SE503 Advanced Project Management Dr. Ahmed Sameh, Ph.D. Professor, CS & IS The Explore Phase (Ch. 7)

Role of management Reach inside each employee Release their unique talents into performance

Agile Workload Management (12) Workers manage their own workloads during an iteration Manager monitors key goals – Features – Quality – Technical practices Coaching, not micro-management Focus on difficult or high-risk tasks

Under-Performance Treat it as a capabilities issue – Technical skills – Experience – Tools – Resources – Influence Manager helps team succeed

Agile Tool: Low-cost change (13) Reduce barriers to experimentation and adaptation Technical debt – As time goes by, change becomes more difficult – Bad practices (kludges, patches) accelerate the cost of future change – Good practices are easier and cheaper to implement earlier in the development cycle

Low-Cost Change Practices Simple design Frequent integration Relentless testing – Quality is built-in, not added on Opportunistic refactoring – Design clean-up that does not add features – Benefit is improved future adaptability

Agile Project Manager Mold individuals into a team Focus the team on delivering results Develop each individual’s capabilities Enable the team – Provide resources – Remove roadblocks Orchestrating the team’s rhythm Managing the customer-team relationship

Coaching (14a) Develop individuals – Technical skills – Business skills – Experience – Communication skills Focus the team on delivering results – Clear goals – Short iterations

Team Development (14b) Bruce W. Tuckman (1965) – Forming Orientation, testing, dependence – Storming Individuals resist group influence – Norming Group identity, cohesiveness, membership, trust, rules – Performing Team performs better than individuals

Daily Team Meetings (15) Scrum – Daily meetings – 10 or fewer attendees – Core people participate, others observe – 15 minute target – Stand up (no refreshments or snacks) – Identify (not solve) issues and obstacles – Meeting leadership role may rotate

Participatory Decision Making (16) Make decisions at the right level Delay decisions and keep sets of viable alternatives When a decision requires input from multiple individuals – Group decision making – Discussion of key points – Everyone has input – Weighted scoring model

Provide Resources Remove Roadblocks The manager’s job is not better, just different The manager works for the team – Obtain needed resources – Obtain needed information – Use influence – “Servant leadership” Quickly resolve conflicts

Project Rhythm There is a rhythm to agile projects Release – Milestone Iteration – Daily meetings Managing the rhythm happens when everything else is in place and working

Customer & Stakeholder Management (17) Daily customer contact? – Customer collaboration is key to agile projects – Customer expectations and project goals must be aligned – Customers decide the value of deliverables Stakeholders provide resources and ensure external support

Explore Phase Summary Exploration is agile execution Emphasis on Theory-Y management – Leadership, Resources Emphasis on self-organized teams – Capable – Accountable – Motivated Heavy customer and stakeholder involvement