Listening to COVID-19 and What It Means for Agile.

Pay attention to the world around you.

It is an extraordinary time.  The world economy lurched into a lower gear.  Many of us are cooped up in our homes attempting to teach children, work remotely, or pass the time because our jobs disappeared with the stay in place orders.  It is also a time where we have discovered how networked and interdependent we are.  A virus half a world away can create a wave of disruption.  In my physical –isolation, I have taken the time to process a few bits of wisdom.

The COVID-19 virus has exposed how networked the global economy and society has become over the last fifty years.  It has also acted as a great equalizer. The developed world is just as susceptible to the virus as the poorest of nations.  The mutation of a virus in bats which spread to humans now threatens everyone on the planet.  It is a slow-motion disaster which we saw coming.

Scientists, health workers, and professionals crunched the numbers and played out the worst-case scenarios.  When leaders listened, you had widespread testing and public health responses.  Where leaders decided to ignore the evidence, military quarantines of entire cities would be necessary, and health care systems were overcome with sick people.  The experts were right and we should trust that expertise more often.

It is easy to be smug in a time like now.  Hundreds of thousands of people are suffering economically as restaurants, bars, and nightlife shut down.  The education of millions of young people is upset by schools closing.  If experts were trusted and people gave credit to others who dedicated their entire lives to the study of science and public health, we might not be in such a difficult situation.  The reality of saying, “I told you so,” is only going to make the present situation more unbearable.

The distrust of experts comes from a particular place.  We often see these experts in comfortable offices and universities and think they lack real-world experience.  Many professionals have authority over others, and it creates resentment.  They are the teachers, doctors, lawyers, judges, and executives who make decisions about our lives.  Making matters worse, professionals often do not live in communities where their choices have the most impact.  It explains why those who work hourly like to use words like quack, shyster, and shylock to describe those with expertise.

One of the reasons I wanted to get into agile is because I wanted to be a different kind of professional.  I wanted to be responsive and empathetic to others. I wanted to show kindness.  Professionals must earn trust each day. It is up to professionals like myself to create ways to work, which are sustainable, satisfying, and sane.  If we are going to dig out of the economic calamity, we are going to discover better ways of working.  Agile will be one of the movements leading the way.

So the main piece of wisdom I have obtained while I remain in self-isolation is that respect of experts and professionals must be earned.  Earning that trust means treating others with decency and kindness.  It means having shared experience in good times and bad.  Agile will be part of this transformation, and I will continue to be part of it.

Until next time. 

Fight Bad Agile!

Command and control did not
 work then and it will not work now.  

I have been involved in the agile reformation for the last ten years.  In 2009, the agile manifesto was relatively young, and it was a quirky idea to make software better. Today we have three primary scaling techniques for agile.  The reformation has grown and splintered over the years, but the manifesto remains the pole star which every variation circles.  Now business professionals and executives are paying attention to the reformation.  Agile is eating the world, but instead of confronting opposition, we are dealing with corruption caused by the status quo as it exists in many companies.  The corruption creates bad agile, and it is up to coaches and scrum masters to call it out.

Last week, I pointed out that a common dysfunction in organizations is leadership spends too much time pleasing superiors rather than doing the necessary work to make the business successful.  The behavior hurts collaboration between departments and categorizes people as resources which can be swapped out like machine parts.  It is dehumanizing and alienating.  Agile helps fight this dysfunction with emphasis on cross-functional teams and less organizational friction.  The challenge of agile is it works well in the realm of the team, but as it attempts to scale out to the organization, it butts against status-quo thinking, entrenched political agendas, and the command and control mindset of most executives.

Put yourself in the shoes of a typical executive who has spent ten, fifteen, or twenty years in an organization. The executive has presided over budgets and deadlines.  The contact they have with the people doing the actual work is limited, and their knowledge of project management is slight, so they hire project managers to handle the responsibility.  Most of the time, executives spend time involved with pleasing superiors and political sparring with rivals.  An agile coach comes along who tells them they have the wrong career focus, and they have been leading their people incorrectly.  Agile, with its emphasis on inspection, adaption, and transparency, undermines political infighting within an organization, which means career advancement depends on results instead of deception.  It is going to create anxiety, and the executive is going to push back.

The executive is not evil in this instance; the new way of doing things creates uncertainty and fear.  It is natural they would be resistant when confronted with this upsetting of psychological safety.  As a coach, it is going to be your responsibility to address the resistance.  You are going to walk the executive through the process of shifting from a command and control mindset to an agile mindset.  It will not be easy.

Instead of telling people what to do, the scrum master will have to show them.  Lead by example, give the team what they need to succeed, live the agile manifesto and principles, and point out organizations friction where it exists.  Inspection, adaption, and transparency are designed to hold everyone accountable particularly executives.

Bad agile happens because self-interest and the status quo are more important than getting work done.  We tolerate double standards, and it creates corruption.  It is up to each scrum master or coach to reveal this corruption so we can mitigate its effects.  It is up to each of us to show instead of telling others what to do.  Finally, we need to create psychological safety among leaders if they are to embrace agile.  Otherwise, we remain stuck with bad agile.

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.

Why Companies Resist the "Agile Mindset"

Bad leadership creates a mindset which is not agile.

It is difficult explaining agile to others outside my profession.  The Agile Manifesto outlines four values and twelve principles which govern how people should approach work.  It is up to people like myself to make sure the manifesto and principles are not abused.  To be successful, it is not enough to have talented professionals doing the work and following a successful formula.  Those professionals need to collaborate as a team willing to take risks and innovate.  Scrum masters and agile coaches call this the “Agile Mindset.”

I have been working in the orbit of agile for nearly ten years.  It is a rewarding and challenging line of work.  Plenty of business leaders like the results agile brings to software development teams.  Research from the Standish Group has shown projects done in an agile manner are more successful and have fewer budget overruns.  Business leaders should be falling all over themselves to implement agile based on this knowledge.

In reality, agile faces serious organizational and cultural hurdles. I say this because agile places a strong emphasis on continuous improvement and corporate transparency.  For managers who are incompetent, absent, micromanaging, or power hungry agile is a threat.  Ken Scheweber says agile holds a mirror up to the organization.  Resistance to agile happens when an organization does not like what it sees and attempts to smash the mirror.

I have experienced this resistance first hand.  A manager was reduced to spasms of rage when I said he could not poach a developer for another project until a sprint ended.  A network administrator deliberately denied technical support for continuous integration and continuous builds because they did not want developers, “…touching my servers.”  Finally, I remember someone from governance say they had been doing production rollouts the same way for ten years.  It was puzzling to them why anyone would change a system which was working correctly for them.  I have seen and heard almost every alibi and excuse NOT to be agile.  Why is it happening?

The answer is the fear and uncertainty built into each corporation.  It is not enough to be profitable.  A corporation must be profitable according to the expectations of shareholders if not share prices can fall precipitously.  Years of retirement savings can vanish in an afternoon.  The focus on this shareholder value forces companies to squeeze profit out of anything.  For instance, employees are expensive, so layoffs, “right-sizing” and automation improve profits without doing the messy work of developing the product or increasing sales.  A Keurig machine where employees bring their coffee replaces a coffee pot with free coffee.  Employees are expected to do janitorial work, or empty trash cans less frequently.  Failure to maintain these profit figures or increase them leads to unemployment which is a pathway to financial ruin.

The power-hungry pursue leadership so they can inflict harm on others rather than suffer the everyday indignities of office work.  The absent hope invisibility will protect them from accountability.  The incompetent bluff their way in the organization and pin their failures on others.   The micromanager lacks trust that people can do their job, and it is a threat to their livelihood. Each of these poor leaders is anti-agile.  Poor leadership drives away good employees and slowly choke the organization.  These individuals survive because the pace of business at a large organization makes it easy for these individuals to hide in plain sight.

With lousy leadership, the only people that stick around are bad employees.  It becomes a feedback loop of awfulness.  It is why an agile coach spends plenty of time struggling against the organization, and it can be lonely.  It is sobering because you will face it often in your career.  So be prepared for resistance to the “agile mindset.”  It is not because people do not want to be successful.  Instead, the fear and uncertainty of a modern corporation discourage the mindset from happening.

Until next time.

Gaslight does not help Agile

Business should never run by gaslight.

As a scrum master, you spend much of your time getting individuals and teams to improve.  It is the central role of a scrum master to encourage improvement.  Countless training courses have come along to help people better coach and facilitate change.  The work is deeply satisfying and provides direct value to the team and organization.  Eventually, a team will reach a plateau of improvement.  It happens because further growth requires changes to the organization surrounding the team.  The biggest frustration of my agile practice is overcoming those cultural and organizational barriers to agility.  I have noticed a significant portion of colleagues and managers have a vested interest in discouraging the spread of agile because it threatens their careers.  Every reformation has a counter-reformation, and this week on the blog, I want to discuss the most dangerous tool used by agile opponents; gas lighting.

The term gaslighting originated from the 1944 movie “Gaslight,” starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.  The film follows Bergman as she is slowly driven insane by Boyer to obtain her inheritance.  The film highlights the cruelty and abuse required to force someone to doubt their reality.  Today, the concept applies to any situation where you have a narcissistic or sociopathic person attempting to manipulate someone else.

According to Ken Schwaber, one of the original signatories of the agile manifesto, scrum holds a mirror to the organization.  Gaslighting begins when colleagues and managers are embarrassed by what is in the mirror.  For instance, a manager could accuse you of pushing the organization or team too fast.  The reality could be you are making the manager look bad because the team is delivering software better than they ever could.  It is gaslighting because the reality is their team is shipping software, but in the manager's eyes, you are upsetting the natural order where they control releases instead of the team.  Feedback like this is insidious because in many organizations the manager’s opinion counts when it comes to appraisals, pay raises, and promotions.

The website “The Ladders,” has a blog on typical gaslighting behaviors which are employed.  If you experience those behaviors, you should leave the organization.  Life is too short to work for an organization which makes you crazy.  Scrum helps address gas lighting behavior because the transparency of inspection and adaption provide physical proof of software releases, performance improvement and pace of the team.  Finally, I have discovered shipping software silences most critics in an information technology organization.  The work speaks for itself which drives the power hungry, absent, incompetent, and micromanaging to use gas lighting to save their necks.

I am a big fan of Kim Scott and her book “Radical Candor.”  Gaslighting is the polar opposite of radical candor.  Scott calls it manipulative insincerity.  Gaslighting is the inability, to tell the truth, and care personally for the performance of the person being coached.  It is abusive.  When it happens, it should be called out, and if it continues, it is up to Human Resources and leadership to become involved.

Organizations who want to succeed should understand gas lighting behavior is wrong.  I have been in numerous situations which were examples of gas lighting.  The survival tactic I have relied upon is to count on my peers for support and seek out authentic coaching.  The first step to fighting this form of abuse is to recognize it is happening; the next is taking action.  I have I have given you a few tools to do it.

Until next time.

Scrum should not be a cargo cult.

Scrum should not be a cargo cult.

Blogging about business and scrum opens you up to feedback and criticism.  Confronted by people who challenge your ideas allow you to reflect on your knowledge and beliefs.  A college of mine took offense to me referring to the meetings of a scrum as “rituals” last week.  I would like to address his concerns.

The primary criticism of my article was that I was encouraging a “cargo cult” kind of scrum.  The term comes from a Scientific American article from 1959 which documented primitive tribes in Melanesia coming in contact with missionaries and soldiers.  The connection prompted these indigenous people to create cults to encourage cargo to be delivered to them.  Primitive air strips, airplanes, and shipping terminals cropped up in the hope that actual cargo planes and people would show up.

The pre-modern culture felt if they mimicked the trappings of technology without understanding the principles behind that technology they would receive the prosperity which comes with modernity.  This assumption is wrong.  The tribes created many faux landing strips and cargo depots in the South Pacific.

People in the agile community, use the story of the cargo cult to illustrate the difference between going through the motions of agile and being agile.  In a perfect world, a business would reconfigure itself to follow the word and spirit of the Agile manifesto.  We do not live in a perfect world, so it is up to scrum masters and agile coaches to provide structure for the transition from traditional business to agility.

The events of scrum provide a means to help speed that transition.  Business people and developers are forced to inspect, act and adapt to changing situations.  That is the heart of an agile business.
When I refer to the meetings and events of the scrum as rituals, I mean the meetings should have purpose and significance.  I am not attempting to create a “cargo cult” in an organization.

I am glad someone challenged me on my assertions, and I look forward to more give and take in the future.

Until next time.

Continuous improvement is a scrum master job.

Development is a lot like theater

One of the greatest things about my job is that I spend numerous hours working with people.  I am learning new things on a constant basis.  I also spend time teaching others how to be better in the workplace.  It is this back and forth which keeps me going into the office.  This week I was asked about how you inspire teams to make continuous improvement.

Business professionals use sports metaphors to describe what they do.  I was never any good at sports, so I look business through the filter of music and performing arts.  I think it is a more constructive way to look at the work.  There is no scoreboard hanging over the cubicles in the office.  Business leaders are often too busy to chart out plays, and there is no playoff season or championship.  Business is an ongoing activity.

To me, the world of work resembles repertoire theater or a jazz orchestra.  Each week the company needs to put on eight shows a week with a matinee on Sunday.  The quality of the performance needs to be professional grade because people will not pay big money to see an elementary school recital.  People get sick, and performers drop out but in show business terms, “The show must go on!” If the show does not go on then, people do not get paid.  The cruel arithmetic of performing arts is that quality must be outstanding and that people must want to purchase your product.  Otherwise, you starve.

So as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach you need to look at your job as if you were a theater director or the leader of a jazz band.  Instead of being autocratic about the work, you will need to be collaborative.  You will have to get to know the people you work with and understand them as people.  Do they have children, are they single, is this their first job or do they have experience?  Do they show up for work on time?  Are they prepared?  Can they improvise and can they handle the pressure?  As coach and scrum master you need to know.

Once you understand the above, you can lay out the goals and mission of the team.  Scrum is good about this.  Each sprint has a beginning, middle, and end.  The release of working software should is like a performance.  When the curtain falls, the scrum master and the team decide how to do better job next time.

I am a big believer in the 1% principle.  Each sprint, I want to improve the performance of the team by 1%. If I have thirteen iterations in a year, the team has increased its performance by 13%.  Over a period of five years, that would be a 65% growth in efficiency.  That is the kind of return which creates pay raises and promotions.  So create small increments of improvement and meet them.  Over time, you will be amazed by the results.

Finally, Agile and Scrum can not overcome a poor work ethic, incompetence, or stupidity.  Being average is not sufficient.  As a coach or Scrum Master, it is your job to help everyone become a better team member.  People unwilling or unable to improve must go.  It is best for the individual and the team.  It is one of the hardest decisions to make.  As someone laid off multiple times, I speak from experience.  Each time I have lost a job I have bounced back and been a better developer.  Nothing focuses the mind quite like unemployment.

So look at your role as a theater director.  Get to know your people.  Collaborate with your team and hold them accountable for small improvements over time.  Finally, remove people from the team holding them back.  Being a scrum master is not easy, but it is the most rewarding job you will ever do.

Until next time.

March of the Flaming Squirrels

Pay attention to the Squirrels.

I have spent over 18 years working in technology.  In that time, it still surprises me how many people think what I do is magic.  Furthermore, those people think setting up complicated database and web systems are like plugging in a lamp and turning on a switch.  This creates all sorts of insane and absurd situations in the work place.

When I was a young person, one of the key measures of success was the ability to handle large piles of work with deadlines.  The metaphor my teachers used was the story of a squirrel.  Squirrels hibernate during the winter months but they still need to eat so during the summer months they spend a majority of their time gathering food to store for the winter.  They also binge eat in the fall so they have enough fat to hibernate.

I took this metaphor to heart and applied it to my undergraduate and graduate work.  Each day I spent a little time reading writing and gathering nuggets of information to help myself become successful.  It worked and it seems like a good strategy.  You do little things today so that big challenges of tomorrow don’t seem so daunting.  Then I became a software professional.

The technology world has too much work and not enough qualified people to do the work.  So instead of small efforts adding up to eventual success it takes super-human effort to prevent getting swamped from the demands of the business.  It is a like being a squirrel which is caught in a forest fire.  You still have to gather food but you also confront the grim reality of painful death.

I am spending much of my time telling business people why these “fires” are bad for the business and the software developers.  As author Jimmy Leppert says, “…firefighting creates a culture of arsonists.”  In my mind, where there are arsonists there are millions of dollars of destruction and countless maimed and dead animals.  The software developers become squirrels set ablaze.

I blame a lot of things for this.  Project are funded poorly with a fixed bid mindset.  Americans do a poor job training people to be engineers and technical professionals.  Many business leaders who manage software project have no practical knowledge about how software works.  Finally, short term thinking among business investors and leaders exacerbate this forest fire thinking.  Thus, your organization, which is a fragile ecosystem resembling a forest, is beset by arsonists with flame throwers and chain saws.

I do not have any cures for these problems but I do want to point them out so people who are smarter and more influential can fix them. In order to fix a problem, you need to understand what is causing it.  So if you see your technology staff running around like flaming squirrels you should be smart enough to kick the arsonists out of your organization.

Until next time.

When to hang it up

Sometimes you have to pack your bags.

Last week I spoke about “struggle” and what I felt it meant.  It inspired a strong reaction from a few people.  Watching this reaction, it dawned on me, I was witnessing a conversation I had three years ago.  Each of us have moments in our careers where we consider leaving and going someplace else. Some of us have that choice forced upon us while others have a “moment of clarity” and then give their notice to their boss.  This week I want to talk about when it is time to leave.

I have been a software consultant and full time software developer for many years.  It was filled with frustration and failure.  Additionally, when I was a consultant I was often treated like high paid “help” who was supposed to keep his head down, mouth shut, and ignore the dysfunction which surrounded me.  I even completed a project early for a client and instead of being rewarded with an extension I was thanked and promptly rolled off.  I have been fired a week before Christmas and had to explain it my former spouse.  I have looked over my shoulder worried I was not good enough and smart enough to work with the other developers in my company.  I needed to make change.

With my own money, I took my Certified Scrum Master training.  I was feeling despair and working as a heads down developer was taking a toll on me.  This was a chance to practice what I preached about Agile.  After becoming an architect at a different firm, they learned about my Scrum Master training and made me the servant leader of development team.  Looking back on that experience, I realize that I was raw, cocky and untested.  One developer openly rebelled against me right away and I would spend weeks and months attempting to effect change.

That was three years ago.  Now, I am training product owners for division of my company, serving as a scrum master, and being “spun off” as my firm splits into three companies.  In those three years, being in the trenches as a scrum master has made me a much better servant leader.  I am even participating in the company mentoring program.  I voiced that I was restless and frustrated with the pace of change I am trying to effect and it looks like someone listened. For me, it is a sign that I need to stay because big changes are coming and my peers and superiors see that I should be part of that change.

I will only speak for myself but if you cannot get training through your work and if you are asked to do one thing but are rewarded for doing something else then it is time to leave.  Before I started working as a scrum master, I was a senior developer for a food company.  I was talking about a software project with a superior and he said I should start over because it didn’t look like something he could use on his iPad.  It was the final straw and with-in a month I was gone.  Since then, that company has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in agile consulting and they laid-off over 100 people, mostly older workers, in order to be more nimble.  They could have saved a lot of money and preserved those jobs if they just figured out how to keep me and allow me to spread agile through the firm.  I am glad I am no longer there.

Each member of the agile community is responsible for his or her own career.  We have to make choices every day about what we do and who we serve.  We also need to remember that we need to serve ourselves.  If we are unhappy or frustrated with what we are doing then we need to change.  If that means leaving one company to go to another then so be it.  For me, I am staying where I am.  I am entering an exciting time of change and I look forward to the challenges.  When I can’t say that any more then I have to quit.

Until next time.

The Two Olive Paradox

Beware the Two Olive Paradox

I have worked in the business world for over twenty-five years.  When I left college my hope was that I would work with grown-ups who would do the right thing.  Experience has crushed those hopes like peanut shells on the floor of a baseball stadium.  This week, I wanted to write about one of the pathologies I have noticed in business world and how it is effecting the implementation of agile and scrum.

This week news broke widely about the poisoning of water in the city of Flint Michigan.  If you are interested in understanding the details of the situation, I strongly recommend this article from Vox.com.  Suffice to say this is the failure of government on a local, state and federal level.  This failure has a root cause and it is what I like to call the two olive paradox.  Politicians, technocrats, and business people want to save money to look like they are being fiscally responsible and instead create situations which cost significantly more money.

I use the phrase two olive because it is based on a true story from the world of air travel.  Robert Crandall, was the president and chairman of American Airlines.  He was able to figure out that if he removed an olive from an in-flight salad leaving two olives, he would save $100,000 a year and that passengers would not mind.  It has become legendary among business school students, professionals, and journalists.  Crandall didn’t really address the falling market share of the airline in the 1980’s or improve customer service but he was able to save the company and the shareholders money.

Since that time in the 1980’s business people have done everything they could to emulate Crandall.  In my career alone, I have seen toilet paper rationed, office supplies cut back, and training and development cut back all for the sake of saving a few thousands of dollars in corporate budgets in the millions and billions.  For the scrum master, this means technical debt festers, mission critical technology becomes obsolete, and quality developers quit because they are not being compensated correctly.  This is the two olive paradox creating petty solutions because we cannot or will not solve the real problems in the organization.

How does this tie into Flint Michigan?  The state appointed administrator after cutting police service and renegotiating the contracts of every municipal employee, and cutting pension commitments still needed to save money so he attempted to do it by finding an inexpensive source of tap water.  Thus, he went to Flint river instead of water from Lake Huron or Detroit.  Concerns about pollution were ignored and in the end water from the Flint river started flowing through the taps.  When activist started to complain the un-elected authority did the usual thing and attempted to protect itself without fixing problem they caused.  It would take the attention of national media in order to get people to pay serious attention to poison flowing through the tap water.

In many respects, a scrum master must be like those community activists from Flint.  They have to raise awareness, point out problems, and work within the system to try and make change.  It is not a very good way to advance your career because most managers that I have encountered want people who go along and get along being likable rather than trying to solve problems in the organization.  It is frustrating.  I struggle with this in many of the organizations I work with.

So be on the lookout for the two olive paradox, because if you see business leaders thinking this way your life as a scrum master is going to get very complicated.

Until next time.

Fighting the Corporate Immune System.

The game of business can be crooked.

One of the most interesting things to come out of biology over the last century has been something known as the Gaia hypothesis.  The theory says that living things interact with non-living things in such a way that a whole ecosystem behaves like a living organism.  It has a lot of criticism in the scientific community and if correct could upset our ideas of natural selection. What makes it appealing to most people is that it conforms with our notions of belonging to an organic whole of life having a purpose on the planet.

If you could apply the Gaia hypothesis to an entire planet in theory you could narrow the focus to a work place.  This week, I want to talk about the immune systems that organizations develop when you are trying to lead change.  I stand by my assertion that the modern corporation is the last vestige of feudalism in contemporary society.  Notions of human dignity, intellectual growth, and making a difference are quickly subsumed by the petty power games of executives, the demands of shareholders, and the peer pressure of the others who share your cubical space.

This is a challenge for agile professionals because continuous improvement and accountability are major threats to executives who see their command and control structures threatened by people in taupe blazers.  The modern business has four major defense mechanisms.

Quid Pro Quo Behavior – 

This phrase means tit for tat.  It is often used during sexual harassment training to describe a sexual favor being traded for bit of career advancement.  For the agilest, this means that people in the organization do favors for each other and in doing so create a currency.  This currency is bartered around the organization and it used to get work done and cover up malfeasance or laziness.  As long as the Quid Pro Quo behavior is not discussed or exposed it will continue.

Social Networks – 

Spending time with people develops bonds.  Friendships with develop and they become a kind of armor against people who want to change things.  A project manager with a close friendship with a department head can get away with plenty of bad behavior to subordinates.  The relationship cultivated will trump the duty of the department head to hold that individual accountable.  So pointing out the misconduct is really threatening your credibility as a person to that department head.

Not invented here – 

Plenty of organizations consider their processes to be unique to their businesses, so anyone who suggests that accounting behaves the same way regardless of the product produced will be treated like a heretic.  Worse these people might be treated like someone “…who isn’t being a team player.”  To suggest that methods of doing things have been tested and true in other organizations, is undermining the uniqueness and authority of the organization you work with.  The change agent will be cut off and eventually removed.

Tenure –

In some organizations the only way to get ahead is to stick around and put up with drivel until someone retires and you are promoted in that person’s place.  What this does is encourage group think and lack of risk taking because the way you move up the organization ladder is to avoid calling attention to yourself.  Thus, the least innovative, curious and creative people make decisions.  It is the reward of the bland and boring.

So this week think about these four pieces of an organization’s immune system and how as a change agent you can work around them.

Until next time.

You can learn a lot about agile from Heraclitus.

You can learn a lot from this guy.

It is funny how culture and philosophy ebb and flow over the years.  Pagan tradition are making a comeback in certain parts of Europe, Australia and the United States.  Machiavelli continues to influence art and politics.  I even see the influence of pre-Socratic philosophy in the Agile Manifesto.  This week I want to talk about a dead white guy and how he should be an influence on the agile community.

Heraclitus was born 500 years before Christ.  He is one of those thinkers college freshmen are introduced to in their introductory philosophy classes and they quickly forget him.  Philosophy is always dry but you would be surprised how much it shapes our actions and thinking. Heraclitus’ greatest observation was his statement, “The only constant in this world is change.”  This makes Heraclitus one of the intellectual forefathers of the agile movement.

I say this because Heraclitus and his notions about change match up pretty well with the Agile Manifesto which says we should “Respond to change over following a plan.”  The idea that everything is in flux an important concept that anyone in the software business can understand.  The marketplace and software is changing each day; today’s Yo can be tomorrows MySpace.  Many of the most disruptive software offerings were developed and pushed to production in a manner of days.  Over the course of weeks, these offering and items were changed to meet the demands of the market and before you know it they became dominant market leaders.

Heraclitus would also say, “You could not step twice into the same river.”  This has additional relevance to the agile community because what may have worked in past may not work now because the circumstances will have changed.  Smart Scrum Masters will understand this to be a common sense approach.  Sadly, I have seen consulting companies and business leaders apply a one size fits all approach to projects and the only thing it has done is create slow motion project failures.

So bone up on your Heraclitus and get ready to use a dash of his wit and wisdom in your next presentation.

Until next time.

The Virtues of Agile: Openness

Everyone should feel safe in the Sauna

This is part three of five of our series of articles about the virtues of Agile.  This week we cover the topic of openness.

When I talk to business leaders about openness, I try to relate my experiences at my local YMCA as a metaphor.  As I have gotten older I, like so many of my peers, am trying to take better care of myself which means trips to the “Y” for some exercise.  It also means I get to sit in a hot tub and spend about a half hour in the sauna.  It is in the sauna where we can learn a lesson about openness. 

Each person in the sauna is naked or warring a towel.  Someone usually is reading a newspaper or magazine, someone else is chatting about the day’s events with a friend, and everyone mentions how warm it is in the sauna.  What does not happen is violence.  The reason why is there is no way to sneak a weapon into the sauna unless you are willing to do something extreme and uncomfortable.  The worst thing which can happen in the sauna is you are embarrassed about your shape or have a tattoo or piercing you might regret.  Everyone is forced to be a little open in the sauna.

An agile team and the organization should be like a sauna.  The low dry heat represents the pressure we face every day in the business world.  Everyone should be willing to be metaphorically undressed when in the hot house of business.  This means agendas are out in the open for everyone to see.  If someone does something embarrassing the others react to it with good natured respect.  If someone feels faint or passes out they get help and provide assistance.  In the sauna, we are all a bit naked and tired.  

This does not mean you have to be totally open.  Confidential information, like salaries and trade secrets, do not have to be discussed in the sauna if someone does not want to discuss it.  Sometimes, information needs to be parceled out in small bites and that too is acceptable.  What is not acceptable is outright deceit or lying to have advantage over the others. 

This is why openness is difficult to cultivate in an agile team.  For years developers and executives have been trained that “knowledge is power” so they tend to hoard information.  In an open team, the rookie developer would know that the old hand on the team has not worked with LINQ statements over his career and might need help.  The veteran may know the business and why a certain approach is being used to fix a problem and should share that with junior developers instead of having them hacking away at code in the dark. 

Openness begins with a scrum master who lets the team know what is going on each day in the stand up and during the course of the day.  They help the developers stay focused by avoiding distractions and having them concentrate on sprint goals.  They also have to good sense to look the other way when open of the team members metaphorically drops his towel and makes themselves vulnerable.  I also make a point about joking about my lack of muscle tone to keep the team loose. 

Openness is about being safe with in your own skin and when exposed to the skin of others who are in the same situation you are in.  Without this virtue team collaboration is partial because everyone will be concerned about agendas, possible threats to their career, and lack of safety. 

Until next time.