Context is critical for learning lessons

Regular readers of my blog will know how much I loathe the term “lessons learned”. I’ve written and spoken frequently about implementation issues such as waiting too long to identify them, storing them in a manner which makes accessing them challenging and not responding to them in an appropriate manner. One of the more common problems I have encountered when reviewing lessons is a lack of contextual information to enable a reader to understand whether a given lesson is going to help or hinder them.

This is not a concern when the lessons are going to be applied to the same project in which they were identified. For example, if a team identifies a learning from a retrospective and decides to apply it afterwards, the likelihood of context drift is low, hence the lesson is still apropos. It is also not as big a deal if lessons are shared verbally, for example, through a Community of Practice meetup. During such events, if a participant shares a learning, contextual information will usually be shared through the normal back and forth discussion about the practice.

But when practitioners are reviewing lessons captured in the past without the benefit of access to the originator, if context is absent there is a much greater likelihood of practices being applied in situations where they won’t be helpful (i.e. a false positive) or practices being discarded based on the incorrect assumption that they weren’t applicable (i.e. a false negative). In both cases, an opportunity to benefit from organizational knowledge assets is lost.

So what context might we capture?

At a bare minimum, we should record when the lesson was identified, on which project and by whom. Doing so will take the least effort on the part of the lesson identifier and the lesson curator (the person who is responsible for distilling “raw” lessons into published knowledge). With this, an interested reader has the ability to follow up with the person who identified the lesson to get the missing context.

Unfortunately, memories do fade with time and people will move into new roles or leave the company so such minimalist context may be insufficient. Time and cost permitting, the following additional types of contextual information could be captured:

• Quantitative metrics about the project such as its duration, cost, and peak staffing level
• What stage or phase of the project is the lesson applicable
• What type of life cycle was used to deliver the project (e.g. deterministic, adaptive, iterative)
• A categorization of the project’s scope (e.g. process engineering, launching a new product, building a dam)
• Specific background details about the lesson which may have been stripped away from the main description through the process of scrubbing it to be useful but shouldn’t be discarded entirely

This seems like a lot to capture and will take effort to do so. But if we remember that lessons are an investment in improved future project outcomes, the returns will justify the costs of doing so.

What are some of the underlying causes of ineffective project risk management?

Since I first started to learn about project management, risk management has always fascinated me.

That characteristic of uniqueness which separates operations from project work introduces uncertainties which, in turn, generate risks. Most mega-project case studies give credit to an effective risk management approach as a key contributor towards their success. But in spite of this, risk management continues to be one of the weakest practiced knowledge areas in the PMBOK.

If eternal optimism is the prevailing mindset within a company, it can be difficult for risk owners to envision things not going according to plan. What has always intrigued me is how the same leadership teams which can be moderately effective at implementing operations or business risk capabilities will be so much weaker when it comes to project risk management.  A risk averse culture will take a long time to change for an overall organization, but a project manager should be able to influence it within the ecosystem of their projects.

Unhealthy levels of multitasking by project teams and stakeholders result in those practices perceived as unnecessary being jettisoned or being given lip service only. If a team barely has time to deliver the scope of their project, how can they or equally busy risk owners be expected to expend any real efforts on considering or responding to potentialities which may never be realized? And, if we combine this limited availability with “one size fits all” approaches to project risk management, it is no wonder that many teams will do the absolute bare minimum required to meet onerous governance requirements.

If team members and other stakeholders don’t know what effective project risk management looks like, how can they be expected to improve? If there are no coaches to help teams improve their capabilities, improvements in risk management will rarely happen organically. Competent risk management requires exceptional interpersonal skills in addition to some basic technical skills, so hands-on practice with feedback from seasoned practitioners is needed to improve.

Finally, there might not be a realization of the positive correlation between effective risk management and successful project outcomes. In the absence of supporting internal empirical data or strong pressure from the outside to create a valid sense of urgency, senior leaders and project teams will be unwilling to sustainably invest in the required behavior and practice changes.

Providing practitioners with risk management training or evolving project delivery standards might help in some small way, but real improvements will only come when these root causes are addressed.

 

 

Evaluate your ceremonies with a W5 check

I’m midway through Priya Parker’s book The Art of Gathering and her insights into how to make an event a meaningful gathering rather than “just another boring meeting” are apropos to ceremonies. A common complaint many team members raise in the early days of an agile journey is that it feels like they are in too many meetings. This shows that they aren’t perceiving the value of the ceremonies and, if these concerns aren’t addressed quickly, the team members are likely to disengage.

One way to evaluate your ceremonies is to do a W5 assessment on them.

Why

Without a shared understanding of the purpose for the ceremonies, misalignment of expectations and behaviors may emerge. It is critical that a newly formed team understands why each ceremony is needed, but as the team evolves, the purpose of each should be reviewed to ensure it remains relevant. One way to gauge this is to ask each team member to summarize what they believe the purpose of the ceremony to be in three words or less.

What

Once there is clarity on why, we need to confirm that the outcomes of ceremonies are being realized and are in line with the purpose for conducting the ceremonies. Poll team members on their perception of the effectiveness and efficiency of producing those outcomes.

Who

A common challenge with agile ceremonies and most recurring events is that, over time, you might pick up a number of participants who “just want to observe” or “need to be kept in the loop”. If everyone is needed, no one is needed. A self-disciplined, self-managing team will weed out those stakeholders who aren’t required but will be equally diligent on ensuring the right participants are at each ceremony. For example, conducting a sprint review without adequate representation from those who will be consuming the outputs of the team is a waste of time. Who is also about the role each participant plays. While new teams might lean on the Scrum Master to facilitate most ceremonies, over time, this can become a shared responsibility, giving each team member a chance to develop their facilitation abilities.

When

It is a good practice to hold ceremonies at the same day and time but the timing that seemed ideal in earlier sprints may not suit all participants in later ones. It is also worth evaluating the duration of the ceremonies as they should be long enough to meet the purpose and achieve the expected outcomes and no longer. If certain team members are missing certain ceremonies, it is worth confirming whether the timing is still suitable for all participants.

Where

Whether it is physical meeting rooms or virtual video conferences or collaboration environments, it is important to ensure that the location supports the purpose and approach and doesn’t detract from it. In physical settings, this could be as simple as the arrangement of chairs around a table and the availability of white board space for spontaneous collaborative activity. Consider alternative environments for physical ceremonies. Could it be possible to conduct some in a more dynamic manner – perhaps as a walking meeting? In virtual sessions, this means ensuring that the tools provided (e.g. polls, whiteboards) are functional and everyone knows how to use them in advance of the ceremony.

How frequently ceremony reviews should take place will vary and one trigger for a health check might be to have team members vote every few weeks or every couple of sprints on how valuable they feel each ceremony is.

To paraphrase Chris Fussell “If your team is trying to be more agile, stop and think, ‘Are my ceremonies actually productive, or are we merely having ceremonies for ceremonies’ sake?’“