No longer is agile a purely software development methodology reserved for techies – organizational leaders across all industries are looking to adopt Agile methodologies, or at least some form of agility in their own field.

I’ve asked project managers how to illustrate the concept of Agile in a simple engaging way that every kid can understand. Here’s my collection of answers.

1

If you take the purest meaning of agile, which is how I always explain it to my children, agile is about being able to move quickly and easily. — Belkis Vasquez-McCall, USA

2

You remember when we were at a zoo? The organization is like a big zoo, but a human one. There are many different kinds of people with different kinds of food to eat — interests. Agile is something to connect them better, to let them eat together and share their food with each other. Only then the organization can change as quick as a leopard and adapt like a chameleon. If they don’t, the lion will come and eat them. And we don’t want this, so it’s better to learn agile. — Aleš Štempihar, Slovenia

3

Agile Project Management is when you have a boring and complicated school task that you transform into an exciting game with your friends. All of you contribute to the game, using your skills and interests, and the task gets done. — Yulia Tchernaya, Denmark

Agile can take on many meanings as you continue along your agile journey. Complacency can set in, which is dangerous because it can truly make agile feel almost the opposite of how it should be. Instead of enabling us to move quickly and easily, sometimes we get so bogged down with processes and documentation that we seem to do more moving by standing still and talking about moving than actually getting the job done.

4

Like building something from LEGO and whatever you decide to make any time, you will always have all the pieces you need and always have the correct instructions. — Barry Curry, Ireland

While you’re here, would you like to check out the results of our Project Manager Book Survey 2018?

5

Son, you know when dad arrives from work, very hungry? Agile is like when we keep bringing him tapas rather than keeping him waiting for an elaborate main dish. — Marisa Silva, United Kingdom

Agile has several different flavors, but in most cases agile means you get started on something before you’re completely ready to get started. You then have a time box — say, two weeks — during which you are expected to deliver. At the end of that time box, you show what you did, and then you get input from others on whether or not to move forward. Over the next two weeks, you repeat that process and move progressively forward until you’ve achieved your goal.

6

Son, when grandpa and grandma married, a long time ago, times were tough and they didn’t have much money to build a big house (like Auntie Rose has). This was October and winter was coming so they had to build something very quick at first – here, have a look at this picture. Yeah, it was a very small house, just with the basic but grandpa ensured that the foundations and the roof were solid enough to survive winter. Then summer came and grandpa started adding to it — first, the living room, then he also extended the kitchen because grandma needed more space to cook. And for the next two years he was incrementally improving their house: here’s another picture, when he added the porch and the garden in the back. Grandpa did it all by himself (with the help of uncle Tom sometimes) and grandma was really happy with what they built. And that, son, is what Agile is about too! — Marisa Silva, United Kingdom

7

When my nearly two-year-old frames a question ever so thoughtfully by starting with “Daddy… I want to….”, however that ends, the next question is “Great. What’s the fastest and easiest way to do that?” Now you’re agile, kiddo. — Pete Adams, Australia

8

When you’re trying to build a prototype of the Eiffel Tower, just using your LEGO parts, that’s called the AGILE Version of Building a REAL one. — Afshin Montazami, Iran

All roads lead to Agile, but some project managers even try to explain backlog prioritizing to kids.

9

Backlog prioritizing is like sorting your LEGO. You put your favorite pieces into one box, so it is easy to reach them, and the other, less important ones, into the box that goes on the top shelf. A backlog is like all the homework you need to do. — Yulia Tchernaya, Denmark

But sometimes project managers have a hard time when a kid asks who’s a stakeholder. Then classmates, teachers, and principals automatically become stakeholders.

10

Treating and building good relationships with teachers, peers, and your principal is the same as building healthy relationships with clients or vendors, which in turn is a crucial aspect of Project Management. — Mayur Sonawane, India

11

Agile is what you do when the ice-cream shop you went to turned out to be closed. If you’re not agile, you go home because your plan was foiled. If you’re agile, you figure out something equally fun to do. — Allen Holub, United States

12

You know when mommy says NO and you go ask dad? That’s Agile. — Perry Watkins, United States

13

I want you to get dressed in the morning. You can do that yourself. These are the things we plan to do this week so you must pick your clothes accordingly. They need to be fit for purpose. You can’t go to school in your swimming costume, for example. Even though we have planned what we are going to wear, we have to expect that things may change. If it is raining you will need a raincoat. If it is hot, you probably won’t want a coat at all. Being able to change your mind on what you choose to wear is O.K. as long as you always wear what is fit for purpose and you always leave the house on time. You may make a mistake. You may not take a coat when you need one. We learn from mistakes so we don’t repeat them. — Kerry Burns, United Kingdom

14

I would describe a backlog as a washing basket. They add the clothes and when it’s time, you pull the clothes out of the basket that can go into the wash (the sprint) together. — Kerry Burns, United Kingdom

15

Well — we might make a mistake, so we work in small steps and ask ‘is this right?’ at each step. That way if we get something wrong, or have to change something, it’s not a disaster. — Guy Maslen, New Zealand

16

I would use examples from everyday life to explain these terms. I think kids (even adults!) learn more from concrete examples that they can learn from books. For example, set up a Kanban board on the fridge for household chores and work through it for a few weeks. The kids would begin by helping their parents create the Product Backlog, then volunteering to do certain chores (listed on the backlog) the next week. — Kirk Bryde, Canada

17

I’d say (very tongue in cheek) that a good parent has a child that says DOD before daddy. I used to scrum my little one’s bath time routines. Whiteboard and all. But had to stop when I was challenged on the DOR being my job to have bubble bath already in the water. — Garin Reyneke, South Africa

18

Mhm. I don’t do Jargon with the kids. My daughter composes music. Every couple of days, she plays a new or modified piece to me and asks how I like it. Sometimes, the feedback is along the lines of, “A bit too exciting”, but usually like, “I wish it was longer”  or, “Very enjoyable.” When I like it, she introduces the piece to her peers. — Michael Küsters, Germany

19

Depending on their age, I’d probably talk about planning a weekend, to get the best out of it. A list of things they want to do. A list of things they ought to do even if they don’t want. Prioritize and rough the schedule. During the weekend I’d ask them what happens if a friend calls with a good idea. Rearrange to fit it in? What happens if a friend / the weather cancels something that was planned? Rearrange. I’d encourage them to have a look back on Sunday evening. Was it a better weekend than usual? What do we want to keep? Want do we want to do better? — Paul Oldfield, United Kingdom

20

Agile is when groups of people believe that we can consistently break down work into smaller, simpler chunks and build something that is valuable to other people. As we keep doing this, we always see if there are ways we can do better, and make things more valuable. Imagine you and four friends started building the LEGO Voltron set. We’d break it down by having each of you work on one of the 5 lions. As each of you completed each step, you’d check your work, or have someone else check it, to make sure it was right. After you completed all the little steps, you’d each have built a single lion, which is valuable already. However, when you all come together and combine the lions, you’ve now formed Voltron, a giant robot who defends the universe from evil! Had you started by building one lion, then the next one, and so on until all 5 were done, it would have taken you much longer to form Voltron, and the universe would not have been protected. — Marc Morell, United States

21

Agile is what you do at your (Montessori) school, where the motto is: “Help me do it myself.” Many people haven’t been at such schools, therefore they still have to learn how to do things themselves, and then they need a word for that. Don’t worry about that word. You are already doing it. — Niels Malotaux, Germany

22

It’s like a group science/ social studies project assignment at school where you brainstorm, plan, assign or take up the work deciding who will do what, build, test in case if it’s a science project, finally submit your work with the presentations. And just like your grades, cumulative of data/fact, display, presentation, and how happy everyone felt looking at your project, etc. all this is done by teamwork. Or playing candy crush with your friends having to finish a level with at least one star (which is horrible) before moving to the next level. — Aneeta Gupta, United States

What is agile? It all depends on who you ask. Let’s enrich this collection of thoughts. Leave your ideas in the comment section below and don’t forget to subscribe to be the first to get project management insights of an even higher caliber.

Illustration: Copyright © Zhenya Oliinyk

The post Project Managers Explain Agile to Kids appeared first on PM Column.

As outlined in their latest report The Project Manager of the Future, the next stage of project management development will demand a focus on data science skills, innovation, security and privacy knowledge, legal and regulatory compliance knowledge, ability to make data-driven decisions, and collaborative leadership skills.

To be in the fast lane, project managers will have to pay more attention to these six project management competencies. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Data Science Skills

The year 2019 rolled around and presented a new spectrum of competencies for digital project managers to embrace. The first top skill, according to PMI researchers, is the ability to extract knowledge from data with the purpose of improving project outcomes.

To put it simply, business environments will encourage project managers to collect data and draw lessons from past experience, this time backed up by graphs and numbers. Different data sets will become the main decision drivers on various stages of project management — from initiating to closing a project.

Digital project managers will have to learn to view past projects as leverage to perform better in the future. Additionally, they will be held responsible for generating such organizational data that will determine which particular employee skills will complement future projects.

But it’s not the only way how data analytics is expected to influence project management. Based on data, project experts will be able to see if their projects are on track and predict any deviations from their plan if problems crop up.

Innovative Mindset

A course on innovation depends on how ready you are to invest in new project management tools and approaches. Attaining a rank of an innovator can be difficult in risk-averse organizations, though.

According to one PMI article, there are three obstacles that stand in the way of project managers developing this skill. Firstly, some organizations prefer time-tested practices over new ideas. Secondly, despite there is free project management software, tools designed to help PM experts innovate pass by their attention and remain inconspicuous. The power of up-to-date project management software is overlooked or misunderstood by many organizations.

Finally, project managers’ third obstacle is time, or a lack of it, to be specific.  So many different tactical demands and project initiatives should go firsthand, right?

Whatever the project environment, abandoning innovation all together is nearly always counterproductive. — PMI

Nevertheless, you can fuse a variety of methods into your work process that will foster the culture of innovation in your company. The 6-3-5 method, the pool method, the pin card method, the clustering technique — they were all designed to steer the growth of new ideas.

Security and Privacy Knowledge

Needless to say, security and privacy knowledge doesn’t fall outside the remit of the PMO office. Project managers have their part to play in building security into projects they manage.

PMI started to focus on security and privacy knowledge due to the reason that more and more projects are becoming dependent on information systems, which, unfortunately, have security flaws. According to the UK Office for National Statistics, cybercrime now makes up 40% of all recorded criminal incidents in the United Kingdom.

This haul of cyber security attacks should be a concern for every project manager. You never know which project will become the next victim of a breach, so it’s better to weigh up all possible consequences that might follow an attack of this kind. “Without solid knowledge of security, your projects could open your organization to crippling threats,” writes Nick Ismail, a cybersecurity correspondent for Information Age.

What is this ‘solid knowledge,’ then? Are project managers supposed to become cybersecurity experts? No, it will suffice if they know what kind of data they’re dealing with and protect it by all means. In fact, it’s a good idea to start building communication plans and take steps to inform their teams about the value of data they hold.

Legal and Regulatory Compliance Knowledge

At every workplace, there will always be borders employees cannot cross and limits they cannot exceed. There will be different factors and rules that your organization, country, or other institution, has set up to ensure a common process and vision on how things should be done.

In Switzerland, for instance, it’s considered illegal to own only one goldfish. But let’s have a closer look at legal and regulatory compliance knowledge as it relates to project management directly. Every organization has its own rules, laws, and requirements that have an impact on different aspects of project management. These standards may concern budget control, management of scope, and other deliverables.

As you forbid your children to talk to strangers, the same way your company prohibits you from disclosing private project information to PM Column, for example. As unbelievable as it may sound, the company can also establish an appropriate length of your beard or allow only emails written with purpose (check out these 25 ridiculous and crazy workplace rules).

Creating a successful project with compliance, however, doesn’t necessarily mean reaching a specific goal — the journey is just as imperative.

As a manager, you should keep asking yourself if everything you do at the moment adheres to your company’s codex. Were your processes — the planning phase, the execution phase, and the delivery phase — compliant with recent regulations established by your CEO? Do you communicate properly within your projects? Does your team receive regular feedback? Lines of questions. Digital project managers should not only be able to answer them all and plan based on definite criteria, but capable of reacting fast to new regulations that come up their way.

Ability to Make Data-Driven Decisions

Most companies sense that data should form the core of their best project management practices. Using data analytics to focus on different levels of project, program, and portfolio management, project managers will be able to make better decisions and, eventually, improve project outcomes. The power data can give to project managers manifests itself in:

• knowledge if what they are doing is what they really intended to do
• insights who or what preempts an initial plan
• better awareness of true project delivery dates
• the ability to make impactful decisions backed up by numbers

Organizations that want to become data-driven will expect project managers to use different kinds of metrics. But you should learn what data can do for you in your specific situation. Construction managers, for instance, can use architecture collaboration software to get the right cost estimate for their next building project. Consider training on how to prioritize and sort your data in a way that will have a positive impact.

Collaborative Leadership Skills

According to PMI, technical skills are not enough on their own but must be paired with leadership in order to support longer-term strategic objectives. The notion of collaborative leadership in project management is not new, as its core attribute is the collaboration between a project manager and the organization as a whole.

Control should be the last thing collaborative leaders seek to perform — they inspire others to work as a team. They also have a set of transferable skills that let them engage successfully in stakeholder management and strategic planning. Being a collaborative leader also means you should break down the walls and encourage cross-functional communication.

Collaborative leaders are culturally competent and possess contextual intelligence required to work with different sectors in the organization. These kinds of leaders offer security and trust to their team, at the same time motivating people to take risks. The decisions they make are passed through multiple teams in advance to make them more objective and create a system of shared goals.

These top skills for digital project managers will be key for success-driven organizations. By cultivating them now, you will gain a competitive advantage in contrast to your peers. Also, check out the ultimate guide to improving a project manager’s resume.

Illustration: Copyright © Irena Voilenko

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#1-2 An Innovative Mindset

Working in a digital environment demands a focus on innovation. 2018 GE Global Innovation Barometer indicates that companies all over the world contend for maximizing the return on innovation. According to the new PMI report The Project Manager of the Future, an innovative mindset will be one of the fundamental criteria for hiring digital project managers in the future. To become an innovation influencer, you should have a tendency to invest in skills, training, and development, learn about cutting-edge project management tools and approaches, and contribute knowledge to your company’s culture.

#3-4 Risk Tolerant

Project managers that tolerate risk will have a privilege applying for positions that presume work in digital environments. McKinsey researchers define “digital risk” as an umbrella term embracing “all digital enablements that improve risk effectiveness and efficiency—especially process automation, decision automation, and digitized monitoring and early warning.” In the light of project management, tolerating risk means replacing a culture of excessive control with a culture of enablement. Facebook has become a vivid example of risk tolerance in project management:

As managers at Facebook, we’re taught to embrace risk. We focus on uncovering new opportunities for people and pushing them to try something new. It’s core to our culture, and it’s how we help people grow. — Dwayne Reeves, Software Engineering Manager at Facebook

Just try being a manager who makes sure that your team members never see any limits in creativity. Be sure to check out this ultimate guide on task delegation methods.

#5-6 Customer Focused

It’s painful to see customers go. As the competition between the leading game changers grows eminently, customer success becomes a company-wide effort. Project managers, responsible for healthy relationships with the client, should do everything in their power to build trust and top-notch customer experience. A digitally-competent project manager aligns project success with clients’ expectations by ensuring that no roadblocks appear in the customer’s journey. Your potential employers should see that they can rely on you when it comes to quality assurance. That’s why mentioning that you value your relationships with the clients will leave a positive mark in your resume.

#7-11 Able to Make Data-Driven Decisions

There will be no place for speculative decisions in 2019. Initiating, planning, and executing projects, you should neither make decisions out of the blue nor rely on your intuition. Make sure that you back up your opinion with facts and numbers. The companies of the future will expect you to cut through the clutter of data sets to make accurate project prognosis. That’s why genuine interest in predictive analytics and knowledge how to retrieve information relevant to your case are becoming the top door-opening project management competencies. It’s just high time to develop your analytical prowess — it will be valued more than ever in 2019.

#12-13 Comfortable with Ambiguity

According to PMI, companies already invest in training and development of a very important project management skill — comfort with ambiguity. It’s a given that starting to manage a project, you’ll have to face many split ways and decide where to go next. Ask yourself if you can stay calm under this pressure and still make sure that your projects are on time, on budget, and on value. Stating that you’re comfortable with ambiguity means that you can sort out priorities in an efficient way.

For a more structured approach to project planning, check out this mind-mapping project management tool.

I hope this set of digital project management skills in your resume will help you raise in the competition. What do you think?

Illustration: Copyright © Anastasiia Shcherban

The post 13 Words to Complete a Project Manager’s Resume appeared first on PM Column.

From my experience as a member in nearly 50 project management groups on LinkedIn, I must admit that very few of them show any signs of response and engagement. What grabbed my attention to this topic was a post by a Senior Project and Programme Manager and a famous influencer in the project management domain, Marc Hammoud. “Most stuff published today on LinkedIn ranges from barely hidden marketing to naked promotion, and sometimes it goes down the spiral of outrageous straight spam!” admits Hammoud. It appears that a project management community with more than 800,000 members is now a mismanaged and spammy hodgepodge that is more an advertising platform than a #1 Group for Project Managers. Sad, but true.

But to help you filter out the spam from the most responsive project management groups on LinkedIn, I created this short list of options you can go for if you want to talk to project management professionals, ask for advice, present yourself, and what’s most important, be heard.

PMI Project, Program and Portfolio Management: #1 group for career advancement

As an official LinkedIn group of the Project Management Institute, it probably has the most active and incredibly responsive community of project managers on LinkedIn, consisting of more than 200,000 members. Its administrators carefully filter out off-topic posts and feature relevant news for project managers. As indicated in the description, this project management group welcomes both PMO leaders and new project managers, experienced project, program or portfolio managers, business analysts, or just anyone who works in a project-oriented profession.

If you’re doing research on a project management topic, preparing for a PMP exam, or simply looking for the answers to your questions, this community of project experts is always out there and eager to help. While investigating what project managers were reading in 2018, I received more than 50 comments with book suggestions from the PMI community.

Agile and Lean Software Development

Agile and Lean Software Development group is a highly responsive network of project managers practicing Agile. It has more than 145,000 members. What makes it a goldmine for Agile practitioners is loyalty to project management topics and strict content moderation. It’s the only group that personally informed me about the violation of their rules when I tried to give a link to my article there. As a trusted source of advice for project managers, this PM network offers various discussions on Agile topics. For example,

• What is Agile all about? Is it a framework or methodology or tool?
• When you talk or write, do you distinguish between “agile” (lowercase) and “Agile” (uppercase)?  If so, how do you distinguish between them? Why?
• Which participants make agile change and the associated self-organisation and self-responsibility more difficult?

Before publishing or distributing anything to this group, I highly recommend to learn its rules first.

I want to be a PMP®

The group’s name speaks for itself. As stated in the description, it is the largest and most active PMP® study group in the world. It was designed to create a virtual space for PMP candidates, credential holders and experts who join for PMP exam preparation. Often, people would go there to share their PMP exam preparation tips or ask for help regarding easy PDU collection to maintain the status. From my observations, despite spam that sometimes occurs in this group, it’s still a network of PM professionals glad to congratulate you with passing your PMP® or share their recommendations.

Also, be sure to check out these good old sources of inspiration for project managers.

So far, only these three project management groups deserve to be mentioned here as they show the highest level of engagement I noticed.

Anything missing? Leave your suggestions in the comments below and subscribe to get the news straight to your mailbox.


Illustration: Copyright © Irena Voilenko

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