Recently I came across a very interesting question on Project Management Stack Overflow. The question is how to organize project management in tiny projects, where everything is done by a single person or just a couple of them.

The interesting thing here is that when we think about the point where organization introduce formal PM role we usually see at least a few dozen people. So how about startups, where just a few people are working in the whole organization?

Let’s consider one-man project. I leave aside all tasks directly related with software development, so for the sake of this article I don’t care about version control or bug tracking. Which leaves us with a few of basic areas.

• Scope management

You actually need to know what you’re going to do. At least on general level. Actually in startups it’s not a good idea to have detailed plans of development since, well, what you start with is wrong and you’re going to change the course along the way. However if you don’t know, even roughly, where you’re going and you can hardly tell what is your goal then you might look for another project or another job instead because you’re not succeeding. So yes, a bit of scope management is crucial – you have to know that you’re building a tower and not, say, space ship.

• Task management

You already know where you generally are going. Good. Now you have to figure out the next step. Or the next feature you’re going to build. Then you build it. And you repeat the process. I mean from the point when you figure out the next step, not from setting the general direction. Of course you don’t have to be so short-sighted to plan only a feature ahead but you do need to break the scope down to smaller tasks and start building your tower brick after brick. And of course you need to know which brick goes first and which goes next.

• Product management

This is kind of tricky. Actually if you know the scope and you dealing well with tasks you pretty much have this one covered. Given that you’re building the right thing that is. Product management in such small project is all about making sure that you’re building the right thing. It’s not on brick level but you need something more than just a picture of tower pinned over your desk. You actually have to know that you want to keep bad people in hostage there so you need cells, torture chambers and such. Then you need to figure out how these things should work so clients… I mean hostages are served… I mean tortured well.

• Communication with users and/or clients

Finally, you need to verify whether your dream about best of the breed torture tower is something people actually want. You need to regularly confront your ideas with clients or users or both (depending on your target group) to make a sanity check: are we still going into the right direction. Yes, you need to talk with those tortured poor souls to learn whether they’re happy with the service. You might also check your butchers – they do use your product as well. If the tower isn’t ready, go find potential customers and potential users and get their feedback. Since you’re running one-man project you don’t have clearly defined requirements so this part is even more important than in typical projects.

Now, I’m well aware these areas aren’t strictly connected with project management as some corporate PMs out there know. In big teams PM can be isolated from product management and from end users, scope can be thrown at the project team in huge specification before the project starts, but well, we don’t discuss big teams working on boring BDUF project here, do we?

By the way PMSE (Project Management Stack Exchange) site is awesome not only in terms of inspiring blog posts. You will find there a lot of great stuff so what are you waiting for? Go check the site.

As you already know I’ve recently attended ACE Conference. By the way, if you missed the message the event was great. Anyway, the interesting thing about industry conferences is you can clearly see some cool phrases, buzzwords or examples. I was once on a conference where like every second presentation cited CHAOS Report to share the news: two third of features aren’t used.

Um, after third time it’s not much of a news anymore.

Anyway, one of few buzzwords I caught in Krakow was limiting Work In Progress. To be honest, I’m confused. Wasn’t it me, who told you to limit WIP in my Kanban presentation? Yup, it’s hard to deny. Am I on this damned limit-WIP-bandwagon then? Yup, it seems so. But why, oh why limiting WIP became a buzzword?

For some reasons we need them. I think we keep attaching those buzzwords to our messages for a very simple reason – they sell. They sell whatever we have for sale. So yes, we’ll be hearing a lot about limiting WIP these days. By the way, another such thing is system thinking which follows exactly the same pattern – every cool kid on the block will tell you about system thinking.

Despite the fact I hate one of my genuine messages became a buzzword, which makes it easier to be depreciated, there are some good points as well. No, I don’t think about being right a couple of years earlier than the rest of crowd. It definitely scratches my ego on the back but, well, my ego feels pretty comfortable anyway.

A good thing of some good concept becoming sort of buzzword is it reaches some ears much easier. There are people who won’t adopt good things unless they’re well-known. There are organizations which hate to experiment. I have a good news for you: now, you have an excuse guys. Everyone tells you that you should limit WIP. Hard to ignore that now, ah?

Unfortunately I know what happens then. The concept is being misused and abused and finally under the buzzword there’s hardly anything coherent. It’s like with agile. What does it mean when someone states they do agile (or are agile, for that matter)?

Basically nothing.

Unless you see how people work you can’t really say whether we discuss hard-core agile team which could serve as Scrum+XP implementation in Sevres or just the good old do-whatever kind of team which just wanted to get agile badge.

It will be the same with limiting WIP at some point of the time. But until then I’m going to enjoy being the part of buzz proponents.

So go, limit your WIP! Use Kanban! It is a goddamn silver bullet! It will make your team hyper-productive and will bring the peace to the world! And of course, in the meantime, it will remove poverty as well!

And if you really think it might be a good idea, let’s talk seriously. Because I know it works, when applied in a reasonable way. Yes, your guess is right “reasonable way” is a key phrase here.

Roy Osherove in response to my last post on the art of saying no linked to his short (but very good) article on coaching, pointing it is better to use a chance to help people grow instead of simply turning their requests down.

Yes Roy, you’re right. To some point at least. I mean I love the “What are you going to do about that?” story. But I also know a different flavor of it. It goes like that.

– Pawel, I have a problem with my project here…
– Um, what are you going to do about that?
– I need more people so please assign them to the project.
– Well, that might be a bit difficult. Do we have other options?
– No, this is the only one.
– Are you sure? Can’t you juggle with tasks in the schedule, haggle with the client so we can do something later or something less, incur some technical debt or just be late with this task?
– No, we need more people. There’s no other choice. If you don’t give me them the world will burn in hell of flames and our poor souls will be lost.
– I have no free people, sorry. Now, deal with that.

I know – the last line should go like that:

– I have no free people. What are you going to do about that? Ha! Check, mate! I have just used magic Roy Osherove’s formula so you lose and I win, sucker!

The problem I see here is taught helplessness. People choose the only solution they believe would work, no matter how unlikely it is to happen, and don’t even try to look for any other idea. It’s my way or highway kind of situation. And well, it’s usually my way when we are at that.

Usually in such cases unless you start with the art of saying no you can’t move to what are you going to do about that. You can hardly turn active search for reasonable solution on unless you turn down the one which is imprinted deep in the mind of a person who ask the question.

Taught helplessness basically makes people immune for coaching. If you’re going to help them grow, you better have a good no at hand.

Kanban is a funny animal. I started my journey with Kanban treating is as a tool. Then I realized it is more of a vehicle which improves things around. Now, I extract some ideas standing behind the method and use them independently in different situations.

Since Kanban is as easy as possible – I use to describe it as “three rules, one tool and simple mechanics” – there aren’t many ideas you could exploit, but there’s one which is especially appealing. A contest: which one am I thinking about?

Yes, I know. I ruined everything with the title. What a dumbass I am. Anyway yes, visualization is the concept I like so much. Generally I’m known to be attracted by every whiteboard or flipchart around. If you see me sitting peacefully in a room with a completely clean whiteboard and set of markers you can bet I suffer. I’d love to write, draw, scribble and note on the board, so we all can see some reference to what we are talking about or how others may understand what we’re talking about.

Feel free to laugh at me because of this. It doesn’t happen without a reason. I learned how much value simple visualization can bring. I’m sure there’s some psychological gibberish which shows how our brains deal better when we can refer to a huge visual brutally presenting the core of the issue, but I don’t really care.

I use visualization because I know it helps me. It helps to me to organize presentation, like the one I’m preparing for ACE Conference. It helps me understand the problem, like learning how many quality engineers we do need at the moment. It helps me to express my thoughts, like when we’re discussing performance appraisals.

Next time, when you have some problem, try to draw it on the whiteboard or flipchart. I mean really. No matter what the problem is or how you choose to visualize it. It would help you to understand and chances are good you’ll find a clue how to solve it.

If you wondered why I brought two whiteboards with me to my new room, now you know.

I hear that one from time to time: “people are our most valuable resource.”

Well, they are not.

People aren’t your most valuable resource. People aren’t goddamn resource at all. People are, well, people. Individuals. Folks who somehow like to be treated as real persons and not precious pieces of junk otherwise known as servers and such.

Every time I hear this cliché about people being most valuable resource I wonder: how the heck can you say people are most valuable when you treat them as resource? As commodity. As something which can be replaced with another identical um… resource. If you say that, you basically deny that people in your organization are important.

And it doesn’t really matter how hard you try to avoid calling people with that name. If you believe they are (put here “most valuable” or whatever bullshit you like) resources you won’t trick them. They won’t feel respected and they won’t trust you. Why should they after all? Do servers trust project leaders? And no, that won’t make people motivated whatsoever.

I know, this is a rant. But this makes me crazy. I mean, how could we learn such humiliating behavior? I’m just waiting until I hear “Hi resource” instead of “Hi Jane” when Mr. I’m-So-Damn-Important-Project-Manager meets one of his project team members.

Then, I’m going to hurt somebody. And I guess it won’t be Jane.

These days every blog discussing agile topics should have a big hairy article on Scrum versus Kanban, so here it is. Well, just joking. Actually many people, way wiser than me, approached that subject some time ago already presenting different arguments. If you want to hear some of the strongest opinions out there check Ken Schwaber’s post on how Scrum is good and Kanban sucks. If you look for more weighted opinion David Anderson shared one. Just recently Mike Cohn also added very reasonable two cents to the discussion even though he actually doesn’t agree with David.

Also there’s been a lot written about Scrumbut and Scrumban. I don’t see the point in repeating once again that if something works for your team – go for it, no matter if that breaks the orthodoxy of the method of your choice.

Note: I’m well aware that until now I just share what I’m not going to write about. Is this post is going to be just a set of links to some good articles though? No, not exactly, but please do check mentioned articles – they’re a piece of good reading. Anyway, to the point. There’s one thing which is often mentioned as one of main differences between Kanban and Scrum but I think this is the core of the whole this versus that thing.

The point

From pretty much every Scrum and Kanban comparison you’ll learn that introducing Scrum is a revolution while with Kanban it is rather evolution. You’ll also be pointed that both approaches foster improvement. Now, finally, after all that beating around the bush: my point here is how Scrum revolution differs from Kanban evolution in terms of introducing improvements and why it is so.

Team model and software development process

Let me start with something I was learning for quite a long time (no, I’m not that bright to catch it during the first class):

Scrum proposes pretty damn good team model and process for building software.

If you look for model team which would work in majority of situations go for a Scrum team: cross-functional, small and tightly-integrated. If you look for healthy approach to software development you can’t really go wrong with Scrum. Scrum is well-thought and well-weighted approach. No surprise it ruled the agile world.

On the other hand Kanban tells you that your team model is good for now, no matter how it is organized. And your process of building software is OK even if it’s pretty chaotic. For now.

Kanban doesn’t propose any specific team model or software development approach.

It basically means that you get no hints whatsoever how the well-organized team would look like. Nil. Nothing. Find out by yourself. No help here. Well, almost.

The difference

When organizing Scrum team you can basically turn your thinking off. Well, sort of. It’s all in the book. Someone took the effort to propose team model which I’ve just labeled “pretty damn good.” Same with the process you’re meant to follow.

Kanban chooses the other approach: we don’t know what optimal solution for your team is. Here’s some help but you’re going to learn it by yourself.

The difference? Pretty damn good doesn’t automatically mean optimal. Scrum is optimized for majority of teams, not for your unique group. Yes, of course, Scrum has improvement mechanisms, retrospective being the flagship here, but in terms of general rules it stays unchanged.

Kanban accepts that starting point may be way worse than in Scrum case but leaves you all options open. You aren’t really constrained with specific practices or models. What you’re going to end up with is totally on you and your team.

Help you get

You can put it in other words if you prefer. Scrum tells you how you should change, at least to some point. Scrum is like your mother-in-law – she always knows that you suck here and there and how exactly you should act to be um… better.

Kanban on the other hand is like your friend, close but probably not the best one you have. He’ll try to show you where you could improve but won’t state it explicitly. It’s just not that kind of relationship. It will be rather a set of hints and smoke signs – it’s you who chooses to use them to change yourself or just ignore them.

Which one is better

Neither. Despite comparisons I’ve just use I really think there’s no winner here. And yes, I’m generally considered as a Kanban guy but I also strongly believe there’s no silver bullet.

If you need a kick start Scrum may give you one even though it imposes some constraints on the way you work. On the other hand if you have in your team someone who is experienced with variety of different methods it may be a good idea to start with Kanban and check where it’s going to lead you.

After all, since I’m not an orthodox, I’ll also tell you should experiment like crazy, no matter which path you choose. Heck, that’s where all those Scrumbans started – people were changing their process, people were breaking The Holy Rules of The Method just to end up with something more optimal for them.

Final thought

If I want you to remember one thing from this post it would be: Scrum tells you explicitly how to organize work and improve things, while Kanban tells you nothing about the ideal models and helps you find out the optimal way by yourself.

After all, this post is big and hairy so I guess I succeeded with the task anyway.

As I’ve already started working on my session for ACE Conference 2011 I tinker at different improvements introduced by Kanban and the way they pop out. Actually if I had to point a single, most surprising for me, feature of Kanban I’d point exactly the way it fosters improvements.

When we were starting with Kanban I expected it to be more a very lightweight approach, which organizes the workflow and doesn’t get into way, than something which may trigger any improvements on its own. Things didn’t really work that way.

Yes, we fixed issues we’d faced at that time but that was to be expected. Then we kept finding new issues and correcting them. For a longer time I didn’t really put much thought how it worked but I had to explain somehow specific practices we introduced in my presentation on AgileEE as I wanted to talk about the subject. I realized that we didn’t plan them. They just popped out. Somehow. Magic?

No, not magic. After short investigation I found the one to blame – it was Kanban. Thanks to using Kanban, specific problems were unveiled and we were just fixing them, sometimes completely unconsciously.

One of my favorite stories is when I suddenly realized we had collective code ownership. Yes, it was totally out of the blue. “Wait,” I thought “didn’t we discuss it through? Didn’t we end up with conclusion that we wouldn’t have collective code ownership? What the hell?” Actually it appeared that it was just easier to have collective code ownership in a pull system, such as Kanban, so people stopped thinking whether this is their own or someone else’s code. After some some time we had collective code ownership implemented basically effortlessly.

That is exactly the mechanics of Kanban improvements. You introduce them because it’s just easier that way. You either see something is wrong on the board and have a quick discussion how to tackle the problem and implement a solution or people start dealing with the issue unconsciously. Either way you end up with your process slightly improved.

And you repeat this activity. Multiple times. After some time when you compare what have you started with and what you ended up with you start thinking: how the hell this whole improvement thing in Kanban works? You can’t see it but somehow it’s happening. All the time.

Well, it seems it just works that way. Don’t complain, just make use of it.

This time a quick look at different types of project management styles. Since I’m dealing with many different teams and many different project managers I hear plenty of opinions about PMs and approaches they employ in their work.

Somehow those opinions tend to support one of three general pictures: the good, the bad or the ugly. Somehow those opinions tend to be pretty aligned. My wild-ass guess: that’s not without a reason. Actually the more I think about that the more I’m sure I could put any project manager I know in one of these buckets.

The Good

You know your job. You try to do your job well. It doesn’t mean you don’t fail. Oh, you do, that’s for sure. However chances are good that every failure is an occasion to learn for you.

The funny thing is the sole reason that you know your job and try to do it well isn’t enough to be respected by people around. There’s something more. You can adjust yourself to changing environment. After all, as a PM, you’re in the middle of the mess, usually called “a project.”

You’re a good observer. You know about people you work with. Sometimes you know about them more than their managers or themselves. You call risks out. Not only project-related ones. Also those which are tightly connected with people and their characters. That doesn’t mean you’re always listened. Heck, that doesn’t even mean you’re often listened. But it isn’t a reason to stop trying.

You’re good but it doesn’t mean you don’t have rough edges. Oh, you do. A lot of them. So yes, we had our fights and misunderstandings. It’s likely we filed each other under “problematic” label after our first meetings. But then, we both know this job takes all sorts and it’s our mutual business to find a way to cooperate well. What more, we clearly stated what we expect from the other side which helped to shorten the process of learning each other.

Now, you’re one of those who I want to work with. I mean really. You aren’t an easy partner but discussion with you is never a waste of time, even if part our ways without finding consensus. It’s good to see you popping up in my office even when you bring a problem with you. It’s good to know you’ll be running projects I care about.

Besides, that’s not only my opinion. People keep pointing on you as a project manager they’d like to have in their projects.

The Bad

For whatever reasons you don’t really like what you do. It may be anything from feeling you’re predestined to something other/better to belief that your work isn’t appreciated enough. Either way you don’t like the point where you stand.

The real problem is you don’t do much to turn things around. If we don’t count complaining that is. It’s either definition of your role which is wrong or expectations are too high or boss is a jerk or project is a nightmare or moon is in the wrong phase. You feel a kind of doomed. You can’t work the way you’d like and you have no guts to consistently work to change things around.

As a PM you have your power though. You use it to show that you are important. You request compliancy, you condemn overruns, you demand people, resources and budgets. There’s interesting thing here – you seem to always know the answer. The best solution is the one you point. And if reality doesn’t stick to it, well, so much the worse for the reality.

Somehow almost everyone around never lives up to your expectations. And almost everyone around would say about you exactly the same. They keep asking what exactly you are responsible for as they’re suspicious enough to think it should be more than you seem to accept at the moment.

We might have had our fights, but that’s not so obvious. You might have been just ignored in a well-mannered way. Chances are good you haven’t really fought for your projects. After all the whole world is allied against you, isn’t it?

Besides, that’s not only my opinion. Most of project teams which worked with you will prefer some other project manager. They won’t be totally disappointed with having another project with you though. After all it’s better to have someone who isn’t supportive but isn’t a pain in the ass either.

The Ugly

You consider yourself as a damn good project manager. You’re a tough type, but that’s what this role taught you to be. You don’t care whether you’re liked or not. This job isn’t about being likeable but about pushing projects to their end. Yes, that’s the word, you push these projects. Without you all developers would end up reading news or playing Counter Strike all day long.

You know how to use project management tools you have. They may say you’re kind of formalist but that’s how you show who failed with their tasks and where eventual project failure should be addressed. Also your ass is always covered. You have e-mails, documents and such for every problem in the project. In the worst case you can say: “Haven’t I told you that?”

I have mixed feelings about you. Sometimes you’re able to put together a group of people and make them playing as project team. Sometimes playing a bad sergeant brings projects closer to the successful end. Unfortunately at least equally often your approach triggers allergic reaction in project teams which brings additional issues to the project. You have an ability to change performance of teams. The problem is it works in both directions – sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.

By the way: your successes seem to be interlaced with failures – isn’t that surprising? With your rock star project management skills every project should be a stunning success. I know it’s always team’s fault but hey, there are fellow PMs who seem to have much better success rate.

Besides, that’s not only my opinion. People say different things about you. There are those who consider you as a model project manager and those who prefer to have no project manager at all than to have you to lead their projects. Have I already mentioned “mixed feelings?”

Lech brought an interesting subject recently: isn’t running an R&D project with heavy-weight, structured approach extremely difficult?

We use to think that we need very flexible approaches for projects which aren’t defined very well, thus agile being frequently a tool of choice for R&D projects, which bear a lot of unknowns by definition. After all can you really produce reliable plan for a research project? It is research; you don’t really know what you’re going to end up with.

But we fall in the trap of simplifying things. When we think about heavy-weight approach to project management we instantly see BDUF waterfall project with no checkpoints on the way carried through without taking changing conditions into consideration. Yes, there are still a lot of projects done this way but this isn’t the only way of running projects non-agile way.

The trick with R&D projects is that you wander through unknown areas. It doesn’t mean you can’t plan you journey though. It doesn’t mean you can’t assess your progress and change your course along the way. It doesn’t mean you can’t measure where exactly you are or compare that against expectations which were set up front.

What more, to some point agile, when done well, enforces us to do exactly that. But then every reasonable approach, no matter whether it’s heavy- or light-weight, does the same. We can have inspect-and-adapt attitude with pretty much any project management approach used these days.

The real problem is we often misuse tools we have. Project management methodologies aren’t an exception here. When we fail to apply our project management approach reasonable it doesn’t really matter which one we choose – the result will always be poor.

So my answer for the problem from the beginning of the post is: as long as your project management approach is well-organized and reasonable your R&D project will go well. It doesn’t matter much whether the method is heavy- or light-weight. However if you fail to apply the approach right way don’t expect much of success in your project even if the label on you’re a tool of your choice says “agile.”

In other words good waterfall is better than bad agile.

Since I expect “but good agile is better than good waterfall, especially for R&D projects” kind of argument I’ll answer it up front: it depends. It depends on many factors, starting with your domain, going through organizational culture and ending with people you work with. And yes, we can discuss each case separately.