Taking a Break

Posted on July 6, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

Dear Readers,

I haven’t written a post in almost a month. It feels pretty good. When I was in the middle of my streak of about 75 weekly posts, it seemed like every article I read, radio feature I heard, or conversation was a source of a new blog post about the other side of risk. That isn’t happening now.

I think my idea of writing about how my projects over the years trended to success when I paid attention to what could go right more than what could go wrong has run its course. Finding new ways to express the same theme isn’t saying enough new things anymore. Recent posts have been looking for new direction.

I’m going to take a break, read through all the posts, consider what I’m trying to do in portfolio management and IT governance in my new job, and figure out where to go next with blogging, writing, and teaching. There’s a bigger picture to paint.

I think I have about 20 – 50 people who regularly look at this blog, and lots more who happen on to it via searches for topics. To all of you, thanks very much for reading and occasionally commenting on what I have written. It’s been very satisfying for me to write about the other side of risk in hopes of helping others have more successful projects. If you are just finding this, enjoy poking through the words and pictures.

Thanks for reading. I’ll let you know on this blog where I will be going next when I figure it out.

Glenn Briskin

Italian Risk Management

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

This traffic sign in Florence, Italy seems to be managing risk in a positive way. What do you think?

Project Management and Scrum

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

I’m feeling guilty for being a little late on this post. Went to a class last week and I’m getting ready to go on vacation. Hang in there with me during June as I will be travelling.

I took a great class on being a Scrum Product Owner from SolutionsIQ in Redmond last week. I want to share my class experience because it provided a great example of how agile is important to project managers who want to find the other side of risk. Agile structures your work so you are constantly challenging uncertainty to drive out opportunities.

The class content was great, the instructors were engaging and knowledgeable, and the class was run in a way that allowed students to learn from one another. At the end of the class, I was happy with what I learned. But, I paged through my class notebook and saw lots of pages we didn’t cover. They all looked like really interesting ideas. Was the class a success from a project management perspective? This is the project manager’s dilemma with agile. How do we commit to scope, schedule, and budget to meet our client’s expectations? Let’s look closer.

The class was run as an “agile” class. We used the agile Scrum process to understand and decide on what we wanted to learn within the curriculum; and how we learned it.

Time and cost were fixed constraints. We finished on time and the class cost exactly what it was supposed to cost. We got a book of slides and articles at the start of class – the potential scope, but we didn’t cover all of them. But, everything in the book seemed important. Shouldn’t I expect everything in the curriculum to be covered? Would we be successful if we didn’t cover all the slides made available? How much scope we could complete within fixed time and budget constraints was an uncertainty. Sound familiar? Continue reading →

Agile and Portfolio Management

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

In my new role, we are looking at using agile methods for both project and portfolio management. We have to look closely at the pieces to put together the puzzle.

To better understand Agile, let’s look at it’s origins. The Agile Manifesto says:

“Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

I write about:

balancing consulting practices with project management to

imagine perfect outcomes and a perfect journey to get there

that leaves the organization and its people better than we found them.

So, when I read the Agile Manifesto, it says to me that:

A way to find a perfect journey to a perfect outcome is to focus on the people and how they will work together more than on the processes and tools. The perfect journey is the interactions that produce ideas and results, not a perfectly followed process.
Working software is more important than comprehensive documentation because a team working one step at a time can better express what it understands via a working product than a complete document. We often complete documents to lock things down and drive out risk. Opportunities for growth come from trying things and learning from them. I think documentation is important, it just has to be in step with product building, not way out in front of it.
Customer collaboration is more important than contract negotiation because it values seeking what can go right over what can go wrong. Collaboration leads to a commitment to leave an organization better as a result of our efforts. The contract focuses on a commitment to do something for consideration from someone. It protects against risk, but can drive out opportunities it if becomes the focus. The focus needs to be on how people collaborate to improve the organization.
Responding to change is more important than following a plan because the plan is only a tool that helps you know when things are changing. I think you have to have a plan that covers all the steps in your perfect journey to the perfect outcome. But, you also have to understand that part of a perfect journey is recognizing its unpredictability and learning to respond to discovery.

I think that Agile will be useful applied to portfolio management as well as software development. The PMI standard for portfolio management says that ‘portfolio management is a framework that provides the means to translate the organizational strategy into a portfolio of strategic and operational initiatives. It manages the actualization of those initiatives through the use of organizational resources.’

Agile suggests that the organizational resources are its people. People pursue the organization’s desired strategic (perfect) outcomes by working together and with its customers to discover the best mix of opportunities for improvement. These opportunities are pursued incrementally so that each completed step delivers progress toward the objectives and a clearer understanding of the next step.

I like the mix of Agile, portfolio management, and the other side of risk. Writing about it gets me a little closer to using it productively. Let me know if you think it all fits together.

Thanks for reading.

Perfect Presentation

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

On Tuesday, I presented on “The Other Side of Risk” to my friends at PMI Olympia – our local chapter of the Project Management Institute. Lots of familiar faces – well, not lots, but enough – showed up to hear what I had to say. I told them that a perfect outcome for me would be if they left with some new ideas and I learned something. So, I think it went perfectly.

I rambled on a bit trying to cover too much ground. As I worked on my presentation over the couple of weeks preceding the big night, I kept refining it so it had a clearer theme. Since it was about “The Other Side of Risk” an obvious theme would be to find opportunities during risk management. I probably could have filled a comfortable 50 minute presentation with just that topic. That was part of the presentation, but I seem to always go for more. I got into different ways to present the idea of perfect outcomes and a perfect journey to get there. I added ways to understand perfection in a useful way, define perfect outcomes, turn risks into opportunities for perfect outcomes, and define perfect journeys to perfect outcomes so that the scope of the project includes all the stuff you need to do to get to perfect outcomes, not just deliver a product. Continue reading →

Positive Psychology and Perfect Project Outcomes

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

Finding the other side of risk – opportunities for perfect outcomes – isn’t done in lieu of finding risks; it’s the complement. Science tells us that this is true and necessary.

I’m getting ready again to present “The Other Side of Risk.” Each time I do it’s a journey to a better understanding of what I’m trying to say. This journey stumbled across the concept of “positive psychology.” It’s reinforcement for the importance of seeking perfect outcomes and a perfect journey so that our projects leave our organizations better than we found them.

In my presentation, I talk a little about Appreciate Inquiry or AI. AI is a technique of organizational planning and change that emphasizes finding and building on organizational strengths to promote positive growth. In AI, the organization enquires into its strengths to: Continue reading →

Talk the Talk to Walk the Talk to Project Success

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

Sometimes we are distracted from our goals by the stress of the moment. Distractions can take our eyes off the outcomes we want from our projects. After stress, we may take our next step away from stress instead of toward our goal. Do this enough, and you get lost. What can we do to keep from losing our way?

I heard an interesting Radio Lab on NPR today about how we find our way. A brief segment of the show caught my “Other Side of Risk” antenna. The hosts interviewed Dr. Lera Boroditsky, a professor at Stanford who studies how language shapes thought and behavior. She described an Australian Aboriginal community, Pormpuraaw, whose language emphasized spatial orientation. When people in Pormpuraaw greet one another, they say “Where are you going?” The answer is always something like “North northeast in the middle direction.” There are about 80 phrases in Pormpuraawan that describe spatial orientation and direction. Pormpuraawans always pay attention to their spatial orientation and how to get where they want to go. This seemed unusual, but according to Dr. Boroditsky, about one third of the world’s 7,000 languages are deeply rooted in spatial orientation. English isn’t one of them. Continue reading →

Mosh Pit Portfolio Management

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

Should managing a portfolio of projects be like a mosh pit at a heavy metal concert, or like a waltz at the royal ball? Maybe both.

This week showed good progress toward setting up portfolio management at my new organization. But, by Friday afternoon I was really tired. You know how your thoughts wander a bit when that happens. Since I’ve been writing this blog, too often thoughts or experiences click on ideas for blog posts. When we are really into something, our experiences all feed into our own frame of reference. I was worried that I’m becoming unproductively obsessed. Fortunately, I found out this week that I’m not unusual.

Continue reading →

Letting Go of Baggage to Find What Can Go Right on Your Project

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

Here’s a reblog of Dan Rockwell’s “Leadership Freak.”

“Creating Glorious Space for Reinvention”

Dan discusses “Leadership and the Art of Struggle” with its author, Stephen Snyder. Stephen encourages us to create “glorious space” by letting go of baggage of past failures and successes. On our projects, past failures may cause us to see only what can go wrong and limit our ability to find what can go right. Opportunities may be missed. The same may be true for past successes. Building only on what worked before may also limit finding opportunities for what can go better this time.

I think that using a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) approach to risk assessment may put us more in touch with the present and what is possible vs. focusing on the past and what worked or didn’t then. It’s a good thing to think about.

The photo is from Dan’s post.

Bring “Wow” to Your Projects

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Glenn Briskin

Reading “Leadership Freak” on Monday was reaffirming. Dan Rockwell wrote about leaders who achieve great success by setting a vision, bringing in good people, and getting out of the way. His primary example was Tony Hsieh at Zappos. My ideas about imagining perfect outcomes and defining the perfect journey to get there are in line with this advice.

I use “perfect” on purpose even though people are uncomfortable about it. The audio clip on Dan’s post brings out the importance of this in how Zappos decides how to “wow” their customers. On projects, we have to decide what it will be like to “wow” ourselves (everyone involved) with our results, and then define the project around that. Those who have to get it done and will live with the results are the best ones to do it. This is a way to find what can go right about a project before we focus on what to do and what can go wrong.

Thanks for the reaffirming post, Dan. Readers, be sure to listen to the audio clip on this post; and check out Dan’s preceding post on how to establish a culture that enables “Wow.”