How do we plan for Quality?

At the macro level we have a couple of documents that help us to effectively plan for quality. We have the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) which identifies how I am judging whether the contractor is doing a good job with respect to execution of the Performance work Statement (PWS). Within the scope of the project we have the Quality Management Plan, which identifies the relationship between things like the Use Case Scenario and an Iteration Test Plan, or the RTM and an Integration Test Plan. These are generally really good.

The problem is that there are likely to be many items that are too detailed to be in a Test Plan or management plan that need to be of a certain level of quality for the project to be successful. We aren't going to create a separate Quality Assurance document for each one are we? No. But we can work to cement agreement on what "quality" means for these lower level things.

Lets take a look at a project plan.

Here you can see a project and the detailed lines for finishing the requirements phase and the first two quality assurance/ design sessions. So here you can see "Prepare for QAS - Create and send out Read-Ahead Package (RAP)". We're not going to be creating a separate document on measuring quality on that. I tried to be pretty clear in my work statement when it came to sending out a RAP but there is an opportunity here to be even more clear.

This next image displays the "Notes" field for a work package in the project plan.

Notice how I use this field to identify the details for exactly what I am looking for in this work package. Keep in mind I'm not writing a tome here. But I am creating objective measures for what I expect when it comes to that or any other work package in the plan. If we going to spend 4 or 8 hours on something, I want to know what we're going to get out of that effort.

I recommend using this notes field to capture the quality metrics for work packages on your plan.

When Work is a Pleasure

I can't begin to tell you how awesome this was. As part of my Agency's Black History Month, the Howard University Gospel Choir came and delivered an amazing concert.

This is a picture of them from another event, but let me tell you, they were great. The thing that I came away with was the thought that they are really in control of their dynamics. If you are into music you'll know what I'm talking about. Their pianos were so quiet and their forte`s were shaking the room. I was very surprised by the volume they were able to generate out of such a small group. I think they only had 3 sopranos, and one one piece one of those 3 was singing a solo which left two people to carry that section. And they did it well.

If you ever have the chance to see them, don't miss it. They got me up and out of my seat. I love the enrichment programs we host here. They never cease to surprise me.

Taking the Fuzziness Out of Risk Management

How frequently does your project identify risks that are generalized across the project or program? I see this all the time. I work to mitigate an avoid these generalized risks, and I don't really know if there is any benefit to actually performing this work. For example, I have the following risk:

Closing Requirements
It is important that the requirements are closed on time according to the project plan. Otherwise, the Development Team does not have enough time to implement all the requirements. During the development of Release 2.1, the Role Flexibility requirement discussions extended over a month beyond the closure of the other requirements.

This is a generic, or general risk, not localized to any specific element. In fact, it is a process risk that is telling us that we must be more vigilant about guarding the process.

I use my SharePoint site as the primary mechanism for identifying and monitoring risks. And I have several of these general risks that are not as specific about what needs to be done. To fix this aspect, I am changing my Risk Identification Form to include a section that will allow for references to specific Work Packages in the Project Plan. In this approach I am more closely modeling my Risk ID form from the USDA Risk ID form.

I think that identifying specific work packages impacted by the risk and estimating the best, worst and most likely cases will provide the best opportunity to get out of this fuzzy, 'We have a risk' situation and into a more meaningful discussion that will have real results for my projects. I'll let you know how it goes.

Leave Fingerprints

Honestly I don't remember exactly who it was at the University of Virginia who gave this advise, but, as crazy as it sounds, I've done it every time since I heard it, and I think it is a good idea.

I give lots of presentations. A good number of those presentations have a deck or a PowerPoint slideshow to help deliver the content. Someone at the UVA criticized me and others for not touching the board or the screen. I mean literally touching the screen.

For example, if you are talking about a business process and you have a model of the business process on the slide, you should touch the blocks as you narrate through the business process. If you are talking about the 4th quarter sales, you should touch the slide where the 4th quarter data resides.

This simple thing draws peoples' attention directly to that spot of content and they can't help but pay attention. I started employing this device during my presentations, mostly at the school to get a good grade. But I do it at work because it actually is effective in drawing attention to the point I intend to make. I recommend it for everyone.

The thing I don't recommend is a laser pointer. It is impersonal, and seems lazy. Get up there, get animated and get people excited about what you have to say.

SMART Objectives

I cut down this iconic 30+ minute speech to under 3 because I want to highlight one aspect of the speech. Kennedy did an amazing job establishing his vision of what he wanted to be accomplished, but he did it in a way that exemplifies the idea of SMART Objectives. SMART Objectives is not a concept I created or came up with, but it is a tremendously good idea and I use the concept all the time.

There are two key occasions when we work to identify the objectives. The first opportunity is when we are working with the sponsor. The sponsor is spending money to make a vision come true. What is he or she wanting to achieve for this investment. The problem with this is that right at the beginning of the project, when we are working on the Charter, we don't know very much about the details of what it is going to take to achieve that vision. So we will likely walk away from that process with a couple objectives, but there is a more important time to clarify them; the Kickoff Meeting. The kickoff meeting represents the first time that the stakeholders, all of the disciplines that are necessary for achieving the vision are all assembled in one place. It would truly be a missed opportunity to not look at and consider the objectives that have already been collected, revise them and identify the other objectives that are critical for achieving the vision.

When you go through the process of identifying objectives, be SMART; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

When laying out the vision of what we want to do, be Specific and detailed. Paint a picture and work hard to make sure that everyone is seeing both the problem and the solution the same way.

Be Measurable, take subjectivity out of the scenario to the greatest extent possible. If you can, make the conclusions concerning attainment of the objective binary; you either got it, or you didn't.

The objective should be Achievable or attainable. If it is 10 objectives that need to be met to reach the vision, then you share the responsibility to ensure that those 10 things may be difficult, but aren't impossible.

There is no omnibus legislation in our SMART Objectives. Each objective must be Relevant to the project or outcome we are trying to achieve. We have no room for laundry lists or gold plating. Be careful about this one. If you are not on your game, someone may try to sneak irrelevant objectives into your project and you will be stuck doing work that doesn't help you and may be a distraction.

Time-bound means that we are intending to meet the objective in a specific schedule; that it is not an open-ended situation. For example, if we say that we want to end homelessness, well, we can be working to end it for a long time, and never actually achieve the objective. But if we say that we want to end it by 2015, then that puts a box around the schedule and we know that we will be required to deploy resources to meet the objective, but we will not be deploying those resources forever.

Anyway, when you deal with a sponsor and your stakeholders, think about the concepts of SMART objectives.

Leadership that Gets Results

Yesterday I took a moment to introduce the concept of Emotional Intelligence. I did that so that today we could talk about one of the most important aspects of leadership. I derive my take on this from Daniel Goleman's work, Leadership that Gets Results. For me, this was an eye-opening piece. He identifies the 6 leadership models, Coercive, Authoritative, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting and Coaching.

The point of the article is that the best leaders have mastery with each of these different leadership styles and that the most effective leaders naturally and automatically move into one of these styles depending on the situation. My opinion is that he wastes a little bit of energy in the article talking about how some of these systems can have a cumulative negative impact on the organization, but I'll leave that alone for now.

But take then one by one, Coercive, a dictator. There is a time and place for this leadership style. When I was one of the first employees to arrive at work on a Monday morning and found pipes had burst on some floor above us, that was not the time to sit in a committee. We needed action and action right that second. I don't typically bark orders out to people, but in that type of situation, that was the leadership model that was required.

Authoritative, the visionary. This style, for me, is best used during the kickoff meeting for a project. I paint the picture of what that final solution should look like. Then I enlist support for helping to achieve it. Another good time to use this leadership model is when you have to present to the executives of the Agency. When I need to enlist their support, I want them to jump on my bandwagon, I pull this leadership model out.

Affiliative, the friend. When I was acting as the Branch Chief for a new Branch in IT, I really leveraged this model. The people in the branch have been bouncing around like pinballs for a year, going here and there. I wanted them to know that management cares about them individually, and I tried to begin the process of helping them coalesce into a team.

Democratic. This is the leadership style I primarily use on a program I run called the Management Evaluation Tool. The reason is because I have three distinct programs, WIC, Financial Management and Summer food. Each of these programs has their own priorities and they don't always see eye to eye. By approaching this from a pure democracy perspective I force them to make the compromises that are necessary to propel the system forward.

Pacesetting is my natural style. Before I ever read the article, this was the leadership style that I exclusively used. The mind of a pacesetter is, 'you all should emulate what I am doing over here.' I think that no matter what, in some areas we need our leaders to always set the pace. I expect my leaders to set a perfect example when it comes to ethics, civil rights and fairness.

Coaching is my second most dominant leadership model. I can't explain it, but I have something that drives me to make sure everyone is on the same page and to identify instances in which we aren't all there. When I do, I can't leave it alone until people are caught up. Some people would think that pacesetting is the most tiring leadership model, but I think that coaching is. That is why I am so focused on creating content that will allow me to coach people without actually being there; thinks like training videos and documentation.

Anyway, think of each of these leadership models as different hats. As a leader you need to try on the hats, and experiment to understand the appropriateness and how you handle each one. When you are comfortable with each one, and knowledgeable about the situations to which each is best suited, you have arrived.

I welcome anyone's thoughts on additional leadership models. I think Goleman did a good job with this article but I suspect that there are more than 6 leadership models out there. I would think that there could be some sort of Thought-leader, like Thomas Friedman, in which the leader derives power from cutting edge ideas. Another could perhaps be an Icon, in which the leader derives authority because of his or her ideas are infectious and there is a grass roots effort that pushes the person out front. I don't know, just some ideas. But I definitely think there are more models that people should consider or be aware of.

Emotional Intelligence

I can't believe that I had not written about this before. It is such an important concept to me personally that as time went by I assumed that I had put a piece together on the subject but I went looking for it and came up empty.

Last week I went to dinner with some current participants in my Agency's Leadership Institute and the discussion swung over to what traits or competencies are the most valuable for a leader. For me, there is no better discussion on this topic than Daniel Goleman's work on Emotional Intelligence. (I should not have been able to find the link for a free article.) But since it is there, give it a read, it is worthwhile.

He will walk through the 5 core competencies that are the distinction between someone who is seen as being emotionally intelligent and someone who isn't. The 5 areas, Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Motivation, Empathy and Social Skill are each independently and uniquely critical to the recognition of an emotionally intelligent person. Read and understand this article. Then, think about your EI strengths and weaknesses. For your EI weaknesses, how can you turn them around and make them into strengths?

I mention this because you must have a baseline knowledge in Emotional Intelligence to understand the follow-up, Leadership that Gets Results. (Shhhh, don't tell anyone that I found it out there for free too.) This piece, Leadership that Gets Results has the list of leadership styles to which every leader should try to master. More about that tomorrow. For now, just focus on the What Makes a Leader piece.

For me, the reason I found this to be so important is because I didn't realize that I had a weakness until it was laid out like this for me. After I understood the relationship of these competencies then, and only then could I see that I had a problem area in Self Regulation. Only after I recognized the problem could I take steps to turn it around. It worked for me, and I know it can work for you as well.

Evaluations Are In

I received the evaluations for the training class I delivered last week. I am still satisfied with how the class went, even in light of the evaluations. The scores on the evals were very good and I'm pleased with that. I received a couple comments that indicated that there was too much up-down, up-down.

I can't disagree with that at all. I had an 8-hour day and 10 different group activities. In fact, I had already consolidated two activities into one. There would have been 11 activities. I just took another look at the PowerPoint looking for another group activity that I could consolidate or cut. I would be very reluctant to cut anything and I don't think I could consolidate any others. The reason I say this is because these activities start slowly but they build off of each other. I pull the string of a single project through the entire day. If I consolidated activities people wouldn't be focusing on the new concept I want them to try out as much if they had to divide their time among concepts.

The other thing about having the group activities was to eliminate the need for discrete breaks. I didn't want to lose time with restroom breaks. By structuring the activities like this I gave people lots of opportunities to have their breaks. I found that I was really behind schedule at about 10 or 10:30. But I made up time during the last part of the morning.

The other criticism, also a fair one, was whether it made sense to use a wedding as a project. Remember I'm from IT, so my comfort-level would have been to select an IT project. But if you aren't in IT that may not be relevant to you. In truth the content of the project was less important to me than the opportunity to witness the process in action. In the end I decided to choose a project that everyone could relate to. Are the 'stakeholders' of a wedding as discrete as the stakeholders for another type of project? No, but that was the one area in which I needed a little latitude. Each of the other knowledge areas adapted well to a wedding project. So if there is a different type of project that I could use, I would be happy to, but i can't think of other projects that everyone can relate to. The other aspect on the project, is that I kept it light. I picked a project that people could have fun with. The scope of a wedding is bound only by a person's imagination. So I would be happy to use another project and if I was delivering this content to a bunch of IT people, I would probably choose and IT project, or a project that is consistent with their baseline knowledge.

Anyway, I am please with the evaluations and happy that the participants took the time to give me something to think about.

URL Change

I decided to change the URL of the blog today. I had a tough decision to make. I ended up going with Timapedia over Timitopia, TimsPlanet, and a few others. My good friend Jennifer helped to shape my thinking on which way to go.

The old URL, whyareyoulookinguphere (why are you looking up here) was a joke that nobody got, so rather than stick with a bad joke that wasn't even that funny, I decided to make the switcheroo. It is OK to actually 'Follow' on this. That way, if I get bored with Timapedia, you don't have to worry about whether I'll send you an email telling you what the new domain name is. That's it for now, I'll post something good tomorrow.