Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: certification

  • Kanban Coaching Professional

    Frequent visitors might have noticed a new banner on the sidebar of the blog that says “Kanban Coaching Professional.” It might come as a surprise that I’ve decided to join the Kanban Coaching Professional program. After all, I used the word certifiction (no typo here) repeatedly, shared my concerns about the idea of certifying anything around Kanban and even showed my hatred to any certification at all. And now, I jump on KCP bandwagon.

    Why, oh why?

    Well, I must admit I like a couple things in the approach David Anderson and Lean Kanban University have chosen in the program. Peer review is one. To get through the process and become a Kanban Coaching Professional, you need to talk with folks who know the stuff.

    On one hand it sounds sort of sectarian – we won’t let you in unless we like you. On the other, it is just a good old recommendation process. I trust Mike Burrows so I trust people who Mike trusts, etc. This way the title means something more than just a participation trophy. Also, the seed people who will be running the decision-making process are very decent.

    There is a risk of leaving some people behind – those who are not active members of the Kanban community but are otherwise knowledgeable and smart folks. Well, I really do hope it won’t become some sort of coven who doesn’t let fresh blood in. It definitely is a risk Lean Kanban University should pay close attention to.

    Another thing I like is that there’s been an option to be grandfathered into the program. By the way, otherwise I wouldn’t be a part of this. I just don’t feel like attending a course just to be approved. That’s just not my way of doing things.

    I prefer to write and speak regularly about Kanban, showing that I do and know the stuff, instead of attending the course. Yeah, this is a hard way but it’s just the way I prefer. With such an attitude, there’s no way I’m going to be CSM, but it seems the Kanban community has some appreciation for non-standard cases such as myself.

    Actually, I hope this option will be kept open. I mean I can imagine great people with an attitude similar to mine – willing to get their hands dirty (and prove it) – but not really willing to attend the course.

    Because, when we are on the course, I’m not a fan of this requirement. I understand it is there for a reason and, to be honest, I don’t think I have a better idea for now, but I have the comfort of standing at the sideline and saying “I don’t like it.”

    I guess it is supposed to be a business, so there needs to be a way of making money out of it. For the time being though, not the business which I’m a part of.

    However, the simple reason that I could, and rather easily, become a Kanban Coaching Professional isn’t why I decided to give it a go. After all you still need pay some money for this, so we’re back to the question: “Why?”

    As Kanban gets more and more popular, I see more people jumping on this bandwagon, offering training, coaching and what have you. The problem is that sometimes I know these people and I’m rather scared that they are teaching Kanban.

    Not that I want to forbid anyone to teach Kanban, but I believe we arrived to the point where we need a distinction. The distinction between people who invest their time to keep in touch with the community, attend events, share experience, engage discussions, etc. and those who just add a Kanban course to their wide training portfolio because, well, people want to buy this crap.

    This is exactly why I decided to get enrolled in the KCP program. For this very distinction.

    I believe that, at least for now, it differentiates people who you’d like to hire to help you with Kanban from those who you can’t really tell anything about. This is where I see the biggest value of KCP. I really do hope it will stay this way.

    Unless the situation changes the banner will hang there on the sidebar and I will use KCP title as a confirmation of my experience and knowledge about Kanban. Sounded a bit pompous, didn’t it? Anyway, if you look for help with Kanban, pay attention to these banners or KCP titles.

  • The Value of Certification

    The other day I had hot discussion about the value of certificates. We went through certificates for developers mainly but the issue is general: how much value certificates bear from the company’s perspective?

    The point where the whole discussion started was when we started analyzing what the most objective way to appraise engineers is. Typically organizations have some appraisal system in place – I don’t want to go deep into it as that’s the subject for another story. Anyway every such system is subjective as it bases on one person judging another. And the Holy Grail of many managers is to make appraisal system more objective.

    That’s where certification kicks in. Certificate is objective. One either passes an exam or not. It’s not her manager who says “she knows Topaz on Tires at 8 out of 10… I guess.” There are some standard criteria which say whether it is 89% or 23% or whatever.

    Then certification process is run by some external entity which isn’t biased so certificate is a kind of independent evaluation. Guys from certificating entity don’t really care if a specific individual passed the exam or not, at least as long as they have steady flow of incoming candidates to be charged for certification process.

    Where’s the problem then?

    It seems certification evaluates people independently and is objective. Unfortunately it’s also pretty much useless.

    The problem I have with vast majority of certification programs is that the only thing people are taught while preparing to earn the certificate is how to pass the exam. They don’t learn how to be a better programmer or a better project manager or how to deal with a specific technology. They basically learn what question schemas and standard answers are.

    You get what you measure. If you measure how many certificates people have you will get “many” as the result. Would that mean that you’d improve skills of your teams? No, not really. So my question is: which problem are you solving this way? Except of course having a huge pile of certificates.

    And by the way the real issue of subjective appraisal system is not system’s subjectivity but lack of trust between senior management and appraisers. “I don’t trust your evaluations so I’ll cross-check them with some certificate.” Well, I’d prefer to work on building trust relationship instead. But maybe it’s just me…

  • Learning Project Management Basics

    A question about starting career in project management is heard pretty often. A question about value of different project management certifications usually follows.

    There is a bunch of standard answers for these questions. Apply for junior role in project management. Attend a course. Help your PM in her job. Get a certificate (this or another). Buy and read a stack of books on project management etc.

    I have another answer. Actually the answer isn’t exactly mine. I’ve ruthlessly stolen it from Scott Berkun.

    Go, run a project.

    “How? I mean I’m yet trying to get project management job, remember?”

    Pretty much everything which happens around you is a kind of project. If you invite a group of friend for a dinner it is a project. If that doesn’t sound like a real project think bigger. Maybe you can organize vacations for friends?

    “Yeah, and what do I learn from such a simple thing?”

    Don’t tell me it’s easy – I’m just finalizing sailing trip for 25 people. And, believe me, friends aren’t the best clients you can find around. It requires the same skills you’ll be using once you get your PM job to organize this kind of trip.

    “Maybe that’s a nice idea but I don’t have 25 friends.”

    That sucks, man. But you definitely have some non-profit organization which would appreciate some help in their projects. And they do have a lot of them. And they’d love your help they’d get for free (non-profit often means non-paying too).

    “But, you know, this whole non-profit stiff isn’t really something I’d like to work on.”

    Um, you think once you are a project manager you’ll be able to choose projects you like and reject those you don’t. I have a bad news for you. You won’t. You know life isn’t as nice as they told you.

    “OK, but how it helps me to learn project management?”

    You basically organize a group of people to do what you want. They come to a meeting point. They go to target place where they’re warmly welcomed by your hosts. People know when they can go watch latest World Cup match and when they should bring you a cold beer in exchange for organizing this great trip. Earlier everyone paid you their share of costs so you could have paid for your shelter.

    This isn’t much different from project management in real world. You make people doing what you want. They work on a project tasks of your choice. Everyone knows when they’re free to learn new technology and when they should focus of finishing before deadline. Earlier people agreed on plan of splitting tasks and build a schedule etc.

    “What about all the formal stuff? I don’t have to create technical specifications when I organize a trip for friends.”

    Oh, really? You don’t? That’s interesting… OK, just joking. All the formal stuff will differ among companies so it isn’t so important anyway. Of course you should know what WBS is and understand how to find critical path, but that’s not a rocket science.

    What more usually candidates for project management positions lack practical knowledge – lack of understanding of some technical terms isn’t so common.

    So go, find a project and run it. After all there aren’t many things which would match your friends thanking you for a great trip and asking whether you’re organizing it next year too. This single thing is worth the whole effort. The funny thing is it works similarly in projects you run at work.

    By the way, I’d use the same method to learn leadership.