I am not going anywhere

My youthful self.

The business world can be cruel and unfeeling.  Millions of dollars move around the globe each second, and decisions in particular portions of the world can create waves of disruption.  The impersonal nature of global capitalism often makes people feel like cogs in a giant machine.  It is easy to feel lost.  The alienation we feel at work does not have to happen.  It is one of the reasons I am attracted to the agile reformation.  It is a better way to work. 

When you work in an office, you are often doing repetitive work. We cash checks, generate invoices, and service customers.  We put policies and procedures in place, but they often stifle innovation.  Managers micromanage because they are afraid to look like they have nothing to do.  It is a dreary existence that encourages people to be mediocre and perform just enough to avoid the scrutiny of the micromanagement class.

I lived that life for over twenty-five years.  I promised myself that I would try to help others avoid that trap.  It is also why I embraced the agile reformation because it felt like a more sustainable, satisfying, and safe way to work.  Leadership is hard, but if you do it right, great things happen.  I reject cruelty, alienation, and the unfeeling nature of global business.  It is why I am a scrum master and agile coach.  I will keep doing it until my time is past.  I am not going anywhere. 

Until next time.

Getting started the Agile Way.

Getting started is hard.

One of the sayings of the Scrum Alliance is, “Scrum, easy to explain; hard to implement.”  When I first saw it, I thought it was a concise way to sell the concept to others.  With experience behind me, I understand it was a clear warning.  Scrum is hard to implement but it is a way to deliver more value to customers sooner.  How do you get started?

I am what Bloomberg Business Week called “The Man in the Taupe blazer.” I have a wrinkled suit and an eye for continuous improvement.  I look around the organization and find a way to make things better.  Over my career, I have discovered that people do not know how to manage projects.  Skills like prioritization, time management, and breaking work down into smaller pieces are rare in the business world.

I suspect lousy project management happens for two reasons — first, many of us to learn to create by ourselves.  The use of teams to educate students and develop teamwork is a recent trend in education.  It means people learn to work on their own instead of with others.  I also attribute this to the glamorization of what I like to call “asshat leadership.”  Gifted people like Elton Musk, Steve Jobs, Carly Fiorina, and Alex St. John lead organizations and behave poorly to others.  The “asshat leader” is someone who thinks being rude, insensitive, and authoritarian is leadership.  It is not and Robert Sutton’s book, “The No Asshole Rule,” makes it clear that being an “asshat leader” has serious implications for the business.  The style of leadership is colorful and media-friendly but, in the end, it often leads to adverse outcomes.  For those two reasons, I think it is hard to lead and manage projects.

So, where does a rookie coach or scrum master begin when they introduce scrum in an organization?  I say before you do anything, talk to people doing the work and listen to what they have to say.  Many people like talking about their jobs, so when you ask, they will be happy to share with you.  Ask them about what is working for them.  Ask them what they feel needs to be changed.  You will be surprised by what you learn.  Only when you have learned what you can will you be able to move forward.

The next step is to teach and practice the basics.  Show a development team the process of scrum.  Show them the rituals involved with a sprint and practice them always.  Repetition is an excellent teaching tool.  Eventually, the team will treat the sprint cadence like a routine.  If a team masters the basics of sprinting then they will be able to focus on more advanced topics.

Once the team is sprinting, track your progress and ruthlessly inspect and adapt.  Measure how you are doing and then make changes to each sprint to improve.  Team members need to feel like they have input into the changes and are respected.  I remember a quotation from Will Durant, “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then is not an act but a habit. “

Help people develop good habits and then watch them succeed.  I did not realize this until I worked with an organization that stressed excellence daily.  Soon, we considered it reasonable to achieve daily and when we did fail to be able to cope with the disappointment and do better the next time.  Now one will ever be perfect but we can all strive for excellence.

So, if you are beginning your agile journey, practice the basics of scrum, listen to others, inspect and adapt regularly to change, and make excellence a habit.  It is not easy but it will be worth it.

Until next time.

Be a Kind Scrum Master

The lonely life of a great scrum master.

It is hard to talk about being an agile coach or scrum master.  It is both an art and science.  The science understands computer programming and technical systems.  The art is listening to others and coaching them to address their challenges.  The profession is easy to learn, and it is a hard one to master.   Many of the aspects of being a good coach or scrum master appear to be touchy-feely skills and that is because the difference between a good and great scrum master and coach are those skills.

When I became a scrum master, I thought I understood the skills, and I would become a raging success.  My first few sprints squashed those delusions.  Teams have conflict, they confront deadline pressure, and individuals inside the group have messy emotional lives.  It is up to a scrum master to deal with all of these issues and more.  In the words of Kim Scott, “It is management and it is your job.”

It is a job that requires listening and empathy.  It means not only talking about agile but living the values of agile daily.  It is about courageousness when you are tired or scared.  It is about being focused when you are in your worst moments.  You respect others and their different perspectives when you want to tell them to take a flying leap — openness to the secrets and vulnerability of others and to try out new ideas.  Finally, a good coach or scrum master must show commitment to the shipping product and the people doing the work.  The values are hard to do which makes them more necessary to the performance of each team.

The business world has plenty of damaged, neurotic, and mean people.  These individuals were not born that way; the dysfunctional cultures of many businesses created them. Companies promote the mean because they appear to get work done.  Years of unrealistic deadline pressure, lean budgets, and lack of advancement opportunities created the neurotic.  For the agile community, this is what we face.

To counter the sickness which resides in the corporate office, the agile coach or scrum master walks a lonely road.  It is choosing to be kind over being snarky.  When they see exploitation, a coach needs to point it out.  Finally, it is doing the right thing when other people are not watching.  It was not easy which is why so few people are good at it.

If you are looking for an opportunity to create “healthy ownership” in an organization, a scrum master or agile coach needs to practice the values of scrum, they need to listen, to show empathy, practice kindness and do the right thing.  I continue to walk this path and I hope you join me.

Until next time.

The Profession of Software Development

Software developers are much like plumbers. 

The stereotypes surrounding software developers are numerous.  Sandra Bullock was the shut-in hacker in the 1990’s film “The Net.” The cast of “Silicon Valley,” embodied the “move first and break things,” ethos of the rise of Facebook.  Finally, the frat brother atmosphere of gaming companies is legendary. Software developers are many things, but not many people outside of the business consider them professional.  Today, I would like to take the time to discuss professionalism in software development.

Many of the things we use operate on code.  The turbochargers in our cars are computer operated.  Trains rely on computer algorithms to run on time.  We can shop for groceries from the comfort of our sofa.  The reason this is possible is the combination of increasing computer power and the work of smart people who write the software code to exploit that power.  It is a detail-orientated and challenging task.

Software development is custom work with little automation, so each piece of software is made by hand.  Each phone application or web site we see today began as a blank slate that needed data, graphics, code and business processes. Line by line, a software developer wrote what you see.  As the site became more complex Database administrators, user experience experts and network security specialists will add their contributions. It is like the manufacture of a hot rod with all the mechanics hammering out the individual parts and then attempting to assemble them into a working car.  The complexity and challenges are difficult for people who do not do it to understand. 

People understand the pressures doctors endure.  Each day doctors are making decisions that might affect the life and death of patients.  Attorneys are responsible for up to billions of dollars in money during civil suits.  In criminal trials, they have to power grant or deny a person their freedom.  Likewise, bankers must make an informed decision about how to invest and loan money to protect their depositors. Finally, teachers educate and look after the wellbeing of children.  Our culture understands these pressures and rewards a particular level of respect and deference to these individuals. 

Software professionals are in that gray area.  What they do is essential but it is invisible until something breaks. The story of the Boeing 737 is a tragic example.  Software developers compensated for an engineering flaw in the aircraft.  Given the time pressures, they were able to create a control system that prevents planes from crashing.  What was not taken into account was the way pilots would behave in critical situations.  The flaw in logic would cost the lives of over 300 people in airline crashes.  It also cost the CEO his job because people no longer wanted to fly on 737 aircraft.  No one knew what the standard of excellence for software was until planes began to fall from the sky.

The software profession has a youth bias; many of the contemporary programming languages have been around for less than twenty years.  Less than five-tenths of a percent of the entire world population know how to write code. Caucasians and Asian people dominate and it is an overwhelming male occupation.  The attire is comfortable, and software professionals are more interested in getting things to work than being likable.  Compared to other professionals, software developers do not look the part.

The trends above make the profession seem clannish.  The time pressure often forces these professionals to take shortcuts.  Finally, the skills are in such demand that compensation is a powerful incentive for people with mediocre talent to join the profession.  Taken together people outside the business see developers with the same respect as mechanics or plumbers. The funny thing is these professionals lack respect until we need them.  It is then we will pay big money to use their expertise and services.

So software developers deserve respect because they keep the contemporary world working.  The world runs on code.  It is a shame we needed planes falling out of the sky to understand that reality.

Until next time.