October 19, 2011
Unfortunately life is like this…. However it isn’t just the fault of the change / improvement people – its the fault of the business. Improvement takes time, effort and resources to do well and to make stick.
Remember this when you are planning it … otherwise you spend money on unrealised benefits. unfortunately these are unnecessary expenditure and will make it harder when you ask for management’s support in the future.
Do it properly…..
October 4, 2011
I was chatting with a customer the other day who has a relatively small development environment and has achieved some really demonstrative benefits using CMMI to drive his process improvement programme. He has successfully illustrated how CMMI works in a small setting. The quite exciting point is that unlike so many process improvement projects that just “die a death” this one is moving on and evolving.
June 27, 2011
I have just had a great opportunity to visit Mongolia and provide training and consultancy for a new client there. An exciting experience to say the least.
Flying Aeroflot via Moscow was… interesting – no in-flight entertainment, so my books got a good pounding. Minimal in-flight announcements – fantastic, Aeroflot becomes my airline of choice. If only they flew more routes from the UK. Changing flights in Moscow – the KGB still seems to run the transfer desk. “Who are you? Where are you going? Where did you get these boarding passes?” Just for starters.
Arriving 7am Saturday morning – the real red-eye experience. The client has arranged a pick-up, so I don’t have to think about finding a taxi. Fantastic. Straight to the hotel, where in brain-dead mode I check-in, unpack, then find breakfast. Interesting slope to the floor in the bathroom, still it helps the water in the shower to drain away. As long as I don’t get too drunk, I probably won’t fall over. No change there, then.
Saturday passes in a haze of jet-lag.
Sunday. Final preparation and some work for the office, so not a lot of chance to go sight-seeing. Make it out of the hotel for an hour or two to get my bearings. Find Subhaktar square and the parliament building – right next door to the hotel. Interesting combination of mid-20th Russian communist monolithic and extreme modernism in the architecture. Hmmm.
Dinner, read, then bed, ready for the off with the client on Monday.
Monday. Getting to know you day. Executive overview of CMMI for the client. These folks are really keen, so that’s great. Some good English skills too, which is fantastic, since I have the Mongolian ability of a senile snail. Lots of naive questions of CMMI – that’s great too, very few preconceptions so we can really bring our expertise to bear. Really tired at the end of the day, so dinner, then sleep.
Tuesday – Thursday – the Intro to CMMI Dev course. Really quite worried, it can be a loooooonnnnnggggggg experience even for people with English as their first language. But there’s a lot of enthusiasm around the room. We take timeouts so the client team can have discussions in Mongolian then sum it up for me and ask some relevant questions. OK, this is working pretty well. The days go on much longer than usual because of the need to take it slow and have local discussion, but that’s OK too.
Wednesday, one of my contacts invites me out for the evening. We travel to the edge of the city and see a huge golden statue of Bhudda, and above that the memorial to the Russian-assisted revolution led by Subhaktar. Then to a local restaurant for some very European food. Actually, that’s ok, I’m still at work tomorrow so I need a degree of caution.
Thursday sees the end of the course. Everyone gets their certificates. Good Job! Discussion and questions after the end of the course. Then I get taken out again. This time to a show of singing and dancing – definitely laid on for the tourists, but a chance to see something of the local culture. Really appreciate the show. Then dinner and a visit to a local monastery – another huge Bhudda.
Friday. Planning day. What comes next? Well the client certainly has conviction in what they want to do. Maybe their plans need to be grounded a bit more with some real expertise, but it’s really good to see enthusiasm in place of the oh-so-normal-cynicism found back in Blighty. A good opportunity for us to support our new friends in their pursuit of better ways of working.
Out with the senior management team in the evening to enjoy a final dinner. Presented with gifts – one for the office and one for me. Fantastic. Finally an opportunity to try some local food and beer. Take the risk of flying flush-class tomorrow.
And so to bed. Not too late because I have to be up at 4:30am to check out and get to the airport. Back on the Aeroflot flight, this time in rear-gunner class (one up from flush). And I get an empty seat next to me, marvellous. Zzz all the way to Moscow. Read quantum physics between Moscow and London – well some of the time anyway. Back home by mid-afternoon (UK time).
Sunday – sleep till mid-afternoon.
What a great opportunity. To visit a country I guess I would never have got to in my life otherwise. There can’t be many places on Earth so different from the UK. And who knows, if we can continue working with our new friends, perhaps I can go again and get to see more of this exciting country. Better still, at the end of it all we will have helped our client become the first ML3 organization in Mongolia. They certainly have the motivation.
Why “One Idiot” I hear you ask?
Its from a Mongolian Proverb “One idiot can ask more questions than 10 wise men can answer”. Well I certainly asked enough questions, so I guess I must qualify as an idiot.
But at least I’ve been there.
June 6, 2011
Why are so many projects underestimated? I guess it’s because so many people think of estimation as an art. Yet what many organizations want, above all, is a degree of predictability that just cannot be provided by most project plans and estimates.
Instead, what we see is lots of esti-artists (no alcohol involved) displaying shocking symptoms of chronic optimism. So here at optimists anonymous, we are developing new techniques to help these poor sufferers, and the organizations that look after them. With lots of care and hard work, we can teach these sufferers to satisfy the predictability junkies at the top of the organization.
Where do the symptoms of chronic optimism appear from? Well first most sufferers are woefully unaware of the actual work that has to be performed to deliver a project successfully. Plans contain interesting tasks like “Do Testing” – a task lasting for 6 or more weeks, but without any more details. And, oh by the way, what about things like “Write Some Tests” and “Put Stuff Right”. Doh! (more…)
June 1, 2011
Over my career I have seen many improvement programmes, some more successful than others. Over a number of years I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the ones that were successful were based on the premise of trying to fix a business problem that was at the heart of an organisations’ aspirations. What’s that I hear you say, “Surely they are all like that?” Well not in my experience, some are driven with good intentions, but are phrased in terms of achieving a level. How many times have we heard a statement like :
“We want to be CMMi Maturity Level 3 in 18 months.”
May 24, 2011
Onefte.com sums it up again….. This cartoon illustrates why we (as an industry) really need to do better.
April 28, 2011
We’ve already had a lot of very positive feedback regarding this years conference – comments that ranged from how pleased delegates were at the sheer practicality of the even, how it brought CMMI down to earth and to life with many real life case studies. Other delegates were delighted that speakers addressed the complex change management dimensions involved. For me – I think the awesome conference photos just speak for themselves – have a look at them here on flikr.
April 27, 2011
Having just come back after a few days off following this year’s successful CMMI made Practical I thought I would reflect and see what messages seemed to shout out now that a couple of weeks have passed. So impressions …
March 22, 2011
Having earlier fallen in love with a small Company’s wiki (see blog here) its time to explore one of the challenges in implementing CMMI and process improvement in general for small organisations. But first I want to be crystal clear that I’m defining small in terms of staff numbers. Other, less useful, definitions for process improvement use revenue or other financial measures.
March 15, 2011
Lamri have recently had sight of a spreadsheet form Capers Jones that purports to analyze the total cost of ownership of a standardised application built using different types of “software development methodologies”. It makes for very interesting reading and presents some very surprising results. At first sight, anyway.
