Dear Fissure Friends, 

In our last newsletter I told you about the release of our new online simulation technology. In the last 4 months of 2011 we had over 200 students run up to three executions of our University/College market product, SimProject®. The feedback was extremely positive and we have been very busy working with instructors and students to make enhancements and fix the ever-present bugs associated with any new software release.

A special thank you goes out to Mike Kushner and his class at the University of Maryland. Mike and his students were the first official users and a big challenge right out of the gate as Mike's approach in this particular class is to turn the students loose on the project simulation with very little upfront project management or simulation introduction - a real "learn by doing" approach, which of course we at Fissure love! Mike will contribute an article to the next newsletter describing the experience.  

Our monthly webinars have been a big hit with a lot of you and they are usually very well attended with very positive feedback. Lately we have received feedback from some attendees who would like us to offer webinars that dive into more detail on a specific topic, tool, or technique. This would be a natural progression and as a training company something we are qualified to deliver. The challenge for us is that when we started offering the webinars, the intent was to keep the topics at an introductory level to introduce our clients and potential clients to project management, business analysis, Agile, leadership and change management. Because the webinars were introductory, we offered them at no cost. In offering more focused webinars we move much closer to training which is how we make a living and giving it away just doesn't make good business sense. To make a good business decision we needed to know what the customer wanted.

At the end of 2011 we sent out a survey to see if there was a desire on your part to attend training focused webinars that lasted 90 minutes rather than 60 minutes for which you would pay a nominal fee. The result of the survey was a resounding yes on providing training focused webinars and nearly everyone was OK with paying for attending. As a result we have scheduled three training focused webinars for 2012.  

• April 11^th will be on Project Communication and will be delivered by Sandy Haydon, an experienced project manager, coach and Fissure guide.
• May 8^th will be on Stop Managing and Start Coaching, delivered by John Kaman, a certified coach and long-time Fissure guide.
• October 10^th  will be The Art of Negotiation and will be delivered by John Kaman.

We look forward to taking the webinars to this new level of training and helping you meet your learning objectives. If you have ideas for future webinars please drop me an email, jesse_freese@fissure.com.  

I have spent quite a bit of training time recently with a large company working on a very large project. I thought it would be a good time to write an article about schedule vs. quality. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

In his article, "Agile Parenting: Compassionate Courage", Geof Lory continues exploring the soft-skill side of project management and parenting. He explores exercising Courage, which is less a preference and more a binary choice. You do it or you don't. The only variance is how often you make which choice.

Our upcoming public workshops and webinars can be found on our website  - our computer simulation powered workshops the most effective and fun way to learn AND EARN PDUs. Make sure you also check out what's happening at Fissure (Fissure News).

Now is your chance:

Thanks for reading and enjoy the coming spring,

Jesse Freese

Fissure, President 

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In the previous articles in this series on the Agile Parenting Manifesto I have presented tenets that focus on a choice: a choice between emphasizing  Goals and Purpose over rules and processes or Releasing Human Potential over conforming to preconceived outcomes. Both of these articles illustrated how a preference of the less tangible and more uncertain possibilities can develop children and build project teams that are better prepared for extreme project environments.

This month we'll continue with exploring the soft-skill side of project management and parenting and talk about exercising Courage, which is less a preference and more a binary choice. You do it or you don't. The only variance is how often you make which choice.

To read full article, click here  

Extremely large projects are rarely completed on time and on budget. There are many reasons for this but one of the big reasons is the tradeoff between schedule and quality. By the word quality I mean not only the minimization of defects in the deliverables but also how well they meet the customer requirements. I have been delivering our simulation powered learning project management training to a good number of people currently working on one of these monster projects. During the training there have been numerous group discussions concerning how bad this project is and everyone has their opinion as to "why". Some blame management, some blame an unskilled workforce, others put the blame on worker attitude. One thing they all agree on is the symptoms: slow progress and poor quality. The reality is I think they are all right. And they prove it in the training by how they manage their simulation projects and the results they see in the simulation.  

To read full article, click here  

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Agile Parenting: Compassionate Courage

Geof Lory

In the previous articles in this series on the Agile Parenting Manifesto I have presented tenets that focus on a choice: a choice between emphasizing  Goals and Purpose over rules and processes or Releasing Human Potential over conforming to preconceived outcomes. Both of these articles illustrated how a preference of the less tangible and more uncertain possibilities can develop children and build project teams that are better prepared for extreme project environments.

This month we'll continue with exploring the soft-skill side of project management and parenting and talk about exercising Courage, which is less a preference and more a binary choice. You do it or you don't. The only variance is how often you make which choice.

The first two values of Agile Parenting set a solid foundation for execution. Leadership and parenting that emphasize goals, purpose, curiosity and adventure will properly position children and teams for success. However, without courage there can be no execution, and in the end, we are all looking for results.

The reason courage is so important as a basic value is that projects-like life-extend into the future, which is by definition uncertain. This uncertainty, and the inability to control it, creates fear if the outcome is potentially negative. Sometimes it doesn't matter whether the potential outcome is perceived as positive or negative; the mere fact that it is uncertain and different creates a doubt. Put all of this together and you have the biggest productivity drain to a project team - FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Courage is acting on your convictions in the face of your own fears. My fellow author Doug DeCarlo calls it "doing it scared." Courage is the ability to move forward toward a goal into the unknown with a sense of purpose. It isn't foolishly charging ahead ignoring the consequences; it is a mindful act to not allow the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to poison or impede your progress.

The FUD factor on a team is a measurable quality. High FUD factors build up and clog open communications, cloud the project vision and jeopardize project success. Fortunately, project managers can combat FUD with Compassionate Courage.  

So, here is the third value of the Agile Parent Manifesto:

As Agile Parents, we have come to value:
Compassionate Courage  

instead of convenient complacency

Compassionate Courage is almost an oxymoron. They are two words you don't typically hear in the same breath. Courage has a forceful and almost machismo tone to it, while compassion sounds yielding and soft. Put them together and you can create a velvet hammer that breaks down project FUD.

I believe that these two words complement each other like individuals on any good team do. Neither is as good alone as they are together. Courage creates the forward motion into the unknown, but compassion engages the spirit in a way that provides meaning and purpose, passion and emotion to the action.  

We rarely hear people talk about passion when they are in the work place, but there is no lack of it away from the job. If you don't believe me, stop by at any grade school sporting event and watch the parents. You'll see passion. Growing up playing hockey, my mother watched almost all my games; I know because I could hear her from the stands. Sometimes I think she cared more than I did. Looking back, she was mostly just afraid I would get hurt. But I was a goalie, so I guess that's understandable. I had created an environment of high FUD that she overcame with compassionate courage and lots of hot chocolate.

Children recognize compassionate courage because it exudes safety, something that reduces their personal FUD factor. As parents we have an obligation to minimize the FUD factor for our children while they are developing the requisite skills to do it themselves.

Compassion understands and accepts, even if it doesn't approve or condone. It believes there is a better way and is willing to work to find it, even if it requires an element of vulnerability. Courage is the conviction and belief that the potential outcome exceeds the risk of the vulnerability. I think one without the other suffers greatly in its potential.

The alternative to Compassionate Courage is convenient complacency, which is really a path of self-serving least resistance. It's the unconscious way out. Face it, we all want to be loved by our children (and liked by our co-workers) and doing anything that would jeopardize that relationship, especially in an irreparable way, brings with it an amount of FUD.  

Doing the difficult and often painful thing, risking undesirable outcomes, but doing it because you hold true feelings for the betterment of a person or future state, shows compassion and courage. In parenting it is called tough love, at work it is a quality of a leader. Without Compassionate Courage, our other values are merely academic.

Unfortunately, we all too often take the easy route of complacency or social compliance with phrases like, "I didn't want to hurt his/her feelings," and "I'm running a project, not a therapy session." Or my personal self-justification when I wimp out, "It wouldn't make any difference because he/she is not willing to listen anyway." In my part of the country we call it "Minnesota nice." It is neither exclusive to Minnesota nor truly nice. It's a cop-out.

So, to practice Compassionate Courage and develop it in our children and project teams, as Agile Parents we follow these principles:

Providing family members with open and honest communications.

Live a life of continuous self-reflection and have the strength to admit and accept the truth about ourselves.

Commitment to the right path, not just the easy path
- acting with integrity.

Ever since my daughters were old enough to have a FUD factor, I have tried to create a world for them that was safe and certain. I monitored it through a divorce, new schools, sports, boyfriends, learning to drive and numerous other transitional life events. I would be lying if I said they all turned out perfectly and there were never any negative outcomes. I can't control the future for my children any more than I can for my projects. But I can take courageous and compassionate steps to reduce the FUD factor and increase the chance of success, and that is good enough for me, as a project manager and a parent.

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Extremely large projects are rarely completed on time and on budget. There are many reasons for this but one of the big reasons is the tradeoff between schedule and quality. By the word quality I mean not only the minimization of defects in the deliverables but also how well they meet the customer requirements. I have been delivering our simulation powered learning project management training to a good number of people currently working on one of these monster projects. During the training there have been numerous group discussions concerning how bad this project is and everyone has their opinion as to "why". Some blame management, some blame an unskilled workforce, others put the blame on worker attitude. One thing they all agree on is the symptoms: slow progress and poor quality. The reality is I think they are all right. And they prove it in the training by how they manage their simulation projects and the results they see in the simulation.

How do projects start? Projects, especially monster projects, start slow. There is the initial ramp-up, the building of an effective project team and the inevitable learning curve. It is almost impossible to keep a monster project from falling behind schedule in the beginning. So what do we do to get back on schedule? Caving in to our overly concerned management, we often throw overtime and more workers at the project. We add, as is the case with this particular monster project, anyone who can reasonably contribute to the tasks at hand. Of course you add the best available workers first and then as time goes on you add marginally less and less skilled workers, but you keep adding workers as you keep falling further and further behind. Adding workers increases the complexity of coordinating the team and makes communication more difficult. Often the most qualified workers end up trying to work with the less qualified ones so they too see a slowdown in their productivity. Now add overtime that seems endless and a management team that constantly focuses on schedule, schedule, and schedule. What is the result? More often than not, they end up redoing completed portions of the project because they don't meet specifications and quality requirements. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes - "If you want it bad, you get it bad". Poor progress and poor quality.

Now let's talk about how they managed their simulation projects. The simulation project is designed to start slow, just like real life. The PMs react to the schedule slip by applying overtime and meeting with the team on schedule every week, just like they have been trained in real life. Some even try throwing resources at the critical path task that don't even have the skills to contribute to the task. This focus on schedule can improve their schedule in the short term, but soon they are watching their quality measure going in the negative direction. Reacting to the poor quality they start focusing on quality by meeting with the team on quality every week and when it really gets bad, sending people to quality training. This focus on quality can work only if they also discontinue their focus on schedule (OT and meeting on schedule). If the students continue their focus on schedule while also focusing on quality, the team members will try to do both at the same time and the result is not so poor progress and not so poor quality.

So what is the answer? Do you have to pick schedule or quality? During class we spent quite a bit of time focused on the productivity of the team - in lecture, in discussion, and in the running the simulation. Productivity is a function of the quality of the team members, the tools they use and the way they are managed. In their discussions the students working on this monster project came up with the answer - focus on productivity. A more motivated and productive work force will work more efficiently and produce much better quality while at the same time reducing schedule pressure. One student even shared how he had been rewarding individual performance and thus raising productivity and morale. Even though what he was doing was working, the technique "challenged the accepted process" and thus was unanimously dismissed as "not to be used" by the other students. It was sad to see a project desperate for answers work so hard to keep from finding them.

Jesse Freese

Fissure, President