Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts

Interview with Yasmina Khelifi| Project Manager

Hello, todays interview is with Yasmina Khelifi. 

Yasmina Khelifi, PMP, PMI- ACP, PMI-PBA is an experienced project manager in the telecom industry. Along with her 20-year career, she sharpened her global leadership skills, delivering projects with major manufacturers and SIM makers. Yasmina strives for building collaborative bridges between people to make international projects successful. She relies on three pillars: her project management skills, the languages she speaks, and her passion for sharing knowledge.

French-native, she can speak German, English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and she is learning Arabic. Yasmina loves sharing her knowledge and experiences at work, volunteers at PMI, blogs at projectmanagement.com, and PM Network Magazine. She is also the host and co-founder of the podcast Global Leaders Talk with Yasmina Khelifi to help people in becoming better international leaders.

Yasmina please tell us how did you get into project management and why were you interested?

As a telecom engineer, I began my career, by testing new value-added services at a French telecom operator. After a few years and with the sponsorship of my manager, I applied to a project manager position. It took me courage because I didn’t have strong self-confidence.  Becoming a project manager was a life changing decision. I loved it from the beginning: the variety of activities, being able to organize, to build human relationships, to improve the processes, to create new things. Since then, I’ve managed numerous international projects.

In the process, you also have a blog and a podcast, tell us about it?

During the lockdown, I decided to invest my time in an online self-paced course by Dorie Clark on how to become a recognized expert. As part of the course, I have access to an amazing Facebook community where many people have their websites and portfolio. It gave me the energy to develop mine: I wanted to have one place to share my experiences and ideas. During the lockdown, I've also discovered podcasts and thought: "why not try it out?” I was curious to know how it worked and to share my knowledge about international leadership.

In investing your time in trying to build a community with all of these, what has been your experience so far?

You’re right it takes time and effort. My main aim is to spread knowledge as I didn't have specific guidance when I began to work. If it turns out into a lively community, that would be great. So far, It has been an invaluable opportunity to meet global leaders, learn from them, and share their stories. I haven't met personally most people I’ve interviewed so far. I think my knowledge of project management helps me a lot: I explain the project, set the expectations, communicate the final product for go nogo, and define a communication plan in social media.

Beyond the nitty-gritty tasks, I’ve met incredibly generous people with their time and experiences, and I’m looking forward to sharing more stories from global leaders.

Do you have any suggestions for the new project managers getting into this domain?

I will focus on three points.

First, get the confidence to leap into project management: you’ll get the skills for life, useful in any job. Project Management isn't linked to technical jobs. As soon as you work in a team (and who doesn't?) you’ll need to define the roles, functionalities of the products, expectations, planning, and draw on lessons learned.

Second, don’t hesitate to ask people for help and advice. Sometimes we think we will see as incompetent by asking but that’s a way to move forward.

Third, take part in training about project management but also about leadership. Devise your learning strategy. Be a lifelong learner!

Where can the readers find you?

This is where you can find my blogs and podcasts. I have a monthly newsletter about global leadership and also write here. As for social media you can find me in twitter @YasminaKhelifi7 and LinkedIn

Thank You Yasmina.




Connections- What we all need (SIPM Connect)

The traditional models are so yesterday.

You had to walk into a room full of people to network, travel for attending seminars and cold call/email to find a mentor. 

Today, things have undergone a massive change, yes we still do all of the above but nothing is limited to how much you are willing to spend. 

And thats a big advantage for so many, for those who want to learn, for students who are cash strapped, for those who don’t want to fly for hours to get to another country. We are all trying to connect- to the right person, right job, right level of experience and right emotions.



And we believe, well most of us at least that connections can get us to the point, carry us when we need an extra nudge. 

At SIPM Connect, we do just that. Its a FREE forum for anyone to connect. Available globally, the idea is projected in an interactive platform, where you are free to find the right level of connection.

The profile creation  is simple and fast, clear and to the point. And yet personalised for another person to reach out to you whether within your group (e.g newbie) or the other (e.g.mentor). Get the entire overview as soon as you login, effective  and time saving. Browse through the group of your interest, find the connections and hear back from them in the same forum. 

Click the group to explore the world, literally. Choose from countries, industries and drill down to keywords to find the mentor/network you need in the domain you would like. 


And yes I will say it again- its free. Built as a way to give back to the community with the confidence that everyone wants to create the right connection and everyone should have the right to. 


To sign up, click here  


This is How I work- Dhaval Panchal (Executive and Agile Coach)

Experienced Executive Agile Coach and Organization Design consultant - Dhaval Panchal is founder of Evolve Agility, a Texas based coaching and training consultancy. Dhaval is ScrumAlliance Certified Enterprise Coach® (CEC), Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST), Certified Agile Leadership-Educator (CAL-E). Dhaval Panchal is actively involved in local Houston Agile community. Dhaval has led large scale Agile transformations for companies in Oil & Gas, Banking, Insurance, Gaming, and Medical business domains. He has more than 17 years of Agile implementation, coaching, and transformation experience.


When do you wake up every day? What’s your alarm set to? 

I do not have a fixed time for waking up every day, but there is a pattern. I workout two or three times per week. I get up early by 5:30 am on workout day and other days including weekends, I wake up later at 7:00 am. 

2. Tea or Coffee? 

Both, but my preference is black tea.

3. Any rituals to set the tone for the day in the morning?

I like to sip on my tea, before I am ready to think through rest of the day. I like working out early in morning, so by 8:30 am, I am energized and ready for rest of the day. I also have long commute (40+ m) and listening to spotify playlists feels good to get oriented for day.

4. Where do you work? 

I work at client site, or at my home office. 

5. What do you listen to while working?

At client site I am mostly leading workshops or working with teams so I am listening to people.  When I am working at home, I listen to songs on Spotify. Choice of music varies greatly on my mood. My default is Sufi Qawwali, and at times when I need to concentrate I prefer Hariprasad Chaurasia, his mastery of flute is flawless. I have a few curated playlists that have songs from hip-hop, Bollywood, reggaton, country, pop, heavy metal, Jazz etc..

6. What are you currently reading?

I generally have two or three books that I am reading at any time. Unlike while at school, my personal reading habits are for pleasure. Currently, I am reading 
1) Influence: The psychology of persuasion
2) Godel, Echer, Bach : an eternal golden braid
3) 1Q84 

7. How do you organize your work life?


I use a kanban board, and have post it notes hanging from my desktop monitor. It is very important for me to make a list of all tasks that I want to complete before I start working. This simple step takes me less than a minute, but it helps me to let go of worry and focus on task at hand. I also have a timer on my computer, where I typically set 25-45 m timer that allows me to stay focused for that time. I force myself to take a break, by walking around or some thing different, I am not always successful.


8.Any hacks you prefer for work? 

A few:

#) Never send long emails. If necessary call or talk to your email recipients first. Face to face conversations, or even on video conference/phone are far more fruitful than exchanging emails.
#) Listen more, talk less.
#) Don't blame others and circumstances.
#) Expect that I will make errors and trust that I will learn from them.
#) Show up on time, don’t make others wait. 


9.What are your favorite gadgets?

#) Jaybird BT headphone, these have lasted me many years and are very good, especially when I am working out.

10.do you have any must have apps in your phone?

# ) Twitter : I spend lot more time on this app than I should.
#)  Mail & Calendar

11. Any new addition to your routines? 
Don’t think I can fit any thing else in day to day.

12. How do you recharge?
Playing & goofing around with my children, long motorcycle rides, and reading books.

(Pic courtesy: Dhaval Panchal)


If you enjoyed this, you might also like another This is How I Work with Linday Scott of Arras People.

Interview: Authors of A Guide to Distributed Agile Framework

The book has been recently published in Amazon and if you have heard of Agile, work as part of Agile teams or would like to have  a better understanding how to make it across countries to work as one team- the challenges and the tools that will help you bribe the gap, this book is for you.

Today we are interviewing the authors of the book: John Okoro, Savita Pahuja and Hugo messer. 

1.First of all congratulations on the book, tell us how did three of you meet and decide to come up with the book?

John: We met on-line through shared interests, and at the Agile Singapore 2016 Conference. 

Savita: Hugo was already working on distributed agile blogs, models and mini books. When we met and discussed the topic, we figured out the common interest and experience on this topic. That’s how we decided to write a book.

We always wanted to share with the community our experience as well as experience of other people working in this space that’s why we have many practices shared by people in the community. 

Hugo: A few years back, I ran a podcast around distributed agile. The interviews with Savita and John inspired me and later, in our discussions, the idea of writing a book about it popped up. We initially started with 4 authors, but one was too busy to continue the effort. The initial idea came up as we saw ‘distributed’ was never answered fully within the agile community. Most frameworks touch upon it, but always look at distribution through their framework-lense. We thought it would be interesting to help address the specific challenges that come up when working distributed. We spoke to many people who struggled with it throughout the years. In my own company, Bridge, I have always had challenges with the distribution across Europe, Ukraine and India. With the book, we mean to help provide people solutions to these challenges. 


2.  You talk about the 6 bubbles of a distributed team, why are they so important to you?
 
John:  Many Agile teams struggle when it comes to working across countries or locations.  Having guidance and the experience of other distributed Agile practitioners is an important first step.  The bubbles are a good way to organize these ideas for easy consumption by our readers, and practitioners. 

Savita: These six bubbles are the main areas where teams struggle particularly when they are distributed. If organisations want to overcome the challenges of distribution, they should focus on all these six bubbles which are: 
Culture
Communication
Leadership
Product
Teams and tools
Organization                  

Hugo:The issue with distribution is that people see the ‘problems’ in other areas. For example, they believe they need to become better at ‘agile’ or ‘scrum’. Oftentimes, scrum doesn’t work perfectly because teams forget that culture influences their collaboration. Leaders forget that to grow a distributed organization, they need to organize work in a different way compared to ‘local agile’. We discussed what were the main ‘influencers’ of agile collaboration across the globe and summarized it in these 6 bubbles. We had more earlier, but since less is more, we simplified it to 6.  

3. Throughout the book you focus a lot on culture and the stories around it…what would you recommend the top 3 action items for any teams who work in distributed mode?

John
  1. Meet face to face at least once, there is no underestimating the power of building an in-person relationship. 
  2. Ensure there are truly Agile leadership virtues like servant leadership, empowering teams, and a growth (Agile) mindset in the organization.  With these Agile leadership virtues and the related practices in place the team is off to a good start. 
  3. Have collaboration tools in place like virtual electronic Agile Boards, Wikis, Virtual Pair Programming tools, DevOps tools to provide dependable and fast builds and deployment.  We talk about practices, and other tools that support distributed teams like high quality video conference. 


Hugo
  1. Create ‘one team’. No matter where people are and what company they work for, ensure people see their common ‘product/goal’. Have coaches to foster that ‘one team’ spirit
  2. Make sure people have a ‘rhythm’ in which they meet face to face as often as possible + they use high quality video and audio to communicate throughout their sprint cycles. 
  3. Get leadership support in order to get to the right team structure (onshore roles versus offshore roles). 


4. Tell us what is a team canvas and the benefit of having one?

Savita: Alex Ivanov and Mitya Voloshuk present a model called Team Canvas for team alignment that we find useful to align everyone on goals, roles and skills, values, rules and activities. The Team Canvas is a Business Model Canvas for teamwork. It is a free tool for leaders, facilitators and consultants to organize team alignment meetings and bring members on the same page, resolve conflicts and build productive culture, fast. It becomes more important to align team members on these attributes when they are distributed. It also creates a level of understanding about people on other site that improves collaboration. 

5. The team room with the wall as a focal point is wonderful, tell me how to convince a team what they can expect when they have a team wall?

Savita: Team wall is one way to improve transparency in the team. It is also helpful to align everyone on the common goals and the work they are doing. It keeps on reminding people on the agreed stuff.

Human by nature is visual and many studies have proved that visual information stick in the memory. That’s what team wall gives to the team. 

Hugo: Transparency and visualization are key in Agile. Without the traditional requirement documents, teams get lost. Team walls and other portfolio/product visualizations help teams to see the big picture of a product, the roadmap, the users, the progress, etc. 

6. Do you think through all these discussion and points, the goal is to bring the members of the team to a common understanding and set up an understanding  that leads to better quality work?

John: Our goal is to bring relevant perspectives and experiences, that are distilled into a set of virtues, questions, and practices. These can be used by our readers to continually improve (Kaizen) and help their distributed Agile teams to succeed. 

Hugo:  Yes I believe so; if we don’t have the discussions proposed in our book, people will blindly execute; business as usual. By becoming more aware of the specific challenges inherent in cross-country-work and having clear action plans to address them, teamwork and hence quality will increase. 

7.  Do you think the concept of distributed culture and its working agreement depends on team maturity? How should one overcome it?

John: Every distributed Agile team is different.  We suggest that teams should come up with their own working agreements that are suitable for their own teams.  If a team is very mature it is likely they will very easily agree to and follow their team working agreement.  On the other hand, newer, less mature teams may need more guidance from a ScrumMaster, Agile Coach or facilitator to stay in alignment with their working agreements. 

Hugo: It surely helps to have mature teams. If I am a junior and just join a software development team, I don’t know yet how to be productive, how to communicate well, etc. As I don’t know that yet even for a local context, working in a global team will bring a lot of challenges. If we have a mature team with experience working in agile for a couple of years, they’ll more easily adapt to the global setup. 

Thank you for your time for the interview.

To buy the book click here.

If you are like this interview, you might also like 44 other interviews done right here. If Agile makes you happy, click here. 

This is How I work- Lindsay Scott

Lindsay Scott is a Director at Arras People, the programme and project management recruitment specialist in the UK. She’s also founder of the PMO Flashmob and PMO Conference. She is PMI’s PM Network career columnist and writes for TwentyEighty Strategy Execution and Project Challenge. Lindsay is also Co-Editor of the Handbook of People in Project Management

When do you wake up every day? What’s your alarm set to? 
Unfortunately my alarm goes off about 7.15am each morning, which is not necessarily the time I get up! I’m a real night owl so don’t like early mornings at all. I’ve often wondered if I would be better suited to the night shift but my work relies on being around when most other people are.

Tea or Coffee? 
Definitely tea – Yorkshire Tea, decaff with milk. Almost impossible to get in any other part of the world and always appreciated when I return from travels abroad. Us English certainly have a thing about tea 

Any rituals to set the tone for the day in the morning? 
Oh yes, bad habits too – tea, a cigarette and a look at the Times cryptic crossword. If its summer, sat outside overlooking the garden – or if it’s typical Manchester weather, rain, then its quickly out the door to work.

When do you feel most productive? 
I actually feel most productive mid morning and then later on in the evening so I tend to do different types of work at those times. In the morning I do a lot of writing about project management careers for various outlets, the first being the Camel blog. Later in the evening its more about research and reading.

Where do you work? 
I work in different places. We have an office in North Manchester, that’s the main office for Arras People. It’s in a small town, nothing fancy but I have a large desk and lots of in-trays. It looks like chaos but there is a system honestly! I work in London a lot too so there’s time spent working on the train, which I love, two hours of no interruptions because the phone network is so bad. In London I work in an apartment I rent, or grab a desk at the Institute of Directors in London’s Pall Mall (the pink one in Monopoly!). I tend to like working in different places because I’m a firm believer in a change is as good as a rest, especially when you’re trying to be creative in writing articles and suchlike.

Three must have items in your desk.
A cup of tea, lots of pencils and my day workbook.

What do you listen to while working? 
Nothing other than the general chatter of those around me at work or on the train. I’ve never been one for music or the radio playing in the background but can work well if there is. I just tune out.

What are you reading currently? 
I’ve got about three books on the go at the moment. For fiction it’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, set in London, an intriguing read so far. For non-fiction but not work related its The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons – I did a Psychology degree many years ago and still pick out books related to that. I’m also dipping in and out of The small BIG: Small Changes that Spark Big Influence. A good interpersonal book for any project manager. I’m a big reader so tend to have books on the go on Kindle and the real thing!

How do you organize? 
I tend to use the calendar a lot – Outlook Exchange so it works on every device I have. I’m also a sucker for a good old-fashioned list. I use a workbook – just a jotter from the stationery store and a “5 days a week” list. It’s standard stuff but I tend to list what needs to happen in the week on certain days then add in the activities I need to complete day by day. I often spend 5 minutes at the end of each work day updating the list, moving things around and doing that really satisfactory thing of striking a line through the things I’ve completed.

Any hacks you prefer for work? 
Because I’m working in different places all the time I totally rely on Dropbox to keep everything filed and easily accessible. I can’t bear not being able to lay my hands on things when I need to, plus Dropbox is also great for managing my photos taken by phone which I use for blog articles.

I use social media a lot for work too and I love reading and sharing great blogs. Dlvr is great for managing multiple social media accounts plus I love its Curator tool which allows me to save my favorite feeds, read blog articles and quickly share them across different platforms.

Finally another great tool if you use a lot of imagery in your work is PicMonkey  Although I use Adobe products a lot (Photoshop and Illustrator) you can’t beat Picmonkey for quick and easy image creation.

What are your favorite gadgets?
The usual I think – iPhone, iPad and laptop. I’m Apple on the mobile gadgets and good old fashioned Microsoft on the laptop and PC. I think that’s a Gen X thing! And I love the Kindle for being a good old workhorse of a gadget that withstands some serious knocking about. I’m also doing a lot of filming of sessions for the PMO Flashmob too so now camcorders have become a thing for me. Sennheiser wireless microphones are the best thing I’ve ever bought

What apps can you not love without? 
Oh wow, where do I start. Dropbox, Echofon (for Twitter), Facebook, Times newspaper, Daily Mail newspaper (guilty pleasure!), Weather app from the Met Office (we’re obsessed with the weather!), BBC iPlayer (TV on the go, great for the train), Anagram solver and the Thesaurus app (can’t do the crossword without it). I also like sketching when I’m at a conference – doing basic mindmaps, so I like basic drawing apps for those but no particular favorite (using Paper and Brushes at the moment)

Any new addition to your routines? 
Yes I’ve starting organizing an annual PMO Conference in London –  which has meant I have a whole new type of work to do. I love it. Especially the part where I get to choose what topic areas we’re going to cover and talk to potential speakers about their passions. It’s also meant I get out and about more listening to others speaking at conferences, like the PMO Symposium in the States. I suppose it’s like a big project for me – doing the project rather than writing about project management or recruiting for project managers like in the day job at Arras People. I like to have new things to do – to set new challenges – to blend with the work I’ve been doing for a while (it’s coming up to 15 years at Arras People!)

How do you recharge? 
I’m the queen of chilling out when I need to – or want to – I enjoy watching TV and movies – anything period drama wise and you’ve got me! Love reading of course and at a weekend I love visiting places. In England we have so much history on our doorsteps and under our noses that you just have to get out and explore. Recent weekends away have included the castle where Harry Potter was filmed and the Plague Village. If there is a magnificent garden to visit I’m also right there, and a chance to combine them with a city visit even better. The Real Jardín Botanico de Madrid was a recent visit.

(Pic courtesy: Lindsay Scott)

To read the last interview of this series, please click here.

Interview with Mark Woeppel

We are glad to bring you an insightful interview with Mark Woeppel , founder and president of Pinnacle Strategies, an international management consulting firm working to improve operations performance in project management and processes. He frequently writes on the subject of execution performance, having written three books and many other publications. With extensive experience in oil & gas, consumer products, IT, many manufacturing industries, Mark is a highly sought after subject matter expert in project management, operations management, performance management, and continuous improvement.

His latest book Visual Project Management brings out interesting concepts that definitely encourages you to think differently. Here's his interview:

The book brings out the realistic problems that everyone encounters like visibility issues in managing a project/portfolio, end goal for team members, lack of communication etc is all related to the way project management used to work. If you look at the problem statements, most of them can be covered if you implement Agile. What do you think?

Indeed, the Agile method can be used to achieve the Basic Collaboration level of execution maturity, and it can do it well. This is just the beginning. There are other problems. For many projects, with longer wavelengths, hitting delivery dates reliably is a problem. Synchronizing remote teams is a challenge. Integration of subcontractors’ projects into the main project is always problematic. Managing capacity, probabilistic planning and systematically breaking bottlenecks are not part of the typical tools set for Agile. And that’s what I see in Agile. Tools. Rules. Plenty of “what” to do, but not much on “why” should we do that. Visual Project Management goes beyond Agile.

What I’ve laid out in the book is a methodology and set of principles that support any project environment. The examples that I’ve used and proposed have has several things in common with Agile, but those are just the means to the end. I’m not in love with the tool, but I am serious about achieving the outcomes: increased velocity, improved productivity, delivering projects on time. Visual Project Management builds on those best practices and integrates the best practices so that any team can understand the cause and effect of project team behaviors to results and pick the methodology that supports them.

Where did the concept of the book come from?

Visual Project Management is the distillation of best practice in project management, employing Lean principles, the Theory of Constraints, and putting the project management body of knowledge to work.

We started with the most difficult activity of creating probabilistic project plans for some very large projects, then putting them into execution. We had mixed results in adoption, even though the projects we used them on were successful. As agents of transformation, we were frustrated, looking for a better way. In the meantime, we were using visual workflows in some of our other Theory of Constraints/Lean process improvement projects and having good success. So we thought we would try them on a sophisticated project. The results were spectacular. We were able, with some very simple tools, to engage all of our stakeholders, from senior managers, to resource managers, to subcontractors to drive better results in the entire portfolio.

We wanted to understand “why” it worked, so over the course of the next 4 years and many different kinds of projects, we developed and tested the principles and tactics to take the execution process from ad-hoc to fully integrated. We now know the specific behaviors that precede project success. Some of them are well known, some are not.

Please tell us what is Viewpoint framework?

ViewPoint is what we have named the visual project management process using the Project Execution Maturity Model (PEMM). It uses the visualization of the project delivery process as a springboard to drive team behaviors: to collaborate and effectively manage projects to deliver on time. ViewPoint treats project execution as a process, with principles and practices to create repeatable, scalable results.

Typically, project management process improvements are built around the sequence of how projects are accomplished: get an idea, form a team, make a plan, execute the project, and then execute the project manager.

ViewPoint reverses that - focusing on project execution first.

ViewPoint emphasizes global results over the entire portfolio or business to makes all projects (although it has been used to manage a single project) under management visible, allowing for strategic management of the bottlenecks that block project process.

Rather than taking the team away from their work to do planning activity, ViewPoint focuses on getting the work done – emphasizing project execution processes and behavior and improving the team’s effectiveness. This then allows the team to engage more with the tasks to be accomplished (rather than sit in meetings to talk about the work that hasn’t been done).

You talk about a lot of Models in the book that you believe will help the projects be delivered the way they should be- what according to you is the main focus that every project manager should look into?

Well, “should” is a bit strong. What I’m looking for is “effectively”. On time, on budget, within scope. Everyone’s good at the latter, the former, not so much.

Most managers believe the planning phase is the most important part of the project, so they invest a great deal in the skills, processes and practices around project planning. There’s an entire industry devoted to helping you plan better. We’ve done quite a bit of research into what works and what doesn’t work in project management, and despite millions in investments, projects are consistently late and over budget. You can see the report here.

I have personally gone the plan-execute-success route; it’s long, arduous and delivers mixed results. Emphasizing the PEMM and the principles embodied in them, has given our team and our clients excellent results time and again. You must have a model for execution – a framework. Without it, a plan has limited value; improving the plan is a waste of time. Besides, what plan is ever perfect? None of them. Who can stop in the middle of a project to do a re-plan? Almost no one. You have be able to live with “good enough”, because we live in an imperfect world.

What managers should be looking at is establishing the behaviors and feedback mechanisms that will allow them to respond to reality – Murphy lives! - while still delivering what’s required. This is the beauty of the PEMM. It lives in the real world.

What difference according to you visualizing project management will achieve?

What it does is make a big difference in how projects are delivered and how the team experiences the project process. At the business end of things, projects are delivered in a LOT less time and at lower costs.

For the project team, there is a greater sense of accomplishment and enjoyment of the process. It’s not frustrating. There are no more “battles” to fight, even though there are still problems to solve. They feel like they are making a real difference, because ViewPoint Visual Project Management removes the obstacles to getting the work done so they can make a difference.

For the leaders and owners of the projects, they have greater understanding of where they are during the life of the project. They can rapidly understand the risks and obstacles so they can engage the right people and resources to meet their projects’ objectives. Their job is easier, too.

To summarize, the difference is in the people: customers, team members, owners all get what they want. Without a fight.

Thank you Mark.

You can find more in his website by clicking here.

Interview with Siddharta Govindaraj

Today we interview Siddhartha Govindraj, who specializes in Lean/Agile processes for software development. He has also contributed in the book "Beyond Agile: Tales of Continuous Improvement" published by Modus Cooperandi Press, Feb 2013 and Published in the March 2011 issue of the Cutter IT Journal on "Use of Kanban in Distributed Offshore Environments". An occasional organizer of events as a part of Chennai Agile User Group and speaks in conferences in India and abroad.

He was nominated for the Brickell Key award in 2011, an award given by the Lean Software & Systems Consortium for recognizing achievements in the lean-agile industry and is also a Fellow of the Lean Systems Society.

He is very interested in the behavior of decentralized and distributed systems.

Agile becoming mainstream now, how do you think the world of project management has changed?

In one way, yes….. definitely more and more organizations are seeing the value of agile in terms of incremental development and faster time to market. However, there are a few aspects where agile is still to make a significant mark. First, the people aspect of agile has still not fully permeated into the culture of many organizations. The idea that motivated, self-organized teams can deliver better software is not yet in the mainstream. I also think that many companies need to invest in the technical environment. The third aspect that companies often neglect is looking at delivery as an end to end system in the organization. Agile is often applied at the team level, and systemic impediments are not fixed. So there is still a long way to go. 

While older companies have a tough time with transformation, the good news is that newer companies like Facebook have been agile right from the start. Over the next decade, success of these newer companies will establish the culture for the whole industry.

As someone who creates tools for Agile and Lean project environments, please tell us what according to you is the most important: the tool or the expertise of the project manager?

Of course the expertise of the people in the project is the primary criteria for success. Where tools will help is in aiding decision making so that people (both within the team, and management) have better insights to take better decisions. 

This questions also leads to an interesting difference between agile project management tools and traditional project management tools. In agile, a lot of decisions are taken by the self-organized teams. Hence the tools need to be able to support the needs of the team. If the team decides that the tool is an overhead or is not adding value to them, then it becomes worthless. By contrast, the primary need of traditional tools is targeted towards managers, who are the decision makers to micromanage the team. 

A big problem is when an agile tool is used in a traditional way – i.e. the team does not feel the value, but is forced to use it so that the managers can micromanage them. My personal opinion is that tools that encourage this behavior rarely lead to truly agile culture. 

Tell us why you decided to create your software and did you use agile way of managing it while n development?

The previous answer has some insight into why we launched our tool. We saw that many organizations implemented tools which support agile mechanics, but not the agile mindset. Such tools get deployed, teams hate to use them but are forced to do so because the management doesn't trust the team and wants to control exactly what is going on in the team. Well, guess what? The team only updates the tool rarely and the data is unreliable so it helps nobody. This does not help build an agile culture. 

What we wanted to do was to build a tool that a team will find easy to use and useful for their own self organization. Basically, we took traditional, proven methods that teams use in a physical space -- card walls, task boards, story maps and so on, and made them available in an electronic format. This gives the benefit of electronic tools, while still being in a format that teams find useful for themselves. 

What according to you are the 3 qualities that every Agile Project Manager should have?

First, curiosity to keep learning. Secondly, soft skills to connect with people (within the team and outside) and build relationships. Finally, the ability to influence people and drive change and improvement. 

I haven't said anything about knowledge of agile. This is easy to learn, and anyone can learn what a product backlog is and how a particular process works. But the qualities above are difficult to train, and very crucial for agile success.

If someone new, stepping into Agile Project Management asked you about the 3 books to read, what would you recommend?
My favourite three books are:

1. Agile Software Development -- Alistair Cockburn (Quick note: This book isn’t about agile, but methodologies in general. It’s a great background about how and why agile works, but perhaps not what you are looking for if you want to know specific mechanics like how to story point a story)
2. The principles of product development flow -- Donald Reinertsen 
3. Kanban -- David Anderson

Where can someone find the link to your software and your books?
I've also been a contributor to this book - http://amzn.to/beyond_agile


Thank you very much for your time.