Learning to Manage time

Time should never be wasted

A software developer is a unique brand of employee.  The profession requires mental toughness and creativity.  The ability to create software also requires strong time management skills.  As a scrum master, you need to help your colleagues learn to manage time better.

If you work in technology, you confront a stark reality.  To keep the global economy moving there is a too much work chasing too few people.  Less than .05% of the world's population can build software and maintain the networks which run it.  Software engineers are under constant pressure to grind out code.  For those who do not understand, it feels like cramming for an exam every day of your working life.  This kind of pressure takes a mental and physical toll on the people doing the work.  Developer’s abuse alcohol, binge eat, take numerous prescription medications and engage in unhealthy behaviors to mitigate the stress.  It is an abusive cycle which leads to burnout and bad quality.

As a scrum master, we need to help others learn to manage time better.  First, create a routine for the development team and business owners.  The daily stand up should never state late, and everyone should attend.  Next developers need “quite time” to concentrate and do work.  People who are looking for favors, football pools, and making lunch plans are forbidden if they interrupt the developers.  Finally, headphones and other techniques to create a state of flow should be encouraged.
Business people divide their day in hour long chunks.  Software engineers think in thirds.  There are morning, afternoon and evening and each period is an opportunity to work and write software.  Another reason I have no meetings scheduled in the afternoon for the development team; I want the afternoons to be interruption free for the developers.

I also use it as a time management tool for product owners.  After lunch, I have a one-hour sprint refinement meeting.  We discuss stories for an hour and then adjourn for the day.  The time after sprint refinement is a perfect opportunity to write user stories.  Developers get into the routine of meetings in the morning and open afternoons of coding.  Product owners understand that the time after the sprint refinement meeting is for writing stories.

So a helpful way to help others better manage their time is to give them clear routines so they can set aside time to do the work.  It is not perfect, but it beats flailing around the office in a panic.

Until next time.

Life Lessons influence Your Agile Coaching

Twenty Seven years later this cover of Time
 magazine still bugs me.  They got it wrong.

Little things remind me of my mortality.  This week I received an invitation to my high school homecoming and a fiftieth birthday party for the class of 1986 afterward.  This reminder of my demise made me do some reflection.  There is nothing like the specter of death to force you to take stock of your life.  This week I wanted to share my revelations.

Demographically, I belong to the Generation X cohort of American history.  Born in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s we were raised in the Reagan 1980’s.  We witnessed the birth of Apple and the fall of the Berlin Wall.  We experienced “Morning in America” and two ugly recessions.  The revolution was televised on MTV, and the counter-revolution came from the White House.  The anxiety of terrorism was nothing compared to the possibility of human extinction caused by mistake in the Cold War.  Plenty of cultural forces mixed to create emulsion which is still relevant today.

As a nerdy Dungeons & Dragons playing child, there was no place to find solace during this period.  I was a striver and wanted to succeed.  There was no internet culture to speak of so I relied on my small circle of friends in theater, JROTC, and scouts to muddle through.  It was a lonely way to grow up.  It was also preparing for my future career because nothing is more solitary that leading change.

Like many people in the early 1990’s, I was adrift.  The job market was lousy, and the prospects for a college graduate were not good.  I worked odd jobs and spent most of my time attempting to be self-sufficient. After working in a casino for a few years, I decided to make a change and become a technology professional.  It was 1998, I was thirty years old, and I began my first entry level job as a Visual Basic developer.  I had found a career.

My career would have numerous ups and downs.  I would confront long term unemployment in the aftermath of the Dot.com bubble.  I would be a consultant, and I would work full time for plenty of companies.  It would take me ten years to learn how to become a competent web developer.  During this period I was exposed to Agile and Scrum.  Since that moment in 2009, I feel like I have gone through a second educational period in my life.  I completed a master’s degree in management.  I became a certified scrum master and then later a certified scrum professional.  I began spreading my experience and knowledge around.  It has been rewarding and fun.

Lately, I have noticed how much cultural opposition within the business community there is to Agile.  It is hard to break old habits and upset personal relationships when you are trying to improve business.  Personal loyalty often takes precedence over doing the right thing for the firm.  There is a lot of understandable fear in the cubicles of America about change and what that means.

Using quantitative measure to judge performance holding people accountable for delivering a quality product, and expecting everyone contributes is controversial among white collar workers.

“It is unfair to measure me to everyone else,” someone I was coaching said.

The reality is it is unfair for someone in the office not to do their job to the best of the ability and cause customer service to suffer.  It is also unfair that you are not improving as your career progresses.  Technology professionals understand this, and it is about time other people in the business community do as well.

So as 2017 drifts lazily into its third, quarter, I am looking forward to the class of 1986 reunion.  My life struggles are a legacy for others to gain experience.  It explains why I enjoy training new developers and helping others avoid the mistakes I made in my career.  Growing old is not as terrible as I suspected.  My life experience has given me the tools to help others, and it just means I have a lot of wisdom to share.  My life prepared me to be the scrum master and the agile coach I am today.  Not a sad thought when you are confronting your mortality.

Until next time.

Work should not make you crazy

Being an office worker feels this wrong and it
needs to change or the global economy is in trouble.

I have been a business professional for over twenty years.  I have witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly of what it means to be a professional.  I am well compensated for my work, but like many people today I live paycheck to paycheck.  I have endured three recessions in my lifetime each time suffering a personal of a financial setback.  I am pretty stoic about these experiences, but they continue having a lingering effect on the kind of leadership I practice.  This week I want to talk about an issue which is an unspoken problem in the business community – mental health.

I began thinking about this topic when news came out on Mashable about Madalyn Parker.  She sent an e-mail where she told her staff that she was taking two days off for mental health reasons.  Her letter was then followed up by a letter from the CEO thanking her for taking the time to focus on her health and wished her a swift recovery.  What followed was a flurry of articles and think pieces about mental illness in the work place.  I want to add my two cents to the conversation.

The world of the white collar professional is unforgiving, highly competitive, impersonal and unfair.  The global economy does not care about the individuals who keep it going.  The factory worker manufacturing smart phones in China, the developer working late nights building applications and the young person cultivating social media likes are all part of this ecosystem.  This environment is an ideal breeding ground for mental illness.  With 1 in 5 Americans who have a mental illness, and I consider addiction part of this statistic, there needs to be a discussion about mental health in the work place.

The reason I became an agile practitioner is as a software developer I labored in plenty of situations which were dysfunctional.  I swore there must be a better way if given a chance I would help lead the necessary changes.  My career is guided by that mission.  In that respect, I am similar to the muckrakers and union organizers of the late 19th century.  These people lobbied and organized to end child labor, reduce injuries in the workplace, and enforced fire safety in all factories.  Eventually, the government became involved, and O.S.H.A. was created to ensure the abuses of the past never happen again.

Just like we do not want to work in factories where the likelihood of amputation or death is high we should also demand offices which discourage mental illness.  Here are some of the long term trends I see which are promoting mental illness.

The use of alcohol and recreational drugs as a social lubricant in business. – 

As long as there has been an America, there has been alcohol.  The nation’s drinking problem became so bad that elected officials, wrongly, passed a constitutional amendment to ban the sale of alcohol entirely. When prohibition proved to be a failure, American returned to its drinking ways.  The real spike in alcohol abuse in this nation took place in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” and the television show “Mad Men” chronical these boozy times.

Fifty years later, alcohol is the drug of choice in the media profession.  Client in all industries is being “entertained” with fine wine and cocktails.  Account executives and vendors are exchanging and consuming alcohol, and it is a regular business practice.   Professionals see this as early as college and discover the consumption of alcohol is a way to deal with stress.  Some of these professionals develop addictions problems, and these addiction problems spill over into the business.

Also, the use of cannabis among engineers has increased over the last fifty years as well as abuse of cocaine among executive ranks.  The reliance of both legal and illegal means to alter consciousness exacerbates existing mental health issues and hurts productivity.  The office should not be a gateway to addiction.

Sleep deprivation. –

Tight deadlines, outsourcing and the around the clock nature of the economy means that a professional to conduct their job has an irregular sleep schedule.  I have written about the importance of sleep in the past, and so has my friend Lawrence Gasik.  Research has shown that people who do not get enough sleep exhibit the traits of PTSD or alcohol intoxication.  There are international conference calls to take and offshore teams to consult.  Business leaders still expect meetings in the office take place during daylight hours, so those people working on these bifurcated sleep schedules suffer in silence.  It explains why sleep aids, melatonin, coffee and Five Hour Energy drinks sell so well in the United States.  We are attempting to whipsaw our bodies into sleep and wakefulness to accommodate the demands of the global economy. This type of sleep deprivation also undermines the mental health of employees.

The focus on shareholder values instead of customer value in large companies. –

Richard Eastman of the Kodak Company paid his employees above average rates, provided numerous perks for his employees and provided outstanding service.  He resisted unionization of his office and factory workers but always made sure his pay and benefit packages were always better than the current market.  With rising unionization of the work force, capital balanced the needs of customers, labor, and shareholders.

This trend began to change as future CEO Jack Welch gave a speech about “Shareholder Value,” to The Pierre in New York.  Combined with the Chicago school of Economics, led by Nobel laureate Milton Freedman business leaders began to worry more about share price than other aspects of the firm.  The effects have been remarkable.  Stock prices have increased for many companies, a particular segment of the investment class has gotten obscenely wealthy, and many mergers and acquisitions have happened to create massive economies of scale.  Shareholder value also lead to the Financial Crisis of 2008 popularized in “The Big Short,” the rise and fall of Enron, the skullduggery of RJR Nabisco and finally the destruction numerous corporate towns in middle America and popularized by the book “Glass House.”

There is plenty of pushback in the academic community against the shareholder value movement, but the business sector has not embraced it and still do not see employees as partners in success.

The inability for business to pay people their real labor value. –

Since the Presidency of George W. Bush and the bursting of the dot.com bubble, companies have gotten very good at creating what my friend Bob Karzeniowski calls the musical chairs economy.  Using slow growth as an excuses firms are demanding more experience from applicants and cutting back training opportunities.  People cannot get on the career ladder, and those that do often have limited chances for advancement.  I also should point out that recruiters and hiring managers openly discriminate against the unemployed people and those who are laid off.

The Great Recession of 2008 – 2009, created a glut of workers.  It has taken nine years, but now that the job market has tightened, business people have lost the “muscle memory,” to increase labor participation to meet the market demand.  We now have created perverse incentives such as airlines having to cancel flights because there are not enough pilots.  Low wages, the musical chairs job market, and the mental scars of the great recession create insecurity.  This instability leads to the undermining of self-esteem and mental illness issues.

The promotions of people with psychopathic tendencies into executive leadership roles.  –

Over the last 40 years, we have been promoting the wrong people into business leadership roles.  Many of these people support the short sided notion of increasing shareholder value.  Making matters worse is some of them are psychopathic who find emotional fulfillment by playing people off each other.  Instead of nurturing others and guiding the business, these leaders create a toxic stew of dysfunction.

It is even more pernicious because these leaders become celebrities in the corporate world and media.  Finally, psychopaths are emotional chameleons kissing up and kicking down to advance their careers.  These emotional vampires undermine morale, and the mind games threaten mental health.

Finally, social stigma against people with mental illness means people who should get help do not. –

Numerous studies have shown the stigma of mental illness is the principle reason people do not get treatment.  This stigma is amplified in the business world where mental toughness and grit are highly prized; to admit weakness is to accept failure.  Venture capitalists are reluctant to give money to people who might be risky.  Someone with bipolar disorder or narcissistic rage is risky to lead a project.  The stigma of mental illness is equal to risk, so business people shun it.

I find it ironic business people does not treat individuals with diabetes or high blood pressure in a similar fashion.  Mental illness if managed correctly, resembles those chronic diseases.  So the stigma of mental illness and its effects on a career prevent people from getting help when they need it.

Taken together, I think these six factors in the modern workplace make it fertile soil to nature mental illness.  Most business people pay lip service to their employee’s mental health because they are trying to keep the business running, meet payroll, and keep investors happy.  It is an ugly spiral; if we want productivity and GDP numbers to improve the business community will have to make some significant reforms.

Just as a factory with fewer fatal accidents is more productive one with deadly accidents; then the contemporary office with fewer mental health problems is more competitive than an office filled with dysfunctional people.  What we currently have is not sustainable, it is better to reform now than wait and see what happens next.

Until next time.

Respond to Change or else

Change is not magic.

Software development is a weird stew of activities.  It is a creative activity taking the vague guidelines of others and turning it into working code.  It is an engineering activity because it requires a certain mindset only found in engineering.  It requires business acumen because software should do something which supports business.  Finally, a software developer has to adjust to change because technology, business, and the world are moving at the speed of the internet.  It is my firm belief that the best software developers and Scrum Masters need to acknowledge this change and learn to work with it.

I am coming up on twenty years in the software business, and the skills I needed at the beginning of my career do not match the ones I use today.  Some principles do translate like HTML, CSS, and object-oriented programming but in the beginning, there was no such thing as generics, responsive web design, or C#.  I relearned the skills I needed in my career every 18 months.  The reward for this struggle is employment and opportunities to share my experiences with others.  I want to make sure that no one suffers the kind of failure or mishaps I have in my career.

The constant theme in my career has been responding to change.  When VB.net careers began to dry up, I learned to code in C#.  As screens became smaller and mobile computing began to grow; I had to learn Bootstrap CSS and Jquery Mobile.  I was an early adopter of Agile and Scrum, but that has not stopped me from reaching out to find out more frameworks like LESS and SAFe to be successful.  In this business, a person needs to keep learning and growing.

In the agile manifesto, this idea is called, “Responding to change over following a plan.” In our contemporary economy, there are no promises in business so as a working person it is important to make sure your skills are up to date and marketable.  As an employer, it is important to address technical debt and make sure your staff is learning the latest skills to keep your company infrastructure up to date.  Upgrade your servers, use an office suite in the current decade, and shun mediocrity in all its forms.

The only thing sure in the business community is change and to be a successful software developer or scrum master you must learn to embrace change.

Until next time.

Feeling All American!!

America may not look good but we have a lot to offer.

The United States is commemorating its Independence Day.  It is a time to look back at the nation’s history, celebrate the present and look to the future.  I am a business person and agilest.  I am also American which means I view the world with a, particularly American perspective.  This week, I want to talk about my American perspective and how it shapes my agile practice.

My European and Canadian friend tease me with the stereotype of the “Ugly American.”  To them, the stereotype posits that we American’s are uncouth interlopers with lots of money but no manners, style, culture or ideas which have value to the rest of the world.  I disagree with them politely and let the facts speak for themselves.  America for better or worse helped create the global economy in the aftermath of the second world war; we take for granted today.  America is why you can purchase a Coca-Cola in any nation in the world. 

We are not a perfect nation.  Our politics are deeply divided, and we are currently involved in on-going wars in the Middle East.  In spite of those challenges, American’s for the last century have stood up to totalitarianism, communism, and terrorism.  When asked, we have come to the aid of our allies and attempted to act as an example for the rest of the world to follow.  That said, I think our three biggest exports to the world are philosophical. Two of these concepts come from the nineteenth century; Transcendentalism and Pragmatism.  The other is from the present day – the agile reformation.  All three of these diverse ideas influence me and my agile practice.

Transcendentalism seems very high brow and something out of a high school American literature course, but we see its influence around us.  The focus on individualism and finding a spiritual connection with the divine links it with the current new age movement.  Thoreau’s ideas of civil disobedience are part of every social justice movement.  Finally, the desire to embrace nature and simplicity is the central framework of modern environmentalism.  I see the concentration on the individual and desire to make the most of one’s time on earth outlined in transcendentalism to be revealing.  Life is too short to be working on poorly run projects and being involved in drudgery.  Work must not only provide material comfort, but it must give people purpose.  I thank transcendentalism for that perspective.  

Pragmatism was a significant movement in American thinking.  Its central idea is, “…the practical application of ideas by acting on them to test them in human experience.”  In other words, a pragmatist does not worry about grand theories of how the world works.  They are concerned about what ideas “work” in the world.  It is responding to change over following a plan.  To pragmatists, an idea or action is only useful based on its practical application in the world.  Pragmatism is why all cities in the United States have water treatment.  Thanks to Pragmatists we set aside our notions of free markets and individual liberty to charge everyone taxes to make sure water is safe to drink.  To reduce the spread of cholera and dysentery in our nation, we sacrificed some individual liberty.  This a classic example of pragmatism.  For a scrum master or agile coach, it means you need to reject ideological rigidity if you want the team to be more successful; in other words, respond to change.

Finally, we have to discuss the agile movement and how it went from an American idea to a global reformation.  The Scrum Alliance has gatherings in Dublin and Singapore this year.  The Scaled Agile Alliance is spreading knowledge around the world.  Finally, business from Korea to Canada attempting to take the Agile manifesto and make it work for their companies.  The reason why we have this broad acceptance of the new way of doing business is that it delivers improved results.  We are turning out software better and faster thanks to the agile reformation than any time in the history of the industry.  It seems pragmatism encourages these new ways of doing things in the business world.

So, this “Ugly American,” takes pride in transcendentalism, pragmatism and agile.  They are uniquely American ideas which are making the business community and the world a better place.

Happy Independence Day and Until next time.