A Few Life Lessons for the Class of 2022

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  Over the years, I have gained competence as a scrum master, product owner, and agile coach.  It is not an easy path to follow.  My professional life contains many failures and setbacks, but it makes me better at my job.  Each day, I attempt to help others avoid the struggles and mishaps I experience in my life.  I am a veteran technical professional, and it means you take pride in showing off your earned scars. 

This week my alma mater, Illinois State University, is having its commencement ceremony.  I walked during my graduation for my parents being proud of my accomplishment and feeling overwhelmed by the rush of final examinations.  I was twenty-two years old and one hundred and fifty pounds lighter when I made that walk.  Today, I want to share a thing or two I have learned along the way with the class of 2022.  

Never Quit Learning – 

Technology moves so quickly that you will become unemployable if you do not keep your skills current.  Successful technology professionals must relearn their careers every eighteen months.  I seek out books, experts, and blogs when I don't understand something.  I still practice coding and the forbidden secrets of open source like .git source control.  

A man I respect, Craig Cutbirth, says that everyone should have an intellectual curiosity about the world.  Curiosity should guide you in your learning and your career.  Soon you will develop a humility about your knowledge and expertise.  At your worst, what you have gathered in your head is what makes you valuable to your fellow humans.  Never squander the gift of learning.  

Be Yourself –

The most surprising thing I have discovered working as a business professional is how much people sacrifice to seek the approval of others, especially those with power.  I have seen people change how they dress to better conform with others in the office.  Moral principles and values are sacrificed for promotions.  Finally, I have seen individuals kiss up and kick down to get ahead.  We have a word for people like this, who are called assholes.  Be yourself at work and be your whole self at work.  Some people may not understand, but it is their problem, not yours.  

Leaders are beginning to understand that bringing your whole self to work makes you happier, more productive, and provides value to the organization they could not imagine.  Ignore the trolls who say otherwise; diversity of background and perspective is a force multiplier in business.  I am very proud to work for an organization, CAPCO, which understands this and supports it at every organization level.  

Say No –

Many people in the business world want to exploit your youth and enthusiasm to bolster their wealth.  Taking on an additional thirty hours a week is wage theft, and a promotion is often an empty promise.  Say no, and say it to set clear boundaries.  Answering e-mail on your phone over the weekend is a symptom of a business that does not respect the people who work for them.  

If you are not learning and feel disrespected by your employer, say no and quit.  Life is too short to work with jerks and organizations who treat you like dirt.  The great resignation is the realization that work must provide financial and personal compensation.  Businesses that do not understand this reality are discovering they are having difficulty finding employees. 

Failure Happens –

Young people, since middle school, are taught that we must pursue success at all costs.  The reality is the business world is going to humble each of us.  Each of us will fail, which is the actual test of who we are.  Failure is pure, and it educates like no other experience.  When you fail, you will do everything not to repeat the experience.  Failure provides you with an incentive to show the people who witnessed your collapse that you are tough and can overcome adversity.  

My failures were like bruises that healed over time rather than tattoos which were marks of shame.  Each of us will fall down, but how we get up is more important.  

Currently, the world is unequal, cruel, and uniquely stupid.  I am doing my part to make it a better place, and I hope you join me in this endeavor.  Enjoy your graduation and take some time to think about what you believe and value.  The real journey begins now. 

Until next time. 

Call out Trolls Before They Destroy Your Business

Spot trolls before they hurt your business

The biggest challenge in Servant leadership is working with the disinterested, dishonest, and disrespectful.  Each organization harbors these individuals like weeds in a field of grass.  People like this seem to revel in their bad faith efforts to undermine others, avoid work, and act as parasites to everyone around them.  Throughout my career, I have confronted these individuals, and it never gets easier.  We should be brave enough to call out poor behavior.  

I spend plenty of time on LinkedIn. It is an excellent service because I can catch up on colleagues, get the latest news from the business community, and many of my fellow travelers share information about what is new. I was surfing along and read the following post from a coach and scrum trainer. The emphasis is mine.  

“I am a project manager having 15 years of experience and 5 years exclusively in project management. I do hold a PMP certificate too. My company is adopting Scrum-based delivery and it seems there is no role for the project managers. There are 3 roles in Scrum but none of them is for me. 

I can’t be a Product Owner because it will get filled from the business/customer side. I am not hands-on so I can’t be a part of the Development Team.

Scrum Master seems to be a very junior role for me. Many Scrum Masters are just a part-timer or working previously as Team Lead/ Tech Lead etc. There was a point when these people were reporting to me on my projects.

I also have an issue with the Servant Leadership style. It is not that I am a command & control person and you can ask my colleagues. Everyone will say how good I am with empathy, situation leadership, and self-reflection. But servant leadership sounds to me either head of the Servant or becoming Gandhi and Mandela. 

What will you suggest? Should I look at some different roles if yes then which one? I have also heard a lot about Agile Coach though I don’t know much how is this different than Scrum Master.”

I had a lot to unpack in this message.  It is an excellent example of how NOT to do Servant leadership.  I have said in the past, that ego is the enemy of good leadership.  Additionally, Servant leadership is more about leading by example than attempting to behave like a saint.  Scrum mastery requires kindness, and it often requires going beyond the call of duty. 

Being a scrum master is not a junior role.  It is a managerial role with tremendous responsibility and little authority. You are the person in the Taupe blazer who must inspire others to get work done.  At times you are a therapist, and at others, you are doing code reviews.  Often you are a square peg in a round hole.  Scrum masters are not junior; instead, they are essential to the success of your organization. 

The arrogance associated with the post was very telling.  What made it shocking was that it came from an instructor from Scrum.org.  I could expose this individual, but that would make me no better a coach or scrum master.  I am sensitive to harassment and doxing concerns on the internet.  I want the satisfaction of calling out a troll and exposing them to shame and ridicule.  The reality is they do not care.  A troll does what they do for the attention and outrage.  Instead, I would rather point out the attitude of these people so that we can be on the lookout for this behavior.  People like this are going to hurt your organization, so it is best to make you aware of them and not give them a chance.  

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  As I continue to advance my career, I do not want to forget where I came from and the lessons I gained along the way.  Being a scrum master and product owner is hard work.  Developers and people in the organization are under tremendous pressure to deliver value to their customers and organization.  In the global economy, we are all servants, whether we like it or not.  Insulting other professionals as junior or beneath you is not how you participate in the agile reformation.  It is a form of elitism that has sparked backlash around the developed world.  

Today, I wanted to call attention to an attitude that will hurt your organization.  It is elitist, and it comes from a position of arrogance.  Do yourself a favor, find these people, and make sure you never hire them.  

Until next time. 

Get Stoic and Get Agile

Hang out on the porch and be stoic.

People in leadership roles like to tell stories.  A story we often tell ourselves is the tale of the coronation of a Roman emperor.  The affair has pomp and circumstance with showers of flower petals, dancing, and conspicuous displays of wealth and power.   In the middle of it all is the emperor, who takes a solemn vow to protect and grow the empire.  There is a member of the Roman senate by his side whispering into the new emperor’s ear, “All of this is fleeting.”  The moral of the story is at your most influential and successful; you have to understand the situation will be temporary.  The world around us has a propensity to humble us and does it in cruel and inventive ways.  As a leader, we need to understand that a situation is never as bad as it seems, and success is never as high as we think.  We call it having a stoic approach to leadership, and I would like to talk about it this week.

The stoics are an exciting bunch of thinkers.  The group was formed in the third century before the current era and got its name from where they practiced their craft on the painted porches on the north side of Agora in Athens.  Stoics liked to sit on the porches, drink wine and talk about philosophy, rhetoric, and politics.  In many respects, they are like us getting together with each other to talk about current events, have a few drinks, and enjoy the company of others on the front porch.  Stoics had lots of influence because they were teachers who taught the political class of Greece and over four hundred years of dominance on Greek thinking.

What sets the stoics apart from people like Socrates, Plato, and later Aristotle was a desire to avoid the ups and downs of life and live in a “rational” manner.  Stoic thought has two main ideas; live in agreement with nature and act like a rational human and not a beast.  Harmony with nature means living in balance, not eating, drinking, or consuming too much.  It appreciates a grassy hill for its natural wonder instead of for its real-estate value or the minerals it might contain.  The reason is what makes everyone human, so to be more human, we should practice more logic.  It sounds high minded and easy to say for academics with enough to eat and the ability to talk about it on some of the most charming porches in Greece.  It is hard to see how an enslaved person might embrace this attitude or someone poor or starving.

The agile world could use more stoicism.  The ability to lead large teams and get them to build software products that help the global economy purr is a rare skill.  It also requires a tremendous amount of emotional intelligence and technical expertise.  People who develop these solutions are messy and need help and support.  The emotions they feel are the emotions you feel.  It is hard to manage those feelings, and it requires energy.  If you are good at it, you will inspire others to their best efforts.  Those who are bad at it are poisonous to their organizations.  Practicing stoic thinking is not a one size solution to leadership, but it is helpful because it is never as bad as it seems and never as good as it gets.

Until next time.

Communication and Openness are the Start of the Coaching Experience.

Patton knew a few things.

Development work is hard.  Software engineers take vague guidelines from business professionals and attempt to build working applications.  It is fraught with peril because business professionals think software developers can mind read and psychically understand what customers and business partners need.  It does not work that way, and it requires constant communication and openness.  It is the same challenge an agile coach faces when they are attempting to improve a scrum team.

I am leading an agile transformation.  I spend plenty of time listening to individuals and teams and I withheld judgment.  Finally, I made a point to listen with intent instead of responding.  After synthesis of all the information, it was time to put a plan into action.  The developers, testers, and business partners were shocked.  Instead of ignoring the problem, I asked the team to confront it and fix it.  Naturally, they looked at me and asked if I could provide them solutions.  Instead, I followed the advice of Lt. General George S. Patton, “Never tell people how to do things.  Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

It is a new experience for the team, but they are learning.  When groups of people are learning new skills and working together for the first time, they are going to make mistakes.  As a coach, you need to create an atmosphere where those mistakes can happen and the team can inspect and adapt.  The world of business does not forgive errors but with proper communications and avoiding the same kind of failure, the learning process is beneficial to both the client and the team.

From the perspective of a coach, it looks messy and awkward.  It is supposed to be this way.  Each leader wants their team to be superstars, but that is a destination.  The journey is a grind of mistakes, accidents, and mess.  The experiences create cohesion on the side and improved performance.  People are messy so getting people to change and grow will generate clutter in your organization.

The first part of the agile manifesto says, “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” Agile is not something you can not copy and paste from a manual.  It requires matching the people you are working with to the skills they need to succeed.  It is making sure the values of the agile manifesto are understood and accepted.  The team will grind and falter.  The struggle is necessary because it will create success later.  Coaching is different than working on the front lines, but with openness and constant communication, it will yield results.

Until next time.

Requiem for a Software Developer

I use this blog to discuss two principle topics; software development and software developers.  It is an exciting topic, and the people who build software represent some of the best traits in the human species.  Today, I want to talk about one of them. 

Carla Robinson was an anomaly in the technology business.  She dedicated most of her career to one company.  Carla spent the bulk of her career at R.R. Donnelly, and when the company split, joined one of the spin-offs, LSC Communications.  She worked with AS/400 systems and wrote RPG code.  It was hours of staring into green screens and sorting through reams of sequential code.  She kept a legacy system alive, and as the technology business changed, she rolled with these changes. 

I knew Carla as her scrum master.  She was learning how to write C# code and unit tests.  What made her invaluable to her team was her manual testing skills and her business knowledge.  Often, she was able to answer questions about the product and how it helped the business.  She was a person of good spirits when times were tough.  Finally, she would not accept grief from anyone and demanded respect. 

She loved Bessie Smith, vintage Prince, and anything to do with dusty radio.  She was a colleague and to many a friend.  The world is a little less fascinating without her.  I imagine her enjoying some step dancing in the afterlife and feeling a sense of pride about a life and career well lived. 

Fair forward and not farewell, Carla.

Agile Slowing Down the Corporate Merry-go-round

The business world is a merry-go-round

The business world is cruel.  It is a perverse merry-go-round of glittering success and spectacular failure.  Billions of dollars are created and lost with a handshake.  Someone in the finance department has the power to destroy the livelihood of thousands with a spreadsheet. It is a world filled with fear and uncertainty.  I belong to this world.  I am an agile coach and scrum master.  Each day, I get on the merry-go-round to make sure others do not get hurt.  It is because the ride does not stop and spins faster each day.  As part of the agile reformation, I have a responsibility to make business better.

The three main pillars of agile are inspection, adaptation, and transparency.  Each day we should be able to understand what is happening around us.  Once we know what is going on around us, we should be able to adjust to the current conditions.  Finally, we should be transparent with information with no agendas or secrets so that we can start the process anew.  For those used to playing political games or hiding in plain sight, these values are dangerous.  Transparency means information flows freely in an organization.  Inspection demands we look at that information with healthy skepticism.  Adaptation means we take action and hold others and ourselves accountable.

Agile is not hard to explain to others, but it is challenging to execute.  People need to be vulnerable and trust each other.  The Harvard Business Review calls this psychological safety.  In cutthroat business cultures, this safety is absent; it is up to the coach to create these pockets of safety.  Once these pockets form, they must grow within the organization.  To borrow from the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, agile becomes a rhizome which rises through the organization and inspires change.

Business people have been comfortable with how they ran large organizations since the 1980s.  Shareholders were more important than customers, and as long as they had priority, everything would be fine.  The digital revolution of the last twenty-five years has upset that equation.  Businesses are being created and crushed at an increasingly fast rate.  Bureaucracy once designed to increase corporate value is now interfering with the customer experience.  Poor customer experience hurts the organization.  The realization is creating anxiety among workers and executives.  A coach needs to step in and point out the importance of customers, and speed to market.  The corporate headquarters lose sight of these simple truths.

Each day, I see good people working in dysfunctional situations, and they inspect and adapt.  As a coach, you have to point this out to people who can make a difference and get them to inspect and adapt.  It is this process which makes the organization more transparent and effective.  If employees can respond to change, then business leaders can do the same.  It takes a coach to make this message clear.

The merry-go-round of business keeps spinning.  It is a relentless machine, but the agile reformation makes the ride less scary.  Using inspection, adaptation, and transparency, you can improve the business culture and leadership.  It is not an easy job, but it is mine.

Until next time.

Dealing with Scary Stuff

I am scared but I am going to be OK.

I have a sign on my wall which says, “If your dreams don’t scare you they are not big enough.” It has been a frightening period for me.  I am interviewing for new opportunities, sending out applications, all the while the holiday season approaches.  It is a lonely period despite the support I have received from family, friends, and colleagues.  Periods like this test a person and this week I would like to discuss it.

Since high school, I have been one of those students who could be labeled as “striver.” I wanted to advance myself and do better for myself and my family.  Pushing myself academically and participating in extra circular activities, so I would get noticed by a college.  It happened with a twist. I was offered a scholarship to a university and then it fell through.  I went to a community college for the first two years of my college career.  In hindsight, it was a perfect move as I was able to deal with the pressures of college with the support of my family.  When I transferred to a four-year university, I learned the discipline it takes to succeed academically.  It was not easy, but the early lesson was that success required sacrifice and discipline.

Sadly, those two qualities are not helpful when jobs were scarce as was the case in the recession of 1990.  Keeping the lights on and the rent paid required the swallowing of personal pride.  It meant working retail working for commission.  It was dealing cards at a casino.  I discovered I was good at computers and learning how to program them.  I was lucky when I left the casino industry, it was the giddy and stupid times of the dot-com boom.  I transitioned from dead-end jobs to a career.  It only took seven years out of school to make this basic professional milestone.

In the intervening period, I have been fired and laid off more times than I can mention.  I struggled to keep the lights on and the mortgage paid.  People have treated me in a grossly unfair fashion and I have received numerous second chances throughout my career.  The adversity which has dominated my career makes me contemptuous of others who have not had similar experiences.  It is also why I roll my eyes when I hear certain public figures discuss their “life of struggle.”

The ups and downs of my career took a heavy toll on my marriage and family life.  It has changed me more than I would like to admit.  In spite of it all, I have remained committed to the business of building working software and attempting to make work more satisfying, sustainable, and sane.  I am committed to large businesses treating people with basic decency.

I am going to give that vision a hard test.  The experience is going to challenge me in ways I am not comfortable.  I might fail.  I still have to try because I owe it to the people grinding out code.  I owe it to my family and I owe it to myself.  My dreams are very big and they scare me witless.   I look forward to defeating the fear and sharing those dreams with you.

Until next time.

Some thoughts on personal change

A typical day for a scrum master; doughnuts and coffee

I have called working in the business world bipolar, toxic and an excuse for mental illness.  I still feel this way, but along the way, I have encountered numerous pockets of decency and professionalism.  I have made plenty of friends along the way.  This week, I took a massive step in my professional career and resigned from my present organization.  I will be joining another firm on November 19th.

When I was growing up in the 1980’s, my parents and teachers spoke about how a career was a pathway or process.  You would join a company and throughout your career advance up the organization.  Your loyalty to the organization came with a measure of job security, and a means to support a family.  I was instructed people succeeded and failed based on individual merit.   The recession of the early 1990’s and over twenty years of being a technology professional have proven those ideas false.

I have spent plenty of time around the damaged, neurotic, and mean people who make up a significant minority of business professionals.  In my worst moments of vulnerability, I have choked back tremendous amounts of rage and bitterness.  In my better moments, I have forced myself to see the good in others.  I was disappointed from time to time, but often my optimism was rewarded.  I leaned on colleagues to muddle through the long days and lack of support, and I relied on my fellow agile coaches who saw something in me I did not.

It is easy to see the bad in the world and wallow in nihilism.  Creating a reformation is going to be hard work.  A modern shareholding company is the closest thing contemporary society has to medieval feudalism, and those in power will do anything to remain in charge.

Fortunately, there are others like me who are agitating for change and a serious business case for making those changes.  Developers, agile coaches, scrum masters, product owners, and random strangers want these changes.  Together, we will work to make the modern corporation more sustainable, sane, and satisfying place to work.  I have spent five years learning to be a great scrum master and coach.  It is now time to put that experience to use expanding the agile reformation. 

Until next time.

When the Story is Not Done

Things go wrong during sprints.

One of the most important facets of agile is the quick cycle times make it possible for people to react to change rapidly.  The end of each sprint is an opportunity to gauge success and look for areas of improvement.  The speed forces us to do work in smaller chunks and gather feedback and direction from customers.  An agile team can bite off more than it can chew in a sprint.  Today on my blog, I want to discuss some recommendations on how to handle stories which take longer than a sprint.

In a perfect agile practice, each team completes all of the work they commit to in a sprint.  The need to “roll over,” critical work to the next sprint does not happen.  In the fallen world where most of us live and work, stories do not get finished at the end of the sprint.  It creates a challenge because the unfinished story might delay a release or throw a delivery timeline off schedule.

The Scrum Guide does not say much about what to do when a story is incomplete at the end of a sprint.  Since there was no consensus, a beginning scrum master just rolled over the story and asked the team to finish the work in the next sprint.  The approach was no different than letting a milestone slip in a waterfall project.  The collective wisdom of the web stepped forward, and experts suggested an incomplete story should return to the backlog and reprioritized.  If the story still had value it can be placed in the subsequent sprint; otherwise, it can wait.

Concentrating on what is important rather than what is unfinished each sprint is what makes agile so powerful.  Unfortunately, unfinished work can become technical debt overnight and create conflicts inside the agile team.  Many stories are incomplete because the team has not met the standard of care for the story.  Unfinished unit tests and incomplete acceptance criteria are prime culprits for this situation.  The group wants to split the story and lower the number of story points so that it does not look like the velocity of the team is impacted.  The truth is velocity is affected.  The team failed to deliver story points in the previous sprint, so the velocity has gone down.  A team should both see and feel the effects of not meeting the standard of care.  People outside the team should also see an honest portrayal of the challenges the team is facing.  There should be no secrets on an agile team or in an agile enterprise.

When a team fails to deliver this is also an opportunity to bring up in the retrospective what caused this kind of setback.  Product owners should understand there is more to a story than writing code and developers should be more assertive about how they communicate.  The team should own up to the failure and try to do a better job next time.

Failure is hard, but it educates better than any success ever could.  It also makes future victory sweeter.

Until next time.

Coaching should reject triage

Good for the battlefield bad for society and business

Usually, I spend my time on the blog discussing agile and how to better improve software development.  I avoid political discussion because there are much better places for people to discuss that topic.  This week, I would like to discuss something different.

This week a young person I have known since her days as a college undergraduate wrote and thoughtful post about her struggles with mathematics in elementary school.  As early as fourth grade she was taken on field trips to grocery stores to learn about careers stocking shelves after completing school.  None of the other students attended that trip.  As early as nine years of age educators and members of the community were making decisions about her life.  Today, Stephanie Orme is a Ph.D. from Penn State who is a nationally recognized public speaker and recently gave a TED talk on Diversity Game Design.  

I am very proud of Stephanie.  I consider myself one of the stepping stones on her journey and I look forward to seeing her further adventures in academia.  Her story made me think about my trip educationally and as a scrum master.  We make too many judgment calls about young people, and those judgments are harming our society and the business community.

Our education system in the United States has wide gaps of inequality.  Private schools appeal to people of means and have been training grounds of the children of business and political elites for the last 100 years.  Parents often pay a premium real-estate prices to live in communities with highly rated schools.  Young people living in rural or poor school districts are not so fortunate; it means that school districts make do with what they have, and they get involved in a practice known as triage.

Initially, from the medical field and pioneered by the French during the Napoleonic wars triage means the sorting of people to help them when confronted with scarce resources.  For example, someone with a head missing from a cannonball does not need a blood transfusion that blood can go to someone with a better chance of survival.  Paramedics, emergency rooms, and combat medics use the concept of triage daily to save lives.

As early as middle school, I experienced triage in my education.  The “smart” students participated in honors courses and segregated from other students.  These students not only had to have good test scores but they also had to have good grades.  The poor students were in remedial classes, and the unwashed middle got by with standard courses.  The exception to this rule were those with cognitive and learning disabilities who received special education.  I was terrible at mathematics, so I attended learning disability courses.

As time wore on, the honors students became more privileged as standard and remedial students shifted into less challenging classes.  Honors students received college AP courses, scholarships, and opportunities to excel. Once labeled a basic or a standard student, opportunities to reach the upper echelon was difficult.  It created a type of resentment and desire to prove those who doubted me wrong.

I was more fortunate than most.  My community college prepared me for university study. I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to a four-year school for debate and speech.  Thanks to the financial sacrifices of my parents, the incredible support of my teachers, the encouragement of countless adults, and a little luck I became a college graduate.  If you had checked in with me as a nine-year-old, you would have concluded that I would be stocking shelves.

It would take seven years working in the radio and the casino business to find my true vocation; software development.  It would take another ten years before I would discover agile and share its worth with others.  I got by on grit, but I would be fooling myself if I did not acknowledge the privilege of supportive parents and my educational background.

It is this knowledge which has shaped my perspective.  The Harvard business review talks about a “fixed mindset” vs. a “growth mindset.”  Thanks to triage in education, we take young people and place them into boxes.  We then triage those boxes into careers and roles in our community.  It is a more significant problem in business because often leaders are more comfortable around people with similar educational and cultural experience.

As someone who has not fit neatly into a box his entire life, it encourages me to adopt a growth mindset for others around me.  I cannot help everyone, but I will try to help those I can.  With a little luck, there will be more people like myself and Stephanie Orme helping reform business and culture.

Until next time.

What You discover at a coaching retreat

Why teammates from the Agile Coaching retreat.

I have been offline for a few weeks.  The reason was I had to have some downtime as I was involved with a conversion of a TFS 2015 server over to an instance of VSTS.  Also, I was getting ready for a trip to London for the Scrum Coaches Retreat.  The pressure along with the time requirements forced me to set aside my writing.  Things have settled down, and so I can get back to writing about agile.

It has been a whirlwind three weeks.  Family functions, work, and this trip to London have been my focus.  When you have time out for yourself, you learn a few things.  The primary lesson came from a scrum master I met from England.  Dominic Kavanaugh who pulled me aside during a stressful moment and said, “This retreat isn’t about shipping anything; it is about learning.”  From that moment, I had an epiphany.

The agile manifesto says working software over comprehensive documentation.  The principles of agile stress shipping software in small increments.  What I realized is I have forgotten a fundamental lesson about continuous improvement.  Learning and growth are a vital goal of being agile.  Shipping software is not a hamster wheel where everyone goes around and round shipping software and not improving.  It was my big revelation.

The revelation came as my team of coaches came upon the idea of “Healthy Ownership.”  I was complaining about the abusive relationship developing between my product owners and developers.  Soon another joined my group and spoke about quality assurance not working well with developers.  Finally, Dominic entered the group and talked about technical debt.  What united all three of these themes was that the development teams did not have a shared sense of ownership to the work they were doing.

Together, the team of us set out on a journey to try and come up with a way to discuss dysfunctions and how to fix them using a coaching approach.  It was the first time I exposed to terms like “clean language,” follow-on questioning, and guided conversation.  It was positive to have ten strong personalities in the room who were all success focused.  One person was our enforcer of norms.  The other was making sure we covered the topic of quality assurance.  Another was our enthusiastic product owner.  All of us learned to work together in three short days, and we came up with a “Healthy Ownership” model of coaching.

I am pretty proud of the small part I had to play in the creation of this tool; I hope to use it for the remainder of my career.  First, it is a descriptive approach to solving problems.  Often as a coach or scrum master, you want to jump in with an answer to a technical question or process problem.  It may answer the question, but it impedes self-organization on the team.  Next, we approach issues like a doctor looking at symptoms.  We gather information, ask a few questions and provide the right nudge to a person.  Finally, we are just getting started.  All of us have committed to being ready to improve and flesh “Healthy Ownership,” out.

I was not sure what I expected at the coaching retreat, but now that I have attended one, I see it as a valuable and worthwhile experience.   I am looking forward to going the next time.  I am also looking forward to sharing with you my experiences.

Until next time.

No Estimates have a spot at the Campfire

Lots of debate around the campfire.

One of the best things about being a member of the Agile community is the smart and enthusiastic people you encounter online and in person.  It is refreshing and challenging to be around people who have a shared vision of making business faster, sustainable, and more intelligent.  The commitment to the goals of agile does not mean we are ideologically unified and dogmatic.  Like any healthy practice, we disagree with each other about basic principles, ways to spread adoption, and innovations.  The creative tension is essential.  I want to add my two cents to an on-going debate which a colleague Ryan Ripley brought to my attention from the sober and restrained convention floor of the #BetterSoftwareCon in Las Vegas. 

The #NoEstimates movement has become a very vocal camp in the agile reformation.  If you follow the debate, it is easy to see why.  The estimation process at many companies is farcical and corrupt.  Story points were created to provide the benefits of estimation without the obvious drawbacks.  The #NoEstimates crowd take this to a logical conclusion and say estimating is a waste of time and energy.

I do not feel very strongly about #NoEstimates.  What makes it interesting is it provides a different perspective to authoring software.  Neil Killick then posted a white paper this week showing some qualitative measurements which show a no estimates approach works just as well as a story point approach.  

I was skeptical but, I decided to give the article the benefit of the doubt.  Killick uses T-Shirt sizes to measure ambiguity and difficulty.  Using arithmetic and charts, he shows how he can forecast project completion.  The approach is well thought out and clear.  It is also story points dressed up to look like #NoEstimates.  It requires the product owners to spend time doing arithmetic instead of writing stories and working with customers and developers.  Personally, I struggle getting product owners to perform the basics of their duties.  Thus, using Killick’s approach may work for a different agile implementation but not for mine. 

I genuinely dislike debates which generate more heat than light.  Killick provides a good approach for a more mature agile team.  I am glad I had a chance to learn about it and will keep it in my chest of tools if I feel it worth trying.  The agile manifesto says, “Individuals and interactions over, processes and tools.” I believe that Killick’s approach is a process which might work with a particular set of individuals.  I also think that discussion of #NoEstimates is good for the agile movement.  People try out ideas, test them, and they are adopted or rejected over time.  It sounds mighty agile to me.

Until next time. 

A sweet and sour career

The stuff of life.

It is the Christian holiday of Easter.  I am spending time with my family and friends.  I am also taking a look back at the start of the year.  It seems like only yesterday, I was counting down to midnight and wearing silly hats.  Now, I am wrapping up the first quarter.  I am unsure where the time goes.  This week, I would like to do a little reflection on the ebb and flow of being a scrum master.

I have repeatedly said on this blog being a scrum master is a calling.  It takes devotion and a touch of insanity to lead software developers and organizational change. I spend my days helping people ship software and then my evenings learning how to be better at my profession.  Someone I respect very much calls it the “sweet and sour” of a career.  Experiencing hardship makes accomplishment more meaningful.

This week I discovered I would be presenting at the Agile 2018 conference in San Diego.  I will be talking about the Cobra effect and how you can fight it.  It is a pretty significant accomplishment, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity.  It also encourages me that I am not some voice in the wilderness.  I have spent nine years as an agilest, and it is profoundly satisfying that people are interested in the insights I have picked up along the way.  It is a lovely feeling.

The sour is the daily grind of putting out software.  I take calls from India each day.  I work with product owners to help them be successful.  I have created close bonds with my development partners because the pressures of shipping software are enormous.  It is early mornings and late nights.  It is cold coffee and petty arguments.  It is what must be done to create value for the business.

I accept the sour to appreciate the sweet.  Family, friends, and loved ones talk me through the sour times and help me celebrate the sweet.  It is not glamorous or pretty, but I have found meaning in the Agile reformation.  My life is a mixture of sweet and sour.

Until next time.

Flying my Pirate Flag

I am letting my pirate flag fly.

Being a full-time scrum master or agile coach is a labor of love.  An agile coach needs devotion.  The successful scrum master needs to do more than manage the version control system.  At times, they need to act like Don Quixote jousting at windmills.  All the time, they are they misfits in the organization attempting to get it to improve when inertia governs the corporate culture.  It is very lonely, and it requires reservoirs of passion which many people do not possess.  This week, I talk about the passion for being a scrum master.

It takes a unique individual to get up before the sunrise and make a phone call with a group of developers half a world away.  Additionally, that person spends hours to coordinate product owners and executives so that those developers can work efficiently.  A scrum master handles this responsibility with no authority, everyone involved has the right to say no; It takes a particular kind of person to lead and facilitate this type of activity.  It requires passion.

Being human beings, we are creatures guided by emotions and reason. The modern business has toxic emotional situations and pressures to perform.  Over time, it leads to burn out and passive-aggressive behavior.  A person does not give it their all because it will not make a difference to our bosses or the organization.  Only the application of passion can get someone through the day.

Currently, I am reading a fantastic book by Dave Burgess entitled “Teach Like a Pirate.”  Using techniques he has developed over his career as a teacher, Burgess talks about how to be a better teacher using techniques to build a passion for the subject, build rapport with students, and create situations where enthusiasm can triumph.

What is refreshing is Burgess, knows the difficulty of teaching and how high school students can be the most terrible room for any professional.  What is interesting, is that one of the first things he talks about is the need for passion.  He is also brave enough to admit that he cannot be brimming with passion every day.  He calls people who do freaks.

So unless they are all freaks, how is it that outstanding teachers can maintain a passion for what they do?  Burgess gives a simple answer, and that is to ask questions about what inspires passion in a person. The first question is what subject areas in your field of expertise excite you?  For me, it is metrics and measurement of continuous improvement.  Nothing is more satisfying than putting an easy to understand chart on the wall explaining the team is improving.

The next question is what part of your job is the most satisfactory?  It is the reason you keep doing it.  I have written about this for years.  When software ships and the team feels like they have done a good job is what keeps me taking the call from India each day.  The final question is about personal passions.  For me, it is board games, family, friends, craft cocktails, and good food.  Those things provide me with inspiration and love for what I do.

So in the lonely world of a scrum master or agile coach, it helps to find your passion daily.  With Dave Burgess and “Teach Like a Pirate,” I might have seen a means to do that.

Until next time.

Saying good riddance to 2017

Would you invite these two over for dinner?
This image captures 2017 better than anything else I have seen.

I want to say good things about 2017; I really want to do it.  The sad reality is that the last year was the equivalent of inviting guests over for a dinner party and they allow their toddler to break your china and defecate on your tablecloth.  The world of politics, business, and agile felt like that disgusting and awkward dinner party.  This week, I take a look at last year’s predictions and look ahead to 2018. 

My first prediction came true in ways I did not expect. The new president and the Republican Party kicked off a wave of deregulation. It was not your garden-variety deregulation typical of GOP control of the White House; this was something radically different.  The Secretary of Education had no experience in educational administration.  The new Secretary of Energy on the campaign trail demanded that the department is dismantled and then used his position to promote the interests of the fossil fuel industry.  The head of the EPA is building a secure secret office and treating the organization he is leading as a security threat. 

By far, the most egregious in a colorful cast of characters is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.  The Goldman Sachs alumni made a career exploiting financial regulations and staying one step ahead of regulators.  Now he is in charge of those rules, and it looks like a repeat of the events which led to the great recession of 2008.  Adding insult to injury is his spouse who has appeared in public with the personae of a Walt Disney villain blended with a trust fund sorority sister.  Her words about how she and her husband do more for the economy are going to live forever in history books written about this period. 

My second prediction was the brief life and death of Net-Neutrality.  Ajit Pai served on the FCC board and said net-neutrality was unnecessary in 2015 when the board supported it.  With the election, he and the Republican members became the majority on the FCC board, and the net neutrality rules were repealed.  In spite of 22-million comments supporting net-neutrality and opposition by 80% of the public, the repeal went through.  It is going to be a considerable give-a-way to companies like Comcast and Verizon.  It is going to hurt innovation and turn internet service providers into protection rackets charging businesses and organizations extra to have high-speed service.  I hate this turn of events and will work with my elected officials to reverse this decision. 

So that was last year, what trends are we going to see in 2018.  I forecast three events. 

Democrats Resurgent?

I made a political prediction in 2016, and the election threw it back into my face.  This time around I am going to say that Democrats have a credible chance of retaking the Senate and the House of Representatives.  Plenty of things can happen between now and November, but if Democrats are smart, they might have a chance.  Some credible polling and research are showing this might happen.  If it does happen, I hope the new Congress will attempt to unwind, the budget-busting tax cut and work on regulating the internet like a utility so that net-neutrality does not come and go with each regulatory change of power. 

The Battle of Home Assistants.

Google and Amazon began a pretty and bitter war last year, and it will get worse in 2018.  The competition between “Alexia” or “Google Home” will get more heated.  It should be good for consumers, but it is going to be a mess.  Home thermostats, lights, and even appliances are going to be affected by this conflict.  It is a battle for billions of dollars in revenue so grab some popcorn and enjoy the spectacle. 

I will own my brand.

For me professionally, 2017 was a tough year.  Thanks to the good folks at the Agile Coaching Symposium in Chicago, I realized that I am part of an elite group of professionals.  We are a caring, creative, and hard-working group of souls who just want to improve how people work.  I am going to embrace that community further.  I am going to put in for my Certified Team Coach credentials from the scrum alliance.  I will also try to become a presenter for the Agile Alliance in fall.  I hope to learn more about LeSS and how it might help my organization. 

So that is my take for 2018, I look forward to sharing it with you. 

Until next time.

Sharpening the Saw at the Agile Coaches Symposium

Billie Schuttpelz and I at the Agile Coaches Symposium

One of the seven habits of highly successful people is called “Sharpening the Saw.”  It is taking time off for self-care and personal development.  I took time off from the blog and spent some time at the Uptake offices for the Agile Coaches Symposium in Chicago.  It was a great time and a valuable learning experience.

Working as a scrum master and agile coach is often a lonely duty.  You are spreading the word and sharing information with a skeptical audience.  Business and cultural forces often impede the agile maturity of the organization.  As a coach, you are spending your time serving as an example to others.  It is why it was nice to spend time with others in this profession and exchange information.

A few themes cropped up during the conference.  First, over 80% of the people at the conference said that had suffered from Impostor Syndrome.  It surprised me because when I have moments of doubt and disappointment, I chalked it up to something else. It is clear that those moments of darkness are Imposter Syndrome rearing its ugly head.  We did not have any easy answers to these issues, but it was still helpful to discuss them out in the open with others.

Next, there is a trend in the business world for Project Managers and other waterfall types of people to falsely brand themselves as agile coaches.  These falsely branded coaches create plenty of situations where people without experience or the personal qualities of coach try to bring agile to organizations.  The aftermath is typically a poorly applied implementation, and the agile movement undermined.  Collectively, we felt that some level of exposure and experience with agile was necessary to help coach others.  The consensus of the group was that a good coach, “Wares the shoes and can talk about the walk.”  So be on the lookout for agile coaches who cannot find comfortable shoes to wander around the office.

There were plenty of other discussions.  I even had a chance to talk about how my notion of story points have changed during my career.  The best part is spending time with other agile professionals and learning from them. If that is not sharpening the saw, I do not know what is.

Until next time.

Admitting personal failure

I failed.  I will get over myself.

There is a saying in the medical profession, “When God puts his hand on the left shoulder of a patient, take yours off the right.”  The meaning being that patients die and even the best doctor will have to accept that they cannot heal everyone.  This week I am leaving the University of St. Francis business incubator, and I am shuttering much of my start-up.  I want to discuss this on the blog this week.

Seven years ago, in the aftermath of my failed second marriage, I founded E3 systems. The goal was to create an online inventory management system which other small and medium sized businesses could use to manage their organizations better.  I wrote software non-stop for weeks.  I would sequester myself to focus on setting up business structures which would scale.  I had numerous arguments with my product owner who also happened to be my father.

I would run into various business situations like people expecting me to give them my product for free.  One potential client loved my work until they realized they would have to pay me.  I even did a classic Silicon Valley “pivot” writing software which handled fleet and equipment maintenance.  I flooded social media with youtube videos, tweets, and Facebook posts and information on my product.  I did everything with scalable technologies and paid for everything out of my pocket.  Sadly, I could not do business development and close sales.  As my advisor told me, I was a dilettante.  The business world rejected me with harsh Darwinian indifference.

I toughed it out for seven years.  I kept my day job and hoped someday I would pack up my cubical and go full John Galt.  The last two years have been a denial of reality.  I did not have a market for my products, or a means to sell those products.  I failed.

I am disappointed, but I have learned some valuable lessons.  I understand that I am pretty good at operations and project management.  My software development skills have dramatically improved including my use of SOLID and test-driven development.  I have been jumping on the chest of a dead business.  Everyone knew this but me.  Now that I have a moment of clarity, I see that now is the time step aside and accept its demise.

I will still be open for consulting and will be happy to continue Agile coaching but my days of selling software as a service are over.  I have a relationship with the Will County Project Acclaim which I will continue to support.  I am shuttering my cloud based software on September 1st.  I will keep this blog open because I still have plenty to share about agile and software development.

In the agile movement, we say, fail early and fail often. Failure is the ultimate learning experience.  As a failed entrepreneur of a startup, I consider this something which makes me a better leader, agilest, and software developer.  Once the disappointment wears off, I will be ready for my next act.  I suspect it will be a command performance.

Until next time.

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.

Beware the Temptation of "Dark Scrum"

Avoid the temptations of "Dark Scrum"

I have been an agilist since 2009.  I began collecting certifications for Agile and Scrum since 2013.  I even finished up my master’s degree studying the differences between waterfall and iterative project management processes.  I have some skills.  What I find most challenging as an agile practitioner is a disconnect between those of us doing the work and the business people who depend on us.  When this happens, it creates a situation Ron Jeffries calls, “Dark Scrum.”  As a scrum master and agile coach, it is your duty to avoid this situation.  This week on the blog avoiding the temptations of “dark scrum.”

In my formulation, "dark scrum," is when the business users of Scrum use the methodology to enforce control over software development rather than use it to improve quality and customer satisfaction.  Jefferies gives plenty of good examples on his blog, but I would like to provide two more.  I consider them to be pathologies of a dysfunctional organization.

Dark scrum pathology – shoehorning arbitrary deadlines on to sprints.  

One afternoon, I was in the office of a Vice President.  I had been raising concerns with him that a project was going poorly and that I would need his support and intervention.  The meeting did not go well.

“I promised the board that this project would be done by X date,” he said.

I told him based on the stories we had and a three-week sprint cadence we could deliver by a later date.

“You are agile, figure it out,” the VP said, “I need it by X date.”

The executive violated the social compact of agile, and we removed stories and features to meet the arbitrary date.  The customer was disappointed, and the Vice President looked bad.

Dark scrum pathology – why do I have to meet with the off-shore team.

Product owners write stories, but because of the time difference between the onshore and offshore components of the project, did not participate in the stand-up meetings.  We had created a situation where the developers would ask questions, and it would take over 24 hours to get them answered.  Product owners also complained that the team was not understanding the detailed requirements to get the work done.  When prodded to attend the stand-up call with the off-shore team a product owner indignantly said, “I am not waking up that early to talk with India!”

We were able to correct these pathologies.

To address the arbitrary deadline problem, bring in executives and product owners to level set expectations.  In the world of Scrum, the product owner is the person primarily responsible for the success or failure of a project.  The executives outside the team are responsible for funding and helping to remove organizational obstacles.  Knowing financing and deadline commitments provides the product owner a framework to write stories.  The scrum master can then use team velocity and the sprint cadence to let everyone know when a deadline is realistic and when it is not.  This way the social compact of agile is respected, and there are not secrets for all the parties involved.

We solved the next pathology by moving up the stand-up meeting by thirty minutes.  The product owner could take the call from home when they got out of bed but before they came into the office.  Product owners answered questions quickly and user stories improved.  Also, automated testing got better as product owners relied on the offshore QA professionals to streamline acceptance testing.  What was once a burden, became a win-win for the entire team.

The hard part about being a scrum master and agile coach is you are forced to come up with solutions like this each day to prevent your organization from falling into “dark scrum.”  Any situation where those in power ignore the input of the people doing the work is going to add darkness to the organization.  It is why the agile reformation is so important.  By beating back the pathologies of “dark scrum,” we can be successful software developers and professionals.

Until next time.

All about the craft of Scrum Mastery

A good scrum master is like a good camp counselor

I take inspiration from plenty of people online and if you have followed this blog for any length of time you will realize I am not afraid to cite my influences.  I have also been a brig proponent of Scrum Mastery being a profession which requires more than showing up to the office.  This week, I want to talk more about the craft and business of being a scrum master.

I have said before being a good developer is in many respects like being a good jazz musician. You can say the same about being a scrum master.  A scrum master must have some technical chops and be able to perform their duties regardless of the situation.  You need to be prepared for anything and flexible enough for when the unexpected happens.  It is hours sitting around with developers active as a “rubber duck” to help them solve problems.  It is listening to them vent about frustrations. Finally, it is about continuous improvement.

It is not an easy job.  One moment you are a therapist for a developer and the next you are disciplining a product owner who is not doing their job.  I have had moments of deep rage where I find myself shouting at my house plants.  The anger is contrasted with sublime satisfaction knowing I am shipping software and helping the business meet customer needs. I have experienced every emotion between these two polls.  Each day is a new adventure and series of emotions to experience.
Companies are looking for scrum masters at an increasing rate because they are struggling to meet increasingly challenging customer demands.  They are also attempting to take dysfunctional cultures and transform them into something where people are willing to innovate.  They want to turn the peasant farmers who labor in their cubicles and transform them into warrior poets.

It takes strange and caring people to lead this kind of charismatic change.  The ironic part is these individuals are often entrepreneurs and iconoclasts who do not mesh with corporate culture.  I am sure every scrum master has a story about visiting the Vice-President's office for removing an impediment and ignoring the office politics.  I have discovered most transgressions are forgiven if you are getting software into production.

So being a scrum master is both a profession and a craft.  I would not have it any other way, and I am looking to help other people understand this career.

Until next time.