‘Be the change you want to see.‘ – Gandhi

Agile as a Party

I like to think of Agile as a party. And like any good party, everyone gets invited. It’s then up to you whether or not you show up. And when. If you do, it’s then up to you how much time and effort you want to put in. As to whether you’re a party animal or a party pooper, the choice is entirely up to you.

The key is to include everyone on the invite. Agile, to me, is about inclusion. It’s about making-change-for-the-better an option for everyone. It’s the kind of option that has no expiry date.

Party On!

The folks who have the most fun at such a party are those who have an open mind. Folks who’ll give things a go, including that dodgy looking punch that looks too funky a blue to be made from 100% natural ingredients. Or may be you do the Macarena because it reminds you of your first year at university.

And that’s the thing I like most about Agile. I never know upfront what I’ll get personally out of a day’s coaching or consulting. The only thing I can be certain of, right from the start, is that it’s going to be a lot of fun. That’s the thought that gets me started. It’s also the one that keeps me going.

Take today for instance. I’m on the last day of an Agile Healthcheck engagement with a team who’s Agile Enablement journey began almost exactly a year ago. The team invited me back to help take them to the next level of applying the Agile Values and Practices. We began by identifying a handful of goals, back at the start of September, such as ‘Increase team customer satisfaction’ and ‘Increase team velocity’ and defined acceptance criteria for each goal so we would know when we were done.

A month on, I’m back for a Show & Tell of the Team Improvement kind, to see how many of the acceptance criteria the team has met in 4 weeks (two iterations’ worth) of concerted effort on Continuous Improvement.

A lot has happened. Judging from the smiling faces that greet me, the team’s proud of what they’ve achieved. And so they should be. It’s a humbling moment to find oneself among people who rise to the challenge of becoming better. People who strive to improve despite the alternative, namely, this-is-what-we’ve-always-done-and-that’s-the-only-reason-we-continue-to-do-it attitude otherwise known as Mediocrity.

Learning the Unexpected

So what did I learn today? It turns out today’s Gandhi’s birthday. And how did I get to hear about it? During the ‘Information’ part of the Temperature Reading exercise. It’s exactly this sort of serendipity that makes me smile as I look up at the team’s new poster with intriguing smileys hand-drawn by each of the team member which reads:

• Everyone has value.
• You can only change yourself.
   

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.

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.

‘Change happens. It cannot be controlled. It can only be influenced.’

One of the key criteria for successful Agile Adoption is to make it grow and endure throughout an organisation. To overcome this challenge, George Schlitz and Giora Morein show us how to navigate organisational relationships using an approach called Mapping the Agile Enablement Battlefield presented at Agile 2009.

Storytime: The Story of Jorj the CSM Pig

Once upon a time, there was a friendly and happy pig called Jorj. Jorj the CSM Pig was part of a great team of pigs. Together, they delivered a successful project.

Shortly afterwards, a curious thing happened. Jorj and his team were reduced to bacon.

The moral of the story, according to Giora and George, is that organisational change is difficult. In Jorj’s case, it was very difficult indeed. It’s perfectly possible to be successful at project delivery yet fail in the overall Change effort.

Put your Strategic Thinking Cap on

For Agile to endure in an organisation, it needs to be part of an organisational change programme.

Agile Adoption fails at an organisational level when we:

• Focus on delivering while ignoring the importance of organisational change
• View organisational change as a distraction
• Insulate ourselves from change beyond the team
• Too much practice – not enough principles being applied

According to Giora and George, the key to the kind of Agile that endures is:

• Develop a strategy – Find out where and when to exert influence.
• Understand that Change is War (in that it requires a strategic approach).

The Objective: Agile Team Leads (aka Scrum Masters) need to be Change Agents. As Change Agents, their objective is to identify how to invest some effort and resources on the Change effort.

The Approach: Using a ‘Mapping the Battlefield’ approach, team leads can visually represent a system of influencers by identifying influencer types, such as ‘Ally’, ‘Supporter’, ‘Neutral’, ‘Threat’ and ‘Enemy’.

There are 3 Influence Strengths:

• Undetermined influence
• Strong influence
• Weak influence.

Identifying the System of Influencers

Day 1: Establish the Perimeter – Create an alternative view of the organisational diagram in terms of influencer types.

• Identify known influencers surrounding the team – Start with the closest people to the team
• Identfy positive and negative influencers – Assess based on direct interaction as well as hearsay
• Update your map as new information arrives.

Day 2: Assess the direct influencers

• Focus on direct influencers (those who interact directly with your team)
• Add in more influencers as you identify them.

Day 3: Assess indirect influencers

• Indirect influencers that influence your direct influencers
• Influence your perimeter by influencing others
• Start with second-degree supervisors.

Day 4: Continue information gathering and analysis

• Rinse and repeat.

Putting the Action Plan into Action

The Response Strategy is to focus on the proximity and strength of the influencers.

Priority 1 – Enagage with the strongest direct threats.
Priority 2 – Enagage with the strongest indirect threats.
Priority 3 – Enagage with the weak direct threats.

My Takeaway

The ‘Mapping the Battlefield’ approach is about information gathering and analysis and strategic thinking. It can be used as an effective thinking tool so long as we live the Agile Values and behave responsibly. As always, the most useful thing to do is look within yourself and change for the better first because true leadership is by example.

(In a team space near you)

Apprentice: My code is thoroughly tested.
Agile Coach: There are no unit tests.
Apprentice: I used my eyes.
Agile Coach: Always listen to your Agile Coach.
Apprentice: Yeah-But-No-But-Yeah-But.
Agile Coach: And always question your Agile Coach.

Do you care enough?

Agile is for people who care. People who care about what they do. People who care about quality. People who care about people. Agile makes me think. It forces me to listen without judgment. To really understand. After all, everyone adds value and we can only change ourselves.

‘Nothing is to be feared, it is only to be understood,’ said Marie Curie, ‘Now is the time to understand.’

A good coach lets you make mistakes. A good coach creates opportunities for you to learn. A good coach gives you room to grow.

Now is the time to understand.

Let the fun begin!

Games make learning fun instead of only growing pain. As children, we learn through play. And because play is so much fun, we play some more until a virtuous circle is formed where we play and learn to play to learn. In my experience, adults learn most effectively in the same way.

By learning through play, we pack in the practice at doing the things we enjoy and so we begin to achieve, getting a little (or, in some cases, a lot) better at what we do every day. Think ‘baby steps’. Little and often.

And when practice brings results, it gives us a sense of achievement and so we practice some more until doing what we do becomes a habit, becomes part of who we are.

By making practice a habit, we’re able to discover what we’re really good at and eventually, all those hours add up to make us proficient at doing the thing we enjoy doing most.

Add in the necessary ingredients of support, guidance and courage, and the moment you attain proficiency should collide just-in-time with opportunity. That’s when you suddenly realise you’re doing what you love or at least loving what you do. And getting paid for it. There’s your TADA! moment. And it feels like magic.

And because your Fun Flywheel is already spinning, that breakthrough will fuel your courage and desire to achieve even more, so you’ll continue to practice and, because you know the secret to practice is through play, you’ll never tire of training to become better every day.

The Enduring Memory of Play

Why turn work into play?

• Breaks down organisational boundaries – Such as when senior managers haggle with developers, as a team, over whether building a Mars station will bring in more business value than a Castle
• Connects people – Creates a shared experience that lasts way beyond a 90-minute gaming session into daily work
• Creates a sense of common purpose – Unites people from different teams and departments, sometimes for the first time, towards a common, tangible goal
• Increases understanding between colleagues – Clearly demonstrates how everyone has strengths and can use the strengths of others to overcome their own weaknesses by working as a team
• We can’t resist having fun – Opens our minds long enough to challenge what we think so we can grow

It is these kinds of mementoes that help form a team, so that when the going gets tough, we can help one another through the storms to become a high performance and happy team.

‘Everything is changeable. Only change is eternal.‘ – Truism

The Problem With Me

The thing I hate most about myself is that I don’t want to change. Truth be told, I resist change a lot more often than I’d like to admit. In my cool and contemplative moments, when I’m not preoccupied with resisting change, I’ve been able to identify the following reasons of why I resist:

• Fear of the Unknown – ‘Only fools rush in. Who knows what lies ahead?’
• Fear of consequences – ‘What if it all goes wrong? What happens then?’
• Fear of waste – ‘If things don’t work out, I’ll have wasted all that time and effort that I could have spent on something else.’
• Lack of confidence in my own ability – ‘Can I really achieve what I set out to do?’
• Fear of ridicule – ‘This might make me look like a right fool in front of others.’

That’s a lot of fear to deal with. Nonetheless, let’s imagine I manage to remain calm and collected. From my tight ball of nerves, self-doubt and indigestion, a simple thought emerges, like a pure drop of water from the French Alps. The root cause of all my fears is my fear of F-A-I-L-U-R-E.

Try and Do Your Best

The fact is, Resistance and Flow both require energy. Unlike Resistance which shuts down the thinking you and limits your options, Flow enables you to keep an open mind. Flow helps you focus on the present. Flow keeps you moving. Before you know it, you embrace and thrive on change instead of cloying into a tight ball of nerves, self-doubt and indigestion going nowhere.

Catch Yourself Doing Things Wrong to Do Them Right

I’ve learnt to manage the Resisting Me. Whenever something becomes difficult, ‘DING!’ goes the bell in my head, clear as a drop of water from the French Alps, and I ask myself: ‘Am I resisting? Why am I resisting? What can I do to flow?’

• Fear of the Unknown translates into ‘Let’s hear out your idea.‘
• Fear of consequences becomes ‘What are the risks and issues?‘
• Fear of waste translates into ‘If things don’t work out, I’ll have learnt something valuable.‘
• Lack of confidence in my own ability becomes ‘What does the situation remind me of? What did I do to make it work the last time around?‘
• Fear of ridicule translates into ‘She who dares grows.‘

Of course all of this only matters if you choose your attitude today. And the one you take to work tomorrow.

‘A crisis is too good an opportunity to waste‘
– Anon.

Meet the Purple Cow

‘Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It’s a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It’s a brown cow.’ (Seth)

Are you seeing purple?

When it comes to changing for the better, there’s no time like the present.  According to Seth Godin, the key to succeeding in an age with infinite choices, impossible-to-tell-before-you-buy quality and grossly limited time is to be remarkable. To be purple.

The 4-step guide to breeding Purple Cows

1. Come up with a remarkable idea: Invent a Purple Cow!
2. Milk the cow for everything it’s worth.
3. Have a Purple Cow succession strategy: Create an environment conducive to nurturing Purple Calves.
4. Rinse and repeat.

Advertising alone is not enough

• Be innovative – Stop advertising and start innovating!
• Appeal to early adopters – They’re the sneezers who’ll propel your idea or product among the slower adoption groups in Moore’s idea diffusion curve.
• Invest in talent and put in the hardwork – The Purple Cow requires talent and a lot of hardwork. A Purple Cow isn’t a quickfix.
• Differentiate your customers – Target and reward the sneezers. Focus on the sneezers.
• Measure, measure, measure – from your products to interactions. Respond to the feedback by adapting and changing for the better.

How now Purple Cow?

Here’s Seth’s takeaway in a nutshell. It’s got Agility built-in.

• Trust: Be authentic in what you say and do.
• Iterate: Iterate over the things you do.
• Incremental Change: Develop new ideas and implement them incrementally.
• Courage: Encourage new ideas and embrace change. Instead of saying, ‘That sounds like a good idea, but…’, try ‘Why not?’

Things to remember during your stay on Animal Farm

• Boring is risky and, according to Seth, always leads to failure.
• ‘The Purple Cow is so rare because people are afraid.’ (Seth)
• Wake up and smell the cheese! What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

P.: Nine out of ten Agile Coaches I meet are those who live by the mantra of Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do.
TJ.: Go on.
P.: Some people say that the statistic concerns them.
TJ.: Why? Did you name names?
P.: No.
TJ.: Perhaps their response is out of guilt?
P.: No. They think that it’s better not to hire an Agile Coach since the chances of finding a good one are so slim.
TJ.: That’s a concern I share.

Make it worth more than words

Agile is many things. In summary:

• It’s a buzzword, a band wagon, a meal ticket.
• It’s a group of practices that enables people to deliver higher business value through better quality deliverables.
• It’s a fundamental mindset shift that effects everything you do based on values and principles.

The Lifecycle of a New Idea

The multitude of definitions is a sign of growth. It’s part of the evolutionary adoption of a new idea according to Everett Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations theory, made better known by Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm model.

The challenge for those with a real desire to understand and experience the benefits the Agile way of working is:

• See through the spin
• Distinguish those who have neither the experience nor the understanding of Agile from those who genuinely apply Agile Values and Principles to the way they work.

This challenge reminds me of the journey of the programming language Java. Cast your mind back to the Dotcom era. Back then, Java was the latest shiny thing and I remember meeting self-proclaimed Java gurus who had only ever created web pages out of HTML and perhaps dabbled in Javascript at best. The buzz, the buskers and the learners are part of the entourage of the growth of a new idea.

How to Hire a Good Agile Coach

I apply the same principles of hiring a team member/employee to hiring an Agile Coach. Here are some of the things I like to find out about them:

1. What they value and why.
2. Their knowledge and thoughts on the Agile Values, Principles and Practices.
3. Their knowledge and experience of the Agile Delivery lifecycle and the effects of possible variables (such as time, cost and scope) on the Agile way of working.
4. Examples of where, when, how and why they’ve used Agile or a different approach.
5. How they use Agile for personal development.
6. Why they’re an Agile Coach.
7. Evidence of their professional experience (including online presence, references, recommendations) to determine their credibility.
8. Would I want to work with them, day in day out? If ‘Yes’, why? If ‘No’, why not? Then I reflect on my responses to find out what they tell me about me.

My Principles on Hiring

• If in doubt, don’t hire.
• If you’re undecided, find other ways of gathering more information. Introduce them to the team over lunch. Or invite them for a day’s worth of work experience.
• Hire people who learn.
• Hire people you can learn from.
• Prefer team players over self-proclaimed leaders.
• Always get a second opinion because we all see the world in different ways. I find it useful to pair when interviewing.
• Make it a WIN-WIN opportunity for you, your company and the new hire.

Leverage the Wisdom of Your Team (Duration: 15 – 30 minutes)

Now we have our team values and the team’s definition of Quality, we’re ready to create our team manifesto out of two A0 posters. A team manifesto should be created by the team for the team.

1. Ask the team to divide up into two groups, one to produce the Team Values poster and the other for the Quality definition poster.
2. Give each group 10 minutes to produce their poster. Tip: Ensure the posters retain the order of the original lists of team values and Quality.
3. Ask the team to post up their poster side by side in the teamspace. Tip: Find a place that is visible from everyone’s desk and, ideally, to passers-by. This serves as a reminder and declaration of the importance of the manifesto to the team.
4. Invite everyone to affirm their commitment to the manifesto by signing below each of the posters. Tip: If certain members are reluctant to sign the posters, find out why. It may be that the team needs to revisit certain points on the posters until they come to a consensus. We suggest adjusting your facilitation style to increase the involvement of those people during the subsequent discussion.

Why the manifesto works

• It harnesses the collective wisdom of the team. Collective wisdom is an increasingly well-recognised approach for helping disparate groups to find solutions, gain buy-in, resolve conflict and increase respect for one another through shared knowledge.
• It’s self-enforcing. Refer back to manifesto the regularly. Since the team came up with it, individuals are more likely to behave responsibly and encourage others to do the same.

We strongly recommend asking everyone to affirm their commitment by signing the manifesto.

Sixty minutes later and we’ve created our very own team manifesto. Smiles everywhere.
The team stands back and gazes in silence at what we’ve achieved.