Managing Product Development

I had coffee with a friend Saturday night. She said, “Our family has a tradition of starting many projects to see what we can stick with. If you don’t start a project, you can’t finish it.”

She’s right. You certainly can’t finish something you don’t start. But the real question for all of is: Should we start this project at all?

My current todo list is way too long. That’s because we took a couple of days off to visit with Mark’s family, and with the Jewish holidays mid-week both last week and this week, I’m “losing” time to family and personal obligations. (No, I don’t really think of it as losing time, just about the actions I choose when.)

In order to get my list of projects down to a manageable number, I’m choosing which projects I need to finish this week, which ones I need to make progress on, and which ones can be postponed starting until next week. Notice that I listed the projects I can finish first in that list.

I hate having partially finished projects, which is why I’m trying to finish a bunch of things this week, even though it’s a short week. I literally get stuck with all the projects on my list if I have too many projects.

Here’s my general mode of working:

1. Make a list of everything I have to do. Get it out of my head and onto paper. Yes, this is directly from Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.
2. Look at the list and see when I have to complete what. Make sure I know my interim deliverables.
3. Lay out the deliverables week by week for a few weeks (not more than 4 weeks total, generally only 2).
4. For the deliverables owed this week, I do 2 things:
   • Ask, “Should I do this project at all?” It’s worth making sure this work is still valuable.
   • If yes, finish the deliverable this week. Now, my deliverables may not be done-done-done. I might have to draft an article or something and let it sit for a few days, but it’s a deliverable to me.
5. Of the deliverables this week, see if there is something I have to finish earlier rather than later. Do those.
6. Make sure I ask “Should I do this project at all?” for each project left.
7. Of the rest, do the ones that take the least time (which tends to be the most valuable for me), and get them off my plate. Since I don’t estimate that well, I never know exactly how long things take, but I’m pretty good at relative sizing.
8. Loop forever.

This is the essence of project portfolio management. I happen to be using it for myself, but it works. If you know that the work is valuable, then it’s a matter of slotting it into your week or weeks. And, if you use inch-pebbles the way I do, it’s easy (well, easier) to keep up with the work.

When my friend says she starts lots of projects and then decides if it’s worth finishing, she’s asking the “Should I do this project at all” question repeatedly. I tend to ask that question before starting, but the key is to keep asking. If you don’t, you are throwing good money after bad, wasting time.

If your projects are hobbies, it may be worth starting a bunch of projects to see what you’re interested in. But if you are making decisions on behalf of the organization, timebox each project. Make sure you know what the deliverables are and see if the team can finish those deliverables in a timebox. Now, your starting and finishing makes sense.

After the US-based Software Development conference last week, I flew to Wellington, NZ. I’m speaking at the Wellington/Auckland/Sydney Softed conferences this week. I have slept almost enough, so if you’re in any of these places and you would like to get together for dinner, let me know. (The last time I was here, I did not successfully change time zones. I didn’t actually fall asleep in my dinner, but it was close.

Labels: personal

We’re on our way home from a ski vacation. Mark’s the driver; I’m the navigator. This morning (in the dark at 5:30am), Mark said, “I don’t need a GPS. I already have a voice to direct me.”

I, of course, cracked up.

Labels: humor, personal

Udi tagged me, so I guess I need to play Here are five things you don’t know about me:

1. I take ballroom dancing lessons with Mark. We’re getting pretty good! No, neither of us will be competing on “Dancing with the Stars,” have no fear! We’re both keeping our day jobs.
2. I used to bicycle a lot (at least one century ride each summer). Couldn’t figure out how to do that with babies. Now I can’t figure out how with my knees.
3. I promised my 10th-grade French teacher that in exchange for a C in French, I would never speak it to anyone as long as I live. So far, I’ve kept my promise.
4. I saw my first computer when I was 16 and in high school. I first started writing code my sophomore year in college. I only really understood what I was doing about three weeks from the end of the semester. But I was hooked!
5. For pleasure, I read romance novels.

I tag Esther, Dave, George, Frank, and Hal.

Labels: personal

This is a little off topic, but it’s a big deal to me

We hit a major milestone this week. Daughter #1 is off to school. (For my non-US readers, that means university.) We have just one daughter at home, who starts high school this week.

Sending a child to school is not like releasing a product. Products stay released. I fully expect Daughter #1 to bounce back while she’s in school, and if we’re unlucky, she’ll bounce back after she graduates

But it’s a major milestone in any case. We’ve prepared her–and ourselves–as much as we can for this time. I won’t know if we’ve done enough preparation until too late.

in reality, raising children to be self-sufficient contributing adults is a lot like coaching an agile project. Once the child has hit a certain age (in this child’s case, about 7), parents can coach, suggest alternatives, provide feedback, but there’s not much we could do (aside from safety issues) to ensure she would act a certain way. And raising children cannot be planned like a waterfall or stage-gate lifecycle

I’ve found the same thing with my project coaching, especially for agile projects. Because the iterations are short, the project team can obtain feedback quickly about what they’re doing (or not doing) or how they’re doing it, and can decide if and how they want to change what they do.

I don’t know about other people, but Mark and I have found that each of our daughters requires a different kind of parenting to help them see where to go and how they’ll decide what to do to get there. I’ve seen the same thing with project teams (and of course, the people on those teams). Sometimes, the people need to see alternatives. Sometimes they need some hand-holding to start and then I need to quickly back away. Sometimes they need to see the big picture of why, and then they’ll choose their own way. There are lots of other characteristics of project teams and how they need consultants to act, but those are some of the common ways I’ve encountered.

So, now we are three. How we deal with the day-to-day things (making dinner, taking out the garbage, doing laundry), will be different. We will have to remake our family connections, still allowing Daughter #1 to return and (hopefully) fit back into our group. I suspect the fitting back in will be difficult–I certainly remember it being difficult for me

Daughter #1 off to college is a major milestone. And I am very happy we’ve gotten here.

My ISP is not allowing emails to my domain name address (again!), so I will be changing ISPs this week. And, I’m chauffering Daughter#1 to colleges, so don’t expect anything from me this week.

I now have a new hard drive. And I’m back from vacation. Thanks to the folks at MacResQ, I didn’t lose any data at all. (Truly amazing with a broken hard drive.

If you need a chuckle, read commute mathematics.

When I travel, I catch up on my magazine and journal reading. A nice side-effect of that is synchronicity in what I notice about what I’m reading.