Reader to Writer – Yet another comic Agile moment

M: I’ve read your blog.
P: What do you think about it?
M: I’m not sure if I’ve got the right word for it. (Long pause)
P: Go on.
M: What I like about it is that I can tell you’re obsessive about what you do.
P: (Stunned silence. Then) Thank you for the feedback.

Just Blog It!

To be a blogger, you have to blog. Here’s how to create a blog in less time than it takes to order a beer in a crowded saloon on a Friday night:

1. Ask yourself: ‘What are my interests or reasons for blogging?’ Write down each thought or idea on a separate mini Post-it. [3 mins]

2. Review each Post-it by thinking out loud and elaborating on the reasons why you wrote it down. [5 mins]

3. Pick the Post-it that makes you feel most energised just thinking about it. This forms the ‘hook’ that will keep you writing as well as attract visitors to your blog. Let’s call this the Hook Post-it. [1 min]

4. Talk about the Hook Post-it some more. After all, it’s special. Why does it make you feel energised? Where did you first come across the thought or idea? Why’s it important to you? [2 mins]

5. Pick one or two or three coherent words associated with your Hook Post-it. Congratulations! You now have the title and theme for your blog. [1 min]

6. Select a free blog provider – for instance, www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com. (I prefer using wordpress because it generates cleaner HTML markup than blogger. Cleaner HTML means a better reading experience for your readers who use feed readers.) [1 min]

7. Register with your chosen blog provider. [1 min]

8. Create a blog with your chosen title. Congratulations again! You’re now the proud owner of your very own blog. [2 mins]

9. Select a particular thought or idea related to your Hook Post-it. Write a sentence or two about it. Don’t overthink it. Just keep writing. [5 mins]

10. Review and preview what you’ve written. [2 mins]

11. Publish it! [5 secs]

12. Send your friends the link to your blog and ask them for feedback. [1 min]

Nice To Haves

• Add tracking to your blog so that you can see how many visitors you get and where they come from. Google Analytics provides pretty, graphical data. The statistics will spur you on to write some more. If you’re using wordpress, go to Dashboard | Blog Stats (which uses Google Analytics behind the scenes).
• Why not buy your own domain name? These days, a domain name is cheap as chips and you can get website and email forwarding for free so you can impress your friends with a personalised email address. If you want to remove ‘wordpress’ from your blog URL, you can buy the domain name and full mapping from wordpress themselves.

To blog or not to blog

If you’re still unsure, begin by asking yourself: ‘What’s in it for me?‘

Writer to Reader

P.: I compare Agile to a pair of socks.
J.: I know, I read your blog.
P: What do you think of it?
J.: I like it. It’s quirky. And it’s based on genuine coaching experience. (Pause) I’ve often thought of writing my own.
P.: That’s a great idea! For years, I didn’t think I had anything unique or worthwhile to blog about. Then I finally decided to share my take on Selfish Programming.

A Blog Reader’s Story

AS A Reader
I WANT to read about other people’s ideas, opinions and experiences
SO THAT I learn new things or re-learn things important to me that I’ve forgotten

Acceptance Criteria

[Y] Is there a steady stream of new posts to keep me reading (at least one per month)?
[Y] Is the information authentic (based on personal experience and perspective)?
[Y] Does the blog give me new ideas?
[Y] Does the blog help me develop my existing ideas?
[Y] Does the blog help me look at my bigger picture?

A Blog Writer’s Story

AS A Blogger
I WANT to share things I’m passionate about in a fun and creative way
SO THAT we become a little more agile every day

Acceptance Criteria

[Y] Does my blog have a clear purpose?
[Y] Do I share information useful to others?
[Y] Do I present the information in an engaging way?
[Y] Is the information authentic (based on personal experience and perspective)?
[Y] Do I have fun blogging?

A Portal to Endless Opportunities

I blog because it:

• Challenges me to think deeply – to question why I’m doing what I’m doing
• Forces me to communicate effectively – in terms of saying what I mean and meaning what I say
• Creates opportunities, such as being invited to present at conferences like Université du SI
• Connects me with other people I would never otherwise meet, learn from and collaborate with

Why do you want to blog? Once you know why, why not create your own blog in under 25 minutes?

‘To some, responsibility is a burden. To others, responsibility is a reward. For many, responsibility means having someone to point to.’

– Christopher Avery

It was great to finally meet Christopher Avery at the Agile Business Conference this Wednesday. His presentation on the Responsibility Model, delivered in person, was every bit as insightful and entertaining as I hoped it would be.

‘Humans are born to learn’

According to Christopher, Responsibility has long been considered as a character trait. Or, depending on your view of the world, a character flaw.

Newsflash: Responsibility is neither a character trait nor flaw. Christopher describes Responsibility as the way you respond to a problem. Responsibility is completely subjective. It’s also a feeling. This is why Responsibility is so difficult to talk about.

For me, the most effective way of thinking about Responsibility is to compare it with Accountability. According to Christopher, delegating Accountability is the first tool of management. It’s a one-sided agreement-making process in which one individual beholdens another regardless of whether or not that individual accepts the responsibility that has been thrust upon them.

Responsibility, on the other hand, empowers an individual by giving each of us the choice to acknowledge then embrace the uncertainty surrounding our lives and to do something about it.

Redefining Responsibility

There are six progressive phases in the Responsibility Model:

1. Denial – ‘Problem? What problem? There’s no problem.’
2. Blame – ‘I don’t have a problem working with you. You seem to have a problem with me. That makes it your problem. ‘
3. Justify – ‘I guess it’s possible that I’ve become insensitive to other people’s feelings and needs. I can’t help it though. After all, I’ve been doing this job for a long time. It’s who I am.’
4. Shame – ‘What have I done? I’m going to look such an idiot in front of the people at work. How am I going to live it down? Why should they help me after the way I’ve behaved?’
5. Obligation – ‘Tell me what you think I should do. I have no choice but to do it (even though I don’t want to). I’ll do whatever you say. It’s only a job after all (no one can expect to do a job they love).’
6. Responsibility – ‘I can wait for them to change but that could take forever. No, it’s up to me. I want to fix the problem. So how am I going to be a better colleague? I know! I’ll listen more. And be more considerate towards others. It’s a start.’

Taboo Who?

Embrace responsibility. Instead of skirting around it, talk about it. Practice moving through the 6 phases of the Responsibility Model. Help each other spot when one of you become stuck in a particular phase. The key to continuous improvement are what Christopher has identified as the Keys of Responsibility.

The Keys of Responsibility

1. Intention – Commit to doing or stop doing something.
2. Awareness – Learn to recognise when you are in each of the 6 phases. Look out for how you feel in each of those phases. Use the feeling to help you recognise which phase you’re in and evaluate why you feel that way you so that you can move onto the next phase towards Responsibility.
3. Confront – Face the truth head on. It’s sounds simple, but it’s not easy. How honest are you with yourself?

One Agile coach says to another, ‘How do you find the strength to carry on?’

The other coach replies, ‘I believe in “happily ever after“‘.

Going Off the Rails

In my experience, the toughest period on any Agile Enablement gig is the first two iterations. Some have described it as a rollercoaster ride – the corkscrew-space-mountain type where you can’t see where you’re headed because everything’s pitch black, your stomach’s one big writhing ball of worms and you have begun to doubt you’ll survive.

It’s also the roughest of rides because just when you think you’re getting it, you discover there’s more to learn. And then some. It’s harder to go on precisely because you remember the difficult road upon which you’ve just travelled. And your gut tells you that it’s going to get harder before it gets easier.

The Road Less Travelled

Agile is about Continuous Improvement. If you’re truly dedicated to improving, you will demonstrate your commitment by learning new stuff and brushing up on the old stuff. Eventually, the old stuff gets displaced by a re-combination of the old and new and you come up with better ways of working.

‘H’ for Helping Yourself

People new to Agile almost always believe they’re already agile. This is rarely the case. The penny only drops when the first person in the group openly acknowledges that, ‘Hey, it’s not a process problem we face, it’s a matter of mental attitude’. The greatest impediment to Agile adoption is people. It’s you. And me.

‘H’ for Hope

If you’re genuinely agile, you don’t just give up. Why? Because you know there’s always hope. You know being agile demands continuous improvement, so as long as you’re changing yourself for the better, you’re one small step closer to a better and happier work life. You can help make change happen at your organisation. What’s the one small change you can make to yourself today to change things for the better?

Rejection’s tough to take. More often than not, it’s painful, humiliating and disappointing. Sometimes even devastating. It can get really ugly, not just for you, but for all parties involved.

Now we’re all agreed on what rejection feels like, here’s how to best deal with it: Avoid rejection by improving your interviewing technique.

Rejection Can Be Avoidable

In the world of consultancy, failing to get a contract is a form of rejection. Likewise spending five years on a supa-dupa high profile project only to have it rejected two weeks before it goes live because we got the requirements wrong also merits an R for REJECT.

Just as you would spend some time preparing for a romantic night out with a significant other, be sure to gather the information you need to bring about a happy ending to your business engagements.

How the Nine Boxes Technique Can Help

The Nine Boxes is an interviewing technique from the Solution Selling® sales process.

It’s a structured approach for:

1. Discovering the root causes of problems
2. Identifying those affected by the problems
3. Creating an agreed common vision of the solution between you and your customer.

Bonus: The information gathered feeds into user stories as demonstrated by Dave Nicolette.

During the information interview, we gather information about 3 aspects of the problems:

• Details of the problems
• Those impacted by the problems
• What the world will be like when the solution is in place (outcome visioning)

For each aspect, we ask 3 types of questions (3×3=9):

Type 1: Open questions allow the interviewee to tell their story (aka Qualification):

• ‘Tell me about…’
• ‘What happens after that?’
• ‘Why is that?’

Type 2: Control questions help fill in the facts of the story (aka Quantification):

• ‘How much…?’
• ‘How many…?’
• ‘How often…?’
• ‘When does that happen…?’

Type 3: Confirm questions verify the interviewer’s understanding of what the interviewee has said (aka Confirmation):

• ‘If I’ve understood correctly… Is that correct?’
• Only when the interviewee replies ‘Yes’ does the interviewer proceed by posing questions about the next aspect of the problem.

‘Sounds complicated – what do others think?’

I’ve co-presented The Nine Boxes session with Pascal at a number of conferences and participants come out amazed at how quickly and accurately the structured approach helps them elicit the root causes of problems. Most important of all, those who play the role of interviewee (the customer) always say what a refreshing change it is to talk to an interviewer who is a good listener and is capable of developing an accurate understanding of the problems.

The Nine Boxes Technique game was created by Pascal and can be downloaded from our Agile Coach site.

What You See Isn’t What You Get

‘But what if clarifying the problem leads us to discover it isn’t a problem after all?’ I hear the consultants among you ask, throwing your hands up in horror. ‘That’s great news – congratulations!’ I say. After all, it’s one of the best possible outcomes of using the Nine Boxes. Why? Because a customer who is genuinely committed to continuous improvement for their organisation would:

1. Be impressed by your problem finding acumen and thank you heartily for helping to clarify the misunderstanding that has caused so much confusion and resulted in so much time wasted to date.
2. Be impressed by your professional integrity for being open and honest instead of charging them for inventing a solution to a non-existent problem.
3. Ask you to help identify areas where improvements can be made.

More Than Words

Build integrity into everything you do. Take the 5 Agile Values to the next level: build Trust and increase Transparency.

* Special thanks to Gino and Pascal for taking this entry’s feature picture

Why Exoftware?

So that on a beautiful summer’s day I find myself cycling along the low road on one of the Aran Islands to spend time with the most diverse, smart, nice and fun bunch of Agilistas I know.

Imagine: You nip to the loo in an office building you’re visiting for the first time. After washing your hands, you look into the mirror and what do you see? A see-through sticker with white writing.

‘Bullying. Let’s Cut It Out’

Five simple words. Words that send so many alarm bells ringing. Who let the bullies in? Are they still here? Which teams do they work in? Do people take notice of the message? What difference does that one sticker make?

That’s when I notice there are more stickers running along the wall of mirrors, each aligned above a corresponding sink so you can’t ignore the problem. Or so you would think.

Cultural or Cuisine Differences?

It’s lunchtime. I ask about the stickers as I tuck into the tasty weekly Indian meal. It turns out most people around the table don’t really know what bullying means. So I change my question to one of the developers.

‘Does Candy respect you?’ I venture, bold and plain as the nose on my face.
She’s nice. She answers my questions about requirements,’ he replies with a tired but sincere smile.

I meet Candy for the first time that afternoon. Candy’s friendly enough. She smiles back, teeth clenched.

Communication without respect is worse than not communicating at all

In my experience, respect is the hardest value of all to live by, partly because you have to dig extra deep as it forms the foundation for the other four values. The main reason it’s the toughest to live by is because it’s usually the first thing that most people abandon when the going gets tough.

What does respect mean to you? How would you rate yourself in terms of respect on a scale of 0 – 5 from lowest to highest? Respect begins by recognising, appreciating then leveraging the value each individual brings to a team. How would your team rate you on the scale of respect?

Once upon a time

My manager said to me, ‘The team thinks you’re doing a good job.’ After a short pause he declared, ‘And I agree with them.’ Then a longer pause. I suspected I was in trouble, but I wasn’t sure what for. He continued. ‘The thing is, I’m just not sure what it is you actually do.’

From Dawn to Dusk to Present Day

I’m reading a book described as an ‘intimate portrait’ of the current President of France called L’Aube, le Soir ou la Nuit (Dawn, Evening or the Night) by Yasmina Reza. I was surprised to learn that Sarkozy and I have something in common.

In a conversation with Yasmina about young people today, Sarkozy says, ‘Ce qui est un problème c’est quand ils deviennent indépendants et pas gentils, gentils c’est le plus important.’ (‘The problem with young people is that when they grow up they forget about kindness. Being kind is what matters most.’)

‘It’s nice to be nice’

That was the gist of the answer I gave my manager all those years ago when he quizzed me about why the team was convinced I was doing a good job. I remember glossing over how I did what I did because my manager graduated from the school of stick-and-carrot management (using the Command and Control Management method). He wouldn’t have understood about consideration for others. I knew this because he had previously expressed concerns about my apparently ‘weaker’ style of management.

Although I couldn’t openly admit to my manager that I worked on the principle of Putting People First back then, the team knew and that was plenty good enough for me.

Agile is all about values

Putting People First is also about Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect. Most people I talk to about becoming agile almost always identify respect as the key value from which the others spring.

What’s less well-known is that respect wasn’t in the first version of the published Agile Values. Some say that respect was omitted because it was a given. Surely people know the importance of being respectful towards one another? But even assuming they know about respect, can we trust that they will always behave in a respectful way? Do you? Towards everyone? After all, everyone is valuable.

In a conversation with Pascal about the values at the SPA conference last month, we both agreed that there is a sixth value: Trust. I’ve seen trust, when combined with respect, empowers teams to grow beyond all previous prejudices and perceived limitations. Trust from a manager or team lead is crucial. Trust among team members is equally vital.

What did you do this week to improve the way you work? How can you show you trust your team more?

‘It’s not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.’

– Louise Bourgeois

I went to see the Bourgeois exhibition at Tate Modern last weekend. I couldn’t help but reminisce as I stood marvelling at the gigantic metal spiders like I did exactly ten years ago. Back then, the Dotcom boom had just begun and most business people knew we were onto something big. When the bubble burst, I managed to survive five iterations of staff reduction. All we got from management was radio silence.

The Power of 3

It was around that time that I read about a particular social experiment. A group of researchers had enlisted two types of people to test: those who considered themselves optimists and others who considered themselves pessimists.

It was an experiment of two rounds. The first was made up of groups of three, consisting of two optimists and one pessimist. Each group then spent 15 minutes talking to one another.

The point of the experiment was to determine which would be the dominant mindset at the end of the timed period given two different types of influence. Not surprisingly, the majority of groups found themselves feeling more optimistic after the first round.

In the second round, the makeup of the groups changed to one optimist and two pessimists. Again, each group spent 15 minutes talking to one another. What do you think was the outcome?

Participants by and large said they felt more optimistic after the round. What does that outcome tell us about sharing? How can we apply that outcome to stressful situations? When was the last time you talked things over instead of bottled it up?

I like Christmas. A lot. I’ve come to appreciate Christmas like I do weddings. I feel the same way towards Agile. All three operate on a manifesto of sorts that people can choose to either respect and adhere to or flout and play-pretend.

Everyone just wants to have a good time. And why not? In my experience, practicing Agile is a bit like driving. When you tell people you use Agile to deliver projects, you’re signalling intent, one of collaboration instead of conflict. After signalling comes fulfilment, made real through behaviour and action.

It’s like driving to the shops and indicating you want to turn left and then actually turning left. Unfortunately, many of the Agile drivers I meet signal left and then turn right. These are the same people who wonder why their passenger-team doesn’t believe or trust them to drive safely. Unskilled drivers are a menace to themselves and everyone else on the road.

Agile, like Christmas, creates a culture of shared reality. By having a common and worthwhile goal, one that produces genuine value for instance, people will figure out difficult (impossible) problems like they’ve always done: through co-ordination, cooperation and convergence.

Agile is the ultimate endurance test because it demands openness, stamina, consistency and constancy. What would your project be like if everyone tried their best to get along with one another, do the right thing and do things right? It would be like Christmas. Everyday. For Everyman. How civilised.

Make 2008 matter. Instead of letting others make mincemeat out of you. Thanks for reading. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!