I was reading an interesting post about the 7 Faces of Leadership.  Definitely worth book marking it...

1) What you say: Rhetoric. Speaking style and the language and vocabulary used to express meaning and communicate vision and intent.

2) Where you go: Create maps to a destination that realizes a vision, which takes the organization somewhere new. Take action. Lead people on the journey.

3) What you build: Build a physical environment, grow teams and nurture relationships to foster a sense of belonging. Create a mental environment, time and space, to produce ideas, visualize dreams, and chart adventures. Project and imagine a future and be conscious of building a legacy that leaves a positive impact.

4) What you care about: Personal values and principles drive what we say and do and the image we project. The value system within the organization influences processes and rules.

5) How do you do it: What drives a person often determines the style in which he will act. As do the freedoms he is granted, the modes of collaboration possible, and the ethos he is trying to create.

6) What are you: Awareness. Feet firmly grounded, conscious of situation, surroundings, people, risks, constraints and other factors. Decisive with sound judgment. Responsible. Holds others accountable. Loyal, trustworthy and trusting.

7) What you do: Conscious of being a role model and sets an example. Acts by values, guided by principles. Seeks to bring about change.

Original URL:

http://www.think-box.co.uk/blog/2007/05/7-faces-of-leadership.html

I was reading an excellent article on what is the True role of a PM in Agile Projects…  Worth reading (book marking) it...

"What does the PM do on agile projects? If the team self organizes and selects their own work from the prioritized feature list, should the PM just buy pizza and keep out of the way? Well they are short changing the team if that is all they do. Rather than a fear of role erosion, PM’s should be maximizing business value delivery and looking to broaden their skill set with more leadership practices."

Four Core Roles

Obstacle Removal: "This means solving problems and removing obstacles that may be hampering the teams work. At the daily stand-up meeting where the team reports progress, planned work, and issues, the PM needs to take note of the issues and make their resolution that day’s to-do list.."

This is an very important thing when you are managing agile projects. Identifying and removing obstacles is the key thing. With my personal experience whenever we meet in the standup, we take a note of issues and try to fix them. If issues are not fixed and no resolution is made, we post keep them in a common place, so that we all are aware of it and its tracked. The team understands it as an important thing and it definitely helps in identifying and fixing gaps.

Diversion Shield: "When working closer with the business it is often tempting for business folks to make side requests for changes or enhancements direct to developers that sidetrack planned development effort. While agile projects positively encourage these business insights and requests, the proper channel is through the iteration planning meeting or requests to the Product Backlog Owner. The PM needs to remind people that requests should go through those channels so that we can maintain iteration focus and establish a reliable velocity (progress metrics) to help plan future work".

Whether we do agile or not, this is an very important thing. Doing AGILE definitely improves Visibility. Whenever there is any change that comes in, the team discusses that in daily standup and everybody in the team is aware of what's happening. Even if the PM is not part of the discussion, the next day he will be aware of it. In our project, the team members works very closely with the customer and they all will be having Skype chats or calls with the customer. We have a team rule that whenever there is a discussion we post them in a discussion thread and we all have subscribed to the thread so that we get ALERTS.  The next day, WE discuss this in the standup and decide on adding the requirement in the backlog and prioritizing it.

(Re)Communicate the Project Vision: "This may seem like an odd one, but a critical role of a project leader is to communicate and re-communicate the project vision. By creating a clear image of the completed system and project goals, stakeholders can check and align their decisions and work towards the common project objective. "

As we go more into the development, its very easy for anybody to forget the vision. Reemphasizing the vision of the project is very important so that the team will be always focused. We have goals defined for every sprint and we work towards achieving our goals for the sprint. It definitely helps the team to be focused.

Carry Food and Water: "We need to provide resources in the form of tools, compensation and encouragement to keep the team nourished and productive. People cannot continue to contribute iteration after iteration to the best of their ability fuelled by professionalism and duty alone. We need to learn what motivates the team members as individuals and finds ways to reward them for good work. Saying a sincere “thank you” for some hard work is a great place to start."

I couldn't agree more than what he has said…

Ten Principles to Manage Agile Projects By:

In addition to these four core roles there are of course a host of other activities the PM should keep in mind.  Jeffery Pinto in “Project Leadership: from Theory to Practice” has a great list of principles that includes the following:

1) Learn the team members’ needs

2) Learn the project’s requirements

3) Act for the simultaneous welfare of the team and the project

4) Create an environment of functional accountability

5) Have a vision of the completed project

6) Model the desired behavior towards this vision

7) Resist meddling and recognize team conflict as a positive step

8) Manage with an eye towards ethics

9) Take time to reflect on the project

10) Challenge the process

Original URL

http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2007/05/the_true_role_o.html#more   

I was reading an interesting post on responsibilities of a software architect from Software Architectures website. I have read couple of articles on the same topic before, but this one talks about the responsibilities in detail.

"Architect’s Responsibilities 

An architect abstracts the complexity of a system into a manageable model that describes the essence of a system by exposing important details and significant constraints. 

An architect maintains control over the architecture lifecycle parallel to the project’s software development lifecycle. Although an architect may be most visible during the requirements and design stages of a project lifecycle, he or she must proactively monitor the adherence of the implementation to the chosen architecture during all iterations. Architecture on paper is fruitless unless implemented proficiently."

More here....

http://www.softwarearchitectures.com/one/Discipline/93.aspx

When I first saw a post about "Thought works Master Class Series" on agile india group, I asked my whole team to attend the "Thought works Master Class Series" sessions on 19th May, 2007. The topics seemed to be very interesting and 7 of us attended it. There were Sessions on

1. Database Refactoring

2. Evolutionary testing

3. Domain Specific Languages

I decided to attend the MCS because I wanted to get some inputs on "Evolutionary Testing" and "DSL". We are using WATIN in our application and I thought it will be good, if I can get some ideas on Selenium.

My likes and dislikes:

1. The whole event was organized properly.
2. Small Gaps in between sessions
3. Learnt few Jargons … :)
4. Evolutionary testing session by Vivek. Vivek explained the topic very well. He talked about the issues with traditional automated testing tools and why Selenium and he demonstrated it with good examples. It was a very good session overall.
5. Database Refactoring: I guess the session was named wrongly. Pramod explained how to bring in agile practices such as continuous integration etc in an agile world. His examples gave me an idea of how to update our build scripts when we do an update release. It would have been really good, if he could have taken couple of refactoring(s) from his book and explained them. If someone knew how to integrate agile practices with DB, it was not a very useful one.
6. Domain Specific Languages: I guess, this did not reach the audience. Hari started this session showing a clip from "CASINO ROYALE" to demonstrate everyone needs to have the same vocabulary. After the session, I felt that the common vocabulary is not established. May be, the organizers could have moved this session in the morning. Not an ideal one after lunch, especially when its not presented to the interest of audience.

What I learnt:

1. Delta Scripts: Forward and Backward Scripts - I felt this one a very useful when we do maintenance and upgrade.
2. Update Build Script, so that it gives you the list of files used(needed) for the build.
3. May be we need to reemphasize this with our team. No body should check-in whenever they receive a "Build Failed" email. We are following this right now, but probably can be added in the RULES print out we have posted in the cubicles.
4. DRY - Do not Repeat Yourself. Had a Refresher on Extract and move method

Testing Patterns

v      Screen Object Pattern

v      Data Template Pattern

v      Workflow pattern

Summary:

I always feel better when I get to listen from somebody. It helps me improve my listening skills. It was a refresher on all these topics for me. I would have really felt very happy, if the sessions were more in depth (Keeping the name MASTER CLASS SERIES). I could see thought works marketing their own products (which makes sense), but I definitely expected more from these sessions. They were targeted towards Beginners.

Another observation from my side is that, the speakers were not very friendly (May be its my personal feeling). Especially when its targeted towards beginners, you should not get frustrated with the kind of primitive questions.

:)