A friend of mine is just starting an agile project and is having discussions with her organisation’s top PM about how he believes he needs to begin to address the project’s needs, particularly in relation to staffing.

The approach he was dictating will be rather familiar to a lot of you:

1. A PM will lead and manage the project
2. A BA is needed to undertake analysis and design of the solution, perhaps coupled with an enterprise architect or a solutions architect.
3. A Developer (or three) is needed to produce the software solution. He’ll also work out how long the project will take based during the initiation phase on assessment of the number of use-cases in the requirements documentation
4. A Test Manager is required to do the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and ensure the solution doesn’t break when introduced to the big wide world.
5. You might need an IA or user-experience engineer to help with UAT at the end of the project, or if you’re really advanced in your thinking, they might be involved up front to help clarify the project solution and identify the sets of users’ needs from information classification to navigation paradigms.
6. … add 4 weeks for requirements and 2 weeks up-front for project initiation, 4 weeks for testing (UAT) at the end, and voila! you’ve got your project plan, n’est pas? (… hmmm … maybe not?)

Given her project is expected to last about 12 months, as soon as you put a PM and a BA on the books, even if its only the equivalent of 1 FTE, you’re already looking at $0.25 million or so before you actually deliver something. So, I put the question to her as to whether you start with roles or whether aspects of what users say they require need to be assessed, prioritised, and then look at the skills needed with people who have those skills to then follow.

Some people think it’s a chicken and egg thing. How do you know where to start if a PM doesn’t sit down and plan out the schedule and a BA assess what’s required? Do you need to do this before you establish that you need a PM to manage the project and a BA to do the analysis?

In essence, preparing for an agile project is just a different way of thinking. Gone are the days where I personally just automatically assign a PM and a BA because I just can’t afford the overhead of having someone to intermittently gauge project risks, update gantt charts (note: I now use Kanban instead) and dictate to the team the tasks they should be doing just because the schedule says to do so.

Here’s my top 10 on how I now begin my agile projects:

1. I write-up a basic project requirement — after all, you’ve got to start with a list of basic user needs and what that might mean in relation to a solution. I know some organisations who will spend about $10K and two weeks doing initial requirements gathering, interviewing users and/or conducting workshops, and producing something simple to communicate what the project needs.

   Me? I like to start with a collection of user stories, a few personas, create storyboards for them in a workshop environment with post-its and pens, and discuss what those user stories might mean in relation to features and sets of features. This typically takes me (and some SMEs like an enterprise architect and an experienced senior BA) a few days.

2. I then group the requirements into logical feature sets and prioritise them based on an initial assessment of value to the end-user. Card sorting with users is a good way to involve users in ascertaining priority.
3. I then draw a line in the sand that describes the most simple, skinny solution — one that essentially has to be delivered in about 8 weeks.
4. I ascertain what documentation might be required or activities that need to be undertaken
   
5. I assess what skills are required to complete the activities. If in doubt, check what you needed last time to produce a certain widget, document, or feature set. Document and baseline it often enough and this task becomes a breeze. Record how long it took and suddenly you’ll be able to have a better guess as to how long you’ll need to complete the task.
6. I then source the people with the right skills and note during the iteration of what feature set when they are required. I don’t care if they call themselves a PM, a BA, or an IA. If they have the right skills for the right job then I want them.
7. To mitigate against loss of knowledge because different people are involved at different times I use virtual teams to baseline and benchmark specific project elements, like the UI, interaction design, systems architecture, etc. In practice, this means gathering together, for example, all the analysts to have their own stand-up meetings about twice a week and have the most experienced among them take a Sensei role. These Sensei’s have their own stand-up meetings with the Roshi to communicate issues with the baseline.
8. If I’ve got multiple feature sets to produce in the skinny solution I group the feature sets into logical bundles and assign each bundle to a team. Of course this can cause fragmentation of the solution, particularly with respect to the UI and interaction design. Leveraging the Sensei in the virtual teams however mitigates the likelihood of this occurring.
9. Each team then needs someone to champion user needs and mentor people to make them more capable to deliver what the project needs (now and in the future) — the team’s Sensei. I simply choose the person that has the most experience and willingness to mentor. Some agile practitioners call this the Product Owner, Product Owner Proxy, the Product Manager or even just the Team Lead (I’m quite partial to Japanese terms and titles though, particularly given they don’t carry a lot of role ‘baggage’ with them).
10. I then choose the most experienced Sensei amongst all the groups to be the Roshi — the person who will champion the project, teach and mentor the team members, be involved in producing aspects of the project, hold morning standups and communicate issues and risks to the Steering Committee. Some call this the Scrum Master, the Project Lead, the Project Director, or the Project Manager. I don’t care about the title overall, I just want them to:
    1. lead
    2. communicate
    3. champion the project,
    4. not be an ‘extra’ or an ‘overhead’. I want them to be part of the solution and intimately familiar with it.

    When I suggested this to a group of PMs in a government department recently someone asked me whether this essentially meant that PMs needed to go out and learn new skills. I simply responded by saying that this was an opportunity for PMs to adapt and learn in order to add greater value to a project.

Working this way to sort out how to begin your agile project isn’t hard. Importantly, it emphasises that from the outset of the project that adding value to users is important and your roles are subservient to that cause.

M

Storyboards are a great way to describe a user’s journey, their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, capabilities, behaviours and expectations, throughout a single scenario. They’re light-weight, easy to do, and as a visual tool can be used in workshops or just by a couple of members of the team. They also work perflectly on agile projects because they’re visual and, therefore, an instant placeholder for a conversation.

Here’s my tips for doing your own storyboards:

1. Do your personas first. This way you’ll know, even at a basic level, who the people in your stories will be, how they think about their work and their behavioural attitudes.

2. Put the persona into the scenario: From the persona’s perspective describe their thoughts and actions as they try to undertake the actions required of the scenario. This is where the user stories written on your agile story cards meet your personas on agile projects.

3. Stick to a single scenario: You’ll be tempted to start to include a whole range of other things in your storyboard. Just keeping it simple will help. The only rule is that the storyboard must be logical and tell a user’s story from beginning to end.

4. Stick figures are ok to! Many people shy away from storyboards because they think they can’t draw. But if you can draw speech bubbles, thought clouds, and a stick figure then you can draw storyboards. If you draw some hair on the stick figure then you can differentiate between Steve and John — which is very useful when one user in the storyboard is, for example, sending a message to another because then you need include both of them in the story.

5. Include thoughts and feelings: It’s easy just to describe the logical sequence of events. The story becomes more personal, though, and thereby more real, if you include thought clouds and speech bubbles. This will ultimately mean people will be able to identify with the story and thereby make your storyboards more effective.

6. Post-its and pens: I always use storyboards because I can do it in a moment’s notice with a Sharpie and post-it notes. This makes it very easy to swap post-its around, draw new ones, until I get all the logic right.

I then take a photo of the storyboard sequence (everyone has a camera on their phone these days) as a baseline and take the post-its into a workshop where I validate my logic by comparing it to the way users’ sequence the elements.

If necesary, I’ll then take the storyboard and convert it into a workflow diagram in Visio as a communication of the user-to-system interactions that helps to clarify use cases for the BAs and developers … but that’s a blog post for another day.

M

“GO UCD! Intervarsities finals!!!! UCD! UCD! ” (tweet)

[Julie Galloway, Twitter, 28 November]

“UCD is appealing to developers to build apartments for student accommodation. University College Dublin has put out to tender for accommodation which is due to be ready by August 2010. It is thought this is the first time the university has put out feelers for new accommodation …” (more)

[Claire Murphy, Herald, 27 November]

Part 4

August 2007 – August 2008

Dublin, Ireland

I move to Dublin to begin the masters programme in Cultural Policy and Arts Management at University College Dublin. I find a basement flat (and a fantastic Irish flatmate, Siobhán) perfectly situated between campus and city centre.

I am intermittently homesick and can’t ever wake up wide eyed with the gray days. I seem to always be cold.

I wait until the week after my mom visits me to get my first tattoo, write many letters, get a piggy back ride from a German guy through the streets of Madrid, attempt to cross stitch, learn how to pour a pint of Guinness, jump up and down to music, drink massive amounts of hot tea, go through countless umbrellas, finish a thesis, and avoid the bus whenever I can.

40s Ball

I am surrounded by a lovely group of people that make up my class and am presented with minds that challenge my own. (I am not pleased to report that I can’t tell you exactly what everyone is doing at the moment.)

Class trip to Liverpool

I am able to travel to some of Europe with friends, with family, and solo.

Family

Fernando, Siobhán, Me

Solo

I’m fortunate enough to have a friend come visit me during St. Patrick’s Day and get a little annoyed with the tourist filled streets of what I feel to be my home city (even if temporary).

Dustin & I, St. Stephen's Green

Glendalough

I know that I changed during the year, but it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how. What I do know is that it’s no easier to make decisions now about where to live and what I should do. Getting my MA didn’t exactly give me the clarity that I was expecting, but I’m okay with that.

I do miss this city.

To be continued…

“UCD men’s hockey team took on Fingal at the National Hockey Stadium in Belfield last Saturday, looking to extend their unbeaten run to three games. Taking on a Fingal side coming off the back of two successive losses, this was a good opportunity for College to push themselves above their opponents in the table with a win …” (more)

[Killian Woods, University Observer, 24 November]

“UCD have won the First Division fair play award. http://ucdsoccer.com/index ….” (tweet)

[UCD AFC, Twitter, 25 November]

“Were you one of those verbally abused, physically blocked from entering, herded from your bus at the entrances to UCD today, had people sitting on the bonnet of your car? Democratic right to protest? What about democratic right to cross a picket? …” (discussion thread)

[Boards.ie, 25 November]

Students from all UC’s (UCI, UCSD, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCD, UCSB, UCSC, UC Merced, UCR) gather to address the fee hikes induced to widen the education gap between the privileged and less so.
UC Regents Pass 32% Fee Increase on Students, Sparks Outrage

Daily Nexus
November 19, 2009

UCLA

UC Berkeley

“The University Observer can exclusively reveal major security flaws within the UCD Registry, which allow an individual to gain access to the detailed academic records of any UCD graduate. UCD’s Student Desk supplied The University Observer with copies of full academic statements for two recent graduates, after this newspaper compiled two standard application forms impersonating the students whose grades were being sought …” (more)

[Gavan Reilly, University Observer, 24 November]

“After multiple breaches of confidentiality, why are UCD Schools and administration not taking the protection of student details seriously? Michelle McCormick examines the lack of data protection in UCD and asks why it’s such a low priority for the powers that be …” (more)

[Michelle McCormick, University Observer, 24 November]

“UCD’s first year footballers overcame a determined challenge from Queen’s University Belfast on a blustery Wednesday afternoon last week, in the quarter final of the Fresher’s Cup. On home ground, however, the UCD side had a very difficult time subduing this physical Queen’s outfit …” (more)

[Patrick Guiney, University Observer, 24 November]

“The ucd strikers are a bit much trying to block the gates” (tweet)

[jgal713, Twitter, 24 November]

I wish my friends and I would look like these group of girls when we go out!

Then we’d totally stand out. Before I say anything else, I just want to say that I love my friends… but I wish they would dress up more! Not even dress up, but just wear heels out or something. This year, I’ve started to actually wear shoes with heels to school. Not like fugly prom heels, but they’re oxford booties which are quite comfortable and appropriate. But I don’t care how my friends dress to school, but when we go out… I feel overdressed wearing what I deem as casual streetwear!

I attend UCD, and the times that I’ve gone out to the bars and whatnot, girls just wear t-shirts and flip flops! It totally discourages me from putting any effort at all into what I wear when I go out Anyway, I sound like such a hater haha, but I promise I’m actually really nice!

my Chictopia page!

Sandy

Signs posted in Dutton hall protesting the UC fee increase.

“More than 50 senior academics are retiring from UCD this year, ahead of a clampdown on generous pension top-ups. Some of them are getting up to 10 years added to their pensions, but in future the maximum is expected to be reduced to five. Topping up academics’ pensions has been custom and practice for decades …” (more)

[John Walshe and Michael Brennan, Independent, 20 November]

“Third-level colleges will stay open next Tuesday but severe disruption of lectures is expected. University College Cork will close but that is because of flooding. University College Dublin said some students had assessments and/or assignment submissions scheduled for Tuesday …” (more)

[John Walshe, Independent, 21 November]

Blogmeister’s note: So if all I’m hearing and reading is correct (a big assumption) that means that TCD, UCD, NUIM and NUIG will be open but will have pickets; UL and DCU will be open and without pickets; and UCC will just be sweeping up the mess, with no pickets, but no teaching either, for the whole of the week. Do I have it right, or can someone with local knowledge give us a better picture? And what’s  happening in the ITs?

“Last week, UCD competed in the 2009 All-Ireland Intervarsities, hosted by University College Cork. Every year, the competition sees Ireland’s colleges square off on a volleyball court over a three-day tournament, with the winning teams being offered a much coveted place in the EVA Student Cup in Leeds …” (more)

[UCD Volleyball, 19 November]

Google has introduced a new way of image search called, Google Image Swirl. When you search a particular place, object, person or product, it groups all similar images into a ‘thumbnail’ which you can further expand to see more.

Here’s what Official Google Blog has to say:

Image Swirl expands on technologies developed for Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to discern how images should be grouped together and build hierarchies out of these groups. Each thumbnail on the initial results page represents an algorithmically-determined representative group of images with similar appearance and meaning. These aren’t just the most relevant images — they are the most relevant groups of images.

Image Swirl currently works for more than 200,000 queries and we plan to include more queries in the future. Available queries will auto-complete as you start to type in the search box, similar to Google Suggest.

Try it yourself.

Early morning photo of the UC Davis Arboretum.

I’ve been approached to write a paper out of my MSc dissertation.  It’s something I dreamt about as a spotty psychology undergraduate in the tropics of North Queensland, Australia. 

However, I must confess I am finding the prospect of actually writing an academic paper a scary prospect.  I’m happy to be collaborating with another past MSc student who followed up my research as I feel like I will have someone to share the journey with.  

We applied a user-centred methodology to investigating chronic pain patients’ needs for support in managing their pain.  At the start of the research we were not confined by technological constraints – it was a case of identifying the problems and letting the user needs suggest the best mode of delivery.  

The reason we decided to do this research is because the user-centred design approach had not been applied to chronic pain management tools development.  The development of medical devices and interfaces are still heavily software development process driven and any user requirements identified tends to be led by medical practitioners.

I started the investigation using interviews and literature review to identify the main problems that chronic pain patients experience when applying pain management methods in the home environment.  

This provided a list of user needs covering communication, reminders and information requirements which were then validated with patients.  My colleague performed further analysis of the interview data and supplemented this data with further interviews.  She identified further requirements and created personas and scenarios to show the target user goals and the context and paths of use.  It was at this stage that the type of system that would be helpful to solve the chronic pain management issues started to emerge.

Anyway I will update over the coming months as to our progress and the steps we take in getting our paper considered for publication.

Wish me luck!

“A new row over third-level funding has been sparked by student union claims that colleges are using most of their €1,500-a-head registration charges to plug gaps in state funding. The claim by student representatives in the country’s two largest universities, TCD and UCD, will be investigated by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) …” (more)

[Katherine Donnelly, Independent, 20 November]