My presentation from Agile 2011 that I delivered with Greg Smith called “Agile 2.0: Rebooting a Raccoon in an Imperfect World” is available on Slideshare.
On this 10th anniversary of agile, our community is struggling to address the issue of how to take experienced agile practitioners to the next level, while still providing training and tools to support those who are beginning their journey. With the “agile” word getting so overloaded, the challenge is to continually innovate without assigning labels. In this talk we will discuss how to use the best of traditional, lean and agile methods to suit any team and showcase numerous patterns that demonstrate the best process to use is often a mixture of traditional practices and new innovations.
Some of the comments on Twitter included:
@teradee: watching @smithcdau speak on “rebooting the racoon. Craig has this stuff nailed. A bright spot in our community #agile2011
@teradee: Listening to @smithcdau talk a on the Oath of Non-Allegiance via @TotherAlistair Thinking this needs more shine #agile2011
@theagilepirate: Look up the manifesto manifesto – we have enough manifestos Kumquat, raccoon is a community #agile2011
@codingbynumbers: @smithcdau gives birth to #racoon at #Agile2011 (but we know it was conceived on @codingbynumbers)! http://t.co/CyvgOer
My presentation from Agile 2011 that I delivered with Adrian Smith called “The Speed To Cool: Agile Testing and Building Quality In” is available on Slideshare.
Ensuring that the approach to testing and quality is understood and appropriately valued in an agile world can be a struggle for many organisations, especially when resources are limited and our customers are expecting business value in a timely manner. In this session we will define what quality means and share a number of tools for measuring it, discuss approaches to improving the skills, empowerment and role of testing in the organisation and share why testing is the coolest role on the team and why it is everyones responsibility.
Some of the comments on Twitter included:
@BrianGress: We tend to test only what we can see. #agile2011 @adrianlsmith
@tonyrockyhorror: @smithcdau Speed to Cool was best talk I’ve seen all week. It will take a mighty effort to top it. #agile2011
The final day of Agile 2011 in Salt Lake City was keynote day but not before a couple of announcements. Next years conference will be organised by Mitch Lacey and held in Grapevine, Texas and a number of presentations were videoed (including one of my talks) and will be available over time on the Agile Alliance website.
Finally it was officially announced that my good friend and colleague Shane Hastie had been elected to the board of the Agile Alliance (a first for our little area of the world!). Here are my notes from the keynotes:
there are two mindsets – fixed and agile – determines everything we do – determines goals, reactions to failure, belief about effort and strategy, attitudes towards others successes
we can continue to grow, you can’t measure someones potential with an IQ test
belief about yourself affects belief about others – we are hardwired to judge and stereotype others, fixed mindsets do it on very little evidence, agile mindset still does it but are less positive/negative
bright little girls are typically praised constantly
bright little boys are typically criticized or reprimanded
organisations have a mindset as well
Enron had a fixed mindset to hire the best talent – “rank and yank” – only keep the best
Southwest are about people not planes – don’t hire for IQ, but for attitude and learning
Day 4 at Agile 2011 brought a full day sessions full day of sessions followed by the conference dinner. For the first session I used the law of two feet and landed in three different sessions.
Stages of Practice: the Agile Tech Tree
Arlo Belshee and James Shore led this hands on session to build a technical tree of agile practices. I didn’t stay for long, but I was interested in the output, which I found hanging on the walls later in the day.
Steve Denning (author of a large number of leadership books) delivered this presentation based around a blog post of a similar name that I sat in for about 30 minutes. His presentation is available here.
delight is happiness, joy, customer success – everybody has a story or understands this concept
identify your project that you wish to delight – who is your customer?
what do customers say they want? – warning! they don’t always know eg. New Coke
what is it that core customers might not like about your product? eg .why they made the Nespresso machine because people did not like cleaning up, need to get inside their head to understand what you need to change
Agile From the Top Down: Executives Practicing Agile
Jon Stahl delivered this session, and I wish I had been there for this one all the way through as his presentations are always entertaining and informative. His slides are available here.
get HR to create their own room to map the organisation and look for patterns – finding the truth isn’t simple but putting stuff on walls creates conversation
create a tool wall – who cares what tool you use, as long as you are adding value
get the practice vocabulary up on the wall – matched with a booklet with more detail
when tracking practices move away from traffic lights and use smiley faces to track how people are feeling – don’t care about if they are doing stand ups but how are they working for them – good way to figure out where to send coaches, where the frowns are
transparent leadership – post and show your people what roadblocks you are working on
everybody wakes up everyday thinking they are doing the best thing they can – as a business the executives need to check each other to make sure they are working on the most important thing and allow each other to question
Relish – the only way the customer will read Cucumber tests
two way mirrors – ensure the users are integrated into development and they can use the software, outside the building
good coders find stuff hard – easy to Cucumber test the full stack but the build time blows, unit tests are hard but are fast, so limit the amount of cucumber tests and isolate them
features rot if the Customer does not read them or not exposed via tools like Relish
manual testers duplicate automated tests – expose features, pair, give Cucumber ownership to QA
how to test lots of permutations – pairwise testing is OK, or just automate the happy path and one scenario and manual test the rest
metrics – JUnit Max to predict probability of failure
Limited Red – calculates the probability of Cucumber failure to improve the way we work – found features that never fail – just keep them in nightly build – means a long build usually fails very quickly
use JMeter to check everything is up like a tracer bullet – eg. a row has appeared in a table
got 8 hour build down to 20 minutes by distributing over 24 EC2 nodes – but think we were solving the wrong problem
slice up the architecture and have thin tests to test them
Spork – helps to speed up the start up time of an application – hard to know whether to reload and it adds a lot of overload at the protocol layer, so almost as efficient to run the tests
people have core responsibilities but we all meld in our roles to be one team and deliver
I enjoyed this session, particularly as I read about Joseph’s company in Specification By Example. I am excited about the prospect of a tool such as Limited Red as well.
Telling Better Stories with User Story Mapping
Jeff Patton led this session to a packed room that included a live appearance from his children! His slides are available here.
how to change the world – start with an idea which is product > feature > specification > requirement
learnt that requirement means “shutup just build it”
outcomes result in impact – agile is to maximize outcome and impact we get
stories are a conversation about the future
stories are 5c’s – card –> conversation –> confirmation –> construction –> consequences (when we realise our ability to predict the future sucked!)
Kent Beck called them stories because they were meant to be heard
need to figure out the who, what, why – this is the richness behind the story
add a short title, add a description (story template), add notes, specifications and sketches and write acceptance criteria before writing software
stories shrink in size and grow in detail as they travel through a pipeline
start with capabilities or features (understand value) –> break to release size stories– > upcoming iteration stories (priority, UI design, business rules) –> break to iteration size stories (details user acceptance tests, small enough to fit in iteration) –> completed bits of software
user story mapping – based on story mapping in films
ultimately we have big things that break down to little things
Build story maps by:
talking to real users
brainstorm user tasks to help them organize
research and build from a narrative
discussions with users in front of a map drive out conversations
plan incremental releases as a team event – developers will actually read the plan
start talking about adding stickies and notes, finally get a fist of five for confidence
don’t prioritise user stories by ROI – target a user segment
like ripping a $5 note, the small stories are not valuable (Jeff actually ripped a $5 note to illustrate the point)
Finally, Jeff has a User Story Mapping book in the pipeline which looks really interesting. I have had the pleasure of meeting Jeff a few times and always enjoy his presentation and learnings, and I am keen to give these learnings a go in my next storycard workshop.
Flirting With Your Customers
Jenni Jepsen delivered this presentation, the slides are available here.
We started with an exercise – 3 things that make a great project – trust, hard work, common goals, transparency, clear direction, grown ups, togetherness, support, communication, budget, right skills, creativity, quality, teamwork, fun, support
We then discussed 3 things that make a great romantic relationship – trust, communication, clear expectations, respect, common goals, honesty, integrity, similar values, enjoy spending time together, depth, support, compromise, patience, back rubs, teamwork, equality, chemistry, humour, passion, sacrifice
there is a lot of commonality between projects and a relationship
flirting is about making people feel valued
need human touch to thrive, keeps immune systems strong
people who are happy and feel valued at work results in increased profit
introverts need to take care of themselves, take energy from within – they can flirt but it takes energy
extroverts thrive in social situations – if your customer is an introvert they may not share your energy
The 8 steps are:
radar – makes you aware of the people around you, takes confidence
target – figuring out who you want to connect with in an organization, who has the real power
move in – show interest, practice your opening line – make eye contact, making the person feel like they have knowledge, makes them feel valuable, interactions become richer because of this
back off a little – the other person may not be ready for the interaction, give the other person space
open up – being honest and laying it out, you have now created a comfort zone, you are also making yourself vulnerable, there might be some back and forward bargaining here
dance – have a little fun, create conversation – lunch, cook together, virtual coffee over Skype, celebration to mark a milestone, dinner club
get real – go through a crisis together, if you have flirted and built a relationship
enjoy – enjoy the relationship
have a list of questions to get over the anxiety
all good steps for people you manage
body language is 93% of communication
Conference Party
The conference party was entertaining as always. Here is me hanging out with Alan Bustamante (who I worked with on the reviews) and the gang from Seapine Software
Scaling Software Agility: Advanced Practices for Large Enterprise
Dean Leffingwell is the author of Scaling Software Agility (which was written in 2006 and, in his own words, the world has changed since then) as well as Agile Software Requirements (which is really about portfolio management). Dean presented this session, a copy of his presentation is available here.
scrum is designed for small teams and makes no claims for scale
scale might not work, you can make it work
economics and technology have changed to make agile work
Not everything is a user story:
user stories came from XP, builds the user right into the requirement
lots of teams have their own stories in their own sprints
if something is in the backlog we might do it, if it is not in the backlog we won’t do it, anything that needs to be done goes in the backlog
best code comes from XP shops – it’s a form of hygiene, like brushing your teeth
the user story model lacks context – the things around it
at enterprise scale you have a large, large amount of stories but how do you reason about that and get the context
we need an additional level of planning – features which get decomposed into stories
features need to fit into potentially shippable increments as well, because they need to ship
stories need to get tested, as do features and non-functional requirements
use epics to describe features that are too fine grained at the enterprise level – may be implemented over long periods, even years
investment themes represent the budget allocations that drive the authority – at a program level figure out your epics that make up 17% of the budget, for instance
Think agile programs, not just agile teams – manifesto does not mention teams at all
there are lots of teams in the enterprise
need to train everybody, but that is slow and expensive
regular release train, build it this way even if if the customer / factory is not ready for fit
change value system from plan driven to value/vision driven – move from Clarity driven estimates which we then fix to fixing a date which we strive to meet
in software industry we always miss dates, build credibility by meeting dates
most teams are overly optimistic
quality needs to be built in, but features need to be variable
everyone needs to be on the train – waterscrumming does not work
hindsight brings us perspective
cadence alone is not enough – worst nightmare is not the facts but the false sense of security that you are going to deliver
slowest component drags the train – if you have a VP of system integration you are already screwed
make sprints the same length – two weeks is a good cadence, three weeks is too long, you can’t figure out when you should start testing
have regular system wide integration – use PSI (potentially shippable increment) to ensure you have a product, use hardening sprints for the things you can’t do in a normal sprint and let the team catch up
release train process – when you have an asset that adds customer value, ship it or ensure you have a asset that you could ship – it could save you with large maintenance renewals
pacemaker is release planning – need a full day or two for release planning – if you can’t spare that then plan badly – also gives us full alignment, a good point to get the architects involved because at this point you can make a change – plan using stories because that is the teams currency
scrum gave us a framework for sprints – plan and commit on day 1, execute for 8 days, demo and retro on day 10
at enterprise level raise this to the PSI level – plan and commit at the program level and demo and retro together at the end, sprints at team level in between (a program is usually 5-10 teams)
do a one week all in training for the team and then fire straight into release planning – then coaching is in context – don’t have good experiences with teams that go ahead without coaching support
take into account that your first sprint will be a little rough
Enterprise systems require intentional architecture – it matters!
refactoring is part of agile, list on the wall and get the product owner to stand by them, but it doesn’t scale very well
architecture can emerge, you can’t always plan for it
principles of system architecture are important
the architect needs to be part of the team to succeed
the team owns the design of the system, gives them accountability – design spike is our currency for architecture and it needs to be demoed
sometimes we need architectural epics – architectural epic kanban system
Portfolio management must be agile too – the mothership of all impediments!
PMO is governing us to a model we have abandoned, yet we created it in the first place
need to move from a portfolio of projects to a backlog of content management
need to move from cost estimation to velocity estimation and planning – so estimate your releases and epics in points too, not in dollars or hours
the team manages a project, not a traditional PMBOK manager
Overall, there was nothing really new in this session for me, although it was great to hear from Dean directly, especially on the topic of PMO’s and leadership. His latest book is still on my list to read.
Removing Impediments with Drawings
Carlton Nettleton led this interactive session, the instructions and agenda of the session is available here.
A drawing is more memorable, particularly when related to a story, helps your audience visualize your message, pictures drawn by a human are better than those drawn by a computer because they look too perfect
SQVID is a metaphor of how to draw pictures. Are you drawing:
simple or elaborate pictures
quality vs quantity
vision vs execution
individual vs compare
change vs status quo
Imagine:
discuss why you are imagining
draw simple
don’t overwhelm by drawing too much
iteration and refinement
think outside the box
Show:
focus on the audience
feedback
evolution – start, middle, end
outside perspective
drawing is only for support
This was a very hands on session, and the charts that we used in the exercises were very good templates that I will recall and use in future. The takeaway for me was to draw pictures in real time more to illustrate and get engagement for my message. I will also take another closer look at Dan Roam’s book.
Agile 2.0 – Rebooting A Raccoon In An Imperfect World
in lean 99% of behaviors are driven by the system – people were driven by the situation at hand
focus on behaviors not values or judgements
Formula:
be specific on timeframes eg yesterday
your observed behavior
perceived impact
recommendation or suggested solution
make it a conversation – set aside time such as feedback frenzy Friday
give feedback earlier, not just at annual review time
create safety – “is now a good time”, not a public theme but in private
seek clarifications – apply the five why’s to feedback
say thanks for feedback at the end – appreciate being helped to grow
take action on the feedback
Overall I have always found Patrick’s writing on retrospectives helpful, however there was little new in the presentation for me.
After Dark
Wednesday night was the Sponsor Reception, where the prime aim was to get to every booth and get a sponsor stamp (the real rule was to get one stamp per page, but it was far more fun ensuring I visited every booth!) One of the amusing things in Salt Lake City was that they do not take themselves too seriously, as evidenced by this beer.
Day 2 at Agile 2011 in Salt Lake City kicked off with Todd Little advising that the conference this year had 1604 attendees from 43 countries and from 968 submissions we ended up with 268 sessions. Here are my notes.
Keynote – Why Care About Positive Emotions
Barbara Frederickson led with a keynote, but unfortunately I didn’t get to stick around for much of it as I needed to prepare for my session following. Two brief notes I picked up were:
positive psychology is about resilience, the closest concept in psychology to agile
positive emotions open us – we are more creative and can see more in the periphery, we have more resilience to bounce back, better performance on exams
The Speed To Cool: Agile Testing And Building Quality In
The session that I presented with Adrian Smith from Ennova was close to a full audience and was also one of a handful of sessions that was chosen to be recorded. We received lots of great feedback. The slides are available in a separate post. The following pictures were Adrian and I outside the room prior to the session:
Agile Coaching Self-Assessment – Where Do You Stand on the Competencies?
This session was limited to 32 participants, so it was with good luck and planning that I was able to sit in workshop facilitated by Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd.
Coaches are energy shifters and are tuned into the atmosphere of the room. We were invited to walk around the circle and reflect on the following areas:
agile-lean practitioner – people who know the tools and practices
business mastery – know what the business needs
coaching -professional coaching
mentoring – help people access what they already know
technical mastery – help people create great software
context – need to not look at a whole object but how it fits into the whole system
patterns – in pair programming, the navigator can see patterns because they are not concerned with the symbols and syntax, pattern matching is the key to expertise
neuroplasticity – humans can grow new neurons, but not sitting in a cage or a cubicle, work with enlightened people or in a sensory rich environment you will grow new neurons, but if you don’t use parts of your brain it will get rewired
If you study in an artificial environment you will get artificial results.
Skills – the Dreyfus model – rules –> intuition, consider everything –> relevant focus –> detached observer –> part of system
novice – no experience, accomplish a goal, want to get it done, don’t know how respond to mistakes, only way to be effective is to have contact-free rules (ie working in a call centre, following a script), need recipes to follow, can’t get much productivity from this level
advanced beginner – start trying tasks on your own, don’t want the big picture
competent – build conceptual models, troubleshoot on your own
proficient – want to understand the big picture, want to understand why, frustrated by oversimplified information, self correct previous poor task performance (retrospectives are a good example of why they need an experienced coach), learn from previous experience, can understand and apply maxims
expert – primary source in their field, continually look for better methods, work from intuition, world does not really work on rules it works on experience
second order of incompetence – know what you don’t know and admit to it
nursing practice shares a lot of similarity to software development – you need to solve problems then and there – need to become outcomes-based, importance of the individual, keep experts in practice, pay based on value added to the company
South American monkey trap is like the tool trap – confuse model with reality, de-value traits that cannot be formalised, legislating behaviour that kills autonomy, alienated experienced practitioners, demand for conformity of tools, insensitivity to contextual nuances
brain is not a computer – made up of L mode and R mode and we switch between them – spinning girl exercise – creativity and intuition works better in R mode
image streaming – pose a problem to yourself, close your eyes for 10 minutes and then for each image that crosses your mind describe it out loud, image it with all five senses and describe it in the present tense
free form journalling – first thing in the morning, write three pages long hand, uncensored, don’t skip a day – way to get it out
ten mental locks – the right answer, that’s not logical, follow the rules, be practical, avoid ambiguity, ……
you need to keep track of your ideas, otherwise you will stop having them – everyone has great ideas, fewer keep track of them, even fewer act on them and very few can pull them off
carry something with you all the time to record notes – tools like The Pocket Mod or Evernote
mind maps
we miss things that change slowly – this happens on projects on all the time
90 cognitive biases that people suffer – memory stinks – every read is a write that can create false memories, anchoring, fundamental attribution error, need for closure (agile estimation) – we will take any information even crap information for closure – in agile we want to keep things open ended, exposure effect, Hawthorne effect, relativity
ask yourself how you know what you know
your age group changes the way we view and understand things
some people need auditory, visual, kinetic
how to read – SQ3R – survey, question, read, recall, review
how to take notes – make a mind map, the sensory of pen and paper is better
get your ideas out there and blog it, tweet it, present it
Warnings:
multitasking – when you get interrupted your memory is blown, constantly checking email is an IQ drop of 10 points, three times as much as smoking a joint!
send less email and you will receive less email – pick up phone, walk down the hall
choose your tempo for an email conversation
don’t context switch – scan queue once, put things into piles, no mental lists (GTD)
set cues for task resumption when you get interrupted, leave a quick mote in code or on a notebook – gets back to resuming task much faster
set team interruption protocols – most teams say this is the happiest times they have coding
second monitor is a 20-30% productivity gains – ALT-TAB in windows is context switchin
Change is hard:
start with a plan
avoid inaction not errors
new habits take time (3-4 weeks)
belief is physical
take small next steps
This was a great session with so many techniques to look (and re-look at). As a result I think I will also add this book to my reading list (especially given that The Pragmatic Programmer in one of may favourite books). Finally, Andy reminded everybody that the Pragmatic Programmers also have a free magazine that is worth checking out.
After Dark
Tuesday night is typically the night that most of the vendor parties happen. I managed two invites – one to the Atlassian Drink-Up (which unfortunately due to talk preparation I ended up missing) and one to the Celebrate with Rally party which I was able to make for a couple of hours at the end.
It was great enthusiasm that I set off to Salt Lake City last month for Agile 2011. In the lead up I was a reviewer on two stages (Testing & Quality Assurance and Working with Customers), plus I was lucky enough (and apparently the only submitter) to have all three of my original submissions accepted (although conference rules, for good reason, restrict speakers to two sessions). Whilst its a been a month since the conference (I took some time afterwards to spend time on both the east and west coast of the USA), I wanted to ensure that I posted my notes.
Here are the notes from the sessions that I attended on day one.
The Product Partnership: Using Structured Conversations to Deliver Value
Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener led this tutorial. They started by taking about requirements by collaboration and leading a discussion on things that hinder and help.
Things that hinder: access to the right people, thinking about the solution rather than what needs to be done, multitasking, people not listening, customer not clear of needs, backlog too big, stories too big, missing product owner
Things that help: centralised repository, short backlog, story maps, clear business goals, UI mockups part of the story, clear priorities, crisp acceptance criteria
conflicting voices for value – not just from the customer but technology value, we need to listen to all the voices
evaluate requirements – value, risk (such as technology risk, team risk, outsourcing risk) and dependencies (dependent on other teams or external vendors and requirements and dependencies where value violates the way we would like to build the system)
benefit – IRACIS (increase revenue, avoid cost, improve service) needs to be balanced with cost, time and delivery
table stakes – the things we must deliver to stay in business
differentiators – point of difference in the marketplace
two states – credible (it has some kind of value) or buildable (it has been prepared and is sliced, groomed or right size as well as understood well enough to estimate, test and document)
incorporate UX into preparation, collaborated workshops
slice for value – starts with a glean in someone’s eye, then it gets bigger because we have a bunch of options, so we need to fit based on value to contract the list
Data: Fee
Type options: regular, early bird, super early bird
State options: available, sold out
Data: Payment
Type options: credit cards, payment order, check
State options: paid, pending, not paid
We may also visualize this as a data model or a state diagram
Once this is complete we can now we slice for value and write a story. This needs to be the silver bullet / tracer bullet, then you can break down from there. At this point you can write the stories and throw the sheets away. This all leads to:
As a... I need... so I (value)
Requirements leads to examples which leads to tests. We can now link this to given when then:
Given: pre-condition (state), fixed data
When: action, business rules, input data
Then: output data, post condition (state)
It is recommend that you come to these workshops with some pre-planning but be under the agreement that they are draft and often wrong. These could be release or iteration planning workshops.
Now the forgotten heroes, the non-functional requirements:
design and implementation constraints – the givens, the parts of your technical infrastructure that are dictated or restricted – worth pausing and discussing if there are any options
interfaces – human, other systems and device interfaces such as messages (you could use a context diagram to illustrate this) – with the diagram you can start discussing the options / choices / possibilities
quality attributes – things like speed, stability, uptime, security, scalability, usability, extensibility, etc…, need to be testable and SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-based) – eg. recover from user error in x clicks, x time
You can do this at the big view (business process, features, MMF, scenarios), pre-view (user stories, user story maps where you lay out stories left to right, scenarios) or the now view (buildable, scenarios). The granularity will change.
Need to have a structured conversation to communicate effectively. Face to face is the most effective and get a shared understanding of the highest value.
Overall, this was an enjoyable session. I really liked the templates for mapping out the requirements (despite the fact that these were essentially just aids for the workshop) as they helped focus the conversation and gave our group something to focus on. Mary and Ellen are currently writing a book based around this content, so I look forward to seeing that in the future.
Coaching Success: Getting People to Take Responsibility & Demonstrate Ownership
Christopher Avery (creator of the Leadership Gift and author of The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite, which apparently is 10 years old and still in print) led this extremely packed session, the essence is contained in this publication available here (as well as here).
We started the workshop by competing in a spaghetti challenge (based on the Marshmallow Challenge) which consisted of the materials of just 10 pieces of spaghetti and a line of tape. The team I was working with constructed a tower of 35 inches, which ended up being the second tallest in the room.
There is a pattern in our mind that kicks in every time something goes wrong – creates angst and anxiety – responsibility process – a descriptive model:
QUIT – the pressure of responsibility and obligation can lead us to quit, an avoidance move, a lack of completion, active disengagement
RESPONSIBILITY – call yourself on obligation so you start looking for solutions – start saying “I get to go to this stupid meeting”, means you have a choice – we were taught that doing stuff we have to do makes us responsible
OBLIGATION – I have to go to his stupid meeting have to but don’t want to – leads to resentment
SHAME – how could I do this, how could I be so stupid – laying blame on self – premise is the problem, you can’t learn
JUSTIFY – it was raining, I dropped my keys – story makes it just – “that’s just the way it is around here…”
LAY BLAME – who took my keys? – not a solving position of mind
DENIAL
3 keys – descriptive model
INTENTION – wanting to get something done, get to RESPONSIBILITY around every problem in your life
AWARENESS – be aware of which level you are in
CONFRONT – ability to face, taking yourself to the edge of your comfort zone, comfort zone = current capability, confront = expanding capability – every person you know was once a stranger
Example coping mechanisms are: learn to live with it, it worked on my machine, they just don’t get it, it’s the vendors fault, it’s too hard, you’ve been here long enough to know that’s not going to happen, murphys law, we did exactly what they asked for, …
We then did a “Be With” exercise, which was essentially sitting knee to knee with the person next to you, in complete silence, for 30 seconds, to feel the others anxiety. Ultimately, it’s not the other person that makes you feel bad, it is yourself.
Confront is the angst of confronting yourself. If you want to change something you need to poke it, and observe the change.
Accountability Responsibility:
accountability is the number one tool of management – it’s the way we manage commitments between two parties – its outside of us because it is us and someone else
responsibility is about how we respond – internal to us, and different for all of us
what people are signed up for is greater than what they are responsible for
what people are responsible for is greater than what they are accountable for <– We want to be here
they are both equal
Where’s the bottleneck?
what if you had to reproduce the code, if you had the same team and resources?
what percentage would be more efficient the second time?
modal is 70%. You would be better because you have solved the problem before. Learning takes time. Essence of agility is to learn and take feedback.
There is lots of feedback in agile practices such as retrospectives, showcases, standups, etc… If you are not going to do anything about it, stop investing in the feedback loop. The fastest way to learn is to take ownership.
Fastest way to elevate responsibility in a group is demonstrate it yourself. If you are saying people around you are not displaying responsibility, then you are just laying blame.
Exercise coaching responsibility. The responsibility process only works when it is self applied! You need to teach it so others can self apply it. Counter not being good enough yet to teach this yet:
Give yourself forgiveness, forgive yourself for being human
Teach this with a light tone. Make yourself the brunt of all the jokes that are below the line
Don’t go into agreement (“but I do have to go into that stupid meeting”) – don’t confuse the facts with the mental position – take time, breathe, count 10 seconds and answer – validates they raised a good question and allows you to respond – ask if you can push back on them a little bit, and ask them to identify where they are on the chart
Make sure you support – need to forgive yourself, let go and move onto a better future
Taking responsibility is owning your power and ability to create, choose and attract.
Responsibility is the design space. What do we want from this? Be clear with what you want and be clear about the consequences. Responsibility gives you power but also potential consequences.
There is a difference between choosing something and avoiding something.
As a coach you get to intervene in situations, so you need to act from a position of responsibility and check where you are coming from (move through the model as quick as you can). Ask yourself if your message is clear and does not sound like blame.
Advice is seldom effective so stop giving advice. You are transferring responsibility from them to you. If it doesn’t work they perceive it as being your fault. Instead:
Resist giving advice. Tell me what you have tried, tell me what you haven’t tried
If you must give advice, give three alternatives so they have to choose, putting responsibility on them. “If I were in your shoes I might consider a…, b…, c… What do you think about those?” One coaching company advises 10 alternatives, so you really think about the responsibility.
Finally, play the “Catch Sinner” game to learn the process:
make a score card
choose a word for today
make 2 columns – “get off of it” and “it got out”
throughout the day, everytime you catch yourself in a position of “blame” mark your chart
10 points for the left and 1 point for the right column
build tremendous awareness for each word at least for one day
There are a bunch of resources at Christopher’s website, in particular he encouraged us to get a copy of the teaching poster and empowered us to teach the process to our peers.
Overall, I really enjoyed this session, as I had heard good reports from this session when it was help in 2009, and this year it was listed as one of the most popular sessions. The responsibility process is something I would really like to work on personally.
The Agile Manifesto 10th Anniversary Reunion: The Big Park Bench
This was one of the highlights of the conference where 15 of the 17 original authors of the Agile Manifesto got together on a big park bench to discuss the writing of the manifesto.
Jim Highsmith noted that there us nothing about it that he would change and would not get back together with these people to do it!
Ward Cunningham would change the colour balance of the background image
Brian Marick noted that individuals and interactions can often be a beat up for people who appreciate tools
Jim Highsmith commented when asked about the next 10 years that agilists don’t predict!
they never expected that something written in a couple of afternoons would be this big
Brian Marick recalled that the stated objective of the meeting was a manifesto and it seemed miraculous that they left with a good framework . Bob Martin was just surprised that he has been to one meeting that worked!
Martin Fowler did not want to call it agile, he wanted a wackier name
Agile Manifesto nailed it as a baseline – they might have added “we really mean it” or “we are not kidding”!
when you gel with a team you get what can be summed up in 3 words: high quality work
great teams change people lives. “The manifesto changed our lives, and probably yours too”
many people who may have survived under waterfall may not survive much longer under agile, as it is flushing out bad practices
other potential names for agile were: adaptive, hummingbird, lean (used already), PPP, a bunch of acronyms, did not want a word they would have to wear pink tights and a tutu to explain!
Agile was a coincidence – people following lean in the 1990’s were saying agile is the future, which was good because agile has a meaning in the business world
the most argued item on the manifesto – iteration timeframe, executes terminology
the principles were harder to arrive at
biggest disappointment – everyone wants to be agile but too few people want to do it (when they wrote it they really meant it), the scrumbut
biggest success – uses outside of software (for example Pragmatic Programmer publishing), wanted teams to be able work freely in a way they wanted to work
need a revolution in middle management and need a similar framework for agility
Agile is not the “not-waterfall” – it’s about teams and delivering software
Agile stands as a beacon of hope, for it to disappear would mean the evil empire has won
in software, we still need to ask how do we do a better job?
an Agile process of inspect and adapt is what makes lean companies great
Jim Highsmith particularly called out Jeff Smith, the CEO of Suncorp Business Services as being someone who got promoted from CIO to CEO through the success of Agile
The last day of the Agile 2011 Salt Lake City conference where Craig talks about Kevlin Henney’s presentation of Functionality being an asset and code is a liability and Linda Rising’s presentation of The Agile mindset.
Craig spent the day milling around a number of presentations today and talks about how technologies link together, delighting customers, visualisations, ATTD for start-ups, Jeff Patton’s User Story Mapping and flirting with your customer.
My presentation from Agile 2011 that I delivered with Greg Smith called “Agile 2.0: Rebooting a Raccoon in an Imperfect World” is available on Slideshare.
Craig Smith 
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