The Baking Manifesto Part III

We've covered "Collaboration and creativity over silos and cookie-cutting", and "Trust and a light touch over frequent temperature checks and overmixing". Now it's time to look at the third value of the Baking Manifesto:

Adapting to changing conditions over following a recipe

Allowing for change is the fundamental principle of the Agile methodology for software projects, and there's no reason you can't apply it at the program level as well. If the projects making up your program are embracing the agile values, then you'll definitely need to throw away your reliable program recipe, or you'll be one frustrated baker.

Mike Cohn sums it up nicely in his book "Agile Estimating and Planning" when he says "Knowing that a plan can be revised at the start of the next iteration shifts a team's focus from creating a perfect plan (an impossible goal) to creating a plan that's useful right now." You can use exactly the same approach for the program. You know that the various projects within the program are likely to change. You know what the status of these projects is now, and you should have a pretty good understanding of the key risks (those with both high probability and high impact). Once the project teams are working to the currently-useful program plan, you can look ahead and start to sketch out a few contingency plans for each of the high-risk areas of the sub-projects, and for the dependencies between the sub-projects.

You can cater for the uncertainty in your currently-useful program schedule by adding some extra project iterations as buffers, or you can create a few different versions of the schedule based on various worst-case scenarios. Start early preparations for enacting the contingency plans (e.g. investigate the feasibility of the different resourcing options you and your team have thought of; test all the assumptions that have been made about must-have vs nice-to-have program scope; probe those rigid project dependencies to see if they might actually have a bit of give, now that more is known about the program). It's best to do this at regular intervals throughout the program, rather than waiting until the inky shadow of the next giant risk comes creeping across your desk. But at the same time, you don't want to spend so much time drafting alternative plans that you neglect to manage the current, useful plan.

Having a few alternative plans in your apron pocket will get you in the mindset for expecting change, and being ready to deal with it. These contingency plans will need revision if and when the risks turn into real issues, but that's ok. The key thing you want is an early acceptance from yourself and your program stakeholders that the plan is likely to change, and that when it does you'll be ready to adapt quickly. You'll be dealing with all the changes that will happen in each project, plus the extra level of changes to the program itself. That requires a lot more flexibility than a single recipe, and the best way to manage that successfully is to always be ready to adjust quantities, substitute ingredients, and switch pans at a moment's notice.

In the next post we'll discuss the final value in the Baking Manifesto: "Delicious results your customers will love, over Aunt Mabel's Christmas pudding" (names have been changed to protect sensitive family members).