What are the first steps (if any) to implement an effective kata for project management?

Question

In software development, the concept of a programming kata is being practiced by many developers (e.g. examples of programming kata, book on katas) to be exposed to new good practices and get used to them.

I was about to ask if you could develop a similar routine for improving your project management skills, but it seems you can (e.g article on katas for management and coaching skills).

So my question is, if they can be an effective way to gain and share good practices, what are the first steps you should do to organize/take part to such effective PM katas?

Answer 1

This concept I believe also falls under the term "Coaching Circles" in the agile community. A way to review or even model practices.

In my experience it takes a fairly organizationally advanced company to put these practices in place. Where coding katas do have opinion, it's opinion about how to tackle a technical problem. Project management scenario work is much harder, both because it requires a company to recognize a need for improvement and because it is much harder to model out and "test" project concepts.

I've found going outside the company works much better for this. Agile has coaching circles. For straight project management I haven't found a venue for direct practice. However you can usually find a project management networking group that has some focus on skill improvement and you can usually find scenarios being proposed by people facing them in their companies who are looking for ideas.