OMS Consulting Partners, LLC

Agile and Scrum are frameworks with a broad range of options but also some pretty hard guardrails . With the best of intentions, some will espouse their ideas/agenda as solid agile, but I'd recommend sticking to the core reliable sources , and look at anything outside of that circle with a critical eye to make sure they are sticking closely to the principles of Agility. To that end, here's a few reliable resources . Reliable Scrum Resources: Scrum Alliance:   www.scrumalliance.org (Mike Cohn - where the most recognized certifications (CSM, CSP, CTP, etc.) come from) Agile Manifesto:   www.agilemanifesto.org (Where it all started) Agile in a Nutshell One Pager:   http:// blog.crisp.se/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Agile-poster-2016-ver14.pdf Scrum Inc :   https://www.scruminc.com / (Jeff Sutherland co-inventor of Scrum) Version One:   https://www.versionone.com/ Rally:   https://www.ca.com/us/why-ca/about-us/acquisitions/rally-is-now-ca-techn...

If you have children (or if not, if you ever were a child ;-)), at one point in time you may have experienced a child that did not want to clean their room. One option as a parent/guardian is to educate the child on the benefits of a clean room.  Another is to offer inducements/incentives to motivate a child to clean their room.  However, in the end, without the threat of compulsion, education and inducements will only succeed some of the time with some of the people. According to the 'Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve' ( http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_rogers_innovation_adoption_curve.html ), 16% of the population will resist change strongly enough to be classified as "laggards". Laggards are defined as: "Traditional people, caring for the "old ways", are critical towards new ideas and will only accept it if the new idea has become mainstream or even tradition".    In Agile Transformation, if "laggards" are in a posit...

The Johari Window:  Knowns and Unknowns Made infamous by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield's " Unknown Unknown s" quote: " There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know..." Uhhh.... Do you know what he's talking about?? Sounds like a lot of gibberish, but it's actually very sound logic that's better explained using the " Johari Window ". One of the primary goals of agile is effective communication.  And a big part of achieving that is making sure information is 'de-siloed', or clearly spread ACROSS departments and 'silos' of organizations. Take a look a the graphic above with Four Quadrants:  Open, Hidden, Blind, Unknown. Open:  The upper left window "Open" (shaded in yellow) is where we wa...

Although the blog asking the question "How Mature is Project Management" was asked more than 4 months ago, I'm still receiving responses from impassioned Project Managers from around the world. Here's a sampling from the "LinkedIn" site, please feel free to add your comments as well. Until next time... Project Management is evolutionary. PM has been around since the ancient Egyptians built their pyramids. As time has progressed and we gained more tools (PERT, project scheduling software, etc.) what it takes to 'efficiently' practice/execute project management has evolved. So too, as the needs of the job have changed such as compliance and work place personnel issues (that Egyptian PM didn't need to deal with unions or counsel low performers on a documented improvement track). Being a 'well rounded' PM now includes a lot more than it used to. Just peruse the table of contents in the PMBOK. I believe that because our tools, techniques, and...

(Part of the "Adventures in Consulting" series, please see previous posts for more info). So you think you want to be a freelancer...? Don't get me wrong -- there are some great advantages of being a self-employed consultant. I've been doing it for more than 15 years now, so I can assure you of that. However, besides the more obvious risks like not having an assured paycheck, having to pay your own health insurance, losing 15% to employee matching, etc., here's another risk you might not have thought about... What about if you want to eventually return to full-time work? You might end up with (as they said in the movie 'Office Space') a case of the "Muundays" Take a long and hard look at this issue before making the jump to freelancing. Once you make that jump, then a few years later go and talk to a company about returning to full time work, expect to answer multiple questions about why in the world you'd want to come back to the full-tim...

The Project Management Institute suggests 12 ways to earn PDU's... http://www.pmi.org/Pages/Ten_Ways_to_Earn_PDUs.aspx Their suggestions are pretty general and generic. Submit a comment to this blog and let me know how YOU like to earn your PDU's, and then I'll take the results and create a new reference on OMS' Project Management Resources page. Until next time...

If your a freelancer, chances are you'll have to work on a 'time and materials' basis on occasion. For me, that is my preferred method, because it gives me some assurance that my client won't take a fix-bid quote and 'scope creep' me into the poor house. Of course, if you can give your client a clear set of requirements and some sort of a 'cap' (not to exceed hours) then everyone has a stake in the game and it's fair for everyone. Some of the work I do requires me to be on-site. Sometimes that's just because the customer wants to see what they're paying for, but also because co-location can really help communication and project progress. If the customer is willing to pay my hourly rate + travel, then I just invoice them for actual travel costs, and they reimburse me. (Don't forget to add the per diem cost for ' meals and incidental expenses ' from the IRS.) But a little more tricky issue is what to do when the customer wants to...