises and went through the Draft Plans. Each team had come up with a list of topics they will start to work on in the next Release period. Already many cross-team issues were identified and the plans were well in line with the Product Roadmaps.

Tomorrow we will go through the finalized plans. I'm not anticipating any big changes so we will probably just go through the main changes compared to the draft phase. But all in all, everything has worked so far just as well as one Release Train Engineer could possibly hope. But of course next time will be even better. Continuous improvement!

Focusing is Effective

If you have a hypothesis, there's probably no better way to validate it than by testing. It's one of my favorite practices from Lean Startup. Experiment. Make a hypothesis, test it and learn. Repeat.

But you also need metrics. Something that you can measure and see if your actions have impact on them. In our case we have been asking our Developers, Product Owners and Product Managers the same set of questions twice. (The poll has been anonymous and people have been participating really well.) The results show nicely how the actions we have done (our focus) have improved the results in those areas. Unfortunately they also show that things that have not been paid too much attention to are not improving.

We have made big efforts to improve our Product Management and to shed more light to our Product Portfolio. Also we have invested in training our Product Owners. The results in these areas are almost stunning. According to POs and PMs the work in Portfolio has improved by 30-40%! I could call that from zero to hero. Developers are now more satisfied with their Product Owners. Although the sample size with Developers is lot bigger than with the other two group, the numbers have gone up by almost 14%.

But unfortunately there are two sides in a coin. While we have put a lot of emphasis on the Portfolio and on Product Owners, we haven't maybe paid enough attention to core of the agile. Data is ruthless and clearly shows that our efforts in Continuous Improvement and Visibility to Work have not been too good. For this I will take personal responsibility. I'm currently both Chief Scrum Master and Manager of Releases. I have been clearly concentrating too much on one part and neglecting my other responsibilities for the organizational improvement efforts and making things visible. Point taken, now I know what to improve next.

As a statistical experiment this has been very interesting. My interpretation of the results is that they validate our hypothesis. The areas we concentrate on are affected and in a positive way. Having focus does pay off!

Behind Enemy Lines - Project Days 2014

Sometimes I notice I can be awfully prejudiced. I can't help but think about projects being all about waterfall. Hehe, I actually blame partially Lyssa Adkins about this (although in my things I admire her). Her excellent book Coaching Agile Teams talks about recovering Project Managers in a sense that they are far from being Agile

Based on this the reader may understand why I had my doubts when I was asked to give a presentation at the Finnish Project Managers' gathering called Projektipäivät. The event consisted of 20 different seminars in both Finnish and English. The one that I participated could be translated as 'Taking the Benefits of Agility into Use'. So even though the whole event was about a substance that I don't know much about, the seminar I participated felt like a safe haven.

The venue of the event was Dipoli, a building in Otaniemi, the cradle of technology in Finland. (I've also studied in Otaniemi, so it felt like a homecoming. :) ) All the presenters received a small bottle of Jaume Serra cava which I later learned was an excellent bubbling wine.

The first keynote was given by Ludovic Hauduc from Microsoft. He talked about the Future of Business Productivity and Project Management. Actually this was the first moment I gradually started lowering my defenses. He talked mostly about how the main characteristic of a successful project it that PEOPLE are involved. So it was not about the superior knowledge of the Project Manager. After the presentation I exchanged a few words with him and he said that MS Office unit is maybe not that agile yet due to the history, but they are on their path to change. Also I was curious about if they used SAFe model. But he told me they have their own way which is more of combination of different methodologies and once more emphasized the people aspect. I was very pleased about this message.

After the keynote I went to listen a seminar about Creative Utilization of Different Methodologies in a Project. Tero Huttunen from Tieto told about how the Project Managers face a big challenge with methodology knowledge. In the busy working life of today the PMs are under big time pressure all the time. And there are quite a few different methodologies out there: Agile, Scrum, XP, TDD, PRINCE, ABC, SAFe just to name a few. How could they find time to learn about all these and still have the project on tracks? (Personally I think it's about changing mindset. Giving more freedom and responsibility to the teams will make everyone's life easier. Of course given that the environment is accepting for such thing.)

Next Juhani Snellman and Elina Koskela from Reaktor talked about using Kanban in IT-projects. They also started their presentation by saying that they don't really have Project Managers and that they do everything in an Agile way. But the presentation was interesting. Kanban isn't totally new thing to me, but I haven't ever used it 'in production'. I merely know about the theory so it was nice to listen people who are actually using it (and even teaching how to use it.) My question to them was about statistics. They showed a nice cumulative flow diagram where they could show lead time and WIP. But when using physical boards someone needs to collect these statistics. From JIRA you can get that automatically, but yeah, using the real post-its has a nice wipe. (If you have distributed teams, working barely with physical boards is rather challenging.)

Then Mika Heikkinen from OP-Pohjola talked about how to use different methodologies in the big picture. Actually this was a bit misleading, because he was actually only talking about how they use SAFe. It was anyway really interesting. They have now used SAFe for over one year and have multiple Release Trains. Can't actually remember what was the percentage, but if I remember correctly they SAFe for about 40% of their projects. Could be less, could be more. But I claim that currently they might be one the biggest players in the SAFe field in Finland with their nearly 12k employees.

After the lunch break I joined the Leadership seminar. It might have been the most popular in the whole Projektipäivät event. The room wasn't the biggest, but it was really full. The facilitator, Mikko Babitzin from Tieto, had set up a second screen which was displaying the tweets with hashtags #projektipäivät and #onnistu2014. (Onnistu, which means succeed in Finnish, was the topic of this years event. Next year it will be growth which could be even more interesting.)

Vesa Rantala from Tieto shared his vast experience about working in foreign cultures and as a Project Owner. Main emphasis was once again in people and more on having personal relationship and interaction with them. Lack of asking question can also be interpreted in some cultures as not being interested in how things are proceeding. So by asking questions you signal your interest. Not really rocket science, but good to keep in mind.

Matti Vesala from Adare talked about social media and how to utilize and manage it. You don't need to be in social media, but if you accept the challenge you can get some interesting benefits. You can have your own prime time show. Not possible in television. :)

Hannu Salonen had selected 'Feedback is a Gift' as the headline for his presentation. It was both about positive and constructive feedback and about the challenge of giving and receiving it well. Really great thoughts and tips. Not really specifically for Project Managers but for anyone in a supervisor role. Or even for a leader who leads without any power over his/her followers (like a Scrum Master.) Actually I like this form of leadership the most and in the end it's the only thing that could work in today's working life. People are free to choose where they work and if you don't treat them well they can vote with their feet.

The final presentation in this seminar was given by Virpi Pikkarainen and Tiina Miettinen, two mothers and wives. (This was their own introduction.) Maybe the most important take-home I spotted was the fact that you cannot lead if you are neck deep in the details. You need to ascend a bit and take a helicopter view. Then you can see more clearly where you and the whole group should be heading.

The second keynote was given by Taneli Tikka, a serial entrepreneur who currently works in an internal start-up in Tieto corporation. They are developing the internet of things. Taneli's presentation was about transformational leadership. Good things start with Appreciation (of other people.) After that you can have Trust. Then if you throw in a bit of Enthusiasm and top it all with Learning you can be up to something really good. But remember to keep clear of being Passive or Controlling. Taneli was also referring to Deep Leadership, a methodology originally developed by Vesa Nissinen for Finnish Defense Forces. I wrote about it last summer. But anyway, I think Taneli's presentation was the most inspiring I have seen in a while or maybe even the best I've ever seen live. Charismatic person, still young and yet already long experience in start-ups and business in general.

The first day's program ended in a set of awards ceremonies. Awards were given for the best Project, best young Project Manager and for winners of Project Management Championship for students.

The second day started with the third and final keynote from Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. Her presentation was boldly named 'Project Management and Sex'. Well, it was really about genders, but this way she was able to draw more attention. ;) Currently there are no countries where it would really be beneficial to be born as a female. In Iceland the genders are closest but even there it's better to be born as male. But maybe things will change in the future. In her presentation she told about how they were able attract more women and young people into a project that was in really harsh conditions in the middle of nowhere. They made the camp really family friendly. The decrease in staff turnover was dramatic and results extremely good. Something to think about.

Later during the second day I actually got rather nervous about my own presentation. I made some final modifications and practiced some more. In the end I was rather happy with the content. Although my seminar had headers in Finnish, I wanted to present in English. Mainly because I thought it would have been recorded and I could have utilized that also in our internal communication (and for myself to take a look at how I present myself in public and how I could learn to do it better.) Unfortunately it wasn't recorded. But I kept the schedule, there was some time for questions in the end and feedback was positive. And I sincerely enjoyed. I knew my subject and I was happy about seeing people's eye contact. I think I was able to give them something.

The Roles and Responsibilities in an Agile Project and Organization from Toivo Vaje

But the final conclusion from the whole event was that projects don't necessarily mean waterfall. I think based on this event the scene has changed into something a lot more Agile. I think the two could live happily hand in hand. But I would have never found this out if I had not participated. Learning is everything.