Find the Right People to Begin Your Agile Journey

I spent time away from work to be with family on the Alabama coast, and I am glad to be back.  Taking time away from projects is a healthy way to recharge and discover new perspectives mentally.  Unfortunately, it creates a backlog of work that you need to sift through when you return to the office.  While I was sorting through my e-mail to achieve the elusive inbox zero, it occurred to me agile is becoming more mainstream.   

When I joined the reformation, 2009, it was composed of misfits and developers who saw the old way of doing things as needing significant change.  Today, I talk with executives who ‘want’ agile.  The secret of agile being a better way to manage complicated projects like software development is now public knowledge.  As this information spreads, business leadership struggles to find people who can make it happen within their organizations.  Today, I will discuss the struggle to find good and great agile professionals. 

Speaking from my own experience, I had the zeal of a newly converted person and still look back at my embrace of agile as my “road to Damascus” moment. Early converts to agile and scrum were enthusiastic. We gained experience working as scrum masters, product owners, and developers.  Now, we are looking for the next steps in our career training and leading others to be agile.  

For business leaders new to agile, people in my cohort of agile practitioners are a large pool of labor, but the front-line scrum masters and product owners are scarce. The challenge is how do you find people to fill those roles. Often they have to train people internally or hire outsiders at a premium.  The challenge is how do you find good people to fill those roles.  

The first thing you must do is take an unflinching look at the organization’s culture.  Is conformity valued over results or delivery?  If it is, it will be hard finding internal scrum masters or software developers.  Agile professionals are iconoclastic and have an entrepreneurial streak.  Suppose the organization is crushing these traits out of the workforce. In that case, they will not spontaneously come to life because you rename a project manager or business analyst a scrum master after a two-day training course.  

Like people who resolve to lose weight or quit drinking, an organization needs to take small and concrete steps to transform.  The agile wannabe leaders must find scrum masters from outside the firm willing to buck the organizational status quo to get things done.  It also means abandoning micromanagement, rewarding people willing to question established ways of doing things, and creating psychological safety so people can try new things and make mistakes.  These are not easy things to do and could take years to complete successfully.  

Where leaders have an advantage is recruiting product owners.  There are plenty of people inside your organization with business knowledge and tenure.  They are the people who know all the secrets in the organization, and they make perfect material for craft product owners. Before you send them off to training, make sure they are empowered to set priorities and say 'no' to others in the organization.  Finally, make sure the new product owners are doing the job full-time. Product Ownership requires undivided attention to write stories, communicate with customers, and measure value delivered to the organization.  If you expect them to handle accounts receivable while acting as a product owner for the new accounting system, you deserve failure.  Pair these people up with an experienced scrum master or coach, and you have a recipe for success.  

Finally, look for people who are stoic and realistic.  The contemporary business world produces toxic people; either they are so optimistic it is alienating or so hostile they act like cancer on their work. Find people who are willing to look at a negative situation and say, “Wow, this is broken, might as well get started and fix it.”  If you find people like this and place them in positions of responsibility, your ability to become agile has a reasonable chance of success.  In the words of agile coach Michael de la Maza, “There are no solutions, just countermeasures.” Find people willing to implement those countermeasures.  

Finding good talent will be a significant challenge as we attempt to rebuild the global economy in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Agile is not something you can buy off the shelf and magically implement at your organization.  It will require organizational change, people willing to take risks, and finally, a commitment to being uncomfortable and hold oneself accountable.   

Agile is not easy, and your first step on your journey is acknowledging that you need the right people to help you make the trip successfully. 

Until next time. 

Agile Coaching Requires Walking Away.

The path of the righteous man requires walking away.

I have been focused on plenty of goals in my career.  I have spent time coaching teams and individuals.  Often, I have to work on projects and help the team turn them around.  Other times, I discover the more esoteric points of my job, like putting together training videos.  This week, I found another necessary part of my career.

I have been working with a large project for twenty weeks.  We went from getting nothing done to pushing releases every two weeks.  The developers were fighting with the QA people on the team, and morale was low.  This week, I walked away from the group and let them stand on their own.  It was a difficult thing to do, but if the team was going to grow, I had to walk away.  

Being a coach means that you have to make your role obsolete.  Teams can only improve with outside help for only so long, and then you have to step away.  The team needs to be able to grow and stand on its own.  Ziran Salayi wrote an excellent paper on this subject in 2019. 

Coaching a team is challenging and a profound emotional commitment.  Walking away from the team breaks emotional attachments, but it is necessary to help the team learn to improve without outside intervention.  As a parent, you place training wheels on a bicycle and run alongside to show them how to ride.  Inevitability, those training wheels come off, and the child learns to ride without adult supervision.  Along the way, the rookie bicyclist will take a few spills, but they will develop a sense of independence.  

Letting go and walking away is critical to the success of a team you are coaching. An organization coached correctly will take ownership of your instruction and bring them into new and more powerful directions.  For instance, if you impress on people the importance of quality, when you leave the team, the team should be eager to create their ways of improving software quality.  Leaving a team is like taking off the training wheels.

A good agile coach is like a character from popular culture.  It is the type of character who rides into a dusty town in the west to restore law and order, like Cleavon Little in "Blazing Saddles," or a mysterious woman who opens a chocolate shop in the 2000 film “Chocolat.” I take inspiration from Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules Winnfield from “Pulp Fiction.”  At the end of the film, Winnfield abandons a life of crime and foils a robbery without firing a shot.  I am never going to be as cool as Samuel L. Jackson, but I do know how to exit.  Walking away from a team is not giving up on them; it is encouraging them to thrive on their own.  Walking away is part of being a coach. 

Until next time. 

It is never about you.

Serve others it isn't about you.

The best part of being part of the agile reformation is the community of supportive professionals who inspire each other.  I can rely on the experience and wisdom of thousands of people who are on a similar journey attempting to make work saner, sustainable, and satisfying.  Currently, I am training at Chicago State University to improve my credentials as a certified agile coach.  It is an excellent experience with people from all over the globe.  Someone from the Philippines has the same challenges I do when leading change.  It is always nice to know that we are all facing similar struggles and challenges. This week, I learned a rather important lesson, which often gets lost as we become more experienced in agile. 

 

One of the critical foundations of agile is the notion of servant leadership.  The best leaders often are those who see themselves as servants helping the people; they lead rather than viewing the people under their authority as people who serve them.  As you gain experience and credibility within the profession, it is easy to let the certifications, recognition, and respect go to your head.  We are scrum masters, and people look to us for advice and guidance.  It is intoxicating.  

The reality is that being an agile coach or scrum master is about service to others.  It is not about us and our journey.  We should remember that success in this profession is when others take the lessons we have learned and apply them to their challenges.  If we are doing our jobs properly, our wisdom will help build success for others.  We should celebrate the achievements of others and the growth of people under our charge.  Unlike other areas of business, being a coach or scrum master means taking the focus away from yourself and directing it at the teams you are working.  

It is nice to learn from others.  The most important lesson is discovering that to be a servant leader, you need to remind yourself it is not about you but the people you are leading.  It is a lesson worth repeating.  

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. 

Avoid Heroism and Practice Radical Interdependence.

Anyone who tells you leadership is easy is either a liar or a fool.  Each day leadership is tested by interpersonal disputes, market demands, and gaps in knowledge.  People count on leaders to have emotional balance when everything is going wrong.  It is facing difficult questions when you do not know the answers.  You must be firm one moment and understanding the next.  When things go well, you give credit to others, and during failure, you take responsibility.  Leadership is one of the most challenging skills to cultivate.  It is a duty and calling rather than a heroic struggle.  I want to discuss it.  

Leadership is more than a stance.

We often train a leader at an early age.  Young people become captains of sports teams or members of the student government.  Junior ROTC programs do an excellent job of teaching the skills of leadership and followership.  The early training in leadership is beneficial, but over the last thirty years, I have discovered that it is incomplete.  For the last two hundred years, we have expected leaders to have answers to every challenge and be able to motivate others.  A leader formulated a plan, and the followers executed the project.  Today, in a global and creative economy, this is no longer true. 

A contemporary leader must depend on others with specialized knowledge.  A deep understanding of the law, finance, computer software, logistics, and marketing is impossible for one person to gather in a lifetime.  Today, a plan requires multiple people to formulate and execute.  The contemporary world is too complicated and chaotic to come up with natural solutions.  

It is why I discovered a TED talk from South African food executive Lorna Davis.  She talked about how she bought into the myth of heroic leadership.  She also found heroic leadership did not effect change within her organization.  People applauded her works and went about doing the same things they did before she joined the organization. Heroic leadership failed.  She goes on to mention that a new model of leadership needs to develop, and she called it “radical interdependence.”  A leader should have a goal, and it is up to the team on how to achieve that goal.  It requires listening, empathy, and giving others a chance to excel.  It is anything but heroic.  

I did not realize I was using this approach when I confessed during a meeting I was stumped.  I did not know how to address a quality problem, and I asked, “Anyone have any idea how we are going to fix this?”  Within a day, I had answers, and the leaders at the off-shore office were implementing them without checking for permission.  The off-shore team knew if I disapproved, I would let them know, so they decided to take the initiative.  I am confident our quality issues will clear up.  

Radical interdependence requires trust and allowing others to come up with solutions.  It involves a surrender of control, which many successful people find uncomfortable. It relies on asking questions instead of giving orders.  It is physically and mentally exhausting because you are stretching your emotional intelligence and practical knowledge.  You are learning and growing with the people you are leading.

Leadership is the most challenging skill a person can acquire, and it is impossible to master.  It is clear why the military calls command a burden.  Each day you are tested, and failure can mean the loss of millions of dollars or even lives.  I think Lorna Davis has some useful guidance about leadership.  I am going to ignore the liars and fools.  

Until next time. 

Good Habits, Teamwork, and Grace Create Agility

Forgiveness is Agile

Being a business person is the ultimate endurance sport.  Each day we awaken and try to earn a living for ourselves and the people we love.  It is a grind.  It goes on for years, and if we are lucky, we will get a chance at the end of our lives to reflect and relax.  It is a precarious existence of striving and survival.  The business person confronts this reality each day.  We compete for the quick win and the big score but understand the long term nature of being a business person.  We need to take a look at the long term nature of the life of a business person and how agile can make the experience more sustainable. 

Building a business is a harrowing process.  For every entrepreneur who succeeds, there are more who fail.  Some of the best ideas fail because they can not find a market, while some of the most trivial can generate oceans of wealth.  The random nature of the success breeds arrogance, and these captains of an industry often ignore problems within their organizations until it is too late.  Only when threatened with extinction do organizations feel the need to change.  The scrum master steps into the world of organizational change when the stakes are highest.  It is the realm of failing fast and making corrections.  For some, it is like building the business from scratch all over again. 

The first step is building successful habits among the people doing the work.  It means meeting standards of quality, showing up to meetings prepared, and communicating correctly to make sure everyone understands what needs to happen.  The process of setting up the fundamental expectation of excellence is outlined by philosopher Will Durant who said, “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act; it is a habit.”  Asking people to develop good habits and practice them is the first step to improvement.  Do not ask people to work extra hours and do not expect them to treat their work as a heroic struggle.  Work should be at a sustainable pace; heroic action is unnecessary. 

It is after this process that you enter the second step.  Everyone should understand the business succeeds or fails together as a team.  It takes a team working together and complimenting each other’s strengths to be successful.  The success is constructed on positive habits and relying on others to do their part.  It is the salesperson respecting the administrative assistant for getting the presentation organized, and it is the developer understanding the quality assurance tester wants to ship quality code.  Everyone has a role to play, and it only happens when we work together. 

Habits of excellence and creating a team mentality in the organization are entry-level steps in creating agility.  It also requires what religious people call “grace.”  A pastor once told me the Christian definition of grace is, “…getting absolutely, positively something you do not deserve.”  It is having school canceled when you did not study for an important test.  It is the client rescheduling a meeting when you are stuck in traffic.  I also think grace is when you forgive yourself and someone else for a bad day.  It is the extra cup of coffee or bag of chips as you muddle through the day.  It is letting some go home early to look after a sick child or deal with the side effects of chemotherapy.  Grace means that you can trust others on the team to step up when you are not performing at your best. 

It is only by combining the habits of excellence, creating teams, and practicing grace do we create a more sustainable business environment.  It is a place where the day in day out grind becomes a day of learning, innovation, and forgiveness.  The victories are more regular, and the defeats are more educational.  It is a new way to look at work and one which I hope to pioneer. 

Until next time. 

Use Agile to Fight Failure

Failure hurts, but not learning from failure hurts worse.

The purpose of agile is to create working software and solutions.  I have stated this goal repeatedly.  The iterations, meetings, and emotional labor are all designed to get work completed promptly.  The rapid feedback delivers value in the least amount of time without waste exposing failure.  The real test of an agile team is how it copes with failure.

The world of politics, media, and business loves to celebrate winning and success.  John F. Kennedy remarked that success had many fathers, but failure was considered an orphan.  People with careers on the line will do anything to avoid failure.  In a world of achievement, the stigma of failure is very real.  I suspect it is this stigma that makes it hard for business leaders to experiment and try different approaches to problems.  To do so is to risk failure.

Failure is a clarifying experience. We quickly discover what does not work.  We also understand the conditions we are working to overcome.  Failure also creates an emotional connection to the work.  It is the chip on the shoulder that drives you forward which says to the world, “I may have failed now but it will make my future success more powerful.”  I extol the virtues of failure because it makes people and teams better at overcoming adversity.  I have failed a lot in my career and that wisdom follows me around.  It helps me train others to avoid the mistakes I have made in the past.

A team has three reactions to failure.  The first reaction is apathy.  If failure does not have any repercussions, a group of people will continue their bad habits and personal agendas.  The next response is fear, where we have people behaving in self-preservation mode.  Team members withdraw from each other and look to do just enough work to avoid blame or blame someone else.  Leaders micro-manage because they feel helpless and see the people they lead unable or unwilling to do the job.  Fear is a palatable emotion, and everyone experiences it on the team.  The final sentiment is determination.  Where the fear once existed, the emotional survivors of the group become determined to overcome their adversity.  Good leaders and coaches get teams to the point of determination quickly.  Those with less skill will have to slog through the earlier steps.

Agile and scrum help along this process, exposing failure and forcing the team to inspect and adapt.  Each retrospective allows the team to find the points of failure and address them.  The team reflects on what they need to do and what they need to change.  A woman I respect who teaches children says failure is an acronym for the first attempt at learning.  Based on this premise failure is a stepping stone to more substantial success.

I have failed more times than I can recall during my career.  Each setback, mistake, and screw up has made me a better developer, scrum master, and coach.  I like to point out the mistakes I have made in the past so that other people can learn from them.  It is also this display of vulnerability that helps me build credibility with the team.  I strive to be a leader instead of a boss or manager.  So, when you are creating working solutions for customers, you are going to confront failure.  The critical part of the failure experience is how you learn from it and the emotional strength of the team who should develop the ability to overcome.

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.

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.

Necessity and Urgency for the Scrum Master.

Necessity Matters.

Last week, I discussed prioritization and why it matters.  I received plenty of feedback and I want to devote extra time to the topic.

It has been my experience that the further one advances in the company the more people struggle with prioritization.  I blame this on individuals who have never had constraints on time, money, or energy placed in positions of authority.  I also suspect sales and marketing professionals advance into the executive ranks faster.  These individuals are trained early in their careers that “no,” is just one obstacle in the way of an eventual yes.  When they become responsible for operations or essential projects, “no,” has a very different meaning.  Unable to deal with shortages of people, money, or time they lash out or resort to deception to get things done.  It is an ugly state of affairs, and it will destroy the morale of a project team.

When I face this situation, I remember the 1999 movie, “Three Kings.”  The film features Ice Cube and George Clooney as gulf war soldiers who decide to steal a shipment of Saddam Hussein’s gold during confusion surrounding the end of the first gulf war.  The film has one moment which sticks out for me, and that is a monologue by Clooney’s character.  He asks his fellow soldiers what is essential.  After listening to several wrong answers, he says, “Necessity is the most important.  We need to know what is going to get us to the next moment and do that.”  When a ship is leaking, fix the leak.  When a house is on fire put out the fire.  Other issues can wait until the immediate crisis is over.  I have used this approach for five years, and I have seen its effect.  If you are in a staff meeting ask, “Is it necessary?” and if the answer is yes then inquire why it is necessary.  Eventually, people in the organization will start asking the same questions.

Some organizations have a culture of firefighting.  Jimmy Leppert observed these organizations are so focused on short term results they do not have time to focus on growth or excellence.  To get anything done, you have to become an arsonist to create a sense of urgency.  To reduce the “fire risk,” take away flammable material from the organization like technical debt and outdated software.  Next, take responsibility away from the “firebugs,” in the organization; people who create a crisis to get things done.  Finally, encourage fire safety with good engineering practices, automated testing, and code reviews among the team. 

People use urgency and necessity interchangeably.  Do not use these words for is a means to upset the process of prioritization in an organization.  It is arson burning down the business.

Until next time.

Have the Courage to Be Agile

The wealth of nations, the success of
agile requires courage and Adam Smith.

Technology is not a profession for wimps.  It requires hard work, intelligence, and creativity.  The profession also requires a level of courage you do not find in many white-collar jobs.  I want to discuss what type of courage it takes to be successful as a scrum master and coach.

One of my most popular blog posts talked about why some firms resist the agile mindset.  I place the blame upon a lack of psychological safety at most large organizations.  Additionally, I blamed the fear and uncertainty, which is inherent in a global company.  These factors combined create a toxic stew where everyone does the bare minimum and tires to remain invisible until they leave the company.  It is depressing and resembles the grim environment of a Franz Kafka story. 

To address the alienation and lack of initiative which festers in this environment, managers, put into place processes which if followed, have a better chance of yielding better results.  The processes become rituals and deviation from these rituals creates a reaction similar to blasphemy in the middle ages.  The process becomes the purpose of the organization.  In reality, the mission of any business is to create products and services which help customers.  Helping a customer creates revenue, and revenue should generate profit.  The description above has existed since Adam Smith and remains the best articulation of capitalism we have.  I think many people who work in business forget the simple principle of serving customers leads to profit.

The early days of software development reflected the spirit of Adam Smith.  Business people learned software development, and they used computers to address business concerns.  The first generation of programmers were the ones who helped automate payroll systems; they created the Saber travel system and provided the mathematics necessary to make the space program successful.  As computing became, more complex and specialized business, people began to abdicate their involvement in the systems which automated their business.  Project managers became go-betweens technology and business professionals.  Projects got more prominent, and the failures got bigger.  Millions of people had their potential squandered.

It was this waste of human capital, which leads to the creation of the agile manifesto.  I am part of the reformation which began on a ski trip to Utah. Many things unite us, but the main trait we all have is courage.  We all dare to go into the office each day and make a difference.  We are courageous enough to point out areas of improvement.  The agile reformation relies on the courage to be visible and vulnerable to our peers.  It takes courage to bet your career each day to make improvements.  It is easy to become invisible at a large organization; it takes courage to make changes.

I hope that I can maintain this courage for the remainder of my career.

Until next time.

Death to Agile-Lite!

Agile has not jumped the shark if I can help it.

I have been working as an agile professional for ten years.  It is equal measures a lucrative and frustrating career.  Servant leadership is hard to teach others and practice, which makes it profitable.  It is frustrating because you are struggling against decades of entrenched thinking inside the business. Fortunately, I have an excellent personal support system and a sincere devotion to what I do.  We are moving into a new phase of the agile reformation, and I would like to discuss it.

Agile is gaining more acceptance in the business world.  Its use has turned around significant organizations, and its application at Microsoft is beginning to create mythology which jealous rivals want to mimic.  Many of these competitors wish to have the success which agile brings to a company without making the necessary behavioral and cultural changes.  In their mind, agile is something you do instead of a goal to strive.  You take a few management consultants in the organization, apply a random scaling network, and then watch the productivity jump through the roof.  It is a foolish short-sided approach to organizational change.

Jack Skeels writes a great blog on this trend in the business world.  People see agile working, and they want its benefits without making the necessary changes.  He calls this, “Agile is anything Management calls it.”  It is no different than working for a traditional organization, except you are working harder to deliver the same disappointing results.  Furthermore, disillusionment sets in as you find yourself working to satisfy the nihilistic and selfish goals of someone else.  Steve Denning has a more polite description of this trend.  He calls it “agile-lite,” which is “…the adoption and tools of agile without necessarily deploying them with an agile mindset.” It is like a cargo cult which will build faux airports out of bamboo and reeds with the hope cargo jets will arrive bringing wealth.

So, what is an agile mindset?  It is an understanding of agile manifesto and the principles of agile.  It is a growth-mindset which is willing to try new things to improve.  It is ruthlessly applying inspection, adaptation, and transparency to the organization.  Finally, it is expending energy getting work done instead of managing up the organization.  To be successful, it requires more than lip service.  You cannot install Jira in your organization and expect it to become agile instantly.  You have to do much more, and you will have to escape your comfort zone.

Agile is eating the world, and it is approaching its twentieth anniversary.  As this movement enters its third decade, it is up to all of us in this community to beat back fake agile and “agile is whatever management wants.” Plenty of positive change has taken place, but more needs to be done.  Otherwise, we will be doing agile instead of being agile.

Until next time.

The Strength of Technology Pros

No rest for technology

Technology is not for the meek.  A software developer is relearning their craft every 18 months.  Technology companies come and go with regularity.  Businesses rely on software to remain profitable and when the software does not work it costs lives.  The men and women who work in this business have to be tough.  Part of that toughness is the realization you have to deal with failure and frustration.  This week on the blog, I will discuss these central conditions of technology.

Many people have romantic notions about scientists, engineers, and software professionals.  The stereotype is that we are super smart and socially awkward individuals who spend their days making inventions and applications which change the world.  The reality of technology is less glamorous; it is hours, weeks, and months of frustration.  It is executives and financers demanding the work to be finished immediately.  It is cold coffee and stale pizza.  It is loneliness and frustration.  In the end, you might have a brief moment which feels like the creator is touching your shoulder but those moments are rare.  Often you will see a solution to a problem which has dominated your life and now you will have to make it work for others.

It means traditional methods cannot measure these workers.  Science is notoriously fickle when it comes to new advancements.  Computer software is a handmade and messy process prone to error and cost overruns.  Software is eating the world, but it depends on a small segment of the world population to build it.  Innovation and invention do not fit neatly into a project plan.  The realities and pressures of technology create unhealthy levels of stress.

The heavy intellectual lifting combined with the anxiety caused by deadline pressure creates a toxic stew of emotions which can lead to physical problems.  Obesity and heart disease are common among software professionals.  Self-medication with cannabis and alcohol are also common within the trade.  All of my contemporaries have recounted stores of insomnia and anxiousness caused by grappling with a severe challenge.  For those outside the profession, the levels of stress and frustration are extreme.  To a developer, it is just another day at the office.

Creativity and innovation are difficult.  The pressure we place on people leading innovation efforts is unhealthy.  The repercussions are professional burn out, defective products, and the risk of cascading failure within complex systems which maintain the global economy.  In many respects, we live in a magical age.  Today’s smartphones are more powerful than the computers which put people on the moon.  With a few swipes, we can order food and find a possible romantic partner to share it with us.  Information can swirl around the globe in seconds and we have millions of people using the internet to solve problems only a century ago would have had the attention of a small group of specialists.  It is a fantastic period to be alive, but the cost is that many people take for granted these advances and forget they are the product of the human mind rather than magic.

It is why I say technology is not for the meek. It requires intelligence, training, and the ability to tolerate frustration and failure.  The strength has helped build the global economy, and I have enjoyed a peripheral role in this process.  Technology people are different, but they have to be; otherwise, the magical world we live in would not exist.

Until next time.

A Scrum Master Demands Interpersonal Skills.

A scrum master must have a
moral compass and great interpersonal skills.

The role of a scrum master is a challenging one.  Any given day you are confronted with new challenges, and you always face the pressure to deliver software.  You are pulled from the top by the demands of business leadership.  From below, you are leading your team and helping them improve.  I have been reviewing plenty of career postings on the internet lately, and I have noticed an interesting trend.  Postings have mentioned in passing the need for interpersonal skills.  I want to argue interpersonal skills are the essential part of being a scrum master.

When you look at a job posting for a scrum master you often see references to project management systems, years of experience and relevant industry experience, usually there is a request for certifications from the various accrediting agencies involved with agile.  The final bullet point is the requirement is a request for excellent interpersonal skills.

Being a good scrum master demands interpersonal skills.  You spend time coaching and educating others about agile and scrum.  A scrum master must be able to say no to others without sounding dismissive.  It requires solid interpersonal skills to have empathy for others.  A scrum master also must speak truth to power and have the integrity to back up those words.  All of this requires interpersonal skills, and a scrum master who does not have them is in trouble.  Earning a scrum master certification is straight forward, being able to do the job requires hard work and a growth mindset.  

You cannot check off boxes and have a scrum master arrive to make your team better.  It is a process of trial and error.  A team will take two steps forward and then fail in an embarrassing fashion.  It is not a traditional career path, but it is infinitely satisfying.  The foundation is excellent interpersonal skills.

Until next time.

It is just like starting over

Listen, Listen, Listen.

The New Year is always busy.  The sloth of the holidays gives way to new resolutions and a means to wipe the slate clean.  I am no different.  I began a new role as a coach and scrum master at a new firm.  Today on the blog, I would like to talk about starting over and beginning a new agile practice.

A scrum master or agile coach lives an intenerate lifestyle moving from client to client.  More than many professionals they are starting over in new environments.  It means a coach needs to embrace responding to change over following a plan. It requires a certain humility and empathy for others.  Some organizations use Azure DevOps to manage the software development lifecycle, and others use tools like Jira.  Any good scrum master should be able to adapt to these different systems.  It might also be helpful to ditch a system entirely to learn the basics of agile. 

I find listening to others is helpful.  To drown out office noise, I often wore noise-canceling headphones and enjoyed a playlist of “New Wave” and “Post-Punk” music.  It made the day go faster, but it created a barrier between myself and others.  I did not understand how big a barrier until I decided to try something different and leave the headphones at home.  I began to hear QA people gossiping about bugs.  I learned about the favorite T.V shows of developers.  It was informative which people took calls via speaker phone and which ones were more discrete.  The office completed work in a particular way, and I gained insight into that process.  The insight is going to help me better coach others. 

Last year, I wrote a despairing article about my failure as a coach.  What came out of that experience was the realization before anyone can coach or guide others you need to empathize with them.  You cannot bully people into improvement.  People need to be shown the way and encourage to make better choices.  Experience and success will create a positive feedback loop of continuous improvement.  Leave the rough justice to managers who can discipline those who will not buy into the agile mindset. 

When starting over, shut-up and listen to others.  Cultivate empathic relations before learning.  Find out how your customers do things before proposing changes.  Finally, have some humility and respond to change.  Ever since Lee Iaccoa took over Chrysler in the early 1980s, professionals have worshiped the cult of leadership.  It is time to take a step back and realize that before you can lead: listen. 

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.

Rubbing Agile on It

I am in here somewhere.

Being part of a large project team is a huge challenge.  You are a member of a cast of hundreds.  Individually, you do not have much influence on the success or failure of the project, but everyone knows when you are behind schedule.  Finally, as a late arrival to a project underway, you feel like you are out running a giant boulder of death attempting to crush everything in its path.  I am where I need to be because it is clear I have to rub a little agile on this situation.

As an agilest in the middle of a very waterfall project, I understand that I am a square peg in a round hole. My boss rejected my first project plan because it was a word document with a list of risks, the people who were going to do the work, and a general timeline over eight weeks.  I was instructed to put something together more detailed in Microsoft Project.  I have not written a project plan since graduate school and never professionally.  I was content with user stories and a Kanban board.

Into this world, I am a stranger in a strange land.  The good news is that I know enough about lousy project management to try and apply better project management techniques.  I am consulting with the people doing the work so that I can put together more detailed steps in the project plan.  I am a big believer in customer collaboration over contract negotiation.  It caused shrieks of horror, but I like to share information with our client even if we are under contract with a fixed date.  I would instead practice “radical candor,” rather than “ruinous empathy.” Instead of weekly status reports, I will radiate information daily out of the “war room,” I am supervising.  By my estimation, the more frequent updates will create more goodwill with the clients.

Even the most waterfall project can benefit from the Agile Principles and the Agile Manifesto to achieve positive results.  It is my current thesis, and I am willing to bet my career on it.

Until next time.

Agile Coaching must work with Corporate Leadership.

They made great art but the rivalry was toxic.
 Don't let this happen to your coaching relationship
with business leaders.

One of the best things about being an agilest is the network of smart and committed people who are willing to provide insight into how they are solving business problems.  I know if I ask for help I receive plenty of suggestions and feedback.  I wrote a blog about how agile is good at exposing toxic leadership inside an organization.  I received some criticism from people I respect who thought I was creating a false conflict with leaders.  Let me explain myself.

Organizations are coming around to the Agile Reformation for one apparent reason; it is good for business.  Faster time to market and more precise focus on meeting customer needs translates into profits.  Business leaders are also discovering disengaged workers, and toxic leaders are a drain to the bottom line.  It is just like what baseball manager Tommy Lasorda said, “Happy Cows make more milk.” The reality of the benefits of Agile provides an opportunity to make business better.  It also means business leaders and agile coaches have a vested interest in working together. 

The tension between leadership and agile coaches happens when agile exposes inefficiencies in the broader business.  Development teams release software, but the business users are not interested in testing.  Network professionals block the use of Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment tools because they see it as a career threat.  Finally, pointing out a toxic leader can jeopardize the balance of power in office politics.  I struggle to navigate these situations. 

Often when teams become more agile, the surrounding business is stuck in the status quo.  It is inside this shadow zone where a company makes the transition from doing agile to being agile.  The metaphorical rubber hits the road in that place.  The only way it can succeed is if business leaders buy in, agile professionals lead by example and teams follow through.  A woman I respect very much said, “Do your job, tell the truth and if it does not work out it is their problem.” 

A large organization can behave like an addict they know they are involved in the self-destructive activity, but they cannot stop.  Only when the organization realizes they have to quit will they.  A scrum master or coach needs to be available when they are ready to make the change.  Leaders should be partners in any agile transformation.  Collaboration and cooperation should be the guiding principles of this relationship.  If it collapses into codependence and conflict, then it is time for the coach to admit failure and go elsewhere. 

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.