Agile Complexification Inverter

Pondering... why are gender "neutral" words such as craftsman are not as gender neutral as we men seem to think they are? I've been personally trying to break myself from a bad habit... one that I've thought was not such a big  deal...  I use the term "guys" in mixed company to describe a group of people ... not yet a team.  In mentoring groups toward becoming a team, I reserve that term for groups that truly behave like a real team.  I was giving a presentation at a local special interest group and afterwards a person gave me some useful feedback... my usage of the term "guys" was distracting and verging on "off-putting" in the room of mostly females.  I needed to read the audience and the room - and choosing the proper term would help them to engage... what I truly desired. I remember in the 1970s (yes this should date me) teachers in school told us that some words were considered gender neutral - I believe that "guys" w...

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...

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...

In the excellently written article   Dark Scrum:  The Case Against the Sprint , Ron Jeffries' does a wonderful job of explaining a common problem of Scrum's mainstay practice, the Sprint.  As I read the article I could only think of many managers I've seen over my years that didn't trust Scrum, the teams, or the coaching to deliver.  And feeling pressure to make deadlines imposed from little information (desire more than empirical evidence) had reverted to past heavy handed pressure techniques to make a deadline.  After all it was their career that was on the line. To summarize (and you would do better to just click the link and read it):  As an exercise in explaining the inverse of "Good Scrum", Ron uses the term " Dark Scrum ".  In this inverted world, Ron makes the case that the Sprint is a bad practice, because a manager expecting the common faster progress (Jeff Sutherland's statement “Twice the Work in Half the Time”) will demand that res...

Every time I meet Ty Crockett at an event he shakes my hand and mentions how many people he's helped to understand their team's Definition of Done or Ready using the card deck I create some years back.  He's not bragging (but he should be) he's thanking me.  But the fun thing is that Ty has evolved a better practice than I did.  Maybe it's the repetition and small variations that has lead to the improvement.  Yeah - I think that's it. I may get this wrong ... but Ty's variation goes some thing like this... Start with a big board. Divided into 3 sections.  Introduce the concept of Brainstorming... Add dividers to talk about how to organize the outputs of the brainstorm.  I usually print out DoD cards but do not show them to the team until we have a discussion on the types of things they need to consider.  For example: Here is a section out of the PSM course that I always ask teams to consider… They create their own cards ...

I was invited to participate in a Scrum Alliance Webinar.  Maybe you would like to listen to us in a discussion of techniques to collaborate at scale (remotely and with many people).  The topic is one that I've got some experience in discussions - yet I never seem to get to done... Collaboration at Scale: Defining Done and Ready and NO for Distributed Teams   With Joel Bancroft-Connors , Agile Organizational Coach; David A. Koontz , Agile Transition Guide; and Luke Hohmann , CEO and Founder of Conteneo, Inc. 14 February 2018 11 a.m. ET (USA).   #ScrumWebinar18 The Scrum Guide is pretty clear on the criticality of the definition of Done: "When a Product Backlog item or an Increment is described as "Done," everyone must understand what "Done" means. However, the Scrum Guide ALSO says that the definition of Done can "vary significantly per Scrum Team." This leads us to examine when and how the definition of Done should vary, how distr...

Knowledge workers in the 21st Century must have many areas of deep knowledge, while also be capable of collaboration across multiple other domains with dissimilar T-shaped individuals.  This description of a person is a metaphor.  Compare it to the shape of the "I" in the classic saying there is no "I" in Team. I first read about Scott Ambler's term "Generalizing Specialist" - but it's so hard to remember the proper order of the words... get it backwards and it has an inverted meaning... T-Shaped is easier to remember.  A generalizing specialist is someone who: Has one or more technical specialties (e.g. Java programming , Project Management , Database Administration , ...).  Has at least a general knowledge of software development.  Has at least a general knowledge of the business domain in which they work.  Actively seeks to gain new skills in both their existing specialties as well as in other areas, including both technical...

I was working with a failing team some time ago.  I use "failing" to describe the outcome of the team - not the people on the team.  Are you OK with that description? An issue arrose in the stand up - a team member that was to verify the quality of a procedure did so and reported that there were a few records that didn't match expectation in the data set.  Upon inquire the number of records not matching was over 2000.  Most people acknowledged immediately the exaggeration - I could tell by the laughter.  After about 10 minutes of discussing the details of the problem - it appeared the team had a handle on the specific situation. I stopped the discussion and inquired if they could name the impediment.  One team member did a great job of describing the impediment as a _communication gap_ .  Wonderful - I could work with that - the problem had a name and it didn't include anyones Proper Name. "If the problem has a first name; we are going to hav...

Great artist sign their work. There is one part of the original Macintosh I'd like to frame on the wall. Apple part number 810-0374 - the case. It contains signatures of Macintosh design team in raised human font. Folklore about the Macintosh design team's signing party . Great artist sign their work Are you an artist? I was thinking about this story...  imagine telling it like this. Some years ago, when the computer industry was not yet launched, and might fold on any quarterly earning report on Wall Street, there was an SOB that drove many team members crazy.  This SOB parked a motorcycle along with a piano in the lobby to inspire the designers.  Some people believe this SOB didn't know how to build teams.  Yet he did know how to build products.  And he did build one of the most successful late 20th/21st Century organizations.  Compare it's operation to that of conglomerates it's revenue size and you will see a stark difference.  T...

I've been called to task - asked why I teach teams to distinguish between Task Hours and some non-denominational non-specific non-absolute unit.  The latest team I guided used PEZ!  In the daily stand up a person might be heard to say: "Yesterday I was working on the code to DisCombobulate the GUID so that we could distinguish customers from guest and the task to peek into the hashed session state was harder than I anticipated - I will need 2 more PEZ to get that done today." Benefits of "Task Points" Because it works and is more fun.  Not a sufficient and rational reason. Because it's a fractal of the concept of Story Points.  Not a practical enough reason. Because it encourages transparency and acknowledges that we are really bad at estimates.  Not sure we wish to propagate that notion. Because Scrum has a value of Openness  and in that spirit can we admit that a team of 7 people doing 50 "hours" of tasks a week is really a poor met...

So you have the new Apple Watch - yes, it's quite nice, and you love the convenience of all your notification right on your wrist.  Did you notice that when the VP was asking about the project, as you were describing the challenges you paused, lifted your arm, checked the latest notification that she was a bit put-out by the exchange.  Although you went on to tell her that your team had overcome the challenges with an innovative solution.  The VP disengaged in the dialogue and walked away.  Wonder why? What was the unintended message of your body language during that encounter? Did you signal that you were busy, late for an appointment, not interested in the conversation, that you were dismissing the participant - what did your raised arm and glancing at your watch tell the VP?  Is that truly what you wished to signal? We have had 10 years to learn to use a iPhone and now in meetings you will notice people signaling that they are prepared to engage i...

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...