CSc 171 Fall 2016 “Beating a dead horse…” Ancient Tribal Wisdom When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in modern business there are heavy investment factors which often require that other strategies be tried… Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 1

CSc 171 Fall 2016 such as… Buy a heavier whip Change riders Threaten the horse with termination Appoint a committee to study the horse Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses Appoint a project team to re-animate the dead horse Create training to increase the rider's load share Change the form to read: "This horse is not dead." Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 2

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Harness several dead horses together for increased speed Increase funding to help the horses performance Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 3

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Rewrite the performance requirements for horses Hire a consulting firm to perform a strategic study of best practices in continuous improvement in utilizing dead horses Promote the dead horse to supervisory position Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 4

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 5 Chapter 6 Recognizing & Avoiding Schedule Games Management Games 1.Bring me a rock 2.Hope is our most important strategy 3.Queen of Denial 4.Sweep under the rug 5.Happy date 6.Pants on fire 7.Split focus 8.Schedule equals commitment 9.We’ll know where we are when we get there 10.The schedule tool is always right 11.We gotta have it, we’re toast without it 12.We can’t say no Team member games: 13.Schedule chicken 14.90% done 15.We’ll go faster now 16.Schedule trance

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Bring me a Rock Happens when “they” want it faster buy don’t explain why and when. Strategies: Ask questions… short, long or what kind of schedule Why the new date? Possible disconnect between what client needs and your understanding Explain the confidence range for the estimated date… Hopefully you have release (finish) criteria that can be referred to. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 6

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 7 Hope is our most important strategy “… they had never done a project like this before… it was bigger, different programming language, new platform, shorter schedule.” What to do: Identify risks! Iterate, prototypes, ongoing “proof of concepts” tasks Hudson Bay tasks Train Iterate everything… especially planning & scheduling Get help Milestones (inch-pebbles) with deliverables

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 8 Queen of Denial Inability to face reality. The “ostrich effect” Advice: Find out why Do risk analysis Make iterations your friend “solution space domain expertise” essential

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 9 Sweep under the rug Unable to face and deal with problems Like, what went wrong Avoidance measures: Rank features for each release Implement by feature Develop release criteria at the beginning Make stuff visible for folks to see

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 10 Happy Date Management demands a date, and all agree without any thought! Associated with a culture of not discussing difficult topics … Avoidance: Explain schedule ranges Iterate … explain what is to be delivered within each range Short timeboxes Use inch-pebbles… velocity charts

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 11 Pants on fire “Stop working on that, do this!” Represents “no focus” “no priorities” “no…” Wastes time! What to do: Short timebox iterations, start something new at the end. … or implement by feature Communicate costs of context switching Modify your estimation approach… or else!

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 12 Split focus “50% on Project A, 30% on Project B, 20% on Project C and your spare time on…” … and you can’t say no. What to do: Have the team work on the problem… Move to one-week iterations … with release criteria Communicate the costs Set priorities… finish something

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 13 Schedule equals Commitment No… it’s a guess not a prediction! The prediction is based on caring about: 1. What is delivered 2. How good is the product Don’t just commit! “If the people involved are not ready to discuss the schedule, the feature set and the defect levels, then any discussion of schedule being a commitment is premature.”

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 14 We’ll know where we are when we get there No! “… keeping focused on its (the project’s) goal(s) is the best way to finish a project” Notes: Have a project vision, goals and release criteria If the boss has no vision, you define it! If the project is too long… iterations. P.S.“If they don’t listen, or can’t stop their behavior, remember you don’t have to stay there.”

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 15 The schedule tool is always right… Remember, the schedule is a guess about how things might happen! “The Gantt Chart lulls people into believing the schedule and not checking on reality.” Alternatives: Use Rolling wave scheduling Use low-tech scheduling techniques Give estimates with confidence limits Use timeboxed iterations

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 16 We gotta have it – We’re toast without it! Without discussing trade-offs? Alternatives: Negotiate for a different feature set Negotiate for more time Negotiate for more money Move to timeboxed iterations to manage the demand…

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 17 We can’t say no Blind acceptance of “just fit one more feature into …” How to combat the “just say yes” problem: Have team create plan that includes the new feature Monitor the overtime… Timebox it and evaluate results versus a non-overtime week We’ll just add more people.

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 18 TEAM MEMGAMES BERS PLAY Schedule Chicken Wait for another team member to confess! Options: No serial status meetings! Smaller tasks with daily deliverables… so you can see Implement by feature… there’s something to show Short iterations… so you don’t need the weekly serial meeting

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 19 90% Done 90% done with 90% of the work yet to do! “90% done” happens! What might help – have team member: Develop inch-pebble scheduling Make status visible Provide coaching on how to track their estimate

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 20 We’ll go faster now Feature implementation stalls… Team still remains optimistic Advice: Show the velocity data on features implemented Track changes to your initial estimates Measure everything team is doing – to keep team focused on necessary, date-scheduled tasks

CSc 171 Fall 2016 Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 21 Schedule trance “Team is in a trance about the date.” Options for inserting reality: Use iterations! The shorter the better The goal Completed work on the feature(s) Development, documentation, testing, etc. Maintain focus within each iteration Daily standup meetings Implement by feature!

CSc 171 Fall 2016 DILBERT Scott Adams Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 22

CSc 171 Fall 2016 DILBERT Scott Adams Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 23

CSc 171 Fall 2016 DILBERT Scott Adams Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman 24