Looking Ahead to 2022

Happy New Year!

It is the end of the year, and everyone will be in full Christmas mode when this blog is published.  Each year, I blunder around attempting to make predictions of what will happen in the world of technology and agile.  Last year, I skipped that exercise because I was moving into my new home.  I am comfortably settled in, so it is time to look at future trends. 

Nothing is going to be easy. –

The year is a textbook example of the insecure nature of the modern global economy.  I was fired from my position as a director of delivery and then went into the world of consulting.  The social contract where you are loyal to an organization and, in exchange, they are dedicated to you is gone.  Now each person must build a brand and skills to convince employers to hire you to generate value for them.  It is exhausting and aggravating because it forces you to prioritize your career for survival reasons instead of family and community.  It also grinds down the self-worth of everyone because security and status depend on maintaining valuable skills for the employment market. 

Career, family, and community are never easy, but it will become increasingly difficult to balance these forces with this present situation.  It is no wonder birth rates are declining in the United States.  

Ending Humiliation at the Office. –

The year 2021 features an open insurrection against a freely elected president and the prolonged effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Both of these stories are important, but in my mind, the big story is the “Great Resignation.”  The job market is hot, and the upheaval of the last two years has made people reconsider priorities.  I also suspect that many professionals working from home realize how awful and humiliating it is to work in an office.  Petty leadership, microaggressions, and lack of advancement are finally coming to a head, and it is natural for people to tell organizations to stuff it.  I joined the agile reformation because I knew that this situation would not be sustainable.  If your organization wants to survive, it pays to help people find dignity, flexibility, and opportunity at work.  Give me a call, and I might be able to help you with that process. 

Money What is that? –

All of our ideas about money are changing.  Bitcoin has been around since 2008, and now we have other types of cryptocurrency floating around the internet, including DogeCoin.  I believe that most cryptocurrency is a high-tech version of blue-sky stocks from the 1920s.  However, we can not ignore that blockchain technology will change how we treat things like money.  Banks are getting involved in cryptocurrency, and governments are taking regulation of it more seriously.  I think these are all good things. 

Non-Fungible Tokens or NTFS are becoming interesting because they look like they are a new way of paying for digital content.  I am not convinced, but NTFS might help move the internet away from an advertising model of content and toward something more sustainable.  I will try to experiment with this in the new year.  Who knows, I might make some money in the process.  What is clear is that attention and time spent with content will be more critical than ever.  

Death to Disinformation! –

Being online can get dispiriting with trolls, bullies, and self-aggrandizing grifters dominating discourse.  Misinformation pedaled by bad actors is poisoning the promise which surrounds the rise of the world wide web.  With the rise of virtual reality and augmented reality in the tech sphere, I will volunteer and help create defenses against misinformation in these new internet territories.  Expect to see me in the Sensorium virtual world attempting to make sense of it and act as a sage, helping prevent the spread of misinformation.  I hope I will be welcome.

So those are my predictions.  I want to wish everyone a happy new year and look forward to seeing everyone on the other side. 

Until next time. 

Embrace the Pain and the Progress of Agile

I am busy with my work commitments and researching a book.  As part of my research for the project, I have spent time reading about topics outside my comfort zone.  One of the topics is an understanding of Lance Armstrong and his doping scandals.  While doing this research, I discovered the deep wells of endurance and dedication it takes to be a professional cyclist.  Each cyclist has masochistically embraced pain and suffering.

Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell described three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond book in their book "Wheelmen,"

"He'd hit 5,000 feet, and the air would get thin. He'd feel light-headed. He'd breathe hard. So hard he couldn't think anymore – couldn't feel anything.  And LeMond liked it that way.  He was happiest when he was suffering when he was in total pain."

LeMond was an abused child, and he would get on his bicycle and ride.  The physical pain and adrenaline were his escape mechanism.  

What many people consider masochism was a typical day's effort for a professional cyclist.  With little fanfare and attention riding, six, eight, ten hours a day, the rider would climb steep mountain trails at altitude and pursue a constant diet and exercise routine.  The routine of suffering had few guarantees because everyone else we doing the same things to remain competitive.  

After a call with my development team in India, it occurred to me that the life of a technology professional is similar to a professional cyclist.  Most people do not see the hard work and attention to detail software developers and quality assurance professionals put into their work.  The hours spent tweaking algorithms, troubleshooting bugs, and tuning database tables are invisible to the software users.  It is a grind, and it resembles the suffering of professional cyclists. 

As the coach and leader of your team, it is your job to put that suffering and grind into perspective.  Measure things like defects, lead time, number of stories getting done per sprint.  Spot trends and point out improvements.  Show your team that the hard work is paying off.  Finally, expose the team to the people using the software.  It will allow the people doing the work to see how all the effort is paying off. 

The emotional labor it takes to lead a software team is challenging, but if you put in the effort, there is a big chance that it will pay off with a victory lap or two when you complete the project.  I hope all of my readers have a fabulous Christmas holiday, and I look forward to more adventures in 2022.  

Until next time. 

Emotions Mater to Your Agile Leadership

People describe business people as cold and lacking emotions.  The classic Christmas story by Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol,” is a prime example of an emotionally stunted person who needs a supernatural intervention to live a better life.  My personal and professional experience is different.  I have witnessed fits of rage, emotional breakdowns, and plenty of narcissism.  Technology features numerous emotional highs and tragically deep lows.  When people base their identity and ability to support a family on work, you cannot help but get emotional.  As an agile coach or leader, it is up to you to deal with your own emotions and the emotions of others.  Let us take some time to discuss it. 

A common phrase you hear in any office is, “Don’t take it personally; it is just business.”  Ironically, this line comes from gangster movies from the last fifty years.  I firmly believe that business people should be better than typical gangsters.  Many people depend on business to feed their families and provide themselves with a sense of self.  It entangles the personal and professional, which are bound to have emotional implications.

In her book “Radical Candor,” Kim Scott talks about the emotional work of being a leader.  She emphasizes that you should care personally about the people who work with you.  Additionally, it would be best to challenge people directly by praising and criticizing when necessary.  Both praise and criticism should come from a place of genuine concern for the people you lead.  It is a skill that does not come naturally, but it will take your agile skills to the next level with practice.

The most challenging part of being in a leadership role is dealing with your own emotions and how they affect the team because pressure can build up in the office, and it creates one of four reactions; fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.  Our evolutionary legacy has taught us to react to danger with a fight instinct or a flee response.  Running away from trouble is always an intelligent course of thinking when escaping.  Fighting is also natural when we think we can overcome the danger.  You can see the flight response when people do not want to see or speak to you in an office.  A person who picks fights is a typical response to danger, and so to create a better working environment, you need to help remove the threat from a situation so you do not trigger a fight or flight response. 

The fight or flight response happens when the power dynamics are roughly equal.  When there is a big difference in power, fawning and freezing happen.  When someone is scared, that person will freeze.  The response allows the person to access danger and the stillness acts as a form of camouflage when someone is threatening them.  I see this happen all the time in meetings when an executive asks a question.  Everyone freezes because they want to provide an answer which will please the executive.  The fear is that they will be punished or ostracised if they give a wrong answer—situations like this demand psychological safety, and people are allowed to speak.  A messenger with terrible news should never worry about getting shot.  

The fawn response happens when someone decides that false flattery is the only way to deal with someone creating a perceived danger. Fawning is a way to advance within an organization or deflect attention.  In reality, it is manipulative and an example of toxic relationships in the workplace.  The leader being fawned over will crumble at any sign of adversity, and the person doing the fawning will lose respect from their peer group.  Being charming and cute is an excellent short-term strategy, but fawning behavior will undermine credibility in the long term. 

If you witness any of these behaviors, it is clear that the office environment does not have psychological safety, and you need to address it.  Business is personal.  People do feel strong emotions at the office.  As a coach, it is up to you to create an atmosphere of psychological safety because if you do not, people will exhibit fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behavior.  It is better than living like a gangster. 

Until next time. 

Communication is the Key to Agile

Gigantic enterprise projects require thousands of developers and countless hours of work.  I am working on one of these projects, and I have learned a few things along the way.  Today, I want to discuss the importance of communication if you are going to be a successful agilist. 

When working with extensive enterprise applications, you should understand that no one will know how the system works.  A person will understand how a particular portion works but not how the entire system operates. Today's giant software applications for business are so big and complex that it is impossible to comprehensively understand how information flows through the system.  Confronted with this reality requires numerous people's collaboration to outline how a system operates.  

The collection of experts in a room will hash out how the system operates.  Once they have a general idea, they start creating user stories to flesh out that operation and assign work to different teams.   With software teams scattered around the world in different time zones, questions are bound to come up.  Product owners and scrum masters then attempt to bridge the gap between the various teams to get the work done.  It is a tedious and painstaking process. 

I use a technique I learned in my undergraduate days as a speech and debate person.  I tell people what I am going to say to them.  I tell them and finally tell them what I just told them.  These techniques sound redundant, which is the point of the entire exercise because repetition aids in the retention of information.  

For instance, we are adding extra fields to an API, so I call a meeting to discuss it with the vendor and the team consuming the vendor's API.  I send out a meeting notice with a brief plan.  During the conference, I said, "We will cover the new fields in the API and how they are going to be consumed."  The next portion of this meeting talks about the fields and how the team will consume them.  At the end of the session, I review what we talked about and, if necessary, follow up with an e-mail and some user stories the teams need to finish.  

Notice the goal of the meeting is clear and stated up-front with a clear purpose.  We work toward that goal.  Finally, we restate how we are going to achieve that goal.  It helps to leverage the communications systems used in the office, including e-mail, instant messaging, and project management tools.  It is a way to hold people accountable and make sure they understand. 

Checking for understanding is essential.  It is one thing to say something, but understanding is a different skill.  It is why you should ask others to repeat back what they know.  When there is a disconnect, you can clarify the misunderstanding.  For a busy person, communication like this can be exhausting, but checking for understanding will improve the quality of work on the team.  The time spent talking now is going to save time doing rework later. 

On gigantic projects, it pays to over-communicate.  Tell people what you are going to tell them.  Tell them, and then tell them what you just told them.  You can thank me later when the level of misunderstanding decreases and quality improves.  

Until next time.