Avoiding the Dumpster Fire

I have seen this ugliness before.

Technology is evolving and improving.  What is not improving is how we lead technology projects.  I have been in the business for twenty years, and it is clear how we lead technology projects needs significant improvement.  Last week news broke Hertz rental car was suing Accenture for 32 million dollars because it could not deliver improvements to its website.  I am surprised this kind of thing does not happen more often because plenty of large projects burn through obscene amounts of cash.  On the blog this week I want to talk about project failure and how it should provide businesses with a model on how not to do large projects.

Nathan Allen writes an excellent blog on all the things which went wrong during the Hertz affair.  It would be amusing if it did not involve the squandering of millions of dollars.  It contains all the usual culprits in a massive software delivery death march.  Salespeople made promises to executive and then forced technology professional to keep them.  Poor infrastructure at the client exacerbated poor development from the consulting company.  The deadlines were unrealistic, and the client abdicated all responsibility for the success of the project.  Add in a pinch of arrogance from a top tier consulting firm, and you have a perfect example of what scrum masters and project managers alike call a dumpster fire. 

Nothing is more dispiriting than working on a dumpster fire project.  It stinks, and it is fraught with getting your career burned.  Often, developers put their heads down and hope no one blames them for the catastrophe.  The main reason for this state of affairs is large projects are so big that any small setback will grind the project to a halt.  The state of affairs undermines the psychological safety of the people doing the work, and everyone is afraid to step forward and be honest with project leaders.  I suspect this was the primary factor why the project failed.

Deadlines were missed and missed multiple times.  When it was over, 32 million dollars disappeared.  What makes the entire episode more galling is Accenture refused to do more work unless Hertz paid more money to fix a broken project.  Failure crashed into failure setting more money on fire, and the only solution was to throw more money into the flames.

I have worked with several people from Accenture.  They are very good at selling products and getting paid, but they are not good at delivering results.  In the world where they work, it was more important to get paid than it was to provide value.  According to the agile manifesto, this is a refutation of the value of customer collaboration over contract negotiation.  It is clear Accenture is more interested in contracts than helping customers.

I entered the agile reformation because I wanted to build things rather than toil in obscurity.  I have worked on projects where we extracted money and value from the customer rather than deliver it.  Working on a project like this does pay the bills, but it does not move the practice of software development forward or improve the reputation of the development profession. It is up to experienced agile and project management professionals to pour cold water on these dumpster fires.  The business needs to set a standard which is more than watching piles of money burn.  Otherwise, we will have more trash fires like Hertz and Accenture.

Until next time.

No Estimates have a spot at the Campfire

Lots of debate around the campfire.

One of the best things about being a member of the Agile community is the smart and enthusiastic people you encounter online and in person.  It is refreshing and challenging to be around people who have a shared vision of making business faster, sustainable, and more intelligent.  The commitment to the goals of agile does not mean we are ideologically unified and dogmatic.  Like any healthy practice, we disagree with each other about basic principles, ways to spread adoption, and innovations.  The creative tension is essential.  I want to add my two cents to an on-going debate which a colleague Ryan Ripley brought to my attention from the sober and restrained convention floor of the #BetterSoftwareCon in Las Vegas. 

The #NoEstimates movement has become a very vocal camp in the agile reformation.  If you follow the debate, it is easy to see why.  The estimation process at many companies is farcical and corrupt.  Story points were created to provide the benefits of estimation without the obvious drawbacks.  The #NoEstimates crowd take this to a logical conclusion and say estimating is a waste of time and energy.

I do not feel very strongly about #NoEstimates.  What makes it interesting is it provides a different perspective to authoring software.  Neil Killick then posted a white paper this week showing some qualitative measurements which show a no estimates approach works just as well as a story point approach.  

I was skeptical but, I decided to give the article the benefit of the doubt.  Killick uses T-Shirt sizes to measure ambiguity and difficulty.  Using arithmetic and charts, he shows how he can forecast project completion.  The approach is well thought out and clear.  It is also story points dressed up to look like #NoEstimates.  It requires the product owners to spend time doing arithmetic instead of writing stories and working with customers and developers.  Personally, I struggle getting product owners to perform the basics of their duties.  Thus, using Killick’s approach may work for a different agile implementation but not for mine. 

I genuinely dislike debates which generate more heat than light.  Killick provides a good approach for a more mature agile team.  I am glad I had a chance to learn about it and will keep it in my chest of tools if I feel it worth trying.  The agile manifesto says, “Individuals and interactions over, processes and tools.” I believe that Killick’s approach is a process which might work with a particular set of individuals.  I also think that discussion of #NoEstimates is good for the agile movement.  People try out ideas, test them, and they are adopted or rejected over time.  It sounds mighty agile to me.

Until next time. 

The Hero's journey is no substitute for a product

A hero's journey is not a substitute for a product.

Each entrepreneur goes through a sort of hero’s journey.  If they are lucky, once that journey is finished they will emerge out of the other side stronger, wiser, and accomplishing something amazing.  It is no secret the technology world uses the language of science fiction and fantasy.  That is why a company which becomes extremely profitable it is called a unicorn.  As an agilest and entrepreneur, I convince myself that I am lucky and smart enough to aspire to this status.  It is the story I tell myself.  In the dark moments, it is what keeps me going.  This week, I want to talk about when story telling crosses the shadowy line from inspiration to deception.

Carl Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis, articulated the idea the human species has a “collective unconsciousness.”  This collective unconsciousness is the common characters or myths humans use to describe themselves.  The collective unconsciousness also describes what the human species aspires to become.

Joseph Campbell then built on Jung’s work in 1948 with his book, “The Hero with A Thousand Faces,” which talks about the similarities between the mythologies of western and tribal cultures.  Roman Gods were compared with the traditions of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines.  The similarities were too hard to ignore.  We had academic proof that the human species has a common story telling tradition.

Now that this knowledge was out in the open it did not take long for others to exploit it.  One of them was a University of Southern California graduate, who just has a hit film entitled “American Graffiti.”  The other was a technology entrepreneur who cultivated the image of a mystic shaman while he sold music players and later phones.

To be successful, a company needed a story and a heroic figure to pitch that story to the media and client.  It was a way of cutting through the clutter and getting the message out.  That lesson was not lost on Elizabeth Holms who dropped out of Stanford to found her company Theranos.   She created an image which was a frittata of Hitchcock’s icy blond, Steve Jobs techno shaman, and the elegant intelligence of Meryl Streep.  Her story was simple, she was going to change the world making blood testing affordable and less invasive.  She was smart enough and stubborn enough to found a company and make it happen.

The technology press swallowed the story hook, line and sinker.  Soon she was featured in press write ups, on television promoting her company, and receiving millions of dollars in venture capital.  I will not go into the details of Theranos and the fraud they committed.  Vanity Fair Magazine has already done an outstanding job on that front.  Suffice to say, Elizabeth Holms had a good story to sell but didn’t have a product.  Her blood testing tool was nothing but fantasy.

The lesson here is that every story should have a grounding in reality.  You cannot change the world with your products if your products do not work.  The rumpled engineers have to build something before the myth makers in sales and marketing come along.  Telegenic good looks and a story are not a substitute for business acumen and a product.

Anyone who grew up during the stupid and giddy time of the dot.com bubble should have known how this story was going to end.  They chose to ignore it and suspend disbelief because the story was good.  Instead of a hero’s journey, what the public got was a true crime story of fraud and greed.
It is a sobering lesson for an entrepreneur and consumer.  I hope that we are smart enough to recognize it before it happens again.

Until next time.