beyond projects: why projects are wrong and what to do instead
TRANSCRIPT
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Cambridge Product Management Network
Beyond ProjectsOr The End of Projects and what
happens next
Allan Kelly
Thanks to our sponsors
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Beyond ProjectsOr The End of Projects and what happens next
Allan [email protected]
http://www.softwarestrategy.co.uk
Twitter: @allankelly.net
April 2015
#BeyondProjects
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Allan Kelly…
Advising on software development & business
Training in Agile, Coaching, Consulting
Author– Xanpan: Team Centric Agile Software
Development https://leanpub.com/xanpan
– Business Patterns for Software Developers (2012, Wiley - ISBN: 978-1119999249)
– Changing Software Development: Learning to be Agile (2008, Wiley)
www.xanpan.org
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Problem #1 - Benefit
Project Success Criteria
• On Schedule
• On Budget
• On Quality (Features)
Where’s the value?£ $ €
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Project Model Assumptions
1. Value is knowable
• And is known before start
2. There is no value in flexibility
i.e. Options are valueless
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70% believe they are failing to identify and quantify the benefits adequately38% openly admit they overstate the benefits in order to obtain funding80% report that the review and evaluation of completed projects is also inadequate
due to the focus on [achieving] cost, time and quality objectives and not on whether the intended benefits were realized.
Delivering value from IS and IT investments, John Ward, Cranfield School of Management, 2006 – survey of UK & Benelux managers http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/dinamic-content/research/documents/deliveringvaluereport.pdf
IT/IS & Business Manager survey
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Conflict and….
Goal displacement
– Chasing date over benefit
– Chasing time over benefit
– Chasing cost over benefit
– Chasing features over benefit
The Project model leads to…
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Status reporting doesn’t work
Snow, Keil & Wallace
Information & Management, March 2007
status reports were biased 60% of the time and that the bias was twice as likely to be optimistic as pessimistic …
… we estimated that only about 10–15% of biased project status reports were, in fact, accurate
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Inconvenient truths of status reports
1. Employees do not accurately report project status or speak up about problems
2. People misreport project status
3. Audit can’t counter the effects of project misreporting (And may make it worse)
4. Putting senior executives in charge may increase misreporting
5. Executives often ignore bad news if they receive it
Source: MIT Sloan Management ReviewKeil, Smith, Iacovou & Thompson, Spring 2014
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Solution
Focus on Benefit not The End
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Focus on Benefit not The End
Ask not, “When will the software be done?”
Do ask: “When will the software deliver value next?”
Think: Stream of Value
(which might stop one day)
Not: An end date
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Govern on benefit delivered
Base Governance on results
Actual delivered benefits
– Not milestones completed
– Not documents
– Not budgets
Picture from Picasa - Creative Commons License http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:House_of_Parliment_6_201
2-07-08.jpg
What have you delivered for
me lately?
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Governance based on results
• Experiment friendly
– Failure tolerant
– Fail fast, fail cheap (salvage)
• Align with strategy
• Governance through Iterative Portfolio Management
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Problem #2 – The End
Software isn’t temporary
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A project is….
Project Management Institute - http://pm4id.org/1/2/
"PMI defines a project by its two key characteristics: • it is temporary and • undertaken to create a product, service, or
result that is unique."
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Successful software doesn’t stop
Successful software continues to change
Only dead software has an end-date
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Successful software?
MoodleWeekly downloads: 23,239Last update: 3 days (16 Jan)
Web TorrentWeekly downloads: 0Last update: 17 April 2013 (9mths)
PerlLORDWeekly downloads: 0Last update: 25 Feb 2013 (11mths)
1) If they use it, it will change
2) Only Dead Software Stops changing
Data from SourceForge search for “WebBrowser” 19 Jan 2014
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A Match Made in Hell
Software Development
Project Management
Software is foreverProjects are TEMPORARY
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End Dates damage quality
Short term thinking leads to…
Corner cutting
Known & unfixed bugs
Residual technical debt
Knowledge lost
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End Date considered harmful
Late requirements considered inferior
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A Project is…
“A temporary organization that is needed to produce a unique and predefined outcome or
result at a pre-specified time using predetermined resources.”
PRINCE2 definition of project
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Temporary organizations
The most destructive idea known to software development
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Temporary Organization?
• Storming
• Norming
• Forming
• Performing
• Destroying
} Takes time & money!
Why destroy performing teams?Why spend that money?Why loose knowledge?
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Temporary organizations
Disbanding teams destroys
– Knowledge
– Capability
– Performance
The most destructive idea known to software development
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Corporate PsychopathyProcess by which corporations disband performing teams and
release staff
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Solution
Base work around stable teams and aim for continuity
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Stable teams…
• Keep teams together
• Flow work to the teams
• Work in the small
• Work continually
• Demonstrate value
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Continuous is not Temporary
Continuous flow
Continuous improvement
Continuous delivery
Continuous benefit
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Organize by business stream & team
• Aim for stable teams & continuity
• Close to business
• Manage queues within capacity
Stream #1 Dev Team
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Problem #3 – Projects are Big
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Projects are big batch of work
• Project model is optimized for big
• Used on small pieces of work it inefficient
• Projects push big decisions up
– to big men
– with big cheque books
– top-down authority
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Software development…
• Does NOT have economies of Scale
• Development has DISECONOMIES of scale
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Milk is cheapest in BIG cartons
Software is cheapest in lots of small
cartons
And small cartons of software reduce risk
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Big increases risk
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Solution
A model optimized for lots of small pieces of work
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Software development…
• Does NOT have economies of Scale
• Development has DISECONOMIES of scale
Therefore
• Stop thinking BIG
• Start thinking SMALL
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Consider a large project
Against several small
projects
Project A: Risk = 30% Value at risk = £1mTherefore risk weighted value = £300,000
Prj B: Risk = 15% Value @ risk = £½m
Therefore … = £75,000
Prj C: Risk = 15% Value @risk = £½m
Therefore … = £75,000
E: Risk = 6% @risk = £200k
Therefore = £12kF: Risk = 6%
@risk = £200kTherefore = £12k
G: Risk = 6% @risk = £200k
Therefore = £12k
H: Risk = 6% @risk = £200k
Therefore = £12k
I: Risk = 6% @risk = £200k
Therefore = £12k
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Big Batch Size
Make lots of this!Build this! Deliver this!
Wait Wait
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Small Batch Size
… and keep going
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Project Manager
Not fair!You misrepresent us!
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Wait a minute….
Project Manager
So what is “A project”?
We don’tBreak up teams, orStick doggedly to requirements
We do- Allow change- Consider value- Work continually
Why does Prince 2 contain this definition?
And what does a “Project Manager” actually Manage?
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Problem #4: Language
We don’t agree on what a “project” is
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“False Projects”
When the language of projects is used to discuss work which is not a project
Confusion!
Stop confusing peopleStop misleading
yourselves
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Beyond Projects
A new model….
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Waterfall 2.0
Jonathon’s Run Fall, Pennsylvania by Hubert Stoffels (http://flickr.com/photos/22195940@N00) Creative Commons License
Continuous Flow
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Continuous flow
• Work in the small
• Get good at doing small things
– Deliver small increments of value
– And evaluate results
• Go fast
• Value seeking
• Repeat, don’t stop
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Could this ever work?
• Governance by results?
• Fail fast, fail cheap?
Seems to work well on Sand Hill Road …
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XanpaneBook https://leanpub.com/xanpan
Print http://tinyurl.com/nnu7homDiscount code April2015 $7 (This month)
Beyond Projects
It ain’t ever over
BAU is not a dirty work
allan kelly
www.softwarestrategy.co.uk
Twitter: @allankellynet
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Appendix
• Slides not delivered
– Mostly from earlier versions of this presentation
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Iterative Portfolio Management
• Fixed schedule for gate reviews
• Review what is ready on a date
– Benefit delivered to date
– Potential benefit if continued
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Pre-defined outcome?
Requirements change
The world changes
Compound to ~27% per annum
The observed rate of change in the US is about 2% per
calendar month
Capers Jones, 2008
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Rational end dates?
In the US more than half of the large projects … predetermined end date is
selected, and it is forced on the project by arbitrary decree.
Capers Jones, 2008
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Solution
• Work to the business deadline
– Do what you can in the time
– Do good work
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Deadlines Good
End dates Bad
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The End of Projects
• Projects are accounting codes
• Finished Software is Dead Software
– Living software changes
– Dead software doesn’t
– Living software doesn’t end
• Project thinking kills software