Agile Complexification Inverter

Chatting with an old colleague about the issues we both face with facilitating group learning environments in the post COVID era we decided to broaden the discussion to learn more from other colleagues in similar predicaments. Event RSVP   -  Friday 2020/Apr/17 @ 2pm CT via Zoom Tom Perry described the proposed event as: In the pandemic era is the agile age of face-to-face communication over? Are post-it notes a thing of the past? How will we re-tool for this brave new world? Or perhaps we should just wait it out and get back to our task boards? Join us for this lively Lean Coffee and tell us where you stand! We are thinking it will start as a Lean Coffee event. .. and what it leads to... we are prepared to be surprised! Join us! David's pre-event Notes & Thoughts Tom Wujec:  Got a wicked problem?  First, tell me how to make Toast.  TED Talk Discusses the need for collaboration in resolving "wicked problems" and the need for decom...

I'm taking Mezick's introduction course to OpenSpace Agility - thought I'd write a bit about what I'm learning. Unboxing the workshop - Your move Schrodinger. Day One: Beginning concepts - leaders have a duty to set direction and name constraints; yet stay away from telling how to achieve the goals.  Executives commits to holding first OpenSpace and Acting upon the proceedings.  And holding a second OpenSpace after a time box (100 days). A constraining forces in OSA will be the Agile Manifesto, actions and experiments should be judged by this definition and if seen to support it, be considered good. Another foundational concept of OSA - Self Management - defined as the behavior of a group to know and practice their decision making process (whatever that may be).  A good test is to ask 5 people how their group makes decisions - then count the number of answers - one general description of their decision making apparatus points strongly toward a self-managin...

For many years one example of process thinking, resource gathering, requirements, implementation and acceptance criteria has been the exercise - make PB&J sandwiches .  I've done this with groups to discuss the simple task that we typically overlook as "experts" in sandwich making, that perhaps a 5 year old will find difficulty glossing over the - get bread - instruction. Here's a TED Talk by Tom Wujec who has analyzed a similar exercise and draws some powerful conclusions from many iterations.  Watch it and then rethink the simple acts in your life. So tell me again why group collaboration is important when you are solving wicked problems? I was out walking my dog, Malibu and we stopped at a tree with lights wrapped around it's trunk.  They didn't go too far up the trunk, and I wondered if the humans ran out of effort... then I imagined the lights wrapping themselves around the tree.  What kind of motions would a set of lights on a wire learn?...

IDEO - redesigns the classic shopping cart, ABC Nightline looks at how the IDEO process of innovation really works. Steve Jobs on the iPhone/tablet development sequence - which came first? Sir Ken Robinson (TED Talk) Do Schools Kill Creativity? The Myths of Innovation - Scott Berkun's Lecture at CMU The New Rules of Innovation - Carl Bass of Autodesk, Inc. Innovation at Procter & Gamble

What are the necessary and sufficient engineering practices that an agile team needs to support the Agile Manifesto's 12 principles ? There is no one right answer - yet there are some very common patterns one sees when this exercise is repeated for multiple teams within an organization transitioning to agile software development.  From this analysis one could derive the set of core practices for your agile organization. Exercise ::  Mapping Engineering Principles to Agile Practices   (PDF) by David Koontz Facilitation Guide Set up Print all material, one Agile principle per page (enlarge if you wish). Hang the Agile Manifesto on the wall. Hang the 12 Principles on the wall. Hang the suggested list of Practices on the wall. Have multiple colors of sticky notes & lots of pens/markers. Introduce the Manifesto and the 12 principles Discuss the Agile Manifesto - tell the history - describe what a process is and is not. Is “Agil...

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...

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 the...

Here's a fun exercise for an Agile training. Build a Fruity Logo. The story is to build a logo (new or well known) from the source material to be supplied. First have the team estimate the story in Story Points. Give no hints of the materials to be supplied. Then after some time go to Sprint Planning where the story to be considered is the logo. Have the PO discuss the story of building a logo. The team may of course resize the story. At this point the PO will allow the requirement of the logo being constructed from fruit to surface. Don't allow the team to just get the materials - they should have to estimate what they need in Story - Tasking. Perhaps they may discover during the Spring needs - these become impediments and my be provided (may not - discretion of facilitator). Team the start the Sprint. Constructs the logo from the fruit provided. Product Review & Retrospective (debrief). Materials: Example logos to choose from, Fruit many types, Cut...

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...

The Golden Gates Paper Bridge Group Initiative This group initiative is from the UNC-Charlotte's Venture Group Initiatives Manual . I've used this initiative to discuss team work, leadership, followership, understanding the client and may other issues that arise during the debriefing. In one training at SolutionsIQ the teams were given the requirements (build a bridge of 12" span - but when the customer acceptance was done the boat that had to pass under the bridge had towers and antenna that exceeded the specification height.  The teams had to negotiate with the Product Owner on the physical acceptance test - a toy boat passing under the bridge.   One team created their own "Unit-Test" - the box. Golden Gates  (Facilitator Info) Materials: 60 sheets of paper per group, paper clips per group, approximately 60 feet of string, tape for the string, copies of rules (next page) for each group, a ruler, flip chart for debrief. Set up : •  Lay down str...