Deepa Kalangi's Blog

If you’re currently self-employed, a few of your clients may have told you that they can longer afford your services as they trim their budgets to get through the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if you can handle the dip in income, you’re probably wondering if it’s possible to drum up more business right now. No matter…

The post Finding new clients or projects during Covid-19 Pandemic appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

“Investing” doesn’t feel like something you can do much of when you are just starting out. Most small businesses operate on a shoestring budget, at least at first, so investments can often feel like a luxury. However, there are countless tools out there designed to make running a small business easier, and it would be…

The post A Guide to Smart Tech Investments for Small Businesses appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Showing Variances in MS Project Plan As Project Managers, we are constantly updating our project plans to analyse the variances on a weekly basis or even more frequently. With so many unknown factors while managing a project, it becomes inevitable for the Project Manager to keep looking at the estimated timelines and factor in the…

The post Variance Analysis using MS Project appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Think of SAFe as an agile and lean methodology for large and complex portfolio, programs. SAFe has two different levels of implementations, one is SAFe 4.0 and the other is SAFe 3.0. SAFe 4.0 has Portfolio, Value Stream, Project, and Team levels. And this is for larger teams that require hundreds of people to develop…

The post SAFe- Scaled Agile Framework appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

The most common way of running a retrospective is through asking these three questions. What went well What did not go well What are the next steps/improvements? The team after the end of each sprint in an AgileScrummodel model sits together to discuss these three questions so they can improve from next sprint on those…

The post Agile Scrum Retrospective Techniques appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Startup companies are all unique in their own ways. They are at different stages of their business cycle. In the concept phase/ seeding stage or may have just moved out of the concept phase into the Growth phase or between. Some entrepreneurs are bootstrapped and are wary of spending their money on the team. While they try to grow and scale, compete with other markets, the pressure is on. And it hits heavily.

And well, in this stage and state of the startup, they may not see the real value in having a Project Manager. Because the Project Manager does not do any real development work. And added to that, they mix up the duties of a Product Manager’s work. More than 90% of the startup companies use Agile/Scrum Model or one form of Agile.

You as a Project Manager will experience the ambiguity, eagerness, push and unrealistic expectations from the owner of the company. You have to just stay calm, do what are you are supposed to do, set the expectations and move on as you are experienced and are very well aware of what your duties are as a PM/Scrum Master.

Key Points

Here are some pointers that will benefit the Project Manager working for a startup company or a small company that is still establishing teams, processes, and roles.

Create a process that will bring value and benefit to the team and the company. Propose and advocate and emphasize the value of having a process. Ensure it is implemented as you will have push back on this.
You may have to work with ambiguous or no scope. Just navigate your way up to defining and getting the agreement on the scope definition.
Get the average velocity of the team.
Understand the MVP(Minimum Viable Product).  Stories/features/flow as this should be your first release to the customer.
Prepare a release plan or a road map. This will evolve and improve over time based on the inputs from the engineering. Be aware that there could be a case where there are no inputs from the team.  Start with defining the goals or vision for the company.

On one side, you are an adept Project Manager, on the other side, you feel like you are stuck. This may lead to questioning your competence. Don’t let that take over you.

Do your best steadily and build the process and the team. Don’t underestimate the value you bring although the founders may not be able to see it yet.

You will gradually develop a mutual relationship and learn from the challenges and risks of the business by working in a startup. You will certainly learn to multitask, navigate through chaos and uncertainty, build resilience working for a startup.

#startup #projectmanagement #Agilescrum

The post Working for a startup company as a Project Manager appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Agile/Scrum is a popular methodology used by many product based companies, big and small these days.

Below is a brief overview of Scrum Roles, Processes, Ceremonies and Artifacts.

 

 

Scrum Roles

Business Owner- Owns the business unit for the product or service

Product Owner- Owns the product that the team is building and delivering.

Scrum Master- Ensures that the team is guided and facilitated with the scrum processes and tools.

Delivery Team/Scrum team- The team that works for the Scrum framework. A typical delivery team is 7 plus or minus 2. While a team size of 7 is ideal. The Scrum team is cross-functional, so it consists of developers, analysts, and operations people.

Scrum Processes

There are three processes in the scrum. Refer to the diagram for a clear picture of the Scrum framework.

Sprint planning:

During sprint planning, the work is being planned. The work is broken down into manageable tasks based on the capacity of the team. (Capacity is calculated as man-hours, for example, if there are 5 members on a team and are working full time, the total capacity would be 5*40 hours per week and for a two-week sprint it is going to be 400 hours). The sprint planning meeting is done before the sprint starts for each sprint and typically runs between 4-8 hours(half or full day).

Sprint work:

This is the time during which the actual execution takes place. The planned work from the sprint planning meeting is executed during the sprint. This is where you would manage(as a Scrum Master or a PM) the project work, which includes monitoring and controlling aspect of Project Management where risks, issues are identified and removed.

Sprint review: This happens at the end of each sprint. This is to retrospect and understand what went wrong and how we could improve for the upcoming sprints.

Scrum Artifacts
Product Backlog:

Think of backlog as a set of features or requirements. Product backlog contains all the features that are gathered from the users or requirement meetings by the Product Owner and maintained as a list. This is like a superset of Sprint Backlog and refers to the entire product.

Sprint Backlog:

This is the set of features that you pull into your current sprint during the sprint planning meeting. These features are further broken down into workable, manageable work tasks during the planning meeting.

Burn down charts:

These are the charts that tell us the progress of how the sprints are progressing. They are also the benchmarks for upcoming sprints. These are like graphs that are generated by the agile tools that tell us how many more hours are left vs how many more hours are needed to complete the current sprint. In other words, these are the charts that give us the PV(Planned Value) and EV(Estimated Value) values and variances.

For related reading; Project Management in an Agile/Scrum Model, click here.

The post Agile Scrum Processes and Ceremonies appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Agile is nothing but a methodology that is used to implement the project or the product. This is a process that has been proven to deliver the product or service faster in the market and also produce better quality. To understand better, let’s quickly look at the standard, most popular, a familiar methodology that all…

The post Agile Models: Scrum Model, Kanban model appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Agile is nothing but a methodology that is used to implement the project or the product. This is a process that has been proven to deliver the product or service faster in the market and also produce better quality.

To understand better, let’s quickly look at the standard, most popular, a familiar methodology that all companies have used before Agile methodology came into use.

Waterfall methodology

Sequential model
Follows one phase after the other in SDLC(Software Development Life Cycle)
Testing starts after development is complete
Requirements are fully approved and signed off before coding starts
Each phase starts only after the prior phase is fully complete and approved.
Team sizes can be small or large, can range from as small as 5 people to as large as 100 people.

Agile methodology

Agile is a blanket term for other variations, Kanban, Lean, RUP(Rational Unified Process) and Scrum. Of these, Scrum is the most popular and Kanban is quickly being adopted by companies as well.

Agile-Scrum model.

This is an iterative approach
Documentation is not given much importance.
Testing happens in parallel with coding.
Time-boxed- meaning, there are cycles called sprints that are run for every two, three or four weeks depending on the nature of the project.
Weighs in a lot for the TTM(Time To Market) (applied to consumer electronics, shopping/apparel- a retail industry more than other domains)
Team structure is different from the waterfall model.
Team sizes are between 5-8 people for Agile/Scrum.

To learn more on each of the Scrum Processes, Ceremonies, click here.

Agile-Kanban Model.

Kanban- Kanban is based on JIT(Just In Time) technology introduced by Toyota. When we talk about Agile, we remember three keywords, Agility(flexibility), Iterative/Adaptive, Coordination(teams are small and communicate well). And we are looking at Kanban, it is even more flexible than Agile-Scrum, which means there is are no particular rules to implement Kanban.

Key points in using Kanban.

JIT framework, meaning, no specific rules, task oriented. Take work as it comes and completes it.
Don’t move to other tasks without completing your previous task.
No cycles or sprints like Agile-Scrum.(Scrum has 2 or 3 or 4-week sprint cycles)
The Kanban board has only(mostly) three columns. To Do, In Progress, Done. To Do column has the features to be done and In Progress states the task that is currently being worked on and done is done(which means, testing has also been done and passed).

And there is another variation called ScrumBan where the company decides the best way for them is to adopt both the Scrum and the Kanban process. This is totally right, as the Agile framework does not dictate any rigid process or framework, rather it is adaptable and customizable based on the company’s structure and needs.

#Agileprojectmanagement #agilescrum #projectmanagement

The post Project Management in an Agile/Scrum Model appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.

Interviewing itself is a daunting task. And if you are interviewing for a startup, it’s altogether a different and difficult story.  In terms of both the questions being asked, the expectations and definition of the role and duties, it is a little overwhelming for the candidate. There are a lot of things that are unknown for the company itself and hence the conversation with the hiring manager would be very different from the earlier interviews you may have. Especially when you are coming from a background of working for a large process oriented company where there is a mature PMO process and the roles are clearly defined and delineated.

Here are some reasons why the interviews with the startup companies are different and what to expect during such interviews so you can be successful with those interviews.

Expect Unclear Job Descriptions

The title and the job descriptions are not clear and also don’t match with each other. For example, if they needed a Product Manager/Business Analyst, they can title is as Technical Manager. And then if you read the description, you will understand that the duties outlined will be different when you compare with the title. Sometimes, the description also asks for things or mentions duties that they necessarily don’t desire or need from the candidate which you would not be able to find out until an interview is called for and a conversation is established. So, it is better to apply to those jobs even though the duties differ from the title and the work you have done in the past. And also keep this in mind when answering questions during the interview. Another point to note is that they most likely are expecting you to wear more than one hat when working with them. As they are starting up and growing, they look for diverse experience and expertise so they don’t have to fill every single role that they might need as they progress along.

Unconventional Communication Style

In terms of communicating the needs and the interview timings, you may also notice gaps. Certain times one manager(we assume it is the hiring manager or the HR person, but sometimes, none of them email you) emails and a follow up is being done by a different person. And also note that the titles aren’t given in the signatures of the emails nor an introduction is done. So, it is advisable to put these questions forward when responding to an email. And once the interview time is agreed and confirmed, you can also expect they may not keep the time. They could change on you during the last minute and reschedule.

Interviewing style

The pattern of questions and the organization of the conversation is a challenge, sometimes. The interview for a Project Manager role is being held by a developer or someone that actually turns into some sort of technical manager from a development role. When they ask questions, they are not geared toward project management related activities and furthermore they would not be able to fully comprehend your responses. So, keep that in mind when you are answering for those questions. Also, they repeat questions until they hear what they expect to hear certain specific response/keywords from you.

Understanding PM Tools

You will get questions on what tools you have used for your PM activities and if you have worked for a well established large company you would use standard tools like Clarity RPM, Microsoft Project etc. But the startups typically use PM software that is less priced and fulfills the needs of the company. So, research on those tools for both waterfall and agile models before taking up the call with them.

These are some factors to consider when interviewing for a startup company. There are mutual benefits for both the candidate and the organization if they can work together. However, it’s a journey that is altogether different from working with fortune companies or well-established organizations.

Hope this article helps you get the perspective before you attend interviews with a company that is starting up or small and does not have an established process yet.

The post Interviewing for a startup company appeared first on A Journey into PM and QA Career.