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TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
00:00:05;00
- 00:00:27;01
00:00:27;03
- 00:00:38;26
Rick Morris: And
welcome to another Friday edition of The Work/Life Balance we're so excited to
have you guys along with us as we've got a very special show planned for you
today. Very excited about our guests that we have with us. It's been another
crazy week.
00:00:38;28
- 00:02:18;13
Rick Morris: As
always, we started actually Sunday this week with a couple of keynote
presentations to Civitan International. They had a group of governors coming in
that is a service organization. We were the keynote speaker to their planning
sessions as they are planning some fantastic service projects for their
different organizations in their communities. We had a great time being able to
spend some time with them Sunday doing some fellowship and some leadership
training and with them we are their keynote speaker Monday night. So they were
a fantastic organization. We had a great time with them and we value their
patronage and was very happy that we had an opportunity to spend some time with
them. We were in Memphis on Tuesday spending some time with some clients and
some community leader organizations there and finally back home for a short
time before we spend all week next week in Nashville. So for our listeners in
Nashville, reach out to us because we're going to be there in Nashville
Tennessee all week next week before we head out back to Memphis the following
week and then leading right into the big international Maxwell certification in
Orlando Florida which is happening the 16th through the 22nd. We will be there.
We'll be excited. We'll be welcoming all of our new people into the John
Maxwell team as we always do. And then right after that, we alluded to this a
little bit, but for those of you that have been following the show, John
Maxwell's passion has been transforming countries and we have accepted an
invitation as part of the John Maxwell team from the president of Costa Rica.
00:02:18;28
- 00:02:37;12
Rick Morris: And
I have accepted invitation from John to participate in some Leadership
Roundtable trainings in Costa Rica which is happening in March as we go to
transform that country through leadership and leadership training. So there
will be a lot more to come about that. But let's get into today's show.
00:02:37;24
- 00:03:04;22
Rick Morris: We
have an incredible guest, fast friend of mine, somebody who I was introduced
through a project that we were working on which was the almanac book too as you
guys know I've been talking about that my great friend John Steinbeck. He runs greatpm.com
and he and I have talked quite a bit about Agile, Agile transformations hybrid
project management.
00:03:04;22
- 00:05:39;29
Rick Morris: He's
a great friend to the show's been on the show many times and he had spearheaded
this project to bring out Agile Almanac book to which I had accepted an
opportunity to collaborate. And so it became what we called the Dirty Dozen,
that was kind of our inside joke, of 12 different authors who collaborated in
producing that book and really trying to you know try to take Agile and really
scale that to the program an enterprise level. And so it was a great
collaboration of 12 incredible people to really lend next level thinking into
this into this book. And so when I went out to Las Vegas as part of CAWorld, we
did a large book signing and for those of you that follow me on Twitter we
posted a video about the book signing in about the speech that John and I did
out there and this person was in that video with us and she's currently a
project manager for Willis Towers Watson in Buffalo New York. She leads an
operational support team with the main focus on CRM customer relationship
management and Confluence data management and previously she was a project
manager for MNC Bank in Buffalo New York leading a digital banking program team
with a main focus on mobile application development. She has led enterprise
level projects for over eight years that spanned from back end upgrades to
customer facing applications and she started working as a freelance writer
trainer and Agile coach in her spare time. She's a member of the PMI Buffalo
chapter in New York and previously held the director of community outreach
position within the chapter. And as a director of community outreach she was
responsible for running a project management for nonprofits program which was a
program of training mentoring and in each toolbox of forums and templates
designed to bring project management best practices to western New York charitable
organizations. She's a member of the buffalo Junior League which is a
philanthropic organization committed to volunteerism developing the potential
of women and of course improving the community through effective action and
leadership. She's certified by PMI as a project management professional which
is PMP and Agile Certified Practitioner which is the PMI ACP and she also holds
the certified Scrum Master designation from the scrum alliance. She graduated
from Empire State College with a B.A. in administration economics and she now
also holds the distinction of being an Amazon number one best seller along with
the rest of us. Let's welcome to the show Nichole Tubiolo. How are you?
00:05:40;02
- 00:05:51;15
Nichole Tubiolo: OK
read Rick thank you. I'm doing well. I'm extremely grateful to be a guest on
your show today and to be reconnecting. So thank you very much for having me.
00:05:51;16
- 00:06:03;29
Rick Morris: It
has been a little while since we've seen each other in Vegas and again that was
a video that we posted out on Twitter or what. What a fantastic time that was.
The book signing the excitement around the launch of the book talked to the
audience a little bit about that.
00:06:04;22
- 00:06:06;13
Nichole Tubiolo: Yes
they were an excellent experience.
00:06:06;14
- 00:06:29;13
Nichole Tubiolo: And
you know being at CA World were all than having so much interaction with
everyone there. The book signing the launch itself it was really just a great
weekend. A couple of days there CA World for you when John had a great talk
there and we also had the book signing which was excellent.
00:06:30;05
- 00:06:45;03
Rick Morris: And
so you know this has been a culmination of a lot of work. And of course John
spearheaded that. But you took a couple of these chapters within the book and
made them your own. Why didn't you tell the audience which chapters you wrote.
Just describe those for a little bit.
00:06:45;25
- 00:06:47;03
Nichole Tubiolo: Absolutely.
Yes I did.
00:06:47;03
- 00:07:59;26
Nichole Tubiolo: I
had the extreme fortune of working with this brilliant team of coauthors led by
John and I did contribute to two of the 17 chapters one being risk management
said the main focus there is talking about various risk management approaches
used by Agile program teams ranging from the do nothing and let it become an
issue approach to you know various tools and techniques to identify and
mitigate risk. So a lot went into that that risk management chapter and the
other chapter that I wrote was around budget management and exploring various
thoughts and tools and different methodologies used to manage Agile program
budgets. Certainly there's the traditional earned value management used for the
traditional waterfall project and you know certain to seed teams and talk about
having teams leverage more of an incremental cost management or looking at lean
budgets and empowering teams with decision making and already. So there's a
there's a lot there and there was a quick summary of both of those chapters but
I was very fortunate to work with everyone and make those contributions to the Agile
Almanac.
00:07:59;17
- 00:08:34;06
Rick Morris: And
so we're going to deep dive on a couple of those topics but I always like to
start broad with you know anybody that I have on in Agile. I'll hit them with a
couple of things that I always got to hear and kind of the reason why I jumped
into Agile in the first place. So when Agile started really hitting the
marketplace I was running into Agile analysts that were saying things to me
like, we can't tell you where we're going to be done because we're Agile and
then specifically to your chapter. We can't tell you how much it's going to
cost because we're Agile. What would you say to somebody who's trying to lead an
Agile transformation and saying things like that?
00:08:34;20
- 00:08:43;14
Nichole Tubiolo: Those
are great points and are actually right. I've heard those as well. And I think
that there are there those sound to me to be Agile myths.
00:08:43;14
- 00:10:22;20
Nichole Tubiolo: That
a project manager is not needed as a leader of a group but not be needed or
that you don't necessarily know how much it costs because you're running Agile.
It sounds to me that there are definitely practices and tools to be used to
work with teams and really if you think about Agile and you think about this
scrum master and that scrum master is really just another way of saying project
manager. So maybe it's that you don't need the term project manager but you're
replacing that with a scrum master who's more taking on that role of servant
leader as opposed to perhaps you know in a traditional perspective on project
management would be commanding control versus servant leaders. There might be
some subtle differences there but there's still leadership in a leadership role
from a project management perspective. Just taking a slight different view on
that and then from the funding perspective you had made mention of we don't
know how much it's going to cost. You know if you fund an Agile team you can
determine how much a period of time would cost and then determine the value
that would be brought forth in that period of time. And so you may not define
how much a feature function or capability would cost in a certain period of
time but you would be able to directionally provide that information or an
estimate to that..
00:10:22;23
- 00:11:43;02
Rick Morris: I
think that that really makes Agile what it is. If we look at what we've done
traditionally as project managers that thought pattern that we actually could
you know take an initiative and then we would try to plan out over the next two
years. Everything that we were going to do up front and then turn around say it
was going to cost this the fact that we were bold enough to think that we
actually could plan that well. Of course you know we always get in to scope
change like crazy and we always miss her budgets and time frames and that and
that's what happened that's why people get frustrated. The other thing is by
looking at it but an initiative by initiative by initiative we were overloading
our teams and that is you know I think the issue that every company has in
America is that you have too many initiatives not enough people and so
therefore you have no idea what they're working on. And so they just keep
approving new initiatives without understanding what is doing to their team.
Thus I have a radio show called The Work/Life Balance. And so when we really
start to look at Agile and you start looking at funding teams that really
becomes a point that is not only a point of struggle but then you are starting
to reverse that flow. You're basically saying here's a group of people we're
going to fund them for a certain period of time and then we're going to start
looking at the maximum they can produce. And I think it's reversing that
funnel. Would you agree with that?
00:11:44;29
- 00:12:00;13
Nichole Tubiolo: Absolutely
yes. I I would agree with that because that makes it such that the cost of the
team is fairly consistent over time and the variable there is the amount of
features functions or capabilities that that team can produce.
00:12:00;29
- 00:13:10;25
Nichole Tubiolo: And
you know that team will in some sprints or some months or some quarters that
team may produce a higher output or higher quality based on the team members
and where they are in their cycle of being a team and it allows the
organization to know how much that team will cost and the unknown then becomes
the deliverable and how many how much you know the quantity of the delivery
that will be produced in that time period. So it is it’s taking that thought
and kind of flipping it on its side upside down as opposed to saying this is
how much money this will cost. And then you know taking those change requests
as you said you know how would we possibly know over the period of two years
how much it will cost us to produce a feature or a function over time. So
instead we would take that and baseline the cost at a flat rate if you will
assuming you have the same number of dedicated individuals on a team and you
change the amount that's produced each sprint or in any given time box.
00:13:11;12
- 00:13:13;09
Rick Morris: And
I think that that's the biggest struggle.
00:13:13;09
- 00:13:37;16
Rick Morris: So
we're actually going to dive into that right after we take our first break here
and start talking about the concept of funding value versus and teams versus
funding initiative. So we're going to talk about that right here when we come
back. You're listening to The Work/Life Balance with Rick Morris..
00:16:26;16
- 00:16:41;29
Rick Morris: Now
back to The Work/Life Balance. And we're back to The Work/Life Balance and you
did hear the dial in number, we do welcome phone calls and questions and I
actually have an over under bet going with how long it might actually take John
Steinbech to dial in.
00:16:42;02
- 00:17:31;12
Rick Morris: So
we're coming back with Nichole and talking the Agile Almanac right. Before
break we were talking about funding of Agile teams. And this is something I'm
actually going to Nashville next week and we're taking a client live in Agile and
you know they're still struggling to cope with this whole thought pattern of yeah
but don't we have to track time don't we have to allocate you know percentages
to support projects and all of this other stuff? And you know really still they
say they want to be Agile but they just can't pull themselves out of the
hamster wheel and you know you have to really start walking them through truly
funding Agile teams. So what really is a benefit of funding Agile teams over
projects?
00:17:31;19
- 00:17:46;19
Nichole Tubiolo: Well
Rick I would say that funding Agile teams at the team level provides the team
some stability so that they can continue forward movement in providing value
and producing those features and functions and capabilities.
00:17:46;20
- 00:18:14;16
Nichole Tubiolo: And
really leave their focus there. I've seen teams that have not had that and you
know the backlog then becomes anytime something that comes up new to go on the
back lot of features functions and capabilities. Is there's a pause or there's
you know take some time to put together a thought process around putting in and
change your quest in order to receive funding for that particular feature.
00:18:14;17
- 00:18:29;29
Nichole Tubiolo: And
really the value there is that we want our teams to be focused on producing
value and focused on really just moving forward on what's the next best
function.
00:18:29;29
- 00:19:51;26
Nichole Tubiolo: So
let's empower our teams to make decisions on what feature function or what
capability is the best next item on that backlog or next set of items on that
backlog to pick up and put into the sprint and fund those teams and they can
move forward accordingly. It allows for that team to feel empowered and to feel
more ownership around what they're producing. But it also allows for less
overhead. And my perspective and opinion there's less overhead there if a team
is given say you know a quarter's worth of funding or even a month to test it
out or two months to test it out and determine that it it's working well so the
organizations that are having are challenged and really focused on that need to
check time or the need to track the percent allocation. You know they can go
hand and check time and present allocation. But it should be pretty flat.
Assuming you have teams that are 100 percent dedicated efforts that you know
you kind of move I would move one step at a time towards towards making that
transition. You know by by saying you can you can check time but it will be the
same flat lined across all of these months because we're going to dedicate you
know X amount of dollars to fund this team and allow them to move forward.
00:19:53;21
- 00:19:55;10
Rick Morris: And
that's exactly right.
00:19:55;12
- 00:20:38;16
Rick Morris: And
I mean when you when you look at that and start to look at when we're talking
about funding there's it's still a different mindset right because what you
have to start to walk through with an organization is if you look at it the way
they do things now is initiatives pop up you're pulling teams away from work.
You're making him attend meetings you're making him do all these planning all
this stuff. And you know I've laughed with several people but you know I want
to make t shirts that you say don't touch my sprint right now because that's
really what it comes down to. Don't touch my sprint and then really quickly I'm
going to go ahead and say that I took the under bed and won a because we've got
John Stenbeck on the phone. And let's welcome John to The Work/Life Balance.
John how are you doing brother.
00:20:39;00
- 00:20:43;04
John Stenbeck: Hey
Rick are you did you guys hear me. Oh great. Just fine.
00:20:43;06
- 00:20:50;21
John Stenbeck: So
I heard the last word to call me out with the over/under bet because you know I
always listen to your show and especially Nihcole.
00:20:50;21
- 00:22:06;10
John Stenbeck: So
glad you're on the show. Good. Couldn't resist giving her a shout out there.
Nichole Tubiolo:
Hi how are you?
John Stenbeck:
I'm good. So if I can interrupt the flow of the conversation there's two things
I think that you guys really should talk about with the audience that are
really important. One is that the common Agile myth now that I've said the word
miss our co-author Joe Montalbano who's our myth mastro might be able to resist
calling in too. But one of the myths is that a company is either you know needs
to or wants to or must become 100 percent Agile or not. And yet our experience
with most our Fortune 2000 and larger clients and agencies and military
commands and stuff suggest that only about a third maybe 30 percent of what
they're doing has the required amount of complexity and uncertainty right and
very ability to justify the overhead that Agile causes. Whereas the other 70
percent is stable enough to not need it. And I think that was really you know
Nichole and Rick when we all started talking about if you're scaling Agile how
do you do budgeting and how does the whole factor in that was really a big
breakthrough.
00:22:07;29
- 00:22:55;24
Rick Morris: That's
a huge breakthrough. And so coming you know coming to that point you're not
completely Agile you're not completely waterfall so the hybrid approach is
where it's at. But I think that still changes the focus with introduction of Agile
and the biggest shift I think I've made certainly in my consulting and my
career over the last two years is still the shift of funding value and stop
funding initiatives and started looking at things as in terms of the output of
value that we're going to bring versus the amount of money we're going to
spend. And I think that that Agile level of thinking also applying Agile
principles across the board is something that's really been exciting for us to
watch.
00:22:56;24
- 00:23:31;15
John Stenbeck:
And
Rick I know in one of our conversations you'll probably remember you completely
rocked my world when we started talking about them. I'm not sure if I'm going
to get that name exactly correct. So help me out on the non-project investment
objectives that you can do in the CAPPM app and how much flexibility that saves
how much overhead it reduces how gives the AGilel folks the ability to be Agile
and the management to get the reporting they need to do that without drive a
lot of overhead. Have you shared that much with your audience?
00:23:31;22
- 00:26:27;29
Rick Morris: Yeah we we've definitely done some
shows on that. But I do want to give you an update and since we're going to
take this topic for just a second. We actually applied this thinking just
recently to pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical development and so we're very
very excited. We won’t say the client but we've got a client that deals in wet
labs and testing in pharmaceutical development. So what they do is receive
samples and those samples come in and they do daily runs those daily runs are
essentially basically sprints there daily. And you know every day we're going
to do. We're going to run these instruments and these instruments are going to
output. And however the lab are getting samples that can be generated by 10 or
15 maybe even 20 different projects. So the management and billing and
invoicing and all that stuff is very difficult for them to track and there's a
lot of you know potentially lost revenue and everything else. So by applying
the same thinking where you have waterfall style projects that are generating
the tasks or features which are being then fired into an Agile methodology where
they can do their runs. So from a lab it just they have work. It doesn't matter
which project is generating it. It's just a queue. And so now we have a whole queue
and a combine style board that's generating the lab work. And as it completes
its automatically updating the appropriate project so invoicing can be done.
It's kind of revolutionizing that business and it's being done in the very same
way. So it's very exciting to see that. So it's the same style. When you're
looking at that from an I.T. perspective it is even if you're not 100 percent Agile
you can still allow your teams to stay in and Agile methodology while multiple
waterfall projects are just simply generating work multiple defects are coming
in from your support staff and it's just generating work. They just complete
their work and it's updating the appropriate systems. That's essentially the
same theory but we're applying that same level of thinking across industries
and outside of I.T. using the tool sets which is why when we've gone through
writing the book we all thought that it was possible that Mikkola taking on two
of the hardest chapters in the whole book because how do you come back then and
budget still at that level. And that NPR show that you talked about the Nahm
project investment objects was the ability for us to shave a slice of our
budget to Agile teams. Right so I can say 60 percent of the budget is going to
be to funding teams 40 percent of the budgets to funding initiatives or
strategic projects and then still be able to report and roll that out because
at the end of the day the CFO doesn't care that we're doing story points. They
want to know we paid X amount of dollars and we generated x amount of revenue.
Fair yeah right.
00:26:27;29
- 00:26:51;11
John Stenbeck: That
just makes so much sense because you know the other myth I was going to bring
up is this idea that somehow an internal or external either one other customer
can give you imperfect specifications and somehow expect perfect schedules or
budget kinds of forecasts. I mean who could actually believe that that's
possible.
00:26:52;23
- 00:27:00;26
Rick Morris: And
there's no way for us to do that. So coming back to the other other than Agile.
00:27:00;28
- 00:27:11;18
Rick Morris: And
I think the two favorite words I ever saw come out in the PMBOK was progressive
collaboration which is that so Nichole coming back to that.
00:27:12;04
- 00:27:26;19
Rick Morris: You
know when we start talking about funding and you know how we're funding in that
portion if funding is provided to teams and not to projects or scope then how
do people then measure value.
00:27:28;02
- 00:28:53;02
Nichole Tubiolo: That's
a great question. There are variables here when teams are funded it is what's
being produced. So we have teams that have a backlog and that backlog story
pointed and you can see the trends of how much is produced in any given sprint.
And from there you can determine the value of that time period. As for what's
been delivered. See you had measured almost in reverse as opposed to measuring
how much money you're spending you're measuring the value of what is being
produced from a feature function capability perspective. So again just kind of
taking that traditional model and thinking of it a little differently and thinking
of the variable there being what we know from a story you can use a story point
perspective to roll that into what the value is. And Rick you made a great
point that you know the CFO doesn't necessarily care about story points right
and having the ability to measure and show the value versus the cost for that
value is still there because you do know how much your team costs when you fund
it from a team perspective. And then once the value is produced you know how
what what's been produced for that money so it's just that you are showing the
value after those features functions and capabilities are produced.
00:28:54;08
- 00:30:11;23
Rick Morris: Yeah
and I think the biggest point in that too is a course correction. And so I
think in the book and I believe it's John's graphic that does it when we start
talking about going through the cone of uncertainty. And John just alluded to
this as well is when we get imperfect requirements expect perfect results when
we go through that cone of uncertainty in a standard project where at the end
of the project already expended all of our funds before we've actually realized
that we've missed the mark and that's generally you know 60 percent of the
development projects that go that go on in a development world or is in an Agile
methodology that when you're starting to release every two weeks and trying to
release value and features and capabilities every two weeks then that feedback
loop is so important where you can course correct. And so you're hopefully
developing and coming out of that cone of uncertainty a lot faster and that's
why that methodology seems to be taking off so well. We've got to take a break
right here we're going to do that. We're going to let CA pay some of our bills
in one of those checks should go to John Stenbeck for mentioning them first on
the show this this week and we'll be right back on The Work/Life Balance here
with Rick Morris.
00:33:21;04
- 00:33:24;24
Rick Morris: And
we're back to The Work/Life Balance on this Friday afternoon.
00:33:24;24
- 00:33:39;20
Rick Morris: I
hope everybody's doing well and wanted to say hello to John Watson who's also a
longtime listener our great friend and shout out to him. Thank you for the text
brother love you always. So coming back I to again.
00:33:39;24
- 00:34:38;20
Rick Morris: You
we're still diving into this whole funding thing and since Nichole wrote the
chapter on scaling Agile in as you know into budget management wanted to keep
going down that topic and so what I see a lot of clients struggle with Nichole
is again coming out still with that traditional we've got X amount of money to
spend and we want to pick other projects that we're going to do and I think one
of the biggest issues that most companies run into is that they pick projects based
on what they can spend but now what they can reasonably accomplish and in this
in this aspect if they are going to be switching to an Agile methodology as
John just pointed out you know only 30 percent of their their budget could be
going to Agile teams. So what is your suggestion or how do how do we start to
look at teaching portfolio management program management and an Agile
methodology to be able to divide those budgets.
00:34:38;20
- 00:35:56;02
Nichole Tubiolo: That's
a great question. You know and and how are we dividing those budgets. Really it
depends how many of those projects in the portfolio really require the Agile
methodology. And you know John's made a good point that maybe 30 percent will
go with an example 30 percent for the company. So you know that 30 percent of
the budget is set aside and lets you know continue on with the theory that this
30 percent would go to funding Agile teams and not initiatives the Agile teams
would then have a roadmap of features and capabilities that they're looking to
produce that they would be focused on it wouldn't be that the funding will go
directly to their functions but they would directionally be towards those
functions that 30 percent of the budget for Agile and then the remainder of the
budget towards those traditional projects that are really based on the scope
and funding scope and funding you know what they have detailed in their
requirements plans so that 30 percent goes towards Agile would would be managed
a little differently in that.
00:35:56;03
- 00:36:25;22
Nichole Tubiolo: You
know they would that the dollar amount would be net steady 30 percent. They've
broken up into the four quarters and provided the funding to a team for the
first quarter and they would take their roadmap and work towards achieving the
functions on that road map. And then you would would certainly need to measure
how much that was spent. And then you know roll that out to reporting on a
regular basis be it weekly or monthly depending on what the governance
structure required of the company required.
00:36:26;23
- 00:37:02;15
Rick Morris: Yeah
I like to say you don't what I'm working with clients I kind of go let's just
cut let's just cut through the red tape where he lead. Let's cut the jargon and
crud and describe how it's being done today. And so how it gets done today is
you define you know Project X and you say these are all the things that I want
I want you know 150 things to be developed. So we say Great we sit down and
estimate how long it's going to take to do those 150 things and we come back
when we say it's going to take us two and a half years to do this and it's
going to cost X amount of money they're going to come back and go we don't have
that amount of money. You got six months right.
00:37:02;15
- 00:38:17;06
Rick Morris: So
then the discussion is what do you want to cut and generally the answer. And
again I'm being a bit facetious here but they're like well we're not cutting
anything. You got six months. And so then we become the people that covertly degrade
quality or whatever else. But that's general project management right. Right.
Impossible timeframes impossible budgets that kind of stuff. What is what I
keep telling everybody Agile is is just a better Covenant's a better contract.
What we're saying here is we're giving an expectation upfront of what can be
produced. Here's the team. You make your wish list and every two weeks you get
to adjust your wish list and at the end of the quarter we'll know that we spent
X amount of dollars and we'll show you what we delivered and will adjust from
there. What I love about that is people get uneasy but at the same time I also
said we also just now cut out the two months of haggling that we would have
done if we approach this as a huge project. We just got to work and we just
started doing it which saved you two months of non-productive time trying to
figure out if we could do this in the first place in which you would have just
told us to do it in the way. Is that fair. I mean is that a fair
representation.
00:38:17;29
- 00:39:13;27
Nichole Tubiolo: Absolutely.
And not only that saved the two months are you know planning an initiation
where there isn't anything produced. It's also saved you know in that third or
fourth month where execution is going on. And then the initial delivery takes
place maybe six months out before a product owner or a business manager is
seeing anything functional and providing feedback on it at which point it may
not their requirement provided may not actually be what needed to solve the
problem. The problem the business problem could have changed given that it's
taken so long or you know maybe there you know once you see it once you see
what's been built sometimes you have a different thought or a different way of
building it. So it's saving so much more than those two months. By using that
methodology you’re getting producing
value and putting it in your customers hands within potentially two weeks for
feedback.
00:39:15;07
- 00:39:30;27
Rick Morris: Yeah.
If you do it right you're tackling the hardest parts first. And we're finding
out maybe six weeks into it we can't even do this thing so we scrap it after
six weeks versus finding that out a year and a half into it and you save so
much by finding out in six weeks.
00:39:30;28
- 00:39:35;27
Rick Morris: You
say that that year and a half of maybe year and four months of work.
00:39:37;05
- 00:39:56;28
Rick Morris: So
I want to I want to hire Jon Gruden just to follow me around with clients just
so they can go. Come on man. Every time you know you have these conversations
with clients are you just he just go. Come on man. Because I mean I don't like
to oversimplify but that's somewhat of an oversimplification but that is the
contract.
00:39:56;28
- 00:40:07;04
Rick Morris: That
is what we're talking about. So right so when we start talking about funding
teams we keep saying two weeks.
00:40:07;04
- 00:40:36;08
Rick Morris: But
does it have to be two weeks
Nichole Tubiolo:
no no it doesn't have to be two weeks and you know it's whatever the team has
agreed upon as far as how frequently they're going to release it can be it
could be a week it could be a day. I think that you earlier in the show you had
an example of a company that has daily rounds that could be a daily sprint if you're
producing something daily. So it really depends on what it is you're building
and what your team makeup is and how quickly you can put something out.
00:40:36;15
- 00:40:44;18
Nichole Tubiolo: Could
be weekly
Rick Morris:
Now is Agile something that is something you're doing at your organization
right now.
00:40:44;18
- 00:41:10;05
Nichole2: I'm
not personally doing that.
And
in my current role my previous role I did manage an Agile program. And we had a
number of different teams that were working on various parts of producing an
application. And so we've run into a lot of a lot of the challenges that we
talk about in the book and had the ability to experience a lot of different
things firsthand.
00:41:11;05
- 00:41:15;03
Rick Morris: Yeah.
I mean again it's it's an incredible run.
00:41:15;03
- 00:41:37;29
Rick Morris: If
you see it done properly but when you start to see people use that as the
excuse and you know John I think as the person said it to me that you're used
for cowboy coding or used to say that we don't need to document because we're Agile
or things of that sort. It just becomes another methodology you can blame for
things going wrong.
00:41:38;03
- 00:43:18;06
Nichole Tubiolo: Absolutely.
And it's just it's unfortunate that in some instances it has been used as the
excuse or the reason not to do things I think you never even take a look at.
You know some of the some of the things that Agile is really kind of trying to
draw forth it's not necessarily that you wouldn't document. It's just that
we're we're saying we're favoring right. The Agile methodology favors working
technology working features over documentation. So there really to me what that
says is let let's get it working and then let's get it working right. And then
let's document it where nothing the documentation is something that the
documentation isn't important. Really more about you know getting your hands
dirty getting in there making making some changes seeing what this changes look
like and then providing the documentation and it's really and how the spirit of
some of the Agile methodology is interpreted. And unfortunately in some cases I
have heard that to be an excuse but it's really you know the spirit of that is
let's produce some work and then and then we'll worry about documenting and
that's really just taking that traditional methodology and really looking at it
in a different way as opposed to let's write every every requirement and let's
write every specification down and get all the documentation perfectly written
to a team before we even write one line of code. You know it's just taking that
and going and writing the code first and then documenting it.
00:43:19;05
- 00:43:52;25
Rick Morris: Yeah
I think that stems from you know poor PMO practices where you know you've got
these thousands of documents that you fill out that nobody ever reads. Nobody
ever goes back and then they get under change control and you've got to change
document first and you sit there and you go you're documenting for the sake of
documenting because it's a checkbox on a process somewhere but is not providing
any value to the business you know. So I think that that spirit of that you
know we value working software over documentation comes from that. But he
didn't say we value working software over it no documentation.
00:43:53;02
- 00:44:17;22
Nichole Tubiolo: So
it really probably stems from those projects that are really documentation
projects re the documentation itself becomes the project and that's unfortunate
as well that's the that's the other extreme right but full agreement with you
there Rick
Rick Morris:
to me is always lessons learned as like we are we don't know what we learns
these lessons and it's only going to go on SharePoint.
00:44:17;22
- 00:44:28;21
Rick Morris: Nobody's
ever going to read it again. So why are we doing this being dead. That was mine
as a project manager. Like am I the only one learning this lesson. Why am I
having this meeting. All right.
00:44:28;25
- 00:44:34;15
Nichole Tubiolo: So
we got an archive it, soo we can archive it and have it available.
00:44:34;18
- 00:45:00;11
Rick Morris: Sure
nobody will ever open it again. I used to put all kinds of fun stuff in my
lessons learned just to see if anybody would ever date me. And there are some
doozies out there past organizations that's just why companies ever for. Go
back there some nice nice tidbits of information in there. We're going to take
our final break here on this Friday afternoon. The Work/Life Balance will be
right back with the goal after this break us in The Work/Life Balance with Rick
Morris.
00:48:02;06
- 00:48:37;27
Rick Morris: And
we're back to The Work/Life Balance as you guys know that that music lead in
music lead out music comes from The Party; it's a group that I've been involved
with and managed over the last 20 years or so and got the sweetest call a
couple of days ago from Damon Pampeluna. Part of that group I know heedlessness
and the shows I wanted to shout out Damon tell him thank you for the call.
Lifted my spirits as always brother and you'll always be a brother to me man.
So coming back to the show. Nichole do you have anything you know website
anything like that that you're participating in or that you'd like to promote.
00:48:38;13
- 00:48:45;29
Nichole Yes.
Thanks Rick the part of the Agile Almanac book too we've also put together an Agile
integration forum.
00:48:46;09
- 00:49:25;23
Nichole Tubiolo: You
can get to that at great PM G.R. are the number 8 p.m. dot com. And really what
that is. The forum provides in-depth discussion points on all of the chapters
within the book. And so it's really a great tool if you're working through
starting working with moving into Agile programs within your organization or if
you're reading through the book and really just have some points that you want
to discuss or just want to read what's out there on the forum. It's really a
great tool and support for for anyone that that's working in Agile program
management.
00:49:25;23
- 00:49:25;22
Rick Morris: That's
fantastic.
00:49:25;22
- 00:49:48;09
Rick In
fact I moderate the tools chapter are the tools portion of that. You're doing a
budget risk and of course there's the other 16 chapters that are out there that
are being moderated by those coauthors. And then you guys are doing a lot of
exciting stuff too in terms of training and video development things like that
would John talk a little bit about that.
00:49:48;28
- 00:50:34;26
Nichole Tubiolo: Absolutely
yes. I'm actually coming up in February will be involved in coach teaching with
John and ECP PMI ACP class and so that that's something that's provided by a
great PM and then also we will be recording and have PD use available for each
of the chapters starting with the first several chapters of the book. So
there's a lot of recording going on of training related to each of those topics
so if you're interested in some additional information after having read the
book or have to having read some of the different chapters of the book those
will be forthcoming we don't have a timeline quite yet but that those items are
being recorded over the next couple of months here.
00:50:35;10
- 00:50:37;13
Rick Morris: And
then how do people get in touch with you.
00:50:38;15
- 00:50:57;19
Nichole Tubiolo: You
can reach me at my email address nichole.tubiolo@gr8pm.com. I don't know maybe
correctly can have that spelled out somewhere but it's nichole.tubiolo @ gr8pm
dot come are the number 8 p.m. dot com.
00:50:58;05
- 00:51:40;19
Rick Morris: And
of course as a new service we announced this last week we did our first posting
we're going to be a little bit behind so we caught up but as a new service to
our listeners we are posting transcriptions of the show at my blog now pmthatworks.com.
So when we do announce websites or do announce contact information like that
you'll be able to find it there at the transcription. Just look for the person
on the show we also link to back to the podcast and we timecode it. So if there
is something that you wanted to hear within the podcast you'll be able to
advance directly to that and hear that portion of the show. Nichole we always
ask all of our guests what is some of the best advice you've ever been given.
00:51:40;19
- 00:51:59;23
Nichole Tubiolo: First
Beth that's a good question. I would say some of the best advice I've been
giving is to really be outside of my comfort zone right. I've been you know
just taught that if there's something that is uncomfortable it's probably where
you need to be to grow.
00:51:59;29
- 00:52:20;19
Nichole Tubiolo: And
so growing and learning and change even and a lot of the topics that we talked
about today were around change and change management moving from traditional to
Agile. That that's very outside of the comfort zone. And so I think that a lot
of success can be found if you move outside of your comfort zone and just kind
of kind of get used to being uncomfortable.
00:52:20;19
- 00:52:23;06
Rick Morris: I
think that's great advice.
00:52:23;06
- 00:53:52;03
Rick Morris: One
of the pieces of advice I'd like to give the listening audience as well
something that I completed today but they brought me a lot of joy was
volunteering with Junior Achievement so you can contact your local Junior
Achievement wherever you guys are. But I taught I taught my sons class over the
last several years I decided to teach a senior class here at Hoover High School
in the entrepreneurial program and it was fantastic. Now you get all the
materials. There's guided lessons but then you can infuse whatever you want to
infuse with those lessons. And it literally just is one hour per week for six
weeks. And so you actually work out the schedule with the teachers. It wasn't
six consecutive weeks for me because of my schedule but I had a fantastic time.
I learned a ton about those students have actually scheduled some follow on
sessions because I want to stay involved with that class and just really you
know got to know these kids. And it was a great way to give back. And so I
challenge the audience to get involved. It's a great way to involve their
community and you'll learn just as much as you give those kids and they need
it. They need to hear from business leaders in our community. They need to hear
from leaders in our community. And at the same time it was just it was a blast
it was a ton of fun. I wanted to shout out my Hoover High Finance Academy
students that I have had and a great opportunity to spend some time with.
00:53:52;03
- 00:53:56;05
Rick Morris: So
Nichole thank you so much for being on the show. We loved having you.
00:53:56;25
- 00:54:00;27
Rick Morris: And
I'm sure our paths are going across again here real soon.
00:54:00;27
- 00:54:09;22
Nichole Tubiolo: Excellent
thank you so much. I really appreciate and extremely grateful for being a part
of this show today and having a great discussion with you and John.
00:54:09;29
- 00:54:27;29
Rick Morris: Any
time we may do a show where we get a bunch of us a bunch of the Agile Almanac
and just have a free for all. So we'll see how that goes. Mainly just to drive
Matt crazy but that will be fun just to see what happens. But be great. So next
week gaing we have got Scott Ambler he's going to be joining us.
00:54:28;02
- 00:55:50;05
Rick Morris: If
you guys don't know who Scott Ambler is he actually is a co-founder of the Disciplined
Agile Delivery system and was really instrumental in helping IBM go down that Agile
delivery path and is just an incredible person in the Agile world. We're so
excited that he's going to take an hour of his very busy schedule to spend his
time with us and The Work/Life Balance. The week after that we're going to have
a revisit from Todd Nesloney. And if you guys haven't heard the first show with
Todd Nesloney the need you need go back and listen to that because if we had
more educators like Todd nestle in our in our environment everywhere we would
be just fine. But Todd's going to be coming back he just released a new book
called Stories from the Web. And he's going to be sharing those stories with us
in just talking about what's been happening with him since he was on our show
the last time he was on our show. Hurricane Harvey had just happened in Houston
and he was sharing a lot of those stories with us but he's fantastic. You're
not going to want to miss that show either. So please join us in the next
coming weeks here on The Work/Life Balance as always we love spending our
Fridays with you. Please stay tuned right here to the voice of America business
channel. You can reach me at The Work/Live Balance. Find me on LinkedIn
Facebook or anywhere else or at rickamorris.com; we'll talk to you next Friday
right here in The Work/Life Balance. We'll talk to you next Friday.
