Saturday, September 15, 2012
A Tale of Two Interviews [Kimberly Wiefling]
Not long ago I was discussing job search with a colleague. He told me about two interviews he had gone thru. I asked him to write up both stories, as I felt they would be of interest to engineering leaders. Here they are. My colleague has asked to remain anonymous.
It was the best of interviews… It was the worst of interviews...
Well, not exactly, but here are two interview experiences that I’d like to share with you. Both employers shall remain anonymous.
At Company A, the first interviewer asked me to describe how a search algorithm might be designed. The interviewer emphasized that a complete design was not expected, but that he was interested in how I would address different requirements. So far, so good. However, everyone else who interviewed me challenged me with brainteasers – pirates, coconuts, monkeys, etc… Now, brainteasers can clearly play a useful role. They give the interviewer a chance to see how the candidate analyzes a problem. And since the answer is rarely obvious, typically one’s first response is incorrect or misleading. This gives the interviewer a chance to see how the candidate reacts to challenges when a real engineering problem does not work out as one might have initially expected, and also to see how the candidate works with others to solve a problem. But at Company A, I got asked brainteaser after brainteaser – at least four or five. After a while, I began to wonder whether they were looking for a software engineer or a televised game show contestant!
Company B is located outside the San Francisco Bay Area, so they put me through a rigorous phone screening process first. Each interviewer posed one or more simple programming problems, easy enough to be solved on the spot, but with a twist or challenge requiring some kind of insight. I passed all of the phone screens and was invited to an in-person interview at corporate headquarters, all expenses paid, of course.
Two sessions at their headquarters left a strong impression on me. The first session was a “panel interview” – two engineers were in the interview room, although only one asked a lot of questions. They led me through a discussion of selected elements from the standard C++ Template Library, and asked my suggestions for how to implement items such as arrays, lists and queues. I remember it as a very stimulating and enjoyable discussion of various design approaches. The second session was lunch with the Director of Software, someone who supervised a fairly large team of about 50 engineers. She took me to a local restaurant. We were having a nice casual discussion when she suddenly asked me to describe a time when I had made a mistake. It serves as a reminder that the job interview process is continuous, and getting taken out for lunch or dinner is just an extension of the process.
Although I did not join Company B, I felt respected and appreciated by everyone there throughout the interview process. Each person approached me as a potential peer. Their goal seemed always to be to find out how I would approach and solve problems, and their questions provided me the opportunity to best demonstrate my skills and experience for the job.
A company’s reputation plays a big role in attracting candidates for jobs. People naturally share their experiences with their peers. Companies who want to continue to attract top quality potential employees should consider the impression their interview approach leaves on candidates. The ability to attract and retain the talented people required to succeed is a competitive advantage for any business. With the wealth of information available via social media, and websites like GlassDoor.com publicizing what employees think of their own company, it ‘s vital for business leaders to protect their reputations by assuring the interview process is conducted in a way that leaves a positive impression with interview candidates – regardless of whether or not they are offered a job.
____________________________________________________________________
Kimberly Wiefling is the author of Scrappy Project Management, one of the top-ranked project management books on Amazon in the US, published in Japanese, and growing in popularity around the world. She splits her work time between the US and Japan.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Strategic & Business Planning: a Project Manager’s Role [Matt Glei]
When your company does “strategic” planning or yearly budget planning, do they come to you and want you to estimate the expense budget, the capital budget, the headcount and schedule for one or more projects in a single day? How do you do this quickly and but still come up with estimates that you can live with?
The first thing to remember is that this comes up on a yearly cycle, so if they came to you last November, they’ll be back again this November. Remembering this might give you a little notice and time to do your homework. Set a reminder in your calendar that November is “planning month.”
Another important item is to know how much detail your company wants as part of this planning. For example, a larger business unit might want rough estimates for many projects so they can add them up and extrapolate resource levels (expenses, capital, headcount, etc.) in general for the business and worry less about the detail of each project. If this is their desire, your job is a bit easier since you want reasonable Scientific Wild-Ass Guesses (SWAGs) rather than fully detailed project plans. However, the emphasis is on “Scientific,” not the WAG.
On the other hand, if the company is asking for schedules that they will use as benchmarks on the projects yet to be started or even fully-scoped, then the problem is much more challenging. Think of this case as “Extreme Project Planning.” To do this well requires a solid methodology and some focused time from the business unit.
One way to do a reasonable SWAG is as follows (with a small, experienced team):
• Write up a brief scope of each project, describing the key features and goals. Identify a first pass on any known-risk items.
• Imagine the team work roles (number and type of individual) that will be needed and likely availability given present projects already in motion. Put this in a spreadsheet for the next year (or whatever the horizon is) per role, with a percentage of each person’s role spent in each month.
• Add it up. The sum with be the FTE engineers needed in each month. You can multiply this by the average cost per FTE engineer month based on present actuals (total expense dollars spent this year / total FTE). This is a useful number to keep on hand for ballpark planning.
• Now you have staffing needs and rough schedule (don’t forget to use a most-likely schedule rather than best-case and take into account realistic hiring or staffing timeframes). For capital, you can best use examples from projects similar to the ones proposed – tooling, NRE, etc.
• I then put the scope from above and the derived schedules, staffing needs, capital, etc. onto a one-page pro-forma data sheet and make sure that it is submitted with the rest of the material. It documents the logic used to make the estimate and mentions any key risks or assumptions.
Later, when everyone has a different opinion about what was committed to, this documentation can be very useful. The project may change and be re-scoped, but this snapshot details what the basis of the estimate submitted was. Make sure it is dated and time-stamped. Mark it confidential. Review it with your marketing product manager or other key stakeholders.
For the Extreme Project Planning case, the SWAG steps outlined above still work, but you must also really dig into more detail on project goals, product features as well as staffing and technical risks. Otherwise you will be held accountable without having done the due diligence needed. You seldom have time to do a detailed project plan with WBS and complete PERT analysis. Having good metrics from similar projects can help a lot, but only if they are comparable to the proposed project.
I found that the SWAG method could be used for planning multiple projects over multiple years, and then be updated as each budget cycle approached or the actual project start neared. By then you often know more about the features, goals and risks, so an update and more detailed planning is appropriate.
At Hewlett Packard, beginning in the 1980s, they instituted a 10-step business planning process that allocated time throughout the year to do the homework (data gathering, analysis and so forth) in small discrete steps rather than take a month off at the most critical time of year to do all the work (often poorly).
Please comment with other or better approaches, especially for "Extreme Project Planning.". There’s always a better way!
____________________________________________________________________
Matt Glei is a contributing blogger to the ProjectConnections' blog. ProjectConnections is a corporate sponsor of the Engineering Leadership SIG. This entry was reposted with the permission of Matt Glei.
Matt is also owner of Know-how Consulting in Honolulu, Hawaii. This consultancy provides performance coaching in areas such as collaboration, knowledge management, intellectual property, virtual teams, program, project and risk management.
Matt also has long experience in product development, project portfolios and strategic planning. Matt has also developed several Quality Systems, compliant with ISO and FDA guidelines.
Matt is certified as a Project Management Professional by PMI and is a Certified Scrum Master.
Matt has spent his 30-year career in high technology and medical product development and operations. His background includes significant periods in Research & Development, Operations as well as Marketing. His career includes 5-person start-ups, all the way to 350 M$ high-volume businesses with thousands of employees. As different as these company situations appear, the fundamental performance problems remain the same.
The first thing to remember is that this comes up on a yearly cycle, so if they came to you last November, they’ll be back again this November. Remembering this might give you a little notice and time to do your homework. Set a reminder in your calendar that November is “planning month.”
Another important item is to know how much detail your company wants as part of this planning. For example, a larger business unit might want rough estimates for many projects so they can add them up and extrapolate resource levels (expenses, capital, headcount, etc.) in general for the business and worry less about the detail of each project. If this is their desire, your job is a bit easier since you want reasonable Scientific Wild-Ass Guesses (SWAGs) rather than fully detailed project plans. However, the emphasis is on “Scientific,” not the WAG.
On the other hand, if the company is asking for schedules that they will use as benchmarks on the projects yet to be started or even fully-scoped, then the problem is much more challenging. Think of this case as “Extreme Project Planning.” To do this well requires a solid methodology and some focused time from the business unit.
One way to do a reasonable SWAG is as follows (with a small, experienced team):
• Write up a brief scope of each project, describing the key features and goals. Identify a first pass on any known-risk items.
• Imagine the team work roles (number and type of individual) that will be needed and likely availability given present projects already in motion. Put this in a spreadsheet for the next year (or whatever the horizon is) per role, with a percentage of each person’s role spent in each month.
• Add it up. The sum with be the FTE engineers needed in each month. You can multiply this by the average cost per FTE engineer month based on present actuals (total expense dollars spent this year / total FTE). This is a useful number to keep on hand for ballpark planning.
• Now you have staffing needs and rough schedule (don’t forget to use a most-likely schedule rather than best-case and take into account realistic hiring or staffing timeframes). For capital, you can best use examples from projects similar to the ones proposed – tooling, NRE, etc.
• I then put the scope from above and the derived schedules, staffing needs, capital, etc. onto a one-page pro-forma data sheet and make sure that it is submitted with the rest of the material. It documents the logic used to make the estimate and mentions any key risks or assumptions.
Later, when everyone has a different opinion about what was committed to, this documentation can be very useful. The project may change and be re-scoped, but this snapshot details what the basis of the estimate submitted was. Make sure it is dated and time-stamped. Mark it confidential. Review it with your marketing product manager or other key stakeholders.
For the Extreme Project Planning case, the SWAG steps outlined above still work, but you must also really dig into more detail on project goals, product features as well as staffing and technical risks. Otherwise you will be held accountable without having done the due diligence needed. You seldom have time to do a detailed project plan with WBS and complete PERT analysis. Having good metrics from similar projects can help a lot, but only if they are comparable to the proposed project.
I found that the SWAG method could be used for planning multiple projects over multiple years, and then be updated as each budget cycle approached or the actual project start neared. By then you often know more about the features, goals and risks, so an update and more detailed planning is appropriate.
At Hewlett Packard, beginning in the 1980s, they instituted a 10-step business planning process that allocated time throughout the year to do the homework (data gathering, analysis and so forth) in small discrete steps rather than take a month off at the most critical time of year to do all the work (often poorly).
Please comment with other or better approaches, especially for "Extreme Project Planning.". There’s always a better way!
____________________________________________________________________
Matt Glei is a contributing blogger to the ProjectConnections' blog. ProjectConnections is a corporate sponsor of the Engineering Leadership SIG. This entry was reposted with the permission of Matt Glei.
Matt is also owner of Know-how Consulting in Honolulu, Hawaii. This consultancy provides performance coaching in areas such as collaboration, knowledge management, intellectual property, virtual teams, program, project and risk management.
Matt also has long experience in product development, project portfolios and strategic planning. Matt has also developed several Quality Systems, compliant with ISO and FDA guidelines.
Matt is certified as a Project Management Professional by PMI and is a Certified Scrum Master.
Matt has spent his 30-year career in high technology and medical product development and operations. His background includes significant periods in Research & Development, Operations as well as Marketing. His career includes 5-person start-ups, all the way to 350 M$ high-volume businesses with thousands of employees. As different as these company situations appear, the fundamental performance problems remain the same.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
June Meeting Notes - Shampa Banerjee on Thinking Strategically – A Survival Skill for Today’s Technical Leaders [Ravi Ganesan]
Shampa Banerjee spoke on the topic: Thinking Strategically –
A Survival Skill for Today’s Technical Lenders to Engineering Leadership SIG,
SVForum on 21st June.
She began by saying “Let’s have a conversation” and asked
about what challenged Technical Leaders the most in their work place. The
audience homed in on the intrinsic tussle between Engineering and Sales. Sales
made promises about new product features and got the commissions while
Engineering took on the responsibility to deliver those promised features and
toiled for long hours, every day.
Then, Shampa mentioned her experience as a technical leader
in several companies, from startups to the big ones. Matrix Management upon
acquisition by a bigger company brought in successive changes. The changes
began showing results when Product Management was eventually made to report to
the Technology VP. This led to engineers questioning what they were developing,
rather than developing to requirements: “Would
I use what I am developing?”
She highlighted a current trend. More than CIO’s or CTO’s,
it is Sales and Marketing, who are introducing the use of relevant Social
Networking tools in their companies. What then, is the role of Technical
Leaders in a rapidly evolving landscape? How do they position themselves in the
company’s business strategy of selling their products, services to customers?
The audience began to enunciate various scenarios that
challenged them, adding what changes were needed to produce the desired
results. Here are some instances shared by the audience:
- Technology leader took control of the product roadmap. As a result, prioritizing and scheduling engineering effort to match promises made to customers became relatively easy.
- In a Professional Services Group, the Account Manager and the Technical Expert were competent possessing excellent leadership skills. One of them was made a leader, though both were accountable for success. Their collaborative efforts brought success. As the business expanded, each was paired with a junior from the other side to facilitate succession. Ensuring the sharing of responsibility for success between the two functions was very instrumental in instilling collaboration.
- In a medical devices company, it was necessary to get the Specifications Writer and the Specification Requirements Consumer to be synchronized. One Product Manager was assigned for every 10 engineers. Audience was polled for what might be a good ratio. The consensus was that independent of the ratio, Product Management and Engineering needed a tight collaboration, in tight alignment, for product success.
- Writing requirements requires (pun unintended) the specification of requirements without mentioning implementation or solution. In a particular company, Product Management and the Development leader collaborated in analyzing the initial list of requirements and rewriting them independent of implementation. The list shrank to one third the initial size making it easier for Development to scope effort and timelines.
- Even in some organizations that use iterative, rapid processes, a Business Analyst negotiates between Engineering and Customers. The success hinges solely in how well collaboration is ensured by executive management.
The audience resoundingly favored the need for Product
Management to work closely with engineers. Challenges are the scale of work and
time zone.
Shampa displayed a high level approximation of the
traditional model of an Engineering Team as a two dimensional matrix based on
skill sets. The horizontal axis denotes Technical Capabilities while the
vertical axis denotes Process Orientation.
1. Top
Right Quadrant: Functions of VP, Engineering
2. Bottom
Right Quadrant: CTO, Chief Architect
3. Top
Left Quadrant: Program Managers
4. Bottom
Left Quadrant: Customers? (drew audience laughter)
Questions were raised about this model:
- Where is innovation?
- Where is business acumen?
The Audience commented that the above two should also be
added as additional dimensions to the above model in today’s competitive
market.
Shampa chimed in that Technology leaders need to be aware of
this as they are not only responsible for the success of their technology but
also for the success of the business. The Technology leader can provide inputs
to the business and needs to be part of business decisions. Technology leaders
need to be a partner with Sales and work together on decisions that impact
engineering effort.
Success of a company is not just Technology. What else is
required? Shampa presented a slide that compared “Where we are” and “Where we
should be”.
These were presented as two adjacent lists, as follows:
WE ARE HERE WE SHOULD BE HERE
Technology as a strategy Business
strategy (offer technology options)
Participate in Sales Partner
with Sales (educate as required)
Partnership Discussions (due
diligence stage) Co-drive
Partnership Decisions (take a stake)
Influence Product Roadmap Co-Own
the Product Roadmap
Fund Raising (not the driver) Fund Raising:
Lead vs
tech discussions only
Build vs Buy Decisions Build
vs Buy: Help define business priorities
An example was provided of a large manufacturing company
that asked for 15 different things. Engineering empowered Sales to negotiate
with the customer. This resulted in 5 requirements only.
The Audience now offered their experience in how the two
sides can engage the customer.
·
Have 2 lists: Can-Do and Cannot-Do maintained by
Engineering and shared with Sales.
·
Engineering collaboration with Sales and vice
versa can be ensured with suitable incentive structures that hold both
responsible for success. The typical model of Sales being paid a commission
upon Contract Signing and Engineering paid full time to deliver much later is
rife with opportunity for misaligned goals.
·
Product Management, as a representative of
Engineering, accompanies Sales to size up promised features. Before a deal is
signed, the Product Manager needs to have a say. Externally customer facing and
internally working closely with engineering the product manager is the liaison,
a conduit to ensure that what is promised can be delivered (in scope, time and
with allocated resources).
·
Startups don’t have the luxury of affording Product
Managers. The CEO plays the role of Product Management. Sometimes, this role
may not be the right fit. Executive training (retraining too) is recommended in
such situations, as is done in larger and more mature companies.
·
Engineering Technology Leaders need to be honest
and be vocal with Executive Management.
·
What can be done to pre-empt failures? Share
everything with the people early-on. Schedule periodic meetings to track
concerns and address issues quickly. Decisions are logged. If the road hasn’t
changed the decision stays.
·
A comment made from a User Experience testing
group drew laughter: Avoid listening only to the hippo (to the highest paid
person). Ask if we are doing the hippo thing now.
Shampa summarized the audience feedback above as follows: that outcomes really depend on
personalities. Often a failure is due to the people and not due to the
technology / technical solution. As an example, while the CEO decides what
needs to be done, she recommends that a Technology Executive be part of the
Executive Fundraising Team rather than just computing the cost, number of
development hires, and delivery timelines.
What are the essential ingredients of a Technology Leader?
- Need to be a great Communicator: not only in verbal and written skills but also in Body Language
- Need to be approachable. If the leader is seemingly distant, people will be afraid to ask, discuss and share
- Need to redefine / reframe the problem. Albert Einstein said: “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew”.
- Need to be a community builder
- Need to have an eye to anticipate (every one today is a visionary and can be)
It is paramount in current times for a Technology Leader to
be an all-rounder; with 360 degree skills to be approached and accepted.
Kennedy said: “Some men (person) see things as they are and
ask “why?”. I dream of things that never were and ask “why not?” The new
technology leader rephrases “Biz is Business” with “Passion is Business”. This
person needs to be in tune with breaking news, to retrain, to accept change by
expanding and adapting oneself. Collaboration is a necessity; i.e. work with a
common goal where each owns up for success. Note that Operations as a big team
(that we knew) is gone now. It is only a handful of people.
Shampa emphasized the need for New Company Structures and
Incentives that can ensure collaboration and sharing of responsibility for
success in the business. Examples:
- Large companies can work as several small fleets and behave like startups.
- Have open discussions: Should everyone have a share in the sales commission? Do we incentivize the right behavior? Abolish hierarchy?
- The book “In search of Excellence” was mentioned. Even in large companies, smaller teams were given big incentives and allowed to use the resources of the large company. Eg. Skunkworks.
The Audience responded how a very large company in our area worked
as a large number of small teams as if each one was a startup. Two years ago,
they found this strategy was not working favorably.
Shampa concluded that big or small, companies need to revise
incentives and control structure in order to ensure that
- Customer facing Sales&Marketing and Producing folks in Engineering Work together
- Both own delivery (i.e. a well-defined common success is identified)
Ravi Ganesan has over 20 years of experience in Product and Engineering Management. As General Manager of TIBCO India, he was responsible for all fiscal and operations planning. He hired dozens of engineers, coordinated with external organizations and set up processes and procedures for development, facilities, finance, IT, release, support, and travel. Similarly, as a Senior Director in Adapter Engineering, TIBCO he was responsible for product management and engineering execution for over 25 adapter product lines (about 15% of company revenue). He has proven himself to be highly effective at Program and Process Management. He was responsible for the day-to-day management of two off-shore contracting companies in India, with a total of close to 100 employees. Among the areas for which he was responsible: setting product requirements and specifications; on-time delivery; budget management; designing SLAs and performance metrics; and coordinating and communicating with other organizations (marketing, sales, alliance contracts, legal, release, etc.).
Friday, May 25, 2012
May 17 Meeting Notes - Camille Smith on Data and Dialogue to Develop People [Ravi Ganesan]
On May 17th, Camille Smith, a Leadership Coach, who does Work in Progress Coaching, gave a very insightful and thought provoking presentation on data and dialogue to develop people.
Camille began the session soliciting the audience for the questions they would like to ask about the mysteries they encounter at work and find answers for. She listed the following questions raised by the audience on the white board: What makes them happy? Why are they angry? What’s going on between their ears? What motivates / excites them (to perform better)? Why do they react like they do? Why don’t they get it? How can they have so many ears? Why don’t they self-regulate? How could they think it was a good job? Why read between the lines – Just say it?
She highlighted the frequency and pace of changes occurring at work: (1) Economic Landscape (2) Technology (3) Leadership and workforce. The key for addressing these changes at work is in recognizing the following:
• People power the business. We have to work with people and solve their issues so they can solve the business problems / challenges
• We need to crunch numbers and mine information effectively in order to know what’s going on with the people doing the work
• Leadership needs different command and control structures that are aligned to face business challenges
Business leaders won’t really know what’s going on with the people within a company since numbers (from conventional tests, reviews) never represent the whole person or provide the whole answer.
She presented the contrast between Debate and Dialogue.
Debate has the following focus: Speak to be right, Express only certainty, Only my point of view is valid.
Dialogue has the focus: Speak to reveal, Express uncertainties, There are many points of view.
A video clip was shown from the movie Houston Rockets movie based on Michael Lewis' book ‘Moneyball’.
Camille highlighted the need to identify data that connected people’s talent directly to business performance in order to:
• Link talent to the required function roles
• Reveal friction points ahead of time
• Forecast how decisions would be embraced (or not)
Typically, businesses rely on objective analysis and intelligence derived from experience, intuition, etc. for making decisions. However, there is also a need to augment such decision making with Talent metrics derived from style (preferences) and ambitions of the people doing the work to produce the desired outcome.
Camille conducted an exercise with the audience for about 45 minutes with charts. She split the audience into 4 groups of about 12 people in each group. Everyone in the audience participated by marking on 4 vertical columns their individual preference styles. Each column is representative of a preference style when faced with the following:
C: How do you tend to deal with problems? The extremes range from Commanding to Collaborative
O: How you tend to relate to people without prior context? The range is from Outgoing to Objective
R: How you relate to pace of your work place? The range is from Routine to Rapid
E: How you relate to processes, procedures? The range is from Exacting to Easy-going
Unlike other personnel tests that bucket a person, the CORE scoring permits the flexibility of ratings in the mid-point, quartiles etc. of the range.
The individual scores (markings on the vertical column) were aggregated into a bigger chart for the 4 groups. Now the clustering of the CORE scores brought out the similarities and contrasts across the 4 groups. Camille highlighted that people tend to move up and down the range of each CORE score based on the context.
Camille then provided case studies of aggregated scores representing preference styles of different function roles in Marketing, Sales groups. Alignments and Misalignments of styles were quickly noticed by the audience.
The key message, as a take-away from this exercise for each of the audience:
• If you know your CORE scores, you know where you tend to come from (the preference style when you work in a context that is your comfort zone – for e.g. say, your ideal work situation)
• You become self-aware about yourself, and you become more aware of others around you.
• If you need to operate outside your preference style, You know that you need to negotiate, have a dialogue, engage with people and ask questions (e.g. Is this working for us?)
Camille then described the use of scores of 1 thru 7 for Role Profiles to identify Individual Ambitions for each of: Creative, Theoretical, Theoretical, Authoritative, Altruistic, Individualistic, Political (Competitive), Economic. A score of 1 is highly desired by the individual while 7 being the least desired score.
The above CORE scores designating individual preference styles and Role Profiles designating individual ambitions constitute Talent Metrics. Camille mentioned the availability of software that identifies individual Talent Metrics and aggregates them for a group of people (say within a department). The individual and aggregated metrics are displayed as Talent Meters. A new addition to the group is surveyed and this person’s scores are compared with those of the group.
When used improperly, Metrics can cause mistakes and result in humans being treated like interchangeable widgets. Examples include:
• Keeping a metric alive when it has no clear relevance to the business
• Assessing only simple measures likes grades, test scores which can fail to predict success
All of above mentioned skills, styles are required; they need to be applied when a business needs them. Periodic monitoring and Training are necessary to interpret the metrics effectively.
The Talent Metrics help a business to make effective predictions and forecast at different levels, across different departments to address its challenges in a rapidly changing environment.
Now Camille went back to the various questions listed by the audience at the start of the session. The audience acknowledged that the Talent Metrics would enhance self-awareness to engage, have a dialogue and find the answers. A key requirement is a commitment for the desired outcome across the board.
_____________________________________________________________
Ravi Ganesan has over 20 years of experience in Product and Engineering Management. As General Manager of TIBCO India, he was responsible for all fiscal and operations planning. He hired dozens of engineers, coordinated with external organizations and set up processes and procedures for development, facilities, finance, IT, release, support, and travel. Similarly, as a Senior Director in Adapter Engineering, TIBCO he was responsible for product management and engineering execution for over 25 adapter product lines (about 15% of company revenue). He has proven himself to be highly effective at Program and Process Management. He was responsible for the day-to-day management of two off-shore contracting companies in India, with a total of close to 100 employees. Among the areas for which he was responsible: setting product requirements and specifications; on-time delivery; budget management; designing SLAs and performance metrics; and coordinating and communicating with other organizations (marketing, sales, alliance contracts, legal, release, etc.).
Camille began the session soliciting the audience for the questions they would like to ask about the mysteries they encounter at work and find answers for. She listed the following questions raised by the audience on the white board: What makes them happy? Why are they angry? What’s going on between their ears? What motivates / excites them (to perform better)? Why do they react like they do? Why don’t they get it? How can they have so many ears? Why don’t they self-regulate? How could they think it was a good job? Why read between the lines – Just say it?
She highlighted the frequency and pace of changes occurring at work: (1) Economic Landscape (2) Technology (3) Leadership and workforce. The key for addressing these changes at work is in recognizing the following:
• People power the business. We have to work with people and solve their issues so they can solve the business problems / challenges
• We need to crunch numbers and mine information effectively in order to know what’s going on with the people doing the work
• Leadership needs different command and control structures that are aligned to face business challenges
Business leaders won’t really know what’s going on with the people within a company since numbers (from conventional tests, reviews) never represent the whole person or provide the whole answer.
She presented the contrast between Debate and Dialogue.
Debate has the following focus: Speak to be right, Express only certainty, Only my point of view is valid.
Dialogue has the focus: Speak to reveal, Express uncertainties, There are many points of view.
A video clip was shown from the movie Houston Rockets movie based on Michael Lewis' book ‘Moneyball’.
Camille highlighted the need to identify data that connected people’s talent directly to business performance in order to:
• Link talent to the required function roles
• Reveal friction points ahead of time
• Forecast how decisions would be embraced (or not)
Typically, businesses rely on objective analysis and intelligence derived from experience, intuition, etc. for making decisions. However, there is also a need to augment such decision making with Talent metrics derived from style (preferences) and ambitions of the people doing the work to produce the desired outcome.
Camille conducted an exercise with the audience for about 45 minutes with charts. She split the audience into 4 groups of about 12 people in each group. Everyone in the audience participated by marking on 4 vertical columns their individual preference styles. Each column is representative of a preference style when faced with the following:
C: How do you tend to deal with problems? The extremes range from Commanding to Collaborative
O: How you tend to relate to people without prior context? The range is from Outgoing to Objective
R: How you relate to pace of your work place? The range is from Routine to Rapid
E: How you relate to processes, procedures? The range is from Exacting to Easy-going
Unlike other personnel tests that bucket a person, the CORE scoring permits the flexibility of ratings in the mid-point, quartiles etc. of the range.
The individual scores (markings on the vertical column) were aggregated into a bigger chart for the 4 groups. Now the clustering of the CORE scores brought out the similarities and contrasts across the 4 groups. Camille highlighted that people tend to move up and down the range of each CORE score based on the context.
Camille then provided case studies of aggregated scores representing preference styles of different function roles in Marketing, Sales groups. Alignments and Misalignments of styles were quickly noticed by the audience.
The key message, as a take-away from this exercise for each of the audience:
• If you know your CORE scores, you know where you tend to come from (the preference style when you work in a context that is your comfort zone – for e.g. say, your ideal work situation)
• You become self-aware about yourself, and you become more aware of others around you.
• If you need to operate outside your preference style, You know that you need to negotiate, have a dialogue, engage with people and ask questions (e.g. Is this working for us?)
Camille then described the use of scores of 1 thru 7 for Role Profiles to identify Individual Ambitions for each of: Creative, Theoretical, Theoretical, Authoritative, Altruistic, Individualistic, Political (Competitive), Economic. A score of 1 is highly desired by the individual while 7 being the least desired score.
The above CORE scores designating individual preference styles and Role Profiles designating individual ambitions constitute Talent Metrics. Camille mentioned the availability of software that identifies individual Talent Metrics and aggregates them for a group of people (say within a department). The individual and aggregated metrics are displayed as Talent Meters. A new addition to the group is surveyed and this person’s scores are compared with those of the group.
When used improperly, Metrics can cause mistakes and result in humans being treated like interchangeable widgets. Examples include:
• Keeping a metric alive when it has no clear relevance to the business
• Assessing only simple measures likes grades, test scores which can fail to predict success
All of above mentioned skills, styles are required; they need to be applied when a business needs them. Periodic monitoring and Training are necessary to interpret the metrics effectively.
The Talent Metrics help a business to make effective predictions and forecast at different levels, across different departments to address its challenges in a rapidly changing environment.
Now Camille went back to the various questions listed by the audience at the start of the session. The audience acknowledged that the Talent Metrics would enhance self-awareness to engage, have a dialogue and find the answers. A key requirement is a commitment for the desired outcome across the board.
_____________________________________________________________
Ravi Ganesan has over 20 years of experience in Product and Engineering Management. As General Manager of TIBCO India, he was responsible for all fiscal and operations planning. He hired dozens of engineers, coordinated with external organizations and set up processes and procedures for development, facilities, finance, IT, release, support, and travel. Similarly, as a Senior Director in Adapter Engineering, TIBCO he was responsible for product management and engineering execution for over 25 adapter product lines (about 15% of company revenue). He has proven himself to be highly effective at Program and Process Management. He was responsible for the day-to-day management of two off-shore contracting companies in India, with a total of close to 100 employees. Among the areas for which he was responsible: setting product requirements and specifications; on-time delivery; budget management; designing SLAs and performance metrics; and coordinating and communicating with other organizations (marketing, sales, alliance contracts, legal, release, etc.).
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, May 17, 2012 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on May 17 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), in the Baltic/Caribbean rooms, starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. The speaker is Camille Smith, Founder/President, Work In Progress Coaching, and her topic is "Take the Mystery out of People Issues with Analytics - Using Data & Dialogue to Develop People."
Leaders: Until you know what’s going on with your people, you won’t really know what’s going on with your team or company. Knowing how individuals make decisions, prefer to communicate and deal with change can make the difference between a team that’s awesome and one that’s awe-shucks. In this interactive session, we’ll use case studies (perhaps one from the EL SIG community!) and explore talent metrics that take the mystery out of people issues, focus developmental efforts and inform career path choices. If you’re interested in impacting performance, yours and those you manage, join us.
Speaker Mini-bio: Camille Smith combines her business experience in start-ups and Fortune 500 companies with her exceptional skills as a communicator and leadership consultant to help leaders and their teams be effective in a world of change. Work In Progress Coaching names her company and her philosophy: “Each of us is a ‘work in progress’, figuring out how to contribute, be satisfied and produce results worthy of who we are.” Her coaching produces business-critical results by building authentic relationships based on values, commitment, accountability and trust. She is a founding member of the Global Women's Leadership Network and has served as an executive coach for Warren Bennis’ Global Institute for Leadership Development. She lives with her family in Aptos.
ONGOING MANAGEMENT SPONSOR: ProjectConnections.com ProjectConnections.com supports EL SIG members with a wide range of resources for managing organizations, projects, and people. Members can access links to templates, checklists, articles, and more from the ProjectConnections.com Premium library. All this is available to ELSIG members at no charge, at the ELSIG page onProjectConnetions.com (Open Enrollment is offered twice a year for this benefit. It's that time of year! We'll be sending a notice shortly and you can sign up if you haven't already.)
SNACK SPONSOR: Ryzen Solutions has been finding high caliber individuals for our clients in high-tech industries since 1999. We have access to thousands of professionals; even those that are passive candidates and not actively looking, and whose resumes' are not posted on the public job boards. Our own internal database has over 51,000 candidates. Ryzen Solutions has been one of the best firms in Silicon Valley. Our recruiters have degrees in electrical, software and mechanical engineering. Our clients such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, PayPal, Samsung and many more have worked with us for many years because our team of 16+ recruiters work collaboratively to find the top talents for our clients.
Agenda: 6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin - Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Leaders: Until you know what’s going on with your people, you won’t really know what’s going on with your team or company. Knowing how individuals make decisions, prefer to communicate and deal with change can make the difference between a team that’s awesome and one that’s awe-shucks. In this interactive session, we’ll use case studies (perhaps one from the EL SIG community!) and explore talent metrics that take the mystery out of people issues, focus developmental efforts and inform career path choices. If you’re interested in impacting performance, yours and those you manage, join us.
Speaker Mini-bio: Camille Smith combines her business experience in start-ups and Fortune 500 companies with her exceptional skills as a communicator and leadership consultant to help leaders and their teams be effective in a world of change. Work In Progress Coaching names her company and her philosophy: “Each of us is a ‘work in progress’, figuring out how to contribute, be satisfied and produce results worthy of who we are.” Her coaching produces business-critical results by building authentic relationships based on values, commitment, accountability and trust. She is a founding member of the Global Women's Leadership Network and has served as an executive coach for Warren Bennis’ Global Institute for Leadership Development. She lives with her family in Aptos.
ONGOING MANAGEMENT SPONSOR: ProjectConnections.com ProjectConnections.com supports EL SIG members with a wide range of resources for managing organizations, projects, and people. Members can access links to templates, checklists, articles, and more from the ProjectConnections.com Premium library. All this is available to ELSIG members at no charge, at the ELSIG page onProjectConnetions.com (Open Enrollment is offered twice a year for this benefit. It's that time of year! We'll be sending a notice shortly and you can sign up if you haven't already.)
SNACK SPONSOR: Ryzen Solutions has been finding high caliber individuals for our clients in high-tech industries since 1999. We have access to thousands of professionals; even those that are passive candidates and not actively looking, and whose resumes' are not posted on the public job boards. Our own internal database has over 51,000 candidates. Ryzen Solutions has been one of the best firms in Silicon Valley. Our recruiters have degrees in electrical, software and mechanical engineering. Our clients such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, PayPal, Samsung and many more have worked with us for many years because our team of 16+ recruiters work collaboratively to find the top talents for our clients.
Agenda: 6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin - Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, April 19
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on April 19 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), in the Baltic/Caribbean rooms, starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. The speaker, Bruce Pittman, is truly inspiring in his enthusiasm for the space industry. He's brilliant, has great depth of experience, and a lively presentation style that will make you glad you made time to attend.
Title:
Balancing Innovation and Risk in the Development of Large Aerospace Systems
Speaker:
Bruce Pittman, Director, Flight Projects & Chief System Engineer at NASA Space Portal
Description:
This talk with focus on the development history of NASA over the last 4 decades; the good, the bad, and the really ugly. One key question that needs to be addressed is why after the investment of billions of dollars and thousands of man years of effort, why are the systems we produce today pretty much like those produced decades ago in terms of reliability and $/performance. The history of NASA projects will be contrasted against the new emerging commercial space companies such as Space X, Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and Sierra Nevada and the different approaches to innovation and risk that they have developed. Recent data indicates that these companies are able to develop systems quicker and at a cost that is an order of magnitude cheaper but at what risk? These two system development approaches will be compared and contrasted and a path forward that takes advantage of the best of both will be proposed.
About the Speaker:
Bruce Pittman - Bruce has over 30 years of experience in aerospace and other high technology industries. He spent the first 11 years of his career with NASA and after that helped found several entrepreneurial space companies including SpaceHab and Kistler Aerospace. He has also been involved in the project management and system engineering of complex systems. he has taught and consulted for a wide variety of companies both large and small and government agencies including NASA and the Department of Energy. Now he's back working at NASA Ames as a contractor as part of the Space Portal to open up the space frontier for entrepreneurs and and the American public.
Snacks and Beverage Sponsor:
Ryzen Solutions has been finding high caliber individuals for our clients in high-tech industries since 1999. We have access to thousands of professionals; even those that are passive candidates and not actively looking, and whose resumes' are not posted on the public job boards. Our own internal database has over 51,000 candidates. Ryzen Solutions has been one of the best firms in Silicon Valley. Our recruiters have degrees in electrical, software and mechanical engineering. Our clients such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, PayPal, Samsung and many more have worked with us for many years because our team of 16+ recruiters work collaboratively to find the top talents for our clients.
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com supports EL SIG members with a wide range of resouhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrces for managing organizations, projects, and people. Members can access links to templates, checklists, articles, and more from the ProjectConnections.com Premium library. All this is available to ELSIG members at no charge, at the ELSIG page onProjectConnetions.com (Open Enrollment is offered twice a year for this benefit. It's that time of year! We'll be sending a notice shortly and you can sign up if you haven't already.)
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Title:
Balancing Innovation and Risk in the Development of Large Aerospace Systems
Speaker:
Bruce Pittman, Director, Flight Projects & Chief System Engineer at NASA Space Portal
Description:
This talk with focus on the development history of NASA over the last 4 decades; the good, the bad, and the really ugly. One key question that needs to be addressed is why after the investment of billions of dollars and thousands of man years of effort, why are the systems we produce today pretty much like those produced decades ago in terms of reliability and $/performance. The history of NASA projects will be contrasted against the new emerging commercial space companies such as Space X, Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and Sierra Nevada and the different approaches to innovation and risk that they have developed. Recent data indicates that these companies are able to develop systems quicker and at a cost that is an order of magnitude cheaper but at what risk? These two system development approaches will be compared and contrasted and a path forward that takes advantage of the best of both will be proposed.
About the Speaker:
Bruce Pittman - Bruce has over 30 years of experience in aerospace and other high technology industries. He spent the first 11 years of his career with NASA and after that helped found several entrepreneurial space companies including SpaceHab and Kistler Aerospace. He has also been involved in the project management and system engineering of complex systems. he has taught and consulted for a wide variety of companies both large and small and government agencies including NASA and the Department of Energy. Now he's back working at NASA Ames as a contractor as part of the Space Portal to open up the space frontier for entrepreneurs and and the American public.
Snacks and Beverage Sponsor:
Ryzen Solutions has been finding high caliber individuals for our clients in high-tech industries since 1999. We have access to thousands of professionals; even those that are passive candidates and not actively looking, and whose resumes' are not posted on the public job boards. Our own internal database has over 51,000 candidates. Ryzen Solutions has been one of the best firms in Silicon Valley. Our recruiters have degrees in electrical, software and mechanical engineering. Our clients such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, PayPal, Samsung and many more have worked with us for many years because our team of 16+ recruiters work collaboratively to find the top talents for our clients.
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com supports EL SIG members with a wide range of resouhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrces for managing organizations, projects, and people. Members can access links to templates, checklists, articles, and more from the ProjectConnections.com Premium library. All this is available to ELSIG members at no charge, at the ELSIG page onProjectConnetions.com (Open Enrollment is offered twice a year for this benefit. It's that time of year! We'll be sending a notice shortly and you can sign up if you haven't already.)
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Announcing the Next EL SIG Meeting, March 15 [Robert Lasater]
The next meeting of the Engineering Leadership SIG will be held on March 15 in SAP Building 2 (3412 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA), in the SAP - Baltic/Caribbean rooms in Building 2, starting at 7:00 PM. Doors open at 6:30 PM. The main presentation will be a talk by Jeff McKenna on Agile, including XP, Scrum and Kanban
Title:
Jeff McKenna - State of Agile: XP, Scrum and now Kanban - What is up?
Talk Details:
Over the last 20 years we have seen the increased adoption of non-waterfall software
development methods. In 2001 many of these new methods emerged under the term
‘agile’ with the publication of the Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org).
For many the start of Agile in software development was in 2000 with the publication of
Kent Beck’s extreme Programming explained followed in 2002 by Ken Schwaber and
Mike Beedle’s Agile Software Development with Scrum. At this time the word agile has
become common with many organizations with supporting reading, training and
coaching available from many sources.
We are now seeing the promotion of Lean techniques in software development with an
focus on Kanban. In this talk Jeff will discuss what lean thinking adds to the agile
mindset, how Kanban embodies lean concepts, what are the basics of Kanban and how
Kanban supplements existing agile methods. Jeff will also discuss when Kanban might
be appropriate and will provide further references.
Speaker:
Jeff McKenna has been active in software development for nearly 50 years taking on at
one time or another developer, tester, manager, business owner, trainer, coach.
consultant, blogger and mentor. He has an special interested in testing. domain
modeling and the larger question of how successful software lives in time. He was a
coach on the very first Scrum project in 1993 and has been practicing agile in various forms since 1987. Currently he is coaching and training on Scrum and moving into Lean.
Snacks and Beverage Sponsor:
Agile Learning Labs: Agile training and coaching is all we do, and we do it well. Whether you’re spinning up a new scrum team, contemplating an enterprise-scale agile adoption, or looking to add scrum certification to your resume, we have the experience and expertise to help you succeed.
There are as many ways to be agile as there are high-performing teams. Agile Learning Labs follows the Agile Manifesto’s people-centered approach, finding pathways to success within a company’s own culture, history and circumstances. A rapidly growing startup is coming from a very different place than a mature company with a 30 year-old product line that has undergone a recent merger, and the path to agility is different for each.
The happiest, most productive teams inspect-and-adapt in pursuit of continuous improvement, discovering new and better ways to work together, and enhancing product quality and customer satisfaction along the way. If this is where you want to go, we want to help you get there.
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com supports EL SIG members with a wide range of resouhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrces for managing organizations, projects, and people. Members can access links to templates, checklists, articles, and more from the ProjectConnections.com Premium library. All this is available to ELSIG members at no charge, at the ELSIG page onProjectConnetions.com (Open Enrollment is offered twice a year for this benefit. It's that time of year! We'll be sending a notice shortly and you can sign up if you haven't already.)
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
Title:
Jeff McKenna - State of Agile: XP, Scrum and now Kanban - What is up?
Talk Details:
Over the last 20 years we have seen the increased adoption of non-waterfall software
development methods. In 2001 many of these new methods emerged under the term
‘agile’ with the publication of the Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org).
For many the start of Agile in software development was in 2000 with the publication of
Kent Beck’s extreme Programming explained followed in 2002 by Ken Schwaber and
Mike Beedle’s Agile Software Development with Scrum. At this time the word agile has
become common with many organizations with supporting reading, training and
coaching available from many sources.
We are now seeing the promotion of Lean techniques in software development with an
focus on Kanban. In this talk Jeff will discuss what lean thinking adds to the agile
mindset, how Kanban embodies lean concepts, what are the basics of Kanban and how
Kanban supplements existing agile methods. Jeff will also discuss when Kanban might
be appropriate and will provide further references.
Speaker:
Jeff McKenna has been active in software development for nearly 50 years taking on at
one time or another developer, tester, manager, business owner, trainer, coach.
consultant, blogger and mentor. He has an special interested in testing. domain
modeling and the larger question of how successful software lives in time. He was a
coach on the very first Scrum project in 1993 and has been practicing agile in various forms since 1987. Currently he is coaching and training on Scrum and moving into Lean.
Snacks and Beverage Sponsor:
Agile Learning Labs: Agile training and coaching is all we do, and we do it well. Whether you’re spinning up a new scrum team, contemplating an enterprise-scale agile adoption, or looking to add scrum certification to your resume, we have the experience and expertise to help you succeed.
There are as many ways to be agile as there are high-performing teams. Agile Learning Labs follows the Agile Manifesto’s people-centered approach, finding pathways to success within a company’s own culture, history and circumstances. A rapidly growing startup is coming from a very different place than a mature company with a 30 year-old product line that has undergone a recent merger, and the path to agility is different for each.
The happiest, most productive teams inspect-and-adapt in pursuit of continuous improvement, discovering new and better ways to work together, and enhancing product quality and customer satisfaction along the way. If this is where you want to go, we want to help you get there.
Ongoing Management Sponsor:
Project Connections is our EL SIG Management Sponsor.
ProjectConnections.com supports EL SIG members with a wide range of resouhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrces for managing organizations, projects, and people. Members can access links to templates, checklists, articles, and more from the ProjectConnections.com Premium library. All this is available to ELSIG members at no charge, at the ELSIG page onProjectConnetions.com (Open Enrollment is offered twice a year for this benefit. It's that time of year! We'll be sending a notice shortly and you can sign up if you haven't already.)
Attendance Verification Available :
Please ask an SDForum registration personnel at the event if you need an attendance verification form for professional development and certification purpose.
Agenda:
6:15 - 6:30 Early arrival recommended!
6:30 - 7:00 Registration / Checkin
6:30 - 7:00 Enjoy cheese, fruit, snacks, pizza, soda and networking
6:31 - 6:59 Engineering Leadership Peer-2-Peer Roundtable
7:00 - 7:10 Introduction and opening announcements
7:10 - 8:20 Keynote and Q&A
8:20 - 8:30 Closing announcements
8:30 - 8:45 Informal networking and followup Q&A
8:45 - 8:50 Clean up
8:50 - 9:00 Clear the room & have a safe trip home!
Cost: $20 at the door for non-SDForum members, No charge for SDForum members
BOOK SWAP - Every month! Bring books to share.
JOB SWAP - Check out our Yahoo! Group here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SDForum_EL_SIG_JobSwap/
PEER-to-PEER Roundtable - Every month! Join us to share insights and advice with peers each month prior to the 7 PM event.
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