Author Archive for Bob Zimmerman

IT as Great Facilitators Part 2

In my last post I talked about how facilitation is a key role, we each provide, in the IT world. I also described the two pitfalls facilitators sometimes fall into: The Presenter vs. the Scribe. Now, I am going to share two basic practices I’ve seen facilitators use to manage a room and deliver effective facilitation sessions. These aren’t the only two recommendations, but I have found they help me personally manage some very strong groups.

First, the Check-in…

One challenge facilitators face is having a single person in the room dominate the discussion. There are two typical causes for this situation.

The first possibility is that others perceive the ‘dominator’ as having all the answers. This person has been around twice as long as us and is a genius. So rather than the rest of us spend 30 minutes trying to solve the problem, we can just let “Joe” tell us the answer now and finish up the meeting early.

The other possible reason for the ‘dominator’ is that the person who is dominating believes no one else has anything to add. They shut down others by interrupting or attacking an idea before it’s given a chance to grow.

Both of these situations means that the room is in dire need of a strong facilitator. Someone who can help everyone feel that their opinion matters and collaborate to achieve their desired goals.

One simple way to get ahead of this curve is a practice I call the “Check-in”. At the beginning of the meeting, as the facilitator, you describe your understanding of the overall team objective and the specific goal of the session. For example, the team objective may be planning the next company outing which is a picnic. The purpose of this particular meeting is to choose a theme for the picnic outing.

This part is simple enough. But then, you go around the room and ask everyone to share their specific role related to today’s meeting. Now it gets trickier.

One person may have been part of the planning committee of past events and is there to bring their experience. Another person from HR and is there to help choose the theme and, more importantly, to make sure the theme is appropriate, professional, and compatible for special-needs employees. There may be an individual who is there to observe, learn and support the team in activities like coordinating picnic vendors.

Because everyone shares their “role”, as a facilitator, you can clearly ask individuals to speak up, or prevent a ‘dominator’ from interrupting by explaining that “Jerry from HR” needs to chime in on any concerns from their role’s view.

As the facilitator, you aren’t trying to control the room or shut down any individual. You are simply asking everyone to both play their role and support others in their roles.

Next, the Chair…

This technique is useful when you are facilitating a group of people and standing in front of the room. Maybe you are at a whiteboard or easel, recording decisions or helping others capture ideas. The idea is that while you ares tanding up front, the room of four to 12 folks are the working team.

When I am in this position, I always make sure to have a chair at the front of the room. If I am not physically at a table, I will have a chair just to the side of the whiteboard where I am standing. The purpose of the chair is to allow me to relinquish and regain control of the room.

For example, if there is good discussion around a topic, even if it’s disagreement, I want to encourage this discussion and let the participants feel in control of the room. I will sit down at my chair and really listen to every word.

If at one point, things are getting off track or out of hand, or if the energy is getting low, I will stand up out of my chair and show my intent to start facilitating. I usually do this by raising a question.

This seems like a very small tactic, almost making you think, “Bob – are you serious?” But if you are trying to lead a group, especially one that you don’t work with often, and need to make sure you are facilitating without confrontation, this is a natural way to control the energy and rhythm of the room. (To understand the importance of energy and rhythm, be sure to read my previous post on the role of facilitators.)

What has helped you facilitate more effectively?

These are just two ideas that I have seen effective facilitators take advantage of. While there are other techniques I may share in future posts, I love to learn and hear about other approaches. What are some of the effective tricks you have used to help lead and facilitate your team meetings?

August 24, 2011 | 1 comment | View Post

IT as Great Facilitators Part 1

In the IT world, we all play the role of a facilitator. Technical architects facilitate sessions for estimating and creating designs for their teams. Project managers facilitate team and client meetings and make sure the team is on track to reach its goals. When Business Analysts collect requirements, they may facilitate large requirement meetings. With so many kinds of facilitation roles, can we assume we know what being a facilitator really means? Do we, as facilitators, recognize that this is a significant role we need to work at and manage in order to be effective? How do we make sure we stay “within” our role as a neutral facilitator and not push our own agenda?

So you think to yourself, “Yes Bob, this is obvious. Of course I am an effective facilitator.” But let’s really test how effective each of us really are.

The Two Extremes of Ineffective Facilitation

When I have been a less-than-effective facilitator, I am acting in one of two extremes. I either go into “Presenter” mode or into “Scribe” mode. Let me demonstrate these two extremes.

On one side, a facilitator may go into “presenter” mode. Although their role is to facilitate a discussion (e.g. illicit requirements from business users or help a team arrive at estimates), the “Presenter” actually comes to the meeting with an opinion, specifically, a desired outcome. They are there to help others meet his or her agenda, rather than facilitate the room to develop its own opinions. When a facilitator starts presenting, he or she does not allow others in the room to collaborate towards finding their own solutions. This shuts down the energy in the room. This also means the participants may not “own” the solution.

At the other extreme, a facilitator goes into “scribe” mode. When a facilitator is in “scribe” mode, it means that when he or she walks into the meeting, they sit and take notes and meeting-minutes but do not influence the dialogue. This often allows others in the meeting to go off topic and start discussing points not related, in any way, to the objective of the meeting. Also, if someone is “checked-out” or “shut down”, there is no true facilitator in the room to make sure their voice is heard.

The Responsibility of a Facilitator

The best facilitators enable others to define, own and work in order to achieve their objectives. While the facilitator may bring an approach, the solution is owned by the individuals they are facilitating.

A Good Facilitator:

Helps the team clarify and align on their objective and then facilitates the team so they make progress towards their objective.
Helps keep the group’s energy high, so everyone is contributing and feeling heard.
Keeps momentum or rhythm flowing towards the objective.
Does not change the team objective during facilitation. (Although they can help the team change direction if the team believes it is required.)
Helps an entire group make progress towards its objective and makes sure everyone’s opinion counts.

Additionally, a good facilitator is constantly taking the group’s temperature in terms of:

Energy in the room: Everyone is engaged, participating and making constant progress towards accomplishing their objective.
Rhythm of dialogue: The dialogue is flowing but stays focused on the initial goal of the meeting.
Focus: The meeting is staying on track and accomplishing its objective. This can be tricky since the facilitator needs to balance discussion on side topics that are helpful to the objective, vs. topics that derail the goal.

Are You an Efficient Facilitator?

Even if we believe we are doing an effective job at facilitating, we may actually be playing a Presenter or even Scribe. Here are ways we can test our effectiveness:

Are you directing conversations with your own agenda? Or, are you enabling the team to have its own conversations?
Are you making sure the team stays on topic and on track to meet its objectives?
Are you making sure everyone in the room is being heard, and no one’s idea’s are shut down? (This can affect the energy of the room.)
Did you leave your opinion at the door? A good facilitator helps get to a solution, not give a solution.
If you had not attended the meeting, would the team have accomplished the same result? (Maybe you are not being as affective as you think you are.)

When It Comes Together…

Simon Sinek recently shared the following quote: “Don’t show up to prove; Show up to improve”.

When great facilitators lead meetings, they enable a dialogue that allows the room to make a decision. They do not abuse their role to force an outcome. Instead, they help everyone do a better job and accomplish fulfilling work. The room fills with energy and momentum that can’t avoid delivering results. When meetings feel this energy, you know you are leading the room and are an effective facilitator.

Do you consider yourself an efficient facilitator? Are there any other suggestions you can offer to help others meet their objectives?

August 9, 2011 | 7 comments | View Post

Is Your Software Development Team Set Up for Failure?

I talk to CIOs all the time and I can tell you that there is one common concern keeping them up at night: Am I getting the best RPM out of my team? Often the answer is no.

Unfortunately, many of the teams I’ve worked with are continually frustrated because they truly, legitimately feel they are being set up for failure. They’re tired of being told they’re late, spending too much money, or missing the boat when it comes to getting the business want it really needs.

Throughout my career, I’ve heard this question from my peers, direct reports and senior executives: Who or what can we change to fix our team? If these concerns are on your mind, I highly recommend taking a look at my white paper: “Doing More with Less – Best Practices for Processes, People and Metrics.”

This whitepaper will help you identify opportunities for optimization based on your specific organization, business situation and culture. Some of the concerns I address:

Is your methodology getting predictable, repeatable results?
Do you have legacy practices and tools that actually hinder performance?
Are the right “heads” in the right “hats”?
Is everyone on the same page as to who owns the success criteria for projects?
Are you tracking the things that make a difference to the business?
Are metrics visible and “common” across IT and business?

This white paper will get you started in one of the most critical roles you have: Removing obstacles. If you don’t support your team in removing the obstacles that prevent it from delivering, you are setting your team up for inefficient and unpredictable results.

Please take a look at this white paper as soon as you can and feel free to post your comments right here.

Geneca Whitepaper – Doing More with Less

July 6, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

It’s 10am and the Requirements Session has Started… Do You Know Where Your Business Team Is?

When sharing Getting Predictable^SM best practices, specifically around requirements definition, a common question that comes from I.T. management, Business Analysts and Project Managers is:

“How do I get the business to come to the table? How do you get the business folks to commit to the time needed to properly collect requirements for a project?”

Most business folks are very busy, but the underlying problem is more than just time management.

Many business users feel it’s a waste of their time. It’s truly annoying to have to tell the “tech folks” requirements. They’re gonna get it wrong anyway.

And you can’t really blame them.

Let’s picture their world:

You’re working 8+ hour days doing your full time business job. You have plenty of regular weekly meetings you go to, some that are a waste of energy. Now your boss tells you the tech team wants to meet to ask: “How you do your job” or “What features would you like in the new system”.

You show up and as you start sharing your thoughts, they keep suggesting a better way. At times, you hear things like “what you are asking for is very complex – or is undoable”. A bit frustrating, but you trudge on.

The Requirements Sign-off

Then the business users are asked to read the requirements and sign off.

First off, some of the documents read like a technical manual for a Sears Washer and Dryer explaining how to disassemble the drive motor and replace some fan belt so your washer doesn’t make that whining noise anymore. The part of the documents that do make sense to you are sort of right – but you’re not sure how much effort to spend to get it 100% perfect.

This might be a little exaggerated, but go ask your business user to read the above paragraph and listen to what they say. Many will surprise you with their feedback.

Over the next couple of months, the I.T. team asks a few clarifying questions here and there and some of the questions have no resemblance to your original requirement.

When you get the new software, it isn’t what you asked for. And the technology team is combative. The I.T. team is saying your requirements were wrong and that’s why the system doesn’t work properly.

Surprised?

Hmmm… Why in the world would the business want to experience this?

While a little exaggerated, I have to admit that over my career I have heard business users say this. There is some truth to these remarks and they represent obstacles for our teams.

That said, there are some simple ways to get the business to check in and truly get passionately involved. Here are some quick ideas to point us in the right direction:

First and foremost, Listen.

The joke I share with my technical leads is that “Before we might say ‘no’ to a particular feature, at least listen to their entire request. Then you can say ‘no’”.

And yes – this is intended to point out that all too often, we start compromising a requirement because we know the business better, or their way takes four weeks to do and tweaking the requirement can get it done in one week with an off-the-shelf product. We need to listen to their full need and the “why”. Then you can be a partner and offer them options.

This brings me to the second suggestion.

Give them Options.

Don’t simply tell them the system can’t send the data to all 123 data centers and get responses in under 30 seconds, assimilated in 14 languages and then graphed real time.

Explain to them this one requirement may take two years and 24 people to pull off and that if they would be willing, here are two or three alternatives that may work and would take two months to get completed. Ultimately it’s their budget and their choice on schedule.

They will feel less like something is being “done” to them and more like you are truly trying to help them through this process.

Finally, Give them what they asked for and Quickly.

What I mean by this: If they asked for a special screen to do a quick side calculation, and you see they have energy, create a quick mock-up or even a prototype and ask if this is what they had in mind. Make sure you don’t embellish. Give them exactly what they asked for.

If you have a great idea, then show them a second version of the mock-up after you showed them theirs. Let them buy into it.

In an iterative world such as Agile, it is part Agile to quickly turn around a requirement for user feedback. Even in Waterfall, you can create anything from paper prototypes (see my previous Lo-Fi post) to a wireframe or real code for those scenarios that the user was really passionate about.

Before you know it, you’ll need a bigger conference room for your requirements meetings because all the different business stakeholders will want to come and give you “their” requirements. They won’t trust their colleagues to represent their opinion.

Do you have issues getting the business to come to your requirements sessions? How do you deal with it?

June 21, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Prototype Technologies are Ruining Your Prototypes

I want to challenge our thinking on how we use prototype technology in our world of software development. Are we using prototypes to help our business users all get on the same page and visualize a solution? Or are prototypes targeted at our internal team, so they can understand what the resulting system “should look and behave like”?

Prototyping can mean different things to different groups. For purposes of this post, let’s use this definition:

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.

When I researched this definition, there were some key points that consistently turned up. They include:

A Prototype isn’t the final product.It is designed to test a vision and illustrate a requirement for a final product. For example, if you want to design a car with the gear shift on the left side of the driving wheel, you could create a prototype with only that level of detail. It may not have a horn etc… Just enough to ‘prototype’ the proposed change.

A Prototype is used to eliminate ambiguity. In other words, it helps drive a common vision across project participants. For example: “Oh… so when you said make it smaller, you really meant tiny or minuscule. I see now”.

A Prototype is used to drive feedback. This helps an idea grow before making huge resource or financial commitments. We might build a working prototype of an Internet Alarm Clock that plays your music stored in the Cloud on the Internet. It may be fully functioning, but it is a one-off. Its purpose is to gather our initial reactions and generate additional ideas based on the working prototype.

Finally, a Prototype might be a Proof-of-Concept. This is used to test the feasibility of an idea and whether the initial vision can actually be delivered with the desired results. This is more of a design based prototype.

Why We Prototype

To summarize, prototypes can be used to:

Drive a common vision across stakeholders
Confirm our understanding of a desired end-state
Provide a forum for feedback among internal stakeholders and external customers.
Act as a proof of concept, flushing out the feasibility of an idea

Most prototypes serve one or more of the above the purposes.

These days, there are many tools for prototyping. Everything from HTML for creating working-light-weight prototypes for review to wireframe tools such as iRise or Balsamiq. There are even PowerPoint files with “wireframe templates” in them to build wireframes and mockups using PowerPoint and it’s native tools.

So What’s the Problem?

In spite of the great tools out there, I’ve been in situations where these tools actually get in the way of our goals. They don’t help the business users get to alignment. In fact, prototypes created with these tools can actually drive a “compromise” in their design. Let me explain using an example:

I have three business users working to define a new “quick order” system for their web site. The Business Analysts spend a couple of hours working with them to collect their vision for the new shopping experience and all the tweaks necessary to take their website to the next level.

We take these requirements and have a designer build a quick prototype so we can make sure this is what they wanted. The final wireframes (built in HTML or another technology) are then emailed around to the business folks for feedback.

Now Volleyball Sets In!

Volleyball starts when one group, in this case the designers, emails information to the users and then the users email back their clarification or changes and the cycle continues.

It’s like each side is sending something over the wall or volleyball net. And, just like in volleyball, if one side drops the ball (or gives up) the other side scores a point.

At this point, the challenge is to effectively create a common vision across multiple stakeholders using email! (Hmmm, I wonder if this is how congress works.)

More often than not, the business gets the prototype to where it’s “Good Enough” and then approves it. They want to get going and hope they can tweak it as it is being developed.

Let’s see how effective this is at achieving our goals for prototyping:

Drive a common vision
Confirm understanding of a need
Provide a forum for feedback
Checking feasibility

I would argue that this process is extremely ineffective and delivers inconsistent results. When someone says this is close enough, are they really saying they feel like we are all on the same page?

If it DID accomplish these goals, then any system that used this approach would have less change requests, less defects and lower overall development cost.

But there is a better way. The Lo-Fi way.

Enter Lo-Fi Prototypes

Here is another way to create and finalize prototypes. Let’s go back to the meeting where the Business Analysts were collecting requirements. After they collected the high-level requirements, they use actual post-its that are cut into screen widgets. For example, there are post-its in the shape of data entry fields, list boxes etc. You can even use fan-folded post-its looking like a drop down box.

Now we ask the business users to actually build their screens. Using the post-its, scissors and markers, they create a lo-fidelity prototype. Whenever possible, we print out existing screens, even screens of a competitor, and mark these up with post-its and markers.

The prototype is NOT designed to flush out usability or the end look and feel. It is used only to enable the business users, as a group, to quickly build their lo-fidelity prototypes and share their vision and intent for the system.

I’ll emphasize that it is CRITICAL they understand that the final system will be a bit different due to design requirements, usability, branding, etc…

This approach is extremely effective and scalable. In fact, I have facilitated a small group of business users using this method to create more than 50 screens and report prototypes in a session.

There are a couple of great benefits using this approach:

The stakeholders feel ownership for the prototypes
It eliminates ambiguity, frustration and misunderstandings due to volleyball
Stakeholders can iterate immediately
They work as a group, helping drive alignment which results in less rework
Prototypes can be scanned into the requirement documents

At times, we give a few of the more critical lo-fi prototypes to a developer to create a hi-fi prototype (an HTML based prototype that can be interactive) over lunch. And yes – I said over lunch! The users can then get a real understanding (feedback) on their vision.

So if you really want to use prototypes effectively, forget about all those fancy tools. This down-to-earth, friendly approach will help you fast path collecting clear requirements and reduce confusion around the real needs and intent of a system, eliminating the pain of volleyball.

As a final note, I believe there is a place for using technology in prototyping. I am a fan of those tools. But I think we have gotten so technology focused, we tend to forget the real goal and use the technology appropriately.

What kind of prototyping tools does your team use? How do you think the post-it approach would go over in your environment?

June 7, 2011 | 2 comments | View Post

You Guys Start, We’ll Figure This Out Later

We’ve all experienced a project that is kicked off just a bit sooner than maybe it should. You know this because you hear those infamous words:

“You Guys Start,
We’ll Figure This Out Later.”

Consider this simple phrase a warning sign that your project is in danger before you even start. The business team is still trying to figure out what they need. Yeah, they know their problem is clear but the solution is anything but.

So what’s behind this all too familiar call for help?
Lack of Alignment.

What the business is really saying:

“You Guys Start and We’ll Get Aligned. Right Now We Can’t Agree.”

This lack of alignment is almost always due to the business stakeholders’ struggling to determine and agree on what “success” is. This can apply to a product implementation, customer software development or even a change in business processes.

Some disagreements can be on the large scale:

Should our first release of tax planning software only focus on Federal tax strategies or must it support State tax planning too? If it should, which State? All 50? Isn’t that going to take forever?

Should we develop a full suite of open source Office type products including a word processor, spreadsheet, Powerpoint like tool? Or should we simply focus on our core offering, the presentation tools?

Some disagreements appear less strategic:

Does the solution have to support our customers in four countries and be localized in six languages? Or can the first release simply support our current client base?

Should our solution include a Spellchecker for the medical terms that we will collect in our survey tool?

“You Guys Start, We’ll Figure This Out Later” = Less Than Successful Project

In spite of this warning, the project needs to start. So we begin our planning and whenever possible, hedge our design to accommodate change. But, in the end, how likely is it that we deliver what they, the un-aligned business stakeholders, fuzzily define as success?

More often than not, they never get aligned. And if a new business person gets involved, who knows what their view of success is. At the end of the day, we are responsible for a potential “less than successful project”. Hmmm – they may even call it a failure!

And this shouldn’t surprise us! In fact, if you hear the words “You guys start…”, that should be a predictive flag that you may be setup for failure.

The message is clear: The Business needs to own the risk of having an I.T. team start without alignment among the Business. And the Business along with I.T., needs to jointly own and collaborate on how I.T. will re-plan once the business has completed their work by finally agreeing on what is project “success”.

What About Agile?

When I share these ideas with colleagues, I typically get two reactions. The first includes smirks and smiles saying: “Yep – we’ve heard that and you are right, it is painful.”

The second reaction comes as a challenge: “Wait – isn’t that what Iterative development is all about? The business can plan and change direction with every iteration?”

The assumption is that Iterative methodologies such as Scrum or Agile, can be an effective way to solve nonalignment situations. They break up a project into small durations (iterations) that focus on specific feature sets. An iteration may be as small as a week, but may be defined as large as four weeks. (You’d be surprised at how much energy this last point generates.)

This is often considered a safe/natural solution because at the beginning of each iteration, the business will look at the list of everything they want and define the target features they would like the team to work on for the next iteration(s). This re-planning allows the business to change its mind and adapt based on feedback and potentially changing business conditions.

An Iterative process doesn’t resolve alignment issues!

But we still have a problem here: The Business Stakeholder who kicks off each iteration is now accountable to determine what “success” is for that iteration. If they aren’t aligned with the original/other stakeholders, then they are actually steering the ship off-course. And there is NO visibility. The rest of the stakeholders may not even know what decisions and tradeoffs have been made within an iteration planning meeting.

But wait Bob! When we do an Agile project, we always have all stakeholders in the loop about which features were completed and what will be planned for the next iteration!

And to that I say: You are not the norm! So congrats!

When most organizations embrace Agile, they are focused on the core I.T. team, planning and execution. They don’t have a model for how this changes the behavior of the business stakeholders in their planning and management of initiatives.

True, we tell the business folks we want them in the room with us, giving us quick feedback, etc. But what we often don’t do is explain to them that this level of feedback requires them to constantly re-baseline what features are “in and out” based on their goals and budgets. There is no formal process for shifting this ownership over to the business.

So what’s the point?
ITERATIVE ALIGNMENT

The fact is that more often than not, a project will be started after hearing: “You Guys Start, We’ll Figure This Out Later”. It is the nature of business and politics. In fact, as I illustrated above, our iterative processes can almost “enable” a lack of alignment.

It’s important for us to set goals for the business to do regular “alignment-check-in”. We need to make sure the business owns and is accountable for understanding what they are asking for, and what changes have been made.

We should strive to eliminate the surprises at the end of a project where a business stakeholder asks:

Where did this feature come from? or
Why is this functionality missing?

Even if we followed the requirements to the letter.

So what do you think? Do you disagree? If you agree, who do you think should be accountable for managing this within your team? Within the business?

May 24, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

The Attitude of Estimation

Over the past three or four blog posts, I tried to challenge our thinking on estimation by sharing some specific ideas on why padding an estimate is evil or how a SWAG can actually be fairly accurate.

Now I want to take a step back and share the biggest obstacle any organization has to getting consistent estimates. By that I mean estimates that drive confidence for the team and it’s stakeholders. That obstacle is our attitude towards estimates.

To clearly share what I mean by our attitude, let me share a typical estimation experience:

Experiencing the Attitudes of Estimation…

I am working with a new team and walking them through some standard use cases or agile stories. I present the first feature, the team evaluates it, and give me their initial estimates.

One person on our team, let’s call her Ann, quickly throws out “This should be about two days”. Another senior member of the team, let’s call him Jerry, says: “I can’t imagine that taking more than a couple of hours”.

I ask Ann, “Why do you think this is two days”? She responds: “Well if I say a day and there are defects etc, it’s going to take longer. The truth is I don’t know whether this is one day or three days – but this is only an estimate. No matter what I say it’s going to be off, and you’ll be unhappy”.

After defending myself and saying “That’s not true, yada yada yada”, I then turn to Jerry asking why he thinks this is only a couple of hours. He responds, “How hard can this one be? It’s a straight forward screen. I just have to get a new table built with the reference codes and we are good to go. I don’t see any challenges”.

One of Jerry’s teammates asks: “Isn’t it going to take some time to download the reference codes, clean them up and get them in the table? And shouldn’t we create some quick automated tests to make sure this works?” Jerry pauses and says: “Well I guess. If you want to include all that then I need a full half day”.

Finally Ann jumps in and shares: “If you ask me, I think you should estimate a full day. We’re going to need the QA team to sign off and by the time you do any adjustments, it might take you all day”.

Jerry doesn’t necessarily agree, but the team agrees it’s better to be safe then be sorry.

Why These Attitudes Make Sense…

I regularly find both attitudes on the same team across companies, sectors and experience levels. I understand both approaches. I can defend them!

Ann is right. No matter what we estimate, it’s going to be wrong. That is why we are estimating and not “predicting”. In fact, I’d even argue “weather forecasting” should be called “weather estimating”. Forecasting suggests we are truly predicting. Estimation suggests based on what we know and the models we are using, here is our best guess.

And Jerry also isn’t wrong in saying he knows that it will take two hours. He genuinely believes for the feature at hand, he can get this out quickly. However, the team quickly reminds him that there are other “tasks” and “team members” that need to be included in his estimate.

Commitment Based Estimates

Having different attitudes and approaches to estimation is a clear obstacle to getting consistent estimates that can be managed and adjusted. To remove this obstacle, I suggest having a standard approach or attitude to estimation. I call this approach: Commitment Based Estimates.

When asking for estimates, I want the team to understand, I am not asking for the smallest, leanest, quickest estimate for each task. If I did, this optimistic plan would simply be impossible to deliver on. It won’t take one small thing into account: LIFE.

I also don’t want them to pad estimates and not be realistic.

So I ask them to think about it from the point of view of “commitments”. When can you commit that this feature will be “done/done/done”? When do you believe it will be ready for deployment to our integration test environment?

I then clarify: That means you have to take into consideration any “clarification” of requirements, obtaining resources such as a tables, test data, web services, tools, conversion scripts, documentation and so forth. It also means you have done your testing and are comfortable that this actually works. You are proud of the result.

In our previous example, the team compromised and said this would take a full day to finish our feature. I might test this by asking the team: “Would you bet your paycheck on this? In other words, are you truly committing to that one day estimate”?

In the real word, if we are working on something that we said takes a day, and it ends up taking an extra 45 minutes, we would typically do what it takes to get it done on schedule. That is the nature of development teams. We truly want to deliver on expectations if “we own them”.

I could write another page or two on Commitment Based Estimation, but I won’t (yay)! I will leave you with these other thoughts:

Never force an estimate on the team. If you are doing Commitment Based Estimation, the team needs to feel full ownership for the creation and development of their commitment.
I highly recommend all estimates be in ½ day increments. More specifically, NOT in hours. If I say I am going to be done in 6.5 hours, am I actually going to get another .5 or 1.5 hours worth of work on my next task done? Stick with ½ day, full day, three days or five days etc…
If your estimate is longer than a week or so, I’d challenge the team to split the work into two tasks and estimate them separately. (There may be some exceptions to this one.)

The Goal: Consistency

Regardless of whether you agree with Commitment Based Estimates, it’s important to get the team to have a common attitude to estimating as much as a common approach. I hope you give Commitment Based Estimating a try. I have found a great deal of success with it.

I’d be very interested in hearing your experiences with “attitudes” towards estimation and why you believe this approach will or will not work with your team. Please leave your comments below!

As always, please feel free to share this post with anyone you think might benefit.

May 10, 2011 | 3 comments | View Post

What Abbott & Costello Can Teach Us About Software Requirements

Growing up, I used to love watching old black and white comedies, particularly Abbott & Costello. If you’ve never seen their classic “Who’s on First”, you can find it right here on YouTube. Feel free to watch it now (but be sure to come back)!

Briefly, this comedy skit is about Abbott explaining to Costello the names of the players on their baseball team. The names of the players include “Who” playing 1st base, “What” playing 2nd base and “I Don’t Know” playing 3rd base. Costello wants to know what the players’ names are, so he would ask “Who’s playing first base?” and Abbott would proudly respond “Exactly”. A frustrated Costello asks “What is the name of the person on first base” and now Costello would reply “No, he plays second”.

If you have never heard the routine, you must listen to it to appreciate it. The link above should help. But I digress.

“Who’s on First” can teach us a great deal about the pitfalls of collecting requirements:

We can have two business users reviewing the same requirements document, each thinking it says something very different. It gets worse. In the real world of requirements, this confusion isn’t limited to two individuals. It spans the entire team, including the business analysts, testing team and developers.

The obvious difference between the “Who’s on First” routine and real life requirements, is that Abbott & Costello know they are having a communication problem.

In the real world, the situation is actually much more challenging.

The “Spellchecker”

Let me share with you an actual “Who’s on First” example that happens almost every time we collect requirements. I call this the “Spellchecker” (and this is totally fiction, made up for illustrating my point).

Let’s pretend we need to add Spellchecker capability to our mobile application. We send out an RFP to various firms. In this example let’s say we send it out to Apple and Microsoft.

Apple responds and says they need two people working for two weeks.
Microsoft responds that they need four people working for six weeks.

We wonder: how does one company’s estimate result in four person-weeks while another is twenty-four person-weeks? Did Microsoft pad their estimate? Or did Apple simply not spend the right energy on estimating and they pulled a number out of the air?

So we ask Apple: “What are the two people going to do for two weeks”? They respond that they will build two screens and one engine. The two screens will include the screen that shows you replacement words and a confirmation screen. The engine is the actual “Spellchecker”.

Seems reasonable.

Then, we ask Microsoft: “What are four people going to do for six weeks”? They respond that they will be working on eleven screens and three engines and possibly some APIs.

Hmmm. We pause and ask: What are these eleven screens going to be used for? They explain the same two screens and engine that Apple discussed.

But they also have screens that allow you to add and maintain a list of “custom words” for your personal dictionary. Further, they have screens that allow you to plug in a proprietary dictionary such as a medical dictionary or a special language. That is how they got to eleven screens.

WOW! I never thought of that detail. Now I have to think of which version of the “Spellchecker” I really want.

If I want the two-screen version, I have to ask Microsoft to change their assumptions and re-estimate. If I want the eleven-screen version, I have to provide the clarity to Apple and ask for their re-estimate. Most likely, I may want something in between. Maybe a seven screen version. I want the “custom dictionary of personal words, but NOT the proprietary dictionaries”. So I clarify and ask them both to submit a re-estimate.

Unlike Abbott & Costello who knew they weren’t communicating, in the real world, we usually don’t catch our “Spellcheckers”. The BAs write up the requirements and the developers deliver the code. We all think: How difficult can it be to understand? After all, the business folks said they just want a Spellchecker! How much more straightforward can you get?

And later, when we deliver a solution that missed the point, the business will hold the BA and developer accountable! I mean it’s as simple as “Who’s on First”!

Taking the First Step

After sharing the “Spellchecker” story with the teams I work with, we actually use the word “Spellchecker” in our every day conversations to help uncover ambiguities and assumptions. It’s sort of a “keyword” around here.

Say we are discussing how we can’t put the next release of our software into production until we fix all of the defects that our top executive just finished screaming at us about. The developers estimate that this can take two to three months.

Our manager responds that we are estimating out of fear and these defects can be squashed in weeks. There is no way he is telling the executives that they have to wait another “three months”!

Then, someone pop-ups in the heat of this conversation and says:

Time-out. Do we have a “Spellchecker”? When you say fix “All the Defects”, we see there are over 50 defects in the system and we can’t imagine fixing all of those with four developers in a matter of two weeks.

Our manager responds:

50? No way! We only need the Severity 1 defects fixed. There are only four of those defects.

And the team responds:

That makes a big difference. Yes we should be able to get that done in a couple of weeks. But are you sure that the Executives agree to only work on the Severity 1 defects? It’s a Spellchecker to them too!

The Benefit of Acknowledging Spellcheckers

Not only do the teams I work with use the word Spellchecker to call out ambiguities, I have clients that have adopted this practice, calling out situations where they question whether “are we really talking about the same thing”. (In fact, the spellchecker concept is so useful, even my family has adopted using it).

There will always be areas that slip in between the cracks. You can’t catch every Spellchecker. However, the real benefit of acknowledging Spellcheckers is the fact that everyone acknowledges that unintentional Spellcheckers, not individuals, can be obstacles to a team’s effectiveness.

More important, Spellcheckers often point to a two-sided misunderstanding. Many times, when you uncover a spellchecker in requirements, the business person will say: I didn’t even think about that. I am not sure what I meant.

I’ll add one more example: When a business user identifies a defect in the software we delivered, we argue that this is an enhancement and not a defect. This is usually a Spellchecker in action and we are both right (or wrong)!

Now, Who Did You Say Is On First?

My suggestion is to introduce the concept of Spellcheckers to your team and ask everyone to speak up when they see Spellcheckers. Share this with your business folks, management, and everyone else involved on the project. When you identify a Spellchecker, everyone can agree that no individual is at fault. It is simply a challenge in every day communication.

I’ll leave you with a final link. I recently came across another short video that is a modern day technical version of “Who’s on First”. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I especially like the punch line at the end.

Please comment and let me know about how Spellcheckers create confusion in your world and any other insights on the topic.

If you think others in your network or organization would benefit from learning about Spellcheckers, feel free to share this post using the tools below.

Photo Credit: Purple Slog

April 26, 2011 | 2 comments | View Post

How to Turn a WAG (Wild-Ass-Guess) Into a SWAG (Scientific-Wild-Ass-Guess)

Next in our Providing Meaningful Estimates series we talk about turning WAGs into SWAGs.

S-W-A-G stands for a Scientific Wild Ass Guess. It’s sometimes used more as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying: “This estimate isn’t really reliable. I pulled it out of the air.”

I’m going to show you how to put the S — the science — back in a WAG so even an off-the-cuff estimate can be meaningful and useful to your audience. The easiest way for me to demonstrate how to improve your SWAGs is to use a simple example.

Consider providing a SWAG, an order of magnitude estimate, on how long it would take you to read to The Fountainhead (752 pages) by Ann Rynd. In fact, stop reading this article right now and come up with your estimate. Please don’t do any research. Just take a moment and give me your “best” wild-ass-guess (WAG) right now. I’ll pause for a sec.

No seriously, take a moment, and come up with how many days it would take you? 1, 7, 14,…… 365? Just take a moment.

Now, I’m going to l give you a technique that to add some S to your WAG and make it a more a scientific answer.

Actually, It’s All In the “Words” We Use When We Present to Provide Our Estimates.

Whenever someone asks you for high-level-estimate and you can’t really do proper research, you will need to make assumptions. The key is to expose these assumptions with your estimate and to demonstrate how changes in assumptions might impact your estimate.

Here’s a framework that demonstrates how this works:

When providing an estimate, always provide a range. And for each number in the range, provide assumptions. It sounds simple, but the difference is pretty significant.Always start out by thinking: What is the lowest reasonable number your estimate might be. More importantly, explain provide why do you think it is unreasonable to assume that the estimate might be lower.So for The Fountainhead, you might start the estimate with:“I can’t imagine it taking me less than 7 or 8 days. Assuming I find the book interesting, I can probably read 100 pages a day and a little more on the weekend. But with my workload at work, and errands in the evening, it’s not realistic to expect me to read more than 100 pages or so each day during the week.”
Next, think about what is realistically the longest this task should take you. When you give this estimate, you also share what assumptions need to be true for you stay within this estimate (not exceed your high number).Returning to our example with The Fountainhead, you might continue your estimate with:“I can’t imagine it taking me more than 40 days. If it does take longer, then the book must have been written in a 3-point font or in French (I don’t speak French) or a crisis at work came up. I have to believe that I could force myself to read 20 pages a day, and even if I find it boring, I’ll get through the book in 35 to 40 days.”

Wild Ass Guess Vs. Scientific Wild Ass Guess

Now, let’s contrast these approaches in terms of reading The Fountainhead- a. All 752 pages.

WAG: It might take me anywhere from 7 days (a week) to 30 days (a month).

Using our new framework, you would answer:

SWAG: “I can’t imagine it will take me less than 7 days, assuming life doesn’t throw me any unexpected curveballs and I can read 100 pages a day. I can see it taking me as long as 38 or 40 days if I can only get through 20 pages a day due to boring content or unexpected crises at work. If it takes me longer than 40 days, then it not only was painfully boring, it probably is written in some ridiculous font or written in French (I don’t know French).”

I hope you agree, that the second example provides a level of confidence that we thought through our WAG and have some reasoning behind our estimate.

Check Assumptions. Manage Expectations.

The correct wrap up for a SWAG is an opportunity to further manage expectations by saying:

“If The Fountainhead is as good a book as you say it is, , then let’s assume I’ll get it done in about 14 days. Within the first 2 or 3 days, I can update you on whether this was a reasonable swag or not.”

This means within the first 2 or 3 days, you determine if the SWAG assumptions are correct. You can even restate your SWAG now that you have started reading it and verified your assumptions (one way or another).

If you still aren’t convinced, let me show you how effective this approach can be might be by by using a one more example real life example.

A Real SWAG in Every Day Life.

You own a home and want to build a deck on the back of your house. You ask two contractors to come out to your house and give you bids on the work. With each of the contractors, you walk through the backyard and show them where you want the deck. They show you different styles of decks and after reviewing the pictures, you choose your preference.

Each contractor tells you they will give you an exact estimate for cost and a proposal by the end of the week. But you have a key question: Your son is graduating college in two weeks and you want to know if the deck will be completed in time for the graduation.

Contractor #1 answers:

WAG: “The deck could take anywhere from 2 to 5 days. So if we start Monday we should have it done by the weekend. Let’s just hope we don’t get any bad weather.”

Are you at all nervous that the deck will not be done in time?

Contractor #2 answers:

SWAG: “I can’t imagine it taking less than 2½ days. If we can get the deck primarily built the first day, we’ll need the 2nd day to stain, make final adjustments etc. So by the time it’s dry and tweaked we are at the 2 or 3 day mark. It’s important that we don’t get any rain on Tuesday when we stain the deck.

Sometimes when we put the “supports” in the ground, we find obstructions we need to move. That could make the job take up to 5 days. If it takes longer than 5 days, then you have a surprise waiting under the ground. I don’t think you do, but until we start the job, I can’t be 100% sure. Of course, this assumes the weather doesn’t blindside both of us.

So barring any golden surprises, we should be able to complete the job between 2 to 5 days. I would hope to have it wrapped up by day 3 but I’ll know more on Monday.”

Which contractor gives you more confidence in their ability to deliver on what they said?

More importantly, if the estimates are off, they can talk with meaning. They can discuss what assumptions were wrong, or what had they not considered. In other words, it doesn’t feel like they just pulled a number out of the air without any thought or real consideration.

In summary: The Framework

So, in order to turn your WAG into a SWAG, start your estimate with:

The shortest or lowest estimate that is reasonable
Why it isn’t reasonable to be shorter/lower
Explain how large it is possible to go
What are the assumptions that would make it go that large
What are your assumptions that could cause it to larger
Finish your estimate with a viable, in between reasonable “target” in between that you believe is reasonable to start with. Explain how and when you will be able to validate assumptions and firm up your estimate.

April 8, 2011 | 2 comments | View Post

Estimating Without Fear: How To Do Away With Padding and Still Come Out Looking Like a Hero

When your team puts together an estimate, does it command a sense of confidence, trust and respect from those reviewing the estimate? Or, is it assumed that your estimate typically is padded and may be off-by-an-order-of-magnitude?

Do people believe, that even though some changes will occur due to dependencies out of your control, your estimate is still reasonable and something the organization can manage to?

Or, do they say that it would be great to hit that date, but still challenge your assumptions and believe you’re really going to miss it?

I am sure that most of us will answer that “it depends”. It depends on the size of the project, the complexity, the individual asked (Harry never trusts our estimates), and so on.

So let me ask you to think of this from a different perspective.

Does your immediate management, your boss, typically have confidence in your team’s estimate?

Do your business sponsors and senior executives typically have confidence in your team’s estimates?

And for the most telling question of all: Do all of the members of your team who participated in creating the estimate, typically have confidence in the estimate and the ability to manage to it?

I am always surprised at how inconsistent these questions are answered, especially the last question.

In this post, I want to discuss the estimating activity that does the most damage in terms of building credibility and confidence, as well as our ability to predictably meet expectations.

Padding Your Estimate!

Padding an estimate is as common place as speeding over the posted speed limit. Sure, there are a few folks who typically follow the posted speed limit, but most of us realize that when they posted the 55 mph limit, that really is “highway speak” for 65 mph. We pad that speed limit too! But NOT for the same reason.

From my experience, padding an estimate is done out of fear.

We pad an estimate for fear of the unknown.

“I have worked with Jerry often enough to know that there is a chance he will want to tweak the report layout. Also, even though he says keep it simple, he’s going to change his mind and will want to add features like exporting to Excel and PDF. If I pad this estimate, I’ll have enough time to give him what he really wants and be a hero by coming in on schedule and on budget. Hmmmm should I pad it by 25%, 100% or more? Hmmm?”

We also pad an estimate for fear of the known.

“I am going to need some new tables from the DBA team. I’m also going to need the backend services team to add some features to two web services. This should only take a day or two, but I know that the process and wait time will take at least a week or two. I should pad my estimate to allow for that, so I am not blamed if they take longer to deliver their changes. I don’t want to be blamed. “

Remove the Fear Factor With Contingency Estimating

Your fear is real. In fact, the truth is that many times, the fears become reality and we need the extra time. This is where Contingency Estimating comes in.

The one consistent theme that padding an estimate has is a base and a pad. I think it will take two days (the base estimate), but because they always change their minds, this will take a full week to deliver (the pad).

With Contingency Estimating, you actually want to “advertise” and “magnify” your pad! This is counter-intuitive, but you want to describe your estimate in the following way:

We believe this will take two days. We also believe, from experience, that we will take time during the review and find changes and enhancements. This happens every time and since Joe will want these changes, we believe we should plan on additional three days of contingency time to let Joe volleyball back and forth so we can deliver this. So my estimate is two days to get it initially done, and three days to let Joe modify, enhance and get this done/done/done.

Now management can understand that if they want to reduce your five day estimate, they need to work with Joe – not you – on how to eliminate the rework or agree that the extra three days is needed estimate to “get this right”. The key is Joe owns the contingency time! And you have been transparent about what is driving your estimate.

Just as important, Joe knows that we have planned to allow for three days of review and enhancements and that he needs to have some ownership in time-boxing his review in that time-frame and schedule.

Here is another example:

We believe building this functionality will take about one week. We can manage our part to the one week. However, we have to wait on the ERP team to modify their web services to handle the changes. This typically should take three days, however, they are so backed up, they typically take up to two weeks to complete the work and remove any defects. So my estimate is one week and three days to do the core work. However, I am adding seven business days as contingency time for integration, testing and making sure the ERP team and us are talking the same language.

Again, management can now understand the cost of the team-to-team communication and integration. It doesn’t necessarily mean there is an ERP team problem! In fact, the challenge may be with your team and their ability to pro-actively manage in an integrated and distributed environment.

The truth is, it’s irrelevant “why” this happens when you build the estimate. It’s important to share the contingency time and then to tackle how to optimize later. This will build more confidence than “Padding” your estimate.

In Summary…

I hope you find this a reasonable approach to clarifying for your management and team members what drives your estimates and what part of your estimate is contingency planning for the “real world” challenges you deal with day to day.

Taking it a step further, I also hope this approach allows everyone to come to the table and begin the process of identifying areas that the teams can start managing better and improve the actual time it takes to complete work. This would be done by first identifying contingency estimates and then addressing potential waste in the organization.

If you have a different opinion, I’d love to hear it. Please leave a comment and let us know!

March 18, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post