if you just tell them they are extinct, there’s no place for them and this will mean they’ll be sacked in short order then their sense of self preservation kicks in. Once that happens they will do everything in their power to hinder, embrarras, sabotage, and defeat the move to agile. They will brand it as a ‘fad’, dig up instances where moving to agile has failed (never mind why they failed, just find a bad example or three, quick!)

They’ll brand it cowboy programming, bemoan the lack of control, the inadiquite planning, and have fits over the whole ‘ad hoc’ (as they see it) nature of the beast.

So fine, show them a path where they don’t lose their jobs.. but also make sure that they commit to the process, not just give it lipservice. I expect perhaps the hardest thing for them is going to be giving up control. They’ve been schooled in it, they’ve spent most of their time not only ‘controlling the process’ but believing that it was absolutely essential to do so. HOW you manage to break them out of that mentaility is I expect absolutely key to success.

Next you need to make sure that everything they are doing ads value. It can’t just be assessments, evaluations of techniques (the people in the trenches can tell you if something is working or broken) and other typical PM style busywork. Make sure improvements they suggest really are improvements, focussed on the constraints that are holding you back, and not peripheral window-dressing that doesn’t increase velocity, provide better quality, or reduce costs.

I do like your post. Following up from my response to your last post on the PMO and in light of the “nuts” comment …

The Lean principle of “Standard Work” is seen in how we execute on delivering value to the business … how value flows. We optimize our standard work through our retrospectives and our Kaizen events. The critical aspect of this is the people doing the work get to improve the work. Management facilitates to ensure we actually practice Kaizen and then follows up to enact the ideas and sustain the changes, but it is the people that suggest and execute to make the improvements (this to me is a major connection between Lean and Agile … it is about the people doing the work). Standard work allows us to measure where we are and where we want to be … and it only stays “standard” until we improve it … then it becomes the new standard (waterfall execution to Agile execution to …..)

“Going to the Gemba” is about management and our fellow co-laborers going to the “factory floor” to SEE … to live and experience reality in order to improve reality. One must walk the path and listen in order to understand how to make real and lasting improvements. This is a much better way of introducing changes instead of the back office or ivory tower approach. So going to the Gemba is practiced during Kaizen … and yes it is a disciplined approach that helps to drive out a culture of continuous improvement. I have been involved in many Kaizen events and it is always very fun to hear comments from people participating in their first Kaizen event of moving from skepticism to excitement … excitement because their ideas were listened to and put into action … and they get to put them into action!

Finally, to help re-tool the PMO, I would add a 9th point (or a sub point for 6) … Visualize and manage flow through Value Stream Mapping (VSM). A VSM allows us to understand the flow of “value asked” to “value received” and guides our Kaizen events … think of it as our roadmap of our portfolio for continuous improvement. It allows us to see and to ask “why” … why is that queue so big … why are we waiting so long at this point … is the output of that process step delivering any value?. In a way, a “kanban” board (agile team scrum board) is a sub-VSM of a larger VSM that helps us see the flow of value (work requests, stories, minimal marketable features) and helps us manage our queues in order to optimize them to minimize waste.

Phillip

Sometimes, however, organizations want to (need to?)go complete cutover and want the PMO to “organize” it (read: “control it”). My goal with the 8 guidelines is: if you have a need to go organization-wide, then you are going to have to pay attention to a whole new set of PMO disciplines than one team alone would do. AND, those new disciplines include NOT controlling the adoption top-down.

Could be a “nuts” way of managing large scale risks or for converting traditional organizations to agile. I don’t think so.

This is just consultants talking to each other. You need *SEVERAL* pilot projects, mark you, before you get to the point where you’re Kaizening your Gembas! Maybe a three-day intensive course on how to use Rally would help get your PMO being a Servile Leader!

You’re all nuts.