Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Should there be PDUs for blogging?

Two weeks back I was attending ProjectWorld in Orlando where I gave two talks. The event is primarily for PMPs and they receive up to 24 PDUs for attending the 4 days of the event. The PDUs contribute to maintaining their PMP status with the PMI. I was reflecting on the irony of this - the extrinsic motivation of the PDU currency - rather than the intrinsic motivation of the desire to be the best darn project manager possible. At the same time, I was also reflecting on an interview I gave to Projects At Work webzine about project management blogging and the topic of why so few project managers are blogging (in comparison say to the number of software developers who blog.) Then it occurred to me…

Why are there no PDUs for blogging?

PMI members get PDUs for showing up at local chapter meetings. In fact, that is one way of insuring that local chapters are well supported - provide an extrinsic motivation. Showing face is enough - but the hope is that showing up will actually lead to some knowledge transfer and the professional development of the individual. Hence, the reason it contributes to PMP status.

So, (first question) are project managers a different breed? Are they motivated by extrinsic incentives (like salesmen) when all the management science literature tells us that knowledge workers are motivated intrinsically (I never have been sure I believed all that science but we hear it repeated often enough from many in the agile community)?

(second question) if the first is true, would offering PDUs for project managers to blog increase the numbers of them doing so?

(third question) If so, what would be an appropriate scheme for awarding PDUs against blog posts?

(and finally the big fourth question) Can anyone imagine the powers in the PMI actually embracing such an idea?

And then to my final observation…

When the extrinsic motivation tool is tribal in nature, it is irresistible! What is missing from the management science literature on knowledge worker motivation - and all that Maslov hierarchy stuff - is a tribal dimension. If you reduce tribal membership and acceptance to some tally of merits or demerits then offering merits will be an irresistible incentive to undertake some task or action. [Yes, the PMI is a tribe! For those unfamiliar with my previous posts on this topic try typing “tribal” in to the search box on the left hand sidebar.]

The organizers of Project World can take this all the way to the bank. Now I wonder if someone could figure out how to monetize this in the blogosphere? Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Project+management, ProjectWorld, PMI, PMP, PDU, Management+Science

Friday, November 17, 2006

How I’ve influenced Alistair Cockburn…

Four years ago, it was unheard of for people to talk of constraints and bottlenecks in software engineering processes. Even if they did use the term “bottleneck” they certainly didn’t reach out to Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints to suggest a solution to the problem.

More than 3 years on since my book was published that is changing. The most tangible evidence of this to date is the arrival of Alistair Cockburn’s 2nd edition of Agile Software Development. I’ve gotten to know Alistair through the formation of the APLN and the creation of the Declaration of Interdependence. When I first met him, he came up to me to tell me that he’d recently read my book and was impressed. It seems that constraints thinking really did enter deeply in to his psyche and this is reflected in his 7 principles for evaluating a methodology. The 7th one states, “efficiency is expendable in non-bottleneck resources.” This comes straight from the Theory of Constraints body of knowledge. Check out this review.

In addition, Alistair has been impressed with some of my Lean work and the work I did to synthesize the CMMI with agile. He has included one of my cumulative flow diagrams as method for reporting progress on agile projects. It gives me a great sense of validation when something like this happens. I guess I’m not some off-the-wall crank after all, then! Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Alistair+Cockburn

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Large Scale Agile Development

Regular readers and watchers of my Channel 9 video interviews will be aware that the challenge of scaling agile to the enterprise has been on my mind. Others are thinking about it to and Agile Journal dedicates the whole of their November issue to the topic - including an article from Scott Ambler on the role of architecture on enterprise scalability of agile. Way to go Scott! Your diagram looks awefully like the 5 steps in FDD diagram that we’ve been using for 7 years  Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Silos, Politics and Turf Wars

I need to thank my friend Mitch Lacey for gifting me a copy of Patrick Lencioni’s Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars. It was an enjoyable read. The first 150 pages or so are in the form of an allegory (or novel) teaching Lencioni’s technique for resolving organizational divides and infighting. The second section of the book describes the theory.

The theory involves a thematic goal that is used as a rallying cry and focal point for the rival teams. Lencioni describes a thematic goal as _not_ a BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) from Collins and Porras Built to Last but somewhat smaller, while not small enough to be merely tactical or operational in nature.

Despite the fact that I have every reason to believe that Lencioni has had success with the technique, I can’t help feeling that Ray Immelman’s Great Boss, Dead Boss is a much better treatise on the topic of office politics, infighting and organizational divides. Last year I suggested that Great Boss, Dead Boss might be the most important management book you would read that year. I still think highly of it.

If you only have time to read one business novel on office politics invest your time in Immelman’s story of acquisition in the microprocessor business rather than Lencioni’s story of a merger between financial systems software firms. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Patrick+Lencioni, Ray+Immelman, Office+Politics

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Thoughts from Asia #2 - Supply Chains

Supply chains are emerging in software application development! I met people in Asia who work for large American corporations. Their office might be in Malaysia but they do work for a corporate headquarters in California or Texas. The are internal outsourcers. However, they in turn take some of the simpler or more boring work and sub it out to 3rd party firms in Vietnam or China. I met firms in Vietnam doing work for the Japanese but they only get to do the coding. They don’t get to do much of the value-added analysis or design work. Sure it is waterfall model but it still highlights a supply chain emerging.

I personally feel that the long term trend will be for this supply chain trend to continue, grow and mature. I think that the smarter firms will get good at it. They will separate out concerns in their analysis and architecture work and will find suitable pieces to partition and source from lower cost suppliers.

I believe it is possible for some of these suppliers to become specialist in certain areas of supply chain focused only on generic abstract pieces that aren’t specific to any given application. Don’t believe me? Well consider this… what does Microsoft Patterns & Practices do today? They create generic reusable components and other assets, that they bundle in packages called software factories and they make those available for consumption by 3rd parties. Money doesn’t change hands but there is still a supply chain.

So, here is how I see this playing out. Smarter Western and Japanese firms will start to use software factories and software product lines concepts in their architectures. They will separate out concerns and write specifications for lower level software factories asset bundles and source the development work from a low cost Asian supplier. These suppliers will then use their sales forces to target other customers in the same or similar verticals and look to resell the knowledge they’ve learned creating reusable assets for their initial customer. They’ll build domain expertise in an area and become known as a very low cost supplier of such components and other reusable assets. From this organic growth a full industry supply chain will emerge. COTS will be the norm when assembling and integrating a new product. Only finishing work will be done by the local high cost application developer.Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Software+Supply+Chains, Software+Product+Lines, Software+Factories