This a free monthly newsletter providing software book reviews and commentary on software industry trends for the wider business community by Marcus Price, Agilier Ltd, April 2006
Overview
This is another splendid book to add the growing number about Agile techniques for software development. One of the criticisms sometimes levelled at these techniques is that the role of the project manager is often poorly defined. Augustine seeks to address this shortcoming by presenting a project management framework that champions the following principles:
- to foster alignment and cooperation between team members
- to encourage and self-organisation
- to promote learning and co-operation.
He gives a compelling account of how implementing this framework can bring a focus on customer value, which he defines as “the right product at the right price at the right time” – a definition borrowed from Lean Manufacturing. Although biased toward software development, the proposed framework can be used easily for other managing non-software-based projects.
Organise Organic Teams
Augustine quotes his own research by saying that between 70% and 85% of a traditional project manager’s time is spent on activities that do not directly contribute to customer value. Drawing on Complexity Theory, which states that a living system has many autonomous agents acting according to simple rules and constant feedback, Augustine proposes a model of a self-organising project team. Interestingly, he shows how this approach can be scaled, if required, throughout an organisation, leading to a possible Agile technique for organisational change.
Have a Guiding Vision
Augustine gives a number of straightforward activities to produce a guiding vision, such as envisioning a bold future and creating shared success criteria. However, he outlines a deceptively simple technique for a team to delineate the scope a project. This involves getting all the stakeholders to list features that are in scope (“to automate the loan approval process”) and list a corresponding feature that is out of scope (“to create a new loan approval process”). Although simple, this is activity that I have personally used to save months of unnecessary work.
Apply Simple Rules
According to Complexity Theory, simple rules can help a team self-organise and exhibit more complex behaviour - meaning that they become a sum greater than their parts. Augustine groups the rules into a number of categories and uses this grouping as a template onto which to map these simple rules. He uses XP (an Agile software development methodology) as an example, but simple rules from a non-software project could be equally applicable.
Display Open Information
Augustine gives a number of activities to demonstrate a core tenet of agile project management - that information should be displayed publicly, rather than held “internally” - for example, a Gantt chart on central filing system. He advocates a useful technique from Lean Manufacturing theory - a value stream map, which shows all the activities to between external groups order to deliver a product. This map shows the total time taken for each activity, broken into wait time (days waiting for the task to complete) and touch time (days taken executing the task). If the wait time is very large (say 20 days) compared to the touch time (say 1 day), then this indicates a potential bottleneck that can be investigated by the teams concerned.
Apply a Light Touch
Once an organic team is assembled and is working to simple rules toward a guiding vision, what is the manager’s role? Augustine addresses this by considering a number of activities including the powerful “pull task management system”. A list of tasks is publicly displayed with details of what the task involves. Rather than the project manager allocating the tasks to the team member, the team members “pull” a task themselves. Once completed, the team member publicly updates the task and it becomes available to the next role in the process. In a software development environment, this may equate to a developer passing the task onto a tester.
Adaptive Leadership
The key to maintaining an Agile Project, Augustine maintains, is to close the feedback loop that Complexity Theory demands by monitoring and adapting the simple rules that were established and agreed at the start. This is achieved by regular, frequent review by the whole team. If a rule proves not to be working, then the team agrees to amend or substitute it.
Book Strengths
The book has many strengths. It is rooted in established theoretical principles of Lean Manufacturing and Complexity Theory. There are many tips and tricks, clearly taken from real-world experience. It avoids rancour that occasionally occurs between differing Agile methodologies. The most useful section is at the end – this summarises how to transition from a plan-driven management style to a more agile, adaptive style espoused in the book. This final chapter could be used as an action plan to start change in an organisation, using a medium-size, non-critical project as a pilot.
Verdict
This is a well-written, thoughtful book deserves to be read in a wider community than just that of software development and can be used as a handy reference for managers dealing with real-world project issues and a reference for those who seek the theoretical underpinnings of modern project management thinking.
This a free monthly newsletter providing book reviews and commentary on software industry
trends for the wider business community.
Please feel free to send comments or forward this to colleagues and friends who will find it
valuable. Permission is granted to reprint as long as it is reprinted in its entirety.
Agilier is an independent consultancy specialising in providing leading-edge
business-change and technology services using Agile techniques.
Copyright (c) 2006 by Marcus Price
