July 8, 2019July 8, 2019 Linky

Want to become an Agile Project Manager? Training and Certifications to consider

By Linky van der Merwe

Prior articles in the Agile Project Manager series:

Important Considerations

There are a number of considerations to take into account before you decide on the best education in order to transition to agile.

Do some research to find out which qualifications are in demand. Also look at what the job market has to offer.

Some certifications have pre-requisites for taking exams to obtain the certification, for example, the fact that you need a number of project management hours experience.

There are costs involved for studying and taking the exam, consider what will your budget allow, or will your employer be willing to pay for this education?

You also need to consider what interests you? Where are you now on your career journey and what will be stimulating and fulfilling in the long run?

Another important factor that people might forget, is the perceptions of your peer group. Some people have preferences for one type of training/certification above another. Take the time and talk to colleagues and friends in the industry to find out what they think and recommend.

All the above considerations will inform your choice of which education to pursue and whether you want to take an exam to become certified or not.

In my experience, I have found that certification carries weight with employers and recruiters, because it gives an indication of knowledge and proven experience, as well as a willingness and commitment to invest in self-development, subsequently adding more value in the workplace.

Agile Certification options

Should you decide on any of the following certifications, remember that the companies offering the certifications, also have training that will prepare you for each type of certification. This is a summarized view of the popular, well-known certifications today, but not necessarily all inclusive.

Scrum Alliance:
1. Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
2. Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM)
3. Certified Scrum Professional – Scrum Master (CSP-SM)
4. Certified Product Owner (CPO)
5. Developers certifications
Scrum.org (Ken Schwaber in 2009):
1. PSM – Professional SM level I, II, III;
2. PSPO level I, II;
3. Prof Scrum Developer (PSD)
4. Prof Agile Leadership (PAL)
5. Prof Scrum with Kanban (PSK)
6. Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS)
APMG: Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) oldest full-project agile approach
1. AgilePM Foundation
2. AgilePM Practitioner
3. DSDM Agile Professional
PMI: PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Professional)
1. PMI-ACP for project managers who need to apply agile principles and practices in your projects. The qualification needs a combination of training, experience, and an exam. It covers a range of agile approaches such as Scrum, extreme programming (XP), Test-drive Development (TTD), Lean and Kanban. You will have PMI recognition and a very broad-based understanding of agile methods.
  - The pre-requisites are challenging:
  - 2,000 hours of experience in project teams.
  - A current PMP® or PgMP® will satisfy this requirement but is not required to apply for the PMI-ACP.
  - 1,500 hours working on agile project teams or with agile methodologies.
  - This requirement is additional to the 2,000 hours above.
  - 21 contact hours of training in agile practices.
  - It is one of the more demanding examinations and also one of the more expensive.
Scaled Agile: SAFe
1. SAFe for Teams
2. SAFe SM and Advanced SM
3. SAFe Product Owner / Product Manager

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July 2, 2019July 2, 2019 Linky

How to Transition into the Agile Project Management Role

In the previous article: “Role of the Agile Project Manager” we covered:

Project management trends that make the shift to Agile approaches more inevitable
The Agile Project Manager in the enterprise context
The role of the Agile Project Manager and what they need to do in the Agile context

This article will focus on what is required to make a successful transition to Agile project management.

An Axelos survey among project managers in 2017, found:

The project manager of the future will be valued above all for creativity, flexibility, agility and emotional intelligence.
Axelos

Reward systems

When adopting an agile approach, organizations will need to re-evaluate their reward systems to encourage agile practices, where collective goals supersede individual accomplishments. Most performance evaluation criteria is still focussed on the individual as well as on the more traditional criteria for project delivery, namely time, cost, scope, stakeholder feedback and benefit realisation. In agile it should be more about the performance of the team, value and benefit delivery as well as customer satisfaction.

Challenges with transitioning to agile project management

Project managers are accustomed to being at the center of coordination for a project. During execution and as part of the controlling processes of a project life cycle, you would be monitoring and tracking progress through status meetings, minutes and status reporting to represent the project’s status to the rest of the organization.

Now, there is a shift from being the center to serving the team and management. In typical high-change projects, there’s more complexity than one person can manage. Instead, cross-functional teams coordinate their own work and collaborate with business representatives like the product owner and subject matter experts (SME) of the organisation.

Project managers are now servant leaders which changes the emphasis:

to coaching people who want help,
to foster greater collaboration on teams,
to align stakeholder needs.

Adaptive approaches use short cycles to undertake work, review the results, and adapt as necessary. This means that Agile is fast paced, disciplined and demanding, encouraging improved team performance due to the inspect and adapt approach. These cycles provide rapid feedback on the approaches and suitability of deliverables, and generally manifest as iterative scheduling and on-demand, pull-based scheduling.

This will require project managers to unlearn some behaviours, to develop a different mindset and developing some new technical skills such as running a retrospective or ‘orchestrating’ work where in the past it was ‘managed’.

What do Agile Project Managers need to be successful?

Taking guidance from the Agile Practice Guide (2017) Project managers need to work on growing skillsets beyond their area of expertise. Some valuable attributes include:

Knowing how to provide a tailored experience for every client
ability to work with flexible workflows – coordinate between different systems and methodologies,
coaching their team(s) in a singular direction,
delegating the control of detailed product planning and delivery to the team.

Rather focus on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.

Remember that an adaptive environment requires adaptive planning. Planning for agile projects look different to what project managers are proficient with on traditional projects. The different levels of agile planning are clearly explained in the image above.

In their book: Adaptive Project Planning, the authors, Christopher and Louise Worsley, found that one of the most distinctive characteristic of high performing project managers is their ability to use their experience and know-how to adapt the planning approach to meet the specific challenges of the project they were managing.

Develop characteristics of Servant Leadership. This is not the answer to it all, but when leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. Read: “Servant Leadership in the Agile context” for more information.

Servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. They facilitate the team’s success by:

promoting self-awareness,
by serving those on the team,
by helping people grow,
active listening,
coaching versus controlling,
promoting safety, respect, and trust,
promoting the energy and intelligence of others.

Part of the transitioning process is to keep learning, because the demand for competent resources and certified practitioners will keep growing globally. If you want to be a complete Agile Project Manager, your learning should include:

Adopting an agile approach to project management
An overview of agile methodologies
Agile planning: project initiating and requirements gathering
Agile planning: doing estimates and completing the release plan
Planning and monitoring iterations on an agile project (example: conceptual sprint plan on scrum)
Leading an agile team
Managing stakeholder engagement on an agile project
Ensuring delivery of value and quality in agile projects

There are many training opportunities available. What you choose, will depend on your circumstances, your project management experience and your new role in the agile context.

In the next article, we will explore some of the Agile Certifications available, as well as the considerations before you make a selection.

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May 8, 2019March 21, 2020 Linky

Servant Leadership in the Agile Context

By Linky van der Merwe

The practice of Servant Leadership is not new, but it is embraced and adopted again with fervor, especially in the context of more organizations following an agile way of working.

What is Servant Leadership Again?

To refresh memory, I want to reiterate the Servant Leadership definition as per Wikipedia:

“Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and a set of leadership practices. Rather than exercising power at the top (traditional), the servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”.

Servant leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in “The Servant as Leader” that was published in 1970. His definition states:

“Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world.”

The most important elements of servant leadership are:

Commitment to developing people
Empathy through trying to see a situation from the other person’s point of view; putting yourself in their shoes
Listening with the intent to understand, not respond
Authenticity through being yourself
Awareness of what is happening in the lives of your team members (including any conflicts and tensions between team members)

Servant Leadership is also known from a religious tradition where in the Bible Jesus is known as the ultimate example of a Servant Leader. In a business context, it can represent a decentralized structure that focuses on employee empowerment and encourages innovation.

Servant leadership is covered quite extensively in the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016). It’s because, once having practiced it, servant leaders can usually see how well servant leadership integrates into the agile mindset and values. When leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. As a result, servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. Successful agile teams also embrace the growth mindset, where people believe they can learn new skills. When the team and the servant leaders believe they can all learn, everyone becomes more capable.

With this clarity of what servant leadership is, what are the responsibilities of Leaders in Agile organisations and what characteristics of servant leadership will enable project leaders to become more agile?

Servant Leader Responsibilities

Here are 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. 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 bridge building activities with external groups. Create upward spirals of appreciation and good will for increased collaboration.

Characteristics of Servant Leadership

According to the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016) the following characteristics of servant leadership enable project leaders to become more agile and facilitate the team’s success:

Promoting self-awareness;
Listening;
Serving those on the team;
Helping people grow;
Coaching vs. controlling;
Promoting safety, respect, and trust;
Promoting the energy and intelligence of others.

Servant Leaders on Agile Projects

Project managers acting as servant leaders will move from “managing coordination” to “facilitating collaboration.” 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.

Honouring the first value of the Agile Manifesto: ‘individuals and interactions over processes and tools’, a servant leader can help to remove organisational impediments. On a practical level you can look at processes that are lengthy, causing bottlenecks and impeding a team’s or organization’s agility. It could be a process established by change control boards, or audits where you can partner 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 4 or more weeks to release due to lengthy release processes.

Servant leaders work to fulfil 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 leaders 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.

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.Because servant leaders understand agile and practice a specific approach to agile, they can assist in fulfilling the team’s needs.

A Mental Shift

Agile project managers need to shift from being the centre 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. Therefore, control of the detailed product planning and delivery is delegated to the team.

Ultimately, the project manager’s focus is on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.