Pic Courtesy- Pinterest
Adopting Agile Pt 1- Three things to consider when moving into Agile
Moving into the Agile way of working is a life changing decision.
- Don’t move to Agile because everyone is- IT’s a trend and everyone is working the Agile way and so should you- is the wrong way to approach Agile. Sometimes even client requests and management interest force team members to move. Changing overnight is tough especially when you have been comfortable working a certain way. If transforming into Agile is the agenda, read some blogs, attend training's, look up articles, ask people who have been working in Agile. Then decide if you really want to make the move and simply start with pilot teams.
- Don’t look for tools immediately- start slow and stop adopting tools immediately. A white board in the team area will just work fine. If you have distributed teams, use simple tools like Linoit or Trello . Tools should encourage more communication not replace it.
- Don’t expect a miracle in your first sprint- Make smaller changes before you transform completely, start with a daily standup or writing user stories. Every sprint introduce something new and work within the comfort levels of the team, this will make your new adoption easier than being messier. Not all teams adopt as easily or work as smoothly, what you will notice is more and more internal problems surfacing and that’s a good sign. Try working out the problems and watch the team perform better.
This is a 5 part series on Adopting Agile.
(Pic Courtesy- Google images)
News for you and more
While I join back work, am incredibly lucky to still have the time to blog- thanks to my amazing support system of friends and family.
In the last 3 months from doing the obvious, I also have managed to read a couple of books and I think you should definitely give it a try-
In the last 3 months from doing the obvious, I also have managed to read a couple of books and I think you should definitely give it a try-
- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
- Management 3.0 Workout by Jurgen Appelo
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (ongoing)
Not entirely related to project management but hey we do need to make a lot of decisions at work and knowing how and why we do its essential in breaking the bad habit and create some new.
Anyways this year I decided to think about my new years resolution a bit early and while its still on the works, I do know that I am thinking of them as more of things to implement than keep them in the list that after a month lands into the trash can.
It might be a good time for you to start thinking as well.
Meanwhile, I have news for you.
A 4 part series on new resources for project management community will be coming up soon and yes I do have a big hairy goal for next year and that involves you too! More on this soon. Plus if you haven't received any newsletters recently that's because I haven't been doing any, although I do enjoy reading the ones i subscribe too. So, the newsletter will be up and coming from December again!
Stay warm and happy this November.
SIPM
The SIPM community platform is still running and if you notice, it doesn't have ads running all over and run on its own merits.
It's meant to be a platform that helps connect newbies in project management with the experts. As far as I know it's one of a kind. It's FREE. Word spreads just by word of mouth and if you like it, let your friend know.
Recently there's been too many of fake sign ups and I think it's wrong on the part of those who are doing it. Please understand the site was build as a way to give back to the project management community and allows and encourage interesting discussions, finding mentors and a way to find your next job or internship. So, if you have nothing to learn or offer, please don't malign the interest of the site and this community.
It's meant to be a platform that helps connect newbies in project management with the experts. As far as I know it's one of a kind. It's FREE. Word spreads just by word of mouth and if you like it, let your friend know.
Recently there's been too many of fake sign ups and I think it's wrong on the part of those who are doing it. Please understand the site was build as a way to give back to the project management community and allows and encourage interesting discussions, finding mentors and a way to find your next job or internship. So, if you have nothing to learn or offer, please don't malign the interest of the site and this community.
The Challenges of International Projects
This is a guest post by Elizabeth Harrin.
The world of
business is continually shrinking: we work in an environment with real-time
audio visual communication with colleagues on the other side of the world and online
translation tools. Even small companies can operate internationally with
outsourcing agreements and partners overseas, which means that project managers
in organisations of any size face the challenges of managing international
projects.
And that means
far more than just calculating that when it’s 9am in ‘my’ London it’s 4am in
London, Ohio. International projects come with two main challenges: the people
you are working with won’t necessarily work in the same way as you, and the
people you are working for won’t necessarily want the same things.
Having an open
mind about these challenges is the first step in being able to address them on
an international project team. You need a pragmatic approach, especially as
national culture plays a big part in how we act, and we can’t change who we are
– we can just learn how to make those differences work for everyone concerned.
This can be
difficult for project managers to get their heads around. Once you are in the
position of managing an international project, you may well be one of the more
senior project managers in your team. You have gained that position through
hard work and successful project delivery. You expect your project team members
to behave in certain ways and people from different cultures won’t always
behave the way you expect. As you can imagine, that causes problems and
conflict on projects.
Making international working easier
Project
managers taking on international projects face a variety of practical
challenges. For example, time zones are important. How will you conduct
real-time team meetings? Who is going to be the person who gets up in the
middle of the night for a call with the Brazilian development team to go
through the testing results? In the absence of incentives for the project team,
the project manager will find it difficult to recruit volunteers.
Protecting the
interests of the UK-based team also falls to the project manager. A project
sponsor who doesn’t appreciate that you have just spent half the night on a web
conference with the manufacturing supplier in New Zealand won’t look favourably
on your request to send everyone home at 3pm. Project managers with
international components to their teams not only have to educate team members
in how to work well together, but also have to manage upwards and ensure that
senior stakeholders understand the constraints of this type of project. In
reality, international projects take longer and involve higher travel costs
than projects where the entire team is co-located – and that isn’t always a
welcome message to the executives.
Practical
suggestions aside, the easiest way I have found to work with international
teams is to build cultural understanding. As I found when living and working in
France, you can be linguistically literate without being culturally literate.
At a pub quiz I couldn’t answer the questions about children’s TV programmes or
what was found under the streets of Paris (I think, if I remember rightly, that
it was the river). But the pub quiz was in an Irish bar, and there weren’t many
of them around so that was a change of environment for many of my Parisian
colleagues.
Cultural
understanding relies on the emotional intelligence of the project manager, his
or her leadership skills, adaptability and ability to inform and train the
teams.
Using software to help international communication
Aside from
cultural understanding, your next challenge is communication. Successful
communication relies on the soft skills that a project manager brings to the
table. These are the ability to listen, hear the unspoken concerns and
messages, and respond clearly in a way that the other person can understand.
Being able to
put those soft communication skills into practice is something that can be
helped by technology. People need to be able to hear and speak to each other in
some format before the project manger’s emotional intelligence can be put to
good use. Technology can help with the challenges of international projects,
even if we have to accept its limitations with regards to the interpretation of
messages communicated using it.
There are lots
of technologies available to project managers with virtual teams, whether they
are based all over the world or in multiple offices in the same time zone.
Instant messaging gives project teams the ability to connect informally when
their status is shown as online. This can promote collaborative working as team
members can quickly and easily ask questions of their colleagues instead of
waiting for a scheduled formal meeting. In general, the more communication the
greater the bonds and understanding between team members, so provided this
facility is not abused, it can help improve working relationships. In practice,
it works best when all users are in similar time zones where the difference is
only a few hours.
The next step
up from one-to-one messaging is web conferencing, where multiple users join the
same online conference. Applications such as WebEx allow you to hold a virtual
meeting with the team. Web conferencing means you can make changes to documents
in real time or show product demonstrations to the rest of the team without
having everyone in the same room – lower travel costs and a reduction in time
spent out of the office even if you don’t have the international element to
contend with.
Instant messaging
and web conferencing allow synchronous communication, but asynchronous
communication is also useful for project managers with international teams. You
could opt for something as simple as a shared calendar, where team meetings and
project milestones are recorded for everyone to see. When you connect from a PC
configured to a different time zone, Outlook will automatically show the
meeting at the correct time where you are. However, I have been caught out by
the same feature in Google’s calendar, which didn’t seem to adjust for daylight
savings time for some reason – and I missed my conference call.
Whatever
software you choose to use to manage your project, you will quickly realise its
limitations. A good project manager knows when to use the tools, and when to
set the tools aside and lead with understanding and instinct.
Spending some
time with your team members overseas is the best way to understand how they
work, but desk research before you go (or if budget constraints mean you can’t
go) will be beneficial. You will find out a great deal about how team members
will most likely react in the project environment if you see them react, but
that of course relies on you having the time to do that period of ‘getting to
know you’.
Even if you
don’t have lots of time, be curious in the time you do have. Many people love
talking about how their countries work and a short discussion early on in your
project can make a big difference. This knowledge provides you with a framework
to manage the differences that will occur and also the confidence that you can
develop an appropriate way of working together. In a shrinking world, projects
are expanding, and the keys to success in international projects are shrewd use
of the available technologies and excellent cultural awareness.
This article has been adapted from material published
on A Girl’s Guide To Project Management and is reprinted with permission.
(Pic Courtesy: Google images)
Friday- Top 3
Here are 3 articles that are sure to make you a better professional:
- Why networking is of importance
- 23 daily habits that will make you smarter
- How you can become so good that you can’t be ignored
What inspires you and keeps you going?
Introducing Project Rio
Will Power and free resources for wannabe Project Managers
You never know where inspiration comes from
.
I have been doing random stuff to keep myself going and one
of it has been watching youtube videos. I recently watched a TED talk by Kelly
Mcgonigal and that led to watching more talks by her. This one is my favorite.
It talk about Will power and what we can do to attain it and
how smaller interventions actually change the way we think.
I also read up her “how I work” series in LIfehacker as it seems very natural to see how she does it in real life. I hope this video gives you the will power you need to pick
up or face a storm in your own work space or life .