February 2007 – Leading Answers

February 28, 2007Agile Project Management, Metrics

Summarizing Progress with Parking Lot Diagrams

Feature Driven Development (FDD) employs a smart way of rolling up development progress that provides an easily digested summary of project status using Parking Lot diagrams. Yet, their appreciation and use outside of FDD is quite rare. I taught an Agile Project Management class last week and nobody had seen or used them before, which is a shame because, especially for large projects, they are a great dashboard tool to illustrate overall progress and pain points. Parking lot diagrams are not just for FDD projects, they can be used equally as well on XP, Scrum, or DSDM projects and this post will introduce them and provide you with a sample Excel spreadsheet for creating them. As projects get larger the […]

February 21, 2007October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Estimating

Schedule Questions: Pair Programming and the PNR Curve

Converting effort estimates into project durations and team sizes is an important part of project planning. How this is done varies from project manager to project manager, to some it is an art, others a science, and to many a case of living with everyday constraints. Today I will focus on the science and its implication to pair programming. If your initial project estimates indicate 72 person months of effort how do you best resource it? 1 person for 72 months?72 people for 1 month?6 people for 12 months? Intuitively we know that 1 person for 72 months might work (providing they had all the right skills) but typically business wants the benefits of a project as soon as possible. […]

February 16, 2007Agile Project Management, Leadership, Planning, Teams

Team Decision Making

How quickly we make decisions and the team member’s level of agreement to these decisions impacts project performance and team cohesion. Software development is an exercise in information exchange and decision making. Also, since software projects have no tangible, emerging product moving down a production line, the communication and decision making process becomes more critical to keep everyone informed and engaged. Agile methods utilize many tools to promote effective communications including: co-location, daily stand-up meetings, planning workshops, retrospectives, etc, but less is written or taught about decision making. However, if team members are not canvassed for their opinions we run the risk of alienating portions of the team leading to reduced levels of commitment and participation, and potentially missing an […]

February 8, 2007Agile Project Management

The Rise, Fall and Rediscovery of Agile Methods

The rising misapplication of agile methods and the trend of everyone claiming to be “agile” is probably a good indicator that agile methods have well and truly crossed the chasm into the mainstream. I wrote the attached “Crossing the Agile Chasm” paper in 2002 and it was published in the Agile Times in 2003. At that time agile adoption was predominantly the realm of early adopters, keen to understand and adopt new techniques. Download crossing_the_agile_chasm With the adoption by the majority segment we see a different usage pattern including “me too” and “panacea seeker” (faster, cheaper, and easier) groups in addition to well intentioned users. Vendors are keen to cash in too, and we see “agile-this” and “agile-that” tools and […]

February 5, 2007Agile Project Management, Events

Agile Project Management Course

Here is a shameless plug for a public two day Agile Project Management course I will be teaching on February 22-23 in Calgary, Alberta. It is an intensive, practical based, small group class that covers the full lifecycle of managing agile projects in the real world. There are lots of hands-on exercises and project case studies. It employs proven adult learning techniques and a visual learning style to bring the topics to life and help them stick in your mind. The course is accompanied by a comprehensive workbook and a CD of tools, templates and resources.

February 4, 2007October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Books, Events, Leadership, Teams

Don’t (Just) Drink The Kool-Aid

The next CAMUG meeting looks very interesting. Jonathan Kohl will be presenting "Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid! Avoiding Process Pitfalls". Here is an excerpt from his presentation outline: “… merely applying an Agile (or any other) process is not a guarantee of success. As with anything else in life, there are trade-offs, and unintended consequences when applying a tool or process. This talk will explore some common Agile process practices that may work well in some contexts, and have unintended consequences in others. The intention of this talk is to encourage us all to keep striving to build the best software we can. It’s tempting to think we have the formula for success, but in a rapidly changing industry, we must […]

February 2, 2007October 3, 2026Agile Project Management, Events, Planning

Update from The Agile Alliance Planning Meeting

I have just returned from the Agile Alliance board meeting in Portland, OR. The objectives were to develop the goals and objectives for the Agile Alliance for 2007, work through some conference planning details, and discuss research funding and other initiatives. The meetings were held at the Kennedy School which is a very cool hotel, come arts and entertainment facility that houses a theatre, restaurant, several bars, and a movie theatre. The whole place has been preserved/restored to a historic school setting and decorated with a wide variety of art installations and period fixtures. The hotel rooms are old class rooms, complete with chalk boards, heavy baseboards and devoid of modern trimmings like TVs. The meeting rooms are old libraries, […]