London, 6 April 2008, 13.20. Everything is covered in snow. On my way home last night, I ask the taxi driver, ‘Do you believe it’s going to snow tomorrow?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. It’s happened once before, so it can certainly happen again,’ he replies.

I can tell Richard is a no-nonsense kind of guy. He doesn’t seem the least bit worried about the uncertainty of the weather. He goes on to tell me he’s already evaluated all his options come rain, snow or shine. He’s a man unfazed by uncertainty.

And so I find myself faced with more questions than when I first started my journey home:

1. Dealing with uncertainty is something we Brits excel at. If we’re used to the unpredictability of the British weather and have learned to cope with it, why can’t we do the same with the uncertainty of projects instead of pretending that plans can be done upfront or that things shouldn’t change? That way, we’ll be leveraging all the knowledge, experience and wisdom we have when it comes to coping with changeable weather. It’s what we Brits have had to live with all our lives. We’re lucky that we get so much practice. Learn more about Real Options here.
2. It’s happened once before, so it can certainly happen again. It only takes something to happen once for things to change forever. It makes the impossible suddenly possible and, more importantly, acceptable. What’s the one thing you can try doing this week to change the way you work for the better?

Dear Reader, I’m pleased to announce that the case of the troublesome staircase has finally been resolved. The staircase was re-opened sometime between late January and February, albeit wrapped up in black-and-yellow sticky tape. Susie from London Transport never got back to me, but at least travellers could resume their new year’s resolution of getting healthy by using the staircase once again.

If the staircase were a software application, then the sticky tape would be a testament to a poor design and even worse engineering as somebody somewhere probably decided that Test-Driven Development would be a) too much hardwork; b) not worth the while; c) TDD, what’s that then? or d) all of the above.
I felt relieved then disappointed when I first saw the staircase covered in snaky yellow-and-black sticky tape. I figured back then that that was as good as it was going to get. That the tape was there to stay.

The tape was going to be testament to rubbishy British design and engineering everytime I used the staircase. ‘At least you can use the stairs now!’ I hear the optimists among you valiantly volunteer. And you would have been right.

So you can imagine my surprise today when I discovered the black-and-yellow tape had been replaced by a ‘proper’ solution: the tape has been replaced with metal casings that run along the length of the rail of the entire staircase. Well, almost.

It seems the team responsible for implementing the proper solution struggled with the use of their measuring tape which means that there’s still around 10 centimentres of the railing covered in black-and-yellow sticky tape in one corner. I wonder what else that team is responsible for putting right. And what about the architects and implementers of the staircase design – what do they do now? Do they know about their design failure? Is this really a happy ending?

Why Agile?

Being an Agile consultant-coach means I’m constantly challenged by what I do, how I do it and, most importantly, why I do it. It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn about myself and others by striving to be agile. Fortunately, that’s one of the things that gives most meaning to the work I do.

Agile Everything

I recently presented at SPA and shocked the audience when I alluded to my experience of having been on an Agile death march project.

‘Surely that’s not possible?’ replied the first gasp from the audience.

‘Isn’t that blasphemy?’ resonated a second gasp around the room.

‘I’m intrigued by your negative Agile experience,’ said an Agile coach with a gleeful smile, pen poised, ready to mark me down on my Agile competency.

Why wouldn’t Agile death marches exist? After all, Agile is just another methodology. It’s simply another way of getting people to work together. You can’t immunise your project from failure just because you say you’re doing Agile. Now that would really be make believe. I call it play pretend.

Growing Old Gracefully

Q: What could possibly be tougher than growing old?
A: Trying to be agile when everyone else believes they are but aren’t.

Earlier this month, I spent a lovely Spring evening with a bunch of young Agile enthusiasts at QCon London and was asked, ‘What would be your top 3 life tips?’ I surprised myself with the following response.

1. Be true to your passion. Do what you love. I didn’t believe this was possible or sustainable when I was younger. I now know it is. Depending on your point-of-view, to do otherwise would either be a pity or a waste.
2. Being better than the rest is easy when everyone else is striving for mediocrity. If you want to stand out from your peers, you only need to be mediocre++. Is that all you really want to achieve?
3. Use your gut instinct to help make informed decisions. Having only ever had a career in IT, over the years I had learnt to value my logical brain over my creativity side. Experience has taught me that tapping into my creativity creates opportunities I never thought possible.

One life. Live it well.

The only real currency we have is time. Invest wisely.

With Spring almost in the air, Agilistas around Europe are getting ready to attend the annual SPA 2008* residential conference from March 16 – 19 in Bedfordshire, UK.

In the Land of Agile Fairytales

Are you baffled yet fascinated by the behaviour of those around you? Have you ever wondered why they do what they do? If you answered ‘Yes’ to at least one of the questions above, then come join Chris Cooper-Bland and me at SPA on a mini-adventure of self-discovery with help from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

This is your chance to learn more about yourself to give you a better chance of understanding others. Think Kaizen Meets Agile Fairytales.

This is the second themed session in the Agile Fairytale series, beginning with a game of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Game to help you identify the characters who interest, trouble, confound and/or confuse you most at work.

Once you’ve developed new or more in-depth insights into your own character, you will be able to choose from one of four techniques to help improve your personal effectiveness. See here for more details on the session.

I’ll also be helping out with Chris Matts’s session on Real Options. He reckons learning about Real Options will change the way you make decisions forever. Come along to see if he’s right or wrong.

After the mailman arrived yesterday morning, I found myself struggling to open my front door. Some of you probably had the same problem.

In my case, I couldn’t open my front door not because there was a gargantuan pile of love post but because I wasn’t at home. I was on an important mission. I was in Brussels meeting a completely new bunch of Agilistas to do work. Serious work.

Mission Impossible

Our goal was to be sure we delivered to our customers what they wanted. We already had a huge backlog of requirements. We had lots to do but no way of evaluating effectively the value of the requirements to our different customers with potentially conflicting priorities.

Each of us in the group had at least three roles. We were:

• A member of the delivery team
• A type of customer
• An individual who wanted to work with and learn from other Agilistas.

The Crew

The individuals present were a great bunch. They were my favourite kind of Agilistas – demonstrably open, friendly, inclusive and enthusiastic. Most important of all, they were Active Doers not Snoozers.

Together, we turned Mission Impossible to Mission Possible. Yes, there was going to be a lot of work ahead of us, but deep down we also knew it would be a great source of fun. Satisfaction was guaranteed so long as we ensured what we did M-A-T-T-E-R-E-D. To our customers and, by association, to us.

What We Did Next

We began by establishing a common understanding, the foundation to any effective, well-functioning group: our values.

1. We began by identifying and prioritising the values of the group using a brainstorming-clustering exercise.
2. Next we identified our customers and grouped them by type.
3. Then, voting using finger poker, we rated the importance of each of our group’s values from each customer’s perspective.
4. Then we reflected and evaluated what the numbers told us. In my experience, this is the most insightful step in the process. On this occasion, everyone learnt something new about the correlation between our values and our customers. This step is usually a useful indicator of the value and quality of data we get from the exercise.
5. Finally we re-prioritised our group’s values in the order of priority to our customers. This is because we all believed customer-value is what matters most.

The Magic Behind the Wisdom of Crowds

Thanks to the Wisdom of Crowds theory, we were able to derive and distil the values that reflected the essence of eleven independent, thinking individuals, each with different perspectives and motivations.

In the time it takes to make a roast dinner, the eleven of us established a common understanding with a common currency: four key values to guide us in what we do based on what’s most important to our customers and what’s most important to us. Of course this is only one way of deriving a value currency. What you end up with that determines whether or not you and your team are doing work that really M-A-T-T-E-R-S.

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

– Louise Bourgeois

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

The Power of 3

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s your chance to define a new beginning…

It seems the topic of the London Underground has struck a chord with many readers. Unfortunately, it’s not so much a symphony as irritation caused by chafing after a day out on the beach.

And so I decided to contact London Transport regarding the mystery of the closed staircase.

Here is their response sent on 23 December 2007:

‘I’m sorry for any problems this may have caused you. I’ve spoken to the Duty Station Manager responsible for North Greenwich and he has explained the following to me. The staircase was closed on health and safety grounds due to a customer incident. The management team along with our contractors, Tube Lines, are currently investigating and hope their proposed plans will mean the staircase can be used once more.’

The seemingly helpful Customer Service Advisor, let’s call her Susie, closes with:

‘I hope you find the above information helpful and once again please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.’

It’s possible that her apology is genuine, heartfelt even, but I just don’t feel the love. I don’t sense she really cares. If I were Susie, I would have:

1. Provided an estimated date on which the issue will be resolved (and if I didn’t know, I would find out since I should know);
2. Let the customer know that I’ll keep them updated with the progress of the handling of the issue;
3. Find out the full impact the closed staircase was having on the customer since the information may influence the speed at which the issue needs to be resolved.

But Susie didn’t do any of that. Most people would have given up after the first email. I suspect Susie was hoping I was one of those kind of people. I mailed her back requesting more information:

‘Many thanks for your reply. As the staircase has been closed for at least 3 months, are you able to provide an estimate on when it will be re-opened? We use the station daily and have not seen any signs of inspection going on.’

Credit to Susie, she responds back:

‘Presently we can’t estimate an accurate timescale however, as soon we have a definitive date I will duly let you know.’

Dear Reader, rest assured I, too, will duly let you know. The good news is that we have a lead. Tube Lines. They seem to be the impediment du jour. That’s consistent with the information from the station manager.

Meanwhile, should you have any concerns regarding London Transport, don’t hold back. I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear from you. Let them know what you think. You can reach them at: Customer.Services@tube.tfl.gov.uk.

Hate something, change something, make something better. It’s unlikely you’ll make it worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It began with MBWA…

I first came across the acronym MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around a concept revived by Tom Peters) during the DOTCOM boom. I’d just started working as a Java developer. Managing By Walking Around is about wandering the ‘shop’ floor and observing how your workers do their job. It’s about getting and staying in touch with the people doing ‘work-that-matters‘* (also from Tom Peters). It’s about learning about impediments so that, as a manager, you can help remove them. It all makes sense.

As far as I can tell, it’s equivalent to Toyota’s Genchi Genbutsu (Go and see for yourself). Unfortunately, the particular implementation of MBWA I was exposed to seemed more like a constitutional, post-lunch walkabout by a manager who didn’t care much about talking to all the people, let alone hear about our progress or concerns.

I suppose that experience made me begin to doubt management. That and the fact that pay increases seemed to be negotiated down the pub instead of being based on performance during work hours.

Call me old-fashioned – it’s simply not right.

Then one day, the time came for me to transition from developer to management. I’d read a lot about Agile and recognised the importance of delivering business value. Like all managers, I was faced with two thorny problems: 1) business value was difficult to quantify, so the movers and shakers sent out an edict of: ‘Do as I say’ using MosCoW rules; 2) developers weren’t enamoured with poorly defined requirements – it’s hard to derive satisfaction from delivering a never-ending ‘something’.

Still, I beat the ‘Deliver-Maximum-Business-Value’ drum, because that’s what leaders do, right?

Business Value = Job + Salary -> Survival + Nice Holidays. For the department. For the developers. And for me.

The Next Killer App: MBPPF!

Delivering business value alone is not enough. Not for me. Doing work-that-matters on its own isn’t enough either. Success means making the most of your options. Maximise your people’s potential and watch your options grow.**

What motivates me most is what I call MBPPF*** (Managing By Putting People First). The MBPPF model is simple, but not easy. It looks familiar because all of its constituent parts are taken from existing models. Good ideas are, more often than not, composites of existing ideas refreshed. If you have to have wheels, round ones work best in my experience.

What does Putting People First mean?

1. Start with a main goal – To deliver value to your customers: Identify what people want (preferably things that would enhance their lives in some way). Something for which there is a demand is easier to sell. This means you can focus 100% on differentiation and quality.
2. Do enough upfront business analysis: Brainstorm how best to fulfil this want (taking into consideration the product’s context such as time and place). Know why people need it, when they need it by, how long they need it for and what else they can use it for.
3. Build a team that cares: Put together a bunch of competent people who want to fulfil this want, as a team of creative, thinking individuals. Show you care by consulting, involving, informing and empowering your team.
4. Everyone does work-that-matters: This is a great motivation for many people. It leads to the elimination of waste and can be leveraged to put best practices in place. When you do something that matters, most people naturally want to get better at it. Now that’s a real bonus.

Sample practices of MBPPF!

• Put people-interest ahead of everything else (and watch the decision-making machine produce the optimal solution).
• Spend time with people because they matter most.
• Hire people better than yourself.
• Know when you need help then ask for it. I’m constantly amazed by what I get back in return.

The rest is based on what works best when you apply the principle of Putting People First. Try it. You might like it.

Useful Footnotes

*Work-that-matters: Have you noticed how many organisations are encouraging their staff to get involved with planting trees and painting classrooms these days.

**I like to maximise mine with Real Options.

***MBPPF: The Disclaimer: Just as any successful diet/fitness regime requires willpower, MBPPF requires people willing to get involved, people who will muck in as pigs instead of play chicken.