Susan, a senior leader, wants faster throughput. She can see people working hard. Yet, all the projects seem to take much longer than anyone expects.
They're doing a lot of the right things. No team is multitasking—the teams work on one project at a time. And the teams manage their inside-the-team WIP (Work in Progress).
But everyone's throughput is low. Worse, Susan has heard people say things like, “It's just not fun around here anymore. It doesn't matter what I do, I can never get ahead of the work.”
After some investigation, Susan realizes the teams have all kinds of problems managing unanticipated risks. They have late—and unplanned—feedback loops. Those late feedback loops don't help the teams manage their risks.
That's when she learned that the teams experienced different project and product risks. While they have a “standard” agile approach, that approach plans too much and too infrequently. That overemphasis on planning instead of learning created their unplanned and late feedback loops. That's when Susan decided to investigate further.
Project Risks Differ From Product Risks
In project management, we're accustomed to thinking about the typical project risks:
- Team-based risks for the features, date, and defects
- Manager-based constraints for the costs, the people, and the culture.
While managers might want to define all those risks and constraints, only one of these aspects can drive the project. Another one or two might constrain the project. And the team will make tradeoffs among the other aspects as they proceed.
But while we might acknowledge technical risks in terms of features, product risks also include the relative need for innovation.
Most projects require some innovation, which means they need to iterate on the backlog and the deliverables. What drives that iteration? Internal and customer feedback.
And the longer the team's feedback loops, the less the team expects or can manage that feedback. That creates more product and project risks. Those risks were the source of Susan's teams' low throughput.
Susan discovered their organization's “standard” agile approach created long feedback loops.
Reduce the Duration of the Feedback Loops
For years, Susan reminded the teams of her feelings about delays and problems:
As soon as you think you'll encounter a delay or a problem you can't fix, I want to know. That's because I want to know when the delays or problems are small, so we all have the most options available to manage the delay or fix the problem. Then I can socialize the issues around the organization and to our customers.
However, the organization had settled on a “standard” agile approach that required three months of plans. (Susan had lost that particular political fight. Even when she said that agility was something they should expect to evolve through continuous improvement.) Worse, those long plans created a ton of pressure on the teams who did not recognize their true progress.
Susan decided it was time to add more agility, so she led a town hall meeting. She said, “We're learning late, not learning early. That means our feedback loops are too long. I don't want to pressure you for more work—I want you to finish less and release more, so we know we're meeting the customers' needs. I expect more demos, more releases, and, earlier feedback which might include ‘failures.' But we'll learn early, and that's what counts. I'll give you political cover to choose how you do this. Use any approach you need to learn what the customers want.”
After several “Oohs,” and more questions, the teams proceeded to change their approaches to manage their specific risks.
Each Team Managed Risks Differently
Some teams used Scrum, while others used a Kanban system. However, several teams spent up to a month developing prototypes. With first internal, and then trusted customer feedback, those teams then delivered the features they chose to release. Each team managed its product innovation risks using different cycles of iterating over features and delivering.
They had several outcomes:
- As the teams collaborated, they learned faster.
- Each team needed much less overall planning and much more experimentation and delivery, with small, more frequent replanning.
It's now been three months since that meeting. Even with the shorter feedback loops and positive feedback from the customers, Susan still has to defend each team's ability to choose their own approach. Some of the other senior managers enjoyed the micromanagement that the “standard” agile approach offered.
With these changes, sales and support revenue have increased—all because the teams are releasing more finished work faster.
Most teams I work with have unplanned and late feedback loops. Instead of trying to plan your way out of risks, consider how you can get internal and customer feedback more often, so you see your progress. The customers will be happier, and the teams will be more satisfied.
That's the point of designing your project lifecycle. You can reduce your risks and increase agility—even if that agility does not look like a “standard” agile approach.
Learn with Johanna
The Project Lifecycles book is done! The book is wending its way through the publishing ecosystem as you read. It will probably be up everywhere by the end of the week. The nice folks at Planisware are sponsoring a workshop where I will review these risks and culture issues for agility in much more detail. Please register for Project Lifecycle Workshop: How to Manage Project Risks to Release Successful Products.
I opened registration for the Q1 2024 writing workshop.
If you are considering public speaking, please see the self-study workshop for Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts. Enroll and take it any time you want. If you want my feedback, you can add that at the end of the workshop.
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© 2023 Johanna Rothman
Pragmatic Manager: Vol 20, #11, ISSN: 2164-1196