It’s disappointing; but it’s not often that I see robust business cases, where the groundwork has been done to clearly show how what is being delivered will result in changes that lead to the desired benefits.

The government quotes that the HS2 project will produce “quantifiable benefits to society” in excess of £48 billion. The cost estimate is almost £26 billion. There are lots of assumptions behind this estimate, which are well documented, but the NAO claims that the business case has been “poorly articulated” and that the project has a significant “funding gap”– it seems the dots simply haven’t been joined up.

While some benefits have a clearer, more direct, link with what is being delivered (e.g. where a change of supplier provides the same service but at a lower cost), benefits realisation usually requires additional management action, to make better use of a project’s outcomes. If any of you have ever bought an exercise machine you’ll know exactly what I mean. Just because you’ve gone to the trouble of purchasing it and setting it up, this doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get fitter or lose weight. It’s only by using it on a regular basis that you’ll see the value – unless of course you think of its being used as a clothes’ hanger as a benefit.

In the Managing Benefits manual, written by Steve Jenner and used as the basis of the new Managing Benefits qualification, clear distinctions are made between outputs, outcomes and benefits.  For example a project may deliver a new sales system – this is an output – and although the new system is capable of processing orders quicker and with more accuracy, it’s what people do with the extra time that determines whether this turns into a measurable benefit.

If they use the extra time to just have longer breaks, then there is no benefit. Extra management intervention is needed to ensure the benefit is realised. This could, for instance, take the form of raising sales targets or assigning additional work that adds value.

The problem is that much of this additional activity is considered to be outside the scope of the original project, so it’s easy for it to not be thought through carefully, and it becomes disconnected from the project objectives and the planned benefits.

The new Managing Benefits training course encourages us to be aware of the critical areas that may appear to be outside the scope of the project, but will significantly affect its benefits. It provides the tools and models needed to ensure that the additional management actions happen in practice.

Joining up the dots, and connecting goals, benefits, and the actions needed to realise these, is worthy of the time needed to think things through.

But we know that there are serious limitations to this simplistic view. Apply a healthy dose of common sense, and you instantly realise that some people may cross their arms because they are cold, and that in some cultures it’s quite rude to hold eye contact with someone whom you respect. There are now several scientific studies to back up our instincts — the New Scientist asserts “our scientific approach has provided little support for those who claim to speak fluent body-ese”. I think what is significant here is the importance of context, and fostering a wider awareness of how those around us are responding to conversations and our environment. Noticing non-verbal signals is important, and may provide vital clues about whether a colleague is listening to what you are saying, or whether someone is comfortable and relaxed in a given situation.

But scientific evidence highlights that there’s more than this. Instead of looking to body language to help us understand others, it suggests we can use our own body language to influence how we ourselves are feeling. It turns out that the brain picks up on our mannerisms, and is influenced by them. So, if we would like to feel more confident, we would do well to use confident poses and perhaps introduce a bit of a swagger to our walk. If we would prefer to be happier, we can take a vital step by smiling more. A study at the University of California asked volunteers to hold a “high power” pose (legs on the desk, hands behind your head) or a “low power” pose (hunched and small), for 2 minutes. Afterwards they tested levels of testosterone (power hormone) and cortisol (stress hormone), and discovered that the power posers had a 20% increase in testosterone and a 25% decrease in cortisol, while the low-power posers showed a 10% decrease in testosterone and a 15% increase in cortisol (Psychological Science, vol 21, 1463).

So body language turns out to be hugely important, but has the greatest potential when used as a tool for personal development — which is why we include this as part of the Project Leadership course too.

* New Scientist, 6 April 2013, pp 34-37

He said ”I don’t teach people to drive, I coach them”. Rather than following a strict lesson by lesson syllabus, a driving coach allows the learner to “own” the lesson time by deciding for themselves what they want to cover. The coach guides by asking the right questions and getting the learner to think – always open questions by the way, “How do you feel about…?”, “What things do you think may affect…?”. The learning process is experiential and exploratory, and I witnessed this driving coach ask his pupil to draw out a mind map, to find out what he’d learnt. Wow!

So what about ChangeQuest and other accredited “training” companies? Should the project management industry revisit this expression, and is it a bit deceptive?

We talk readily about “training companies”, but I realise this risks being an unimaginative and inadequate description, that doesn’t begin to describe what is on offer.

Training is what we do with dogs. It involves repeating simple tasks until they are done perfectly and a reward can be given. With dog training, reward and appreciation of what the animal is doing is absolutely everything. A basic principle is that even if you can catch the dog doing something good by chance, you should still reward – this highlights and embeds the good behaviour. It works for people too. We all like to be appreciated and are more likely to repeat behaviour for which we are rewarded. So, the “training” approach can be important – but is that what you would experience during a project or change management training course?

I’d suggest that if Mercedes-Benz driving instructors are ”coaching”, then ChangeQuest certainly is too – we would think of it as facilitating learning.

“Training” techniques have moved on a lot since the old “chalk and talk” approach, where the goal was knowledge-transfer rather than learning. But, we’ve stuck with the same “training” terminology, making it quite hard for anyone buying courses to know what the study experience is likely to be.

ChangeQuest uses brain-friendly learning methods, and we talk about our courses being interactive, practical, and focused on the specific needs of the learner. But, Mercedes Benz have convinced me that the project management training sector has a lot to learn – and sometimes we find inspiration in the most surprising places….

Feel free to keep an eye on our website – we may be making a few changes

Evolution and the mobile phone

Last week was marked as the 40^th anniversary of the mobile phone.

So I thought we’d take a light hearted look at the changes and evolution of the phone, since the first “brick phone”, the Motorola DynaTAC, appeared on the scene in 1983 to where we are today, and maybe we’ll try to find out what’s happening next with the ever expanding dominance and uses of smartphones.

These days smartphones have a myriad of uses. In fact I’m surprised they don’t make a decent cup of tea! Well maybe not tea, but coffee! According to an article released just last week on April 1^st  (spoiler alert – please note the date) a team of scientists are very close to developing a smartphone that will also now brew a cup of coffee for you.

Bunkum! you say. Well maybe? – but think about this, if back in 1983, I had told you that in 40 years, that brick you were lugging around, that took all night to charge so you could shout into it for 35 minutes at a time would be replaced by something as small as a credit card, that you could also use as a credit card you could operate by just waving your hand over it, that it would talk to you and allow you to communicate messages to millions of people instantly, that you could watch or even make a movie on, that it could help you find your way home or lead you to someone lost, what would you say?…Bunkum right?

Oh and that little article about making you a cup of coffee ended with a confession that it was only poking a little foolish-fun at us for the day, but we may yet see a smartphone making a cup of coffee. Don’t believe me? (Scroll down to the video below).

But as I was researching the history of the phone, I also found an interesting blog written by Larry Cone 7 years ago today titled A Brief History of Change – The Future of Change.

The article discussed the future of Change Management in a software product development environment and looked to answer the question of how to balance the needs of everyone. The primary challenge then wasn’t about getting the systems requirements right,  it was about “ implementing a meta-system – a process that periodically optimizes the multivariate calculus of resources, feature set, ROI for the customer, delivery dates, user change management, and quality.”

He applies this to all organisations and breaks it down to look at the dynamics of groups with different priorities. “ The product managers want the most functionality for the users. The development team wants well-defined modules that fit together with clean interfaces. The QA group wants a clean, testable interface. The deployment team wants clean code, with no emergency patches two weeks after release. The users want more-more-more, but often can’t handle more functionality.”

His answer then was to “stay flexible”. Today we call it being Agile.

And the importance of Agile project management today cannot be greater, especially in today’s mobile smartphone industry, as has already been felt by late adopters Blackberry and Nokia in the last few years, and today by HTC. Even though it was one of the early adopters of the new technology, today it has had its revenues hit badly with 1^st quarter net income falling 98% simply because a camera component shortage delayed the launch of its latest model the HTC One by only a month.

The pace of change in industry is different now, it took 10 years for Motorola to go from “the brick” to the hand held “flip-phone”. Today those technological development jumps take more like 10 months and an organisation has to react as quickly.

So what will the next 40 years bring us?

Oh and for those of you who thought it was just an April Fool’s prank …..coffee anyone? (Here’s the video link)

http://youtu.be/wp6P0v1r7qs

I would like to thank and acknowledge Larry Cone and his 2007 Blog article A Brief History of Change – The Future of Change. The full article and details about Larry can be found here http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/coneblog/a-brief-history-of-change-the-future-of-change-8621

Imagine being part of a rowing team and that you know you can row faster and for longer than any other team member in the boat. Is it about proving how good you are or is it about how great the team can be working together?

Businesses and organisations can also have very competitive individuals at their helm. To create truly successful working environments, great team leaders understand the critical importance of trust and collaboration when building, leading and working within, and for, the team.

Some of you may already know Formula 1 motor racing has been a passion of mine for many years now. With the 2013 season just underway, this weekend I awoke at 4.30am eager to watch the preliminaries to Race No. 2, the Malaysian Formula 1 Grand Prix. But due to adverse weather conditions both in Malaysia and here, I instead spent the next 12 hours watching a small lake form in our garden. But that’s another story about project and risk management that I’ll tell once I know the ending.

Saturday night, our watery crisis barely averted, had me retiring early to bed, in preparation for an early rise for race day….but I overslept!

By the time I switched on the TV, the race was over but I was in time to witness the trophies and accolades being handed out to a very forlorn looking podium of ”winners”.  Something was not quite right. What had happened?  Was it a crash? Some devastating event that brings with it a sombre silence from the victors. Were we in the midst of restrained celebration out of respect to the passing of a sporting colleague?

Well no, as has happened many times before within all teams, the winning team from Red Bull Racing were having to face, and deal with, the complexities of managing a 2013 Formula 1 TEAM.

Now stay with me for a minute, you may not be an F1 anorak like me, so I want to bring you up to speed. This is a sporting business layered with competitiveness, between teams, between individual drivers and even between the drivers and their respective engineering and support teams – within the same team.

This sport has changed and evolved drastically over the last 50 years. It is no longer just a high risk motor sport. With the astronomical investments, risks and rewards involved, it is a very high risk business. A business that is in constant flux with managing change and development, with multiple concurrently running projects, and processes that are as complex as they are vast. This team business employs and relies on the skills of hundreds of professionals that all bring their individual expertise, commitment and dedication to the team. There are teams within larger teams ultimately managed by a Team Principal who in turn is held accountable to the Team’s stakeholders.  It is a business with a very clear directive and hierarchy for objective success.

At the end of the season, in addition to the financial gain from purse winnings and sponsorship deals for the winners, there are 2 major accolades up for grabs, one for the team which brings recognition for their technical excellence in design, engineering and management, and the other for the individual driver offering personal glory and fame for becoming World Champion (Think the wearer of the Yellow jersey in the Tour-de-France).

But to achieve this overall success, the teams’ and drivers’ objectives are to ensure that their cars finish as many races in the highest position possible. No team can win without the skills of truly exceptional drivers and no driver can win without the best performing team car. With the ultimate winning combination occurring when the winning team’s driver also becomes Formula 1’s World Champion.

This very symbiotic relationship, where either can only succeed  if there is absolute trust in their commitment to one another and that any strategies agreed or instructions given on behalf of a team whether right or wrong  (as has been many times in the past and will be in the future), are followed and accepted.  This means the individual may have to overcome ego and sacrifice self-importance to ensure that trust and team solidarity is maintained.

Which brings us to the reason for the sombre looking winners and the furore that has been kicked-up since over the actions of Sebastian Vettel, who 9 laps before the finish of the race, disregarded a clear team directive not to challenge and overtake his teamate Mark Webber who was leading the race at the time.

My guess is that this is a serious issue for the Red Bull Racing Team for one reason alone. Formula 1 Racing teams abhor making the same mistake twice. In 2010 a similar competitive overtaking incident occurred between the same two Red bull racing drivers at the Turkish Grand Prix, which led to a collision between them ultimately denying the team what looked like a sure-fire 1^st & 2^nd place victory for that race. The team, to ensure that this could never happen again, had probably put in place a team agreement that should they find themselves in a similar position of gaining both top spots close to the end of a race, that an assessment would be made and the risk calaculated and managed, so that whatever the decision, the needs of the team would take precedence over that of an individual driver’s personal ambition.

Formula 1 drivers are all very competitive sportsmen at the top of their game and are hardwired to win, but no matter how great the driver, if team decisions are not applicable to them then they need to question their team commitment and what this could cost the team dynamic.

So what is the right decision when you have the opportunity to show off your work performance, but it may not be in the team’s best interest and could affect team dynamics and trust?

The new system is designed to ensure the organisation make the most of all the information they hold about existing and potential customers and is backed up by a rigorously tested database containing detailed information about all their leads. In theory this is a great opportunity for the company to gain new customers and to understand their existing customers better so they can offer better customer service. What’s not to like?

The project team running the rollout are busy training the sales staff on the ground and doing a great job promoting the benefits of the new system to the people who will actually use it but whilst that is running smoothly in the background there are some major issues that the project manager has  to worry about with the stakeholders.

It is often assumed in projects that the stakeholders are the driving force behind the project – the people that stand to gain most from a successful outcome. But what happens when the project has been imposed on the “stakeholders”, the organisation is making multiple redundancies across the board (so everyone is fearful of losing their jobs) and there is an insidious blame culture.

In an attempt to offer a way forward to my old friend we discussed the main problem areas of this particular project. It made me realise that I often write about project management from the perspective of the ideal project environment and, whilst  I know from my own experience that no project environment is ideal, this particular project made me realise just how far from ideal some projects are.

What is the Purpose of Communication?

One of the main areas that need resolving is the series of lengthy meetings that are giving the impression of everyone being busy without actually achieving anything concrete (does that sound familiar?). Surprisingly, in a world of excellent video conferencing facilities people from across the UK regularly travel many hundreds of miles to have face-to-face meetings with their counterparts from different regions. We all recognise the value of face-to-face meetings in contributing to project success but those meetings should have a purpose. When quizzed about the purpose of these meetings my friend, the project manager, was a bit hazy. Surely you have an agenda at these meetings? With just a day to go to the next meeting no agenda has been distributed and yet flights, trains and hotels have all been booked when no-one is really sure of the purpose of the meeting except (let’s hope) the person who has organised it.

It seemed like fairly basic advice to give an experienced project manager to request a detailed agenda prior to the event and a clear statement of what the group expected to achieve in the meeting but it seems that the objective of the project is being lost amongst the detritus of in-fighting between the regions.

Keep Personalities &  Politics Out Of It

It is so easy to de-rail a project when different regions, departments or individuals have their own agendas  and it takes a strong-willed and confident project manager to stay calm when others are arguing, back-stabbing and criticising the project. But stay calm you must and put your own personal feelings aside – after all you are paid to get a job done, not necessarily to like your work colleagues. Of course, it helps if you can get along personally with colleagues but a professional project manager should also know how to work with those they don’t personally like. I suspect my friend was getting too personally involved in the situation.

It is hard not to retaliate if someone is criticising a project that you and your team are working extremely hard on but take a step back and think why? What are the reasons for someone to openly criticise a new project or system – in this particular case  it turns out that there is a new, but senior, Sales Director who is unfamiliar with the system that has been some years in the making – he lacks the in-depth knowledge of the other stakeholders so criticises instead of revealing his lack of knowledge. Another stakeholder seems to be worried about his job as many of his counterparts in other regions have lost theirs.

Of course, none of this is the project manager’s fault but if the project is to be a success then these stakeholders have to be brought on board – this is where a project manager can tactfully and diplomatically tackle the personal issues. This is not an easy task but who was it who said a project manager is all things to all people?

Know Who Is In Charge

Perhaps most surprisingly of all I discovered that there is, in fact, no single project manager with overall control of the project. Each region has its own project manager and none have been appointed as the person in overall control. When I’d lifted my jaw back up off the floor all I could think was how lucky I am not to be involved in that particular project!

So here’s a project with no one person in control, stakeholders who are trying to dis-credit the project because of their own personal fears and inadequacies and all the while they are travelling the length and breadth of the country to talk in meetings that have no known purpose. If there was ever a case for a rigorous project management framework this must surely be it.

Are you involved in a project with such fundamental flaws – maybe one even worse than the one I describe above? Why not let us know – talking may help to put some perspective on the situation!

Author Bio:

Michelle Symonds has many years’ experience in IT and IT Project Management in the oil industry and investment banking working on complex global projects and managing overseas project teams. She is now a freelance consultant specialising in search engine optimisation and content writing for businesses such as Parallel Project Training and is also editor of the Project Accelerator Project Management News website.

• Decide on the best approach and how to move initiatives forward
• Identify and agree priorities for requirements
• Gain agreement and buy-in from stakeholders on key success criteria
• Assess risks and appropriate management actions
• Quickly resolve issues and agree on solutions to move forward
• Approve changes to plans
• Help teams work together more effectively
• Monitor ongoing benefits and results

The project manager or sponsor can of course decide to just make decisions and tell people about them. But the old “command and control” style of management is not so effective any more. For one thing, in the more complex, uncertain and inter-related environments we work in, it is very unlikely that any one person has sufficient know-how for all the areas involved. So much more collaboration is needed to ensure the best solutions are found for the business. Secondly, others will still need to be “convinced” that the decisions are the right ones. Otherwise the business could end up with yet another change that no-one has adopted.

Of course, all this collaboration can seem like it will just take more time and introduce even more uncertainty – the last thing you need! It can also feel a bit “scary” – what if it doesn’t actually lead anywhere, there could be lots of talking and going around in circles, disagreements and opening up all sorts of issues, without actually achieving anything useful.

But good facilitation skills can avoid these common pitfalls. Chances are that you do a lot of facilitating already and most of it probably quite intuitively.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Even where we have intuitive responses that we believe are good ones, it pays to understand more about why certain things work, and why others don’t. By taking the time to focus on what you do, and what works, you can improve your skills and produce more consistent results.

This new APMG qualification offers a robust process for practising the feedback models and communication techniques that lead to success. It’s suitable for professionals of all disciplines, and the Foundation level takes just 3 days of highly interactive workshop, with the multiple-choice exam included as a part of the third day. The course covers the methodology for the facilitation skills that get decisions made and draw out the best from the competence and knowledge of the group. With a smoother process for decision making and progress, you can increase a group’s productivity, resolve issues faster and improve the quality of the results.

Facilitation is at the core of everything we do that involves other people. This new Facilitation Certification helps embed new skills in a very structured way,and can make you confident that you have the tools and processes to step into any situation and work through problems effectively to guarantee a strong result.

Daniel Kahneman explains in his book Thinking Fast and Slow –”intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind, even to stimuli that normally attract attention.” The shoppers in the above experiment were so focused on their own task that they completely missed what was going on in front of them.

Our minds clearly don’t work the way we like to think they do. Our brains are constantly making mental shortcuts to process data quickly and, as a result, much of the information around us gets filtered out. This has its plus side of course – it means you’re able to handle complex problems and deal with incomplete information to find solutions, even when you don’t have time to analyse the situation in depth. Think of it as the brain using a rule of thumb or making an educated guess to bypass some of the work involved. It’s a very efficient way of working, but it has its downsides too.

This is how biases set in. For example, the confirmation bias is a tendency for people to seek and notice only information that confirms what they already think – a case of people ”hearing what they want to hear” and ”seeing what they want to see”, even when contradictory evidence is in front of them. This is obviously not helpful in objective decision making.

I’m sure you are aware of how strong the perception was that the Titanic was unsinkable. Fuelled by the hype and marketing, this perception kept growing stronger. Increasing numbers of people bought into this and ”group think” had clearly set in. Even when several design changes meant some key safety features had been compromised – and the sister ship, the Olympic, had had three accidents– the idea that Titanic could sink was unthinkable.

When the unthinkable actually happened, it was such a shock that there was a delay in responding. Even the crew, who carried out orders to launch the lifeboats, doubted that anything serious would happen. The normalcy bias is similar to being in denial; it led to passengers being reluctant to accept there was a problem, even when they were in the midst of it. People held onto the idea that this was impossible, and tended to interpret warnings optimistically, looking for any signs which would justify them thinking the situation was normal or less serious. That’s why, although each lifeboat had a capacity of sixty-five people, only twenty-seven were lowered into the first, and the first eight lifeboats left half-empty.

There is not a lot we can do about our brain taking mental shortcuts – much of the time this is very helpful. But recognising that this happens, you can watch out for it on your projects. Get the team to think about a wide range of what-if scenarios to help everyone challenge common assumptions and biases. Encourage a culture where the team are comfortable questioning decisions and exploring multiple perspectives. If you tend to work alone much of the time, find a trusted colleague, peer, advisor; someone who can review your work and you can discuss ideas with.

These suggestions may mean it takes a little longer to get the work done, but the output will be of a much higher quality.

”The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend” – Robert Davidson

More on how different biases and perceptions affected decision making for Titanic, can be found in Titanic Lessons in Project Leadership.

Why is it that a decision feels as if it should be based on a full situational analysis and yet a choice can be made on the basis of gut instinct?

A New Year blog from Seth Godin got me thinking. He suggests that for most of us decisions are our “product”, they are what we “make”, so we should make more of them and be more productive. He says:

“The farmer who grows corn has no illusions about what his job is. He doesn’t avoid planting corn or dissemble or procrastinate about harvesting corn. And he certainly doesn’t try to get his neighbor to grow his corn for him.

Make more decisions. That’s the only way to get better at it.”

In Titanic Lessons in Project Leadership Ranjit Sidhu says that “a leader’s role is to ensure the team has agreed … how decisions will be made.” What she goes on to say provides the clue for my decisions v. choices dilemma. Ranjit advises, “Gathering information and identifying options are critical steps toward effective decision making.”

That’s the difference then.

A choice is a personal thing, but to make good decisions, it’s essential that we involve others. We need to follow an agreed problem-solving process, gathering evidence, listening to our team and our stakeholders, identifying options and only then making the critical, but individual, choice.

So Seth is right. We need to make more decisions, but while we can’t get ‘our neighbours’ to make them for us, we should certainly listen to their views.

Recently, I went to an “Agile Edge” conference at Valtech to hear Greg Hutchings talk on “Introducing Agile”. Here is what I learned.

You must know WHY you want to “do Agile” The normal reasons people state for wanting agile are to: – reduce time to market – be more flexible – be more efficient (less cost) – increase quality. All very laudable and valid reasons but Greg said there was one, less quoted, which he believed had the greatest leverage  – to increase customer intimacy. By working with customers, you build up a lasting relationship which can survive many of the knocks of corporate life. Business is, at heart, about people working with people. Efficiency is not generally a compelling case for Agile; flexibility and time to market are usually better. If you launch your services early, then your benefits flow earlier, often dwarfing the cost aspects (although costs centre accountants might not look at it that way!).

One thing Greg warned of was not to aim for all those benefits; you’ll just fail. His advice was to choose just one, then aim and focus on it; keep an eye on the others, but don’t let them drive you. He also warned that some things may get worse, but I am sure you “change-savvy” readers know all about that.

Who wants it anyway? Greg’s key message was, if there is no-one in the Executive (top) level of the company who wants Agile, don’t waste your time. Successful implementations should initially come top down, with the senior leadership team signed up and then management trained on what it’s all about. You can then come bottom up with the training of the practitioners. Why? Agile relies on the right behaviours which, in some organisations, can look very strange or even appear subversive!  (See case study 2, later.)  You also need to make sure your sales force and customer services people are trained, so they can explain effectively to customers what Agile is all about. Finally, traditional contracts may no longer be appropriate as they tend to build in rigidity which works against the flexibility of Agile. Naturally, the customers also have to be involved; if they aren’t, you have no “customer intimacy” and Agile becomes futile!

Big bang or incremental adoption? Incremental every time! In this way you have the space to “inspect and adapt” your approaches to suit your organisation. Greg did come across a company where they successfully implemented a pilot in three months and the senior leadership team was so impressed, the rest of the company was instructed to roll it out in the next three months. The manager commented that he did it . . . . but it was nowhere near as well done as the first tranche, as he was pushed to hit schedule deadlines rather than make sure it was right. It seems his leadership team had the view that new methods can be turned on and off like a switch. Will we ever learn?

There is no substitute for face to face working One question from the floor concerned the trend for distributed, remote and home working. Greg was very clear that despite having wikis, teleconferencing, and all that stuff, there is no substitute for face to face work for critical activities. The hidden cost to an organisation of not letting people truly work together can be vast.

Case study 1 – FAILURE Agile was implemented bottom up on an incremental basis. There was no top-down support. The consultants were removed from the company as what was exposed during the implementation work was too embarrassing for the incumbent Vice President. The implementation had no top down sponsorship nor effective governance. Most of the staff involved were fired. Six months later the Vice President in charge of the area lost his job for covering up some critical business issues. That company now has new leadership and is getting on much better . . . and adopting Agile.

Case study 2 – you’ll die waiting The second case study is a large, global industrial company. They had executive sponsorship, a core team to implement it but very few people engaged in the outer global reaches of the company. After four years, they decided that Agile was a valid approach to IT development and may be used!

Case study 3 – A large telco – SUCCESS!

This organisation had executive sponsorship, a core team to lead and manage the implementation and good geographic representation. They focussed on product development but were careful to choose which developments in their portfolio would benefit most. They discounted the products at the end of their life-cycle, the cash cows and the highly innovative. They focussed on the others.

. . . . and then Greg ran out of time.

Summing it up My own view is that I can’t see many customers wanting a fixed timescale and price for a variable output from their contractors. So, going in with the approach with an unconvinced customer may be dodgy. Often, however, a company will have many long term contracts which include “future services” clauses to cover stuff the customer wants but hasn’t a clue as to what the real requirements will be. Surely this is the opportunity space for using Agile?

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This week’s guest blog is kindly provided by Robert Buttrick of   http://projectworkout.wordpress.com/

Robert Buttrick is the author of the Project Workout. He has been providing advice and guidance since the publication of the first edition of his best-selling “flagship” book, the Project Workout in 1997 and now its 4th edition.  The principles laid out in the publications, take a holistic view, ensuring that culture, systems, processes and accountabilities are mutually compatible. The book has been translated into French, Korean, Chinese, Russian and Romanian