El Calafate, Argentina

#SridharPeddisetty, #Argentina, #Calafate, #ElCalafate, #Patagonia, #Travel, #PlacesToVisit, #PointsofInterest

Below snaps are of El Calafate, a city in Patagonia, Argentina. 

Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina

#SridharPeddisetty, #Argentina, #Calafate, #PeritoMoreno, #Glacier, #GlacierNationalPark, #Travel, #PlacesToVisit, #PointsofInterest

Below snaps are of Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina. 

And below is the video of the same. 

You Already Have ‘NO', Go For ‘YES'

#SridharPeddisetty #PreSales #Negotiation #Project #BestPractices #Agile #ProjectManagement 

"You already have NO, go for YES!" is possibly the best advise shared by my colleague to sum up a hectic 10 days PreSales trip. In the last ten days, we travelled extensively across North America meeting with various clients, which worked out to be an enriching experience for both of us. Coming from a delivery background, this PreSales trip was a learning experience in many ways for me. More often than not, when you are selling your services, its the preconceived perception that is normally challenging to change. By definition, perception is the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. So when my wise colleague shared with me the wisdom he got from his mother, it truly reflected the challenge we mostly overcome during our PreSales meetings. The challenge of going for ‘Yes’ when we already have a ‘No’. 

In my earlier blog posts, 5 Tips Delivering Quality Services To Your Client and 7 Tips Having Good Times In A Client Relationship, I had shared tips on maintaining robust client relationships and how to ensure providing quality services to your client. This post is more applicable for PreSales phase, which precedes before starting work with a new client or on a new project. In the book "Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In", based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, authors Roger Fisher and William Ury outline four parameters for principled negotiation:

1. Separate the people from the problem
2. Focus on interests, not positions
3. Generate a variety of possibilities before making a decision and 
4. Define objective standards as the criteria for making the decision

All of above four parameters are applicable when transforming the perception of people into a positive outlook. Below I am sharing five tips on how you can go for ‘Yes’ when you have already have a ‘No’.

Tip#1: Identify the people for whom you would want to change perception - Its an important first step to identify the people and their positioning of strength. Have a clear understanding on who are the influencers whose change of opinion would matter the most. Its more on focusing on their respective needs rather than their positions. 

Tip#2: Identify the reasoning of perception - Understand the background to get some context behind the perception. Its important to understand whether the perception is a direct result of personal experience or its an opinion formed by hearing other’s experience. This would help while devising the plan on transforming.  

Tip#3: Plan to transform the perception - Identify and establish some common grounds while planning the transformation. There is a reason why a perception is formed so plan to be assertive without being argumentative. Prepare yourself with ideas, logics and rational reasoning to counter the perception.  

Tip#4: Execute on the plan - Its important to keep emotions under check while executing the transformation. Keep in mind to respond and not to react. Always keep me in mind that you build relationships and connect with others by listening to understand and not listening to respond. 

Tip#5: Have Follow Ups - Its important to have regular follow ups with the individuals you are trying to change the perception. Closing the loop is very critical in ensuring a trustworthy relationship. 

Summary

To summarize, going after ‘Yes’ is more about knowing what you want, going after it and in the process respecting the person on other end of the deal. Go after ‘Yes’ to build long lasting relationships rather than burning bridges on your way out of the meeting room.

“Place a higher priority on discovering what a win looks like for the other person.” – Harvey Robbins

Previous posts you might be interested in 

• 5 Tips Delivering Quality Services To Your Client
• 7 Tips Having Good Times In A Client Relationship
• Active Listening Is Key For A Successful Delivery 

Every (Failed) Project Has ‘Success' Story To Tell

#SridharPeddisetty #LessonsLearned #Management #Project #BestPractices #Agile #ProjectManagement 

A 24 year old boy seeing out from the train’s window shouted…
“Dad, look the trees are going behind!”
Dad smiled and a young couple sitting nearby, looked at the 24 year old’s childish behavior with pity,
suddenly he again exclaimed…
“Dad, look the clouds are running with us!”
The couple couldn’t resist and said to the old man…
“Why don’t you take your son to a good doctor?”
The old man smiled and said…
“I did and we are just coming from the hospital, my son was blind from birth, he just got his eyes today.

We should not judge too soon before knowing all facts as at times the truth might surprise you. Every single person on the planet is unique and has a story to share. Similarly, every project is unique and has a ‘success’ story to tell even if it failed to meet its objectives in the eyes of stakeholders. By definition, project is a temporary unique endeavor having start-end timelines with a defined scope & resources with planned set of interrelated tasks executed to accomplish goal(s). 

There are many means to measure the success and failure of a project but there is no strict line dividing between the two. For instance, a ‘successful' project could have exceeded the planned budget or went over scheduled delivery date or could even not have provided all the planned functionalities upon completion. Whereas a ‘failed’ project could have a release with all planned features but missed the critical market launch or could not align with the direction of new leadership team. Brian K Willard in his Project Success and Failures article has shared examples, which strengthens the point that success or failure of a project are subjective. 

In my earlier post, Why Sharing Lessons Learned Is Key For Matured PMO, I discussed why sharing 'lessons learned' across teams is one of the key aspects of a matured PMO in an Organization. A well organized exercise to document 'Lessons learned’ would include identifying the ‘success’ factors of a project and understand how to repurpose it for future or existing projects. Success factors that could be salvaged from a ‘failed’ project could be

• An improvement to internal process(s) 
• An improvement in technical skill(s) of the resource(s) 
• An improvement to service(s) for the end customer 
• An improvement to save cost in utilizing key resource(s)

The exploitation of knowledge and experience gained from completed projects is very critical for a matured organization and application of the same for continuous improvements.  

Summary

To summarize, do not judge a ‘failed' project too soon without getting specific facts for learning lessons. It's important to identify and share the ‘success’ value of a project even if it failed to meet its main strategic goals.

Remember not to throw the baby out with the bathwater!

Previous posts you might be interested in:

• Why Sharing Lessons Learned Is Key For Matured PMO
• Top 20 Tips for Project Managers
• Are You Providing 'Right' Status To Stakeholders?

DevOps Need Collaboration To Succeed As A Practice

#SridharPeddisetty #DevOps #Kanban #Culture #Collaboration #SchneiderCultureModel #DevOpsStrategy #Agile 

“A great team doesn’t mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists.” ― Gene Kim, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

DevOps formulates collaboration of Operations and Engineering teams to achieve continuous delivery by participating together in the entire service delivery lifecycle. DevOps is NOT a role but it is a shift in culture of an organization, which encourages greater communication and collaboration to foster building better quality software more quickly and with better reliability. There are good number of people who agree that DevOps is not a new phenomena and some organizations have been formulating collaboration of Operations and Engineering teams to achieve continuous delivery by participating together for releasing new product or service. However there are good number of organizations who are either warming up to the idea of DevOps and ready to adopt it or going through initial phase of DevOps adoption. It is important for the organizations to understand that "collaboration culture” is key for them to successfully adapt to DevOps. In my earlier post Kanban & DevOps - Forming A Perfect Alliance, I shared how Kanban and DevOps combine together to help bring down the silos between Engineering and Operations teams. 

Why DevOps need collaboration to succeed?

To understand why DevOps need collaboration to succeed, let's understand Schneider Culture Model, which defines four distinct cultures:

1. Collaboration culture is about working together
2. Control culture is about getting and keeping control
3. Competence culture is about being the best
4. Cultivation culture is about learning and growing with a sense of purpose

In the diagram below, Michael Sahota shared his thoughts on understanding the culture of an organization using Schneider Culture Model. Each of the four cultures are depicted – one in each quadrant with each having a name, descriptive quote, a picture, and some words that characterize that quadrant. 

As can be seen in the diagram, collaboration quadrant includes the words affiliation, synergy, partnership, interaction, trust, diversity and egalitarian to characterize itself while the descriptive quote is “we succeed by working together”. These are the exact characteristics that are needed for DevOps to succeed as a practice in an Organization in which Engineering and Operations teams come together to work with affiliation, synergy, trust as partners by closely interacting with egalitarian philosophy. 

Note that according to Schneider model, no one culture type is considered better than another and same is applicable to DevOps, in which possibly cultural elements from other quadrants (control, cultivation and competence) are applicable to DevOps. Depending on the organization but for DevOps to succeed, definitely the organization needs to have ‘Collaboration’ as the single dominant culture with elements from the other three culture quadrants.

By adapting to the culture of DevOps, an organization is not only focusing on agility but also on reliability by eliminating waste, identifying repeatable steps and automating those steps. Organizations will fail in adapting DevOps if the culture is not breaking down the organizational silos and in which everyone shares the accountability for delivery.

Summary

DevOps represents both a technology and a culture change in the organization and the objective of DevOps can be achieved only if the culture of the organization is more collaborative. In other words, DevOps need more of a "collaboration culture” in the organization to succeed as a practice. 

In the comments section, please share your thoughts on what do you think an Organization must do for DevOps to succeed and make a positive impact. 

Previous posts you might be interested in

• Kanban & DevOps - Forming A Perfect Alliance
• Value Stream Mapping As A Process Improvement Tool
• Metrics For Maximizing Productivity In Kanban SDLC

Change Management Is Not Everyone's Cup Of Tea

#SridharPeddisetty #ChangeManagement #Management #Project #BestPractices #Agile #ProjectManagement 

There's an old sea story about a ship's Captain who inspected his sailors, and afterward told the first mate that his men smelled bad. The Captain suggested perhaps it would help if the sailors would change underwear occasionally. The first mate responded, "Aye, aye sir, I'll see to it immediately!" and went straight to the sailors berth deck and announced, "The Captain thinks you guys smell bad and wants you to change your underwear." He continued, "Pittman, you change with Jones, McCarthy, you change with Witkowski, and Brown, you change with Schneider."

Moral of the story: 
Someone may come along and promise "Change", but don't count on things smelling any better.

Whether your Organization is using Agile or Iterative or Traditional methodology to deliver services to its customers, Change Management is a key component to ensure alignment of plan with strategic objectives. Change Management is a structured approach comprising of an approval process, which allows a change request to move through a series of approval stages to ensure that the lasting benefits of change are achieved. Organizations still struggle to implement a robust Change Management process vetting out the changes as they ought to be.

Common pitfalls seen in Change Management process include

1. People are not very receptive to expect change. Either there is not a good process to identify and report change or enough stakeholders are not involved early enough to vet out the change. 
2. More often than not, necessary ‘Change Impact Analysis’ is not performed to truly understand the impact of a ‘Change’ and how its aligned with the strategic objectives of an Organization. 
3. Project plans are not always changed to reflect the impact of a change, which could effect overall schedule, cost and likely result in scope creep. 
4. If the project plans are changed, they are not communicated to all project stakeholders to ensure everyone are aware of the change, its likely impact and seek approvals. 
5. Weigh the priorities of the change with the tasks in pipeline, aligning with strategic objectives of the Organization 

Below is a pictorial depiction of a simple 'Change Management' process

Summary

Presently all Organizations are growing through a disruptive phase whether its technology transformation, changing customer demographics, challenging economic times, etc. In this phase, It is an organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly, which gives it the ultimate competitive advantage. In other words, sustaining success depends on an organization’s ability to adapt to a changing environment. Implementing a robust Change Management reduces disruptive aspects and emphasizes positive opportunities in the change process. 

In my future blog posts, I will be sharing how specifically to plan Change Management in an Enterprise Agile setup. 

Previous posts you might be interested in

• Value Stream Mapping As A Process Improvement Tool
• Are You Providing 'Right' Status To Stakeholders
• 10 Ground Rules On Right Metrics For Your Business

5 Tips Delivering Quality Services To Your Client

#SridharPeddisetty #Leadership #Management #ClientManagement #ClientRelationship #EngagementManagement #CustomerService 

A gentleman once visited a temple under construction where he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he noticed a similar idol lying nearby. Surprised, he asked the sculptor, “Do you need two statues of the same idol?” “No,” said the sculptor without looking up, “We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.” The gentleman examined the idol and found no apparent damage. “Where is the damage?” he asked. “There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.” said the sculptor, still busy with his work. “Where are you going to install the idol?” The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high. “If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is a scratch on the nose?” the gentleman asked. The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said, “I know it and God knows it!”

It was probably the understatement of the year when President and CEO of Volkswagen's US group admitted that the company "totally screwed up" in using software to rig emissions tests. More than the tangible monetary losses, it's the intangible reputation & loss of customer trust that will impact Volkswagen the most.

According to Gartner, 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, and it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied. So it is a no brainer to understand that retaining an existing customer is very important for the continuous growth of any company. In my earlier post 7 Tips Having Good Times In A Client Relationship, I shared tips for helping experience the good times in a client relationship while converting them into everlasting memories & forging long term relationships. According to report from Oracle:

• 81% - customers are willing to pay more for a superior customer experience with nearly half (44%) willing to pay a premium of more than 5%.
• 89% - customers switched brands after a poor customer experience.
• 20% - annual percentage revenue losses due to poor customer experiences.

Below I am sharing 5 tips on how to deliver quality services to your client and ensuring trusting relationships

Tip#1: Understand the strategic objectives of your client - Long everlasting relationships begin with knowing your clients' wants and needs. Most times the focus is on scope, schedule, cost and the solution. It is important to understand the business problem or the strategic goal, which the client needs to achieve. We need to provide simple solutions to complex problems and not the other way around. 

Tip#2: Provide transparency in the delivery process to your client - Transparency is important in every business and client service is no different. Always strive for a high quality output by being transparent with your client on the delivery process and keep them engaged. Being transparent and with robust communication, you minimize the element of surprise and at the same time, earn client’s trust. One reason for wide adoption of Agile is mainly because it encourages customer involvement throughout the delivery process. 

Tip#3: Proactively plan for frequent client feedbacks - You need to measure client satisfaction and engagement by taking frequent feedbacks. Regular check points with the client can help easily identify areas of concern and perform course corrections before issues lead to an unhappy client. Without constant feedback from clients, it's more like working in a vacuum and waiting to be surprised. 

Tip#4: Be consistent in providing your services - Every client is important and you need to appreciate that by creating a unique client experience. Whether your client is a fortune 100 or not, be consistent in providing your services. It's a fact that a satisfied client would be willing to refer your services, leading to increased opportunities; while a non-satisfied client can spread the word faster and even more so via social media. 

Tip#5: Share your new services, processes, tools or competencies - A proactive customer service to help find solutions for continuous improvement not only helps keep the client happy but turns them into your strong brand advocate. You are cultivating shared values by engaging the client in your new services, processes, tools or competencies, which fosters relationships. 

Summary

To summarize, clients do not owe you their loyalty, you have to earn it continuously. Any organization’s strategy for their services should be built around delivering quality customer service. When performed properly, you have earned a happy client for life. 

"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." - Henry Ford

Previous posts you might be interested in:

• 7 Tips Having Good Times In A Client Relationship
• Empower Your Team To Own Responsibilities
• Are You Providing 'Right' Status of Your Project, Program or Portfolio?