Do you ever feel your efforts to improve your teams and organization are just window dressing on the traditional system? Welcome to Agile Theatre!
Today’s topic is a standout from our Lean Coffee sessions: “Moving from Waterfall to Agile, how do we change to an Agile PMO (Project Management Office). Mainly moving away from those documentation that is required to be completed for Waterfall PMO.”
During our conversation, I was blown away by the sheer volume of documentation and reports the team was expected to produce. For a team of six doers (including ScrumMaster) and Product Owner, the workload bordered on what would be a full-time job for one person!
The immediate thought is to eliminate the PMO and scrap the documentation. But that’s the fastest way to trigger resistance.
Before attempting to make changes, we need to understand what the PMO perceives as valuable from the masses of paper. I always recommend you find, at least two people with different backgrounds from yours. We want to engage in a simplified Systems Thinking approach. Take the perspective of the PMO staff, the Directors/VPs and any other relevant stakeholders (i.e the regulator if you’re working in a regulated industry). Ask:
- Why this documentation was considered valuable initially?
- What past events made this necessary? (Often the distant past)
For example:
- Projects that went five times over budget and delivered nothing?
- Apps deployed without a proper security audit, leading to a data breach?
- Reporting and documentation used for project control
- Documentation replacing the need for good communication
- Metrics tracking - more paper, more metrics, easier to track performance
- Resource allocation - knowing if people are being utilized efficiently
- … the list goes on ad infinitum
With understanding comes empathy. Empathy is the first step in creating influence. Tomorrow, we will dive into concrete actions.
#YourTurn: When have you used Empathy and Systems Thinking to better understand why your organization clings to prehistoric practices? Share your experiences!
#Influence #Ship30For30