Agile Complexification Inverter

A Splendid Mirror

2012-01-22T07:01:00.001-06:00

Oh the irony of a Pigs & Chickens paradigm.

If you know of the Scrum parable of the pig and chicken. Then you may find this story humorous. I'm working with a group trying to teach them just enough Scrum to form a project team. Trying to facilitate just enough team formation to allow them to self organize. We planed a 3 day workshop, to be immediately followed by sprint one. It went well. Although some troubling patterns were apparent, we summoned up the courage to keep moving forward.

Fast forward to Sprint Two's planning session. Only three of the seven team members were at the planning session, one had to leave for an hour during the session. The product owner did not appear, the scrum master had a higher priority meeting. Summing more courage to venture into the unknown the 3 team members and the two coaches (we pair coach teams) ventured into the unknown. We discussed the obvious impediment in the room. Created a working mitigation plan for the missing product owner and we planned the sprint as best we could without any guidance from the missing leadership. The team asked for help in raising this impediment.

I sent an email to the team's director - the sponsor of the project, and included the whole team in the email. An example of raising an impediment, a teachable moment. Just the objective observation of what was happening, and how it was impacting the team. Along with some subjective opinion of the risk.

"I'm very concerned with the number and frequency of team members absences from team events and Scrum process meetings. I've not encountered a successful Scrum team that can operate with this low a level of team commitment to the project."

The private reply was: "Thanks for the email. Who else on the team are chickens?"

Now this question took me quite a while to process. Oh-boy, wouldn't a face-to-face conversation be so much better. Have I fallen into poor behaviors? Behaviors that are in contrast to my principles.

I do not use the pig and chicken joke to teach the distention between team commitment and and stakeholder interest in my practice. However, it is a well known piece of the Scrum vernacular. Now, we must sort out this misunderstand of the term "chicken" within the Scrum context. Who on the team is a chicken? The obvious answer is no one on the team is a chicken, the team is made up of pigs. Yet the sponsor, who rightly considers himself just an interested party (a chicken) appears to be searching for a well defined set of roles that will allow him to know who on the team is required for the team's meetings. And he does this using the exact parable which was used to explain the definition of the term 'scrum team'.

Oh irony - what a splendid mirror you make.

In our 3 day workshop we spent quite a bit of time talking about how words have various meanings to different people. One word that we used to illustrate this was the word "team." We did various exercises to define words, to start sharing a common understanding of the words and phrases we use in our work day. We obviously have more work to do.

What does it mean to be on a team?
Will a group of part-time participants become a high-performing team?
How does one best accomplish achieving low priority commitments?

Dragonvale, bringing the Fun; yet a poor simulation of markets

2012-01-02T16:15:00.000-06:00

I had a wonderful Christmas. My nephews got me addicted to the Dragonvale game. A land where one breeds dragons of various types - did you know, dragons are very hybidizable (I'm sure that's not a standard dictionary word).

Dragonvale - iOS simulation game.

To build up to a high enough level to purchase a breeding cave one must build treat farms, dragon habits and grow crops. For this there is an internal game monetary market. The prices of these goods are set by the game designers (I'm assuming it is not a true "free market"). The game does not have a sane and balanced market pricing system.

The objective of any game designer is to get you to play and have fun. That is objective number one - design in the fun-factor (see MIT Technology Review's Exploiting the Fun Factor). A secondary objective is to build a game where people will spend money - real cash in exchange for virtual goods. This is one technique for the game company to make money (in app purchases of virtual goods). Luckily the iOS designers created a way to protect my mother's credit card from her grandkids desire for dragon gem stones. This game market place is big business $16 billion in 2010, quite a bit larger than the movie ticket sells for the same time, $10.6 billion. This is perhaps one of the fastest growing industries, starting in the early 1970s (Pong by Atari was a 1972 game smash hit).

Dragon Habitats

"Why are games important? Because people will reward businesses that cater to their appetite for fun, providing commercial incentives for every incremental improvement in the technology that delivers that entertainment. And game designers are masters at stoking that appetite. Every designer from Pong on has deliberately tried to make their games addictive, with a grab bag of psychological tricks that include humor, storytelling, and reward systems similar to the payoff schedules that lure gamblers. And some designers succeed, serving up jolts of pleasure in such a way that users can't stop coming back for more." -- Stephen Cass "Exploiting the Fun Factor"

An example of the unbalanced game market pricing is that a treat farm cost $100 (coin of the realm). With this treat farm a land owner such as myself may grow crops to feed dragons. Now at a sufficient level (experience points) an owner is given the opportunity to upgrade the treat farm to a larger farm, capable of growing the same crops but with an even larger selection of crops costing more and providing various levels of food. The cost of the upgrade is $25,000. The cost of purchasing out-right is $25,000. This unbalanced transaction in the economic system of the game concerns me.

The net effect after the upgraded transaction is a large treat farm with total cost of $25,100 (100 original cost + 25,000 upgrade). The net effect of purchasing two separate farms one small (100) and one large (25,000) is that the owner is capable of producing twice as much food, for the same fixed cost (excluding real estate area which is a limited supply). However after the purchase of a second treat farm if the owner wished to recover land area they may sell the smaller treat farm and recover 1/2 of the original purchase price of the farm ($50). Making a true apples-to-apples comparison then one has an upgrade option of $25,100 versus an option of purchasing and selling cost of $25,050. I call this an unbalanced market price for the farms.

Why would the game designers create such an unbalanced system. They are encouraging the land owner to use limited resources money and land space in unnatural ways. There is both a monetary reason to consume more space (purchasing two farms vs upgrading a farm) and poor land use practice to purchase two farms rather than upgrade.

Now some people will see this as an opportunity to game the system. To take advantage of this inequity in the economic system to make more money on similar capabilities of production. Yes this type of inequity exist in all markets. Yet my concern is that if we are teaching our young children to make poor (non-sane) economic decision at such a young age, what will become of these children when they have they own credit cards. Will they believe they can take a cash advance from the card and put it in the bank to earn interest at say 4% and then pay back the credit card company? A system of kiting loans rarely works out for the credit card customer, banks are not as nieve as young people some times believe.

The book that started an economic reasoning
nation, published in 1776 by Scottish economist
and moral philosopher Adam Smith.

I believe that the game designer have not purposefully made this inequity in their game's economy. They have just made simplifications and nice "round" numbers for the market place. Thereby creating these non-sensical opportunities to teach poor money management techniques. Now some people will believe that the young people who play these games may not be learning these poor finical lessons. I do not. I believe that the best way to learn something is to make it fun. This is an area the game designers have excelled. Their game is fun. It teaches some good lessons and some poor lessons. The thing with these fantasize world simulations is that they are very good at teaching lessons, I just wish they taught lessons Adam Smith could be proud of.

Focus on the Customer

2011-12-18T20:29:00.001-06:00

What does it take to have a first rate customer experience when there are more customers than sales representatives? Yes, this means there is going to be some form of wait, a queue. Here is my comparison of experience at the Apple Store to that of the restaurant, CheeseCake Factory which we went to right afterwards.

At the Apple store we were put on a wait list to see a representative (the greeter used a text description and my wife's name to put her on the list explaining that the next available person would find us, as we browsed). I asked what the description was, and this is how my wife was described: "tall, with long hair, in a jean jacket with multi-colored scarf". I suggested that they had the technology to just snap a picture and attached it. She said there might be privacy concerns with that.

We browsed and found the item we needed (a Mini Display Port - HDMI adapter). About the time we had found it an Apple person (wearing a red shirt for the holidays) walked up and asked for Tracy. We handed her the item we found and she checked us out immediately.

At the restaurant we got on the wait list and received a pager. We went to the bar to wait and have drinks for the 15 minute wait (got a separate bill for the drinks). When the pager beeped we went to the greeter desk and then had to wait there again for the line of people being seated (4 parties ahead of us). After seating and a lovely lunch, we paid again (a separate bill for the meal).

Now which business has a smooth process that is customer focused?

Visualize Your Problem Domain

2011-12-14T09:42:00.000-06:00

Do you innovate new ways to visualize your problem domain?

The health care field is constantly using technology to visualize their problem domain. They teach with color coded pictures, pink muscles, red arteries, blue veins, yellow nerves, etc. Yet the actual patient doesn't arrive on the surgens table with this color coding - YET. They can do quite miraculous tricks with imaging (x-Ray, CT Scans, MRI, etc) and some imaging techniques are in real time. Here is a video of the latest technique I've seen. To visualize the problem.

I love the history and context Ms Nguyen gives us in this video. The reason for surgery theaters to be where their were in old buildings. Now with electric lights they can be in the basements, many times they are because of the heavy equipment they contain.

Apply this to the domain of software development. Yes, we also use color coding to visualize the field, we have IDEs that give unique color to constants for example. Yet we can not yet tag a bug with a florescent and shine a light across 10,000 lines of code to see how many times it has been replicated. Or can we - have you created a florescent bug tracker?

Yes - You Need a Full Time Scrum Master

2011-12-13T22:47:00.001-06:00

Many organizations adopting Scrum ask these questions.

Do we need a full time Scrum master for each team?
Why do we need a full time Scrum master, can't they do other roles also?

Now allow me to give you the answers:

Yes, you need a full time Scrum Master.
Why - watch the video.

Let me explain:

Yes, you need a full time Scrum master, because they will be constantly watching for the actions of the team. Making sure that the team member are working in flow as often as possible. This is a full time job.

Why can the scrum master not do other roles on the team? Because of the human ability of selective attention. First let me show you a video - a little test of your superior ability to follow instructions. Perhaps you've seen this video - if so, just play along, maybe you will be surprised at how well you do on the test.

The Monkey Business Illusion

Now do you understand why we need a Scrum master watching out for impediments all the time. If they are tasked with doing something else, I'm sure they will miss the obvious impediments the subtle changes in the team members and the environment.

Here is Jeff Sutherland's reasoning (from Scrum Development Yahoo group):

"One of the leading Agile teams in software development asked me how to go hyperproductive. I was their coach as my venture group had invested in them. They had a fuzzy ScrumMaster definition and it was not clear who owned this role. I told them to get a ScrumMaster. The experienced team thought they were better than that and could never go hyperproductive. A new team was formed with a ScrumMaster which immediately went hyperproductive."

"So a lot of teams that think they don't need a ScrumMaster are a long way from 10 times the performance of a waterfall team. This was the design goal for Scrum and every team should be getting a 10% velocity increase sprint to sprint until they hit that number."

"Teams without ScrumMaster's don't do this. Usually they are flatlined and will never reach their full potential."

-- Jeff Sutherland

Is Time-to-Market really a Key Differentiator?

2011-12-04T11:52:00.001-06:00

Why do some product win in the market place and some lose? Is being first to market the key distinction between winning and losing?

The Agile software development movement has this one aspect (time-to-market) as key differentiator. Many surveys note this aspect as a reason to adopt Agile methods. Business people resonate with this value proposition. The Lean Startup movement has this within its core. It appears just common sense. But is it good practice - is it a true cause and effect relationship? If one is first in the market place with a new product, will it capture market share and become the de-facto standard product in the market segment?

Take the case of the cookie - the Oreo Cookie (introduced in 1912) - have you heard the back story? It was the perhaps a knock-off of the Hydrox cookie (introduced in 1908), the first in the market segment, yet always labeled "imitator" and never a strong competitor (Oreos to Hydrox: Resistance is Futile).

It certainly did not work for Apple Computer in 1985 when they introduced the world to a computer for the rest of us. Their graphical user interface was new and created a key differentiator, perhaps the key innovation since they had created a new market segment with the introduction of the personal computer in 1977 (see Apple History Timeline). Yet Apple consistently a first to market innovator, appears to always run in second place to Microsoft. That is until very recently (the post PC era).

One aspect of the difference between first movers and the rest of the pack is not the timing of the introduction (being "first") but in having a better and more compelling story. Much of the product story has to do with marketing, distribution, partnerships, and customer satisfaction and adoptions of the product story as their own personal story. A case in point the Teddy Bear.

Steiff Billy Possum

A great story, the origin story of the Teddy Bear is in pod-cast audio on 99% Invisible. It is told from the perspective of the second mover - the air-apparent to the thrown of the assumed temporary Teddy Bear toy - Billy Possum - the next big thing. This toy was designed to succeed the outgoing president's (Roosevelt) plush toy with the incoming president's (Taft) product designed and marketing flop toy - a plush possum.

Which would you purchase for your child to play with - a teddy bear or a billy possum?

How's this for marketing - and the rest of the story is not for youngins. While he would not shoot the bear - doesn't mean he wouldn't eat the bear.

Info-radiator; Better than Google Analytics

2011-12-03T13:26:00.001-06:00

What is better than Google Analytics (web analytics made smarter, friendlier and free)? How about web analytics made into an INFO-RADIATOR?

Better than Google Analytics
Info-radiator of desire.

What is an info-radiator?

“An Information radiator is a display posted in a place where people can see it as they work or walk by. It shows readers information they care about without having to ask anyone a question. This means more communication with fewer interruptions."
-- Alistair Cockburn

Day 2

This concept is a mash-up of publishing information with information graphics and personal interactive engagement.

So here is my latest attempt to create one of these mash-ups. It is an attempt to disseminate information about some Scrum videos and a survey on basic training evaluation (did the learner like and value the training). One problem with this poster is that it may spark interest in the topic - yet there was a poor actionable behavior associated this reading the poster. One could watch people stop in the hallway and read the poster, yet one couldn't measure any transfer of knowledge. Did the learner actually go to the web site to watch the video advertised by the poster? Sure we could put in some fancy web tracking analytics (if our back-end systems supported this feature - who knows what SharePoint can do - but I know it cannot be helpful in me acquiring knowledge of its capabilities - it doesn't like to share).

Day 3

So solving one problem - the issue of people need to remember the ridiculously long and complex URL (again SharePoint lack of capability) lead me to a great solution. I shortened the SharePoint URL using Bit.ly then printed the shortened URL multiple times and created a tear-off and take-one sheet. By posting this beside the poster I created the info-radiator. Each day, I walk by and see the growing torn-off shortened URL tabs on the sheet. This is an indication that the poster is working. I think it may also create a virtuous cycle. As others see the obvious interest, they see value in stopping to read the poster. This may drive people to the Scrum videos and they may actually watch the video - then take the survey.

Why I use Flip Charts not PPT Slides

A Burndown chart that radiates progress

Play != Games

2011-11-28T06:27:00.001-06:00

I'm excited to see Game Storming the iPhone app.

Dave Gray notes that "games and play are not the same thing." He will teach you to bring games into the work place to get work done. I think one of the side effects is that you may start to have fun. For many people work will never be the same as play. Yet if you want to change the world (thank you Steve Jobs); if you wish to have a purpose aligned life, then you will need to find a way to make play equal to work. For me, this involves bring games into the work place.

Related posts:

Agile tools for your iPhone - a list.

Every object should have multiple uses.

2011-11-24T21:03:00.001-06:00

Book used as a saw guide.

Working on a honey-do item from the task board today. It was to cut the dinning room table into, shorten it by about 12- 20 inches. I was working with a limited selection of tools. I needed a short straight edge, skill-saw guide. I had a 6 foot straight edge for the table top - but needed a small one for the table skirt. Looking around I couldn't find one until I looked at the book shelf. So I grabbed "Agile Estimating and Planning" by Mike Cohn. I though it was quite appropriate.

Table with two cutoff pieces.

Help me Circle you up on G+

2011-11-24T09:54:00.001-06:00

Do you want to help me circle you on G+ - if so edit your profile and place a sentence or two in the field "Employment". Then when I mouse over your name I get a richer understanding of who you are. It helps me decide which of my circles I'd like to put you in - keep in mine the empty circle is also a choice. So help me out.

G+ > Profile > Employment (describe yourself)

What have we LEARNED?

2011-11-19T08:26:00.001-06:00

Scrum is a stepping stonetoward the organization becoming a learning organization, and much of beingAgile is about the opportunity to learn. In the modern world of knowledgeworkers, if the people are not learning on the job, then they are not creatingnew knowledge. We create new knowledge by understanding the context of newproblems, deconstructing the problem, understanding the forces acting withinthe system, creating solutions to solve them, and then remembering thedecisions that resolved the forces and applying them to new challenges. Experiencecomes from numerous encounters with similar problems. When we reflect on newproblems, we generalize and abstract guidelines and rules – this synthesis islearning. Reflection requires time and distance from the immediate problem.

At whatpoint in the Scrum framework do we focus on learning? Well, for a truly mature Scrumteam it is constantly, at varying levels. That's what makes working on an Agileteam fun for me. We’re constantly learning something – whether it’s throughplanning to do something new or different and it actually working or by failingto achieve an objective and then realizing a better path to that objective.Learning to learn is like riding abicycle; once you know how, it gives your inner child freedom to explore.

But if youhave never experienced this type of fun on an Agile team, then perhaps you needtraining wheels for your shiny new Agile vehicle. These training wheels come inthe form of the basic framework of Scrum. For example, the product reviewmeeting (demo) is a great place for learning. If the team can create anopportunity for the stakeholders to learn the current state of the product,then they are doing the core of their task. However, the team also needs topresent what they have learned during this iteration. Sometimes this is tootechnical for many of the stakeholders, but this doesn't mean it should besquelched. One of those stakeholders may be a high-level technical architect.If the team learns something about the suggested architecture, isn't this demoa great place for that feedback (positive or negative)?

A great storyfrom Richard Cheng that describes an Agile team in the learning process was coveredon the ScrumDevelopment YahooGroup discussion list.

"Let me tell you a true story. I was working with a Scrum team at a financial website. About once a month, there was a company meeting where they presented what they did to the other departments and executives. Their initial presentation contained information such story points completed, hours spent on stories/spikes/firefighting, and what they implemented. As the team really started to understand the goals of the company and the project and their place in achieving these goals, the team presented the following:

1.       What have we done this month to help make our company profitable?
2.       How have we excited our customers
3.       What we have learned

"This is a fundamental shift from thinking about task based, to do list work to actually achieving goals and providing value. Helping your organization shift from getting value from the first set of presentations to the second set of presentations is a big part of what the Agile transformation is about."
-- Richard K Cheng, PMP, CSP

Teams ofdevelopers (programmers, testers, business analysis, etc.) typically adapt tochange with ease. For these knowledge workers, learning and doing Scrum isrelatively easy. In Richard’s story, he’s telling us of a fundamental changethat happened within his organization. It is at the company meeting that teamsare describing the new knowledge that they have created and describing theimpact to their customers.

How wouldthis fundamental change occur in an organization? My answer is via a shift from managementoperating in outdated fashion (i.e., control and reduce risk) to thinking in aleadership style (i.e., release control and accept risk). It is often the management– working within the traditional organizational structure – that that havedifficulty embracing the Agile change. Scrum teams may create many morelearning opportunities than management desires, and they may expose many moreimpediments than the existing structure can bare. This will cause friction inthe management layers above the teams.

Do notforget that the management layer has become successful within the old structure,and they may need to embrace new theories of motivation and practices ofmanagement. These new theories, ones that were not taught in MBA school in the1980s, are well described in popular leadership literature. The Industrialrevolution lead to a style of management largely based in Fredric Taylor’s workon Scientific Management also called Taylorism. This theory of managementworked very well for assembly line workers. It does not function well forknowledge workers. New theories for creating the environment required forcreative knowledge work are described in:

Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us by Dan Pink

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath

Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders by Jurgen Appelo, author of the popular NOOP.NL site.

Leaders areyou managing your knowledge workers as if they are industrial workers? Have youupgraded your wetware – your mental model of the way in which you manage and leadpeople? What are you studying to increase you ability and knowledge? What areyou learning? To become the Agile learning organization, the whole body of theorganization must learn new things – create knowledge – this is especially truefor the leadership.

It is not about Sprint Zero; Think Sprint-N

2011-11-12T10:48:00.001-06:00

There is a good dialogue on the topic of Scrum's Sprint Zero going on at Scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com. If you follow the group you will surely learn something about Agility. It will just seep into your pores. Go right ahead - click the link and join up... I'll wait here.

The "raging" debate in the Scrum world for years is - should a Scrum team have a Sprint Zero? A sprint in which they get setup for doing real work. A sprint for installing all that infrastructure (DB, Version Control System, App Server, build a few [sarcasm] frameworks). [Hint: when a developer says they just need to build a framework - it is geek-code for I don't have any idea how to use The Google to find a tool to do that job - so I will have to forge my own special handmade tool - check back with me after I reinvent the wheel.]

I think perhaps the wise and wonderful man behind the curtain - Ron Jeffries - captures the best thinking on the topic:

"I do, however, object to calling those activities Sprint Zero. Here is my reason:"

"It is a core principle of Scrum that every Sprint must produce an increment of potentially shippable software.

"Therefore, an interval of time which does not produce an increment of potentially shippable software is not a Sprint.

"Therefore such a time interval should not be called a Sprint. It doesn't do what a Sprint does."
-- Ron Jeffries

So the debate - and I think it is much more a debate - than a productive dialogue, is over something at the very beginning of a long learning process. The transition from predictive to emergent behaviors of development. Is the debate over - what to call an increment of time? Or is it over our starting point: Zero vs One? Or is it over the principle of - do we really have to deliver something this first iteration - what could we possibly do AND do all this setup work? Do we have to do ALL this setup work? Now we are going down the right path.

And the abstraction of that path is that we learn to count with the infinite goal in mind - not the beginning. We learn to count: Zero, One, Many.

If you have only ONE sprint called Zero - I'm fine with that - it is a failure if it delivers no potentially shippable software. But hey, I'm OK with failure. And if you fail once and learn something - like how to get back up, dust yourself off and start delivering working software in one sprint, well then HEY I'm good with whatever you call it.

You see, I'm focusing on the goal - getting to reliably delivering software in Sprint-N, each and every Sprint-N. And if you need training wheels on your first bicycle - then I'm all for getting training wheels - it is a very reliable learning technique. Just don't put them on your Harley.

The Ultimate Wallboard Innovation

2011-11-11T17:20:00.001-06:00

Some years ago Atlassian ran a contest to find the Ultimate Wallboard. The winner Vodafone's board was awesome. There are other nice boards there - if you are in need of inspiration to improve your task board.

The Ultimate Wallboard - 2010

Ole Højriis Kristensen from the Vodafone Web Team in Denmark was voted the Ultimate Wallboard winner in Dec. 2010. An interview with Ole on the creation of their wallboard.

It uses RFID to track the task on the board and projects on the board real time graphs of work in process and burn up rates. This allows them to integrate with team members in remote locations. Yet they do not lose the tactile sense, nor the spatial processing that the vision center of the brain do so effortlessly for us.

While I'm expecting nice online version of wall boards to keep improving, I don't believe there is a better way to learn Scrum than with a physical low-fidelity wallboard.

We don't learn to do arithmetic using a calculator. No, one starts with simple addition and by the time your ready to learn division it is done using pencil and paper (long division old school). Requiring the student to do the hard work of the long division process may help them to understand the conceptual division problem and the solution technique. Just image how hard it was to do in Euclid's time (300 BC) without the zero and using Roman numerals. Thank you Fibonacci for introducing us to the Arabic Zero.

The invention of the tablet device (post PC era - thank you Steve Jobs) may be an additional minor improvement to our eWallboards. They will get better when I can touch a task and move it from one area to another and that action syncs to everyones device, including the Big Visible Chart on the team room wall. While my iPad may represent an abstraction of the BVC via a zoomed-window to allow me to work on a tiny portion it will not replace the ability to stand back and see the big picture. To recognize the patterns that emerge when I see the whole. This ability is just the tip of the iceberg of Systems Thinking.

One advantage the eWallboards have over my favorite brand of stickies (Post-it pastels) is rarely seen used. It is touched on in the timelapse above. The ability to see patterns that emerge over time. The temporal dimension of patterns. These events could be recorded and played back at super-fast-mo to show patterns over a 4 - 6 month release. How would we create a temporal-burn chart?

I'm a big fan of info-graphics - wish I was better at creating them, maybe that's my next career.

What would we see if we timelapsed each project form cradle to grave? Then compared the patterns the emerged to derive health stats for projects in the aggregate Something like the human body-mass index. At six months your baby project should be weighing in at 10-15 developers and delivering health product increments each iteration Ms. Manager. Now compare that to the young adult project out in the lobby - it appears to have caught a virus, perhaps mono I expect it is running hot and productivity has dropped through the floor.

Now imagine that info graphic help you to determine if the project you have is healthy, and suggesting forms of treatment with projections of what might happen - the what if - scenario. Then imagine it playing those on an 8 foot wall.

My advice to everyone - bring in the creativity, the fanciful, the silly, and the fun.

Related post:
Interactive Whiteboard using the iPad
8 reasons to buy an iPad for your team room
Agile apps for your iPad/iPhone

Have you written a Manifesto lately?

2011-11-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

What is it lately - everyone wants to get into the Manifesto authorship racket. When I was growing up - only commies and the unibomber wrote manifestos.

Well after taking a stroll through the internet, there are quite a few nice manifestos out there. Here are a few that I subscribe to...

The Agile Manifesto - four comparative value statements and 12 principles for how to build better software. With an industry failure rate of 72% boy do we need a manifesto!

The ScrumMaster Manifesto - because this is a group of people that are downtrodden every day. Sitting in a seat for 2 days straight without nodding off is no bais for a system of government - to paraphrase Dennis - come see the violence inherent in the system.

The Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship - because we need the bar raised.

The Mother [bleep] ing Manifesto for Programming Mother [bleep] ers - because sometime a four letter word says more than a well crafted phrase.

The Holstee Manifesto - because it is my life - and I will do what I love.

What good ones have you seen - please comment.

A trick for motivating people

2011-11-03T09:49:00.000-05:00

If you're task is to motivate people - you may be surprised that you will fail very often. Invert your thinking. Figure out, how do you not demotivate people? It is easier to not demotivate people than to motivate them. Here Jim Collins gives 3 great tips.

Don't first sell people on a vision. Confront the reality (the facts).

Don't decide first and then appear to discuss. Have a true dialogue, then decide.

Don't make progress toward the goal invisible. Show progress, make it obvious.

Related posts:
my notes on Dan Pink's book Drive!
see Sinek TED Talk video in Be or Be Not; there is no Do in Agile

A Timeline of Digital Storage Media

2011-11-01T07:41:00.000-05:00

It is a well know fact that humans are relatives of the packrat. We love to store stuff - useless stuff away for a later time. Therefore we need bigger storage lockers, and more storage lockers. We need 30,000 sq-ft homes with basements the size of a high school gym. We need climate controlled storage lockers - off site, but still within 5 miles of home.

The same is true for our digital lives. Who still has the code for the first program they wrote for the x86 chip set? Now we have more storage on our key ring than was in the corporate data center of 1984 (I am Big Brother).

The History of Digital Storage [INFOGRAPHIC]

My how time flys! The rate at which data storage capability increases is exponential. But is it limited?

Why I use Flip Charts not PPT Slides

2011-10-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

Want to retain something you just heard - draw a doodle.

Want to engage learners - get them active.

Want to teach someone a skill - have them teach you.

Want to change some behavior - make it fun.

In all of these techniques the trick is to invert the traditional training paradigm. The classroom was created to process children with unique talents into factory workers willing to follow directions of an authority.

Doodlers, unite! Sunni Brown on TED.com

Read Sharon Bowman's 'Training from the BACK of the Room!'.

Don't think you can doodle - come out of the closet with these techniques from Dan Roam 'Back of the Napkin'.

One can not doodle on the power-point slide one the screen. One can not quickly annotate a burndown chart in that spreadsheet (a learning moment). One can not give the marker to a participant and have them draw a diagram on your slide deck. You do not get their mental model of the problem domain when you show them your perfect architectural layer model. While sitting in perfect rows and columns the students are not allowed to engage with each other - only by signaling the authority (raising a hand) may the student (receiver of info) become active in the dialogue. Is that fun?

I encourage people to mark on the charts and diagrams on the flip charts - they really are not works of art. They do not have to be treated like paintings hanging in a museum. I've gotten in "trouble" for annotating (with sticky notes) a poster hanging in the work place. Oh-my, it started a conversation about the topic, what is wrong with that? I didn't draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

If the traditional paradigm is not working - try an inversion principle.

This RSAnimate video was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert.

How Happy Are You?

2011-10-29T19:02:00.000-05:00

The Science of Happiness in depth report by Scientific American.

Learn the latest psychology behind why it's hard to be happy, and take the quiz to learn how your contentment compares to that in other cultures.

Scientific American

"Happiness varies not only from one person to the next but also from one country to another. (For more discussion of happiness around the world, see The Many Faces of Happiness.) Psychologists measure happiness in several ways. One approach involves the extent to which you experience positive versus negative emotions. Another assesses life satisfaction, or how pleased you are with your life as a whole."

Quiz: How Happy Are You?: Scientific American:

Change is easier with FUN!

2011-10-28T20:35:00.000-05:00

OK - I've got to remember to bring the FUN. That's what empowers changing behaviors. Not Power-Points, not mission statements, not a list of 10 things you don't know, not a study done at Stanford. It's pure Fun!

100 Things You Should Know About People: #13 — Want To Change a Habit? Use Fun, Surprise, and a Crowd | What Makes Them Click:

What belongs on the Task Board?

2011-10-28T07:58:00.000-05:00

I wonder about these questions a lot - what types of task belong on the task board? Does every task have to belong to a Story? Are some tasks just too small? Are some tasks too obvious? Obviously some task are too larger, but when should it be decomposed? How will we know a task is too larger?

I answer these questions with a question. What about a task board motivates us to get work done? The answer is:

T - Those
A - Awesome
S - Stickies
K - Keep
S - Sliding to DONE!

Inherent in the acronym TASKS is the point of all tasks, to get to done. That is the measure of if the task is the right size. Does it motivate us to get the work done? (see notes on Dan Pink's book: Drive - The surprising Truth about what motivates us) If we are forgetting to do some class of task then putting it on the board will help us remember. If we think some small task is being done by someone else, then putting it on the board will validate that someone else is actually doing it. If a task is obvious, then putting it on the board will take virtually no time and promote the well being of getting things done. If a task is too large it will never move to done.

I walked up to a task board just this week and saw a set of Sisyphean Tasks. It was a signal that the board would not be helpful. No flow would happen. The task would get to In-Process and stay there for life. What information would radiate from this board? A static task board sends the one signal - we don't know what we are working on, and we can't tell you.

Sisyphean
adjective(of a task) such that it can never be completed.
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin Sisypheius (based on Greek Sisuphos: see Sisyphus).

The solution for this group was to realize that those epic tasks were a story or a class of work and after reforming the task board a bit, we made a minor improvement. Hey, that's what it's all about. Oh... no, maybe that's the Hokey-Pokey.

Thinking about company culture

2011-10-10T13:50:00.000-05:00

One of the best blogs on the topic is Michael Sahota's Agile Culture Series Reading Guide.
Michael uses the Schneider Culture Model to describe efforts to transition a culture.

This is a reading guide to the series that explores corporate culture and how that has a direct impact (sometimes very negative) on efforts towards Agile adoption. It is a must-read for anyone that is considering taking their company agile or for coaches and consultants whose trade is based on Agile. The role of Kanban is quite distinct and is discussed throughout.

References:

“That’s the Way We Do Things Around Here”: An Overview of Organizational Culture by M. Jason Martin

The Reengineering Alternative: A plan for making your current culture work by William Schneider.

How we do things around here in order to succeed. Agile 2010 conference session by Israel Gat.

How to Find Out If the Company's Culture Is Right for You by Whelan Stone

The 25 Smartest Things Steve Jobs Ever Said

2011-10-08T12:20:00.000-05:00

By Morgan Housel on The Motley Fool

[Reposted without permission - hey I'm an Apple Fan Boy - sue me.]

Steve Jobs and I quote:

25. "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed saying we've done something wonderful ... that matters to me."
24. "I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list ... That didn't look so good, but then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a man on a bicycle blew the condor away. That's what a computer is to me: the computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."
23. "In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service."
22. "I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do."
21. "We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it."
20. "My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person; they are done by a team of people."
19. "The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea. And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important."
18. "I wish [Bill Gates] the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.''
17. "My self-identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I think of myself more as a person who builds neat things. I like building neat things. I like making tools that are useful to people. I like working with very bright people. I like interacting in the world of ideas, though somehow those ideas have to be tied to some physical reality. One of the things I like the most is dropping a new idea on a bunch of incredibly smart and talented people and then letting them work it out themselves. I like all of that very, very much."
16. "Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."
15. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
14. "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
13. "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
12. "We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make 'me, too' products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it's always the next dream."
11. "The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament."
10. "A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets."
9. "When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there."
8. "That's been one of my mantras -- focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex."
7. "We didn't build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build."
6. "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."
5. "We've never worried about numbers. In the marketplace, Apple is trying to focus the spotlight on products, because products really make a difference. ... You can't con people in this business. The products speak for themselves."
4. "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
3. "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people."
2. "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
1. "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." * not by originally by Jobs.

* Stewart Brand - The Last Whole Earth Catalog. Jobs noted Stewart Brand in his Stanford speech.

What are the Principles?

2011-10-08T03:35:00.000-05:00

The agile reboot is underway... the company says it is using "Agile" yet there is no methodology/process/framework that defines "Agile" is there. So it is not a very valid statement to say we do Agile. Agile is a philosophy - defined by 4 comparative value statements and 12 principles. So the top-dog rightly focuses the company on one well defined Agile process - Scrum. Great move for a change initiative. Focus is going to be important. Now we need to discriminate the change - what is it that we want to quit doing and what do we wish to start doing? We must label these things.

Three of the 12 principles of Agile with engineering
practices mapped to them (TDD, Pair Programming, etc).
When we tried to map our existing practices - we found
we didn't have very many disciplined practices, so this
is a mapping of a desired future state.

Typically it is easy - one applies the Waterfall label to the old and the Agile or Lean label or more specifically Scrum/XP or Kanban to the new. That has worked for me in the past very well. But what to do when it doesn't work? What to do, if the company has brainwashed itself into thinking it is practicing Agile.

I must resist the Stockholm syndrome. That culture of just get it done - is not a process - and by any definition of the word - it is not Agile.

But then perhaps in a moment of desperation they look around and ask - "what are the principles"? What is the foundational philosophy of this Scrum process? We want to know these so that we will know where we can customize this process. We want to know what we can bend, what we can circle around - how can we keep doing what our culture dictates and just install the scrum.

Agile Culture Series Reading Guide Written by: Michael Sahota

How many times does a process get broken before it is tried - before it is adopted - before any experience what-so-ever with the designed process, we say "we can't do that - we must change it" - not our selves - we change the process. We all know that it is easier to change something else than it is to change ourselves. So we search for the exceptions that will prove the case that process step 23-C will not work here - we have decided that we are so special that the Sun actually revolves around us.

Scrum designers have done a wonderful job of defining a very small list of things that must be done - if you do them - then you are doing Scrum. If you break the rules, bend the framework to suit you special case - well then do you think you will get the desired outcome?

So that first question of what are the principles may be more subversive than it appears. Because if you slip up and define a gap in the principle fabric then there will be a hole for the monsters to slip back through. Given that I'm not going to be able to articulate each principle and you will not quite understand my meaning just perfectly. Is this not a slippery slope.

So if you want to customize your process - one that has been built/designed/tested/refactored over years by experts - and you think you are qualified to state when we can just re-jigger this piece, skipping that piece, it is just a waste, never understood it anyway, so we'll just do it our way. Well I don't want any part of your bastardization.

If you want the principles - they were stated - as best we have found in the Manifesto. Don't re-invent the principles - just re-use them. Have we not learned this concept yet.

Exercise :: Mapping Engineering Principles to Agile Practices
(PDF) by David Koontz

Trusted & Motivated People - a label for
one of 12 Agile principles is well supported
by 5 practices.


Jay summing up 'User Stories' supports 7 principles

David Koontz
Pointing at the root of our principles
Agile Manifesto

Lovely space at Microsoft NERD center.
Mapping Engineering Practices to Agile Principles at
Agile Games 2011 in Cambridge.
Note circular whiteboard - awesome!

Another Exercise: The Definition of Done & Ready!

Another Info-Cooler bites the dust.

2011-10-06T17:10:00.000-05:00

Built another Scrum task board today for a team. I first described it on the whiteboard, and a bit about how it worked, how we could choose vertical story and status columns or horizontal - gave them the choice. We could start with the simplest thing that might work - 3 states (ToDo, In process, Done) and add states if needed (another choice).

The simplest thing that could possible work.
A Scrum task board (ToDo, In Process, Done).
Tasks flow down the page.

I gave my standard disclaimer - the first version was going to be designed to be thrown away - so bad that they would have to re-do it to make it better. That's a trick I've learned to sell them ownership of their board. After a few mock examples on the whiteboard they were getting restless and wanted action. They bought it. Sold!

After 6 flip charts got pasted to the wall (3 h. x 2 v.) and a bit of labels and lines - we ran some examples of what it might look like with Story stickies and Task stickies. Then we played a simulation standup for a few simulated days. The simulation worked wonderfully. They got into the make-believe and started adding to the Improv. I was switching hats - Coach... ScrumMaster... Team Member with a really bad performance record on a task. They improv-ed some situations and one or two really great question later we had a team that was going to learn Scrum the old fassion way - by doing it. No powerpoints, no death by bullet points, just good old Polish hard work and positive attitude.

I did pull out one acronym and we talked about homonyms (I'm from the south so my dialect allows me to pronounce 'pen' == 'pin' - but they are Polish and it all sounds English to them).

T - those
A - awesome
S - stickies
K - keep
S - Sliding to DONE!

That's as close to a slide as we got.

Sorry Rally/VersionOne/etc. - that's a three person team that is not going to use your Information Cooler.

Video at 11.

Queen - Another One Bites the Dust.

Scrum Task board loaded and in action.
A Polish Impediments list on the right wall.

How do we form teams?

2011-10-06T06:54:00.001-05:00

One question that is constantly coming up is this one – How do we form Scrum Teams?

Here' my opinion – and blunt answer:

It does NOT matter what team you form the first time you will get it wrong! So what matters is HOW you plan to re-form the teams. Rather than assuming you can get the correct solution – figure out a way to work toward a better solution. This is applying the concepts from Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) the great grandmother of Scrum. Almost any system with a human is going to be complex – the question is – will it be adaptive. FIRST - Plan to form your second team – how will you reform teams. Then it doesn't so much matter what the first (and obviously wrong) team is – you will have a way for that team to decide when & how to reform into a better team. So now we need some ideas about what might decided when and what might decide who and what might be a measure of good & bad and good enough the criteria by which the team decides to reform.

So I'm not going to tell a group who should be on what team. I them to realize there is not a perfect answer – but we do have principles!

What are those principles? Come on – dig deep – what principles can we draw upon to define Scrum teams?

Here' some background on this – if you want to have an informed opinion about Scrum and team formatting – this is a great place to start…
http://featureteamprimer.org/

Simulations are tools for fun.

2011-10-01T05:09:00.000-05:00

If you want to learn a new skill, create a safe simulated environment in which to practice. I feel this is a lost technique for most technologist. Perhaps it is too easy for us to just start writing some new module in a new language just because we wish to learn. We think that we will just solve the real world (work) problem at the same time. I learned of this case recently.

A developer used their work environment to learn a new skill. In this case the programmer decided to learn design patterns. So to do this he started applying every design pattern he could to the application he was working upon. Now, if you imagine this is a beginner at the technique of pattern application then you may imagine that he may have gotten a bit carried away. And that is what I've heard happened. Now the code has nice fancy patterns, some quite complex and many are used just to experiment with the pattern. This happens to be code that is sold to clients, and the over exuberant use of patterns have made the code worse, and harder to maintain. Quite the opposite of the intent of design patterns. In fact had the programmer learned his subject well, he might have found that he was applying the 'cargo cult programming' anti-pattern.

What interest me is why this happened. Why did the programmer feel the need to learn patterns. Why did he apply them to the clients code base (application) while he was learning? Why did he not have a 'safe' sandbox to learn and play within. Why did the company allow this behavior - perhaps they encouraged it?

I think many of these root cause issues come down to a human need to learn, and that learning needs to take place in the appropriate place and context. In this example case the developer had a context (the work environment and the companies application code). But, clearly, this was not an appropriate place to learn this skill set.

What would happen if the developer had a sandbox that he could apply those skills he wished to learn and they after a few experiments with design patterns he would take that new knowledge to the actual work? This is a concept used in so many other industries, yet in an industry where creating virtual worlds and models are our forte, we don't use them for our own learning. We learn on our clients new application. A common behavior pattern is to learn the next skill needed by gold platting the current application.

Why not have a simulation-lab where this type of learning may take place?

My sister-in-law is in town to do a sailing level II course (she is skipping the level I - so that she can get certified to go on a training cruise in a few months) She has never really sailed. She has studied the books, knows all the equipment names, parts of the sail boat, she can talk like a pirate. But, there is some part of sailing that is experience. Knowing which way the wind is blowing just by the pressure effects on the hairs on your body. And the spacial relationships of the sail, boat, and wind - not to mention the difference in apparent wind, true wind, apparent velocity, etc. Being expected to captain a boat for the first time can be a nerve wrecking experience. Why not simulate this experience.

My wife created a mock up sail boat, a small model. A cardboard boat and a mast with a plastic sail. A little fan provides the all important wind. Switch it on and the simulation is underway - the learning begins. Sailing - like Scrum - is an empirical game. In sailing one measures the wind and always adjust to the wind's force and direction. Everything is relative to the wind. They spend the afternoon learning to sail in the simulation of the apartment. When the model doesn't provide the proper scale for the next lesson, a bit of refactoring on the mock up leads to the swiffer mop becoming the mast and the coffee table becoming the boat. This time the model is complete with main sail and jib. Now the simulation has taken on a complex relationship and there is no risk of capsizing or running aground.

When learning becomes experiential and fun humans retain more. We don't just learn in our heads, We use the whole body to process and store information. Remember the reference to body hairs. Yes, those tiny little hairs are how we know the direction and force of the wind. We have to learn to process the signals they are sending and map that sensory information onto the model of how a sail boat converts wind into propulsion. When a person has done this a few time, even if it is in a living room, they know how to sail.

So why are we in the high-tech industry not creating simulation labs? Why don't we have a Matrix Construct, where we down load an application that needs some refactoring and a few patterns applied. This simulation would not be the clients application code. But a reusable learning environment. If we value learning, and we better, because in the 21st century the modes of wealth creation changes - it is not how much you can produce, it is how much you can learn, and apply that knowledge.

Exercise:: Definition of Done

2011-09-30T17:29:00.000-05:00

Assuming you are on a Scrum/Agile software development team, then one of the first 'working agreements' you have created with your team is a 'Definition of Done' - right?

Oh - you don't have a definition of what aspects a user story that is done will exhibit. Well then, you need to create a list of attributes of a done story. One way to do this would be to Google 'definition of done' ... here let me do that for you: http://tinyurl.com/3br9o6n. Then you could just use someone else's definition - there DONE!

But that would be cheating -- right? It is not the artifact - the list of done criteria, that is important for your team - it is the act of doing it for themselves, it is that shared understanding of having a debate over some of the gray areas that create a true working agreement. If some of the team believes that a story being done means that there can be no bugs found in the code - but some believe that there can be some minor issues - well, then you have a great point to have a team discussion. Better at the beginning of the project, rather than right before the boss says 'ship it'. If you are having this dialogue (more than a debate/discussion - everyone is explaining their assumptions and exposing their values underlying their position in dialogue) then your team has entered the 2nd stage of team formation (Forming, Storming, Norming, Preforming) - congratulations! Now there is the second reason to create a definition of done - it moves the team along the continuum of strangers to team-mates.

One team's Definition of Done.
Note the items on the border between
Now and Next - tacit information.

So rather than using someone else's list you want to create your own. Yes, sometimes you need a little water to prime the pump. Or you could get the energy flowing in the meeting with an exercise to get people out of their seats (you increase blood flow to the brain by 20% just by standing up) at the white board and interacting with each other. Try drawing a target (very large) - 3 concentric circles (or rectangles) on the board, label the inner most 'Now', the outer 'Later' and the middle 'Next'. That is a form of prioritization (now - > next - > later) that you want your team to become very familiar with (we use it in backlog ordering - right?). Then place stickies or index cards on the table and have someone write just one aspect of the definition of done on a card/sticky, then place it on the board in the proper location. Take turns, the next person may either - move the card to a 'better' location (now, next, later) or create a new card and post it. Play continues until we exhaust the fun in the game, or get good enough. You might want to dialogue on the aspect of growing your definition of done over time. One could easily imagine that done means something different in sprint one than it does for sprint 73 after four releases and lots of customer feedback, now that you have continuous deployment working.

If you want some cheater index cards then use mine - they are no better than anyone else's answer to a team question, but these might get a reluctant team up and interacting in the game of collaboration.

  Definition of Done Exercise.pdf
  Definition of Ready Exercise.pdf
  Facilitator's Guide to Exercises.pdf
    by David Koontz

Not obvious in the example above is that the team used the items in the Next category to affinity group them by type, this was a spontaneous behavior of one of the team members. It was a natural thing to do with visible information - it organized the display - and then we dot-voted to decide which items were the most important to work toward moving into the Now category of the Definition of Done. Those items were then moved to the top area and circled to draw attention to them. Then they worked on their understanding of the Definition of Ready - what do they believe the story must have to be ready for sprint planning.

Comparing these two charts - what would you say about this team's ability to plan? What team member needs help?

See Also:

What is the Definition of Done in Agile? - by Dhaval Panchal

What are the Principles?
What do we do to truly support those 12 Agile Principles? We mapped our engineering practices to see if we were Agile.

Shared Scrum Immersion Workshop - Increased Feedback

2011-08-28T15:45:00.000-05:00

Sharing is a FUN way to learn! And play is the context for the brains most creative moments of learning.

Reading "Gamestorming" (book by Gray, Brown, Macanufo) this morning and reflecting on last weeks sharing of techniques and ideas of a Scrum immersion workshop with my colleagues. We had great conversations on various topics in launching teams on Scrum sprints. One important piece of the week for me was to iterate on exercises in real time, with people that could both play a game and then "go meta" and discuss the game from a game design aspect.

The workshop's Meta-Backlog, a list of topics to cover, both to learn Scrum and to do work preparing the team to sprint (photosynth panorama of meta-backlog).

Here's a Photosynth panorama (it's a flat whiteboard mapped to 360 degrees) of the Team's Work Product wall.

<br><br><br>The

There were many opportunities to learn and iterate on exercises. One great moment was in debriefing the exercise to 'Map Engineering Practices to the Agile Principles' the group had created a new dimension to the map. When a practice did not directly influence a principle but had an indirect supporting relationship the practice was placed below the principle's 8 1/2 x 11 paper. Later after 5 - 10 minutes of discussion and mock-ups we had iterated from a target graphic to multiple papers per principle. (I'll make pictures to illustrate this & the technique of immediate feedback of game design).

Interactive Whiteboard remote via iPad

2011-08-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

One hot topic in education circles this fall is using the iPad as an interactive whiteboard.

Oh - the days of teacher's pets getting to clean the blackboard erasers are long gone.

An interactive electronic whiteboard is a very expensive piece of equipment. But with modern hardware we have seen the price point drop dramatically. With a bit of hacking and mash-up skills the do-it-yourselfer can create a comparable system for $30 - $100.

Perhaps one of the first mash-ups was Johnny Chung Lee's Wii Remote Whiteboard software.

Now the iPad has gotten into the mash-up game. Using various software tools one can share a Mac/PC whiteboard program and then use the iPad as a second visual screen that is remote and a user input device. The portability of the iPad lends itself to the classroom where the students may interact with the projected (or large screen) image in real time.

With iOS 5 coming this fall, Apple will update Air Play, allowing any iPad display to be shared with another display (via Air Play & Apple TV).

For one case study see "iPad as an Interactive White Board for $5 or $10" by Wesley Fryer.
Or see iPads in Education web site.

Some of the related tools are: Air Display, Doceri, eNote Taker, Ink2Go, ShowMe, ScreenChomp, Splashtop, Replay Note

Best T-shirt at Agile 2011

2011-08-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

I enjoy the T-shirts that are seen at the conference, but when one requires you to interact, pick up a sharpie and write on the board - well that just takes the prize.

The SolutionsIQ Agile 2011 T-shirt. The back is a white board.

This is my coaching groups idea of "Scrum is..."

We did this as a group activity at the brew pub, so perhaps they are not the deepest thoughts on the topic.

A past winner of the best T-shirt award (Agile 2007).

Still Learning from Experiences at Agile 2011

2011-08-13T14:22:00.000-05:00

WOW - what a fun week at Agile 2011 (Salt Lake City, Aug. 8 - 12).

In the sudo-pattern language of "Language Hunting" I'm full!

When I got home, and after sleeping for 15 hours, I pulled out one of my favorite gifts from the conference - a TDD glass from James Grenning. Poured some milk into it for breakfast and got this surprising response.

8 reasons to buy an iPad for your team room.

2011-08-06T23:09:00.000-05:00

Will you buy an iPad? That was the question in March 2010. Here is the answer - iPad sales over 14 months.

8 reasons to buy an iPad for your team room.

Easy to carry to meeting (compared to laptop and power supply).
Makes a person look smart compared to the person with the laptop, power supply, wired mouse, wired web cam that needs to get up and walk around the conference table to get a close-up shot of the white board.
Apps that are designed to work instantly and quickly give the information you need without minutes of drill-down menu clicking and searching.
Instant on (compared to opening a laptop that has its lid shut - because shutting the lid is a sign that you are present and paying attention to the meeting).
Early adopters have acted - now you can hop on the bandwagon.
Smiles on team members face's is a sign of a performing team.
Have a need - there is an App for that, 65000 of them.
Facetime - video calls that just work. And with iOS5 sync to the big screen in a team room with a few touches (AirPlay -> Apple TV).

Here's a developer preview iOS 5 running on the iPad and Apple TV to do just that - share what ever is on the iPad with the TV big screen. This could include the FaceTime call with the remote team.

by CNETTV on Aug 4, 2011

Want to connect remote Agile teams? I suggest you buy an iPad 2 for each team location. Use it as the video conference system - cost $1000 (2 wifi iPads). Benefit - instant easy access to the members of the other team via a shared video conference system that is portable, easy to setup, easy to use, gives high quality images. And does more than just video - it becomes a communication tool.

I mentioned this to a colleague and he suggested that if one could link the FaceTime video on the iPad 2 with Apple TV via the AirPlay protocol then one would have an awesome video conference tool. Imagine the easy of use with two remote locations using iPads with FaceTime chatting and the ability to put the remote video on the big screen (Apple TV large screen TV or projector).

Last year Apple had not enabled this video sharing over AirPlay... yet. But I've asked for it. And now with iOS 5, Apple is delivering. That is innovation.

Related Links:

Bashing the iPad - but will you purchase? Jan 2010

The Macalope Weekly: Say, this iPad thing may really take off

What competes with an iPad?

What replaces co-location in Agile?

Agile tools for your iPhone/iPad

Long Distance Communication Timeline it ends at FaceTime

The geekiest CAPTCHA ever

2011-07-30T10:08:00.000-05:00

I ran across the geekiest CAPTCHA on Adafruit Industrials blog. Thought I'd share.

CAPTCHA an acronym: Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. A good article on the invention in 2000 of some of the fist.

For me, just seeing a resistor brings back a rhyme from 9th grade electronic class that runs in my head uncontrollably.

Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly

A mnemonic for the resistor color code that matches the first letter of the color code, by order of increasing magnitude.

How to launch a corporate Agile library

2011-07-25T21:52:00.000-05:00

One simple initiative each Agile Transformation can make is to create a book lending library focused on Agile processes, organizational change, learning organizations, best engineering practices in software development and other topics. Since this topic of "what books would you recommend" comes up quite a lot, perhaps it is time for me to join the ranks of hundreds of people making their top 10 Agile books list.

Top 100 Agile Books (Edition 2011) by Jurgen Appelo

But no that's not what this post will be. It is something much more useful. Instructions on creating your very own lending library.

Get funding - about $1000 for the first quarter.
Find a book shelf and a reading room with comfortable chairs.
Purchase 3 copies of each book on the short list - these books are the seed stock.
Make a company logo sticker for the back of each book and inside cover.
Make signs and hall way posters to advertise your new library.
Make a book list to hang on the wall, listing all titles, authors, and number of copies.
Upon arrival of a majority of your new (used) books - sticker the spines and inside cover and place them on the shelf.
Open the library - send email, put up posters, invite people to read your books.
In one month look at the shelf - compare it to the book list - purchase more of the books that are missing from the shelf (celebrate - they are being used).
In month number two - send out a reminder email, and posters in the hall to return the book after they are read - give someone else a chance to enjoy such wonderful knowledge that has just been collecting dust on your night stand.
In month three, work up a new list and purchase more books.
Repeat until the whole organization knows everything.

I am constantly amazed at the looks I get from managers that can't image a lending library without a complicate check-out procedure to insure we get the books back. I remind them that these are our trusted employees. The ones with the keys to the client's kingdoms. The same employees that could launch Thermonuclear War with just a key stroke. So maybe we can trust them to return the books. And hey, if they forget, then it cost us a few dollars to educate them in some new technique. Compare that cost to sending them to a training session that they are planning to take their phone and TXT with their BFF the whole time.

Some further recommendation:

purchase used book - many great books have been in print for a while
don't worry about returns - consider it a bonus plan for employees that can read
add a wish-list to your book shelf
add a donation can to the shelf - to defray the cost of forgetful patrons
add a list of YouTube video links, and other resources on paper
add a general reading shelf - give-one & take-one shelf
don't forget the differenator between the library and the book store - comfortable sitting & coffee

Here's a short list of Agile books to add to the library.

Methodologies and Principles

Agile Software Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
Agile Project Management Creating Innovative Products by Jim Highsmith
Succeeding with Agile: Software Development Using Scrum by Mike Cohn
Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck.
Agile Project Management with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber.
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers by Mary Poppendieck and Tom Poppendieck
Kanban by David Anderson
Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson

Development Practices

Refactoring by Martin Fowler
Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck.
Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka
Managing Software Debt by Chris Sterling
Pair Programming Illuminated by Laurie Williams
Agile Retrospectives Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

Management and Other Practices

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni
The Mythical Man-Month, by Fred Brooks – 20th anniversary 2nd edition
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Demarco and Lister
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Fisher, Ury and Patton
The Leadership Challenge, Koures and Posner
Good to Great, Jim Collins
Innovation Games - Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play by Luke Hohmann

Camera lens are getting cheeper

2011-07-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

I have always wanted a Canon Pro Lens, one of those white and black lens that sets the serious photographer apart from the amateur. A few years ago I rented one for an Alaska cruise we did. Hoping to get images of big horn sheep or bear - something one typically needs a long lens to capture.

In actual practice the people with the regular lens got as good of images as I did with the super fast long lens. Why - because they could find the target faster with the wider angle. When I started thinking about this, it made me question the need for a 35 mm camera. Would a typical point and shoot give me just as good vacation photos for the scrap book or slide show?

I tested this primise out on a European vacation. I carried the pocket sized point and shoot Canon Power Shot SD1100 IS (8 Mpix with image stabilization). While my wife carried a Canon 20D (35mm with various lens). We shot many of the same scenes and typical tourist images, and while it is possible to see differences in the images upon inspection. All the finner details are lost when the image ends up in a iMovie slide show and the Ken Burns effect pans across the image in 4 seconds, then transitions to the next slide. However the different camera solutions are telling in the candid photos sitting around the table in a cafe, or standing around a town square of the images of "Man on a Horse" or "Pigeon on a Statue". The small form factor of the pocket camera makes for easier capturing of these images and situations. This is a large advantage for this solution.

Imagine the advantage of an ubiquitous camera solution by putting the camera in a cell phone (the iPhone rocks this solution) and the days of the amateur with a 35mm and a pro lens are all but gone. There is no need for that pro lens unless you get paid for images. I don't get paid for images. So in fulfilling my childish needs - I bought a Canon Pro Lens coffee mug.

iPhone image of a fleeting moment at sunset, no time to run get the big camera.

Now I can look like the serious photographer, drink my coffee and pull out my iPhone for that candid shot without any scene prep time required. I'll be able to get rid of this expensive setup.

No test - inconceivable. Not Technical Debt.

2011-07-24T08:05:00.000-05:00

Technical Debt

The software term "technical debt" is getting a lot of play on the air waves. But I do not think we are using it the way Ward was when he invented the term (a metaphor) to explain to his buisiness team why creating software fast to get feedback was a good thing. But that they had to be willing and able to sustain a pace of repayment on the debt of doing just good enough design to get product feedback. Their form of repayment was constant refactoring. Always keeping the software model moving toward the best possible business model, which modeled the real world. Using many XP practices to enable the repayment plan of the debt they were consciously assuming.

In this vain, technical debt does not cover the process of writing bad code, of poor design, of skipping steps (such as testing). Those behaviors would be considered to be incompetent design and implementation. That behavior results not in debt at all but a breach of the inherent contract between development team and the business. The warranty of merchantability.

The warranty of merchantability is implied, unless expressly disclaimed by name, or the sale is identified with the phrase "as is" or "with all faults." To be "merchantable", the goods must reasonably conform to an ordinary buyer's expectations, i.e., they are what they say they are. For example, a fruit that looks and smells g.ood but has hidden defects would violate the implied warranty of merchantability if its quality does not meet the standards for such fruit "as passes ordinarily in the trade".

This industry (software development) is deceiving its customers and pass off bad products as if they just have a little bit of debt to be repaid. As if the product was a 3 year old car with a 5 year loan. One purchases the car and the debt. But I suggest that is not the same thing as purchasing software the has been created in such a poor fashion as to have no unit test, or no acceptance test. Little if any way to become the application it appears to be. A car on the outside but with a faulty electrical system, blown engine, and bad transmission, but really good tires and paint.

A case in point - a team wishes to upgrade the compiler that produces their application. They have little to no tests for the application - it just works. They then ask for a test group to provide the effort required to prove that the compiler upgrade doesn't cause any bugs. I do not think one can pass off the warranty of merchantability to the test team and expect good things to come from this - pass the hot potato behavior. This is not technical debt - it is incompetency - it is inconceivable.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
-- Inigo Montoya

Ward Cunningham on the creation of the "Technical Debt" metaphor.

I think we keep using the phrase technical debt - but it doesn't mean what we think it means. Technical debt means a conscious decision to defer up-front design and research in the product development, in order to get to market with a model that is capable of becoming the the desired solution, and capable of eliciting the customer feedback that we desire, which proves that the product is evolving in the proper direction. And provide return on investment earlier.

See Also:

A Technical Debit - Collateralized Debt Obligation you should not invest in

Thinking about company culture

2011-06-25T11:38:00.001-05:00

What does a company culture (wikipedia's definition) tell you about their Agility?

When I think of culture and models to describe these very complex human dynamics I think of the song "Hair Styles and Attitudes" by Timbuk 3. In this song they sing of how scientist have categorized our attitudes into 3 basic types (a model of attitudes). This is the Three Stooges model of attitude. I liked this model so much that I created a slide show of my company's people as a prelude to a project retrospective. This project was having a clash with the client culture. The project ended, but I'd have to say it didn't end pretty.

Slide show of Hair Styles and Attitudes at SIQ

Now that quite a bit of time has passed I wonder if I knew then, what I know now, about Agile transformation, organizational leadership, company culture, etc. if the project could have gone in a different direction. There was definitely a clash. A clash between the client's "control" attitude and the teams collaboration attitude. The team at SIQ was given lots of freedom to solve the technical problems in our project vision. Freedom to analyze the clients problems and to propose a solution, we assumed. We formed a team around some core individuals that were very capable, we hired into that team wonderful people. We were also engaged with helping the client transition their in-house team (at their headquarters, in a different city) to Scrum, training and coaching them in the art of product ownership, evolutionary design and development of a product in an Agile way. What we didn't effectively deal with was the cultural clash. And ignoring the flare-ups of conflicts did not make them dissipate. We assumed that when we delivered our "obviously superior" solution, that the working software would win them over. It did not win-win.

Would Lysaa Adkin's coaching on conflicts on and within an agile team have saved the contract? Boy, I wish we would have tried it.

Navigating Conflict on Agile Teams: Why Resolving it Won't Work

References:

One of the best blogs on this topic is Michael Sahota's Agile Culture Series Reading Guide.
Michael uses the Schneider Culture Model to describe efforts to transition a culture.

This is a reading guide to the series that explores corporate culture and how that has a direct impact (sometimes very negative) on efforts towards Agile adoption. It is a must-read for anyone that is considering taking their company agile or for coaches and consultants whose trade is based on Agile. The role of Kanban is quite distinct and is discussed throughout.

“That’s the Way We Do Things Around Here”: An Overview of Organizational Culture by M. Jason Martin

The Reengineering Alternative: A plan for making your current culture work by William Schneider.

How we do things around here in order to succeed. Agile 2010 conference session by Israel Gat.

Be or Be Not; there is no Do in Agile

2011-06-24T12:21:00.000-05:00

Why do we practice this thing we call Agile? Is it for the results it provides?

I've been working with companies and people that use the "A" word in many different ways. Sometime the word is used as if it were a method of working. "We are doing Agile on this project, but the team has 34% story carry over each iteration." Sometimes it is used as a bludgeon to beat someone not behaving as one would like them to behave. "I'd like you to work on this severity one bug, it just came in and the customer while not really blocked is considering a purchase of our SuperWidget and if you just sneak this in today they will be really happy. Sorry, talk to the PO we have sprint commitments. Well, that's not very Agile!" While at other times it is a promised land, a utopia of project management where we all live in harmony. Many times it is used as a technique to achieve some other purpose, a differentiator that will achieve some other objective. Objectives such as speed to market, doubling revenue in five years, raising quality while lowering cost, there are many other business objectives for "installing the agile".

I am not surprise when department managers say their groups are doing Agile. I typically bit my tongue and run through this test in my head.

Show me your teams interacting with each other, the customers, and product owner more than they are working with the tools, process, etc. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Great you must have working software, show me your last iteration demo on the staging server, now. Working software over comprehensive documentation
Which one of these people is the customer? Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
What feed back did the customer give in the last month or two that cause you to deliver higher value than initially planned? Responding to change over following a plan

Is there a way to do these things? No. There are thousands of ways to do these things.

Those things are the definition of Agile. Agile is not a method, it is a way of being. It is a synergy of many things we do, and many things we do not do. It is in the decision we make and it is mostly in the underlying reasons - why - we make those decisions.

One could do Scrum or XP, those are processes (or frameworks or techniques) - but one cannot do Agile. However, one could be Agile. Agility is a path, either you are on it, or off it - there is no Agile destination.

Yoda teaching young Skywalker "Do or do not, there is no try."

But why should one attempt to be Agile? Answering this question is getting to the core purpose. It is not about all the outcomes that might result in a group or organization being Agile. If being Agile is the goal, then we are surely going to disappoint someone. Perhaps ourselves, perhaps our customers. Customers don't want us to responded to their change request - they want products that met their discovered needs (true needs) with the ability to sustain the continual deliver of meeting their needs in the future.

Simon Sinek TED Talk: How great leaders inspire action

I think we must be Agile for our selves. Then align our values of being Agile within the context of the purpose of the organization we choose to work with. If this alignment is too difficult, the friction too high, options exist. Explore those options.

Scrum cartoons and fictional stories - a list.

2011-06-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

If you enjoy the classic pig and chicken joke that Ken likes to tell, then you will enjoy the Implementing Scrum Cartoons.

There must be 100 of them, so if you want to illustrate a Scrum dysfunction, there is probably a cartoon for you.

If your cartoon taste are a bit retro - try Scrum Noir.

Be sure to start at the first season's episode 1 "A Silo to Hell" (in the Archives) where Ace (the Agile Coach) is hired to help a Scrum Master whip a team of independent developers into delivering on time.

[Disclaimer - I worked with most of those actors in Scrum Noir, in a steamy city that knows how to keep it's secretes.]

Or try Enabling Agility's Comics.

I'm sure there are other's out there - let me know - tweet me a link @davidakoontz I'd like to add them to the list.

Here's a cartoon about the 10:00 AM Scrum on the Enterprise.

I should have patented the design

2011-06-20T10:34:00.000-05:00

MacWorld just ran an article with this new iPad telephoto lens adapter.

The Super Gear Telescope 6x Zoom For Apple iPad 2.

I knew I should have patented my earlier design.

I’ve been taking all my pictures with this new lens and camera combination for the iPhone. The image quality is great from edge to edge and the telephoto zoom allows image reach from Illahee, WA to Ketchikan, AK.

iDuct Systems EF mounting hardware

The Canon 100 - 400 F IS zoom lens is mounted to the iPhone with iDuct Systems custom hardware ($8.97 at Ace Hardware).

Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS

L-series super telephoto zoom lens equipped with an Image Stabilizer. The fluorite and Super UD-glass elements largely eliminate secondary spectrum. The floating system also ensures high picture quality at all focal lengths. The Image Stabilizer has two modes and it is compatible with Extenders 1.4x II and 2x II.

Update: You could pay $250 for an expensive solution.

The iPhone 4 SLR Mount at the Photojojo Store!

What Agile tools are you using? 13 tools to use.

2011-06-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

There are all levels of software development tools. From project management tools to source control tools, and all manner of in-between tools. Many new teams starting out want a quick list of the tools they should use. This is a cheat. They want a quick fix to their existing problems. Here's a clue - it is hard work that fixes your problems. No tool is going to solve your underlying problem.

Chances are that your problem is not technical at all. Changes are that your problem is a human caused problem. You are not working together, not collaborating. Adding a tool will just mask the root cause. But most management will purchase such a tool if it has some good smoke and mirrow hand wavy justification.

My first recommendation is to use your brain. Then use your hands. Make your problems visible. Draw them on a white board, or a flip chart or an A3 sheet of paper (11x17 for you Americans). Yes use your spreadsheet to track trends and make graphs, but when the canned graphic routine doesn't draw trend lines, print it and use a pencil.

Because you click to see a list of tools here's a small list of tools you may find useful. Please help me add to the list - use the comment field below.

Innovation Games - the book and the online site has 12+ games to create delighted customers via games that get work done. Instant Play Games

Many teams use Dot Voting as a means of reaching consensus. Try the online site DotVoting.org to pre-arrange a vote and run a round of consensus making via a distribute online tool.

The artistic person will wish to summarize a feature and one way to do that is to make a word cloud of the requirements document. Try Wordle an online word cloud tool. Or try Tagxedo - allows uploading shape files.

"You never develop code without version control, why do you develop your database without it?" The tag line for LiquidBase a database version control tool.

Need a distributed team to work with story cards and a cork board for visualizing the relative effort of each story - try CardMeeting.com.

A similar tool used to create a story map is CardMapping site, see the usage of mapping stories article.

Basecamp is a project management system desing for online collaboration. It is integrated with 37Signals other online suite of tools.

Many Agile team's use timeboxes - for this one needs a timer: e.ggtimer.com/ is one option as well as Timer-Tab.com.

When distributed team's wish to know if the team members in the USA are awake - try What Time is it There?

A classic white board diagramming and collaboration tool: Cacoo.

Want to see if your documentation is truly readable (understandable) - try this site: Tests Document Readability.

Agile Games 2011 - Best Conference ... yet ...

2011-06-19T11:23:00.000-05:00

A great conference! Watch the video and count the number of times that you see interaction and collaboration versus the number of times you see traditional telling method of knowledge transfer. If you happen to see a gorilla then you may be watching the wrong video.

Agile Games 2011

Agile Games Conference 2011 Promo from Lollie Videography on Vimeo.

This was in Cambridge, MA April, 14 - 16, 2011.

Be sure to save April 19th - 21st, 2012 for next year's Agile Games conference.

Great idea - great execution - but don't patent - think public domain.

2011-06-18T12:46:00.000-05:00

Here is a great heart warming story. A group of Girl Scouts invent a prosthetic hand. The device cost about $10 to make. And somewhere in the process they are encouraged to patent the invention. Why not donate the invention to the public domain?

Should the Girl Scout leaders have encouraged the group to look beyond the typical process of patent. Think about the values of the Girl Scouts.

The Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be:
honest and fair,
friendly and helpful,
considerate and caring,
courageous and strong, and
responsible for what I say and do,

and to
respect myself and others,
respect authority,
use resources wisely,
make the world a better place, and
be a sister to every Girl Scout.

Imagine if "The Man Who Saved the Children", Virologist, JONAS SALK had patented his invention. The polio vaccine.

We have the best tools - why do we not use them?

2011-06-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

See Also: 13 Agile Tools to Use.

I was observing a Scrum daily stand-up for a new team the other day - here is one observation I had. At the end of the stand-up the Scrum Master asked the team who was going to update the burndown chart today. One team member stepped forward and started adding up task estimates (in his head) and then drew the bar on the chart (paper on the wall) representing the daily estimated work remaining on this sprint. We talked briefly about the shape of the graph (classic downhill ski jump shape) and last sprints graph (similar shape) and what that implied. There was no big discussion about if the data was truly represented in the information - because they all understood the derivation of the chart information, they had created the information (the chart).

This is a great break through for this team - because of the status quo in the organization. It is not until you know 'The rest of the story' that the new behaviors become so awesome in my view.

... the rest of the story
The organization is heavily reliant on using a big name tool for tracking the agile teams and creating charts. Yes, this well known tool is on many list of agile tool sets (another list of agile tools). Yet, it is not well liked by the people. There are questions as to weather it is just plan wrong in the information it is creating (burndown charts). Or if the tool is being used inappropriately (problem exist between keyboard and chair - PEBKAC). These charts are not trusted by the teams and thought leaders at the organization. The agile coaches have even created an excel spreadsheet and manually extract data from the agile management tool to plug into the spreadsheet thereby creating better charts and graphs.

"The Sprint Burndown Chart is a valuable tool for team self-management. Excessive management attention to team self-management artifacts will lead to finger-pointing and “looking good for the boss,” impeding the candid interaction among team members necessary for hyper-productivity."
-- Michael James, An Agile Approach to Measurements

Since the teams and leaders do not trust the tool, and have created another layer of tool abstraction, the teams do not really feel responsible for the information being presented. It is just some numbers (a lot of numbers) in a spreadsheet that someone created, that is telling us something, but what do we do about it? "I don't know what to do, I'm sure they will tell us."

In my opinion, the problem's root cause is that the team has been dis-empowered by removing them from the responsibility of managing them selves. It is their responsibility to decide if they are going to get to Done on the sprint. It is not the responsibility of some tool to report to someone else this information. And then result in that someone else directing the team in how to correct the inadequate burndown rate.

This team has accepted their responsibility. They own the task of tracking. They have modified the tracking tool they are using to give them better information (note graph paper above, and plan paper last sprint) over time (inspect & adapt - learning). Now that they have a deep understanding of the information, they may be able to draw conclusions that lead to changes in behaviors that improve the shape of their graphs, and allow them to project if the sprint will get to done early and with confidence.

If there is no confidence in the information - wouldn't that mean the use of the tool to produce the information is WASTE. Oh - that Lean thinking will get me in so much trouble - or - perhaps the status quo will change.

See Also: A Burndown chart that radiates progress

Agile: organization, movement, or philosophy?

2011-06-16T21:00:00.000-05:00

I referred to Agile today as a philosophy in a conversation with other Agile coaches. I got a little push back. So it made me think - is that the right word for the thing that has resulted from the Agile Manifesto?

No. I may want it to be a philosophy, and it may be my personal philosophy. But it is not a philosophy that is recognized by the general population. Nor even a philosophy as recognized by the IT industry nor software developers.

It is a movement. Or is it a method of working? I'm not sure - what's the difference? I believe that Scrum is a method of working, while I believe that Agile is greater than just being Scrum-y, or turning all the dials to 11 (XP).

However, if Agile were to marry Lean, then I think the union would have a great shot at becoming a philosophy.

So in my philosophy I try to marry the two movements and I think it makes for a philosophy. One that has the capability to evolve via Double Loop Learning. A philosophy should be capable of challenging it's own truth and modifying the goal to know the truth. So in the manifesto the goal is to develop working software, along with all the necessary stuff like teams, and server farms required to deliver the software. But is that the truth? Is that the value stream result? No.

The ultimate goal of working software is to delight customers. It is delighted customers that purchase the software. Software has no real value until a customer chooses to purchase it or the device the software is embedded within. Like the DVD player that really needs a better UX (no delighted customer here - no recommendation for that DVD player to my twitter friends). A case in point is the eco-system that Apple has created with the iOS devices and the App Store. Billions of dollars have not changed hands because of lists of acceptance criteria that have been met for thousands of feature sets. Oh-no, it is because delighted customers have raved at the local watering hole that this app is awesome.

So if your company is looking to Agile to increase speed to market, or to double revenue in 5 years, or to increase quality while decreasing cost - then you are missing the movement. And you will not make your transformation to Agile stick.

To make that Agile Transformation stick into the DNA of your organization you will have to promote the movement to a philosophy within your organization. Then and only then will the movement (transformation) become capable of surviving the inevitable change of leadership and staff that will snuff out a movement.

My quest is to find the techniques that transform a movement into a philosophy. But I need help.

Organization vs. movement vs. philosophy by Seth Godin

An organization uses structure and resources and power to make things happen. Organizations hire people, issue policies, buy things, erect buildings, earn market share and get things done. Your company is probably an organization.
A movement has an emotional heart. A movement might use an organization, but it can replace systems and people if they disappear. Movements are more likely to cause widespread change, and they require leaders, not managers. The internet, it turns out, is a movement, and every time someone tries to own it, they fail.
A philosophy can survive things that might wipe out a movement and that would decimate an organization. A philosophy can skip a generation or two. It is often interpreted, and is more likely to break into autonomous groups, to morph and split and then reunite. Industrialism was a philosophy.
The trouble kicks in when you think you have one and you actually have the other.

Humans resist changes - empirical evidence shows

2011-06-16T08:09:00.000-05:00


Key frequency infographic

The ability of humans to make a change is very limited. Even when we know the change is going to be for the best. Even when we know the current method of working is based on a flawed understanding of our needs. We resist changes.

A case in point. The common keyboard. It is laid out in a some what random pattern of letters. Yes it looks like your grandfather's keyboard, so you instantly recognize it. But ask a 7 year old to describe the keyboard and you will see that there is no obvious logic to it's design. You of course know that the design was purposeful. It was a configuration that put the most used letters/keys away from the powerful fingers, this was to slow down the best typist. During the days of the early type writers the keys would jam.
I recently watch a young lady switch the Wii keyboard from QWERTY to a 9-digit telephone keypad, because it was easier. At least the letters are in a predictable pattern (ABC1, DEF2, etc.).

Innovation in the typewriter took quite a while. IBM introduced the Selectric ball in 1961. This among many other innovations removed the need to slow down the typist to reduce key-jamming, however few people changed to the better designed Dvorak keyboard layout (patented in 1936).

Perhaps it is the patent that prevents its adoption. I keep asking - why does Apple not give the Dvorak keyboard option to the iOS devices. With their innovation in keyboards (touch screen) the layout is all software, no hardware cost to switching the keyboard layout.

Yet we still teach and use the inferior QWERTY keyboard. We resist changing to a new system even when it would make our lives easier, more efficient. I think the keyboard will die a slow - very slow death. As computer become auditory and visual input devices. But the new touch screens - a tactical input device will still be around for quite some time.

The rate of change that a complex system can sustain is one of the factors in its ability to survive. We now live in an epoch where change is exponential. Humans better learn to keep up.

Epochs in the big picture

2011-06-15T21:22:00.000-05:00

If you haven't thought about the universe today - now would be a good time. It may be the only time you really have. However we tend to measure things, we humans tend to only think in terms of our personal scale. We measure our lives in birthdays (an unassuming point where a crowded planet completes an almost circular orbit about a yellow star). But what are the true delineating points in the history of the universe?

One would most certainly have to be the Big Bang! I mean - come-on, the point at which nothingness turns into somethingness - that's the start of something. But measuring from that point 13.7 billion years ago, what's the next important event?

13.7 billion years ago: Big Bang!
Just 380,000 years later the atoms of Hyrdogen & Helium start to form.
Just 200 million years later stars begin to form.

These are just the first 3 Thresholds of Increasing Complexity (David Christian, Big History Project). They have happened at the very beginning of time. Rather quickly on a time line linear scale. Then for quite a long time 9 - 10 billion years nothing quite so miraculous happened on the complexity increasing threshold event time line. Until the formation of planets (4.7 billion years ago). Not long after planets we get Life on Earth (3.8 Billion years ago). Things are starting to get more interesting.

Interesting things happen at the ends of time.

If we zoom up to the right end of the time line we start to see that complexity increases rather quickly at this end of the scale. Much like it did at the other end of the time line. It is the middle that is rather uneventful.

The last 3 thresholds have happened in just the last 100,000 years. Thresholds 6 collective learning, then 7 agriculture, then 8 the modern revolution have just happened. To compare humans scale to the Epoch scale use the term Stone Age. We tend to think the Stone Age was a long time ago (2.5 million years). The Stone Age is the first of the minor epochs used in archaeology, which divides human history into three periods. It is just a small fraction of time.

The Anthropocene has just started. A good point in time for that era is when humans started using stored sun energy (oil) to change the environment. The trend is ever increasing complexity. While the 2nd law of thermodynamics tells us that the system (universe) should tend toward chaos (higher entropy). What is threshold 9? It should happen any moment now. Could it be the Ray Kurzweil Singularity event? The merging of human consciousness with silicon machines.

A Burndown chart that radiates progress

2011-06-10T11:13:00.000-05:00

Here is a visual example of a team learning the value of a Scrum Sprint Burndown chart. To give some context to the images below - the team did a 3 day workshop on Scrum between sprint 1 & sprint 2. In this workshop we laid down some working agreements, one of which was they would use a physical Scrum task board with several major items. One item was the burndown chart derived from task hours estimated remaining each day. This team knew they were under committed for the sprint but wished to get started sprinting (a good choice rather than spend more time in sprint planning with so much uncertainty). They felt they could get to working on about 5 high priority stories and plan to replan (pull into the sprint more stories) later in the week. They assumed that learning about the uncertainty was better than crystal ball gazing.

The team started with 64 units (estimated task hours) of work. On the fourth day they decided to bring in more stories with estimated 24 units of work. Then on the fifth day they agreed to pull in an additional 34 units of work. This is their original burndown for the sprint.

What does this burndown tell us? It tells us that the team is not going to finish the sprint. It is only when one stops to read the fine print (the annotations) that one may gleam that there is more to the picture than is being visualized. Asking the team what they could do to make this chart "tell the whole truth", they decided to redraw the burndown.

Now this 2nd generation chart is telling a more complete story. It shows that on day four the team recognized it was finishing the committed work very early (as assumed - and then proven by tracking). So they pulled in some work on that day from the prioritized backlog. They were dealing with stories that had dependencies (not quite at the INVEST model standard - yet). But by doing work on the dependent stories the understanding of the team was growing. They pulled in 24 units of work (drawn below the zero datum on day 4). The very next day the team was in a similar position and pulled in an additional 34 units of work (units were derived from task estimates - not story points). The additional 34 units are drawn below the 24 datum line (at -58).

Will we get to DONE?

On day 8 the very quick progress slowed. This was not evident in the low fidelity charts and some team members were debating about the proper location of the top of day 8s bar on the graph. The solution to this "impediment" is to use graph paper. This allows for a more precise view and projection. Projecting the trend is the purpose of the burndown chart. We want to answer the question: Will we get to DONE?

At sprint 2 - I am much less concerned with the team getting all the work pulled in to the sprint Done, and much more concerned that they learn to use the tools and techniques that allow them to become self-managing. Next sprint they will have a better idea of the amount of work they can accomplish in a sprint (velocity). And if they have taken time to groom their backlog this sprint, next sprint's planning meeting will go much more smoothly. They may be able to fully plan the sprint and not need to pull in stories ad-hoc.

It is all part of learning to use the Scrum tools and techniques. Learning is exciting!

See Also: We have the best tools - why do we not use them?

One on One Coaching tool for iPhone

2011-06-07T06:31:00.000-05:00

How much do you coach someone via simple one-on-one conversation? Is that conversation an active listening conversation? Is there an App for that?

Why yes, there is the Talk-o-Meter.

Imagine if we had one of these Apps for pair-programming. It would be a Type-o-Meter. Hooked into the pair programming work station to measure the key strokes of each of the two keyboards. Hey, that sounds like a great idea.

I'm a Single Track guy

2011-06-04T12:34:00.000-05:00

Do you believe you are more productive because you think you can multitask? Studies show you are wrong. Why do we believe we can; why do we think we are super-special and have powers above the average? Answer: (pay attention) cognitive bias - attentional bias.

Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows

"People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found."

I think I will lower my personal kanban work-in-process limit to ONE. There really is only one (Highlander - then there was the sequel).

Just last week, coaching a new team with their Scrum task board we had a conversation on the number of tasks a person could be working on at one time. The reason given for the four tasks in process on the big visible scrum task board was that getting up from their desk to select the next task sticky was a nuisance. The tasks were estimated at 1 - 3 hours each, and two tasks were still in process the next day. Changing peoples perceptions of efficiency is a slow process of exposing incorrect mental models that are reinforced by cognitive bias.

Hello, wake up people, do not try to be a computer. That day will come, as we approach the Singularity, when humans transcend biology.

In Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations.

That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will. In practical terms, human aging and illness will be reversed; pollution will be stopped; world hunger and poverty will be solved. Nanotechnology will make it possible to create virtually any physical product using inexpensive information processes and will ultimately turn even death into a soluble problem.

Stanford study: Stanford Study on Multi-Tasking

What iOS apps are required for iHappiness?

2011-05-21T10:53:00.000-05:00

I am the Koontz family's designated Apple fan-boy. The one that had the first iPhone, the one that talked Mom into buying an iMac. But lately it has occurred to me that the title is being usurped. First it was my mother-in-law that got the first iPad, when all I had was an iWant. Now my mother has an iPad 2, I still only have iEnvy.

While they have the new shiny toys - I've got more apps on my iPhone than they do. However there are a few iPad only apps I cannot get. Mom told me to get the NC Muesum of Art's app for the Rodin exhibit. It is only avaliable on the iPad. But the HD video is awesome on my MacBook Pro (bigger screen than the iPad).

Rodin: The Cantor Foundation Gift to the North Carolina Museum of Art

So what are the required apps for happiness?

A list:

Filxster - movie & theater search
IMDb - Internet Movie Database
Pandora - customized / personalized radio station
Kindle / iBooks / Audiobooks / Google Books
Facebook / Twitter - social media tools
All text pictures pro SMS pictures - text pictures
Dual Level - yes if you need a bubble level, reach for the iPhone
Convertbot - converts units to other equally useless units, like $ => Yen, Yards => Meters
MailPhotos - utility to email groups of photos
iFlashReady - photographic enhancement
Comic Touch - every now an then a cartoon balloon must be added to a photo
Star Walk - for knowing your stars and who they hang with in the sky (not talking Hollywood here)
NPR News / Public Radio / AP Mobile - staying informed
Dictionary / Wikipanion
Audubon - for identifying those pesky plants & animals without name tags

Blindsided for Happiness - Would you make the Sandra Bullock trade?

2011-05-21T07:32:00.000-05:00

Here is an excellent question: Would you make the trade? Trade a happy marriage for career success.

Two things happened to Sandra Bullock [in March 2010]. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?

New York Times Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks The Sandra Bullock Trade

According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

One method of resolving this question is to understand motivation versus satisfiers as Herzberg described them in his Two Factor Theory. Money is a satisfier, happiness is a motivator.

My Personal Values start with Happiness

2011-05-13T18:56:00.000-05:00

Happiness - the pursuit of happiness has equal weight to the rights of life and liberty
Knowledge - the progenitor of many others e.g. law, justice, fairness, virtue; one must 1st have knowledge
Imagination - the human animal is unique in its ability to imagine a future and then create it; imagination is required for compassion
Pragmatism - a balancing power, a moderator that accounts for context and operates within knowledge bounds

David's Personal Values were developed during a Organizational Leadership Master's program; publishing inspired by Luke Hohman of Innovation Games tweets on the companies values. So why not publish my own value statements.

Happiness. The founding father's inshrined this value within our Declaration of Independence. Giving the pursuit of happiness equal weight to the rights of life and liberty (Declaration of Independence). Recognizing that while the framers of the republic considered life and liberty an unalienable right, one does not have a right to happiness, just the right to pursue happiness. The pursuit of happiness should not be allow to impinge upon other's rights. Therefore an inherent requirement for just societies, for rules of conduct, and for many qualities found in other core values.

For over 200 years we Americans have been free to pursue our happiness, yet it is not evident that we are a happier people than our forebears. There is no guarantee implied that we will achieve happiness. In the business world which we have optimized our society for in these 200 years it is common to measure results. One universal measure of success is the Gross National Product (GNP) of a country. This measure focuses upon the total market value of goods and services produced by the nation in a period. This measure has steadily climbed and become one of many finical benchmarks that we measure our wealth. GNP does correlate well with happiness in some studies. Wilkinson (2007) states; "high levels of economic freedom and high average incomes are among the strongest correlates of subjective well-being" (p. 1). Happiness and GNP correlate well at low levels of GNP, however there is an inflection point in the curve. A point at which the peoples happiness does not rise at the pace of increasing GNP. Implying that material wealth can satisfy basic needs but not necessarily make us happy. Measuring happiness is difficult, and somewhat subjective. However many people, organizations and even countries are attempting to measure and increase happiness across their constituents.

Maslow described people having basic needs and once these needs are met they may will strive to fulfill higher order needs. At the top of his pyramid of needs we find self-actualization (Robbins & Judge, 2009, p. 176). I would argue that this is just another term for happiness. A person that is happy will have found an area that they can achieve self-actualization within. This may be parenting, or athletics, or politics, or perhaps finance, but self-actualization, becoming more in-tune with what one desires to be, makes us happy.

At the forefront of the trend to measure and optimize a group of people's happiness is the country of Bhutan. Their King, His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, instituted a policy and a measure of Gross National Happiness (GNH). For His Majesty, "a GNH society means the creation of an enlightened society in which happiness and well-being of all people and sentient beings is the ultimate purpose of governance" (Ura, 2008). The reasoning behind this is sound. Indicators such as GNH embody values of the people and their government, the indicators influence policy, they create a scoreboard in the imagination of the people, and most importantly they will drive society to change (Ura, 2008).

Happiness may be difficult to define or quantify and measure, however, no more so than other phenomena that social science tries to model. Yet, this indicator may have a much larger impact upon our daily lives than any other standard. If I could optimize only one dimension, happiness or wealth, for example, I would certainly choose happiness.

Knowledge. After happiness as a core value that I desire for my self, I choose knowledge. There are many types of knowledge, empirical, systemic, semantic and logical for example. Each of these types of knowledge is a claim of truth. Something that we know to be valid. How we come about that knowledge differs in these cases, but the commonality is that we have a belief in the truth of the claim. Many times the truth may be verified. Without some justification of the nature of the claim, it is not knowledge.

I believe in knowledge as a core value because knowledge is the progenitor of so many other values. Values such as law, justice, and fairness must have their roots in the knowledge of actions and consequences and knowledge of right and wrong. A value such as virtue, the behavior of high moral standard, can only exist if there is knowledge of a moral standard. Without knowledge there is no virtue.

Knowledge along is not enough. It is not a value that can easily stand alone. One could learn to split atoms, thereby making terrible explosions. That knowledge is neither good nor bad. How it is used, the purpose the knowledge serves may be described as good or bad. Socrates is quoted as saying: "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance" (Socrates, n.d.).

Imagination. I enjoy playing with young children, young enough that they still use their imagination as a central part of every moment. I now have a nephew, age four, with an extremely active imagination, he is a pleasure to be around and consistently astonishes the adults with his imagination. Entering his world of super heros, space ships, dinosaurs and monsters will exhaust the adult imagination in twenty minutes, but he continues non-stop all day long. I worry that the education system will diminish this talent rather than encourage and cultivate it.

What does imagination do for the human, why did we develop a brain that was capable of creating space-men with blasters that didn't harm the blue dinosaurs but would kill monsters? Humans may be the only animal that is capable of imagining a future and then creating that future. Dr. David Suzuki (2010) stated it well: "In our short time on Earth, we humans have emerged from a chaotic world, imposing order and meaning in myriad ways, imagining the world into being. That was our great gift" (¬∂ 1). This ability to create from our imagination a world that we wish to live within, now powers much of our civilization. It has created increasing more complex environments, with as many problems as solutions.

Imagination powers the creative side of humans, but it is also at the heart of what it means to be humane. When we act out of compassion for another person or even another animal we are using our imagination. Our imagination powers the ability to read the thoughts of another, to place our selves in the mind of the other and imagine how they must perceive the situation. This great ability leads to empathy.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, described in her Commencement Address at Harvard the power of empathy. Rowling (2008) said: "Amnesty [International] mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners" (para. 33). In her speech Rowling describes how this very human value of empathy is derived from our imagination.

Pragmatism. One last value that I hold is the balancing value of pragmatism. This value holds that in every thing there must be moderation. The moderating control is to measure against what is realistic within the context.

My bachelor's degree is in mechanical engineering. In this degree of study, we learned that one can make the design of a bridge so very perfect given the materials and resources you have to work with, but that when built the true test is does the bridge function. In the first year of study we designed simple bridges of various styles. Then we watched a documentary of one of the most spectacular bridge disasters, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed Galloping Gertie. In the film the bridge is seen to be bouncing. Cars and people are being thrown around by the violent oscillations. Later that day the bridge collapsed. It is a sobering thought to consider all the energy that went into building the bridge and then a 40 mile per hour wind was its destruction. To me this was an early lesson in the compromises that are the practice of engineering. In this awesome failure, much was learned and bridges today are aerodynamically stable.

It was unimaginable in the 1930s that the bridge would be blown down by a slight wind. Its designers didn't have the knowledge that they would gain by the failure of putting their best engineering into practice. Practical real world applications of our knowledge is important to validating that knowledge. Some times the world is very different that we assume we know. This is why knowledge alone is lacking, there must be a utility of purpose for the knowledge. It is the pragmatic use of knowledge that we can increase our well being and our happiness.

Organizational Values I search for:
I work in a very young industry, it is one of the fastest growing and ever changing sectors of our economy. The software industry is approximately 50 years old. Robert Holleymam (2009), CEO of Business Software Alliance stated: "The software industry is a remarkable engine for jobs and economic growth. The software and related services sector employed 1.7 million people in the US in 2007 in jobs that, on average, paid 195 percent of the national average. This sector contributed more than $261 billion to US GDP in 2007" (para. 3). However the young industry has been plagued by poor project success rates. The 1994 Standish Chaos report noted: "Only 9% of projects in large companies were successful" (p 3).

One answer to this industry aliment has been a movement to be more responsive to customers changing requirements, more collaborative in developing software and a focus on the outcomes of the development process. This movement is called Agile, and is defined by the Agile Manifesto. The values stated in the manifesto, are values that I strive to uphold in my organization.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
-- (Beck et al., 2001)

While these values alone will not change the industry, they have proven to be a wonderful start. These operational values resonate with me, and are in alignment with my core personal values. I and thousands of other software professionals have joined the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto. It is a movement to continuously improve and to deliver value to the organizations that use this philosophy. I have been involved in the Agile transformation of software development shops. It is truly a transformational process, requiring leadership.

References
Beck, K., Beedle, M., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M., Grenning, J., et al. (2001). Manifesto for agile software development. [Web page] Retrieved from http://agilemanifesto.org/
Robbins, S. P. & Judge, T. A. (2009). Organizational behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Rowling, J. K. (2008). The fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination. [Web page] Harvard Magazine. Retrieved from http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination
Socrates (n.d.). Quotations by author: Socrates. [Web page] Retrieved from http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Socrates
Suzuki, D. (2010, January 8). Imagine a brighter 21st century. [Web page] Vancouver, BC: David Suzuki Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly01081001.asp
Ura, K. (2008). Explanation of GNH index. Gross national happiness [Web page]. Thimphu, Bhutan: The Center for Bhutan Studies. Retrieved from http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/gnhIndex/intruductionGNH.aspx
Wilkinson, W. (2007). In pursuit of happiness research: Is it reliable? What does it imply for policy?. Policy Analysis: Cato Institute, (590). Retrieved from http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8179

A List of Agility Tests

2011-05-08T15:13:00.000-05:00

How many forms of Agility are there? I know my friend's dog is a champion at doggy-Agility. That form of Agility is well know (in the dog community) and it is all about the test.

For the purpose of this list I'm referring to the software development philosophy of Agility (as in Scrum, XP, Lean, etc.). Since there is only one definition of Agile in the software community - the Agile Manifesto and it's 12 principles; it would appear to be easy to know what Agility meant. Alas, it is more elusive than a simple Webster's dictionary definition. There are too many personal and subjective measures.

But is a subjective experience beyond the ability to measure? No, it is not. The nature of an Olympic Platform Dive is a subjective event. Yet it is measured and scored to a high degree of precession and accuracy to determine the winner in an event. This is the process of moving the subjective beyond the laypersons personal feelings and into the real of expert opinion.

Every assessment tool used for measure has aspects of reliability and validity. Do the instruments (surveys) you are using have these aspects quantified? If not then they are just ad-hoc hunches and in my opinion you are much better off not subjecting a team to them. Because this form of directive, will prove to the team that you do not believe in good scientific process (after all you have used suggested they use an arbitrary instrument of little validity to measure them). You have also suspended your belief in the Agile Manifesto's "individuals and interaction over processes and tools" by choosing to use a tool when an interaction with the group would achieve the same results. Results - what results?

What is the expected outcome of an Agility Assessment? What results are you after? Most of the companies I've dealt with wish to assess teams agility in hopes of identifying where to concentrate interventions. Interventions are then designed to address areas in the team's performance where some action is desired to improve that dimension of Agility. In so many cases one could just as easily ask the team - where do you wish to improve your Agility. Wow - with just that one question and response (dialogue) not only have you identified a gap but there is an implicit "readiness to change", because they have identified the area for improvement rather than having been told.

List of Agility Assessment Tools

The Nokia (Scrum-But) Test (pdf) - by Bas Vodde and Jeff Sutherland

an online version of Scrum-But test
Bas Vodde's thought on the origin

The Comparative Agility Survey - Mike Cohn & Ken Rubin
The Joel Test - 12 Steps to Better Code - Joel Spolsky
How Agile Are You? (Take This 42 Point Test) - by Kelly Waters
Your own companies Ad-Hoc Assessment - (your name here)
Agile Assessment Framework (pdf) - by Minna Pikkarainen, ITEA
Agile Self Assessment - by ThoughtWorks
Back-of-a-Napkin Agile Assessment - by Elisabeth Hendrickson
Scrum Checklist - by Henrik Kniberg of Crisp AB

Do you know of others - if so please add a comment.

See Also:

Chris Simms article in InfoQ - Measuring Agility, Craftsmanship and Success.
InfoQ: What is the value of the Nokia Test?

Assessments are not evil, however, I believe that if one choses to consume the teams time in performing an assessment then it should be a valid and reliable measure of what you wish to measure. Of all the assessments above I would argue that as of this date (May, 2011) none have been validated. The Nokia test has expert validity (Sutherland) to strongly suggest that it may be valid, however, it's reliability may be questioned as the data that Sutherland sites typically comes from himself (is there a bias conflict within that expert/validation and reliability claim?). My recommendation is the Comparative Agility survey. Rumor has it that Rubin & Cohn are interested in studying the surveys psychometrics (validity & reliability). This survey is very well executed and allows one to compare their relative score to their own over time (longitudinal study) and to other in their industry sector. With over 2400 surveys collected it may be the only large database of Agility surveys in a public domain. Why not chose to support the community by adding your team's assessment to this resource?

Here is a blog post for results of the Comparative Agility Survey on a very agile team I work with back in 2009.

An innovation in Books

2011-05-07T08:41:00.000-05:00

Yes I own "Our Choice" by Al Gore, for two reasons:

It is the best book on the most important question of our era - our choice to save humanity.
It is the first innovation in books since Gutenberg.

Al Gore Invents a Showpiece E-Book

By NY Times David Pogue.

Oh - maybe there are many more reasons - the interactive info-graphics developed for the "book" by Push Pop Press, but then that just falls under the heading of innovation, doesn't it.

Tools for Collaboration in Remote & Distributed Teams

2011-05-06T18:57:00.000-05:00

I'm researching tools for collaboration. I'm a firm believer that the best tool for collaboration weighs in at about 3 lbs, is made of 100 billion neurons and consumes 20% of the energy your body uses. This tool uses other tools like that mouth of yours and the big ears on the side of your head to communicate. Along with those tools it uses the facial muscles to form expressions that are interpreted by other 3 pound blobs. All of which gets synthesized into a cognitive mental model.

diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measurement of a human brain.

All these other tools are substandard replacements for pieces of the above ecosystem of collaboration in a face-to-face manner. But let's take a look at some of them anyway.

One very interesting tools is Mind Mapping in a collaborative tool. Follow the rules of brainstroming and this tool may rock your next retrospective. MindMeister.com

A tool for sharing video streams with up to 20 of your closest friends is an embed chat tool called TokBox. To use the shared video screen cast one has to have the moderator and their secret code.

One of my favorite tools is CardMeeting.com a virtual 3x5 card wall which allows concurrent creation of index cards and placement on the wall. Very useful for retrospectives with remote teams.

Performance Appraisals what have we learned in 50 years?

2011-05-04T21:55:00.000-05:00

I've got to write my personal Performance Appraisal Goals & Objectives. So in the process I thought I'd see what experts think about the whole system. It appears that the system of performance appraisals crossed the chasm back in the 1950s. Peter Drucker's Management by Objectives (MBO) spurred on this new technique. Previous to WWII very few companies used this technique, the military did. Going back even further the Civil Service Commission's system was in place back in 1887 (from Dick Grote's "The Performance Appraisal, Question and Answer Book").

McGregor's 1960 book "The Human Side of Enterprise" introduced the Theory X & Theory Y concepts of management. McGregor writes in Harvard Business Review (1957):

"Effective development of managers, does not include coercing them (no matter how benevolently) into acceptance of the goals of the enterprise, nor does it mean manipulating their behavior to suit organizational needs. Rather, it calls for creating a relationship within which a man can take responsibility for developing his own potentialities, plan for himself, and learn from putting his plans into action."

In 1960s General Electric conducted a scientific study of the effectiveness of it's annual appraisal system. McGregor had singled them out as a company that was using the Theory Y approach. Yet GE still found their system had concerns.

Criticism has a negative effect on achievement of goals.
Praise has little effect one way or the other.
Performance improves most when specific goals are established.
Defensiveness resulting from critical appraisal produces inferior performance.
Coaching should be a day-to-day, not a once-a-year activity.
Mutual goal setting, not criticism, improves performance.
Interviews designed primarily to improve a man's performance should not at the same time weigh his salary or promotion in the balance.
Participation by the employee in the goal-setting procedure helps produce favorable results.
-- D. Grote, Performance Appraisal, page 4.

Note the language is from the era before equality of the workforce (..."a man's performance"...).

The point on coaching is an interesting one to me. Assuming that a manager spends a whopping 6 hours a year per person on the performance appraisal, then they have only consumed 0.3% of their time coaching on the performance appraisal. Tell a manager they will spend 6 hours per person and watch them squirm out of that requirement. How many system's address performance more than once or twice a year?

Graphical view of my Twitter stream.

2011-04-29T23:16:00.000-05:00

A graphical view of my twitter feed. From a mash up by Tweet Topic Explorer (created by: @JeffClark).

Chefs of Fruit Salad (Scrum Immersion Exercise)

2011-04-24T12:36:00.000-05:00

Chefs of Fruit Salad immersion exercise is designed to give the participants a quick shared experience of Scrum sprinting in a domain (food preparation, presentations and delivery) that is familiar to everyone but slightly outside the expertise of many. This domain requires most individuals to use similar techniques to battle the uncertainty of requirements and implementation details while allowing for great creativity within their skill sets. In game design it is a leveling of the field of play - making most everyone an beginner, with some deep skills in the recesses of their experiences (hasn't everyone eaten a very decorative fruit salad at a fancy restaurant or conference)?

The exercise as a whole gives the participants an experience of using the Scrum terminology and practices (stand-up meeting, timeboxes, planning, reviews, retrospectives) within a safe environment to learn and play. Within this safe environment people feel free to create the mental models they will use to think about mapping the concepts of Scrum into their daily lives of software development. My experience is that this exercise while fun and productive, gives the participants "real-world" concrete examples of a positive example of "doing" Scrum.

My latest incarnation of this exercise was a wonderful experience with a distributed team from Bosnia and the US that had gathered in Chicago to kick-off a Scrum team. On day one the individuals were behaving very much as individuals on a work group (lots of pleasant introductions and a very little bit of posturing). This exercise was planed for day two and it was craftily planned to sneak up on the participants and be a surprise. I introduced the exercise to Bob (Scrum Master) and Rob (Product Owner) in our workshop planning session and they bought into the idea of a shared experience as a learning and team building opportunity. It took courage for them to agree to allocate more than 3 hours of a 3 day workshop to a game to make a fruit salad. We could easily have purchased a fruit salad if that was what we wanted. However these guys had the experience to know that building a team, was the primary goal of this game, and that there was no moratorium on having fun at work.

On day one we introduced the concept of affinity estimates with the Dog Grooming exercise, and then to reinforce the concept allowed the team the opportunity to try affinity estimation within a different domain - chiefs creating a fruit salad. So the team estimated the effort to prepare each of about 20 different fruits. While I bit my tongue, trying to hold the secret that they would use those estimates tomorrow.

On day two, after lunch, I gave the group the options to play a game (immersive simulation of Scrum) or continue with the chalk-talk on Scrum and its wonderful benefits to software. The option was presented as their choice, but I required their group consensus, as it was a risk to me a coach and facilitator of the workshop if they had a poor experience. This was designed to get the group to buy-in to the exercise, and to give them as a group some level of control of the workshop. Had they chosen not to play the game, a lot of fruit would have stayed hidden away in a cabinet. To their credit they engaged quickly, wanting to know the nature of the game, the rules, the boundaries, etc. The energy level in the room rose by two orders of magnitude in about 20 minutes.

Note the B&W Apple Logo photo copy.

We played the game, the group experienced two sprints, the injection of last minute requirements and surprise dinner guest (Steve Jobs invited Bill Gates). Over three hours the group designed and presented twice, then experienced iterative & incremental development, accepting change in requirements, evolution of the story with the line workers input and suggestions paramount to the stories ultimate value.

On day three the scrum master and I were chatting during a break, he pointed to a round table (four-top) it had 6 people crowded around 2 computers, people from the Chicago area (some originally from China, India, Africa), some flew in from Bosnia, and all deeply engaged in a conversation on the topic of their newly formed Scrum team's problem domain. A new team was formed - we felt proud and grateful to have such a diverse group come together and gel in such a short time.

An last minute injected story.
Create a chocolate logo for Bill Gate's who is coming to dinner with Steve.
Note four piece Windows logo in chocolate.

Inspiration for the second sprint's story came from the Apple Fruit Logo but it was Rob (a true Product Owner) that made this suggestion his own. He created a complete back story for inviting Steve Jobs to the company's offices and needed a center piece for the dinner. Using a typical picture of Apple's logo he described the user story of creating the center piece. The fruit salad center pieces above are the pure creation of the teams. Only Rob had seen the inspirational photo of the Fruit Logo (below).

Inspiration photo: Apple Fruit Logo

No one was a chef, but I did divide the group into teams with a technique that put the experienced cooks on different teams. In this domain there were lots of chiefs in the kitchen, the team dynamics to get the tasks done exposed the group to many team building moments of Tuckman's model (forming, storming, norming, preforming).

Release Planning for Fruit Salad

Pictures of various fruits.

Team affinity estimates the work effort for each type of fruit.
Effort includes: fruit is clean; fruit is selected; bad spot removed; sliced into bite size pieces.

Dialogue on the Definition of Done for a Fruit Salad Sprint.

Split group into multiple teams of 3 - 5 people each.

Introduction to Set Development
Organization needs guarantee of high quality best of breed product.
Selects multiple teams to perform dual development
Collaborates to refine best ideas, and selects one to produce.

Schedule
Release Plan - 30 minutes to size each fruit.

Introduction to Simulation - Planning: 20 minutes

Sprint 1: 30 minutes (each sim-day: Standup 2 min.; Work time 7 min; Night 1 min)
Release One Review: 10 minutes

Sprint 2: 30 minutes (each sim-day: Standup 2 min.; Work time 7 min; Night 1 min)
Release Two Review: 10 minutes

Debrief simulation: 20 minutes.

Working Agreements
Don’t waste Food (each sprint is independent and complete - no carry over)
No assembly line production
Kitchen Rules: Safety and Cleanliness are required
Set Development is NOT a competition - it is a collaboration.
Assign one or more Observers (give observer cards and instructions)

Salad Preparation & Assembly
Proportion of various fruits
Color & texture
Size of pieces
Presentation

Review Stand-up Procedure:
Answer 3 questions
Get in context, share with team to synchronize, plan the day.
Ask for help
Remind each other of the goal

Materials:
Constrain the materials to add challenges; for example one sharp knife per team, cutting boards, serving plates, or bowles.

Knifes
Cutting boards
Plates; bowls; spoons; forks;
Fruit (lots of fruit), some raw, some processed, Odd items (tomatos, fruit juice, etc.)
Paper towels for clean up

Facilitation is made easy with a great back story - give purpose to the reason to create a fruit salad; add challenges to the back story; introduce whimsy and seemly impossible dinner guest for example.

My Experience:
Teams of 3 people can produce a nice sample fruit salad in the first sprint, therefore a PO will need to have a new story for sprint 2, maybe even two new stories. Constraining the knives is a useful technique to cause stress and creativity and create some pairing and close cooperation within the teams. Providing odd items, vegetables, juice, candy, toys, etc. can spark creativity that is beyond the facilitators experience and expectation therefore it is essential to add these items to refresh the experience for the facilitator.

Additional resources:
Credit due to: Estimation and Release Planning with Fruit Salad by Lyssa Adkins

Cooperation is found at the top of an Escalator

2011-03-29T07:46:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting study - where are people at there best (as measured from a Dr Who perspective) at the top or bottom of the stairs?

Why Escalators Brings out the Best in People

A curious connection between altitude and goodness

By David A. Schroeder | March 29, 2011 Mind Matters, Scientific American

So this has me wondering if we could see the same results at the top of an elevator - I doubt it. Therefore, I suggest you place your team room at the top of an escalator - to infuse the most cooperation within the team.

What's new with your User Experience?

2011-03-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

I was sitting with some colleagues at the pub the other night, talking about one of my favorite subjects - Apple computer's highly innovate nature. One person reflected that the one thing that made the iPhone successful was the touch screen. That other devices had used a touch screen, but had not gotten in quite right. Other devices that were using touch screens were clunky to use. He had apparently used several different devices with touch interfaces. A benefit of the company he works for that has a loner program (want to try their software on a mobile device - borrow it for a few weeks). I chatted with the person that runs the program, they have all the new toys and every week its like Christmas morning opening new packages. What a brilliant program.

Yes, I'd have to agree that one of the keys to the iPhone's success is the new user experience it allows. Along with the wonderful opportunity for people (mere babes) to use a computer with absolutely no instruction at all. Countless people tell stories of their 2 and 3 year-olds using iPhones to navigate to their favorite applications.

I remember when Apple introduced the paradigm shifting mouse in 1984. I taught a summer school program where 6th & 7th graders could learn to program (BASIC) with the Apple II Plus computer. One half of the first day was teaching students to use the mouse. The kids got it much quicker than the older teachers. However I still spent hours teaching the user interface techniques of a mouse. Can you imagine teaching someone the techniques of mousing? Break it down - learn to point, to click, the timing of a double click, the advanced drag and drop. With a touch interface this is needless. We have been using a finger to point and touch since we've been 6 months old - it is natural.

I gave my mother a used first generation iPhone, no manual, no instructions, just sent it via mail in a box. Now my Dad said she's just as bad as the young kids, constantly on the internet, reading, watching TV, multitasking and googling things in real time. She's a Digital Immigrant.

My father never wanted to use a computer. He said he would use one when he could just talk to it and it would type his reports and papers as well as his secretary. Yes he worked back in the days when even middle managers had secretaries and typing pools. This didn't keep him from enrolling me into the 9th grade typing class. I was one of only two boys in a 40 girl class for beginning typing.

My father foresaw the power of typing and of computers. I was in typing class because he had so much stress working on his master's dissertation and computer classes he had to take in the 1970s. In 1976 he was sure typing would be a skill I would need in life. In 1979 he brought home an Apple II computer to see if it would interest my brother and me. It did, I learned BASIC programming. Then he bought the first personal computers (Apple II Plus) for students in the Stanley county school systems.

So learning new computer user interface has been in my family for years. First user interface we learned, typing (1976), then mousing (1984), then touch interfaces (2007) with the iOS products, next.... voice. My father's vision is happening. My father-in-law uses Naunce's Naturally Speaking on the Mac to write proposals and email today. My wife uses Naunce's Dragon in preference to typing. In the near future this may become the primary user interface.

This change in user interface will require changing your software application. How close to the bleeding edge is your software application interface? Are you planning for the future? My family is willing to test it for you. We are experts, including the 2 year old niece.

What is Consciousness? A survey

2011-03-22T07:24:00.000-05:00

Information is Beautiful is taking a survey on the inner workings of the mind.

What is Consciousness?

Click the link "Make up your own Mind" to take the interactive survey. One to join the fun, two to see how good a survey tool could be with interactive graphics.

I'm revealing my inner truth.

Collaborative Place :: Context inside of Space

2011-03-13T11:03:00.000-05:00

I am in search of collaborative place - the context of innovation that is embodied in the space we choose to inhabit. Having noticed how some people decorate their cubie with personal artifacts and the boundary that the artificial wall creates, I'd like to "tear down that wall."

I attempted to study the habits of people in transition from structured space to open space. I bought a time lapse camera with the intent of photographing the big picture patterns of movement. My vision was to mount the camera to a column in the space. Record the deconstruction of cubicles into the open space. Then watch the organization of Place, via the context of a Scrum work teams, within the space.

The people vetoed the idea. Lack of trust is the motive. They were uncomfortable with the organization having photographic proof that they were talking with each other rather than pressing keys on their keyboard. While I understand the feelings of the people, the organization should wake up to the impediment this points to. The sub-text is trust and a belief system that communication via face-to-face is less valuable. That a laugh is a sign of goofing off, as opposed to enjoyment of work/play.

See Also:
Bobtuse: Collaborative Place
Tour the d.building Collaborative Space at Stanford Institute of Design

What happens if the Tardis goes through the Phantom Tollboth?

2011-03-06T21:36:00.000-06:00

I think the Doctor would be at home in the lands beyond.

"Pardon me," said Milo to the first man who happened by; "can you tell me where I am?"

"To be sure," said Canby; "you're on the Island of Conclusions. Make yourself at home. You're apt to be here for some time."

"But how did we get here?" asked Milo, who was still a bit puzzled by being there at all.

"You jumped, of course," explained Canby. "That's the way most everyone gets here. It's really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times."

The Phantom Tollbooth
by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer

Time Machine :: Human Camera :: Watson

2011-03-06T09:52:00.000-06:00

Time Machine

I'm trying to restore my Apple Time Machine - after a hard disk upgrade my time machine backup has choked on the extra large data set. It gets quite complicated but in the end, the machine can not reconcile that the new data is just a continuation of the old data and it should just piece it all together in one continuous flow of information. At last the machine breaks down. It can not see the forest for the trees. It has no big picture overview of the scene.

This same day my father-in-law sends me this YouTube video of the "Human Camera"

Beautiful Minds: Stephen Wiltshire

Watch the video and be awe struck at what a human mind can do. This is a power and skill we all have - but very few have ever nurtured this ability. Stephen can connect both the detail and the big picture and flow all that data into the information to recreate the image. Many artist can do this same feat, they have practiced endless hours to master the skills.

Here's one that I went to school with: Mark Stephenson Portraiture and Paintings.

Watson

Just recently IBM's Watson computer bested a human on Jeopardy (quiz show). Take a look at Watson's technical specs - do you think you will have that kind of power in your pocket in 30 years? In 1980 did you think you would have a cell phone and a search engine (Google) in your pocket (see Cell Phone time line) with video (FaceTime) calling?

The Meta Problem?

But why - oh why - do we still compare the human mind to a computer? Compare what one of the best humans can do in their domain (Stephen Wiltshire) to what a computer can do in their domain (Watson). Which is solving the harder problem? Would Watson pass the Turing Test? Can a human prove that it is not a machine - in other words does the subject have the power of patten matching at a high level - CAPTCHA?

The answer is YES. 8 reasons to buy an iPad for your team room.

2011-03-05T14:48:00.000-06:00

Will you buy an iPad? That was the question.

8 reasons to buy an iPad for your team room.

Easy to carry to meeting (compared to laptop and power supply).
Makes a person look smart compared to the person with the laptop, power supply, wired mouse, wired web cam that needs to get up and walk around the conference table to get a close-up shot of the white board.
Apps that are designed to work instantly and quickly give the information you need without minutes of drill-down menu clicking and searching.
Instant on (compared to opening a laptop that has its lid shut - because shutting the lid is a sign that you are present and paying attention to the meeting).
Everybody else is doing it.
Having fun is a goal for everyone (even your boss).
Have a need - there is an App for that, 65000 of them.
Facetime - video calls that just work.

Want to connect remote Agile teams? I suggest you buy an iPad 2 for each team location. Use it as the video conference system - cost $1000 (2 wifi iPads). Benefit - instant easy access to the members of the other team via a shared video conference system that is portable, easy to setup, easy to use, gives high quality images. And does more than just video - it becomes a communication tool.

April 13th UPDATE: I mentioned this to a colleague and he suggested that if one could link the FaceTime video on the iPad 2 with Apple TV via the AirPlay protocol then one would have an awesome video conference tool. Imagine the easy of use with two remote locations using iPads with FaceTime chatting and the ability to put the remote video on the big screen (Apple TV large screen TV or projector).

I don't believe Apple has enabled this video sharing over AirPlay... yet. But I've asked for it.

Related Links:

Bashing the iPad - but will you purchase? Jan 2010

The Macalope Weekly: Say, this iPad thing may really take off

What competes with an iPad?

What replaces co-location in Agile?

Agile tools for your iPhone/iPad

Long Distance Communication Timeline it ends at FaceTime

What does a good Product Owner need?

2011-03-03T05:59:00.000-06:00

Why is it so challenging for a company to get the Scrum Product Owner role right? It is a great job. Lots of power to envision a market an deliver the product that makes a difference in that space. Plenty of feedback and opportunity to learn by guiding a truly Agile team toward achieving the goals.

The responsibilities are few but require discipline and dedication to the vision of the product. The key task is to prioritize (stack rank - not hi-low bucketing) the product backlog. By doing this the product owner optimizes the return on investment for the project as a whole and within the enterprise ecosystem.

Steve Jobs on innovation. "It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much."
-- BusinessWeek Online, Oct. 12, 2004

I was reminded this week of why the committee of product owners will not work. I was working with a Steering Committee. [Aside: Is that term an oxymoron or what? How many peoples hands do you want on your steering wheel?] My challenge to them was that their primary role was to find the teams a Scrum Product Owner. It was not to set the priorities of the various projects that the teams should work on - which is what they had met to accomplish.

A colleague mentioned the 1962 Chicago Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley's failed College of Coaches as an analogy. Having tried a baseball analogy and failed to make the point with this largely international group, I decided to search other domains for inspiration.

How about Apple - home of "insanely great" products - is there inspiration for the Scrum roll of the one Product Owner at Apple? Why, yes - yes there is!

How many companies are envious of Apples ability to deliver great product to market, and even shape the new and emerging markets? Answer: many - if not all. Even Nokia is willing to burn their platform to create a reason to change to a new Windows 7 solution in hopes of holding onto market share. While Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop has realized (perhaps too late) that the environment has changed. Apple has created a whole ecosystem of simple products that are symbiotic (see eHub strategy - 2001).

While I enjoyed Elop's use of the burning platform metaphor - I don't think one should pour gasoline upon their own burning platform. That sounds like a suicidal tendency. Perhaps he intended to mix his metaphors. I also enjoy a well mixed metaphor - shaken not stirred.

But back to the product owner roll. Why has Steve Jobs been so successful and has Elop in a panic state? I think it comes down to vision - purpose - acting to fulfill ones core values. Steve Jobs has been doing this since he built and sold his first Apple computer kit. He set out to change how people interact with computers. The March 2, 2011 iPad 2 announcement indicates that he believes this is at least the 2nd time if not the Nth time Apple has delivered on the dream - "to make computers for the rest of us." He refers to the iPad device as a post-PC device. He knows the landscape has changed - he had a dream.

The human is the only creature on earth that is capable of imagining a future and then creating that future. To do this we use one powerful ability - Imagination. This is one of my personal values. I believe this is an ability every great product owner must have.

Dreaming of iPad with Thunderbolt (Updated)

2011-02-28T21:20:00.000-06:00

What would you say to an iPad with a Thunderbolt port? Both high-res video and high speed data transfer.

Well March 2, 2011 came and went, the iPad 2 didn't get a Thunderbolt port but did get HDMI output. Looks like they've made the iPad 2 too thin for a Thunderbolt port. Didn't see that coming.

UPDATE: But wait, perhaps a redesigned iOS connector would do the trick. This is what some think is coming to the iPad and iPhone.

Thunderbolt coming to iPhone and iPad

And they called it Scrum (iteration 5)

2011-02-26T22:58:00.000-06:00

[Why iteration 5? Just because I wanted to see what would happen if I iterated toward a finished blog post. I learned that I do not consider blog post to be finished works of writing, the better the post the more I wish to iterate on it. ]

I'm sitting here drinking a Big Orange and thinking about Scrum. How much does Andy's monologue, What it Was, Was Football sound like your management or C-level?

Why did they call this lightweight process (that later became know as an Agile process framework) Scrum? I don't know - but allow me some revisionist historical fiction, and I'll tell you.

Scrum by definition is a play in the real sport of Rugby. I think Jeff Sutherland (roots of Scrum) may be a Rugby fan. Being an observant guy and noticing the similarity to software development and the true game, it hit him one day in the midst of a game (it was most likely a legal hit, as there are few illegal hits in Rugby - this ain't Football).

Scrum - in Rugby: a play that commences after a pause in play (and we ain't goin' stop for just anything - this ain't Football) where the two opposing teams discuss in an orderly fashion the true possession of the ball. The outcome of this play is the start of a complex (perhaps chaotic) plan by the possessive team to reach their objective and score a goal.

Now why does software development even resemble this game? Well we do sometimes pause during development. Well not the really good teams - just the nanzy-panzy teams. But it is the beginning teams with which we must work first. The paws of which I speak are the daily breaks we take for the dog walking and the spouse's honey dew list, and resetting the alarm clock to 6:00 AM after the cat unplugged it again (rather that default to 12:00 - wouldn't 6:00 AM be a better default - wonder what their Story Test script has in that spreadsheet cell).

So how do we restart the team after a pause? One technique is a stand-up meeting where we gather around in a lose circle and focus upon the first objective, who has the ball? Then we make a plan (maybe we call an audible play) we break and execute the plan. In the mean time we would like a referee (preferably wearing an embarrassing shirt) to be watching the group, to make sure we don't inadvertently violate some rule of the game.

Now just for the edification of American's who think they know all about Football (the world snickers - oh, you mean American Football - that nanzy-panzy game). Why not call this new lightweight process Football? It has much more planning and the teams pause at very defined regular intervals to re-plan. They have more people in funny looking shirts running all around blowing the whistle on violators. Much better analogy - right? Well yes, to the old way of doing software development - waterfall. In waterfall we did a lot of planning, and then executed the plan. In Football, they spend more time in huddles, than running the plays. Jeff must have considered this. Did he wish his software developers to spend 4 hours to complete a project (wall clock of a televised game), when the actual time running plays was some small fraction of the official 60 minute game clock? Small fraction you say - what? Well, yes the plays take 10 - 20 seconds, but the huddles take up to 25 seconds. A Wall Street Journal study found only 11 minutes of play in the game.

That equates to less than 20% of the game in true action. Not to mention the overages to total project duration caused by advertiser (stakeholders) request to pause the game for their special agenda item of interest (commercial breaks) which delays the value (win/loss) to the customers.

Hey, Jeff, good call on the naming - Football sucks!

What about another sports analogy? I just saw one in my office this week. "It ain't over till it's over"-- Yogi Berra. This baseball reference was made as an analogy to Scrum's definition of done. Why did Jeff & Ken not think to use such a rich treasure trove of language? Well for one reason, that is a reference to a feature bound game. It requires 6 outs and 9 innings to end a regular baseball game, however they can last forever (record 8 hour game with 25 innings). Baseball is great -- but not a great metaphor for a lightweight time bound process -- Scrum.

What it Was, Was Football (YouTube).
Andy Griffith's famous 1953 stand-up monologue about college football. It has become one of the most beloved comedy recordings of all time. The illustrations used in this video were drawn by George Woodbridge, a Mad Magazine artist.

Listen to Andy (what Dialect is that?) mentally map Football to Scrum.

I grew up in the shadow (plus 85 miles) of Pilot Mountain which is in very Surry county of North Carolina. But I don't sound like it unless I've had a few beers.

If you are a fan of Sheriff Taylor's management style - you will enjoy this article by Donald E. Gray:

Managing in Mayberry: An examination of three distinct leadership styles

Just found this video of Jeff Sutherland on the evolution of Scrum the process framework.

Related posts:

And they called it Scrum (iteration 1)
And they called it Scrum (iteration 2)
And they called it Scrum (iteration 3)
And they called it Scrum (iteration 4)

Innate Scrum - we are born with it.

2011-02-20T09:15:00.000-06:00

It would appear that humans have innate ability to do empirical process control within a very difficult domain (language) right from birth.

At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.

I'm a typical American, I only know one language. I also have a bit of a impediment in hearing some sounds. I was born and raised in the south (North Carolina) so according to the dialect maps I pronounce the words: pin, and pen the same. I also pronounce the words: hill, heal, heel the same. May be it's just me and not my dialect from Stanley County, NC. I also had a speech impediment as a child and with the help of parents and teachers I over came the impediment - I normalized.

I did the typical statical mapping as a toddler (6 -12 months) and fine tuned my audio cortex to distinguish certain sounds and ignore my ability to distinguish other sounds. Now I cannot distinguish those sounds.

This was pointed out this week with a training class, in which I could not pronounce the names of some of the participants. They were very gracious. But no one likes to have their names butchered.

So it may be easier in the future when we are all assimilated into the Borg, and we all just get a GUID (Global Unique IDentification) number.

In this class I used a technique of Fail-Successfully to address my poor ability to spell words correctly. I draw a "spell check" button on the board and explain that when I click it, they are to instantly make the corrections in their heads. People laugh at this subtle trick and for the rest of the workshop they allow me to be a very poor speller. By failing early in the session, we get beyond it and are on our way toward the bigger picture success - learning. Perhaps I need a similar trick with a babel-fish.

Ref:
Map of American English Dialects
A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English

Pair Chess Game Exercise

2011-02-19T18:00:00.000-06:00

Some years ago I designed this exercise for a Pair Programming simulation using the media of the game of chess. The idea was to have a pair on each side of the board, they would work together to finish a famous game against their opponents (a pair also).

Chess Game Pairing Exercise Instructor.PDF

I never used the exercise because the developers I was working with didn't know the game of chess, and didn't seem interested in the simulation. If you use this please let me know how it works out.

Game 1 (after 31 ... Bxa2)
Garry Kasparov (White) vs X3D Fritz Computer (Black)
Man-Machine World Chess Championship 2003

How did I drive up my reader stats?

2011-02-15T05:28:00.000-06:00

What will increase your web-blog traffic the most - getting aggregated into a well known site like All About Agile or pictures of dogs?

Well it may be too early to tell for sure. But here are some early stats.

Daily stats for the week that my site was added to All About Agile some time Saturday. I see traffic up about 100+ page loads. That's great - wonderful.

However that's just one data point, and one aspect of the study. What drives traffic to a blog?

I have another data point. In late November I added about 12 dog photos on a post about story estimation. How has that effected traffic?

Here we see monthly (not daily) page load counts. That spike in December, 90% is the dog story from Nov 28th. Below are individual pages, my site sees a few hits a day per story - until aggregated with All About Agile, then it bounces into the 20 - 35 range. But nothing compares to pictures of puppy dogs!

So go ahead... I know you want to look at the dogs.

Dog Grooming Exercise

Practice story estimation techniques with this exercise in dog grooming.

Which will you choose - the 2 step or 4 step?

2011-02-14T07:09:00.000-06:00

When it come to being a messenger - we all should receive a Kevlar vest.

So you have bad news - you feel that the upper management will not like to hear about it. Here are two options.

The Harvard Business Review recommends a simple 4 step process:

Describe. Provide a general overview of the problem, and explain the impact. Be sure to position this in terms of what matters to your manager.

Identify a solution. Recommend a specific solution or approach, along with alternatives.

Analyze your solution. Share the pros and cons and explain the implications. Be prepared to discuss the risks or barriers that may be of concern to your boss.

Accept responsibility. Let your manager know that you are willing to take the responsibility for the outcome of your proposed approach.

Or you could use the Two Step:

Lift carpet. Find somewhere to put the problem out of sight - out of mind.

Sweep. Keep sweeping the carpet out of the bosses sight line.

Which is going to be the easiest. I question which method will become the de facto standard if some other forces are not at play. What might those other forces be?

What would happen if your management gave you a 3rd option? Simpler than the first two options.

Just make it Visible.

Simple - one step process. Then we decide what to do. We use group processes to identify multiple solutions before converging to "the one solution."

Your next Scrum Board.

2011-02-13T13:37:00.000-06:00

What would you do with a million dollars?

Here's your next Scrum Board.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/02/08/reality-touchscreen-is-10-meters-long-accepts-100-touch-inputs/

What's the worst bug ever?

2011-02-12T15:20:00.000-06:00

If you've had beers with a few programmers, sometimes the conversation gets around to a one-ups-manship game of who's faced the worst bug. One story I retold just the other day was about the IT department that was truncating long running connections at the firewall for security. Silly programmers, we had written our applications to assume that a TCP/IP connection could last as long as the application needed it to last. While it didn't take long to discover the bug, it did take weeks to clean it up - policy decision are the hardest to change. Policy is not software - it is ink & paper signed in blood-ware. Much harder that hardware. Capable of withstanding krypton drills and sharks with frigin laser beams.

Here's a picture of the first-ever computer bug.

"One of the primary programmers for the Mark I was a woman, Grace Hopper. Hopper found the first computer "bug": a dead moth that had gotten into the Mark I and whose wings were blocking the reading of the holes in the paper tape. The word "bug" had been used to describe a defect since at least 1889 but Hopper is credited with coining the word "debugging" to describe the work to eliminate program faults."
-- John Kopplin - An Illustrated History of Computers

The Starbucks Test

2011-02-12T09:31:00.000-06:00

I'm just making this up today - so pardon me if it could be better. Or better yet, comment below on how you can help me improve this idea.

What is the purpose of the Starbucks Test? To indicate to me a Fluent Digital Immigrant the likelihood of happiness when engaging with a new an unknown organizations.

The premise: When one walks into a Starbucks one expects to increase their happiness.
Either by making a "fair" exchange for a coffee with lots of options, and the opportunity to speak in riddles (order: I'll have a tall, skinny, why bother) to the happy staff that deliver value in a very predictable and expected way. Or to not exchange any of my hard earned money - and just soak-in the cool (or warm) air and spend some quality time using their wonderful space to think, chat, or while-away some hours.

The exchange is fair because you both agree to it. It is not the best price that a fair market should trend toward. But there are so many externalities that keeps this best price from being reached. One externality is that the free WiFi does cost them money weather you buy coffee or not while checking your email at the UPS Store next door.

The Starbucks Test - what's the likelihood of happiness?

Does the organization support a Digital Native's expectations of ubiquitous connectivity to the world (all apps that work in Starbucks also work in the organizations e.g. they do not block common ports)?
Is the culture team-oriented (or command and control)?
Is learning one of the organizations core values (is it just a platitude like - "people are our most important asset" or worse they believe people are assets)?
Does the culture support making problems visible (even when one doesn't present a known solution to a known problem)?
Does the C-level view their role as "Servant Leadership" (or to be served - how do they draw the management structure; pyramid or tree)?

Define: Digital Native - see Marc Prensky's papers (he coined the term).
"Digital Natives. Our students today are all 'native speakers' of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet."

A model or Example - The Nokia Test

If you have been around in the Agile world then you may have heard of the Nokia Test. A simple 10 question test of an organization's (or team's) ability (or readness) to become a high performing Scrum team.

Where did the Nokia Test come from?
Jeff's latest version in PDF.

Bas Vode (CST) developed a small test for teams he was coaching at Nokia, it has been called Nokia Test. In 2008, Jeff Sutherland adding a scoring system and referred to it as the "Scrum But" test.

The Joel Test - 12 Steps to Better Code

Another example is the Joel Test. I read and used this back before Danube introduced me to this Agile thing. Joel said: "I've come up with my own, highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of a software team. The great part about it is that it takes about 3 minutes." Here it is (circa 2000) - The Joel Test. From Joel Spolsky, or Fog Creek Software and Stack Exchange API.

The Turing Test

1950 - Alan Turing proposes the Turing Test for artificial intelligence.

Will Mash-ups start happening outside of software?

2011-02-11T22:53:00.000-06:00

Just watched this video about Lean-Agile process being used by WikiSpeed to build fuel efficient cars (100+ MPG).

Wikispeed is using Agile and Lean to manufacture parts, components and assemblies - generating very fast innovation.

I then watched this video about eRocket Bike - you still peddle but the bike is assisted and goes about 50 MPH! Move over Lance Armstrong.

So what would happen if we mashed these two startup innovators together? We do this in software all the time. I worked with some guys that mashed Fit/Fitness with Selenium and out poped StoryTestIQ. Could we all be peddling our cars in the future?