I like to think of work as an adventure. This makes me an intrepid adventurer who:

• Goes about with an open mind – always striving to listen without judgment to discover the facts
• Seeks to deeply understand – always listening first and asking questions
• Is ready for anything – constantly refinining my existing skills and acquiring new ones
• Strives to create a happy ending for everyone involved – helping to make WIN-WIN situations possible for everyone.

Postcard from Norway

I was invited to Haugesund in Norway last week to meet an Agile team keen to do what they do even better.

It was my first visit to Norway and, as usual, I ask many questions and get many answers. For me, this is the best way to learn about a new culture and help me develop a better understanding of those with whom I work.

For instance, on arrival, I ask my taxi driver to describe the Haugesundians in 3 words. After a brief moment of consideration, he replies, ‘Happy. Friendly.’ And last but not least, ‘We’re full of guts!’ he says as he strikes his chest with a closed fist and beams a smile. We both laugh out loud in appreciation of his answer.

I learn that the Norwegian working day is from 8 am – 4 pm with lunch at 11 am and dinner from as early at 5 pm. An earlier lunchtime demands a slight physical adjustment for me since I’m a Brit used to having lunch at midday. It leads me to wonder if the concept of ‘brunch’ exists and, if so, what its definition would be and when it would be scheduled.

While we’re on the subject of food, I experience firsthand that fish features a great deal in the Norwegian diet, including what’s best described as edible white discs made of fish. It’s known as fishcake which can be served cold or hot (lightly fried until it’s brown on both sides). They taste fairly bland, but since it’s fish, I figure out they’re probably an important part of a healthy diet.

I notice that monkfish is a popular fish and discover a curious story about how the monkfish reached the dining table of the Norwegians. The monkfish is considered to be an ugly fish by many. And so, for a long time, the fishermen would discard the monkfish from their catch because it was too ugly to eat. Then one day,  a fisherman set aside this deep-rooted prejudice and served monkfish to his family for dinner. Lo and behold – he discovered what a tasty fillet the monkfish made! Ever since then, monkfish has become a special dish featured on many restaurant menus. Now’s that food for thought.

Since I remain intrigued by the Finnish fascination with saunas, I share my encounter with the concept of the Finnish sauna with some of the team. The result? 4 out of Scandinavians polled (3 Norwegians and 1 Dane) clearly identified the passion for sauna as predominantly a Finnish pastime.

Last but not least, I come across a troll with three heads at the airport. I wish I knew why the troll had three heads and why he needed so many. I wonder if having three gives him a real headache. I look forward to asking the questions the next time I meet up with the team!

BarCamp London 2009 is undoubtedly one of the best conferences I’ve been to this year: it’s fun, it’s inclusive and, most important of all, it’s all about people. All this came as quite a surprise since I really didn’t know what to expect.

The Story of BarCamp

Once upon a time, there was FooCamp where Friends-of-O’Reilly got together at an annual invite-only participant-driven conference hosted by Tim O’Reilly. Since not everyone could be friends of Tim O’Reilly, some folks got together and created BarCamp, a place where others could participate by presenting their ideas, too.

BarCamp is described as an ‘unconference’, a conference where the programme is based entirely on material generated by the participants themselves. You really don’t get more inclusive or spontaneous than that!

Open Space Technology in Action

FooCamps and BarCamps are based on a simple variation of Open Space Technology format, where participants post up topics they want to talk about in 20-minute timeboxes. Like successful Open Spaces, the success of BarCamp depends entirely on strangers self-organising around passion and mutual interests.

There are two key rules to BarCamp:

• ‘When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.’
• ‘When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.’

Real Options at BarCamp London

And since I was lucky enough to get a ticket in, I wanted to give something back that would be useful to most. The result: a 20-min session on Real Options, Bottled Common Sense to Better Decision Making. Around 30 people attended out of a crowd of 200. I described BarCamp London 2009 as a Real Option, just as Agile 2009 was a Real Option for me. We even touched briefly on the importance of applying personal values when deciding the value and application of Real Options Thinking. Judging by the quiet yet definite sound of lighbulbs going off in the room, I think Real Options Thinking resonated with many conference participants.

What I liked about BarCamp London 2009

• Sessions were run in separate rooms where participants could concentrate comfortably on the session topic.
• Each room had a mixture of facilities such as projector, flipchart and tables.
• One Saturday alone there could have been as many as 12  x 9 sessions – now that’s a lot of Real Options!
• It was great to learn from and meet people beyond the Agile Community
• A two-day event during the weekend is a great opportunity to meet new people and make new friends

What would make BarCamp London 2009 perfect

• A stationery stash provided by organisers so we be even more creative!
• An ice breaker that would engage and involve everyone and not just those with a passion for Lego
• More BarCamps throughout the year – I wish we could have more BarCamps, perhaps mini BarCamps, may be one a quarter to increase learning from one another!

Expect the Unexpected

BarCamp London 2009 was exactly what I’ve been looking for. BarCamp has helped me better understand people’s fascination with Open Spaces, something Marc Evers tried to explain to me at ScanAgile 2009. I think I understand now and I want to go to more Open Space conferences!

BarCamp is living proof that the most invaluable learning is about connecting, sharing, courage, learning and having fun. BarCamp is about leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds. BarCamp is a great inspiration where you can expect the Unexpected. And expect to participate. Get to a BarCamp near you. Go, go, go!

And if you like BarCamp, you’ll love XP Days Benelux, a mixture of pre-scheduled sessions and the option of running Open Space sessions!

It’s my second visit to Helsinki and it’s been quite an adventure! It’s been almost a year since my first visit.

What Went Well

• The location: Getting the chance to see beautiful Helsinki in the fall
• Over 280 participants attended – and it’s only the second time ScanAgile has been run!
• The conference was well-organised, everything went really smoothly!
• Learnt a bit about Beyond Budgeting from Bjarte Bogsnes in his experience report on implementing the techniques at Statoilhydro
• Being challenged by questions that made me think hard about how I coach and why
• Meeting Agilists from all over the world, including Brits who now live in Finland!
• Getting a chance to sample Open Space sessions on Day 2 of the programme
• The Toyota Way Management Principles session with Pascal: Illustrated how to implement a kanban system using baskets with the help of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves and the Evil Queen
• Receiving feedback and recommended reading list from Tom Poppendieck (thanks Tom!) on our Toyota Way session
• The Conflict Resolution Open Space session by Pascal where we learnt that we don’t have to compromise: it’s not either or. It’s  AND!
• Post-conference get-together with the very warm and friendly folks from Reaktor (voted second in 2009 Best Workplaces in Europe competition)  at their very stylish office (with its very own onsite sauna!)

What Went Wrong

• Too many theoretical presentations
• Too few sessions based on real-life experiences of using Agile
• No list of attendees, where they work and the country of where they come from

Puzzles

• How do you get the most out of Open Spaces?
• What’s the best way to hear everyone speak and engage those interested at an Open Space?
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarves proved popular with the crowd: Would ScanAgile be interested in featuring an Agile Fairytale session next year?

Lessons (Re-)Learnt

• I learn more from interactive sessions
• I learn more when I disagree with the material being presented or the speaker because it forces me to question what I think and why I think it
• We often ask questions not to find answers, but to merely seek for affirmation of our pre-prepared answers. By asking questions with a closed mind, we limit our capacity to learn compared with when we inquire with an open mind
• ‘You don’t lose weight just by standing on the scales’ – thanks Bjarte Bogsnes for a great reminder!
• Fixing budgets once a year is like having banks that only lend to customers once a year. That simply wouldn’t be acceptable nor practical
• It’s customary in Finland to relax with your colleagues in saunas in just your birthday suit!
• Design and creativity are a matter of national pride judging by the myriad of colourful shops of handmade goods and crafts!
• Using Thinking Tools such as the Conflict Resolution Diagram allows us to have our cake and eat it! No more compromises through clear thinking. Hoorah!
• Instead of eating your own dog food, drink your own champagne instead. Cheers to ScanAgile’s organisers and the humorous participants!

I’ll be co-presenting The Toyota Way Management Principles with Pascal this Thursday in Helsinki, Finland at ScanAgile (Scandinavian Agile Conference 2009).

We’ll be sharing lots of stories based on our experiences of how we’ve applied The Toyota Way Management Principles in our work as consultants. We’ll go through each of the 14 Toyota Way Principles for implementing Lean and illustrate how we’ve applied them when working with aspiring Agile teams.

Thanks to all your feedback when we presented this at Integrating Agile back in June, we’ll be presenting a newer and much improved version. I hope you’ll join us! Learn more about the session from http://www.agilecoach.net/coach-tools/the-toyota-way/.

‘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.
   

Thank You! to Team Jenga (featuring Peter Yu, Syrous Delavari, Alex Dergousova, Boris and Kevin Mezick) for building the tallest Jenga tower at Agile 2009 by starting small!

Thank You! to Peter Yu, Syrous Delavari, Alex Dergousova and Pascal for a fun-filled day-out in Chicago – involving sensory modern art and a philosophical discussion on what it means to be an optimist and how to become one.

Thank You! to Matthew Edwards for finding the best sushi restaurant I’ve ever been to and then an act of unexpected generosity – he treated a random bunch of strangers-now-new-found-friends to dinner!

Thank You! to Matthew Edwards, Luke Amdor and Ola Ellnestam for a thought-provoking and hopeful conversation on what being agile means over dinner.

Thank You! to Jenni Dow and Ole Jepsen for their enthusiasm and open-mindedness on all things kaizen!

Thank You! to George Schlitz, Giora Morein and Brian Bozzuto for participating in The Bottleneck Game and The Business Value Game!

Thank You! to Chris Sims for his big cheer of appreciation and support when he discovered that Pascal and I share all our games under the Creative Commons licence so that we can all have more fun and be more effective at work.

Thank You! to Mark Striebeck for saying ‘Hello’ and doing the keynote at XPDay London 2009 – I’m looking forward to it.

Thank You! to Dan Mezick for introducing me to the PMI community and suggesting Pascal and I share our games with them.

Thank You! to Carsten Jakobsen for an enlightening conversation about CMMI and Agile and how they complement rather than compete with each other.

Thank You! to Tsutomu Yasui and Ebacky for sharing The Kanban Game at Agile 2009!

Thank You! to Christopher Avery for helping me better understand how to facilitate discussions about The Responsibility Model.

Last, but not least, Thank You! to the organisers, presenters and participants of Agile 2009 for making it such a great conference for learning and sharing!

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

My Top Favourite Sessions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Perfection Game on Agile 2009

What I Liked About the Conference

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

What Would Make the Conference Perfect

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

What about Agile 2010?

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

Meanwhile, Thank You! and Goodbye for now.

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

Find out more about The Five Focusing Steps here.

What I Liked About the Session

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

What Would Make the Session Perfect

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

Feedback from bloggers on the session

• Patrick Kua shares his Lessons Learnt

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

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

Redefining Responsibility

Newsflash: Responsibility is neither a character trait nor flaw. Christopher describes Responsibility as the way you respond to a problem. Responsibility is completely subjective. It’s also a feeling. This is why Responsibility is so difficult to talk about.

There are six progressive phases in the Responsibility Model:

1. Denial – ‘Problem? What problem? There’s no problem.’
2. Blame – ‘I don’t have a problem working with you. You seem to have a problem with me. That makes it your problem. ‘
3. Justify – ‘I guess it’s possible that I’ve become insensitive to other people’s feelings and needs. I can’t help it though. After all, I’ve been doing this job for a long time. It’s who I am.’
4. Shame – ‘What have I done? I’m going to look such an idiot in front of the people at work. How am I going to live it down? Why should they help me after the way I’ve behaved?’
5. Obligation – ‘Tell me what you think I should do. I have no choice but to do it (even though I don’t want to). I’ll do whatever you say. It’s only a job after all (no one can expect to do a job they love).’
6. Responsibility – ‘I can wait for them to change but that could take forever. No, it’s up to me. I want to fix the problem. So how am I going to be a better colleague? I know! I’ll listen more. And be more considerate towards others. It’s a start.’

What I Liked About the Session

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

What Would Make the Session Perfect

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

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

Attributes of a Good Facilitator

A good facilitator:

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

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

The Role-Playing Facilitation Patterns and Antipatterns Game

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

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

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

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

The Facilitation Four-Step

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

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

What I Liked About the Session

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

What Would Make the Session Perfect

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