I never wanted to be a consultant. That’s because the recurring pattern I saw among the consultants with whom I’d worked was this: consultants increase waste and reduce value. More often than not, they had less skill than the permanent employees they were brought in to help and, worst of all, they had little or no experience in what they were supposed to be experts at.

The result: client organisations would pay for the privilege of training the consultants while underestimating the competencies of their own people. We all know how the story ends. A legacy of more waste and less value, all at the expense of the client organisation.

Time passes and I learn two key things. One, that many of the consultants I’d met weren’t representative of good consultants. It wasn’t that consultancy was a bad profession, but rather that there were many who were doing it wrong. Two, most of us are consultants at work in that we provide options without being decision makers ourselves.

A Tale of the Unexpected

Once upon a time, I worked with an organisation that provided a bus service between the work campus and the local train station. Fortunately, as a consultant, I didn’t have to rely on the bus service to get to my meetings on time, but I couldn’t help but notice that something wasn’t quite right. Judging from the regular, long queues of fifty plus people stood at the bus stop during wind and rain, I could see the waste mounting up: a waste of people’s time, a reduction in their goodwill and a serious impact on the quality of life for those sentenced to such a terrible, and unnecessary, commute.

At first, I would jump into a taxi and offer a lift to those I recognised in the queue, picking up as many people as would fit into a regular 5-seater. Then I would wait at the taxi rank until I got the people carrier in order to transport more people in one go, all for the same price of a single taxi journey. After that, I practiced Genchi Genbutsu and gave up using taxis all together.

I started documenting my user experience as a bus passenger, recording details such as my waiting time, the number of of people in the queue, the rate at which the queue grew and gathering comments from other bus users and even the bus drivers. Everyone I asked told me they’d given feedback to their respective managers on the poor level of service but nothing had been done.

I continued to collect the data over a couple of weeks until one day, I’m invited out for dinner. ‘Would you like to come out for dinner with our client?’ my boss asks. ‘Will senior managers be there?’ I say.

After a brief conversation about value and quality over dessert, two of the senior managers helped reduce the average passenger waiting time to ten minutes as well as extend the bus service so that folks no longer had to pay for a taxi home if they had to work late.

Be Your Own Consultant

In my experience, a good consultant has a large toolset that’s also wide in range. They should be the kind of generalist-specialists that Agile teams strive to create. Most of important of all, a good consultant understands and enjoys working with people.

To learn more about improving your personal and professional effectiveness, I recommend reading:

• The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg
• More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant’s Toolkit also by Gerald Weinberg
• Flawless Consulting by Peter Block
• Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self Interest also by Peter Block

As a consultant, I’ve learnt to be creative when it comes to delivering value because it’s not always obvious and you almost always have to first overcome considerable challenges. And the reward? Knowing that you didn’t get paid just to stand by and do nothing to help people in need.

What I liked about the conference

• Recognising familiar faces from last year’s conference and getting to know the people behind the faces
• Seeing new faces and getting to know those folks, too!
• Pitching Agile by David Harvey and Peter Marks – David and Peter made us think hard about what the Agile way of working brings in comparison with other approaches and how to scale the Agile Enablement in large, distributed organisations
• Pairing: Beyond Programming by John Daniels and Dave Cleal – the session was an excellent mix of facilitation and different types of individual, pair and group activities to encourage us to develop a deeper understanding of why pairing is valuable
• Catching up with Agilistas from XPDays Benelux and XPDay France
• Running a followup workshop to The Business Value Game with Pascal and Vera where we learn to apply the game’s principles and techniques
• Running the conference as a non-residential conference
• Learning and improving: the conference has improved significantly as a result of last year’s feedback
• SPA provides a friendly place where folks can be courageous and try things out

What would make SPA perfect*

• Practice the Agile principle of ‘signing up for work’: Invite session presenters and shepherds to match themselves up to improve sessions together
• Include details of the session format in the programme session description
• Give presenters the option to present a 15-minute (abridged) version of their session prior to the conference to practice and receive feedback
• Re-introduce Official One Minute Presentations (OOMPs) at the start of each day to help participants decide which session to go to
• Non-residential and residential conferences provide different experiences – perhaps we could alternate between the two one year from the next?
• Have a mix of shorter and longer scheduled sessions to increase the diversity of topics, perspectives, presenters and participants

My conference takeaway

Agile is about delivering the highest business value possible faster by focusing on people and Continuous Improvement. To change the organisations we work in (or with) for the better, the most important question to answer is this: ‘What’s the smallest action we can take as an individual to become more agile today?’

* The format of this retrospective is known as The Perfection Game. It’s a great way of sharing feedback, bearing in mind that ‘Perfect is something we aspire to, it’s elusive by design‘.

What Went Well

• The organisers were really warm and welcoming
• The organisers set a good example as an Agile team – working to help one another
• The participants were enthusiastic
• The candid conversations about the Agile Values and our personal agility
• The range of session subject matter
• 60 out of 96 participants attended Pascal‘s and my session: Les cinq premiers pas pour devenir vraiment agile
• We had lots of fun together
• We all had a good laugh
• Vincent Raemy made a great conference chair
• The dinner in the dungeons at Les Armures where we dined on fondue like real hedonists
• We even played the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves card game with adventurous participants

What Went Wrong

• We didn’t expect to have 60 participants in our session – the session was designed for between 20 – 30 people
• There wasn’t enough room to network comfortably during lunch
• One day is too short for such a great conference!
• There weren’t enough interactive sessions
• We didn’t do a dry-run of our session with volunteer participants

Puzzles

• Where will next year’s XP Day Switzerland be held?

Lessons Learnt

• Set a maximum limit to our sessions
• Our personal agility is better judged by others than by ourselves because it’s usually difficult to evaluate ourselves objectively
• The Agile Values are just as important for beginner-Agilistas as they are for expert-Agilistas
• We become agile by always living the Agile Values
• Hedonism means finding what you love to do and doing it such as egalitarianism, community and friendship
• Being agile means knowing we don’t know it all
• Suisse fondue is made with three cheeses (Gruyère, Vacherin and ?). Now I have an excuse to return to Switzerland to find the answer!

This entry is also available in French!

Qu’est-ce qui était bon?

• Les organisateurs étaient très accueillants
• Les organisateurs faisaient un bon exemple d’une équipe agile – cela veut dire qu’on s’entre-aide l’un et l’autre
• Les participants étaient enthousiastes
• Les conversations ouvertes autour les valeurs agiles et notre agilité individuelle
• La diversité des sujets des sessions
• 60 sur 96 participants ont suivi la session Pascal et moi ont crée: Les cinq premiers pas pour devenir vraiment agile
• On s’est bien amusé ensemble
• On a bien ri
• Le rôle du facilitateur principal joué par Vincent Raemy
• Le dîner aux oubliettes au restaurant Les Armures où on mangeait la fondue comme les hédonistes
• On a même joué le jeu de Blanche Neige et Les Sept Nains avec quelques participants ludiques

Qu’est-ce qui était mauvais?

• Il n’était pas prévu qu’on serait aussi nombreux dans notre session – on n’attendait qu’entre 20 à 30 personnes
• Il n’y avait pas assez de place pour la circulation pendant le déjeuner
• Le congrès ne durait qu’un jour!
• Il n’y avait pas assez de sessions intéractives
• On n’a pas fait une répétition en avance avec les volontaires

Les questions grandes et petites

• Où se tiendra XP Day Suisse l’année prochaine?

Ce que j’ai (re-)appris

• On décide à la limite de participants dans nos sessions en avance
• Notre agilité personelle est jugée par les autres parce que normalement nous ne sommes pas assez bon juge de nous-mêmes
• Les valeurs agiles sont aussi importantes pour les débutant-agilistes que les agilistes expérimentés
• On devient agile en vivant les valeurs tout le temps
• Dans l’hédonisme il s’agit de trouver et de faire plus ce qui nous fait du bien, comme l’égalitarisme, la communauté, l’amitié
• L’agilité cela veut dire qu’on sait qu’on ne sait pas tout
• On fait la fondue avec trois fromages en Suisse (le Gruyère, le Vacherin et ?). Maintenant je suis obligée de retourner en Suisse pour trouver la réponse!

Voir ici pour ce billet en anglais!

‘Tis the Season to be Jolly

One of the best ways to learn is from people, irrespective of their age, level of proficiency, interests and habits. What better way to do that than to attend conferences?

I’m really excited about my visit to Geneva next week for 5 reasons:

• It’s the first ever XP Day Switzerland!
• It’s my first time to visit Switzerland!
• Pascal and I are co-presenting our first session together in 2009 (and it’s always a guaranteed and healthy balance of hardwork, nervousness, fun and lots of laughter)!
• We are presenting a brand new session titled ‘Les Cinq premiers pas pour devenir vraiment agile‘ (‘The First Five Steps towards Becoming Really Agile’) where we’ll be sharing the 5 most useful and effective tools we use as Agile Coaches!
• We’ll be presenting in French!

Does it get better than this? Well, yes it does. The reason we continue to present at Agile conferences is because it allows us to better understand what being agile really means, to others and for ourselves. And why is being agile important? Because it enables us to better respond to change and deliver more value.

Survival of the Fittest

To many the recession is turning into the ultimate nightmare, especially for those who know they don’t know but don’t care enough to improve. To others, the recession is a gift. A chance to challenge our personal and professional beliefs and effectiveness based on how well we weather the storm. It’s true you don’t know what you don’t know, but that’s okay so long as you continue to learn and change for the better.

Fact: Time is our most valuable asset. Everyone has time. How will you choose to squander or invest yours?

K.: Don’t you find the Agile Values patronising?
P.: Why do you ask?
K.: It’s basic stuff. Like things we learnt back in kindergarten.
P.: Do you always follow the Agile Values?
K.: At work. Mostly. I guess I don’t always succeed.

Growing up to be better

The thing I enjoy most about Agile is that it’s an approach founded on People, Continuous Improvement, and Common Sense.

Cast your mind back to your teenage years. Think about your teenage children. Look at those around you at work. Can you spot those who continue to do things exactly the same way they’ve always done it for the past twenty, thirty, forty years? Can you catch yourself doing this?

Growing pains are never pleasant or easy to endure. Especially when you’re an adult who believes you already know it all. Worse still, an adult who knows best and think everyone else desperately needs to change, but not you.

Find the fish in the sea

According to Marshall Goldsmith, the simplest step towards Continuous Improvement is to find one of your trickier customers. This may be a particularly demanding client or a disgruntled spouse or offspring. Ask them this question: ‘How can I be a better [supplier/partner/parent]*?’ Next, identify together an action you’re prepared to take to improve. Be sure that the acceptance criteria has been clearly defined so that both parties will recognise when the improvement has been accomplished (aka Done). Then, set to work and make it happen. Ask again for feedback to verify for positive change. Finally, rinse and repeat.

Just as there’s always plenty of work out there for folks who deliver value, there’s always plenty of room for improvement. For each and everyone of us. You included.

* Delete as appropriate

As a followup to an introduction on Real Options Thinking, a group of us gathered once again last Thursday to consider ways in which we could apply Real Options in our projects.

Let me tell you a story

As usual, we kick off with an ice breaker to get everyone moving. Each participant pairs with the person they know best and comes up individually with Six Words to describe one another (as opposed to themselves like we did in the first session). Participants then circulate in pairs to exchange the story they’d written. This ice breaker seems to generate even more laughter and joviality than the first time we played it together.

The Power of Collective Memory

Next we get together by project team and spend 10 minutes recapping on Real Options theory. Each team then presents what they’d remembered about Real Options to the rest of the group. As many discover, this is an effective way of reinforcing the learning from the previous week. You can download the handout here.

Applying Real Options to our projects

We begin the second half of the session by brainstorming current examples of Real Options in our projects to generate scenarios where Real Options could be applied.

Then we select one particular scenario and work through the 7-step Optimal Decision Process. Last, but not least, each team presents their scenario back to the group to demonstrate how they could apply Real Options on their project. One team comes up so many more options they’re keen to hurry back to their project to try them out.

Facing Uncertainty

As a final bit of fun, participants are asked to create a Human Uncertainty Spectrum, with participants sorting themselves from those who are supremely comfortable with Uncertainty on one end to those least comfortable with Uncertainty on the other. This exercise generates the most discussion and laughter of all. Who would think confronting ourselves about how we really feel about Uncertainty in public could be so much fun?

Many thanks to all of you for reading. We’ve made some improvements to enhance this blog’s usability:

• Full blog entries are now displayed on all pages (instead of summaries) 
• Previous and Next links have been added to the bottom of every page for easier navigation
• The Archive month-by-month listing is now displayed in the lefthand nav of every page to make it easier to browse entries by month

Many thanks to Sarah Price for playing The Perfection Game as a way of providing feedback on this blog and a super special thanks to Pascal Van Cauwenberghe for making the changes happen in PHP!

Happy reading!

Last Friday, we celebrated the forthcoming weekend with a session on Real Options, a simple, yet powerful decision making tool. What better time to learn how to deal with uncertainty than in highly volatile times such as these?

What’s your story?

We kickoff the session with an unusual ice breaker called Six Words. Each participant is given a small white card on which they write six words that sum up their lives or who they are. Each group of six words tells a short story, an idea originating from the writer Hemingway.

Participants then circulate to exchange their story with as many people as possible within 3 minutes. Judging from the outbreaks of glee mingled with quiet surprise and lots of questioning, everyone seems to be having fun. This is important because it correlates with my current team’s top team value of ‘Fun’.

Knowing when to decide what

Next we learn about the simple, yet powerful tool of Real Options. You can download the session handout here.

Real Options means you don’t have to decide now. Instead, you need to know WHEN you have to decide. You want to keep as many options open for as long as possible and actively gather information unti the moment you have to decide. Last, but not least, you commit only when you must or when you have good reason to.

A Real Option:

• Has a value – if not, why would we consider it?
• Has an expiry condition – a deadline or condition by which we have to choose
• Has a cost: Buying cost + Exercising cost – the Buying cost gives us the right (not the obligation to implement a decision in the future for a known cost); the Exercising cost is the agreed price to implement the decision

Real Options help us deal with two of the most daunting features of any project: Uncertainty and Risk. Real Options creates opportunities out of Uncertainty by encouraging us to postpone our decision making so that we have more time to gather information. This, in turn, helps us make better informed decisions. Real Options mitigates Risk by explicitly encouraging us to wait and see what happens before we decide.

The Optimal Decision Process

The Optimal Decision Process helps us structure our thinking in 7 steps (especially when we’re under pressure):

1. Identify your options
2. Calculate the first decision point: Decision Point = Deadline – Implementation Time
3. Decide which option to take under which circumstances
4. Seek out information and more Real Options
5. Reduce Implementation Time to push back Decision Point
6. Wait… wait… Until the first decision point
7. Make the decision with confidence

Real Options in everday life

Then, in groups of 4, We practice by identifying Real Options in everyday life, followed by working through one example in detail and mapping it to the Optimal Decision Process.

‘Agile makes my life more simple’

In response to the participants’ feedback, we’ll be meeting up later on this week to consider ways in which we can apply Real Options Thinking on our projects and to ourselves to improve our effectiveness as individuals. One thing’s for certain, it’s going to be F-U-N.

‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ literally means ‘Wishing you health, wealth and prosperity’, so here’s wishing you Happy Chinese New Year!

One of the things I’ve always liked about Chinese New Year (and New Year celebrations from different cultures) is that it’s another chance to review and refine what Jim Collins‘ refers to as an organisation’s Hedgehog Concept. Since organisations are made up of individuals, following the principle of self-similarity, we can also apply this thinking to ourselves when it comes to defining personal success.

The Three Circles

In his book ‘From Good to Great’, Jim describes what the most successful companies in the world do as working within the boundaries of The Three Circles.

Circle 1 – Understand what you can be best at
Find out what you’re good at and, equally important, find out what you’re bad at. From this, you’ll be able to come up with two lists: a ToDo list and a STOP DOING List. According to Jim, you know you’re good at something when you think to yourself, ‘I feel I was born to do this!’

Circle 2 – Understand what drives your economic engine
Consider the economic returns on the time and effort you invest in the things you do. You know you’ve attained a deep insight and understanding into what drives your economic reality when you can identify what Jim calls your ‘single economic factor’, the single thing that increases what brings most value to you. You know your economic engine is running well when you find yourself thinking, ‘I get paid to do this?!?’

Circle 3 – Understand what you’re most passionate about
Passion cannot be manufactured. Passion is doing what makes your heart sing. Do you apply what you do at work outside of work because it’s so valuable, useful and fun to you? You know you’re passionate about something when you think to yourself, ‘I really believe in what I’m doing.’

The Hedgehog Concept

Jim describes the Hedgehog Concept as a ‘simple, crystalline idea’ based on a deep understanding of the Three Circles. Two of the hardest things to do is 1) to come up with a simple Hedgehog Concept and 2) to keep it simple. Jim also emphasises that you can only come up with a Hedgehog Concept through an iterative thought process.

Identifying your Hedgehog concept can help you gain a deeper understanding of what you want to achieve and why. How will you attain health, wealth and prosperity in 2009?