Summary: Know Thy Audience Dwight Eisenhower said, “Planning is everything, the plan is nothing.” One of the critical success factors for introducing Lean-Agile software development into an organization is to be prepared. To understand who you are going to be working with: their motivations, experiences in development, world view, and their focus in development efforts. Who makes decisions and how are they made? The thought work you put into your planning now will help you create a plan that both helps you focus on the important things first and gives you a flexible framework for the future. The more you engage with the organization, the more you should expect to adjust your coaching plan: it will never be correct the first time out. Adjustment is completely acceptable in Lean-Agile. What is not acceptable is going in unprepared. Lean-Agile is not chaotic. It requires discipline and a framework to build on. I will be doing a couple of shows with Alan Chedalawada, the Chief Operating Officer and manager of the coaching practice at Net Objectives. He is a gifted coach who connects with senior management as good as anyone I have seen. He knows how to get things moving. Early in his preparation to talk with a client, Alan spends a fair amount of time trying to understand who he will be talking to, what is driving them when it comes to software development. He classifies them as Entrepreneurial, Structured, or Highly Defined and that helps him decide what he will emphasize first. Of course, this is a tentative classification until he knows more. In this show, Alan discusses his classification approach. On a personal note, I can hardly believe it has been 2 months since I have done a podcast. It has been a crazy few months for me at Net Objectives. I have been on a couple of client coaching visits, worked with the Information School at the University of Washington (http://ischool.uw.edu/), and helped to develop our new web site, which is based on the Drupal content management system (http://www.drupal.org/). Drupal is a great tool and should serve as a good foundation for going forward. We had the good fortune to work with Scott McDaniel of Decisive Communications to help us with the new site. He is a WordPress expert who learned Drupal very well. If you haven’t had a chance to see our new site, take a look: www.netobjectives.com. We have put up a lot of new resources for registered users and customers. Hopefully, you will find it helpful. All of that and writing two books and learning to be a manager. Well, I am glad for my online virtual Kanban Boards to help me manage my work in an agile way and for patience of my friends, family, and listeners. I hope to be on a more regular production track now. Enjoy the show! Talk to us I want this to be very useful to you and want to dive into the issues you care most about. So, I would appreciate it if you would drop me a note to jim.trott@netobjectives.com with the topics you want us to cover. This blog and podcast series is really about how we can provide value to you. Recommendations - Training by Net Objectives Lean-Agile Software Development Recommendations - Technical Drupal - Open source content management system Scott McDaniel's site Decisive Communications. He helped us with the design of the new site, www.netobjectives.com Music used in this podcast: “Pizzaman” and “Chocolate” ©2006 William Cushman: ghostnotes.blogspot.com “On the Cool Side” ©2006 Kevin McLeod: http://www.incompetech.com/ For more information, contact info@netobjectives.com or visit us at http://www.netobjectives.com Blog Type: PodcastLog in or register to post comments
