Agile Complexification Inverter

Many coaches suggest that teamwork starts with trust.  Simon Sinek would have us believe that there is a perquisite for trust:  followers feel safe . That feeling of safety builds trust, and that trust sets the environment for teamwork. Do your team members feel safe?  If the project succeeds or fails do they still have a job on your team?  Answer no to that one simple question and you have your answer to why collaboration and teamwork is a challenge in your organization. Work toward changing that and you are demonstrating leadership. Did your software development organization follow the lead of many Agile companies and create a large open space floor plan with rows of cheep tables and expensive chairs?  Did this environment create the collaboration that it was intended to?  I've been in several companies recently that believe they have an Agile environment - this is far from the truth.  Let's look at what they really have and wha...

I've been reading the futurist Ray Kurzweil's latest book ( book's web site ). I find his theories fascinating.  He has quite a record for predicting the future (see ch. 10  The Law of Accelerating Returns - How my predictions are fairing at KurzweilAI.net). Kurzweil's model of the neocortex described in detail in this book,  The Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind, may be sufficient to build a Artificial Intelligence.  This computer mind system may be capable of demonstrating the emergent property of intelligence.  And then by extension the emergent property of consciousness. The sections on hidden Markov models, hierarchical architecture, and evolutionary genetic algorithms are worth reading if your into software design.  If you wonder why Apple released Siri before it was perfect, this book will give you the reason.  Kurzweil and company are the innovators of speech recognition. Apple Had No Choice But To Release Siri As An Imperfect Prod...

I'm working with a large client that has adopted the classic user story format for the backlog. "As a user , I want some feature  so that I receive this benefit ." Yet, I'm sure that it is not delivering the desired shared understanding that throwing out the classic business requirements document and adopting the scrum/XP user story practice is designed to deliver. So if your groups user stories have become just a piece of boiler plate language to satisfy some agile coach's requirement - maybe you should reflect upon the desired reason for user stories rather than requirements documentation so many years ago.  User stories do work.  But you have to tell a story.  Few authors are good enough to tell a story in one sentence. @davidakoontz @dayleyagile Card, Conversation, Confirmation. Card contents irrelevant. http://t.co/IIUdJJmxA1 — Ron Jeffries (@RonJeffries) May 15, 2014 Here Ron is pointing to one of the XP practices that were very successful in...

Here's an exercise for the leadership - expand this simple backlog and track it until the project is completed - the project is to launch a team. Goal:  lauch a new team;  success criteria - doing sprint 1 and releasing a product increment Stories:  -  An "Order" to create team  -  Business to deliver Purpose / Vision for new team  -  Team Roster  -  Team Infrastructure  -  Mutate Wishlist into a Product Backlog (visible to team, sized, prioritized by delivery order)  -  Team Launch Workshop Here is agile42's advice on creating a great team. Here's a video documentary of how one of the Tech Industry's greatest visionary purposely built his next company.  Built from the heart, with passion, because they all wanted to make a difference in the world. I suggest your team watch this video - discuss how they can be like the founders of NeXT.  What similarities does your team have with th...

Visual.ly Infographic Understanding why an organization thinks it needs to change is enlightening.  Many times the people at the bottom ranks of the organization have no idea the driving forces that necessitate a change.   As a group brainstorm a list of possible reasons for the change. Dialogue on the difference between change and transition.  How long does change take?  What is a transition?   Bridges Transition Model :  Ending - Neutral Zone - New Beginning. Dialogue on the difference between satisfiers and dissatisfaction in the workplace (Herzberg's  Two-Factor theory ). See Gallup's Q12 Employee Engagement survey . First just capture all the reasons that might be the answer to - Why change? Typical reasons (if you need to prime the pump - or when the answers slow down - throw one of these out to head in a different direction). Current process just doesn’t work Decrease time to market for new products Cost reducti...

A collection of blog post that describe team exercises - if you need more information about one of these please contact me. Estimation simulation (paper folding) and why we re-estimate often http://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2016/04/exercise-estimate-number-of-times-you.html Video series on Scrum (short takes) http://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2013/10/learn-scrum-video-series.html A Release planning and Scrum simulation - Priates of the Carriballoonian http://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2012/04/procuct-owner-scrum-immersion-workshop.html   Project success sliders http://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2013/12/project-success-sliders.html Quikie video explains relative vs absolute measures http://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2013/11/relative-points-explained.html    Dog Grooming - agile estimation technique http://agilecomplexificationinverter.blogspot.com/2010/11/dog-grooming-exercis...

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...

Agile Tetrahedron - ver 1 Who can explain the classic Project Management Triangle?  I've found that everyone has heard of it and uses it fairly well in a sentence. But when it comes to actually explaining the analogy to the triangle the struggles begin.  Some call it the iron triangle - as if nothing can stretch or shrink it's features once set.  I created a plastic triangle that was adjustable to illustrate the nature of negotiation of each of the sides. I want to move beyond the classic three variable problem of the project (scope, schedule & cost) and envision a model that describe the value that a project represents while maintaining the constraint relationship that these classic triangular relationships represent.  Enter the Tetrahedron - a platonic solid.  The tetrahedron has four faces, each face is a triangle, it is the simplest form of a pyramid with the base in the form of a triangle. Highsmith's Agile Triangle Jim Highsmith introdu...

Are we applying a great solutions to a poorly understood problem?   What is the question - we know the answer is 42 . The early adopters of Scrum were seeking a method of controlling the chaos of emergent product development processes.  They needed empirical methods to discern if the product was moving in a meaningful direction.  They were willing to risk accepting technical debt to validate working solutions in the hands of real customers.  They were focused on delivering value, they wanted a process that optimized on value delivery and embraced the learning process required to explore new product domains.  They were organizations capable of thriving on the edge of chaos.  Organizations in the early adopters phase seek to keep options open (decide at the last responsible moment), to pivot  upon learning about the opening market space, to fulfill an undefined emergent need. "Intelligence should be viewed as a physical process that tries to maxim...

Before one scales up their functioning teams (I'm assuming one would not want to scale up non-functioning teams - yet I've seen that done) one should look for alternatives to the scaling problem. "Scaling Agile methods is the last thing you should do" — @martinfowler , 2003 This scaling problem has been studied: "In 1957, British naval historian and management satirist Northcote Parkinson [known for Parkinson's law: “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”] painted a cynical picture of a typical committee: It starts with four or five members, quickly grows to nine or ten, and, once it balloons to 20 and beyond, meetings become an utter waste of time – and all the important work is done before and after meetings by four or five most influential members." Scaling up Excellence Why Big Teams Suck  by Robert Sutton is a Stanford Professor and co-author (with Huggy Rao) of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More without Set...

Perhaps someone has already thought about the human brain's propensity to match patterns... if this has happened - would we see a patten in this behavior?  If there was a patten, you think someone would have written a book on the subject. Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information Five of the most influential data visualization of all time   by Andy Cotgreave, Tableau Software. The Periodic Table of Visualization Methods ( aside: why people abuse the notion of the Periodic table of elements is puzzling to me - it's not just a table with iconic status - it's a predictive model in action ; ... meanwhile, back to the visualization methods... ) awesome chart with wonderful pop-ups to explain all the visualization methods. Periodic Table of Visualization Methods So let's just go right ahead and include the predictive model of Mendeleev's table. Example of the Periodic Table style applied to Scrum by my friend and colleague KaTe. by...