"My Life As A PM Is Over: The Company Just Went Agile!"

Last night was my presentation on Agile Project Management to the local chapter of the Project Management Institute, and based on the electronic polling results that were collected right after I finished, I think I did fairly well. Each member of the audience was given a handheld device about the size of a small calculator and then asked to respond to a series of statements along the lines of: "The topic presented by tonight's speaker was informative and interesting" and "Tonight's speaker appeared to be well-prepared" by selecting, on their device, either "1" (strongly agree), "2" (agree), "3" (disagree) or "4" (strongly disagree). For those who were having trouble figuring out how to work their new toys (since this was the first time they had tried this approach), I helpfully offered the advice, "Just press the button labeled '1'!" In most cases, I received scores where the total of "1"s and "2"s put me at or above the 80% mark, which was gratifying to see.

As for the material itself, I had worried that I had too much to cover in 2 hours, but somehow it all worked out, even with a 15-minute break midway through. I spent the first half introducing Agile, and then called for a short break. However, I asked that, during the break, everyone write down how they thought they might react if they went into work on Monday and their boss walked up to them and announced, "Guess what? We're going Agile in a month!" Just before resuming, I collected their responses and read them out for everyone to hear. Here are some representative samples of what I got:

• "Agile? Can we get the Functional Managers to support it?"
• "Good, [but] first educate the clients."
• "Let's go!"
• "Can we still perform accurate Earned Value analysis?"
• "Great, but how do I co-locate with my global team?"
• "1 week cycles??"
• "But what's wrong with RUP?"
• "Great, let's try it. As long as we follow ALL of the steps, not only parts of it."
• "How do we break deliverables into iteration-sized chunks?"
• "Risk of scope creep."
• "How do you budget??"
• "What are the signs that we NEED Agile?"

and my personal favourite:

• "Do Agile? We don't even do Project Management!"

What impressed me most about these results, aside from the variety, was that it was pretty clear that everyone had been paying attention to what I'd been saying up to that point and attempting to rationalize it against their own experiences and work environments. Virtually no one was writing off the notion of "going Agile" as some crank thought experiment that they could laugh off or simply ignore. Also, I'd say that about 1/4 of the responses were of the "Let's go!" variety, showing that there was at least some buy-in among a group that was mostly hearing about Agile for the first time.

During the Q&A session at the end, many of those same concerns were expressed once again. One woman was sure that no budget would ever be approved without a guarantee that the work done would match what was being approved, to which I said, "If that sort of arrangement is working out for you right now, then I don't know why you'd ever want to move to Agile. The organizations that move to an Agile methodology are the ones where things change considerably between initial concept and final installation." Another fellow was understandably concerned about how to create automated tests to replace the extensive manual testing that they currently do at the end of each project, and I said that that was one area where you'd want to allocate time in order to research the new products and services that are coming out on the market for that purpose. "But in the end," I said, "you really don't have any choice: you need to have automated testing, or you'll never be able to do short cycles." I also got asked whether Agile was really only appropriate for "UI companies", to which I was able to describe some of the very-different types of organizations I've heard of - or seen! - doing Agile.

The moderator eventually had to call an end to the Q&A, as I think it might've gone on for quite a while longer otherwise. I received a $25 Chapters gift card for my troubles (which was nice, and unexpected) and eventually took off home to unwind. Sadly I didn't make any book sales, despite having several copies with me for just that reason. Maybe next time!

In The Black

That's right! Thanks to the kindness and generosity of our many readers, the two-pronged publishing project that included More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done) and The Complete Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Two Years of Lessons Learned in Going Agile) has now achieved profitability! It took a few months for that milestone to arrive for the first AgileMan book, but less than a week this time around (the difference that not providing a couple dozen comp copies can make!). And I'm not counting the 8 copies that were pre-ordered but not distributed/paid for yet, which means that I'll soon have taken enough in to pay for another (smaller) print-run if there's ever enough demand for it.

Many thanks to all who've purchased either book, and especially to Jamie who bought four copies to give away (once again)!

The Books Are On Their Way!

I just received e-mail notification from Lulu that the initial print-run of More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done) and The Complete Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Two Years of Lessons Learned in Going Agile) has been completed and several dozen copies are now winging their way here! It's always a bit tricky guessing exactly when they'll arrive, but I'd say Monday or Tuesday of next week looks promising.

If so, I should be able to get books out to my former co-worker buddies who pre-ordered sometime later next week, which would be excellent (several weeks earlier than I had planned). I still need to figure out how to accomplish that mass distribution (and currency collection), but now that it's starting to seem real, I'll put more thought into it!

Another publishing cycle nears its exciting conclusion...

Book Publishing Running Ahead Of Schedule

I was very happy to see this week that Lulu, where I print my AgileMan books, was able to produce and deliver the print drafts of More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done) and The Complete Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Two Years of Lessons Learned in Going Agile) in less than a week! I ordered them Sunday afternoon and they arrived the following Friday! That's quite impressive and in fact exceeded my expectations by about 50%. (That's the good news; the bad news is that even their cheapest shipping option is now more expensive than it used to be, meaning that they've already started eating into my profit margin before I even sell the first copy!)

After Vicki and I checked over what had arrived, I made a few minor tweaks and then placed an order large enough to cover all of the requests that have come in to-date plus a handful of extra copies of each book. Based on the estimate provided by Lulu on the order, I would think that they might arrive sometime during the week of Dec 15th, or possibly earlier if I get really lucky. It's hard to predict just how much things will slow down in December because of holiday-related activity, though. It's still possible that the books won't arrive until after Christmas, which would be more in line with what I imagined when I planned out the self-publishing schedule leading up to this.

In any event, we're on the last leg of the journey for the 2nd AgileMan book, and those of you out there who are eagerly awaiting it (c'mon! stand up and be recognized, both of you!!) should know that it won't be much longer before you have it in your hot little hands. I still have to figure out, logistically, how I'm going to get copies to all of those people at my former workplace (I can't exactly book a meeting room for it, after all!), but I'm sure that we'll figure something out.

New Mike Cohn Agile Book In The Offing

I stumbled across this link to a website where you can download and preview a few draft chapters from Mike Cohn's upcoming book, Succeeding with Agile. I'm not sure which excites me more: the fact that Mike has a new book coming out, or that he's providing the option for interested parties to preview the work and give feedback on it ahead of publication!

Anyway, I definitely encourage other Agile enthusiasts out there to do what I'm about to: visit the site, check out what Mike has to say and help him make the book even better!

2nd AgileMan Book Nearing Completion

I'm now into the home stretch on More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done), as I'm about to embark on a final read-through before beginning the self-publishing process. I'm still awaiting feedback from one of my reviewers, but that seems to be par for the course in this sort of arrangement (the same thing happened with the first book, even though the set of reviewers this time is completely different). Depending upon when it arrives, this final array of comments may - or may not! - end up being reflected in the finished product. As tempting as it might be to hold things up and wait, I'm keenly aware (after 22 years of doing various types of projects) that it could end up being a long delay. So onward and upward we go!

Vicki and I spent some time toward the end of the week (after we'd concluded our Project Management guest lectures) designing the covers for the 2nd book and the collected edition. The former will use a standard Lulu cover image, just like the 1st AgileMan book did, but I'm doing something special for The Complete Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Two Years of Lessons Learned in Going Agile). And yes, that means I finally decided on a name for the collection! I've had 5 pre-orders placed for the bigger volume so far, and I think those generous souls will be amused, and maybe even pleased, to see what their book's cover looks like! I still have one more extra in mind for that edition that I'll probably take care of tomorrow.

If things go well this weekend, I hope to be placing an order for one copy of each of the two new books sometime very early in the week. With the American Thanksgiving holiday looming on the horizon, I imagine it may take more than the (now) standard two-week turnaround to get them, but I'll optimistically say that we might have the first proof copies in hand toward the end of the week of December 8th. If so, that would work out well for having the first big shipment arrive in time for early January distribution (an even luckier outcome would have the books show up before Christmas, but I don't see that as likely at this point).

A Few Updates On The 2nd AgileMan Book

I've begun soliciting pre-orders for More Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Year 2: Easier Said Than Done), starting with the list of people who bought or expressed interest in the 1st book. I've had nearly 20 positive responses so far and that's an encouraging result after just a couple of days!

Since I've decided to produce a collected edition of the two books, I'm also looking for pre-orders on that (I have 2 so far!). I've been working on the bonus material for it recently, making sure that anyone who buys the collection gets a little bit of extra, fun stuff beyond what's in the two regular editions. I'm still noodling over the sub-title for that book, to go along with The Complete Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan. Ideas I've had so far include:

• (Two Years of Going Agile)
• (Two Years of Lessons Learned)
• (Two Years of Agile Lessons Learned)

Anyone out there have any better suggestions?

The online prices at Lulu.com will be slightly higher than what I'm about to quote, but for in-person sales I'm expecting to charge $30 for the 2nd book and $45 for the collected edition (the latter of which is compared to $25 and $30, or $55 total, for the 2 books individually). For anyone in my neck of the woods who'd like to get a copy from the author himself on Launch Day (sometime in January 2009), please let me know now so that I can be sure to print enough copies!

While the actual writing of the books could at least conceivably be considered "work," I have to say that doing the various extras for them comes almost entirely under the category of "fun!" I had a great time dreaming up the comic strip captions that I used in The Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan (Lessons Learned in Going Agile), not to mention the minor thrill that I felt in creating the artwork in the first place! While I don't want to give too much away ahead of Launch Day '09, I will say that I'm having every bit as much fun this time around! I also tended to laugh out loud quite a bit as I came up with the contents of "AgileBoy's Glossary of Terms" for the 1st book, and I have an idea for something similar to use in the 2nd one. I really enjoy flexing my creative muscles on things like that, and if the people who buy the books get a kick out of them - as a few readers have told me they did - then all the better!

As for timing, the reviewers have until Nov 21st to get me their feedback (some of which has already come in) and then I hope to be starting the printing/publishing process shortly thereafter. I might manage to have the first print draft in my hands as early as the first week of December, if all of the stars line up and nothing goes wrong (I know: what are the chances?)

And that's where things stand today.