LESSON 14

Lean, Kanban. Agile’s Roles & Responsibilities. Agile Team

Is agile an approach, a method, a practice, a technique, or a framework? Any or all of these terms could apply depending on the situation. PMI uses the term “approach” unless one of the other terms is obviously more correct.

Agile approaches and agile methods are umbrella terms that cover a variety of frameworks and methods. See the figure below places agile in context and visualizes it as a blanket term, referring to any kind of approach, technique, framework, method, or practice that fulfills the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. Figure also shows agile and the Kanban Method as subsets of lean. This is because they are named instances of lean thinking that share lean concepts such as: “focus on value,” “small batch sizes,” and “elimination of waste.”

Agile is a Blanket Term for Many Approaches

In general, there are two strategies to fulfill agile values and principles.

The first is to adopt a formal agile approach, intentionally designed and proven to achieve desired results. Then take time to learn and understand the agile approaches before changing or tailoring them. Premature and haphazard tailoring can minimize the effects of the approach and thus limit benefits.

The second strategy is to implement changes to project practices in a manner that fits the project context to achieve progress on a core value or principle. Use time boxes to create features, or specific techniques to iteratively refine features. Consider dividing one large project into several releases, if that works for the specific project context. Implement changes that will help the project succeed—the changes do not need to be part of the organization’s formal practices. The end goal is not to be agile for its own sake, but rather to deliver a continuous flow of value to customers and achieve better business outcomes.

LEAN AND THE KANBAN METHODOne way to think about the relationship between lean, agile, and the Kanban Method is to consider agile and the Kanban Method as descendants of lean thinking. In other words, lean thinking is a superset, sharing attributes with agile and Kanban.

This shared heritage is very similar and focuses on delivering value, respect for people, minimizing waste, being transparent, adapting to change, and continuously improving. Project teams sometimes find it useful to

blend various methods—whatever works for the organization or team is what should be done regardless of its origin. The objective is the best outcome regardless of the approach used.

Lean

Proper use of Lean techniques will result in cutting waste in your projects, producing greater customer satisfaction and improved profit margin. This will be accomplished by examining how companies like Toyota and Motorola achieved excellence through the Lean methodology.

The objectives are:

Identify the five principles of Lean

Discover how Lean principles can be applied to project management

Determine the various kinds of waste that exist in projects

How important are time and money for a project manager? Would not it be nice to wave your wand and bring your schedule and budget back in line?

A Lean Project Management toolbox might very well be the answer. Numerous surveys and studies have documented that nearly half of all projects are behind schedule and/or over budget. While the Lean Project Management toolbox is highly valuable, it is not a magic wand. Rather, it requires a disciplined approach to examining all the activities throughout the entire project life cycle.

Only a thorough process analysis will identify how the process is actually handled and identify inefficiencies. Too often people think that the way they have done it in the past is the best way to conduct the process. Understanding each process step will identify waste and non-value added process steps, which have become an accepted and unquestioned part of the process over time.

Lean PrinciplesLean is a business philosophy, not just a tool set or method for improvement. This business philosophy was derived from Toyota experiences and in particular from its Toyota Production System (TPS). The focus is on reducing waste in all business processes. The result is reduction of cost and lead-time as well as an increase in quality.

Lean Manufacturing – Toyota Production SystemFollowing the 1973 energy crisis, Toyota was the only Japanese firm resisting by working efficiently and effectively. The company managed to overcome this crisis by deploying a culture of empowerment. Toyota employees were embarked in a continuous improvement journey and were working to drive inefficiencies out of work processes. Results are reduction of manufacturing lead-time and costs as well as improving quality and customer satisfaction.

This is a study of the automobile industry (Womack, J. P., Jones, D. T. & Roos, D., 1990) that introduced this business philosophy lean production for the first time to the western world. The Toyota success story base waste elimination has since kept all industries enthusiast about the lean approach.

It was also a breakthrough step from mass production to lean production, from a push system to a pull system.

Principles of Lean ThinkingOver the years, Womack and Jones refined their strategy and published in 1996 Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. They provide in this book a set of management principles, tools, and best practices designed to identify and eliminate waste in work processes and increase efficiency. The goal is to help organizations achieve operational excellence.

To be Lean is to provide what is needed, when it is needed, with the minimum amount of materials, equipment, labor, and space.

The book Lean Thinking introduced five core principles:

1. Specify value in the eyes of the customer

The first lean principle is to specify value. Womack and Jones (1996) define value of a product or service as “a capability provided to a customer at the right time at an appropriate price, as defined in each case by the customer.” (Womack & Jones, 1996, p. 353) Value is stated in the customer's word. The challenge here is to focus on what the customer is willing to pay.

2. Identify the value stream for each product

A value stream includes “all the actions, both value added and non-value added, currently required to bring a product from raw material to the arms of the customer or through the design flow from concept to launch.” (Morgan, 2002). First, we need to create a value stream map that reflects the current state of the process being treated. This map is then analyzed for waste and value creation, and a future-state map is created, which represents how the process could and should operate.

We generate then an improvement plan, which will enable the transformation from the current state to the future state.

3. Make value flow by eliminating waste

Once the value is defined and the value stream is identified, the step here is to create continuous flow by eliminating backflows, scrap, rework and interruptions. No stoppages, no waste is the central tenet here. In analyzing value streams, work will fall into one of three types:

Value-Added Work: Those works are essential changes to product/service. You would look at maximizing this category, as there are providing customer value (Form, Fit, Function).

Value-Enabling Work: Value-Enabling Work is a category that has potential for elimination in the future (with identified improvements) but cannot be eliminated immediately. There are necessary to run the

current process. Technology, environment, culture require these activities. You would look at minimizing this category of work.

Non Value-Added Work: Non Value-Added Work can usually be eliminated quickly and is not dependent on improvement of other areas. This is the work nobody needs and it is pure waste. You would look at eliminating this category of work.

All of the waste (“pure” or “necessary”) in a process can be classified as one of the following 7 types:

Over Production: Producing more than is needed before it is needed

Waiting: Any non-work time waiting for approval, supplies, parts, etc.

Transportation: Wasted effort to transport materials, parts, or finished goods into or out o storage or between processes

Over Processing: Doing more work than is necessary (customer requirements) or double work

Inventory: Maintaining excess inventory of raw materials, parts in process or finished goods

Motion: Any wasted motion to pick up parts or stack parts, also wasted walking

Defects: Repair or rework

4. Let the customer pull the flow

The challenge here is to avoid delivering value before the customer request it. Also, you should not provide to the customer more than the agreed initial scope. In manufacturing, we let the customer pulling the flow by means of a Kanban system. Kanban allows the implementation of a just-in-time system. It uses cards to signal the need for an item by triggering the movement, production, or supply of a unit.

5. Continuously improve in the pursuit of perfection.

The final step is pursuing perfection which would lead the transformation to a lean culture. The pursuit of perfection implies process improvement is endless. We should constantly question the value of all activities. Obviously we would certainly not achieve perfection, but we must constantly strive to get closer.

Common Causes of Project Failure

Real Life

Project Manager's world is about focusing on the product, focusing on the team, keeping the customer happy. Project managers face here a serious challenge. In addition, they have to deal with a matrix organization, with people that they do not have power on.

Project management processes and the lean six-sigma tools kit would certainly help project managers become more efficient by focusing on value added activities and limiting processes variation. In real life, project managers overlooked the following:

Establish real Customer Value:

Set up a scope baseline control to avoid our baseline to creep.

Build a communication plan to streamline the information flow

Assess stakeholder needs and get internal stakeholder commitment

Define Project Value Stream

When those previous factors are overlooked then project wastes start building. What happen if we are not collocated with our customer? Then it could be difficult to establish real customer value. If we allow our customer to redirect our project team member then we would end up with scope creep.

Normally, our project management plan should describe the project value stream. The Work Breakdown Structure would decompose end deliverables into value-added work package and value-enabling work package. The precedence diagram network would make the value flow. First, it is recommended to have an unconstraint approach. The project manager would then negotiate with the customer to which extent planned milestones could be pulled but customer target milestones. If we accept up front customer's constraints without any proper practical and logical planning effort, we would then certainly, start building wastes and increase cost.

We have a good project management plan so why are we in trouble? We have to re-plan the project and finally we face schedule and budget overruns. Let us discover now how Lean principles can be applied to project management processes.

Current State of Project Management Value Stream

Value

We specify value in project management by identifying objectives, deliverables and requirements. We define also here acceptance criteria. Value or end result of the project is what the customer is truly purchasing. It is stated in the customer's words and comes directly from the customer. Initial requirement may not be clear at first, but must be established through close customer contact and establishing a good working relationship. A statement of work or a requirement document is not the end state, but just one of the items that makes up customer value. If value statements are in conflict, the project manager must work with the customer to resolve that conflict. To avoid building up wastes from the beginning of the project, the project manager must therefore establish close client relationship and good communication.

Value Stream / FlowValue Stream is a critical area for the project manager. Many of the “things” that take place in the project may very well be outside their span of control, especially in a strong matrix organization. The current state project management value stream could be mapped and analyzed in order to eliminate waste in processes, make the remaining value added flow and move project management processes towards the future value stream state. The future state would show short and rational response to customer expectations for new products or services and change requests.

By analogy to the physical material that flows through the manufacturing process, we can assume that it is information that flows through project management processes.

As the information flows through this process, project management activities performed add value to the information. It would transform initiating inputs data into deliverables such as scope statement, project management plan, risk register, etc.

We would inevitably also build wastes depending of the level of accuracy of initial product scope and business data. If we apply the seven manufacturing waste categories to information, we would end up with the following table:

1. Inventory – typical example of inventory waste is overstocking to meet unexpected demand. In project management, often seen inventory waste is purchased online tools that teams rarely use or office supplies that exceed needs.

2. Waiting – whenever a task is not moving, the waste of waiting occurs, interrupting the continuous workflow. Typical in project management is waiting for approval from higher management.

3. Defects – causing rework or even scrap, defects are hazardous waste. Examples from the project management world would be incorrect data collection, conversation errors, and unclear acceptance criteria.

4. Overproduction - occurs when you exceed customer demand and produce more than is needed or before it is needed. It is also a hazardous waste type, as it triggers the other six wastes. Overproducing in project management would mean filling an unnecessary great amount of documents or communicating unnecessary information. 

5. Motion – to avoid motion waste, you need to arrange a process where workers need to do as little as possible to finish their job. Often in project management, motion waste is generated by searching for information or lack of direct access to data.

6. Transportation – transportation is wasteful whenever you move resources without this movement generating value to the end product. Task switching, interruptions, unnecessary outsourcing are prime examples of transportation waste in the project management reality.

7. Over-processing – often manifested as double work or work exceeding customer requirements. In project management, we see over processing most often as multiple levels of approval for small tasks, excessive reviews, or too many iterations.

Eliminating these sources of waste from your process will allow the value to flow through your project freely. However, to ensure a continuous workflow, you also have to look out for bottlenecks.A bottleneck is a stage of your work process where work is stuck due to capacity shortages. You have a bottleneck when a work stage, even working at its full capacity, still would not manage to process work items quickly enough. As a result, continuous flow is interrupted.In particular, for project management processes, unplanned overtime waste can come from an uncontrolled scope change or also called scope creep. This is the consequence of adding new functionalities without assessing the impact on the project objectives and without getting a formal approval from the steering committee and/or the customer. We can imagine situation where the customer is bypassing the project manager and addressing scope change requests to project team members ending into scope creep. To avoid such a waste,

the project manager must manage customer's intimacy. Possibly, an extreme improvement would be that the project manager collocates with his customer.

Additional inspections waste would improve the performance or the end result but not the process delivering the result.

Continuously eliminating those wastes are at the heart of adopting a Lean Project Management approach. Project managers need to learn to see them by putting together a value stream map such as the one below.

Future Lean State of the Project Value StreamFlowThe ideal flow is to have the product or service move through the value steam without interruption. You should remember to begin from the end of the value stream.

Factors to apply to a product development value stream maps to move them towards a lean state. Those factors listed here and could be apply to a project management value stream:

1. Remove redundancy, simplify, and standardize

2. Create continuous flow of information

3. Minimize information handoffs

4. Balance reviews and responsibility

5. Improve communication systems

6. Implement integrated product and process development

7. Maximize concurrent processing

Getting into this lean state, the organization would improve its project management organizational maturity by eliminating the wastes while doing due diligence regarding planning and control value-enabling work.

Pull By adding out of scope functionalities, you can expect that it will affect negatively your project triple constraint. If you make more work than required at a certain time, it will be pilled in waiting to be expedited to the next step. You should also avoid here to execute project management activities in a batch. Indeed if there is any product change request then you would end up with obsolescence and therefore waste.

Perfection Senior management support is critical here. They must set the standard and lead the transformation to a Lean culture. Middle management and project managers must constantly question the value of all activities, asking questions like why we are doing this, is this signature necessary, etc.

People essential to create a lean culture

People are the keystone of any continuous improvement initiative. To detect the problems and wastes is one necessary thing, but it is not sufficient to improve the performance of the organization. For each dysfunction, a

solution needs to be implemented. This second stage is the most complex one because it mainly rests on the human capacity to create and innovate.

Whatever the improvement required, the capacity to mobilize and involve personnel in this action is fundamental. The transition to a lean organization requires a change of culture and from all a new way of thinking. In the context of project management, the project manager need to involve its project team in planning activities. They know that anyone else the work content and the constraints. This teambuilding approach would certainly prevent the creation of wastes. If the project manager was to force its project team to commit to milestones fixed by the customer, we could expect to have rework, low morale and high employee’s turnover. Empower employees is also critical in developing cultivating a human friendly and supportive environment.

Steps to do the roadmap: Establish your Project Value Stream

Value from Customer's perspective

Eliminate every waste possible

Work to develop Customer loyalty

Lean PM Tool Box

The flowchart below illustrate a possible Lean Project Management toolbox. It reconciles the project management process group model based on the PMBOK framework with the Lean principles described in this paper. One could consider here Lean and Six Sigma principles as a common methodology to reach excellence in projects. We will have project management processes and those must be carried out with a certain level of excellence. However, at the same time, we need to deploy Lean principles to early define the value in the customer's word.

Continuous improvement of project management processes will ensure that you maintain an acceptable level of performance. Ultimately, this will lead to project excellence.

Lean Management ToolsIntegrating the Lean principles into your project management routine will not happen overnight and without a dedicated effort from the whole team or organization. However, a good start may be adopting one of the following tools, which can accelerate the transition.

PDCA in Lean Project Management Also known as the Deming Cycle, the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is a key instrument of the lean manufacturing toolkit

As the picture represents, a four-stage method includes solutions testing, analyzing results, and improving the process to enable teams to avoid recurring mistakes and improve operations. Through its iterative approach, PDCA is introduced to improve products, services, and overall team performance continuously. In Lean project management, PDCA is a good way to establish a culture of solutions testing on a smaller scale, minimize potential re-work, increase customer satisfaction, and support a continuous improvement mentality. The goal would be to plan, execute, and test a potential solution as an experiment. After that, you should analyze the results from the customers’ perspective to adopt, optimize, and, if necessary, repeat the cycle. If adapted in your project management process, the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle can be another element that grants build-in project quality. Example of the question:

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Kanban for Lean Project ManagementKanban is one of the most widely spread workflow management methods that helps you visualize your work, improve your workflow, and ultimately increase your efficiency.Kanban definition. Initially, it arose as a scheduling system for lean manufacturing, originating from the Toyota Production System (TPS).  In the late 1940s, Toyota introduced “just in time” manufacturing to its production. The approach represents a pull system. This means that production is based on customer demand, rather than the standard push practice to produce goods and push them to the market.Their unique production system laid the foundation of Lean manufacturing or simply Lean. Its core purpose is minimizing waste activities without sacrificing productivity. The main goal is to create more value for the customer without generating more costs.

Adapting the Kanban principles and practices in project management will reinvent how you and your team structure, organize and execute work in general. The benefit of Kanban is, it respects the current approach and suggest incremental, evolutionary changes, so the transition to Lean can go smooth and one step at a time. 

Central to Kanban is the visualization of work. Using Kanban boards for project management will help unhide work, centralize communication in one place and create a transparent work environment with fewer interruptions.Kanban boards, such as the one shown in picture below are a low-tech, high-touch technology that may seem overly simplistic at first, but those using them soon realize their power. Utilizing policies for entry and exit to columns, as well as constraints such as limiting work in process, Kanban boards provide clear insight to workflow, bottlenecks, blockers, and overall status. Additionally the board acts as an information radiator to anyone who sees it, providing up-to-date information on the status of the work of the team

Kanban Board Demonstrating Work in Progress Limits, and a Pull System to Optimize the Flow of WorkEventually, the Kanban board will become a real-time status reporter on what is going on in the project, and you will be able to get this information without asking questions. This way, every team member will better understand the work state and project status, and potential bottlenecks will also automatically unhide themselves. 

KANBAN METHODThe word Kanban is literally translated as “visual sign” or “card.” Physical Kanban boards with cards enable

and promote the visualization and flow of the work through the system for everyone to see. This information

radiator (large display) is made up of columns that represent the states the work needs to flow through in order to be to done. The simplest of boards could have three columns (i.e., to do, doing, and done), but it is adaptable to whatever states are deemed needed by the team utilizing it.

The Kanban Method is utilized and applicable in many settings and allows for a continuous flow of work and value to the customer. The Kanban Method is less prescriptive than some agile approaches and thus less disruptive to begin implementing as it is the original “start where you are” method. Organizations can begin applying Kanban Methods with relative ease and progress toward fully implementing the method if that is what they deem necessary or appropriate.

The Kanban Method is a holistic framework for incremental, evolutionary process and systems change for organizations. The method uses a “pull system” to move the work through the process. When the team completes an item, the team can pull an item into that step.

Unlike most agile approaches, the Kanban Method does not prescribe the use of time boxed iterations. Iterations can be used within the Kanban Method, but the principle of pulling single items through the process continuously and limiting work in progress to optimize flow should always remain intact. The Kanban Method may be best used when a team or organization is in need of the following conditions:

Flexibility. Teams are typically not bound by timeboxes and will work on the highest priority item in the backlog of work.

Focus on continuous delivery. Teams are focused on flowing work through the system to completion and not beginning new work until work in progress is completed.

Increased productivity and quality. Productivity and quality are increased by limiting work in progress.

Increased efficiency. Checking each task for value adding or non-value-added activities and removing the non-value adding activities.

Team member focus. Limited work in progress allows the team to focus on the current work.

Variability in the workload. When there is unpredictability in the way that work arrives, and it becomes impossible for teams to make predictable commitments; even for short periods of time.

Reduction of waste. Transparency makes waste visible so it can be removed.

In the Kanban Method, it is more important to complete work than it is to start new work. There is no value derived from work that is not completed so the team works together to implement and adhere to the work in progress (WIP) limits and get each piece of work through the system to “done.”

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ROLE OF THE PROJECT MANAGER IN AN AGILE ENVIRONMENTThe role of the project manager in an agile project is somewhat of an unknown, because many agile frameworks and approaches do not address the role of the project manager. Some agile practitioners think the role of a project manager is not needed, due to self-organizing teams taking on the former responsibilities of the project manager. However, pragmatic agile practitioners and organizations realize that project managers can add significant value in many situations. The key difference is that their roles and responsibilities look somewhat different.

Notes: The value of project managers is not in their position, but in their ability to make everyone else better.

PROJECT MANAGERS USE SERVANT LEADERSHIPWhen project managers act as servant leaders, the emphasis shifts from “managing coordination” to

“facilitating collaboration.” Facilitators help everyone do their best thinking and work. Facilitators encourage the team’s participation, understanding, and shared responsibility for the team’s output. Facilitators help the team create acceptable solutions.

Servant leaders promote collaboration and conversation within the team and between teams. For example, a servant leader helps to expose and communicate bottlenecks inside and between teams. Then the teams resolve those bottlenecks.

Additionally, a facilitator encourages collaboration through interactive meetings, informal dialog, and knowledge sharing. Servant leaders do this by becoming impartial bridge-builders and coaches, rather than by making decisions for which others should be responsible.

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SERVANT LEADERS REMOVE ORGANIZATIONAL IMPEDIMENTS

The first value of the Agile Manifesto is individuals and interactions over processes and tools. What better responsibility for a servant leader to take on than to take a hard look at processes that are impeding a team’s or organization’s agility and work to streamline them? For example, if a department requires extensive documentation, the role of the servant leader could be to work with that department to review required documentation, assist with creating a shared understanding of how agile deliverables meet those requirements, and evaluate the amount of documentation required so teams are spending more time delivering a valuable product instead of producing exhaustive documentation.

Servant leaders should also look at other processes that are lengthy, causing bottlenecks and impeding a team or organization’s agility. Examples of processes or departments that may need to be addressed include finance, change control boards, or audits. Servant leaders can collaborate and work with others to challenge them to review their processes to support agile teams and leaders. For example, what good is it for the team to deliver working product every 2 weeks only to have the product fall into a queue or process that could take 6 or more weeks to release due to lengthy release processes? Far too many organizations have some “bottleneck” processes that prevent teams from quickly delivering valuable products or services. The servant leader has the ability to change or remove these organizational impediments to support delivery teams.

SERVANT LEADERS PAVE THE WAY FOR OTHERS’ CONTRIBUTION

In agile, the team manages its work process and its work product. That self-management and self-organization applies to everyone serving and supporting the organization and project. Servant leaders work to fulfill the needs of the teams, projects, and organization. Servant leaders may work with facilities for a team space, work with management to enable the team to focus on one project at a time, or work with the product owner to develop stories with the team. Some servant leader’s work with auditors to refine the processes needed in regulatory environments, and some servant leaders work with the finance department to transition the organization to incremental budgeting.

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The servant leader focuses on paving the way for the team to do its best work. The servant leader influences projects and encourages the organization to think differently

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS VERSUS TECHNICAL SKILLS

In addition to servant leadership, team members emphasize their interpersonal and emotional intelligence skills—not just technical skills.

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Everyone on the team works to exhibit more initiative, integrity, emotional intelligence, honesty, collaboration, Example of the question:

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humility, and willingness to communicate in various ways so that the entire team can work together well.

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The team needs these skills so they can respond well to changes in project direction and technical product changes. When everyone can adapt to the work and to each other, the entire team is more likely to succeed.

CONSIDER THESE SERVANT LEADER RESPONSIBILITIES

Servant leaders can have many possible titles, but what is most important is what they do. Here are some examples of the responsibilities a servant leader may have:

Educate stakeholders around why and how to be agile. Explain the benefits of business value based on prioritization, greater accountability and productivity of empowered teams, and improved quality from more frequent reviews, etc.

Support the team through mentoring, encouragement, and support. Advocate for team members training and career development. The oxymoronic quote “We lead teams by standing behind them” speaks to the role of the leader in developing their team members. Through support, encouragement, and professional development, team members gain confidence, take on larger roles, and contribute at higher levels within their organizations. A key role of the servant leader is to nurture and grow team members through and beyond their current roles, even if that means losing them from the team.

Help the team with technical project management activities like quantitative risk analysis. Sometimes team members may not have knowledge or experience in roles or functions. Servant leaders who may have more exposure or training in techniques can support the team by providing training or undertaking these activities.

Celebrate team successes and support and bridge building activities with external groups. Create upward spirals of appreciation and good will for increased collaboration.

When working on an agile project, project managers shift from being the center to serving the team and the management. In an agile environment, project managers are servant leaders, changing their emphasis to coaching people who want help, fostering greater collaboration on the team, and aligning stakeholder needs. As a servant leader, project managers encourage the distribution of responsibility to the team: to those people who have the knowledge to get work done.

TEAM COMPOSITION

A core tenet in both the values and the principles of the Agile Manifesto is the importance of individuals and interactions. Agile optimizes the flow of value, emphasizing rapid feature delivery to the customer, rather than on how people are “utilized.”

Notes: Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.

When teams think about how to optimize the flow of value, the following benefits become apparent:

People are more likely to collaborate.

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Teams finish valuable work faster.

Teams waste much less time because they do not multitask and have to re-establish context.

AGILE TEAMS

Agile teams focus on rapid product development so they can obtain feedback. In practice, the most effective agile teams tend to range in size from three to nine members. Ideally, agile teams are collocated in a team space.

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Team members are 100% dedicated to the teams. Agile encourages self-managing teams, where team members decide who will perform the work within the next period’s defined scope. Agile teams thrive with servant leadership. The leaders support the teams’ approach to their work.

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Cross-functional agile teams produce functional product increments frequently. That is because the teams collectively own the work and together have all of the necessary skills to deliver completed work.

Regardless of the overall agile approach, the more a team limits its work in progress, the more likely its members can collaborate to expedite work across the board. Team members in successful agile teams work to collaborate in various ways (such as pairing, swarming, and mobbing) so they do not fall into the trap of mini-waterfalls instead of collaborative work. Mini-waterfalls occur when the team addresses all of the requirements in a given period, then attempts to do all of the design, then moves on to do all of the building. Using this scenario, at some point in the building or the testing following the building, the team may realize it had assumptions that are no longer valid. In this case, the team wasted time in addressing all of the requirements. Instead, when team members collaborate to produce a small number of features across the board, they learn as they proceed and deliver smaller finished features.

Agile projects benefit from project team structures that improve collaboration within and among the teams. Table below shows how collaborative team members boost productivity and facilitate innovative problem solving.

Business Objectives in Agile

Traditional Project management is well defined and best suited for projects where things are more or less known. For innovative projects, there is a need of a new approach to management in general and project management in particular. There are five key objectives for Agile Project Management:1. Continuous innovation2. Product adaptability3. Improved time-to-market—to meet market windows and improve return on investment (ROI)4. People and process adaptability—to respond rapidly to product and business change5. Reliable results—to support business growth and profitabilityContinuous Innovation - Requirements are dynamic in today’s world therefore to cater it a mindset is required which adopts innovation. Striving to deliver customer value, to create a product that meets today’s customer requirements, drives this continuous innovation process. Innovative will never grows in a defined, structural environment. It needs adaption and flexibility;Product Adaptability - In this fast changing world, the pace of change increasing and response time shrinking, the only way to survive is to strive for product adaptability—a critical design criterion for a development process. In an agile project, technical excellence is measured by both capacity to deliver customer value today and create an adaptable product for tomorrow. Agile technical practices focus on lowering technical debt (improving the ability to adapt) as an integral part of the development process. In an agile project, developers strive for technical excellence, and project leaders champion it.Example of the question:

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Improved Time-to-Market - APM has inherent qualities like iterative, feature-based development. This contributes to improving time-to-market in three key ways: focus, streamlining, and skill development.

Attention to feature driven short cycles of iterations in timeboxed manner enforces the close consideration both on number of features and its depth;

Agile Project Management like other agile driven methodologies e.g. Lean, focuses on value added activities and continuously works towards eliminating waste and overheads;

APM focuses on selecting the right skills for project team members and molding them into productive teams

People and Process Adaptability -Practically, it’s not possible to achieve adaptability in product development unless adaptability is achieved in Organization & team members mind set. Product adaptability can be built on that foundation. The APM principles and framework encourage learning and adapting as an integral part of delivering value to customers.Reliable Results - There are two mindsets, one where repeatable process is used, i.e. one in which doing the same thing in the same way produces the same results. Two where reliable delivery is paramount, regardless of the impediments thrown in the way—reliability means constantly adapting to meet a goal. If your goal is to deliver a product that meets a known and unchanging specification, then try a repeatable process. However, if your goal is to deliver a valuable product to a customer within some targeted boundaries, when change and deadlines are significant factors, then reliable agile processes work better.

AGILE ROLES

In agile, three common roles are used:

Cross-functional team members - This role, sometimes referred to as developer or programmer, is responsible for the creation and delivery of a system. This includes modeling, programming, testing, and release activities, as well as others because agile believes in cross functional team and having generalized specialists who can play multiple roles.

Product owner -The product owner, called on-site customer in XP and active stakeholder in AM, represents the stakeholders. This is the one person responsible on a team (or sub-team for large projects) who is responsible for the prioritized work item list (called a product backlog in Scrum), for making

decisions in a timely manner, and for providing information in a timely manner. Product owner ensures profitability (ROI).

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Team facilitator or Lead.- This role, called “Scrum Master” in Scrum or team coach or project lead in other methods, is responsible for facilitating the team, obtaining resources for it, and protecting it from problems. This role has great focus on the soft skills of project management but relatively less focus on technical skills such as planning, tracking and scheduling because lot of these activities are better left to the team as a whole.

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Stakeholders. - Stakeholders form a large subset of your project community. Not only are they affected by your project, they have an active interest in its success. Stakeholders may include direct/indirect users, user manager, "gold owner" who funds the project, purchasers, operations and support staff and senior managers etc. Although they don’t participate in day-to-day development, they should be engaged via product manager or team lead.

Table below describes these team roles

“I-SHAPED PEOPLE AND T-SHAPED PEOPLE”

Some people have deep specializations in one domain, but rarely contribute outside of that domain. These people are known in agile communities as “I-shaped people” since, like the letter “I,” they have depth, but not much breadth. By contrast “T-shaped people” supplement their expertise in one area with supporting, but less-developed skills in associated areas and good collaboration skills. As an example, a person who can test some areas of the product and develop different areas of the product is considered to be a T-shaped person.

A T-shaped person has a defined, recognized specialization and primary role, but has the skills, versatility, and aptitude for collaboration to help other people when and where necessary. This collaboration reduces hand-offs and the constraints of only one person being able to do the job.

GENERALIZING SPECIALISTS

Agile teams are cross-functional, but the people often do not start off that way. However, many successful agile teams are made up of generalizing specialists, or “T-shaped” people.

This means team members have both a focus specialty plus a breadth of experience across multiple skills, rather than a single specialization. Agile team members work to develop such characteristics due to intense

collaboration and self-organization to swarm and get work done quickly, which requires them to routinely help each other.

A single person’s throughput is not relevant. Focusing on a single person’s throughput may even be harmful if it creates a bottleneck for the rest of the team. The goal is for the team to optimize the delivery of finished work to get feedback.

If the customer desires great results, such as rapid feature delivery with excellent quality, the team cannot be structured just with specialist roles in an attempt to maximize resource efficiency. The team’s objective is flow efficiency, optimizing the throughput of the entire team. Small batch sizes promote working together as a team. The product owner’s job is to make sure the team works on the highest-value work.

TEAM STRUCTURES

Teams have adopted agile principles and practices across many industries. They organize people into cross-functional teams to iteratively develop working products.

Some organizations have been able to create collocated, cross-functional teams; others have a different situation. Instead of having all team members collocated, some organizations have distributed or dispersed teams. Distributed teams have cross-functional teams in different locations. Dispersed teams may have each team member working in a completely different location, either in an office or from home. While these arrangements are not ideal due to increased communication costs, they may still be workable

DEDICATED TEAM MEMBERS

What happens when the team members’ time is not 100% dedicated to the team? While this condition is not ideal, unfortunately, it sometimes cannot be avoided. The key problem with having someone invest only a capacity of 25% or 50% on the team is that they will multitask and task switch. Multitasking reduces the throughput of the team’s work and affects the team’s ability to predict delivery consistently.

Notes: Multitasking slows the progress of the entire team, because team members waste time context switching and/or waiting for each other to finish other work. When people are 100% dedicated to the team, the team has the fastest possible throughput.

People experience productivity losses somewhere between 20% and 40% when task switching. The loss increases exponentially with the number of tasks.

When a person multitasks between two projects, that person is not 50% on each project. Instead, due to the cost of task switching, the person is somewhere between 20% and 40% on each project.

People are more likely to make mistakes when they multitask. Task switching consumes working memory and people are less likely to remember their context when they multitask.

When everyone on the team is 100% allocated to one project, they can continuously collaborate as a team, making everyone’s work more effective.

Notes: Not all teams have all the roles that they need. For example, some teams need support from database administrators or research analysts. When a team has temporarily assigned specialists, it is important to ensure that everyone has the same set of expectations. Is this specialist 100% allocated to the team and for how long?

Set expectations with everyone (the specialist and the team) to clarify the level of commitment so the team can deliver. Part-time assignments create risks for the project.

Key Aspects of Agile Team• Typically, 8-12 people,• Cross-functional,• Self-organizing and empowered,• Team members have mutual trust,• Close collaboration – typically collocated for close collaboration,• Members should be full time – agile discourages fractional assignments i.e. people working on multiple projects as they are less productive due to task switching overhead.• Committed to developing functionality,• Continuous adaptation and improvement.

TEAM WORKSPACES

Teams need a space in which they can work together, to understand their state as a team, and to collaborate. Some agile teams all work in one room together. Some teams have a team workspace for their standups and charts, and work on their own in cubicles or offices.

While companies are moving toward open, collaborative work environments, organizations also need to create quiet spaces for workers who need uninterrupted time to think and work. Therefore, companies are designing their offices to balance common and social areas (sometimes called “caves and common”) with quiet areas or private spaces where individuals can work without being interrupted.

When teams have geographically distributed members, the team decides how much of their workplace is virtual and how much is physical. Technology such as document sharing, video conferencing, and other virtual collaboration tools help people collaborate remotely.

Geographically distributed teams need virtual workspaces. In addition, consider getting the team together in person at regular intervals so the team can build trust and learn how to work together.

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Some techniques to consider for managing communication in dispersed teams are fishbowl windows and remote pairing:

Create a fishbowl window by setting up long-lived video conferencing links between the various locations in which the team is dispersed. People start the link at the beginning of a workday, and close it at the end. In this way, people can see and engage spontaneously with each other, reducing the collaboration lag otherwise inherent in the geographical separation.

Set up remote pairing by using virtual conferencing tools to share screens, including voice and video links. As long as the time zone differences are accounted for, this may prove almost as effective as face-to-face pairing.

Notes: Form teams by bringing people with different skills from different functions together. Educate managers and leaders about the agile mindset and engage them early in the agile transformation.

OVERCOMING ORGANIZATIONAL SILOS

The best place to start when forming agile teams is by building a foundational trust and a safe work environment to ensure that all team members have an equal voice and can be heard and considered. This, along with building the agile mindset is the underlying success factor—all other challenges and risks can be mitigated.

Often, siloed organizations create impediments for forming cross-functional agile teams. The team members needed to build the cross-functional teams typically report to different managers and have different metrics by which managers measure their performance. Managers need to focus on flow efficiency (and team-based metrics) rather than resource efficiency.

To overcome organizational silos, work with the various managers of these team members and have them dedicate the necessary individuals to the cross-functional team. This not only creates team synergy but also allows the organization to see how leveraging its people will optimize the project or product being built.

Notes: As an agile project leader, first focus on how you can create a team that is cross-functional and 100% dedicated to one team. Even if it means just getting key team members, such as the developers and testers, to work and communicate together on a daily basis, that is a step in the right direction toward agility.