Begin as you intend to go on

As an Agile Coach, I always start with a Personal Agility Rating exercise whenever I work with a new Agile team. By ‘new Agile team’, I mean a team with whom I’m working for the first time, regardless of their Agile experience. I do this for two reasons: 1) to set precedence for the kind of Agile we’ll be adopting going forward; 2) to create a common understanding of what being agile really means.

The Personal Agility Rating Exercise (Duration: 10 – 15 minutes)

1. Pass around a deck 4″ x 5″ index cards and a pot of coloured felt tips and ask everyone to take one of each.

2. Ask them to write their full name in the top righthand corner on one side of the card.

3. Ask them to write ‘Agile Values’ as a heading on the card.

4. Tell them that there are 5 Agile Values, also known as the XP Values by Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres.

5. Name Communication as the first Agile Value and ask the crowd what it means to them. Write down the value on a flip chart so everyone can see.

6. Summarise the definition of the value in concrete terms and, where possible, reiterate using the descriptions provided by the team.

7. Ask each person to rate themselves for the given value between 0 – 5, where 5 is ‘I’m the world’s best [communicator]!’ and 0 is ‘Needs a lot more work!’.

8. Tell them that the Agile Ratings will remain confidential between each individual and you (the coach) and will be used as a topic for conversation during 1-2-1 Agile Coaching.

9. Repeat steps 5 – 8 for each of the other 4 remaining values (Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect).

10. Collect the cards immediately after the exercise and continue with the rest of your team building/coaching activities.

The Kit – What you need

• 4″ x 5″ index cards (you can use lined or plain – I prefer lined for writing)
• Coloured felt tips (these help to create a less formal atmosphere for the exercise)

Tips

• Wait for between 10 – 15 seconds for a response before volunteering your definition of each value to encourage team participation.
• This exercise is best done following an ice breaker exercise (especially if the group is meeting for the first time) to put everyone at ease.
• I like to tell a short story about each value to make it more memorable.
• I like to add a small drawing next to each value after it’s been discussed to make its meaning more memorable.
• Ratings should be given as whole numbers only. For instance, if someone is tempted to give themselves 3.5 for Simplicity, I recommend they round down to the nearest whole number because there’s always room for improvement. I then reiterate, however, that as it’s their rating for themselves, it’s ultimately their decision what number they write down.
• The Agile Rating exercise is a great way of entering into a conversation about what being agile really means.

The Personal Agility Rating Exercise for Individuals

I use the the same exercise during my first 1-2-1 Agile Coaching sessions with newcomers to the team.

What do I do next as coach?

Immediate Followup

• Email a picture of each Agile Rating card to the individual for their reference and include several links on recommended Agile resources.
• Stick up the Agile Values poster in a prominent place in the team space to serve as a reminder of the activity and the importance of adhering to the values if we are to become an Agile team.
• Take the poster along with you to subsequent or troublesome meetings as a portable information radiator of what Agile means. In my experience, you don’t have to talk about the poster at all, just having it present and visible is usually enough to encourage Agile behaviour.

Mid-term Followup

• Discuss the Agile Ratings with each team member as part of their first 1-2-1 Agile coaching session.

Long-term Followup

• Choose to exercise the option of asking the team member to do a re-assessment of their Agile Ratings (as required) halfway through the Agile Enablement during a 1-2-1 Agile coaching session.
• Review the Agile Ratings with each team member as part of their last 1-2-1 coaching session with you.

Lessons Learnt about the Agile Values

You can never review the Agile Values too often – if you don’t know what they are, how do you know you’re being agile? Does everyone in your team know the Agile Values? And what about your coach?

As an Agile Coach, the greatest challenge for me on any Agile Enablement gig is The Wall. And I don’t mean the Project Wall (aka Kanban Board), the one with the iteration backlog on display for all to see, where stories and tasks take their turn journeying across the columns of TODO and In Progress before finally reaching DONE.

The Wall I speak of is a metaphorical one. Everyone has one. One person’s Wall may well be different from someone else’s. I can only share with you what mine looks and feels like. The most important thing is to be able to recognise yours when you come up against it. Recognising the Wall is one small, yet significant step towards winning the struggle against yourself.

I know I’ve reached the Wall when:

• I’ve stopped listening.
• I refuse to ask for feedback.
• I refuse to ask for help.
• I’ve stopped learning.
• I think I’m right and everyone else is wrong.

The Wall at its most extreme means:

• I’ve run out of answers.
• I feel helpless.
• I feel like running away and leaving it all behind.
• I’ve lost hope.
• I question everything I represent: from my areas of expertise and skills to my years of experience.

In summary, The Wall is when self doubt gnaws at your bones trying to get to the marrow. It’s when you refuse to face the brutal facts about yourself and start making up stories in the hope of magicking away The Wall through make-believe.

Agile and The Wall

Agile Enablement is tough because Agile demands continuous improvement. Continuous Improvement means being on the constant lookout for problems and facing the brutal truths when we find them so that we can deal with them through process and/or people improvement. It’s only natural that Continuous Improvement at an organisational level results in growing pains on a grand scale.

Rules about The Wall

1. You have to confront The Wall.
2. You have to develop an understanding of how The Wall has come to be in order to identify ways of getting over it.
3. You have to climb over The Wall. You cannot just skirt or workaround it.

Dealing with The Wall as an Individual

Here’s what I do when I find myself or a team member facing The Wall:

1. Take a break.
2. Find a quiet place to sit and think.
3. Find out how others are feeling about the situation in a 1-2-1.
4. Ask for feedback.
5. Perform a version of a temperature reading.
6. Put checks in place and assess progress.
7. Rinse and repeat.

Dealing with The Wall as a Team

1. Take a break.
2. Hold an impromptu team retrospective.
3. Mine for key issues.
4. Brainstorm possible causes for key issues.
5. Brainstorm possible solutions for key issues.
6. Commit to trying out 1 – 3 possible solutions as a team.
7. Put checks in place and assess progress.
8. Rinse and repeat.

Beware of Wallflowers

Be on the look out for perpetual laggards who choose to hang around The Wall. No one forces them to stay there, as they kick stones at the foot of the Wall, like aged teenagers smoking their cigarettes by the bike shed trying to look cool long after the bike shed is gone. Offer help by way of a 1-2-1 conversation to identify options that may help them go over The Wall.

The Secret to Scaling The Wall

• Always apply the Agile Values: Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect
• Apply two additional Agile Values: Trust and Transparency
• Practice Real Options thinking
• Take responsibility for yourself
• Find meaning in your work
• Find ways you can add value
• Strive to improve continuously
• Strive to enjoy what you do – the amount of fun you have is in direct correlation with the chances of you being able to scale The Wall

There’s one more thing about The Wall you should know: there will be many incarnations of The Wall you’ll have to face. The trick is to focus of scaling the one that’s blocking your way right now. Another one will inevitably spring up elsewhere on your journey and that’s good news because we need The Wall to keep our brains agile and our bodies nimble. The Wall also keeps us honest about how agile we really are.

Last night saw the largest gathering ever to attend Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Why Me?, an Agile Fairytale session on improving personal effectiveness, created by adults for everyone. More than 20 people converged to learn how to create their own happy endings on Day 2 of the AYE Conference in sunny Phoenix, Arizona.

Rediscovering the lessons we learnt as children but have since forgotten

We began the session with a speed retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves – a story of murder, intrigue, passion, poisoned apples and, of course, an Evil Queen. It was great to see sceptic-looking faces brighten with smiles as the story unfolded. The room soon filled with laughter at the thought of Sneezy being a friendly kind of dwarf who’s creatively efficient because he’s allergic to work.

You can read more about the Snow White and Seven Dwarves Game here. The game and all related materials are freely available under the Creative Commons license. You can also download the game and play it for free* with your team, family and friends.

If you’re an avid Agile Fairytale game player, you can read about the experience of your British Agile Fairytale counterparts and see how they fared.

Making Money with Agile Fairytale Projects

The highlight of the evening had to be the project pitches as each of the three teams presented their project proposition, outlining their project’s goal, its deadline and a team staffed with Agile Fairytale characters.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Who’s the fairest of them all?

Many thanks to everyone who attended! The overwhelming enthusiasm of the participants was a sure sign that Pascal and I were among folks who take responsibility for ourselves by continuously seeking to improve.

Heartfelt Lessons Learnt by the Group

• The only person we can change is ourselves.
• Everyone has value.
• Stop being a misanthrope: we should appreciate people more.
• By looking at what we think of others, we can learn about ourselves.
• It’s up to us as individuals to take responsibility in a relationship.

One participant declared, ‘I can see how the game can be a catalyst for team building. I’m going to play it with my team the moment I get home!’

Agile Fairytales coming to a place near you

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Why Me? will be showing next at XP Days Benelux later on this month. The Agile Benelux contingent are world-renowned for their sense of fun, so I’m looking forward to what promises to be a most excellent European mini-adventure of self-discovery.

*The Snow White and Seven Dwarves Game is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK license.

Playing to learn about the Theory of Constraints

It’s 5 pm on a Thursday night and everything’s already pitch dark outside. We need at least 7 players to play the Bottleneck Game created by Pascal Van Cauwenberghe but we only have 6 eager participants. Being an Agile Coach has taught me to be resourceful (think Macgyver), so I roam the corridors for a couple more minutes in the hope of netting a few Agile enthusiasts keen to learn a thing or two about process improvement and bottlenecks.

To my surprise, I don’t just find one, but two volunteers: Darren and Paul. Both Darren and Paul have been extremely helpful and supportive with our fledgling Agile teams to date. I’m glad the promise of an Agile game and Halloween chocolates prove more enticing than a visit to the gym. It’s also a sign that I’m working with a learning organisation.

Favour Brain over Brawn

The Bottleneck Game (also known as ‘I’m Not a Bottleneck, I’m a Free Man!’ teaches us about the Theory of Constraints (TOC). According to the Theory of Constraints, every organisation has at least one constraint which limits the system’s performance in terms of its goal. The theory states that we can improve a system’s throughput learning how to recognise and deal with a system’s constraint (also known as a bottleneck).

The 5 Focusing Steps

Step 0: Make the goal of the system explicit.
Step 1: Find the constraint.
Step 2: Exploit the constraint.
Step 3: Subordinate everything to the constraint.
Step 4: Elevate the constraint.
Step 5: Rinse and repeat.

Lessons We Learnt Today

• If you’re rushing, you’re probably stressed – slow down instead and you’ll improve your quality as well as increase your throughput
• Apply improvement changes one at a time
• Always measure the throughput before and after applying improvements to verify their effects on the system
• Cross-training helps improve the throughput of a team
• Small, incremental changes can make a big difference to throughput.

Process Improvement is the New Sliced Bread

Don’t let inertia become the constraint. Help your team and your organisation become more agile by striving to be a bit better than you were yesterday every day. Thanks to Alison, Suresh, Bhavna, Paul, Mark, Darren, Jo and Genevieve for being such professionals as employees of The Boats and Hats Company!

The Theory of Constraints is clearly a hot topic as Pascal’s also run the game with one of his clients over in Paris. You can read a more comprehensive account of the Bottleneck Game as played by our French Agilista counterparts here.

Learn About Bottlenecks with Your Friends and Family

Origami isn’t just for work, it’s for learning, too! The “I’m not a Bottleneck! I’m a Free Man!” game by Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and Portia Tung is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Belgium License.

Today’s a special day for my team: we’ve got one more day before our Iteration 1 Show & Tell and, of course, it’s Diwali, the Hindu festival of light. During the second part of our standup this morning (what we call ‘Information Broadcast’ where we share useful information among the team outside of the 3 usual three questions answered in a standup), I’m told that everyone will be praying to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. It’s natural to want a share of good fortune, so I ask by way of a reminder: ‘Will anyone be praying for us to reach a burndown of 0 story points by Thursday morning?’ And everyone laughs.

This is Day 18 with my team and I’ve learned many things from them including some Agile lingo in Hindi:

• Grahak means Customer
• Sahayog means Collaboration
• S’mmaan means Respect

How did I come across such useful learnings? It’s thanks to one of the first team exercises we did: translating the team’s values as well as the Agile Values into Hindi. Seeing the team tackle that translation exercise is one of the most memorable events I’ll be taking with me when the time comes to move on to my next Agile team. I hope the translation exercise will somehow help Agile endure.

‘Exoftware has been ranked 6th in the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Ireland. Rankings are based on average percentage revenue growth over five years. Exoftware grew over 1300% percent during this period.’

– Deloitte Ireland

One of the hardest things about becoming agile, both for the organisation and for the individual, is that Agile challenges parts of your brain other project delivery methodologies don’t reach.

Continuous Improvement is a tough job, but someone’s got to do it

I’ve gained an incredible amount of insight and experience by working at Exoftware as an Agile Coach since January. One of the things I love most about my job is the fact that I’ll always be learning. After all, continuous learning is the only chance we have of improving ourselves.

What Makes Exoftware Special

I’ve worked for a number of organisations, both large and small over the past decade, and Exoftware’s different for 5 key reasons:

1. Exoftware walks the talk: We strive to apply the Agile Values of Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage and Respect, with our customers and among ourselves.
2. Exoftware acts with integrity: We tell it like it is even if the message isn’t easy to deliver or receive.
3. Exoftware’s a learning organisation: We understand that success is defined by continuous improvement. The best learning comes from making mistakes, so we fail early as well as pool the experiences of our coaches.
4. Exoftware creates an environment where we can be courageous: Everyone who works for Exoftware is part of the same team. Our clients are an extension of that team. We’re stronger because we work together.
5. Exoftware really cares: We continuously improve because we care about what we do. That’s because we’re in the People business.

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?

Fear of the Unknown

One interesting similarity between being a coach on an Agile Enablement gig and presenting at a conference is this: dealing with an audience who secretly fears the Unknown.

In my experience, there are 3 main groups:

a) Those who ask for help
b) Some too afraid to ask for help
c) Others who think they know it all

Which group do you most identify with? For most people, in an ideal world, change would happen with minimal pain and even less hard work. In fact, many people don’t feel they need to change: ‘Help? Why would I need help? Of course I support Continuous Improvement! Change is for other people though. I don’t need to change.’

These folks make-believe that others need to change, but not them. These folks are usually the ones most resistant to change and this resistance manifests itself, at best, as self-deprecating humour or cynicism and, at worst, as silent sabotage.

The major casualties of such silent sabotages are the individuals themselves. I know this because whenever I resist change I miss out on learning new things and re-learning lessons I’ve forgotten. I end up losing out. I become the largest impediment I have to deal with. But I have a choice. I have the power to remove this seemingly insurmountable impediment by confronting it face-to-face.

Should I stay or should I go?

Occasionally a coachee asks me outright if they’re cut out for Agile projects. They’ve usually taken a bold leap of faith by daring to try to do something different while their colleagues and mates at work look on in wonderment / disbelief / morbid fascination*.

It’s a tough question to answer. As a coach, I’ve learnt the importance of providing feedback that helps people improve instead of criticising or passing judgment. After all, who am I to cast the first stone if I’m not prepared to offer suggestions when asked to help others change for the better? I’ve also learnt that anything that doesn’t increase value leads to more waste. A waste of breath, a waste of time, a waste of human life.

What is potential?

Agile has taught me that everyone has value. Before Agile, I remained sceptical of such a notion. Before Agile, the notion that everyone has value was merely a hollow incantation that, as a manager, I recited and barely believed.

As an Agile Coach I’ve learnt to spot potential. First I had to define potential. Potential for me means a willingness to learn which really means a willingness to change. Most important of all, potential is the willingness to change oneself instead of expecting others to change. After all, we can only change ourselves and lead by example.

Survival of the Fittest

I often hear folks say, ‘This organisation will never be agile’ or ‘Agile only works on certain types of projects – it won’t work on mine’. The reality is this: processes don’t fail, people do. If a process doesn’t work, people can change it. Believing change for the better is impossible is like clinging onto the belief that the world is flat. For as long as a team or organisation can improve, Agile can help you deliver value. So the question we all have to ask ourselves is: what’s my time worth to me? Don’t let it be a waste of breath, a waste of time, a waste of human life.

* Delete as appropriate

The most striking thing about Toronto is its people. It’s a place where diversity is reflected in every face in the crowd, from groups of friends to couples and families. Walking along Queen St on a Saturday afternoon gives me hope. Here is a community that realises the sociological, cultural and cognitive evolution that Gene Rodenberry envisioned.

The Bizarre and the Marketplace

With over 1500 attendees, Agile 2008 is the largest collective of Agilistas I’ve ever seen under one roof. In typical Torontonian fashion, its diversity is represented by more than 400 sessions across 19 tracks in just 4 days. The variety of sessions makes for interesting reading, but I find myself constantly wondering what I’m missing out on. Sometimes too many options is a bad thing when their cost outweigh their value.

Group Smarts

The key attraction for me was James Surowiecki author of The Wisdom of Crowds. James asserts that ‘groups of people can be remarkably intelligent’. He believes that crowd intelligence improves the closer they are to the ground.

According to James, hierarchies are a problem because they create incentives for people to conceal information, to do what their bosses want, to game the system. The result: a flawed information system.

Dream Team

James reiterates that the secret to teamwork is collaboration. First we assemble a team of appropriate people, then we create the right conditions.

Quality collective work requires three ingredients:

• Aggregation – so that deliverables reflect group judgment to smooth the fluctuations in information quality
• Diversity – cognitive diversity is what makes a group smarter – sociological diversity isn’t enough
• Individuality – because people facing the same direction don’t realise when they make the same mistakes

I dare you defy mediocrity. Trust in the group smarts of your team.

I’m in Toronto for Agile 2008 with Pascal Van Cauwenberghe to present two sessions: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Why Me? and Les Neuf Cases (known as ‘The Nine Boxes‘). Being away from home is great because it gives me time and distance to reflect on my Agile Enablement gigs both past and present.

Nothing is Impossible

Imagine. You’re a new recruit for the first Agile team in your global organisation. It’s Day 6 of your first ever iteration. The team has been working late for the past couple of evenings. The team believes things can change. The team’s doing their best to deliver.

Team in Action

(The open plan office is empty but for the one team still busy at work.)

Coach: A core Agile principle is sustainable pace.
Team: (Silence)
Coach: Deathmarching isn’t agile.
Developer: (Silence. Then) Everyone outside the team is watching. (Long pause) They want us to fail.
Team: (Stoic silence)

One Ring to Rule Them All

The next day, I speak to the project manager on the team and raise the issue of the pressure the team feels they’re under. ‘There are others in the organisation who want us to fail,’ I say. He remains silent but for a moment then replies with a bold smile, ‘That’s because they’re afraid of what will happen when we succeed.’ We both knew then that success was by no means certain. What we were certain of, however, was that the team would try their hardest to make it a success.

That was a defining moment for everyone on the team. Their stoicism was something so much stronger than an individual’s desire to prove others wrong. This was camaraderie in action, each member united with one another by the weightiest of burdens they were helping to carry. Hope. The hope that things can change for the better.

Hate Something, Change Something, Make Something Better

Over the next few days after my conversation with the team on that fateful summer evening, the team started leaving work on time. They understood that working late was merely hiding problems due to the way teams have always worked in their organisation. They knew that becoming agile meant maintaining a sustainable pace and addressing difficult problems head on instead of working longer hours.

Never Say Never

Fast foward to the end of the three-iteration-long release. The technical lead who reviewed the code delivered described the quality as ‘some of the highest quality code’ he’d ever seen. After four weeks in end-to-end testing, only one defect was found.

It’s a humbling experience to work alongside folks determined to learn and change in spite of being surrounded by a sea of cynicism and resistance. That’s what makes my heart sing as an Agile coach. Do something that makes your heart sing. Today.