Agile Complexification Inverter

 Some times it takes time to  process great truths.    They  don't all hit you like a  grand piano  falling from the 5th floor.  Many  take time and considerable ruminating to totally GROK. The 20-Day Agility Challenge DeMystifying Agility, one belief at a time. There is a good friend of mine that has worked to make the Agile Manifesto reachable by the many people who need to read (reread) and come to terms with its true meaning.   Here is  Derek's summary in a multipart pod-cast   The Long Way Around the Barn. PLAY EPISODE Podcast: Unlimited Agility The Agile Manifesto is often thought of as a historical event or document, but Derek Lane is hoping to redefine how it’s introduced and revisited because the principles are time- and battle-tested in how it brings value to people. As 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, Lane and fellow colleagues have formed a community, Unlimited Agility, where you won’t find an...

Have you heard this term in your office " double bind "?  I bet you haven't - do you even have a clue as to it's meaning?  Since the majority of my readers are male - I can safely bet that the overwhelming number has no clue.  I've never heard it, I confess. After reading about the term and a study at BYU on why women don't speak up in groups... well I have a sense of the double bind.  An observational sense - not a first-hand experience of the double bind. Our industry - software development - has a problem.  The Agile movement with it's lofty goal of improving the work life for developers could have addressed this problem.  Over the last 19 years ( Agile Manifesto c. 2001 ) I've seen little movement in the needle of women in SW Dev (STEM Stats - 15 %).  Could the alliance moved that needle.... it is one of their initiatives . One in 18 Trillion I use to have a goal, no objective, no a rule...  to have at least one female on each team. ...

The product owner calls everyone together and explains the "crazy" direction we are headed and why. Team morale does an immediate 180-degree turnaround and sky-rockets. Product Owner has a Sprint Goal This little tidbit of Sprint Planning often goes unnoticed, is frequently forgotten or never mentioned. But when you see the difference it makes for a bunch of devs that thought we were building the wrong thing and then realize how crafty your product owner is... well you will not forget to insist on the reasons - the goal of sprints you and the team are running. Years ago, in a rainy distant land far from sunny Texas, I worked for a SpeakEasy. The company was a hot-shot in ISD land (Internet Service Delivery in the days of modems). They had this crazy idea to build a Voice-Over-IP telephone product and hired out the tree-hugging hippies from a little consultancy company across the lake. These hippies said they had a new collaborative way to build products that work...

I received this letter from  Jurgen Appelo and thought it might be worth posting here as an example of good criticism and taking action, rather than just complaining.  Yes, there is a  call-to-action   down near the bottom. Dear David, In the Lean-Agile community,  there is a ton of criticism on the topic of certification . Most certificates have little meaning, prove nothing, empty your wallet, and are little more than nasty money-making schemes of savvy certification bodies. At least, that is the sentiment that I usually hear when I bring up the topic. I believe it’s worth trying to do better. 1. Accomplishments One reason for improving upon the idea of certification is that many people find the motivational aspect of certificates to be a positive thing. Human beings crave recognition.  We all want to feel appreciated for the work we do and the successes we have achieved . Badges, awards, trophies, and certificates are standard techniques for signa...

I've been around agilist and SW devs that are using the term MVP quite a lot these days.  And when we get deeper into the conversation I learn that the thing there are referring to is not at all an MVP . It's not the box - it is the Star! Perhaps we need a better term.  Perhaps we should define the terms we are using.  Perhaps we should just use the tools we have to find the better term.   Or I could just tell you - the better term is MBI - Minimum Business Increment . Why does MVP not suffice?  Because to have a product one needs a customer that has paid for said product.  And the purpose of the MVP was to learn for actual customers about how they liked our product and if we should change it in any way.  It was also a test of our current business model, and an opportunity to learn about our business model (was it efficient, could we optimize it in some way, etc.). Most MVPs I've discussed with people have no customers - there is no exchange ...

Recess Kit I've found yet another tool for improving teams.  This is a subscription service that monthly sends you and your team a fun and engaging way to reflect upon your work and discover areas to improve.  Take a look at their site and offering and give it a try like I did. I will update this post as I get to experience Recess Kit and their monthly box of yummy with my team. See Also: Retromat - A well planned Retro Retrospectives trump Planning Collaboration Tools List

Does your Agile community have a local hub, a place where you are 80% sure you will run into almost everyone in the local universe if you attend enough events, meet ups, and bar tabs? Mine does, ... let's test this out...  I will tell you my locations - and if you know much about it, let's see if you can ... guess, ... no, not guess,  predict, no... forecast - can you forecast the name of our local hub of Agile community? I'm in Grapevine, TX ... let me broaden that for you...   Dallas / Fort Worth . Now if you have any experience with the DFW area ... been to user groups in the area or perhaps software development oriented conferences.... you may know the place where... like Cheers - where everybody knows your name .  Who is it? Spoilers .... hi sweetie ... I will put the answer a bit further down the page. I just read this article in INC. - Here's the Secret Sauce for Turning Your Business Into a Beloved Community Fixture   By Leigh Buchanan ...

The Committed Sardine By Ian Jukes  A blue whale is the largest mammal on earth. The adult blue whale is the length of 2½ Greyhound buses and weighs more than a fully loaded 737. A little known fact is that a blue whale is so large that when it decides to turnaround, it can take 3 to 5 minutes to turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction. As a result, some people have drawn a strong parallel between blue whales and our school system. It just seems to take forever to turn them around. There as some people who just don’t believe the public school system can be turned around. But compare the way a blue whale turns around (slowly) with how a school of. . . Sardines – which is the same or even greater mass than a blue whale. . . A school of sardines can almost turn instantly around – how do they do it? The answer is simple. If you take a careful look at a school of sardines you will notice that although all the fish appear to be swimming in the same direction, at any one ti...

Presented in OpenSpace at Agile Games 2018 for FUN and Feedback. This game design is not focused where you might assume - at training people how to "do" Scrum.  The inventors of the game, Tim Snyder and Derek Lane, are focused upon the experience of Scrumming, the group dynamics of being a scrum team.  The game has been designed, and is being refined with the objective of allowing groups of people that know how to do Scrum, to experience some of the Ah-HA moments that mature Scrum team learn after many, laborious retrospectives.  By compressing the group dynamic into a game with the glorious "happen-chance" cards causing random, yet all too common software development events, playing this game for a few hours can give you the deep insights that may only be achieved after months or years of real-life time developing products.  Learning doesn't require time... * Al Shalloway. One of the core questions Tim & Derek have been pondering:  How does one gai...

What must an Agile Transformation initiative have to be reasonably assured of success? We "change agents" or Agilist, or Organizational Development peeps, or Trouble Makers, or Agile Coaches have been at this for nearly two decades now... one would think we have some idea of the prerequisites for one of these Transformations to actually occur.  Wonder if eight Agile Coaches in a group could come up with ONE list of necessary and sufficient conditions - an interesting experiment.  Will that list contain an "engagement model"?  I venture to assert that it will not.  When asked very few Agile Coaches, thought leaders, and change agents mention much about employee engagement in their plans, models, and "frameworks".  Stop and ask yourselves ... why? Now good Organizational Development peeps know this is crucial, so I purposely omitted them from that list to query. One, central very important aspect of your Agile Transformation will be your Engagement mod...

Have you ever been in a situation where you thought the technique needed to move forward was one thing, yet the person leading (your leader) assumed something else was what was needed?  Did you feel misaligned, unheard, marginalized?  Would you believe that 54% of all leaders only use ONE style of leadership - regardless of the situation?  Does that one style of leading work well for the many levels of development we see on a team? Perhaps your team should investigate one of the most widely used leadership models in the world ("used to train over 5 million managers in the world’s most respected organizations").  And it's not just for the leaders.  The training is most effective when everyone receives the training and uses the model.  The use of a ubiquitous language on your team is a collaboration accelerator.  When everyone is using the same mental model, speaking the same vernacular hours of frustration and discussion may be curtailed, and alignm...

Let's Invert the typically wrong headed view of Software Development project management as a construction project.  We can map it the other way just to see if it works... to have some fun, to explore the meaning of phrases we toss around quite frequently. Site Landing Page Normally Project Management terms come from a construction domain.  We are going to apply the lexicon of modern software to the construction of a home.  We will follow the construction project and meet some of the people doing the work. This is a very small (8 homes from $600,000 skyward) program in my 30-40 year old neighborhood. About 6 months ago I saw the programs landing page go up.  It gives casual observers and some of the stakeholders a general idea of the intent of the program.  And most importantly who to contact for additional information if you happen to be interested in their products. The Refuge program has 8 product projects and has them running independently. ...