Scrambled on a Plate - Wellesley, MA

Photo credit: www.center4oe.com

One of the central tenets of the ReacHIRE program is providing refreshment of professional on-the-job skills. Halfway through the program we have covered data analysis, software coding, google products, pivot table and powerpoint. All have been at the very least valuable, and at their very best, full of "a-has" and proud moments of "hey, this is kind of cool!" 

One of the most tired adages of life is that what comes around, goes around. Yes, you laugh about your elders  being outdated (anyone remember going to mom's house to find that they've covered the blinking time on the DVD player with black electric tape? Yes)....and then suddenly you are yelling at Siri who does not seem to know what "call home" actually means.

There is a cartoon I still remember, I think it was from the New Yorker, but could be a newspaper, in 1992. It was about a visit of then-president George H Bush to a supermarket in Orlando where he was "amazed" by supermarket technology such as the electronic scanner that shows the price. Here he is, quoted in the New York Times:

"I just took a tour through the exhibits here," he told the grocers later. "Amazed by some of the technology."- New York Times, February 4, 1992.

(By the way, the above article has been found to be faulty on research (look here) and the incident is really urban legend). 

The cartoon, which I cannot find, showed him looking at a carton of eggs and saying something like "Wow! They come this way? I thought they came scrambled on a plate!"  And we all laughed about how out of touch our president was in his White House with his chef.

But I've just had my first scrambled on a plate moment. Not, actually, technology-induced as frankly, Powerpoint and Excel haven't changed THAT much. In fact, they've gotten easier. No, my moment came with project management, a skill I learned in my first "real" job out of college at Visa. I was never project manager, but always part of a team as we looked to launch new fraud monitoring and risk management products in Latin America and Europe. 

A couple of Saturdays ago, we spent six hours at Babson, which graciously hosted us as we brushed up on project management. To be honest, the first four hours were a bit of a snooze for me since I knew so-called "waterfall" project management and really not much has changed there. Still have nightmares about Gantt charts. 

Photo credit: agile-scrum-master-training.com

But then suddenly we were building paper airplanes and throwing them. And that was my introduction to Agile Project Methodology--a new-to-me project management theory that has nothing to do with paper airplane building and everything to do with it. It was a scrambled egg moment.....oooh, project management is FUN for once, and not a Gantt chart in sight! The point of the paper airplane exercise was doing a short-term project with multiple iterations that would improve the overall results. Yeah, okay, it's more complex that that.

I won't go into all of the workings of Agile. There is a whole new set of vocabulary including "scrum masters", "scrum teams", "sprints", "burndown charts" and "user stories." For more helpful information, you can visit here. It seems to be mostly mentioned as a methodology for software development projects, but it has practical application everywhere. In my opinion. 

Here's what I love about Agile. It is, as they say, incremental, iterative and empirical. Instead of a long project horizon, there is a "sprint" set up for two-four weeks for a "scrum team" with a "scrum master" who helps clear the path for the team and communicates progress. And one of the best parts of Agile--instead of those interminable project meetings, there is a "daily scrum", a stand-up meeting of 15 minutes when the 3-7 person team talks about what they are working on and what may be standing in the way. Issues that come up are added to a backlog and are put into play on the following sprints.

Agile is cool. I decided to put it into daily use as of two weeks ago planning for my twins' 9th birthday party last Wednesday. That was the sprint. Two weeks til party. I was the scrum master because I am the queen of communications in my household. Okay, I was also part of the development team which is where things fall apart a bit on the analogy but work with me.

Stand-up meetings, check. Short-time frame, check. Prioritization of user stories (mostly twins' requests for whatever), check. I loved when I could say "sorry, that Gronk-frosted cake is not on this sprint. You get the Patriots colors and that's it." Oh, all right, the kid cried so we moved up the user request. 

 

 

 

Yeah, the edible Gronk photo was my one scrum master fail

So, yes, I do feel a bit like George H Bush (and that will be the LAST time you ever hear me say that) as I was "amazed" at current times in the business world. Eggs that don't come scrambled on a plate. A project methodology that moves fast like today's development cycles. Love.