Agile Complexification Inverter

I've been a fan of Triangle Man for some time... Then the other day... years, and decides later I saw this Hugh Lieber art work. Hugh Lieber And once again I fell for Triangle Man.  And that got me thinking of the 3-4-5 right triangle... When I think of right triangles - it's the one I imagine...  although I spent many years using the classic drafting 30-60 degree triangle. And then this sound track starts in the back of my mind... THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS Particle Man (Tiny Tunes) Lyrics Particle man, particle man Doing the things a particle can What's he like? It's not important Particle man Is he a dot, or is he a speck? When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead? Nobody knows, Particle man Triangle man, Triangle man Triangle man hates particle man They have a fight, Triangle wins Triangle man Universe man, Universe man Size of the entire universe man Usually kind to smaller man Universe man He's...

Imagine two tribes, the first tribe is referred to by anthropologist as the Slackers .  The anthropologist refer to the other tribe as the Overloaders .  These anthropologist are a crafty bunch, they have devised various methods to study the tribes without the very observant members of the tribes realizing that they are the subjects of experiments.  In fact if we asked the astute tribal people if the anthropologist exist, the people would say no.  They would look at you funny and step away from you, giving you just a bit more personal space.  From the slightly safer distance the people may ask you, why would any tribe wish to have anthropologist.  What happiness could they bring to the tribe? Never-the-less, we know the anthropologist exist because we, dear reader, are pan-dimensional super intelligent creatures that do not live confined to the bounds of this page. These tribes collect berries of all types around their villages and transport thes...

What do these phrase have in common - what is their inherent consistent meaning? Zero Defects Take the time to do it Right Repeatability and Reliability Process Maturity Model Measure twice, cut once Six Sigma Rework is Waste, Lean processes remove Waste They are ironically consistent in their purpose to reduce variability.  Don Reinertsen will attempt to convince us that in the domain of product development (unlike other domains) variability may not be the enemy of good.  He will argue that it is the economic payoff-function of this outcome that is of upmost concern in design. Voltaire 's aphorism :   Perfect is the enemy of good. I'm in a group at work that is reading books on Agile software development topics to what purpose... well to learn I hope.  After Lyssa's book on Coaching Agile Teams  we turned the knob up to 11 with Don Reinertsen's Principles of Product Development Flow .  Since it's such a tough read, a dense book with so m...

Now that everyone knows about Bill Murray's movie Groundhog Day - I love February 2nd.  It's my favorite , most enjoyable, beloved, cherished, esteemed day of the year.  And I don't need to tell you again how many LIKES I give this redundant day... so on to the story. Bill & Groundhog Well this happened about ten years ago, and about 6 years ago, or maybe it was 4 years past, and seems like we did this about 24 months ago...  or it could be today! The Agile Transition Initiative at the company has come upon an inflection point (do ya' know what that is...  have you read Tipping Point ?).  I'm not exactly sure of it's very precise date... but  Feb. 2nd  would be the perfect timing.   The inflection has to do with which direction your Agile Transition Initiative takes from this point into the future.   Will it continue on it's stated mission to "transform" the organization?  Or will it stall out and revert slowly to the stat...

Here is a new set of books for Synergic Reading, lessons from more perspectives than one can wrap their minds around. I just ran across the book:   The Billionaire and the Mechanic on "the Face Page" (what my 85 yr old father calls it).  Apparently it's the choice of flight reading by Lia, a row boat captain who plans a trans-pacific crossing single handed this year.  See her awesome row boat:   Row Lia Row . The America’s Cup, first awarded in 1851, is the oldest trophy in international sports, and one of the most hotly contested. In 2000, Larry Ellison, co-founder and billionaire CEO of Oracle Corporation, decided to run for the coveted prize and found an unlikely partner in Norbert Bajurin, a car radiator mechanic who had recently been named Commodore of the blue collar Golden Gate Yacht Club. Julian Guthrie’s The Billionaire and the Mechanic tells the incredible story of the partnership between Larry and Norbert, their unsuccessful runs for the Cup in 2003 ...

Yesterday (July, 2015) we did a lunch-n-learn at GameStop HQ on pair programming.  I think it was a great success, largely because we serve food, and I've been told that everything goes better when people are sharing a meal together (and even better with adult beverages). Are you interested in Pair Programming?  I'll confess, the term is a bit misleading.  I was asked by multiple people if the topic was just for programmers.  No - no it's not just a programming technique. It is also for any kind of knowledge work.  Such as testing, or analysis, or writing stories, or ... yes coding, scripting, excel spreadsheets, etc. The Agenda: Pair Programming Simulation Start with a warm up exercise (totally non-related to the topic).  This allows all the late arrivals to find a seat and not miss out on the real start of the session.  I've found this technique (soft start) to be a required technique for companies that have not adopted basic meeting protoc...

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?...

Is your "Agile Project Manager" driving the team to increase their velocity?  Has the Agile Death March begun? Fred Brooks warned us of these dangers nearly 25 years ago in The Mythical Man-Month . One antidote to the PM schedule crunching technique of throwing warm bodies at the problem is to remove the impediments that are known (or just under the surface) within the structure and environment that holds the team back from performing at more efficient delivery rates.  So many times the line workers (developers and testers) are well aware of these issues, and feel as if they have raised them many times and gotten little attention (mostly negative attention) from managers.  A classic game (Innovation Game) to expose these impediments is Speed Boa t. I just saw this image of the anvil holding the balloon down and thought it would make a great visual metaphor for the Speed Boat game .  See the article by Alan Dayley  Velocity is Like a Helium Balloon  ...

Many companies have initiatives to become innovative.  There are some companies that don't appear to need a leadership sponsor to get competitive innovation - wonder why.  Perhaps they have some fundamental aspect to their organization that allows them to be creative.  What would be those aspects? Why It Feels Like We're Falling Behind It can take years to notice a life-changing invention.  - Motley Fool It took the world a few years to recognize that the Wright brothers had flown the first airplane at Kitty Hawk, NC (first flight in Dec. 1903 to 1908 public demonstrations). Here's my research on the topic of creativity. The musical group OK-Go! describes their process to achieve creativity - and the math behind the wonder and surprise they are reliably able to deliver. An awesome lesson in discovery - planning to play - to achieve innovation. Predicting Creativity in the Wild -- a research paper on the use of sociometric monitoring of teams by Sociom...

I've never met a Scrum team that was highly performant (one commonly stated end goal) that did not have a highly engaged and participatory Product Owner.  I've also not met one person that can do all that that role requires for Scrum teams and the business.  Yes, Scrum's model simplification may mislead organizations into believing that the role is one and only one person.  It was designed this way for very valid reasons - to quit thrashing teams and increasing focus, also a form of limiting work in process, the concept of the PO as the one-ringable-neck responsible for the ROI of the team. However this simplification rarely addresses the needs of the total business.  Here's a great article on the expansion of this simplification. The Product Manager vs Product Owner   by John Peltier I've worked with numerous teams in my 10 years of guiding Agile transitions.  And reflecting upon all those teams, there success levels, the customer & te...

Practicing Into to Refactoring with LEGOs . Refactoring is when a developer changes the structure of the code without changing the behavior.  To do this with little or no risk a craftsman will have a set of well maintained tests that prove the code still behaves exactly as before. A simple way to visualize refactoring is to think of 12 eggs.  Most people will imagine a carton of eggs.  But it is possible to think of 2 cartons of 6 eggs; or even 6 packages of two hardboiled eggs.  Refactoring get's its name from the factorization of numbers.  Twelve has multiple factors (6 x 2), (3 x 4), (2 x 6), (1 x 12).  No matter which factorization the resulting collection is twelve eggs.  In TDD we have test to make sure we don't break the eggs. Note:  Many IDE's claim to do refactoring, and many times they work just as expected; however not all IDE refactorings are reliable.  I suggest you test your IDE's refactoring before you trust it. To int...