Agile 2009 has been an educational and uplifting conference for me. See for yourself!

My Top Favourite Sessions

Here are my top five favourites out of the dozen sessions I attended:

1. Mapping the Agile Enablement Battlefield by George Schiltz and Giora Morein – A thought-provoking session on strategic thinking demonstrating The Mapping the Battlefield approach for identifying and dealing with influencers as part of Agile Enablement at an organizational level.

2. “Flirting” With Your Customers by Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen – A fun, yet serious session introducing an 8-step model for creating rapport with your customer through effective communication.

3. Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns by Steve “Doc” List – An experiential session that reminds us of the importance of self-awareness, empathy and moderation if we are to play the role of facilitator effectively. (Session summary)

4. How to Develop Your Leadership Power Daily: An Agile Approach to Growth by Christopher Avery – An introduction to The Responsibility Model as a personal responsibility and way of improving individual effectiveness.

5. The Bottleneck Game by Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and me – a simulation of a production line at The Hats and Boats Company where we learned to apply the Five Focusing Steps from the Theory of Constraints.

Each of these sessions have three things in common: they are well-presented, thought-provoking and valuable for individual development and Agile team development.

The Perfection Game on Agile 2009

What I Liked About the Conference

• Day 1: The Ice Breaker Evening Event – The activities at the event, such as Giant Chess and Jenga, multiple wii game stations and an open space area,  gave attendees a great reason to mingle and network.
• The Can-Do attitude of the conference helpers and presenters was a good example of collaboration in action.
• Day 4: Dinner Banquet – The quality of the dinner was superb for a meal served to a table of 8 let along for 1,400 diners.
• Day 4 Keynote “The Dawning of the Age of Experience” by Jared M. Spool – An entertaining and educational talk on the importance and relevance of user-centred design in our lives.
• Participants were exceptionally forthcoming with their session feedback which should help improve future runnings of the sessions.
• Watching Ola Ellnestam and Gerard Meszaros in the finals at Programming with the Stars reminded me of what software craftsmanship looks like in action!
• Discovering that The Business Value Game doesn’t make learning business value modelling sufficiently explicit.  
• Getting better acquainted with old friends and making new friends.
• The city of Chicago provided numerous opportunities for promenades to relax the mind and re-charge the body after a day crammed with learning.

What Would Make the Conference Perfect

• Find a way for attendees to familiarise themselves with the programme quickly and easily (it took me at least an hour per day to decide on a session shortlist).
• Find a way of reminding attendees which sessions they attended to fuel meaningful conversations during the breaks.
• Create opportunities for the different types of attendees to cross-stage mingle instead of enforcing silos by primary interest.
• Kick off the conference with a facilitated ice breaker exercise to encourage mingling from the start.
  Intersperse the conference with ice breaker exercises to encourage more mingling throughout the conference.
• Introduce One-Minute-Presentations by session presenters at the start of every day (or every morning and every afternoon) so that attendees have more information on which to base their session choice.

What about Agile 2010?

As Agile Adoption becomes increasingly widespread, Agile 2010 will be instrumental in enabling face-to-face knowledge sharing around the world.  Agile 2009 proved to be such a hit that I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference in Nashville, Tennessee, home of country music. I hope this means there’ll be lots and lots of dancing. Best get practicing!

Meanwhile, Thank You! and Goodbye for now.

To illustrate the The Five Focusing Steps from the Theory of Constraints, Pascal and I co-presented The Bottleneck Game at Agile 2009. We had a lot of fun as usual and, in return, we’ve received lots of useful feedback to improve the way we run the session going forward.

Find out more about The Five Focusing Steps here.

What I Liked About the Session

• It was great to have the likes of Henrik Kniberg play the game and give us feedback.
• It was useful to have the opportunity to run the session as two parallel simulations.
• The two parallel simulations heightened the sense of urgency/stress (just like work!) because the two teams tried to compete with one another.

What Would Make the Session Perfect

• Limit the number of consultant players per simulation so players can all focus more.
• Use the microphones as presenters so that everyone can hear us!
• Run the second half of the session so we can apply the Theory of Constraints to our workplace (although this would require an additional 90 minutes!) and come up with a process improvement plan.

Feedback from bloggers on the session

• Patrick Kua shares his Lessons Learnt

It was good to hear Christopher Avery re-cap on The Responsibility Model in his session How to Development Your Leadership Power Daily: An Agile Approach to Growth at Agile 2009.

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

Redefining Responsibility

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.

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.’

What I Liked About the Session

• It was interesting to see the audience’s reaction to The Responsibility Model since the model was new to the majority of them. I remember feeling uplifted when I first came across it; the algorithm makes the notion of Responsibility explicit as a repeatable process.

What Would Make the Session Perfect

• It would have been very useful to experience the model as an exercise to internalise it.
• I would have liked to hear more about the latest research Christopher’s been doing related to the model.

Facilitation is a key skill in personal and team effectiveness. A facilitator by definition is someone who makes it easier for others to communicate while maintaining a neutral stance themselves. According to Steve “Doc” List, each of us can choose to adopt the role of facilitator whenever we take part in a discussion, be it at work or at home. Doc demonstrates the complexity of good facilitation in his session Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns at Agile 2009.

Attributes of a Good Facilitator

A good facilitator:

• Creates an open environment so others can make decisions during the discussions.
• Recognises disruptive behaviour within a group and does something about it (using The Facilitation Four-Step – see below for more details).
• Has no authority.

Good facilitation, according to Doc, means ‘dealing with attitudes and behaviours that lead to more effective meetings so that meetings become more productive and even enjoyable’. It’s not the facilitator’s responsibility to work on motivating others. Instead, a good facilitator recognises negative behaviour and deals with it in a respect way to all those involved.

The Role-Playing Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns Game

The theory on good facilitation was brought to life by Doc’s meeting game attended by stereotypical meeting-goers.

The game is made up of 13 types of personas (also known as Patterns and Antipatterns depending on your role as meeting facilitator or participant). Each persona has distinct motivations:

• The Benevolent Dictator: ‘I know what’s best for all of you.’
• The Guide: ‘I’m here to hold the lamp and show the way.’
• The Gladiator: ‘It’s all about the combat!’
• Curious George: ‘I’m here to ask not tell.’
• Professor Moriarty: ‘The end, if it’s what I want, justifies the means.’
• The Conclusion Jumper: ‘I don’t need to hear everything you have to say – I’ve got it!’
• The Orator: ‘I’m worth listening to.’
• The Superhero: ‘I’m here to rescue you.’
• Sherlock Holmes: ‘With enough information, we can reach a conclusion.’
• The Repetitor: ‘It’s worth repeating. It’s worth repeating. It’s worth repeating.’
• Switzerland: ‘It’s not up to me.’
• Be Yourself: [Insert your own motto here]
• The Facilitator: Persona who facilitates a practice meeting.

The first round of the game involved each player randomly drawing a card and playing out their persona during a meeting on a given topic (eg ‘We should use Scrum instead of XP’). The player who draws the Facilitator card plays the role of meeting facilitator. The aim of the game is for the group to guess who was playing which persona. Then we played a second round, with each player drawing two cards (instead of only one) and playing both their personas during the meeting. This duality gave each player an additional dimension which made divining the characters based on their behaviours much more difficult.

The Facilitation Four-Step

The Four-Step is useful for faciltators when dealing with negative behaviour during a meeting. Doc recommends taking the following actions when the meeting becomes blocked:

1. Interrupt – Stop the speaker in mid-flow in as polite and as respectful a way as possible.
2. Ask – Ask the speaker to sum up or clarify their point.
3. Redirect – Ask others to share their points-of-view.
4. Commit – Return to the original speaker and double-check with them that they are happy to move in the direction of the rest of the group.

What I Liked About the Session

• The game successfully highlights the importance of what Doc refers to as ‘Collaborative Conversations’, conversations that have 2-way flow, involving talking and listening.
• The game is an excellent example of how experiential learning enables us to gain a deeper understanding of how and why certain skills and techniques work in the real world.
• The session reminds us of the importance of self-awareness, empathy and moderation if we are to play the role of facilitator effectively.

What Would Make the Session Perfect

• I would have liked to play more rounds to improve my facilitation skills.
• I would have liked to learn more about the manifestations of combined personas embodied by an individual and how to deal with the behaviour they exhibit.
• I would have liked to learn more about the personas in terms of Patterns and Antipatterns depending on your role as meeting facilitator or participant.

The first Agile (XP) Value is Communication. Communication is probably one of the most talked about themes on Agile teams, yet it is probably one of the most difficult ones to realise. Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen show us how in their session “Flirting” With Your Customers at Agile 2009.

Jenni and Ole liken developing rapport with a customer to two people flirting since successful relationships are based on Effective Communication through Mutual Understanding.

An 8 Step Guide to Flirting with Your Customer

1. Radar – Be switched on because every moment is a chance to connect with people.
You: I’m aware of my thoughts and how I’m feeling right now. I’m also aware of those around me.

2. Target – Identify who you need to connect with and why.
You: To deliver maximum value for my organisation, I need to gain support from senior management. Patrick’s a senior manager. I’ll go speak to him.

3. Move In – Show you’re interested in them by inquiring about their perspective on things.
You: Hi Patrick. Graham suggested I speak to you about how we currently deliver software. Do you have 5 minutes?

Customer: I’m on my way to another meeting.

You: How about I walk you there and we talk on the way?

Customer: OK!

You: What’s bothering you most about the software delivery process?

4. Back Off A Little – You’ve shown your interest in them, now give them a chance to reciprocate.
Customer: The way we do releases is a serious problem. They’re simply taking too long.

5. Open Up – Share more information.
Customer: Your concern mirrors my experience with the teams I’ve been coaching in your organisation. If we begin by applying some Agile practices to Release Management, we should be able to improve the process and reduce the overall time it takes per release.

6. Dance – Socialise!
Customer: Thanks for inviting me to this team lunch. It’s been great to hear firsthand from the team how they think Agile’s working out for us. What we really need is a repeatable process.

You: We’ll be learning more about process improvement based on the Theory of Constraints next Tuesday. We’ll be playing The Bottleneck Game, a production line simulation. You’re welcome to join us!

Customer: Mmm… I’m booked up already next Tuesday. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.

7. Get Real – Work through a crisis together.
You: Patrick, I need your help.

Customer: What’s the problem?

You: The Release Management team thinks Agile is just a fad. They want to sit tight and wait for it to pass.

Customer: Thanks for letting me know. I’m seeing the Release Manager this afternoon. I’ll let him know that Agile is the way forward and we all have to do our bit to increase the value we deliver.

8. Enjoy – Enjoy the relationship and help it grow.
Just as 20% of the cost of a piece of software is incurred during development and the remaining 80% goes into maintenance, a similar distribution of effort applies to establishing and growing relationships. 

Tips to Effective Communication and Meaningful Relationships

When applying the 8 steps, it’s important to remember to:

• Be open and receptive.
• Ask questions.
• Listen first.
• Find common points of interest/concern.
• Listen some more.
• Sense-check by playing back what you’ve heard (eg ‘If I understand correctly, the time it takes to do releases is a key concern for the organisation’).
• Apply the Agile Values (Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect). Always.

What I Liked About the Session

Jenni and Ole are a great example of pair-presenting. I thoroughly enjoyed their session for three main reasons:

1. It takes courage to tackle a tricky topic, especially that of human social interaction.
2. Jenni and Ole created an environment where everyone could safely experiment with the steps.
3. The steps were delivered in a good-natured way so as to make us laugh and help us remember them!

What Would Make the Session Perfect

• I would have liked to practice the 8 steps in triads (with two participants and one observer) in order to 1) gain a deeper understanding of the steps and 2) get feedback on my application of those steps.
• I would have liked to learn more about ways to grow a relationship – Step 8 – since relationships that endure are the ones that require time and effort.

Afternoon Timeslot 1:

• 14:00 – 15:30 – Learning: the best approaches for your brain with Mark Levison, Linda Rising because understanding how our mind works frees us up to grow.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – “Flirting” With Your Customers with Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen because I want to understand how the concept of flirting can be used to improve communication at work.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Applying Game Theory to Agile Contracting with Simon Bennett because I want to learn how to use Game theory to create compelling contracts.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – Skills for Agile Designers with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock because I want to learn how Agile Practices can increase the value of UX design.
• 14:00 – 15:30 – Coaching Success: Getting People to Take Responsibility & Demonstrate Ownership with Christopher Avery, Ashley Johnson because I want to learn The Challenge Game to help myself and others grow.

Afternoon Timeslot 2:

• 16:00 – 17:30 – The Business Value Game: How to build and use a Business Value Model with Portia Tung and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe because we creating the highest business value possible is why we do Agile.
• 16:45 – 17:30 – Scrum and CMMI: from Good to Great – are you ready-ready to be done-done with Carsten Jakobsen because it’s important to understand how to leverage the strength of both tools.
• 16:00 – 16:45 – Bob and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (The Biologist’s Tale of Risk and Uncertainty) with Julian Everett because it’s always handy to know multiple techniques for dealing with risk and uncertainty.

Today marks yet another Agile First – It’s the first time Pascal and I are presenting two of our all time favourite Agile games in the United States on the same day:

• 09:00 – 10: 30 (Grand Ballroom A) – We play The Bottleneck Game, a simulation of  a production line at The Hats and Boats Company where you’ll experience and apply the five focusing steps from the Theory of Constraints and learn about how it correlates with Agile, Lean and Real Options. Maximum 60 participants.
• 16:00 – 17:30  (Plaza Ballroom B) – We go for gold with The Business Value Game, a jam-packed game where you come to grips with release planning and the role of the Agile customer by playing sales people competing for resources to deliver the highest possible business value for your organisation. Maximum 50 participants.

Bonus! Henrik Kniberg, author of Scrum and XP in the Trenches, has volunteered to help facilitate The Business Value Game (having played it for the first time with us at Agile 2008) so that we can scale it up to 50 participants like we did at XPDay France earlier this year!

We’ve played these games on numerous occasions with our clients and Agilists in Europe, so we ‘re intrigued by how the participants at Agile 2009 will fare compared with our European counterparts! Come to the sessions early to avoid disappointment as places are limited. We look forward to seeing you there!

Where can I find out more?

You can download the games (including full instructions!) from www.agilecoach.net and play them for free with your colleagues and even family and friends. Warning: Having fun can be hardwork!

 All the games on www.agilecoach.net are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license.

Reviewing my plan for Day 2

As Tuesday’s conference day is fast approaching, I’ve reviewed my Real Options for the day.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to plan 1-day ahead which seems to give me a healthy balance of focus on the present day of the conference and enough information just-in-time for making well-informed choices at a sustainble pace. Sustainable pace is key at Agile 200X conferences because of the gargantuan amounts of information around!

Day 3 at Agile 2009

As usual, the sessions with emboldened titles are the ones I’ll be attending!

Morning Timeslot 1:

• 09:00 – 09:45 – Agile @ Yahoo! from the Trenches with Mun-Wai Chung and Brian Drummond because experience reports provide useful insights into an individual’s journey through Agile adoption as a part of team.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – Activity Theory for Manifesting Agile with Robert Biddle because I’m intrigued by cultural-historical activity theory, a psychological framework for understand collaborative behaviour.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – Narrative Acceptance Tests – A Behaviour Driven Approach with Antony Marcano and Andy Palmer because acceptance tests help define ‘Done’ and success.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – The Elephant in the Room: Using Brain Science to Enhance Working Relationships with Sharon Buckmaster, Diana Larsen because I want to understand how the male and female mind works and the impact it has on our relationships at work.
• 09:00 – 10:30 – The Bottleneck Game where Pascal and I’ll be co-presenting a simulation on The Theory of Constraints’ Five Focusing Steps because experiential learning provides learning that sticks!

Morning Timeslot 2:

• 11:00 – 12:30 – Telling Your Stories: Why Stories are important for your team  with Johanna Hunt and Rachel Davies because storytelling is a vital vehicle to improve our understanding of ourselves and those around us. If you love stories, check out Agile Fairytales – they help teams grow!
• 11:00 – 12:30 – You say tomato, I say Pomodoro with Renzo Borgatti because it’s a second chance to learn about personal effectiveness using timeboxing and other Agile techniques such as planning.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Emergent Design & Evolutionary Architecture with Neal Ford because it will enable me to explain why Big Design Up Front in comparison with iterative and incremental design more effectively.
• 11:00 – 12:30 –  Help me to see… corporate culture with Alan Cyment, Tobias Mayer because I want to improve my collaboration skills by playing the Dialogue game.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Multi-team sprint planning – how to do all the teams together with Henrik Kniberg because Henrik’s a great speaker who always provides value as a hands-on Agile practitioner!
• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Agile PMP: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks with Mike Cottmeyer because I want to better understand the responsibilities of Agile Project Management.

The key to reliable delivery, according to Mary Poppendieck, is understanding that Workflow is Orthogonal to Schedule. This is my experience report of the session at Agile 2009.

The Secret of Success: The Story of the Empire State Building Project

The goal of the Empire State Building project was to 1) create the tallest building in the world; 2) bring in revenue by opening the building to the public within a year.

The secret of the project team’s success was Focus on Flow, in this case, getting the right materials to the right people in the right place.

Key Sucess Factors

1. Teamwork of owner, architect and builders working as one team – consulting and involving experts early.
2. Hire deeply experienced builders (then delivering to a fixed price contract).
3. Focus on the key constraint: material flow.
4. Decoupling – creating ompletely independent schedules allowed swift response to impediments/surprises.
5. Cash Flow Thinking: each day of delay cost $10,000 ($120,000 today), making speed well worth it.
6. Design to meet constraints – the schedule was not derived from the building design, the building was designed based on constraints (such as building in the middle of New York, the laws of physics, zoning ordinances).

How to Achieve Reliable delivery

1. Establish high level system goals. Create high level system design based on the goals. Understand what the the business really needs.
2. Involve those who understand the details early in the design process. There is no substitute for experience.
3. Apply teamwork based on respect and trust. Managing by solely by contract-based thinking increases costs 30% – 60%.
4. Reduce complexity with wise decoupling  (eg reduce architectural and schedule dependencies; provide alternate options for ‘Critical Path’ items).
5. Understand and manage the biggest constraint – know what that constraint is and how to deal with it.

Tips for Leveraging Workflow and Scheduling Together

1. Level the workload because it provides greater control over the schedule and increases a schedule’s predictability.
2. Create the schedule with people with knowledge and experience.
3. Optimise throughput, not utilisation because lower utilisation delivers higher performance.
4. Ensure slack is built in because it allows for team to respond to feedback and cope with normal variation.
5. Limit work to capacity.
6. Timebox don’t scopebox.

No need to look so glum! There are even more Real Options on Day 2 of the conference than Day 1! Marvellous.

On Monday, I wrote: I have yet to make my first choices for the timeslots, I’m keeping my options open for now!

On Tuesday, I’m writing: It’s 6 am Tuesday morning and I’ve refined my shortlist for Day 2 (see emboldened session titles) to at least two options per timeslot based on what I learned on Day 1 and what I need to learn from the remainder of the conference. Of course I don’t have to decide which session until the last responsible moment… just before the session begins or just before the session ends. It’s important to note, however, that the value of each session (Real Option) diminishes depending on when I join the session.

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Morning:

• 11:00 – 12:30 – Pragmatically “Crossing the Chasm” from Project-level to Enterprise Adoption with Ahmed Sidky and Chris Sterling because for Agile to endure, it has to be adopted across the enterprise.
• 11:00 – 12:30 Release Planning (The Small Card Game): Discover What Works with Chet Hendrickson and Ron Jeffries because I get to play a game run by Chet and Ron!
• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Beer Game with Agile Teams – MIT Game Theory in Agile Project Management with Tom Looy because it’s a great chance to learn about Game theory with a game.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – The Pomodoro Technique: can you focus – really focus – for 25 minutes? with Staffan Noteberg because I’ve been practicing with the tomato and want to use it right.
• 11:00 – 12:30 – Creating “Big Picture” Designs without Big Design by Desiree Sy because getting the approach to UX on Agile projects right gives us a greater chance of delivering the highest possible value to the customer.
• 11:00 – 11:45 Tips and Techniques For Implementing An Agile Program Across Distributed Teams with Tamara Sulaiman because tips and techniques for distributed working offer insight into the nature of team.
• 11:45 – 12.30 – Leveraging Collaborative Tools with Distributed Customer Teams with Luke Hohmann because I want to see which tools are useful in which contexts and why.

Afternoon:

• 14.00 – 15.30 – Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns with Steve “Doc” List because as an Agile Coach, I’m always looking for ways to improve my facilitation skills.
• 14.00 – 17.30 – Do I Still Have a Job? Roles and Org Structure in an Agile Transition with Alex Pukinskis and Mark Kilby because I’m interested in learning about models of change.
• 16:00 – 16:45 – An Agile Development Team’s Quest for CMMI Maturity Level 5 with with Sean Cohan with Hillel Glazer because I want to understand how Agile and CMMI can complement each other in practice.
• 16:45 – 17:30 – Group Relations & Social Systems with Dan Mezick because I want to learn what Group Relations is and how it can be useful in Agile.
• 16:00 – 17:30 – How to Develop Your Leadership Power Daily: An Agile Approach to Growth with Chris Avery because I want to learn about the mental models from work on the Responsibility Process that I already use with teams.