Agile Complexification Inverter

David Koontz guiding a canoe I was at the Dallas Tech Fest last week (2017 actually) and was asked several times what an Agile Transition Guide was (it was a title on my name tag)... it's surprising to me how many people assume they know what an Agile Coach is, yet there is no good definition or professional organization (with a possible exception coming: Agile Coaching Institute ). So naturally, the conversation went something like this: Inquisitive person:   "Hi David, what's an Agile Transition Guide?  Is that like a coach?" David:  "Hi, glad you asked.  What does a coach do in your experience?" Inquisitive person: "They help people and teams improve their software practices." David:  "Yes, I do that also." Inquisitive person: "Oh, well then why don't you call yourself a coach?" David:  "Great question:  Let's see...  well one of the foundational principles of coaching ( ICF ) is that the coa...

I've listened to the audio book several times on trips across country, and each time I've said that I needed to buy the book (paper version) so that I could study it better.  So I did, and this is an attempt to outline the books major points. The book:   The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking  by Burger & Starbird. In the audio format I found it hard to visualize the 5 elements, perhaps because of the analogy to the classic elements of earth, fire, air, and water.   So before any confusion sets in, here are the author's 5 elements: Grounding Your Thinking; Understand Deeply  [Earth] Igniting Insights through Mistakes; Fail to Succeed  [Fire] Creating Questions out of Thin Air; Be your own Socrates  [Air] Seeing the Flow of Ideas; Look Back, Look forward  [Water] Engaging Change; Transform Yourself  [the Quintessential element] "In any movie, play, or literary work, media scholars tell us how to determine who truly is the mai...

Guest post by: Tracy Gibson  ( tracy@gibson.name ) "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living." ~ Gail Shelly Long-term results are the impact of coaching. We all want to improve our life in an area of career and work, money and wealth, people and relationships, health and wellbeing, and/or learning and growing. Yet how often have we vowed to change and sooner or later, the resolve that we have to start has waned or the methods chosen seem too hard. That wavering moment is where coaching steps in and strengthens our resolve. A good coach is someone who is an expert at helping others create positive change in their lives. For some clients, the positive change they most want may be focused on personal goals such as relationships, time management, work-life balance, stress reduction, simplification, health, etc., but other clients may be more interested in professional or business goals such as leadership, getting a pr...

Learning to listen is a difficult skill to teach. On the surface it appears to be a passive activity. It is the reflection portion of the listening activity that might need enhancement. Here is a group exercise that will strengthen your team's ability to listen. The 5 Second Rule. After a person speaks, everyone must count to 5 (5 seconds) before anyone speaks. If you wish to speak next, you must physically count on your raised hand via fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Practice this a few time, counting slowly (maybe extend it to 10 seconds if there are lots of fast counters). If two or more people raise their hands to speak next, then they (not the group) decide the speaking order. This pause in the immediate point, counter-point might allow the conversation to become multi-perspective, rather than percussive-discussion, like a ping-pong match. Most teams will expand their views and learn to be inclusive during dialogues with this technique. When multiple people want to speak to...

Agile Palooza - at Sabre HQ - March 8th. The Agile Coaches table at Sabre's Agile Palooza had a guest, Lance Dacy, Founder of DFW Scrum . The person responsible for the "Agile Palooza plan coming together" Charlsi, with the leadership, Chuck & Lisa. Overall feedback was very positive. Some of the feedback on the sessions - I think we call that a success!

Oh the irony of a Pig and Chicken 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 obvi...

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

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 Stor...

a vending machine - random books 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 2012) 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...

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 be...

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 i...

A good dialogue on what it means to be an Agile Coach on Quora - http://www.quora.com/What-is-an-Agile-Coach Buckminster Fuller wrote in his 1970 book I Seem To Be a Verb : "I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe." Much of the coaching I enjoy doing is about being a "Transition Guide" toward Agility. My thinking on this is that I don't want to have to wear the Kevlar vest of the Change Agent. I prefer to model the behaviors of the best guides I've had the pleasure of knowing - the community of Outward Bound guides I've learned so much from.  And the role of a true coach is one totally focused upon the client's needs (not the sponsor's desires for the client).  That ethical constraint is not respected in the Agile community. These are people that can not afford to spe...

I just tagged myself Dogfood David in a retrospective the other day.  Our Product Owner was running a few team building games.  We were playing an Agile word association name game, the ball was tossed to me, the pressure was on, I had to find an Agile word/concept that started with D.  Dogfood David just blurted out of me. Why did this happen? As it turns out I do believe in eating my own dogfood .  I have literally made and eaten dogfood. Kato & Tyler My wife and I had two dogs when we were married.  After our honeymoon we moved to Salt Lake City and bought new unknown brand of dog food.  Our golden retriever, Tyler, had epilepsy and  he started having daily convulsions.  My wife spotted the pattern. She had been reading about controlling epilepsy in humans via diet.  She put two very temporal separate things together and decide that we had to change Tyler's diet.  More research turned up a book that recommended a vegetari...

Do you think you need a prescription to create a Team Culture - OK - here you go. Executive-level statements in public and private about the importance of team players (not just teamwork platitudes). Executives model team player behaviors (not just preach behaviors). Promote and reward people with team player skills, publicly announce reasons including team player factors for decision. Reward team players with important assignments. Adjust individual performance appraisal systems to include specific team player behaviors. Hold training on attitudes, skills and behaviors of team players. Reward team players with higher salary increases, and tell them why. Create an incentive system that rewards team effort (not individual effort). Institute flexible compensation programs that allow managers to pay individuals that contribute to the team culture. Include team-player skills & abilities in management assessment programs. Develop programs of team awards that motivate the...

Acid pour is a game (group initiative) to investigate styles of leadership such as: command-and-control versus self-organizational teams, styles of communication and behavior of groups. I have used this game to teach teams the difference between Agile and using a command-and-control style of leadership.  In this scenario the group elects a CEO that appoints 4 managers, the rest of the group is assigned the role of worker.  Restrictions are place on the worker such that only communication is allow to flow from the top.  For example: when the workers approach the containment area they must put on the protective suits (blindfolds), however only the 4 manager suits have intercom systems, therefore the workers will not be able to talk, nor see.  The managers will instruct them (control).  The CEO will direct the action via planning with the managers for 5 minutes, and then by announcing new directions as needed. This scenario is very restricted, typically fails t...

Being on a team is a privilege not a right.  Some people inherently understand this, some do not.  Marcus Jordan, freshman guard for University of Central Florida, doesn't want to wear the team shoes.  It is big money for sports teams to make deals with sponsors - this one is $3 million.  Why does Marcus refuse to wear the team shoe?  The team shoe is Adidas, and Marcus is fond of his father's famous Nike Air Jordan. So if you were the coach, what would you do? What were the choices for Marcus?  To wear the Adidas shoes and explain to the press that he was wearing the team shoe.  This has been referred to as "taking one for the team".  Or he could play the "I'm special" card.  Which is what he choose to do. Is having a special player on the team, good for the team? I have fond memories of Michael Jordan playing for UNC.  He was  great player for many reasons.  One was that he was so very hard to defend when driving t...

This is a paper I wrote for a master's in Organizational Leadership. Ref:  See Sutherland's original paper on Shock Therapy  - A bootstrap for hyper productive teams (PDF) Shock Therapy: Good for the Team David Koontz Chapman University College Building new teams is very difficult, getting a team to come together and gel is an art that has been studied in group dynamic and other team building efforts.  Bruce Tuckman’s model of group development (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing) is the basis of team building. Scrum is an Agile software development framework based upon empirical process control theory.  Using an inspection and adaptation feedback loop Scrum allows a team to self-manage while constantly improving its process and methods of work.  Many teams require months to reach the performing stage.  A method to reduce this startup cost is a controversial technique named Shock Therapy.  With skilled and competent leadership ...