On a road trip to Agile 2013 from Dallas to Nashville, Craig chats to Nick Muldoon while cruising in a Chevy Equinox eastbound on Interstate 40 between Memphis and Nashville. Nick is an Agile Coach at Twitter and formerly the Product manager for GreenHopper at Atlassian and whilst doing 65 miles an hour they chat about:
Using task boards or story walls is a key Agile practice, but are you making the most of it? Visual Management is more than just putting cards on a wall, it is a growing style of management that focuses on managing work only by what you can see rather than reports or paper being shuffled around. Visual Management allows you to understand the constraints in the system, mitigate risks before they become issues, report on progress from the micro to the macro. Visual Management can also be used to demonstrate to customers and clients where the work they care about is at. This presentation is all about taking the management of your work to the next stage of transparency. Discover:
* How to identify when your story wall isn’t telling you everything and how to adjust it
* What the three different types of story walls are and which one is more suitable to certain circumstances
* Different ways to visualise your product backlogWhy queue columns and limiting work in progress is so important regardless of whether you are using Scrum or Kanban
* How symbols and tokens can be used to give more information
* What else can you use other than story walls to visualise information
* How to ingrain Visual Management into both the team and management structures of your organisation
* Visualising Your Quality, Testing and Team
* What is systemic flow mapping and why is it important
Unfortunately the talk was interrupted about three-quarters of the way through by a rogue video conference call into the auditorium. My attempt to try and answer questions why people were trying to fix the problem were interrupted by audio coming through the call. We soldiered on – but it interrupted the flow.
Wishing my good friend @smithcdau best of luck doing Visual Management at Agile Encore tomorrow – wont be the same without Penny
Agile Australia 2013 was recently held in Sydney with over 850 attendees and 3 days. Between running a pre-conference workshop, recording interviews for InfoQ, presenting a session and being a MC for a number of sessions, it was a fairly busy time but I did get to sit in on a couple of sessions.
I was once again one of the conference advisors, although this year we introduced the role of Stream Chairs and Reviewers who took the bulk of the review of the 240 plus submissions and, I think, went some way to making the whole selection process more transparent and community driven.
Pre-Conference Workshop – Introduction to Agile
There were a number of pre-conference workshops running on the day before the conference, and on behalf of Software Education I ran an Introduction to Agile workshop for a small but engaged group of people new to Agile. According to the course overview:
This course provides an independent one-day introduction and overview of Agile Software Development. We look at the underlying philosophy and motivation for this trend in software development and examine the core values, principles, practices and techniques that fall under the broad “Agile” umbrella. Independent of any single brand, this course looks at the key factors that are needed to apply Agile effectively and provides an experiential introduction to working this way.
InfoQ Interviews
InfoQ was a media sponsor for Agile Australia this year, and being the Australian based Agile Editor for InfoQ, I undertook the organisation iof the recording of sessions and interviews. I recorded a number of interviews throughout day 1 of the conference and I look forward to seeing them available on InfoQ in the coming months.
Visual Management: Leading With What You Can See
The session I presented with Renee Troughton had a great turnout and plenty of questions afterwards. The slides are available in a separate post.
In relation to the sessions that I attended, here are my notes.
need to see the waves and learn how to surf them, rather than trying to control the waves
cognitive biases – confirmation biases (align with people with same thinking), anchoring (hang on first piece of information), loss aversion (careful not to lose what we already have rather than gain)
dealing with options – teenage decision making (either/or or whether or not), widen the frame (what about both or none of the above), multiple options, patterns
speed and quality are compatible, you learn that you can’t go fast without high quality
Ericsson – the past is not good enough for the future, stop projects because they are big batches
accept uncertainty and learn how to live with it – range estimates over point estimates and manage flow
managing complexity – probe, observe and adjust; dealing with it – flow, obstacle, adjust
wisdom of the crowd, widen the perspective, zoom in/it, look at base rates (probability of success in your market and what makes you different)
why do companies fail – they focus too much on success, take what they have and make it better, forget to look at the big picture and see what the world is doing – Garmin and Magellan lost 70% of their market overnight due to Google Maps on the iPhone
perfection paradox – learn to fail and learn to prevent rather than striving for perfection, resilience is learning to fail
flow depends on your engagement – deeply engaged, no distractions, time evaporates – otherwise you drift between anxiety and boredom depending on your expertise
Keynote: Managing for Serendipity
I was quite looking forward to seeing Dave Snowden and hoping his talk would cement in my mind the Cynefin Framework. His slides are available here.
it is better to have a partial view of the whole, than a complete view of the parts
theory deals better with uncertainity than practice
exaptation (taking something that exists and enable it to a different purpose, usually two unrelated things)
agile manifesto swung too much towards customers and away from how we can educate them
you absorb complexity, don’t delude yourself into thinking you can eliminate it
outliers are where opportunity and threat manifest themselves first – most research and search eliminate them
only way you can understand a complex system is via experimentation.
you want to cycle between complicated and complex, stuff that goes to simple usually becomes complacent and dies
cynics care about your organisation – they are the only ones making noise
meetings should not be used to resolve problems – you get dominant players – you want to to do 5-7 parallel safe to fail experiments
interventions should be coherent, safe to fail, finely grained, tangible – tackle problems oblique (plant different ideas, like managing a teenager), naive (anthropology experts in the Holiday inn), a few high risk high return options
process is what you need to change people (sorry mainfesto), naive if you think you an change one person at a time
micro narratives are what we want (stories developed in workshops are not the same as the discussions around the water cooler)
Keynote: Beyond Budgeting
The highlight of the conference for me was to meet and hear from Bjarte Bogsnes, as I have long been a fan of his Beyond Budgeting work. His slides are available here.
the purpose is not to get rid of budgets, need to change traditional management and the budgeting mindset to make organisations more agile
written into The Statoil Book, but has not reached all corners of the organisation
transparency is a great social control mechanism and good for learning
management recipes – someone has done all the thinking for you, beyond budgeting is not that
we budget for targets, focussing and resource allocation – inefficient and in one number – separate the numbers and be event driven not calendar driven
change the mindset from do I have budget to is this really necessary and how much value it is creating
Statoil abolished annual budgets, but they still have project budgets but can get money at any time (the bank is always open)
need good information to make decisions – current status as well as capacity
use a burn rate rather than a budget, with some variance
use a unit cost, keep exploring as well as you stay within a unit cost
bottom line – good costs create value, eliminate the bad ones
express cost in words rather than dollars as strategic actions and objectives
need to start trusting our people
“the way we deliver is as important as what we deliver”
objective > measure > actions > goals
KPIs – perfects KPIs do not exist, make them ambitions to action
dynamic forecasting – don’t put everybody into the same limited time buckets – some people need small time frames, some people need years
apply pressure to the KPIs – were they ambitious, did you stretch versus low balling, were there outside influences
mechanical link and no judgement between KPIs and performance bonus is dangerous
The Guessing Game: Alternatives to Agile Estimation
Neil Killick has become the voice of the #noestimates discussion in Australia (whether he likes it or not). His slides are available here.
estimation – what am I going to get and when
estimates set an expectation level
in 12 moths time if estimates come true – either by good guessing or by adjusting for over runs
we have known unknowns – can’t predict them and can’t ignore them
use real constraints – what can we build for this money, budgets create a real deadline and bring out creativity
create mini constraints and iterate and learn, come up with a mini solution for what we can do, small iterations to keep options open and diversify our risk
need an a-team that can build solutions continuously
iterative pricing – allows the customer to cut the cord early, possible even with traditional contracts
present customers with expectations of of what they are going to get and when – flexible options
slice things to the same size, avoid story points, count cards – price per feature
story points will be gamed – people will make the burn chart look good
In Conversation with Patrick Eltridge
I was the MC for this session that was a coffee table conversation between Beverley Head and Patrick Eltridge, the CIO of Telstra. When I introduced this session, I made the comment that it was interesting to see how Telstra was progressing on their Agile journey and Patrick was at the conference for his third year now; in the first year we didn’t really believe they would be able to make an Agile transformation and in the second year we weren’t sure how much was fact and fiction. In 2013, they are certainly making their presence felt with over 70 people at the conference, a title sponsorship and a number of sessions being presented.
I did not get to hear all of the session, but hear are some snippets I picked up
IT strategy needs to be driven by the corporate strategy, then creating an environment that can change and people being the best they can be
huge “opportunity” when he joined Telstra
celebrate successes as much as possible – stiffens the spine for the naysayers
reverse mentoring – mentor older staff with younger ones to pass on new thinking and ideas, both sides learn
nations can benefit if agile leadership is successful
simplified scorecards and KPIs – single number of financial performance (EBIT), engagements with stakeholders, employee engagement plus project outcomes
Using task boards or story walls is a key Agile practice, but are you making the most of it? Visual Management is more than just putting cards on a wall, it is a growing style of management that focuses on managing work only by what you can see rather than reports or paper being shuffled around. Visual Management allows you to understand the constraints in the system, mitigate risks before they become issues, report on progress from the micro to the macro. Visual Management can also be used to demonstrate to customers and clients where the work they care about is at. This presentation is all about taking the management of your work to the next stage of transparency. Discover:
* How to identify when your story wall isn’t telling you everything and how to adjust it
* What the three different types of story walls are and which one is more suitable to certain circumstances
* Different ways to visualise your product backlogWhy queue columns and limiting work in progress is so important regardless of whether you are using Scrum or Kanban
* How symbols and tokens can be used to give more information
* What else can you use other than story walls to visualise information
* How to ingrain Visual Management into both the team and management structures of your organisation
* Visualising Your Quality, Testing and Team
* What is systemic flow mapping and why is it important
Lynne Cazaly did an awesome visualisation of the talk!
We had some great feedback from people after the talk as well as via Twitter.
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
On a road trip to Agile 2013 from Dallas to Nashville, Craig chats to Nick Muldoon while cruising in a Chevy Equinox eastbound on Interstate 40 between Memphis and Nashville. Nick is an Agile Coach at Twitter and formerly the Product manager for GreenHopper at Atlassian and whilst doing 65 miles an hour they chat about:
Craig Smith 
You must be logged in to post a comment.