how project managers & developers relate and succeed...

Perfect Strangers

Justin Browder

Bryan Schoeff

How Project Managers & Developers Relate and Succeed

Audience participation

“The way we engage with the humans who make stuff directly influences what we receive.

…

It’s up to us. Just about everything is ultimately a singalong.”

- Seth Godin

Perfect Strangers

Justin Browder

Bryan Schoeff

How Project Managers & Developers Relate and Succeed

Project Managers

Developers

Who Am I? Hi, my name is Justin Browder.

Here are some things about me in a cool cloud thing.

Who Am I? Hi, I am Bryan Schoeff

Here are some things about me in the cloud thing too.

http://axiaconsulting.net/perfect-strangers

http://justinbrowder.online/author

https://bryanschoeff.com

Who are you?

• Project Manager

• Business Analyst

• Product Owner

• Scrum Master

• Developer

• Tester

What is one process or activity within your role that you really enjoy?

What’s on the menu?

• Standups

• Iteration Planning

• Progress Tracking

• Retrospectives

• Pairing

Here’s how this will work…

What is he assuming he thinks? And what is he assuming he thinks?

Disclaimer • We like each other.

• We respect what the other person does.

• We think the stereotypes about our roles are funny.

• We think the stereotypes about our roles are sometimes accurate.

• We’re in the Trust Tree.

What is one process or activity within your role that you really do not enjoy?

Let’s talk about…Standups

Standups

• A time to identify blockers or impediments.

• A time for the team to align.

• The one time everyone is together and reachable.

• Time for the team to share achievements and plans for the day.

• A meeting that, without rigor, can spiral into a status meeting.

• A meeting that sometimes feel like pulling teeth in order to get information.

Standups

• Another time when I visibly show how annoyed I am at how the standup is run.

• 30 minutes. ALWAYS THIRTY MINUTES.

• A meeting where Management judges whether or not I'm productive.

• If the PM, Scrum Master, or whoever isn't there, I'm not going.

• A meeting I would rather not have.

Standups

• A focused meeting for the development team to share context, progress, and the roadmap.

• An opportunity to identify blockers as a team.

• An opportunity to identify stories that could benefit from extra attention, pairing, or specialized knowledge.

• A meeting the PM is always trying to turn into a status meeting.

• A developer meeting.

• A meeting I sometimes wish the PM would not attend.

Standups

• I need to see what those sneaky developers are up to.

• An opportunity to collect my project status.

• A place where I can try to glean estimates.

• An opportunity to establish how important I am and reinforce that I am in charge.

So where can we find neutral ground?

Standups • Good standups are important.

• Keep it concise! Use the parking lot! No one likes long meetings.

• Being late is bad form. No one should need a shepherd.

• This is team member focused, not management focused.

• Team members should be ready to provide updates.

• Blockers should be called out and addressed. Blockers should have owners.

• PMs—it is okay if you don’t talk. Take a deep breath.

• Devs—it is okay to run the standup as a team. No need to wait on the PM.

Let’s talk about… Iteration Planning

Iteration Planning

• However we plan our work for sprints or iterations, planning helps coordinate with other teams and stakeholders.

• Estimating and planning work is key to project predictability and trends.

• Planning our work helps us understand resourcing needs.

• Planning gives us a goal to try to achieve.

Iteration Planning

• What's the methodology where we just don't meet and instead we work on stuff?

• This feels like time for the PM to show that they have manager in their title.

• Maybe if I just stay at my desk I can skip it.

• A meeting (or set of meetings) I would rather not have.

• Lean doesn't do this right? Or Kanban? Let’s do that.

Iteration Planning

• I don't understand the value; why is this part of my job?

• This feels like a promise; aren’t we supposed to be agile?

• Why can’t we just prioritize and deliver what we manage to deliver?

• I'm just going to give you some honest ranges; you are going to pick the lower bound on all of them so you can cram as many features in as possible.

Iteration Planning

• I need to promise the customer something. This is my opportunity to take their 'estimates' use them to do that.

• Finally, some planning. I mean, it isn't the 1200 page project plan / requirements document I wanted, but at least I can get something laid out.

• These estimates are terrible; they aren't even trying.

Iteration Planning • Let’s all agree that plans, and estimates, are going to be incorrect.

• This doesn’t mean they are worthless! Having an educated estimate helps with other planning… • Resourcing/Staffing

• Release Management

• Change Management

• Communications

• PMs should listen. Listen to estimates from the team and get team buy-in on any plan before it’s agreed to or communicated.

• If we don’t meet the plan, it doesn’t warrant overreaction.

Let’s talk about… Progress Tracking

Remember…Trust Tree.

Progress Tracking • Tracking progress is key to building an overall plan or roadmap…which is key for

folks inside and outside of the team.

• There are multiple stakeholders all wondering how we're doing, how much money we're planning to spend, and when we're going to be done. Tracking and reporting progress is how we communicate that.

• If we were building a house and the contractor only kept told us things were "coming along" we wouldn't be content for very long. This isn't much different.

• If other teams have dependencies with ours, we need to keep measuring and communicating how we're doing.

Progress Tracking

• Get out of my business.

• It'll be done when it's done.

• Was micro-managing part of the PMP?

• Fine, it'll be done when you say it's done. When I miss that deadline though, I'm reminding you that I didn't sign up for that date.

• I bet you I'd be done quicker if you didn't keep asking.

Progress Tracking

• I don't understand the value.

• An arbitrary percentage compared against what was an estimate to begin with; how is this supposed to be accurate at all?

• The best I can do is to give you off-the-cuff, gut-feeling number. Will that make you go away?

• You are just going to come back and say something like “how have you only made 20% more progress in one day?”

• It is impossible for me to give you what you want.

Progress Tracking

• These developers are going to force us to miss deadlines; I need to know by how much so I can gauge how much harder to push them and where to downplay the customer expectations.

• All they do is lie and tell me they have no idea.

• If they just followed my work breakdown structure, this would be so easy.

Progress Tracking • We all think progress percentages are silly. Cool? Cool.

• Devs—when a story is sitting...and sitting....and not moving.....PMs are probably going to ask if there's an issue. This is a fair question, and isn't calling you stupid.

• How progress is tracked should be discussed as a team.

• PMs—if you’re going to communicate the team’s progress, the team should have the ability to see that communication. Buzz word alert–

• The goal should be finding a way to that is informative, fair, appropriately accurate, and communicable.

• Honest > precise.

Progress Tracking • We all think using baseless percentages to track progress is a little silly.

• Devs—when a story is sitting...and sitting....and not moving.....PMs are probably going to ask if there's an issue. This is a fair question, and isn't calling you stupid.

• How progress is tracked should be discussed as a team.

• PMs—if you’re going to communicate the team’s progress, the team should have the ability to see that communication. Buzz word alert–

• The goal should be finding a way to that is informative, fair, appropriately accurate, and communicable.

• Honest > precise.

Let’s talk about… Retrospectives

Retrospectives

• A valuable tool to pull feedback from the team.

• A safe place…a Trust Tree if you will…to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

• A meeting to document the team’s feedback for our team and future teams.

Retrospectives

• I need to think of like two things I can say without offending anyone.

• No matter the feedback from this thing, nothing is going to change.

• I’m not sure why this meeting is so long.

• I’m going to stay quiet until someone makes me talk.

• A meeting I would rather not have.

Retrospectives

• The best opportunity we have to reflect on our process and address things that worked well and iterate on things that could use improvement.

• What should be a safe place to air issues professionally, and in a way that might get addressed.

• A place that often draws criticisms without useful insights for suggesting alternatives.

• A meeting I sometimes wish the PM understood better and respected more.

Retrospectives

• Some hippy-dippy, feelings crap the devs need to validate their existence.

• A formalized medium for the developers to complain about me.

• An organized effort to tell me they don't want to give me estimates anymore because they 'don't work'.

• A chance for me complain about missed deadlines and slipping velocity.

• A meeting I'd rather replace with a 'lessons learned‘ document.

Retrospectives

• We all want the same thing! Continuous improvement!

• The issue most of us have with retrospectives is how they’re implemented, not why.

• The team should agree upon the style, the length, and the frequency of retrospectives. This is a meeting for the whole team, so the whole team should help define it.

• If something is identified as an opportunity, an action item and owner should immediately be assigned! That action should be tracked. Don’t let good ideas turn to fossils in some document repository.

Let’s talk about…Pairing

Pairing

• I hear about it at conferences, but I’m not quite sure I understand how pairing makes things better.

• Even if I understand how the quality is better, I’m really not sure I understand how things are accomplished quicker.

• Even if I understand quality and speed, I’m really, really not sure it’s cheaper in the long run.

Pairing

• A chance to collaborate with someone.

• I wonder if my pairing partner watches Game of Thrones.

• I like spending half my time hanging out and not coding.

• I wonder if my pair has read the Game of Thrones books!

• I’m going to spin in my chair every once in awhile just so the PM thinks I’m not doing anything.

• WINTER IS COMING.

Pairing

• An opportunity to learn a section of the code quickly with the aid of experience.

• An opportunity to mentor some of the junior members of the team.

• An opportunity to write highly robust, bug resistant code; taking advantage of two sets of eyes and…

• Improving the long term maintainability and readability

• Reducing long term cost in defect reductions

• Preventing future lost velocity

Pairing

• OH MY GOD THE COST.

• Wait...really!?!? Half the work? Same cost. Really 1/3 the work because of the double screwing around. Come on.

• Special stations and computers and hardware?!?

• Seriously, who came up with this crap?

Pairing

• Let's admit PMs probably don't totally get it.

• The broader IT world probably needs to articulate its value a little better than it does.

• As a PM, if my team is telling me it's something we need to do, I need to trust ,embrace, and champion it.

• As a Developer, I need to help a PM build a case for its importance. This is going to cost money, and anything that costs money gets questioned.

• This isn’t actually going to cost money in the long-term; it is an investment.

So…let’s talk about you.

What is one of these stereotypes you are guilty of?

Conclusions

Project Managers are…

Overbearing, time-sucking, micro-managers

Developers are…

Lazy, hippie, primadonnas

( just kidding)

In Conclusion (for real)

In Conclusion

• Empathy.

• In most cases, despite your perceptions, people are trying to do the right thing.

• Understanding team members’ motivations will help you understand their actions and attitudes.

• Take some time to think about the pressures and challenges each team member is facing.

• In most cases, keeping an open, honest, and fair communication channel allows for team members to discuss and find a comfortable middle ground.

http://axiaconsulting.net/perfect-strangers

http://justinbrowder.online/author

https://bryanschoeff.com

Thank You Any Questions?

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