Plz don’t do this. 

Agile postulates that large scale planning is impossible due to complexity and uncertainty and instead proposes iterative fast to market development of product, service and process.

Just enough planning for continued execution is instituted.  Story mapping and kanban for tiered management of teams are covered. Good cover of basics, could use some experimental and comparative data.

Cottmeyer, M. E. (2011). Large scale program and portfolio management with Scrum and Kanban. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2011—North America, Dallas, TX. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/agile-scrum-kaban-business-management-6164

I always make sure HR does not include “multitasking” in the job description.

That is bad. All-around. Bad management, bad budgeting, bad strategy.

Multitasking is wasted motion.

Harold Pashler has shown that people can only think about one thing at a time, and switching between tasks creates delay and interference. Gerald Weinberg  postulates that Adding a single project to your workload will drop productivity by 20%

Why do we do it? The human brain seems to enjoy it. After all, it did not evolve for project management, but rather hunter-gathering. Interest in new stimuli insures You don’t miss that delicious snack or deadly predator.

Don’t multitask. Even if it feels good.

Further reading:

https://www.solutionsiq.com/learning/blog-post/agile-resolution-1-destroy-multi-tasking-the-productivity-killer/

https://turboscrum.com/context-switching/

Ah, the ghosts of yesteryear. I remember reading Yahoo’s glowing testimonies of implementing agile in their development process. So much time saved! Such productivity! Very happy developers. Much scrum.

Then of course, Yahoo got hacked. Multiple times. What happened? Who’s to blame? Corporate culture and strategy, of course.

Yahoo did not prioritize engineering – google and now amazon are notorious for investing in infrastructure done right. Scalable. Automated. Very attractive to good engineers.

Yahoo did not prioritize engineers – did not hire the best, did not pay to get the best, did not promote the best. Yahoo though it was a media company.  They though search was unimportant. Even when Yahoo engineers were pointing out that they were using google instead of yahoo for their searches.

Paul Graham thinks yahoo failed because they let the suits “adult supervise” the developers, and the hacker culture central to a tech company left. I agree.

And the death-throes under Mayer? Bad acquisitions, failing revenue, scattered strategy, and widely criticized leadership.

Why do I bring this up now? Because process frameworks can’t fix lack of strategy. It’s a timeless lesson. I’ve been doing process this week. And if you are not brought in to do strategy and there is no strategy, your only option is to run.

Further reading:

http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

https://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/careers/what-went-wrong-for-marissa-mayer-at-yahoo-5-reasons-ceo-failed-perform-turnaround-3655968/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/11/20/marissa-mayer-case-study-in-poor-leadership/#414a313e3b46

https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/11/19/the-last-days-of-marissa-mayer/#57b16636141f

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzfjPoMaaRA

As I recently retook my Scrum certification, I went over some key differences between PMI and Scrum project management.

Completeness vs complexity

From a mid-level managers perspective, PMI certifications cost more, which does affect the bottom line once You get to scale. This may however be the least concern, as any successful business orients at net profits and not costs.

PMI-ACP offers a broader outlook onto agile methodologies. Which is not necessary per se,  as the Scrum guide alone, when implemented holistically, has certainly been more than enough for many successful projects.

Experience vs franchise licensing

The people behind Scrum.org wrote the book on the subject, and the manifesto. And participated in multiple successful large-scale projects. the PMI-ACP certification was introduced in 2011, ten years after the agile manifesto was published. Some say that happened due to PMI loss income as industry shifted away from traditional project management frameworks.

I personally have had success with both having teams get certified in-house, without the need for an external authority, and having people take the Scrum.org online-only certification. At the end, it was strategically enabling developers to own the project that made the real business impact.

Further reading:

PMBOK® guide versus SCRUM mastery points of convergence and divergence

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/pmbok-guide-scrum-convergence-divergence-8089

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO_QbPfFREA

Again, multitasking named as a major cause of pan and quality loss.

An article in CIO Making the shift to product-based IT

https://www.cio.com/article/3332030/making-the-shift-to-product-based-it.html

Interesting that this is another way of doing agile without calling it agile and without it being agile, i.e. without reaping the totality benefits of Scrum. Some points:

Finding highly skilled product managers is another sticking point. “Product managers have to understand the tech side and the market they’re in,” Rowsell-Jones says. Because of this, product managers typically come from the business side.

A person from the business side does not understand the tech side. In Scrum, this is dealt with the Product Owner being the market expert, prioritizing features developed, while the development team owns the technical aspects, estimation and implementation.

When the DevOps team needs to work at a frenzied pace week in, week out, it gets to become really demanding,” Rowsell-Jones says.“CIOs must keep them fresh, motivated, and take them in and out.”

Scrum postulates that You lose velocity every time You change team members. The goal is not to take people in and out. It’s to have sustainable development, indefinitely.

Interestingly enough, the necessity of mandate, i.e being empowered from the start to lead the project, own the project, and prioritize features, comes up late in the article.

A project sponsor, in PMI parlance, is vital. Someone in the org has to give You the power to make the decisions on two of the three – Time, Budget, Scope ( Features / Quality )

Overall, an incomplete implementation of Scrum presented as news.

Getting certified as product owner or scrum master with Scrum.org on your first attempt.

I recently got re-certified. For work purposes. The required  Scrum documents are not wordy, but content rich. You need to know them well. Scrum Master 1 and Product Owner 1 overlap, so studying material is about 75% similar.

Review the learning paths at scrum.org

https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-master-i-certification

and https://www.scrum.org/professional-scrum-product-owner-i-certification

1)Read and learn

• the manifesto.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

• Scrum Guide, 18 pages https://www.scrumguides.org/index.html
• EBM Evidence Based Management Guide  11 pages https://www.scrum.org/index.php/resources/evidence-based-management
• Optional – videos and recommended books https://www.scrum.org/index.php/resources/webcasts

2)Write out flash-cards based on the material. I prefer by hand, uses muscle memory. Glossary, manifesto, etc. Plan to make hundreds of cards.

3)Take practice tests at scrum.org till You score 100%

Review other reports on passing the exam.

Last, remember that only individuals and organizations that You do not want to work for care about your certifications and not what You can deliver. So in the worst case scenario, use that pretty piece of paper to get the first step to find a position where working software beats documentation, including certification.

Many accuse agile being a sect as the common heard excuse is ” if it’s not working, it’s not agile”.

Since the framework aims to be empiric, it is a very valid excuse – you should use the framework in a way that works for You. Positive catch-22.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/09/22/how-fake-agile-at-dod-risks-national-security/

The US military appears to have a problem with fake agile, so much they have even made a guide on “detecting agile bullshit”.

Click to access DIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF

Beyond Agile – The Studio Model  Interesting Column by Scott Heffield at Forbes, commenting on The End of Agile by Kurt Cagle. Does Agile deliver? Is it about Agile or people being people, not knowing what they want delivered?