Agile...it's all about Leadership!

I just returned from Agile Development Practices East Conference. It hit me how critical leadership is in all endeavors and in particular with Agile.

Agile, for those who may not be familiar, is a set of approaches, mostly focused on software development, that focus on just enough planning to get work going; just enough work to demonstrate and deliver value to the customer. In software there are numerous approaches with the most common in the US being Scrum and XP (eXtremene Programming). There are not as many for non-software efforts, although Commitment-Based Project Management, CBPM for short, in an approach that I and others have used successfully in various efforts.

Agile's approach is to have the team be responsible for the output of the effort; for the team to be self-organized and self-led. However, it is very difficult for teams to form in this way to be successful, so a guiding hand is needed to get them going.

That's where leadership comes in, in particular Servant Leadership. The leader must help the team come together, organize, start delivering, and then the leader needs to step back and serve and support the team. If the leader doesn't step back and continues leading the team, s/he will be responsible for the output of the effort and many of the benefits of Agile will not be achieved.

Have you used Agile in your efforts? What's your experience?

Another outstanding leadership coaching session

I've written about the leadership coaching I've been privileged to participate in through Delta Leadership for Duke's Fuqua School of Business. Today we finished another one, this one with a global company in some very tough business.

Once again the model opens the eyes of the participants. Lind and Sitkin's Six Domain model is probably one of the best models I've been able to use as a coach to help participants understand their leadership and how to grow it. It is always gratifying to be able to help people demystify leadership and set plans for improving themselves and their organization.

As is traditional, we ended the week with a dinner with all the coaches, staff, instructors, and participants (or most of them) at the University Club in Durham. If you have a chance to learn about this model (check deltaleadership.com) do it.

Continuing "Coaching for Leadership"

This week I coached three persons using the Six Domains model at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. A very interesting experience to analyze the various responses received through the 360 degree assessments and then work with them to help them understand the messages that their raters provided.

We first analyzed the Personal and Relational domains, two of the three foundational domains (the third one is Contextual). These three domains are the foundation upon which the three other domains build. Your Personal Leadership impacts the Credibility that as a leader you have. Your Relational Leadership impacts the Trust that others have on you. And your Contextual Leadership impacts the sense of Community that your followers have.

Later in the week we moved on to Inspirational Leadership (High Aspiration), Supportive Leadership (Initiative), and finally Responsible Leadership (Stewardship). All of these domains interact and, typically, the lower ones impact the effectiveness of the upper ones.

In addition, the participants received verbal comments that clarified the raters' input on their leadership skills. Using these inputs, the participants developed both a plan to improve their leadership skills as well as a plan to use their leadership to implement a change in their organization.

The added value were the classes as well as the networks they developed with fellow participants. If you have a chance to do a program like this one, consider doing it.

Coaching for leadership

Back in September (http://leadership-topics.blogspot.com/2009/09/very-good-leadership-model.html) I discussed the six domain leadership model developed by professors Allan Lind and Sim Sitkins at Duke University's Fuqua school and described at http://deltaleadership.com/sixdomains.htm. Since then I've been coaching on this model and have dug some more into leadership.

A current book I'm reading is Leadership That Counts: Harnessing the Power of Leadership Coaching to Deliver Strategic Value by Dianna Anderson and Merrill Anderson. This book provides a different framework, broader in scope to some extent, as well as a good discussion on how to set up a leadership program, how to justify it, and how to assess its performance. If you are in coaching or interested in getting into coaching, this book should be in your library.

Another thing that it does is provide a time-face model of how persons being coached move through time. While the Delta Leadership model is to some extent time-specific (e.g., a leader is assessed today in six domains, puts plans in place on how to improve, and later on is re-assessed), Leadership that Counts helps a coach assess where a leader is in his/her leadership maturity and how to move him/her forward.

So, I recommend this book for your coaching library.

Side note: I used to provide links to Amazon for books. Due to new FTC rules for disclosure and changes in the Amazon Associates rules, I am no longer providing such links. If you are interested in buying a book I mention, please pick it up at your favorite merchant.

The Need for Leadership

As the world turns it becomes more and more critical that everyone step up and show leadership. People around the world are showing courage and demonstrating for their rights as they've done in Iran, Venezuela, various other countries, and, to a limited extent, Cuba (see the blog Generation Y in English and BBC Mundo - Cartas desde Cuba in Spanish to get a sense of some of what's going on in Cuba).

Being a leader is hardly ever easy and even more in situations like in the countries above. It's much easier to play along, stay home when there are demonstrations, and let others do the work. But, we get the world we work for and if we are not involved, will we be satisfied with what we get?

Currently most people are focusing on Haiti's situation but have you noticed how the media has turned their focus to the American missionaries and away from the ongoing disaster? Guilty or not, their situation is not as dire as the Haitian citizens. Or, if you read Nicholas Kristof's columns you realize that the situation in the Congo is as bad or worse than Haiti and there it's caused by humans.

But they are all disasters and our role, as leaders, is to pick the ones we can have an impact on and do something about it.

Cheers!

#1 Job - set the example

As leaders we have many jobs: motivate our followers; update our own leaders; understand the overall organization's mission; communicate it to our followers; etc., etc., etc. But one job is, and continues to be, at all times and specially in these difficult times, the number one job: set the example.

Our people watch us and follow our example. If we are excited about the vision, they are excited. If we are down on it, they are down on it. If we are positive, they are positive. If we are down on the job, they are down.

This was brought home to me recently with our new Boy Scout District Chair, a volunteer position. After we had told him of all the problems and issues he said: "Great. Thanks for sharing. Now we have to forget about that and figure out how to accomplish our goals. We set the example and we must be positive. Our goal is to win the district quality award and to do that we'll have to compensate for whatever issues there may be in other areas."

Wake up! Whining time is over. Time for us as leaders to take the challenge, turn it into an opportunity, and lead our team via our example! We can do it with Scouts and we can do it in our jobs and any other situations when we are the leader.

Happy holidays to all and the best for 2010!

Why do projects take so long?

A key piece of my company's business (Solera Associates LLC - see http://www.pmlead.com) capability is its ability to help others accelerate their projects. How do we do it?
While we like Agile and Agile-like methods, such as Commitment-Based Project Management -- CBPM -- (see our LinkedIn Group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1944064&trk=hb_side_g for various discussions on this approach developed at Intel Corporation) instead of the more traditional, process-intensive approaches, we also find that leadership plays a major role.
Processes can help you lead a project. Processes well executed will allow a team to succeed. By applying leadership we can be even more effective at getting the team to excel. As leaders we need to set the vision (leader's intent), communicate it, and enable our teams to execute within that intent. Processes take time. Leadership can shorten this time.
Traditionally project managers have controlled the details of the project, from the planning to the actual execution. CBPM encourages the owners and customers of the deliverables to execute more independently from the project manager and hold each other accountable. This process, coupled with leadership that not only encourages but expects and empowers this behavior, allows teams using CBPM to excel in their performance.
To answer the question in the title: projects take too long for a number of reasons but one of them is lack of the appropriate leadership needed to enable the team to succeed and reduce the time. Other reasons why projects take to long include lack of scope, requirements, plan, and execution clarity, among others. Leadership addresses all of these. CBPM addresses plan and execution clarity. For more details see our LinkedIn group mentioned above and my PM blog at http://www.pmlead.org.