Finally I got time to read the new book "Scrappy project management" from Kimberly Wiefling. I knew it will be a great book and I wanted to read it immediately after I knew her new book will be published. Why? Kimberly is a very energetic lady who motivates people around her. I love her style and admire her rubber chicken. Oh, did I tell you the story about rubber chicken? I had one cute rubber chicken at my desk. I still remembered the time Kimberly dropped the rubber chicken to the ground and asked us why the chicken dropped. So many answers presented. Earth gravity for sure. The most powerful answer I even got is:" I let it go!" The rubber chicken won't drop if we would not let it go! The impossible task won't be accomplished if we would not try!
I was reassured that point after I finished the preface. PMBOK is a good start to learn what should happen for a project from start to finish. It is neat and ideal in a sanitized world. "Real projects are messy!" How can we achieve most and take advantage of PM knowledge while we are dealing with the real world case? Kimberly showed us a scrappy world where we lived in.
Here's the scrappy project management checklist Kimberly presents:
- Be completely and unrepentantly obsessed with the "Customer".
- Provide shared, measurable, challenging and achievable goals as clear as sunlight.
- Specific: who, what, when, which, why, where
- Measurable: how do we know it is finished?
- Achievable: the project to make people live forever is born to fail, at least, in my point of view.
- Relevant: A car company may not want to build a spaceship.
- Timely: someday will never work.
- A complete list of success criteria
- A clear description of each of these criteria
- SMART target for each criterion
- The minimum acceptance limit for each criterion
- Prioritization of these criteria, at least the top three most important one
- Updated at each major checkpoint with status and action required to make it move
- Clear ownership to get accountability
- Engage in effective, vociferous and unrelenting communication with all stakeholder.
- Ensure that roles and responsibilities are unmistakably understood and agreed upon by all
- Create viable plans and schedules that enjoy the team's hearty commitment.
- Mitigate big, hairy, abominable risks and implement innovative accelerators.
- Prioritize ruthlessly, choosing between heart, lungs and kidneys if necessary.
- Anticipate and accommodate necessary and inevitable change.
- Challenge assumptions and beliefs, especially insidious self-imposed limitations.
- Manage the expectations of all stakeholders: under-promise and over-deliver
- Learn from experience. Make new and more exciting mistakes each time!
- Attitude of gratitude: celebrate project success and some failures, too!
Do not assume anything. Find out who is the customer, what is the needs of customer, and how can we delight the desire of customer. We should never be busy with other matters instead of meeting with customer. The reason comes from the fact: "More than 50% of all new products fail to meet their goals because they don't meet the needs of their target customers and because they are released with unacceptable quality issues. Even when the quality is acceptable, between 60% and 90% of all new products fail to meet customer expectations."
Surprised? You should not. While whole project team members are working hard to meet the schedule deadlines, the assumed requirement may not meets customer expectations at all. No matter how sophistic your product can be, the REAL CUSTOMER may feel "you never listen to me" simply because it is not what customer needs. Does this sound so simple? Many projects failed because of the customer ignorance.
Customers may not know what will be the ideal solution before the solution is invented. However, they are the truly firsthand source to share their issues to overcome, their headache to kill, and their dissatisfactions to delight, with you, if you are carefully and actively listening.
So, before the project starts, the first thing we need to do is to pay a visit to our customer. The cost of trip will be rewarded by the customer satisfaction certainly.
The number one reason project failed is the lack of goals. Thus team can not achieve the goal and project failed. Ask all stakeholders what their project goal is, they may give you different view of goals. If those different view of goals are towards different direction, the team will be stretched apart.
"You can Do it!" Only if you know what "IT" means. "All road leads to Rome." Only if Rome is the eternal destination.
A traditional way: SMART goal which defines the success exit criteria for a project is essential to project success.
The famous project Triple Constraint defines three important factors: Schedule, Scope, and Cost. However, they are not the only factors in the play. Finishing a project on time, with the right requirement, and within budget does not mean the project is success. There are a lot of other aspects to consider: quality, usability, profitability are just some examples to ensure the successful project.
Moreover, most people only look at the simple SMART goal in their success scorecard. The results are the only focus without considering the impact of the process on people themselves. We, as a project leader, have to have our own success scorecard while contains both results and relationship. As always, the relationship last longer than the companies.
I love the scorecard Kimberly give in her book. She mentioned the key attributes of a useful scorecard as follows although the format varies:
Since not everyone in the team will read long requirement documents, a one-page scorecard keeps the team members aware of the goals clearly and posted with the progress. It's also a useful technique to communicate with stakeholders who are busy with many other matters.
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[Edit: to be continued.]
1 comment:
This is great info to know.
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