 everybody for coming to the session and I just want to introduce myself as first bit so you know what I am going to talk and so if you want to tweet or ask questions afterwards first ID is mine and the second one is camera and so I'm a project manager I'm being in the field about 10 years and over the 10 years I've worked with a lot of different platforms and industries so I've started from digital marketing relief for home entertainment so I work with clients like Disney Universal and a lot and I carried on and moved on to very boring stuff building financial tools and working for a couple of years decided that wasn't really my thing because it was contradicting a lot with my personal interest they're always building website for this big global organization and so I decided to actually focus on the first sector so I was very very like a the year made a decision was there before the Olympics and Paralympics so the first job I landed in the first sector was actually the Paralympics on the website so it was at that time I started using Drupal so we're talking years now and I've learned a lot of different useful things about project manager I think those are the years where I grew the most about working in complex website working for third parties and also because I started working on bigger clients and bigger budget I think it was really important for me to understand how I could bring value to teams that are very very big where you are different third parties to work with and multiple stakeholders so from then I then moved on to basically job purely Drupal I'm currently working currently one day different projects really mainly in the publishing sector so I work with the telegraph to build their news up I'm working with Sage publishing to do a few website for German projects and some of you might cover one thing but we are a medium-sized agency based in London some of you might come to our meetups as well and that who knows what we do for student health and the monthly Drupal beer so we are the class behind it so I think it's really it's really nice what we're doing especially from last year we are focusing also more on a client so we notice when we work with the projects that it's never good to make assumptions so we just took a increasing role in actually working with the client so now what I do as part of my role as a project manager is I run agile training around Drupal training I just like coach the client and also deliver the project and that for me is really important one of the main factors where you can build the credibility that you can build that trust and loyalty with the client so you together can work together understand each other business understand better how you work together before I go too much into details I went into presentation yesterday and I realized I made some assumptions about agile so just for my information how many of you just work with agile at the moment so and so kind of agile okay so I just popped in this money a couple of quick flights so I'm not gonna divert too much but because my talk is on agile I'll just give you a quick overview just in case so the first sketch is what a waterfall project is in our mind the second sketch is what agile is in our mind so waterfall is from what I remember a lot of lot of technical documentation on a nightmare and asking maybe you know the dev guys in my team to mind-reading to have a crystal ball and just get how to do things in six months down the line and slowly trying to build the project having the client not so much involved and deliver the project within the timeline with not much vision throughout and fingers processing that hopefully the client is gonna like what he says after six months since the inception since when you started a relation and you were in stages so what agile and let us do instead is iteration so the second sketch is iteration so what agile allows us to do is in our case we have sprints so we work every four sprints of two weeks every two weeks we interact with the client we give the client something to revise to test to play with to confirm that we are working in the right direction so that is iteration what agile allows you to do is deliver the website from the minimal viable product slow steps towards your ideal website and that's what's happening to my presentation I will talk a bit as well about scrum ceremonies how many of you again are aware of the terminology so most of you so I'm not gonna waste too much time on here so if you have questions just ask me questions if I don't make it later but I'm not gonna stop on this side for me agile is very important the agile manifesto clearly tell us that agile is more about individuals than documentation and this is the core of my presentation so I think when we talk about clients we need to stop thinking there is the client and I'm the agency here or I'm the freelancer so I think we are all individuals we get to know each other we work together and we are very lucky because we agile we see each other every week that is the core so the core is build the relationship believe in the relationship and agile allows you to do it very very well so how many of you we in without in your faith hear about these words be collaborative be respectful be hard-working I think I hear this very very often and my issues is that we take these words from textbooks we read them we hear them in our workshops and we I did it in case fantastic yeah I respect my colleague I'm not rude to them I don't use words or whatever you know and I'm collaborative because I'm part of the team but my issues that in the day-to-day work we don't really implement this values so I'm here just to share a few experiences now from my past two years working with the common wedding team so if you have any questions throughout just ask me but I like to think that I found somehow the way to work very well with the client through agile and with the team that is because I applied a lot of days nice words in my daily routine in the way I work with the client the result is I have a lot of returning clients which is what my boss like I like if I work well with a client why not working with them again so I think that what I'm gonna talk about is the way I found to build the trust I need to the client to make me happy my team happy damn happy and possibly a lot of balls because we have returning customers so as we know the other manifesto say individuals before the commendation so for me communication is the core I think it's really important so we all know how to communicate and I think I need to go back to the basics here I always talk to my clients and at the cake of meetings we talk to the clients and the first thing I do as we agree how we communicate why do I do that I want them to make sure that they know how to reach me if there is something urgent I want them to know to leave my team alone if something is not urgent I want to give them different opportunities to raise their issues so the way we do it here just to give your real example is we use emails we use heat shot do you know what he said is it comes we is an adult for Europe so it's just a touch room so it could be Skype it could be so when I meet my client I go back to the basics so I make sure they're aware of our scrum service bodies so we have plenty of opportunities to talk during the daily stand-ups during the weekly growing or during the planning sessions so everything that can wait for those meetings was for those meetings is it and everything that is urgent is gonna go on the room charts so my guys know the first point of contact if anything is urgent I can see the final button anywhere my client send us on a hip-chat and we jump in it you know if it's not urgent maybe doesn't care it send us an email so whenever we have time we go to there but we are very clear we don't think we don't check emails you know your first part of contact is hip-chat we don't have extra meetings during the week because you already had your daily stand-ups and to weekly meetings to attend to so that way I said expectations with the client so I know how to talk to me and I also shield the team for overcommunicating we were working on a project I took it over from someone else when I took over the project in hip-chat we had four rooms for the same client there was a secret room that was just internal because the team was in confident enough to do to use the retrospectives to bring out issues so there was like this this ranging room on hip-chat so first thing I did remove all their hip-chat redundant charts and I encourage participation during the retrospective I think the retrospective is golden agile because we've got a way to be be ourselves first of all to be informal with the clients and just to raise issues so I don't think it's always easy but it's the best way to be honest and open it's very very important so I always encourage the team participation the client participation to be as truthful as possible so if I had a shit with because the client was over communicating about no urgent stuff if you if they wanted to change my spring go now and if he gave me a hard time I'm gonna bring it up I think at the beginning is a bit uncomfortable maybe but I think it's very important to be honest because if you are honest and you go straight to the point you feel the trust so the client knows you're not hiding anything you are actually there you see the problems that he sees and you want to bring resolutions and very important for me is be assertive be confident in your team be confident that you're doing the right job that you are bringing value so be collaborative here means I'm not just saying yes to everything because you're the client and I'm the agent because I mean look I think the way you're working right now is not very good so maybe I've got a product owner that never bothered showing up never bothered you know bringing me the information the feedback I need from the stakeholders am I gonna do a try my best without an input or I'm gonna say look this is not working that's why I've got realignment meetings in there so if it's not working I want to do something so for me every meeting every phone call everything is got an action a solution so I think when you go straight to the point you are honest you can find solution so it's we time this one brings to a high level of collaboration and trust because I know you're listing you're observing you are actually seeing what they need do you have any questions about this because this for me is very important I think it's the core of everything I do it can be internal it can be with the client but this is really really important so I think it's just matching the first item of the I don't manifest and so we are individuals we recognize each other is individuals and is that we listen and we help each other my second point and it's really really important is respect so it's a big big word and I really think we do show respect not by words but how we interact with each other so I do we have this scrum ceremonies we have the daily scrum meetings we have to prove me we have to planning whatever your name but just respect people time just don't call a meeting if you have nothing concrete to talk about don't overload your clients out and you know because they might be very very busy people and you need to make sure you only calling meeting the right people for the meeting your colleagues so if I have to talk about integration I don't call my old project team in I might just have an initial call with the tech lead client side and my lead developer any solute anything that we discuss out of there it can be maybe waiting for the session or we might be cool in the product owner or the designer if we need to design anything new but I think it's really really important to be aware of yeah what you're talking about so the agenda is really important bringing in the right people and show up timely they start me nuts so a lot of people for me it's like not showing respect when you don't show up timely because I work with client telegraph big time the daily routine is probably seven hours of meetings one hour work per day so if you start not showing up on time you have a knock over fact so it's just not respecting of that business of their duty so yeah so for every meeting I like to speak about the retrospective a lot because that's so that is really the core for me of how I build a trust how I improve my relationship with the client so I don't want a retrospective to say oh you were available this way it was it was really bad because we were blocked you know you didn't give us the information we couldn't do anything let's move on let's forget about it no so I think always have solutions for what you've got so if something is not a good point don't go out from everything without having a solution a mitigation point and action and very very important ever owner of the action otherwise as a team we agree that we need better response time when I tell you the web services down we didn't talk about who is gonna act promptly on that action so next week we're gonna have the same problem so very very very important having action solutions and an owner for all of your meetings and I used to think what adults allows you to do is getting to know your clients as individuals so the meetings don't have to be boring that can be fun I think it's very important not to lose your personal touch and we had an experience with the Imperial War Museum guys so we were doing the front end so with the work of our teamer and myself working with the development team of the Imperial War Museum also the guys at the museum didn't really know Agile so we had the opportunity to grow them to understand what Agile is and how it works and we've done it in a very down-to-earth environment you know it was like really fun the meetings might have been long but they were useful they're so value in there so I made like getting this personal connection is very important and I never had a traditional you know project management methods I can't do it with Agile and it comes very natural because we are in the same room every other week so it is also challenging so a lot of time our clients disagree with our priorities with the way we are on Agile so I think it's very important to get this conversations going admit your mistakes you know we screwed up with the development once again and it's just because we were mega tired something went wrong we weren't paying attention we don't need to find excuse it okay so we did that we made a mistake how gonna make sure it's not gonna happen again so we implement a body system so that if my developer is a bit destructed I don't know I had a baby yesterday so I don't care about just the deployment today and my second developer is not keep an eye on it so we find solution and we stick to the solution we talk about it and we yeah so this is what I mean when we said it needs to be collaborative it needs to be fun and it needs to allow allow you to observe please and learn from each other and I think it's very important so I just stick this one in after yesterday because yesterday we talked about Jira so you guys use Jira how many of you you use Jira okay great so yesterday about how many people don't share Jira with our client and for me with mind blowing and a lot of our yesterday admitted we don't share Jira I share everything I share everything with the client I ask my clients to add user stories on Jira so we have a business analyst identify at the beginning of the project he's gonna do the user story writing we reviewed them all together as a team during the grooming meetings I have clients whereby we share responsibilities we develop the website they tested offshore testing teams they have access to material that see everything they are part of the workflow if this works so empty just goes on and so this is my workflow so what I do is I start my free my developer works on it my second developers peer review that my clients coming so I want the client to be part of the process my client is doing the testing and it's gonna stand back to my team the tickets adding comments it's gonna pass the tickets if I'm lucky enough to the column so my client helps me building the backlog I'm sorry it's huge does that help alright so as a project manager what I do on Jira if I open my project I set up the board I probably want a right place all their tickets to kick off the conversations with my clients so when we kick off with a new project we have high-level requirements so what I do a thick place orders in they're not stories they're no estimated so what happens next as a team we agree there is someone client side who takes the ownership of writing a user story I could stem how to do it we work together through the process so those user stories those place orders are gonna become user story with me in the client working together after a couple of sprints the client works by yourself I do nothing here I just wanted to so we have epics we have a backlog that is prioritized and it's gonna have all the scope of my projects in there and slowly slowly we define stories slowly slowly display soldiers thanks to the client input I'm gonna become user stories what my team needs to do show up to the grooming meeting we read the stories we improve the story we estimate the story so I think for me if I wasn't transpiring with my client I wasn't able to do all days and this is possibly a way for me to also shield my team from sorry mess from the client so I transparency for me is another very very important topic they have access to everything they have access to all my folders on Google Drive they have access to my juror they have access to my forecasting they have access to my team capability per spring my planning they I don't know everything absolutely everything so for me that is again is trust I don't have nothing to hide I want to share everything and hopefully they want to be part of it and they're taking gonna take workload off me because they have access to it they can rather use the stories so I don't have to do it and they have access to it so if I'm off to Italy for a week I can play the score master rule for once they can play with priorities they know what we do on a weekly spring to leave busy so that is become that yeah interchangeable role with your client you have done to help you I think this is what transparent you honesty does to me on my project so it's very important I consistency and timeliness so I I do stick my project also in my so I close the spring today before the day after my client know the input is coming my report is coming my bad report is coming and they I had expectations so by me being organized they can trust me they can rely on me you know they don't have to wait or chase or check that I am not overcharging them because everything is available to them we have we have reports I am very visual person so I like to see a little pie chart throughout the project I keep track of how much budget I am burning they can see it because they have full access so this is a very very small example that we start with we the client was but it was very very low so it was 30,000 with that what that's really low I don't know how much we can do but we can work out together we do as much as possible this is what I think I can do for sure within the so we start working together for a timely reporting for transparency that could just work with me and say actually this is going very well we want to carry on but we don't have the budget so a few weeks after we were worked together I signed off an additional 20,000 pounds okay so we see how you work we want to carry on so let's stick let's just keep working together and so on and that happened twice to me in a year so where you can see I started with a budget of 30,000 we signed off 40,000 more to deliver a project that they're really proud of so that is what transparency being organized be clear go straight to the point at this conversation with the clients allows you to do anything for me flexibility is the way now so what I do as a project manager is I adopt I don't a cram master certification told me to do and I don't allow flexibility we are all different we have different needs so I work with organizations there were five people I work with organization there were 200 the same principle don't work for different business models so I work with clients who are based in America scream at me but my stand up was at five in the afternoon because it was 9 a.m. over there so my guys and my team we adapted to their needs so my stand up was 5 p.m. I I don't know so I observe my clients the interaction to go with my my team as well so I if something it doesn't work we are very lucky we have daily standards we have the weekly growing if I notice something is not wrong we are all people we have a motion and I call my clients maybe before the morning we go and catch a coffee I say because maybe not everybody's comfortable to talk in front of a room of 10 people say yeah I'm struggling I don't know how to do my job I'm lost maybe you're proud maybe you say something wrong to admit so you don't want to talk about it in front of the team so by observing by listening to your client you can spot this thing you can take the client for a coffee or a nice meal you know is it okay so how you feeling how you're doing so what I just want you to do is have access access to people access to individual use it I think it's it's gold and and always keep an over mind over mind so unless you know inside out of an individual how it fits another organization how struggling not struggling is you can't really know why maybe it's been a bit aggressive in your meaning you know maybe it's got a lot of pressure inside and internally that you don't say so it's been aggressive with you because it wants you to do the things like you want when he wants so having this week by week relationship also helps a lot cause you have many occasions retrospective is the best place if you don't want to use the retrospective because you don't like to talk about your witnesses in front of the team you go and grab a coffee but how me as a project manager I can do this like by being flexible by observing keeping an open mind trying and adopt is really important there is no one way that works for everybody I mean all my projects have done different things for each of my clients because I want them to be comfortable I want them to know that I hear them I understand what they need I understand what they need to go to and I'm gonna find the best way for them to do that and so questions on any of the points I've raised today so in there are a few meetings that we run as the practice so what we do is we have a two week development at the end of those two weeks we have a set of new functions that can potentially be released to the client so in order to keep up with the completion the workflow with the definition of stories we run many three things first print one is a daily standard one is a growing session and one is a planning so during the planning sessions what I do specifically is we give an overview of the new functionality that we've built during the past two weeks and that is mainly led by developers but also we do this retrospective so the retrospective is we focus on the past two weeks and with the client we talk about what went not so well in terms of how our way to work together or our way to deliver this new functionality so we talk about what then goes so well what it go well and what drove us crazy so is a way for us to have an informal window outside the user story outside the requirement outside of me coding to understand how we working together me as an agency and user client so is there anything that we've done during the past print that drove you crazy so I cannot address those issues at the beginning is not easy so you need to encourage their participation but it gets easier and the client will eventually see the value of having those conversations because from those conversation you don't make the same mistakes your next print you have a sense of process improvement methodology yeah like the rules and the other for example one of my clients there are some rules that can't add a product owner always available sometimes the product owner is the PM or sometimes the PM is also the tester so for my selfish perspective there is a problem because I want the tester to have fresh eyes on what we build I want them to just dedicate their time to try and break my website if I'm doing POPM product owner rules, PM rules and tester rules I don't have the notification so I take the order that can be a product owner sometimes you can't so I think the downside if you want is I need to keep up with the eye on what that person can actually do want to do sometimes I need to work this realignment meeting because I do, this is really not working, I can't have you as a tester to the website because we've done the coding together, we've already used the story together I don't spend the time but then things break so I guess the downside for me is that I have some kind of difficult conversation to work with the client but I also keep an eye on what solution we can bring so family, outside, help you out, dedicate some time of your time really talking about your time, doing just UAT testing, just talk about your time, don't get distracted because you're not doing the same thing, you're talking about to release, this is one example but that is not, you know, if I think about street agile, definitely before Is that your question? Trust and transparency right, which is important if the client is going to have a budget and not necessarily get a distinct set of deliverables having it When it's a new client, that's obviously more kind of fluid So what do you do, do you handle the process differently for new clients? What would you do to sort of build that trust in what you guys do? Yeah, so a lot of the clients I talked about today were new clients for me two years ago So the first thing I usually do is a kickoff meeting So in the kickoff meeting, let me see So my kickoff meeting is basically talking to Okay, I have this little template that I use for all my projects and for the responsibility is the way I open my kickoff meeting So I spend today client, what agile is, we run agile at that point that you know because we go through the pitching process together and I just stress to them what the important is of all of our responsibility on an agile project So from my side, I'm usually the scrum master I go from my internal team and then I identify their team So who is going to be the product owner on your side? Who's going to be the project manager? I start setting expectations their side as well So that for these to work together and to work well, to work successfully it means we have clear rules of responsibility So we expect these from you as a product owner We expect these from your team as a project manager A lot of times I've got a project manager inside So that's why I focus on the scrum master rule But I think that transparency I've been talking about starts from day one So agile is a lot of time, it's a lot of commitment it's a lot of expectations from client side and they're annoyed the first day they start working with me So I then we agree on the responsibilities we all have on the team Very important, I realize the responsibilities If I see my product owner can make half of my meetings you're not a product owner of this rule So by being transparent in my communication from day one I start beating the trust So I set my expectations I set their expectations as well That's the answer I think I go back to my previous examples Ideally, in my ideal world, if I reduce the agile meeting non-urgent in email super mega urgent in Hitchcock So it's my chat room In September I started with this new client and Hitchcock was a liar So I say my role as monitor Hitchcock just to make sure my team is not overloaded which is for anything you can do So my first retrospective with the client probably didn't hit me for two months but my previous manager would allow everything say yes to the line or with whatever you want and then my guys were spending half days checking Hitchcock and half days calling for me not acceptable My first retrospective I went in and was like guys what's going on my guys are totally interrupting Our velocity is no because we spent time replying to your questions can they really not wait for the grooming can they really not wait for the daily stand-up Is there a question that only my developer can answer? Can I help? So it took me a while It took me a while probably three or four retrospective and I'm really stubborn and I would bring it up every retrospective So after four times my client was like okay I got it After two retrospectives I started seeing improvements and it took us for you four more retrospective not to talk about communication and dance and now there's still the odd after there's still like can we do the outfit we're not gonna talk forever yes I think so but it sounds really bad but it's so important that building the relationships So I'm trying with a retrospective that it's going or working and I came new on a project where my developers worked for the last year and I was like why? I was like why are we doing this? I start questioning the other practice why are we doing a retrospective that we don't talk about the issues so right off I don't know and what's the problem? if you don't pinpoint people too you just like try to find solutions that are within the workflow within the system if not with this deaf person to that level and a further manager? yeah so but I think at the end of the day they understood they trusted that we get it all done if it's important we reply it is not important it can't wait so I still monitor this stuff sometimes I've got the guy saying just leave me because I just don't want to talk about this now too usually the beginning of the day or the end of the day so my guys can focus but this is like about what should be very important yeah a partnership type approach with you very used to throwing something over the fence and running away come back when it's done and then and then trying to get all that engagement and ownership from there the way it keeps us in how do you get them over they have to see the benefits of being more of a partner with you? yeah okay so I think I've got two examples in mind at the moment so one thing that we always always do is we amongst hearing meetings monthly so whoever is now our day-to-day contact our project theme on a spring basis comes once a month to the hearing meetings what we do in the hearing meetings is a big demo of two weeks two springs for full work so that every stakeholder knows exactly where we are in the project I also run through the overview of the project I showed you before so that I know what features we implemented and how much budget we've got there is once a month and it's usually not too much of a ask for a client perspective who doesn't want to be involved on the commitment time commitment of agile so I think again it's something new for them so at the beginning you have people not showing up and then how we just like talk to the product owner usually and just making understand we need that engagement it's for your safety it's for our safety you want to know from your stakeholders whatever priorities we agree as a project team never here is okay for the business so is that what your business from their point of view is expecting so it's especially useful where you're running on the budget you're like 60% in the budget 80% in the budget and you're like shit I can't do everything so we need to bring that value we need to bring that communication to a different level so I show the stakeholders what we've done why we've taken certain decisions in priorities and I can't deliver everything you want you know unless you give me more budget or you tell me what to do with the 20% left for budget so once you get that explanation at a project level to your project manager or to your product owner then I can see the value then usually they want to push for internal meetings with the stakeholders