Methodology roulette, always bet on Gorilla

Note: For new Gorilla Blogs, head over to The Gorilla Coach

This blog originally appeared on PMChat.net. I heartily recommend this site and more importantly the weekly Twitter chat that Rob Kelly and Rob Prinzo host with the hashtag #pmchat. Thanks again to Rob and Rob for inviting me to speak in the PMChat pre-game call and to share this blog on their site.

“Hogarth?”

My mind was still trying to comprehend the scene before me, but my mouth already knew who was undoubtedly responsible. The conference table was gone; in its place was a roulette table. Gathered around the betting section of the table were some of the usual suspects, Percy – the pink elephant, Wanda – the black swan, the apes Stanley and Winston, and even James – the intern.  And overseeing the table was none other than Hogarth. Wearing a poker visor and sweeping up chips with one of those crooked neck poles you see in gambling movies, he was cheerfully laying on the “dealer” patter.

“Winner pays to six phase lifecyle on black. Oh, tough luck for Wanda betting it all on Scrum red. Lay your bets for the next spin…”

Hogarth, was the gorilla in the room. He’s one part elephant in the room – that problem everyone is trying so hard to ignore, and one part 800 pound gorilla – something so powerful that it can act without regard to the desires of others. The gorilla in the room can crush your project into dust and leave your team wondering what the license plate number was of the bus they were just thrown under.

Like Harvey, Jimmy Stewart’s imaginary rabbit, Hogarth is my personal management Pooka. Thing about management Pooka’s is they are a blessing, a curse and totally unpredictable.

“Betting is closed,” Hogarth said. “Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody…”

“HOGARTH!” I snapped, this time much louder and with a healthy dose of annoyance. “What on earth are you doing?”

My 800 pound gorilla looked up from the spinning wheel. “Oh hey there, Boss. We’re just playing a little methodology roulette.”

I shook my head, trying to comprehend what he was saying. The roulette wheel was slowing down now and as I stepped closer I could see words, not numbers on the red and black pockets that made up the wheel. I caught words and acronyms like “6 Phase SLDC, 9 Phase PLC, Scrum, Lean, PDD, PUD, and BDUP”

“Methodology what?”

The table broke into groans of disgust as the ball finally fell into a pocket labeled “SotP.”

Hogarth turned to the table, brandishing his chip collecting stick. “Oh too bad, no one put anything down on the “seat of your pants” methodology.”

Hogarth pulled out the banana tucked under his sleeve garter. While he peeled it he addressed my question. “If you haven’t noticed, there is a hell of a lot of methodologies running around. Just here in the company you’ve got at least a dozen variations. Your using a Scrumish model in the consumer group, IT is using a Lean Kanban model, Finance has a customized accounting focused process for all projects it takes part in, and let’s not even get into what it takes for the hardware team to change a single resister from 10 to 15 ohm in that monolith, twelve gate process they have.” Tossing his banana peel in the trash, he continued around a mouthful of the fruit, “With all those different processes it plays complete havoc on anyone who wants to run a project. What the heck should they learn, PMP, Prince, Six Sig, Agile, IBM’s custom process, Accenture’s?” He shook his head, “Man could go crazy trying to figure out which process to become an expert on.”

He was right, absolutely dead right. I could feel my heart start to quicken with impending panic. What should I do?

“Oh come now, you don’t think I’d leave you hanging, now do you?” He gave me a sparkling white grin and pointed at the table. “When you can’t beat the house, don’t play the game. Remember it’s not about the process, it’s about the people.”.”

It’s good to have a Hogarth… (just don’t tell him that)

Methodology Roulette- Or how the heck can you work in any project?

We are hearing more and more about the portability of the project management skill set. I’ve blogged about this in previous blogs, “Project Gorillas are SMEs” and “The gorilla with too many hats.” The nutshell concept is that the project management career has become its own expertise that can transcend specific industries. I’m a walking, talking example of this, having worked in such diverse industries as hard drive manufacturing, consumer electronics, computer games and virtualization.

“Okay, so I believe I can work anywhere. The question is, how do we keep up with all the ways to run a project?”

Even within a single “big bucket” methodology (which is really the wrong term at this level, but that’s another blog) there are dozens if not scores of variations. I’ve worked in traditional “waterfall” (Plan Driven Development or Big Design Up Front) projects that range from a bare three phases/gates to a staggering nine phases/gates and I’ve heard of programs with even more gates. The blog Leading Answers has a great blog on Agile Adoption that shows a periodic table of agile adoption. If there are that many ways to adopt agile, just think of the number of ways to do agile.

PMBoK, Prince2, BDUF, PDD, XP, SCRUM, LEAN, AGILE, SIX SIGMA, PMP, CSM, ACP, AAPM, CSP, CPM, ABC, 123, PDQ, the list of methods and certifications is staggering. PMI alone has six different certifications, five of which are focused on their own specific methods and practices.

“Oh my head, there’s no way to keep up.”

That’s right, so don’t even try. Instead focus on what’s most important.

There is one thing every project I’ve ever worked on possessed. One constant factor across a half dozen industries and even more job titles. It’s on every project and it’s what you should focus on.

“You mean people?”

Right! You see for me I’ve come to the realization that it’s not about the methodology at all. To paraphrase presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, “It’s about the people, stupid.”

Projects are done by groups of people. And when a group of individuals works together, instead of in parallel, they become teams. And through teamwork the end result can be greater than the sum of the parts.

And that’s why today I call myself an “Agile Project Manager”.  Using the principles and values of agile to guide how I work with any team, any project, any methodology.

(Remember, agile isn’t a methodology. Just like the PMBoK isn’t a methodology, but a set of best practices, agility as it is practiced is nothing more than a set of guiding principles set forth in the Agile Manifesto. Scrum, XP, lean, those are methodologies).

The very first value of agility is “Individuals and Interactions over Process Tools.” It has nothing to do with the tangible. It has to do with how the team should function. Principles four, five, six, eight, and twelve are directly focused on people or team interactions and principle eleven can't happen without a motivated team. Agile isn't about shipping software, but instead is a set of values and principles. Values that have an extreme focus on the who, not the what.

“But Agile is just a passing fad, it won’t last.”

Agile the word is new, the concepts behind agile are not. Agile is new vocabulary for good business practices that go back to post World War II with Edward Demmings, the Toyota Production System, and the people philosophy that became the Toyota Way. It really goes back even further; to the Hawthorne Study in the post depression and the roots of Industrial Psychology  in WW I troop assignments. The point here is solid team building practices have existed for a long time. In the 1980’s and 90’s it seems we lost the way. In the drive for more efficient companies we forgot that the people in them are what make the products, not the balance sheet.

Using Agile as a management technique makes sense and is something that’s been done for decades. I’m not doing anything new, I’m just coming full circle.

“Umm, okay. So how do you do Agile without using Scrum (or Lean, or Kanban, or..)?”

There are many ways to do this.  Author and agile coach Lyssa Adkins focuses on coaching the players. Agile fundamentalist, Tobias Mayer, ascribes to total self-empowerment of the team. The Manager Tools  podcast series focuses on making you a better manager with the concept that making a better you makes a better team. You can follow one of the existing concepts or, like me, you can develop your own principles and guides. For me I focus on how I can help teams. By being the best team helper I can be, I support the team in being better.

At the end of the day the core concept here is to focus on the team. A better team, makes for a better product.

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Talker

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Wake up and smell the gorilla

Or: Finding my own business philosophy on project management (and other business management)

The training room was packed. Nearly everyone from the department was there and we were all interested to know what the all hands meeting was about. Things were going really good. The company was doing great. We'd gotten past the uber release of the year and were all breathing a sigh of relief. My job might not have been exciting or "filled with growth opportunity" but it was nice and safe.

Then boss of all the bosses in the room stepped up to speak and we all settled into quiet, ears listening.

I know he said other things, but somehow everything he said was lost in an unrelenting roar of six words as they repeated in my head, over and over again. "Your services are no longer required."

My jaw dropped. That's okay though, the floor had fallen out from under me and my jaw was just trying to keep up with the rest of my body. What happened? This was a safe job! How did I miss the writing on the wall, I mean there's always writing on the wall. Isn't there?

"Of course there is." I turned to look for the source of the voice. I didn't recognize it, but the voice was familiar somehow. It was almost like I should know and was just having amnesia.

"Selective amnesia, sure I'll give you that." The voice was attached to two rather large, extremely hairy feet. Said feet were propped up on the table next to me. Following the feet back up the equally hairy legs I was eventually greeted by the visage of a 900 pound gorilla.

"What the hell are you?" Not exactly the most sane response to meeting a talking gorilla but I can't imagine Elwood P. Dowd handled meeting Harvey much better.

"I'm your fairy career gorilla." He grinned, showing a mouthful of blindingly white teeth. "Well technically I'm your 'So blindingly obvious you can't avoid it' combined with 'That problem you know is there but would rather ignore gorilla.' Course you could just call me Hogarth, that's my name."

"I must be hallucinating. Or maybe this is just a bad dream. I've been under a lot of stress lately, this is just stress giving me bad dreams. Yeah, that's the ticke…"

Smack!

I think I've mentioned before how unnerving it is to be smacked by a figment of your imagination. The first time was no less so. And it's damn  hard to ignore figment of your imagination that makes you see double. Blinking, I looked at the fuzzy image of two gorillas. "How long have you been sitting there?"

Hogarth folded his ample hands over his chest and spoke serenely, "I have always been here, you just were not prepared to see me."

"How the hell can you miss a 900 pound gorilla in the room?" I asked in complete disbelief.

Hogarth's reply was to wave about the room. All about me were faces in shock, disbelief and sadness. HR Minions, their dislike of their own job right then evident on their faces, moved about the recently dispossessed like clerics ministering to their flock. But no one paid any attention to Hogarth. "People see what they want to see, they understand what they want to understand."

"To truly understand the source of a problem, one must be prepared to look for it in ever increasing circles about oneself"*

*This quote is paraphrased from Mark Horstman

And so was my "aha moment", my "game changer", my "Waterloo". Or in normal speak, it was getting laid off from this "safe" job that finally made me stick my head up over the cube wall and look around. 

In the days right after the event I went through the normal five cycles of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. It was with acceptance that I found out something fundamental. Something that changed how I looked at everything. With acceptance I gained the realization that getting laid off was the best thing that could have happened to my career. I felt like that guy in the romance comedy movie. You know, the one who's in love with the super perfect, if not a little boring, woman and is devastated when she leaves him, only to realize his best friend has been the girl of his dreams all along? Being shaken from the safety of my job made me realize how much I was to blame for where I was.

For some of us, it takes a two by four to the head to see the blindingly obvious. My two by four was being laid off and what I ended up seeing was Hogarth. Okay, I didn't really see a 900 pound gorilla, but what I did see were things that had been right in front of my face all along and I was too focused, blind or in denial to notice.

And so I began to make the changes to take control of my career. At first it was the absorption of knowledge I'd ignored for so long. Reading books I'd long owned, long had looking impressive on my office shelf and had never read. Checking in with the real world and what was going on. And discovering new voices that spoke words of common sense, words I'd been deaf to before.

And then I began to realize I had most everything I needed to take charge of my career. I learned enough to see that I already knew how to be more than what I was. I started to understand I already had a set of principles, a personal business philosophy. I just needed to start following my own inner gorilla.

Over the last two years I've put to writing my own guiding business philosophy. Covey might call it a mission statement, Agile calls them values and Manager Tools just calls it being Effective. They are still a work in progress, but they color my daily work and the blogs I write here. 

The one caveat I should give is that this isn't anything new or profound. This isn't rocket science, or as the fine gentlemen at Manager Tools like to say "Management is boring, but it is effective." I'm not the guru of a new world order, I've just put some common sense into a coherent form and am doing my best to follow my own guidance.

The Gorilla Philosophy:

1- People, not projects

2- It's all about communication

3- Process is a tool, not a roadblock (corollary, there is no, one, right way)

4- Everything leads back to the Customer (Stakeholder, End User, etc.)

Stick your head up and look around, is there a gorilla waiting to talk to you?

Joel Bancroft-Connors

The Gorilla Project Manager

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.

Pothole Project Management, a Gorilla PM philosophy

Or- How to solve a problem you lack the authority/resources to solve.

Ever have a day where you feel utterly powerless? Where your every act carries as much power as a waterlogged facial tissue holding back a runaway train? Okay, okay, I know, that that's the normal state of being for a project manager. But I mean really and truly feeling like you have no more influence then a viagra spam email. Ever had one of those days?

I was.

Jake, the development manager,  had just declared his team had no plans to fix the fatal crash& corruption bug in the database load scripts. "It's a fringe case, no one is ever going to hit it."

Carlos was less than inclined to accept the answer. "Fringe case? A good twenty percent of our user base uses the Whippoorwill chip. What are my customer support reps supposed to say, 'Oh sorry, sir, but that's a fringe case. Can you please reinstall your system from a backup? You don't have a backup, oh well."

I sat in the middle, doing my best to stay the unbiased facilitator. Carlos could be a very reactionary customer service person and had a tendency to exaggeration, but I'd seen his data on this, and it was accurate. Over in the other corner, Jake's team had been working for six months solid and had juggled a mountain of scope creep, introduced by the product manager. He was under a lot of pressure to deliver the product and just plain worn out by it.

So I looked to the product manager. "Bob, it's your product, what do you want to do."

Bob looked up from his Blackberry prayer. He glanced at the fiery tempered CS manager and then at the stoic development manager. "We're a month late already, we can't afford any more delays."

Carlos nearly jumped across the table, "Delays? We wouldn't be a month behind schedule if you hadn't added a dozen features at the last minute and we wouldn't have this bug if you hadn't insisted on changing the DB schema!"

Two size-twenty, hairy feet levered themselves up onto the table next to me. Leaning back in his chair Hogarth folded his arms behind his head and turned to me. "You know this isn't going to be any different from the last time customer support went toe to toe with the product manager?"

I glared at Hogarth, willing him to disappear in a puff of smoke. He didn't and I was faced with the lopsided grin of my personal gorilla. I wanted to snap at him, that this would be different, but I couldn't because I knew very well it wouldn't be. Just like weather in LA, if yesterday was sunny, then odds were damn good tomorrow would be as well. The needs of the schedule would outweigh the needs of the product quality and customer support would be stuck supporting the bug. It would also impact our company. We were already starting to get a poor reputation for having great ideas, but horrible implementations.

Hogarth yawned, exposing a mouth full of pointed teeth, each gleaming like a reminder of things gone wrong. He said, "if you don't do something, then it will be the same thing all over again."

Now I was angry. It was one thing for Hogarth to state the blindingly obvious. But to imply I could change fate was quite the other. "Hogarth, I don't have that kind of authority. My job is to move the project, not decide what it is!"

"We're not going to have the responsibility argument again, are we?" he said. Before I could tell him this was different he waved towards the conference room's big, picture window. "Remember that pot hole in the north parking lot, the one you used to hit every day?"

I nodded, "Yes, and I tried to get it fixed for six months. Facilities only finally got around to doing it last week. So?"

Hogarth shook his head, "Yeah facilities fixed it, but it wasn't anything you did. The construction project on the south wing meant they had to drop a bunch of equipment at the head of the south lot, including in the CEO's parking spot." Flipping his feat down, Hogarth turned to point out at the north parking lot. "So they gave him a temp spot right next to the north entrance. See there's his Mascarpone right there."

"Maserati" I corrected.

He waved a massive paw-hand, "Whatever. The point is last Monday he drove into the north lot and took out his muffler on that pothole. Want to guess how fast it was fixed?"

I shook my head, "No, I want to know what your point is."

"My point," he said, "is sometimes the solution to the problem is to steer the right person into the pothole. Who do you think is really going to care is there is a crash bug on  the Whippoorwill chip?"

And the light dawned on me. "Massive Computing, probably our largest client. And Walter, their account rep is in town. I make sure Walter knows about the problem and he'll get Bob to change Jake's mind!"

My gorilla smiled. "You are learning, young Jedi."

I call it "Pothole Project Management" and it's one of the core tenants of Gorilla Project Management. It is something of the flip side to what I discussed in Blog 21, The Responsible Authority Gorilla. In Responsible I talked about how I, as the Project Manager, worked process and standardization into the team using Gorilla PM rule #1 "First thing is to get it done, then find out who should do it." Pothole PM is the tool I bring out when my own authority (real or relationship) is insufficient to solve a problem. By steering someone with the authority into the issue, you can get the needed result.

Important point: This is not "I'm going to go tell dad!" This isn't the school of tattle-tale project management. Relationships and subtlety are still very important. A project manager who gets a reputation for always going over people's heads is a project manager who will soon have his team working to get rid of him.

Let's take the example from above. I wouldn't pick up the phone and tell Walter "Oh my god, do you know what they are doing?" My first approach would be to talk to Carlos, the Customer Service Manager. Carlos is the one who is most invested in the problem and he and Walter share a common interface point, that being the customer. Guiding Carl to go talk to Walter about "how we can ensure Massive Computer will be impacted minimally" will not only make Walter aware of the bug, but worst case will also start the risk mitigation planning if the bug does ship.

If I had to handle it directly, I'd do it in two ways, face-to-face and the power of status reports. Face-to-face is the trickiest, as it can all to easily come off as tattle-tale PM and that's bad. You have to steer the conversation and get Walter to ask for the data. Power of the status report is the least risky, but you have to make sure people read your status reports (and that is a whole other blog, but there are tips for this). You make sure you have a history of factual reporting that includes issues and risks. If Walter is reading your reports, he'll know about the issue gets involved that way.

Being an effective project manager is not about doing the work yourself, it is about making sure the right resource is applied to the right problem.

Joel BC

Veteran, the project management wars

Want me to talk to your gorilla? Send me an email

You can follow me on twitter, @JBC_PMP

Who is Hogarth? Read Blog 001 to find out all about my personal gorilla.