Weeknotes #40 - Product Management & 2019 Reflections

Product Management Training

This week we had a run through from Rachel of our new Product Management training course that she has put together for our budding Product Managers. I really enjoyed going through it as a team (especially using our co-working space in More London) and viewing the actual content itself.

Credits: Jon Greatbatch for photo “This can be for your weeknotes”

What I really liked about the course was the fact the attendees are going to be very ‘hands-on’ during the training, and will get to go apply various techniques that PdM’s use with a case study of Delete My Data (DMD) throughout. It’s something that I’ve struggled with when putting together material in the past of having an ‘incremental’ case study that builds through the day, so glad that Rachel has put something like this together. We’ve earmarked the 28th Jan to be the first session we run, with it being a combination of our own team and those moving into Product Management being the ‘guinea pigs’ for the first session.

2019 Reflections

This week has been a particularly challenging week, with lots of roadblocks in the way of moving forward. A lack of alignment in new teams with future direction, and lack of communication to the wider function around our move to new ways of working means that it feels like we aren’t seeing the progress we should be, or creating a sense of urgency. Whilst it’s certainly true around achieving big through small, it does feel that with change initiatives it can feel like you are moving too slow, which is the current lull we’re in. After a few days feeling quite down I took some time out to reflect on 2019, and what we have achieved, such as:

• Delivering a combined 49 training courses on Agile, Lean and Azure DevOps

• Trained a total of 789 PwC staff across three continents

• Becoming authorised trainers to offer an industry recognised course

• Actually building our first, proper CI/CD web apps as PoC’s

• Introducing automated security tools and (nearly) setting up ServiceNow change management integration to #TakeAwayTheExcuses for not adopting Agile

• Hiring our first ever Product Manager (Shout out Rachel)

• Getting our first ever Agile Delivery Manager seconded over from Consulting (Shout out Stefano)

• Our team winning a UK IT Award for Making A Difference

• Agreement from leadership on moving from Project to Product, as part of our adoption of new ways of working

All in all, it’s fair to say we’ve made big strides forward this year, I just hope the momentum continues into 2020. A big thank you from me goes to Jon, Marie, James, Dan, Andy, Rachel and Stefano for not just their hard work, but for being constant sources of inspiration throughout the year.

Xmas Break

Finally, I’ll be taking a break from writing these #Weeknotes till the new year. Even though I’ll be working over the Christmas period, I don’t think there’ll be too much activity to write about! For anyone still reading this far in(!), have a great Christmas and New Year.

Weeknotes #39 - Agile not WAgile

Agile not WAgile

This week we’ve been reviewing a number of our projects that are tagged as being delivered using Agile ways of working within our main delivery portfolio. Whilst we ultimately do want to shift from project to product, we recognise that right now we’re still doing a lot of ‘project-y’ style of delivery, and that this will never completely go away. So we’re trying to in parallel at least get people familiar with what Agile delivery is all about, even if delivering from a project perspective.

The catalyst really for this was one of our charts where we look at the work being started and the split between which of that is Agile (blue line) Vs. Waterfall (orange line).

The aspiration being of course that with a strategic goal to be ‘agile by default’ the chart should indeed look something like it does here, with the orange line only slightly creeping up when needed but generally people looking to adopt Agile as much as they can.

When I saw the chart looking like the above last week I must admit, I got suspicious! I felt that we definitely were not noticing the changes in behaviours, mindset and outcomes that the chart would suggest, which prompted a more thorough review.

The review was not intended to act as the Agile police(!), as we very much want to help people in moving to new ways of working, but to really make sure people had understood correctly around what Agile at its core really is about, and if they are indeed doing that as part of their projects.

The review is still ongoing, but currently it looks like so (changing the waterfall/agile field retrospectively updates the chart):

The main problems observed being things such as lack of frequent delivery, with project teams still doing one big deployment to production at the end before going ‘live’ (but lots of deployments to test environments). Projects are maybe using tools such as Azure DevOps and some form of Agile events (maybe daily scrums), but work is still being delivered in phases (Dev / Test / UAT / Live). As well as this, a common theme was not getting early feedback and changing direction/priorities based on that (hardly a surprise if you are infrequently getting stuff into production!).

Inspired by the Agile BS detector from the US Department of Defense, I prepared a one-pager to help people quickly understand if their application of Agile to their projects is right, or if they need to rethink their approach:

Here’s hoping the blue line goes up, but against some of that criteria above, or at least we get more people approaching us for help in how to get there.

Team Health Check

This week we had our sprint review for the project our grads are working on, helping develop a team health check web app for teams to conduct monthly self assessments as to different areas of team needs and ways of working.

Again, I was blown away by what the team had managed to achieve this sprint. Not only had they managed to go from a very basic, black and white version of the app to a fully PwC branded version.

They’ve also successfully worked with Dave (aka DevOps Dave) to configure a full CI/CD pipeline for any future changes made. As the PO for the project I’ll now be in control of any future releases via the release gate in Azure DevOps, very impressive stuff! Hopefully now we can share more widely and get teams using it.

Next Week

Next week will be the last weeknotes for a few weeks, whilst we all recharge and eat lots over Christmas. Looking at finalising training for the new year and getting a run through from Rachel in our team of our new Product Management course!

Weeknotes #38 - Authorized Instructors

Authorized Instructors

This week, we had our formal course accreditation session with ICAgile, where we were to review our 2-day ICAgile Fundamentals course, validating if it meets the desired learning objectives as well as the general course structure, with the aim being to sufficiently balance theory, practical application and attendee engagement. I was extremely pleased when we were given the rubber stamp of approval by ICAgile, as well as getting some really useful feedback to make the course even better, in particular to include more modules aligned to the training from the BACK of the room (TBR) technique.

It’s a bit of a major milestone for us as a team, when you consider this time last year most of the training we were doing was just starting, and most of the team running it for the first time. It’s testimony to the experience we’ve gained, and incremental improvements we’ve made based on the feedback we’ve received that four of us are now authorized to offer a certified course from a recognised body in the industry. A new challenge we face in the course delivery is now the organisational impediments faced around booking meeting rooms(!) — but with two sessions in the diary for January and February next year I’m looking forward to some more in depth learning and upskilling for our PwC staff.

Product Management

As I mentioned last week, Rach Fitton has recently joined us as a Product Manager, looking to build that capability across our teams. It’s amazing how quickly someone with the right experience and mindset can quickly make an impact, as I already feel like myself (and others) are learning a great deal from her. Despite some conversations with colleagues so far where I feel they haven’t given her much to work with, she’s always given them at least one thing that can inspire them or move them further along on the journey. 

A good example being the visual below as something she shared with myself and others around all the activities and considerations that a Product Manager typically would undertake:

Things like this are great sources of information for people, as it really emphasises for me just how key this role is going to be in our organisation. It’s great for me to have someone far more experienced in the product space than myself to not only validate my thoughts, but also critique any of the work we do, as Rachel gives great, actionable feedback. I’m hoping soon we can start to get “in the work” with more of the teams and start getting some of our people more comfortable with the areas above.

Next Week

Next week we plan to start looking at structuring one of our new services and the respective product teams within that, aiming for a launch in the new year. I’m also looking forward to connecting with those in the PwC Sweden team, who are starting their own journey towards new ways of working. Looking forward to collaborating together on another project to product journey.

Weeknotes #37 - Ways of Working & New Joiners

Ways of Working

This week we had our second sprint review as part of our Ways of Working (WoW) group. The review went well with lots of discussion and feedback which, given we aren’t producing any “working software” is for me a really good sign. We focused a lot on change engagement this sprint, working on the comms side as well (with producing ‘potentially releasable comms’) as well as identifying/analysing our pilot areas where we really want teams to start to move towards this approach. A common theme appears to be around the lack of a product lens to services being offered, and a lack of portfolio management to ensure WIP is being managed and work aligns with strategy. If we can start to tackle this then we should have some good social proof for those who may be finding adoption slightly more tricky.

We agreed to limit our pilot to be on four particular areas for now, rather than spreading ourselves too thinly across multiple teams, fingers crossed we can start to have some impact this side of the new year.

New Joiners

I was very pleased this week to finally have Rachel, our new Product Manager finally join us. It feels like an age since we interviewed her for the role, and we’ve been trying our best in holding people back to make sure we aren’t veering too much away from the Product Management capability we’re wanting her to build. It’s great to have someone who is a very experienced practitioner, rather than have someone who just relies on the theory. I often find that the war stories and when stuff has not quite worked out is where the most learning occurs, so it’s great to have her here in the team to help us all.

Another positive note for me was after walking her through the WoW approach, as she not only fed back around it making sense but that it also has her excited :) It’s always nice to get some validation from a fresh pair of eyes, particularly from someone as experienced as Rachel is, I’m really looking forward to working with and learning from her.

With Rachel joining us as a Product Manager, and Dave who joined us roughly a month ago as a DevOps Engineer, it does feel like we’re turning a corner in the way we’re recruiting as well as the moves towards new ways of working day to day. I’m extremely appreciative to both of them for taking a risk in wanting to be part of something that will be both very challenging but also (hopefully!) very rewarding.

Team Health Check

We’ve made some good progress this week with our Team Health Check App, which will help teams identify different areas of their ways of working which may need improvement. With a SQL DB now populated with previous results, we can actually connect to a source where the data will be automatically updated, as opposed to manually copying/pasting from Google Sheets -> Power BI. The next step is to get it fully working in prod with a nicer front end, release it to some users to actually use, as well as write a short guidance document on how to connect to it.

Well done again to all our grads for taking this on as their first Agile delivery, they’re definitely learning as they go but thankfully taking each challenge/setback as a positive. Fingers crossed for the sprint review Thursday it’s something we can release!

Next Week

Next week we have our ICAgile course accreditation session, hopefully giving us the rubber stamp as accredited trainers to start offering our 2-day ICAgile Fundamentals course. It also means another trip to Manchester for myself, running what I *think* will be my last training session of 2019. Looking forward to delivering the training with Andy from our team for our people in Assurance!

Weeknotes #36 - Refreshing Mindsets & Cargo Cults

Refreshing Mindsets

This week was the second week of our first sprint working with our graduate intake on our team health check web app. It was great to see in the past week or so that the team, despite not having much of a technical background, had gone away and been able to create a very small app created using a mix of Python and an Azure SQL database for the responses. It just goes to show how taking the work to a team and allowing them to work in an environment where they can be creative (rather than prescribing the ‘how’) can lead to a great outcome. Whilst the app is still not quite yet in a ‘releasable’ state, in just a short time it really isn’t too far away from something a larger group of Agile Delivery Managers and Coaches can use. It’s refreshing to not have to take on the battle of convincing hearts and minds, working with a group of people who recognise this is the right way to work and are just happy to get on and deliver. Thanks to all of them for their efforts so far!

Cargo Culting

“Cargo Culting” is a term used when people believe they can achieve benefits by adopting/copying certain behaviours, actions or techniques. They don’t consider why the benefits and/or causes occur, instead just blindly copy the behaviours to try get similar results.

In the agile world, this is becoming increasingly commonplace, with the Spotify model being the latest fad for cargo culting in organisations. Organisations are hearing about how Spotify or companies like ING are scaling Agile ways of working which, in practice, sounds great, but it is incredibly hard and nowhere near as simple as just redesigning organisations into squads, tribes, chapters and guilds.

In a training session with some of our client facing teams this week, I used the above as an example of what cargo culting is like. Experienced practitioners need to be aware that the Spotify model is one tool in the toolbox, with there being lots of possible paths to organisational agility. Spotify themselves never referred to it as a model, nor use it themselves anymore, as well as ING moving towards experimenting with using LeSS in addition to the Spotify model. Dogma is one of the worst traps you can fall into when it comes to moving to new ways of working, particularly when you don’t stop and reassess whether this actually is the right way for this context. Alignment on language is important, but should not be at the compromise of finding first of all what works in the environment.

Next Week

Next week I’ll be running an Agile Foundations training session, and we (finally!) have Rachel joining our team as a Product Manager. I’m super excited to have her as part of the team, whilst hopeful we can control the flow of requests her way so she does not feel swamped, looking forward to having her join PwC!

Weeknotes #35 - Retrospectives ≠ Continuous Improvement

Back to Dubai

This week I was out in the Middle East again, running back to back Agile Foundations training sessions for people in our PwC Middle East firm. 

I had lots of fun, and it looked like attendees did too, both with the engagement on the day and the course feedback I received.

One issue with running training sessions in a firm like ours are that a number of large meeting rooms still have that legacy “boardroom” format, which means for little movement during sessions that require interaction. Last time I was there this wasn’t always the case, as one room was in the academy which, as you can tell by the title was a bit more conducive to collaboration. As well as that we had 12 people attend on day one, but 14 attendees on day two which again for me is probably two people too many. Whilst it generally works ok in the earlier parts of the day as the room can break off into two groups, it causes quite a lot of chaos when it comes to the lego4scrum simulation later on, as we really only have enough lego for one group. Combine that with the room layout and you can understand why some people can go off and get distracted/talk amongst themselves, but then again maybe that’s a challenge for the Scrum Master in the simulation! A learning for me is to limit it to 12 attendees max, with a preference to smaller (8–10) audience sizes.

Retrospectives

I’ve talked before around my view on retrospectives, and how they can be mistreated by those who act as the ‘agile police’ by using their occurance to determine if a team is/is not Agile (i.e. “thou cannot be agile if thou is not running retrospectives”). This week we’ve had some further contact from our Continuous Improvement Group around the topic and how to encourage more people to conduct them. Now, given this initiative has been going on for some time, I feel that we’ve done enough around encouragement and providing assistance/coaching to people if needed. We’ve run mock retrospectives, put together lengthy guidance documents with templates/tools for people to use, people practice it in the training on multiple occasions yet there are still only a small amount of people doing them. Given a key principle we have is invitation over infliction, this highlights that the interest isn’t currently there, and that’s ok! This is one in a list of many ‘invitations’ there are for people to start their agile journey — if the invitation is not accepted then ok, let’s try a different aspect of Agile.

A more important point for me really is that just because you are having retrospectives, it does not always mean you are continuously improving.

If it’s a moan every 1–4 weeks, that’s not continuous improvement. 

If nothing actionable or measurable comes out of it that is then reviewed at the next retro, then it’s not continuous improvement. 

If it’s held too infrequently, then it’s not continuous improvement.

With Toyota’s Kentucky factory pulling on the andon cord on average 5,000 times a day, this is what continuous improvement is! Worth all of us as practitioners remembering that running a retrospective ≠ Continuous Improvement.

Next Week

Next week we have a review with ICAgile, to gain course accreditation to start offering a 2-day training course with a formal ICAgile Fundamentals certification. It’s been interesting putting the course together and mapping it to official learning outcomes to validate attendees getting the certification. Fingers crossed all goes well and we can run a session before Christmas!