In Praise of Duct Tapers and Problem Solvers

The world of business is shifting and complicated. Billions of dollars are sloshing around the global economy, and currents of this activity impact each of us on the planet. It is hard to make sense of all the motion and activity, so the business press attempts to make sense of it with strange trend articles. Fobes magazine had an article about the five tribes of employees you find in the office and their possible leadership potential. I enjoy these articles as social exercises, but they left out a crucial component, and I feel compelled to discuss it. 

Ryan Hogg in Forbes reported that the good folks at Slack have identified five prominent workplace personalities. He then describes their unique characteristics and possible ability to lead business organizations. These subgroups are detectives, networkers, road warriors, problem solvers, and expressionists. I am including a link to the article here if you want the full details. 

What struck me about the article was the perky and upbeat nature of how Hogg describes these tribes of workers. Detectives are data-oriented, organized, and outcome-oriented, while road warriors are 'feisty' and have a different vision of success than typical employees. It is easy to be glum and write about work with a sense of futility and toil, so I am grateful for Hogg to take a different approach. 

Working in a contemporary office has gotten a bad reputation. As corporations have grown, we need to do a better job developing leaders, and profit-seeking is the central focus of our activities to the detriment of everything else. It is a toxic perfume of alienation and exploitation. It explains television shows like The Office and The IT Crowd have become cultural touchpoints in the UK and the United States. Our work lives contain plenty of farce and pathos. 

According to Hogg, people like me are problem-solvers. We adapt to technology quickly and like using new ideas to solve old problems. Slack's head of customer success said, "I expect to set the problem solver to be an integral part of an organization because they're going to be the people that adopt artificial intelligence much faster and find ways to make their jobs easier." 

Hogg ignored the definitive book about office subculture seven years ago, David Greber's "Bulls#it Jobs." In his book, Graeber uses his experience as an anthropologist to explain the five tribes of people who undermine organizations—he labels these groups flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. Graeber's book is an unflattering look at corporate life and the "profound psychological violence" that accompanies it. 

Graeber and Hogg's overlap is the description of problem solvers and duct tapers; both live in an ambiguous realm of decisions requiring judgment and creativity. Duct tapers and problem solvers spend lots of effort fighting corporate red tape, fixing problems before they happen, and keeping the promises of others. They are project managers, scrum masters, and middle management types who support the organization. They also make many enemies because they spend most of their time challenging existing power structures and proposing new ways to do things. It requires technical and people skills with uncertain payoffs. 

I am proud to say that I have been a duct taper for the last twenty years of my career. Along the way, I have earned a few emotional scars and developed a reputation for frankness and delivery. Executives only understand the necessity of problem solvers and duct tapers once they need them. When a deadline is in jeopardy or an existential threat crops up in an organization, these people become saviors. Otherwise, they quit and join other organizations because even the best duct tapers and problem solvers know when to run for cover when an organization is about to blow up. 

So, if you want to ensure the survival of your organization, pay attention to this tribe of employees known as duct tapers and problem solvers. These people know your organization better than you do, from its seedy underbelly to the glamorous product launches. They also have a symbolic roll of duct tape to keep the organization from flying apart. It would help if you had more of them in your organization. 

Until next time. 

 

Looking Ahead to 2022

Happy New Year!

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

Nothing is going to be easy. –

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

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

Ending Humiliation at the Office. –

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

Money What is that? –

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

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

Death to Disinformation! –

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

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

Until next time. 

The Profession of Software Development

Software developers are much like plumbers. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time.

The fight against alienation is real

Don't inflict help

Any time a professional person attempts to change an organization they belong they are going to face a backlash.  Socrates would argue that this kind of behavior was the product of ignorance.  The philosopher would say once people knew the difference between objective right and wrong, people would choose right.  It was an optimistic view of human nature and one which is non-existent in the contemporary office.  Business people can be nasty, cruel and brutish as Thomas Hobbes would call them in “The Leviathan.”  A business person can exhibit the manipulative insincerity of Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”  Worse of all, professionals can exhibit the traits of the “Ubermensch” running roughshod over the “last men,” as Nietzsche would call them.  Backlash, is natural in human progress and it is up to coaches and scrum masters to address it.

Fear and uncertainty dominate the contemporary office environment.  Lots of factors are to blame for this state of affairs, but the principal factor is the shareholder value postulate of business.  In this postulate, shareholders or investors are the most important constituency in a corporation.  Customers, employees, and communities which also rely on the corporation receive secondary treatment because they are not as important as shareholders.  It is how we have educated a generation of business leaders since the 1970s.

Combine this trend with the deregulatory actions of the conservative movement, and you have a recipe for sterile and exploitive work environments.  It does not matter if you are blue collar, white collar or in service industries you are generating wealth for others with little upside to yourself.   Karl Marx called this the “labor theory of alienation.” It is one of the few things which Marx has written which has held up to scrutiny over the years.

So the agile coach is often in an environment where people are alienated.  People work hard enough not to get fired but not too hard because they will be singled out for extra responsibility with no subsequent increase in pay or authority.  The “company way” keeps a person paid and provides a modicum of security.  It is a miserable and uninspiring way to work.  Thus, the coach or scrum master is fighting on three fronts.  The coach must address the apathy of individual team members.  Next, they are changing the perspective of managers who often benefit from the alienation of the workers they are supposed to serve.  Finally, inertia in the organization acts as an easy alibi to resist organizational change. It is frustrating.  You are hired by organizations to help them change, and they actively oppose the change.

What I have discovered over the last few weeks is organizations want to improve; they do not know how.  Companies need scrum masters and coaches to help them.  They are looking for individuals to offer help rather than inflict it on the organization.  Often a scrum master acts as a therapist or pastor to an organization.  A coach needs to practice non-violent language and help others find solutions rather than dictating those solutions.  It is not easy, but anything worthwhile is going to be difficult.  Backlash is natural and it is up to the agile community to turn it back on itself to effect real change.

Until next time.

Watching the changes roll by

Heraclitus would be pleased

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus has a special place in my heart.  He was one of the first thinkers to observe the importance of change, and he coined a slogan which business people use each day.  Heraclitus said, “The only constant in nature is change.” This maxim in philosophy and business got a bit of a work out this week as the Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org announced two new training programs.  This week, I would like to talk about these new programs.

Scrum.org announced a new class and certification called Professional Scrum with Kanban.  My initial reaction was skepticism.  Kanban is widely discussed among agile practitioners and understanding how to do it properly is part of learning Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise (SAFe).  I was confused.  With this wealth of information, why would anyone want or need a class on Kanban and scrum?  It occurred to me people learn in different ways.  Some individuals can handle self-directed learning on Kanban.  Other people, will benefit from classroom training and the guidance of an experienced trainer.  So, a course on Scrum and Kanban is not so strange or confusing. 

The next big news in the agile world is the scrum alliance announcing the Advanced Certified Scrum Master and the Advanced Certified Product Owner credential.  I was much less skeptical about this news.   I worked as an agile developer for four years before becoming a certified scrum master.  The credential gave me instant credibility with hiring professionals and with executive leadership.  What the training did not provide me were some of the soft skills I would need to be a more successful scrum master.  Abilities like active listening and creating a dialog with stakeholders were skills I would discover by trial and error.  The advanced program from the scrum alliance provides a solid background in the basics and the skills required to spread the use of agile to other parts of the business outside of technology.   As someone who has been a CSP for the last four years, I wish I had this training during the early portion of my career.  Now the scrum alliance is offering it, and it is a positive development for those who know the basics but wish to be more successful.

Any training and development from the agile community is a good thing for the people out in the field.  The sharing of knowledge and information between the different licensing bodies also creates a cross-pollination of ideas.  It prevents the practice of technology and project management from getting stagnant.  I use approaches from SAFe and scaling scrum with scrum side by side. I have to deal with waterfall budget processes and graft them to scrum teams.  Finally, I deal with business partners who think everything I do is magic.  I need all the training I can get to be successful and deal with those challenges.

Heraclitus was a teacher.  This founding father of change spent his time educating others about it.  If agile is to continue to grow and spread; its practitioners need more opportunities to improve their skills and gain knowledge.  It means these new courses are good news about the health of the Agile reformation.

Until next time.

It is worth it!

The work is worth it.

I have been doing plenty of reflection.  I blame the dispiriting winter season in my hometown of Chicago.  The cold winter nights force you to confront your past and ponder your purpose.  My friends and social media contacts are asking me plenty of questions about my weird profession.  These kinds of existential moments make me want to do a little explaining.

I joined the agile reformation in 2009.  I was working as a contractor for a family run medical supply company.  I was thoroughly miserable.  I had no job security and little hope. I spent each day grinding out code for capricious people who treated everyone not family as medieval peasants.   Family disputes would boil over on to the sales floor, and anyone caught in the crossfire could lose their job.  It was such a dispiriting place to work.  I witnessed the ten-year-old grandson of the founder tease a salesperson saying, “Daddy says you are fired.”

In the middle of this night of the soul, a project manager decided the team should try “agile.”  It began with daily stand-ups and doing releases in two-week chunks.  It ended with unemployment.  The project manager left for a better job.  The IT Director realized I had more credentials than he did so I was a threat, and it made me expendable.

Between job searches, I did research and the more I learned about Agile, the more I realized it was a better way to lead software projects.  I also realized that the concepts while simple to explain were hard to implement.  Thanks to the Agile Manifesto and the early proponents of the scrum, there was a way to perform technology work without abusing people and providing better value to the business.  I would spend the next four years as a developer spreading the word about this new approach.

Things finally came to a head when I left my last role as a senior developer and became a scrum master full time.  I was no longer some developer mentoring others.  I was leading other teams and setting an example.  I thought I was ready.  I was wrong.  Over the last five years, I have been tested and challenge in numerous ways.  I have succeeded in public ways and failed in equally public fashion.  I am not the scrum master I was five years ago.  Everything I have learned along the way has made me better.

I keep thinking about a quotation from Dave Burgess I tweeted out last week.

"It is not supposed to be easy- its supposed to be worth it!" Nice wisdom for scrum master from #tlap #agile #leadership

— (((Ed Wisniowski))) (@eeeThree_ed) February 13, 2018

The last nine years of my agile journey have been challenging, but it has been worth it.  I am a better leader.  I am a better developer.  The software is getting shipped on time, and the office is a little less capricious.  I do not have entitled ten-year old’s threatening to fire me, and the business community seems to be catching up to my way of thinking. 

This hard journey is probably worth it, and I am proud to be sharing it with you.

Until next time.

Eat up

I feel like a shark!  "Chomp!"

Social movements and organizational change are difficult to measure, and it is particularly hard to do in the world of business.  The business press concentrates on investing and accounting.  Since the beginning of the agile reformation, those of us involved in the change have openly wondered if we are making an actual difference.  As 2018 begins, it looks like agile is becoming mainstream and successful.

In 2011 a famous editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal, It was titled, “Software is eating the World.”  The principal thesis was for companies to succeed they have to behave more like software companies.  It was a daring argument.   The seven years which followed have vindicated that notion.  Google, Tesla, Amazon and a funny project called Bitcoin are dominating headlines and the business community.

Tesla is still struggling to meet its production commitments and Bitcoin, to me, feels like a blue sky stock but what all of these firms have in common is a willingness to innovate, iterate, and move fast to satisfy customer demand.  Even companies who lost their way are embracing blockchain technologies, cloud computing, and rapid software development. 

It is satisfying to know that my career choices have mirrored changes in the business.  While business is changing business leadership is struggling to keep up.  Organizations charts still matter in many places.  Command and control measures which existed for years are difficult to discard, and inertia prevents most organizational change.

It has created a quandary and spawned an entire industry of coaching and consultants, who are attempting to show others how to do business with the agile paradigm.  What these coaches discover, is a business is a social construct along with a business entity.  The ego of a director may be more important than the needs of the company.  Board members excuse a lousy quarter because they golf with executives.  Whole industries condoned sexual harassment and assault as long as the abusers generated revenue.  

Which is why I find the turnaround at Microsoft so fascinating.  They went from a sales culture under Steve Balmer to an engineering culture under Satya Nadella.  After product failures like Zune, Vista, and Windows Phone, the organization decided to place its future in the hands of a software engineer who felt building better products was the path to commercial success.  It is a gamble which has paid off handsomely.

Microsoft has embraced Agile, and it is paying enormous dividends.  That is why this week an article appeared in Forbes called, “Agile is eating the World.”  The reformation is growing, and the success is getting noticed.  It is a satisfying development to me.  I am no longer a lonely missionary in the wilderness, but a professional at the table is making a difference.  It is nice to see the times change.

Until next time.

Saying good riddance to 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democrats Resurgent?

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

The Battle of Home Assistants.

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

I will own my brand.

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

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

Until next time.

Work should not make you crazy

Being an office worker feels this wrong and it
needs to change or the global economy is in trouble.

I have been a business professional for over twenty years.  I have witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly of what it means to be a professional.  I am well compensated for my work, but like many people today I live paycheck to paycheck.  I have endured three recessions in my lifetime each time suffering a personal of a financial setback.  I am pretty stoic about these experiences, but they continue having a lingering effect on the kind of leadership I practice.  This week I want to talk about an issue which is an unspoken problem in the business community – mental health.

I began thinking about this topic when news came out on Mashable about Madalyn Parker.  She sent an e-mail where she told her staff that she was taking two days off for mental health reasons.  Her letter was then followed up by a letter from the CEO thanking her for taking the time to focus on her health and wished her a swift recovery.  What followed was a flurry of articles and think pieces about mental illness in the work place.  I want to add my two cents to the conversation.

The world of the white collar professional is unforgiving, highly competitive, impersonal and unfair.  The global economy does not care about the individuals who keep it going.  The factory worker manufacturing smart phones in China, the developer working late nights building applications and the young person cultivating social media likes are all part of this ecosystem.  This environment is an ideal breeding ground for mental illness.  With 1 in 5 Americans who have a mental illness, and I consider addiction part of this statistic, there needs to be a discussion about mental health in the work place.

The reason I became an agile practitioner is as a software developer I labored in plenty of situations which were dysfunctional.  I swore there must be a better way if given a chance I would help lead the necessary changes.  My career is guided by that mission.  In that respect, I am similar to the muckrakers and union organizers of the late 19th century.  These people lobbied and organized to end child labor, reduce injuries in the workplace, and enforced fire safety in all factories.  Eventually, the government became involved, and O.S.H.A. was created to ensure the abuses of the past never happen again.

Just like we do not want to work in factories where the likelihood of amputation or death is high we should also demand offices which discourage mental illness.  Here are some of the long term trends I see which are promoting mental illness.

The use of alcohol and recreational drugs as a social lubricant in business. – 

As long as there has been an America, there has been alcohol.  The nation’s drinking problem became so bad that elected officials, wrongly, passed a constitutional amendment to ban the sale of alcohol entirely. When prohibition proved to be a failure, American returned to its drinking ways.  The real spike in alcohol abuse in this nation took place in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” and the television show “Mad Men” chronical these boozy times.

Fifty years later, alcohol is the drug of choice in the media profession.  Client in all industries is being “entertained” with fine wine and cocktails.  Account executives and vendors are exchanging and consuming alcohol, and it is a regular business practice.   Professionals see this as early as college and discover the consumption of alcohol is a way to deal with stress.  Some of these professionals develop addictions problems, and these addiction problems spill over into the business.

Also, the use of cannabis among engineers has increased over the last fifty years as well as abuse of cocaine among executive ranks.  The reliance of both legal and illegal means to alter consciousness exacerbates existing mental health issues and hurts productivity.  The office should not be a gateway to addiction.

Sleep deprivation. –

Tight deadlines, outsourcing and the around the clock nature of the economy means that a professional to conduct their job has an irregular sleep schedule.  I have written about the importance of sleep in the past, and so has my friend Lawrence Gasik.  Research has shown that people who do not get enough sleep exhibit the traits of PTSD or alcohol intoxication.  There are international conference calls to take and offshore teams to consult.  Business leaders still expect meetings in the office take place during daylight hours, so those people working on these bifurcated sleep schedules suffer in silence.  It explains why sleep aids, melatonin, coffee and Five Hour Energy drinks sell so well in the United States.  We are attempting to whipsaw our bodies into sleep and wakefulness to accommodate the demands of the global economy. This type of sleep deprivation also undermines the mental health of employees.

The focus on shareholder values instead of customer value in large companies. –

Richard Eastman of the Kodak Company paid his employees above average rates, provided numerous perks for his employees and provided outstanding service.  He resisted unionization of his office and factory workers but always made sure his pay and benefit packages were always better than the current market.  With rising unionization of the work force, capital balanced the needs of customers, labor, and shareholders.

This trend began to change as future CEO Jack Welch gave a speech about “Shareholder Value,” to The Pierre in New York.  Combined with the Chicago school of Economics, led by Nobel laureate Milton Freedman business leaders began to worry more about share price than other aspects of the firm.  The effects have been remarkable.  Stock prices have increased for many companies, a particular segment of the investment class has gotten obscenely wealthy, and many mergers and acquisitions have happened to create massive economies of scale.  Shareholder value also lead to the Financial Crisis of 2008 popularized in “The Big Short,” the rise and fall of Enron, the skullduggery of RJR Nabisco and finally the destruction numerous corporate towns in middle America and popularized by the book “Glass House.”

There is plenty of pushback in the academic community against the shareholder value movement, but the business sector has not embraced it and still do not see employees as partners in success.

The inability for business to pay people their real labor value. –

Since the Presidency of George W. Bush and the bursting of the dot.com bubble, companies have gotten very good at creating what my friend Bob Karzeniowski calls the musical chairs economy.  Using slow growth as an excuses firms are demanding more experience from applicants and cutting back training opportunities.  People cannot get on the career ladder, and those that do often have limited chances for advancement.  I also should point out that recruiters and hiring managers openly discriminate against the unemployed people and those who are laid off.

The Great Recession of 2008 – 2009, created a glut of workers.  It has taken nine years, but now that the job market has tightened, business people have lost the “muscle memory,” to increase labor participation to meet the market demand.  We now have created perverse incentives such as airlines having to cancel flights because there are not enough pilots.  Low wages, the musical chairs job market, and the mental scars of the great recession create insecurity.  This instability leads to the undermining of self-esteem and mental illness issues.

The promotions of people with psychopathic tendencies into executive leadership roles.  –

Over the last 40 years, we have been promoting the wrong people into business leadership roles.  Many of these people support the short sided notion of increasing shareholder value.  Making matters worse is some of them are psychopathic who find emotional fulfillment by playing people off each other.  Instead of nurturing others and guiding the business, these leaders create a toxic stew of dysfunction.

It is even more pernicious because these leaders become celebrities in the corporate world and media.  Finally, psychopaths are emotional chameleons kissing up and kicking down to advance their careers.  These emotional vampires undermine morale, and the mind games threaten mental health.

Finally, social stigma against people with mental illness means people who should get help do not. –

Numerous studies have shown the stigma of mental illness is the principle reason people do not get treatment.  This stigma is amplified in the business world where mental toughness and grit are highly prized; to admit weakness is to accept failure.  Venture capitalists are reluctant to give money to people who might be risky.  Someone with bipolar disorder or narcissistic rage is risky to lead a project.  The stigma of mental illness is equal to risk, so business people shun it.

I find it ironic business people does not treat individuals with diabetes or high blood pressure in a similar fashion.  Mental illness if managed correctly, resembles those chronic diseases.  So the stigma of mental illness and its effects on a career prevent people from getting help when they need it.

Taken together, I think these six factors in the modern workplace make it fertile soil to nature mental illness.  Most business people pay lip service to their employee’s mental health because they are trying to keep the business running, meet payroll, and keep investors happy.  It is an ugly spiral; if we want productivity and GDP numbers to improve the business community will have to make some significant reforms.

Just as a factory with fewer fatal accidents is more productive one with deadly accidents; then the contemporary office with fewer mental health problems is more competitive than an office filled with dysfunctional people.  What we currently have is not sustainable, it is better to reform now than wait and see what happens next.

Until next time.

"Never Events" in Software Development

Without "Never Events"
a doctor is nothing more than a glorified butcher

There is a phrase in the medical profession known as a “never event.”  It is something that should never happen in a hospital or another medical setting.  People have been practicing medicine since Neolithic times.  We have only been writing software for about seventy years.  I think we can learn a few things from the field of medicine and I would like to discuss it on this week’s blog.

The term “never event” came from a medical paper from the National Quality Forum.  These are mistakes which should never happen in any medical setting.  Some examples of these never events are, people receiving the wrong type of blood during a transfusion, surgeons amputating the wrong limb, and discharging an infant to the wrong set of parents.  If something like this happens, the doctor is subject to profound liability, and a patient could die.  It is why they are called “never events.”

I thought about this, and I felt that those of us in the software business should have a series of “never events” for our profession.  If we are going to improve in the agile community, we need to have a set of standards and those standards should include things which should never happen.

Here is my list of never events for software development –

• Code which exists in production should never reside on individual’s computer; it should all reside in source control.
• The database administrator should never ignore system backups of data; data should be backed up regularly and before scripts are applied to the system.
• All code which performs business logic should have unit tests; this way you will understand where the system has changed and what the possible changes are.
• Network servers should receive regular patches and security upgrades; this will discourage hackers and avoid technical debt.
• A developer should never work longer than 10 hours; fatigue causes mistakes.
• Before checking in the code, it should be code reviewed by another developer; an extra set of eyes on the code prevents errors and helps to learn.

Those are my starting points for “never events” in software.  Look forward to what each of you thinks should be included on this list.

Until next time.

Why good developers put up with bad workplaces.

Working in technology should
 not feel like being in a sweatshop.

I touched a nerve with my blog last week and it kicked off plenty of debate.  What struck me was the insight from Steve Seather who asked, “…why would anyone work in such a wrong place?”  This week why good people put up with bad workplaces.  I have been a contractor and full-time employee in the technology business for almost twenty years.  I have a lot of experience in bad workplaces.  I will also cop to the fact that I was a poor software developer for the first ten years of that career.

According to the United States Census website, approximately 7.3 Billion people live on the earth.  According to the Verge website of that roughly 18.5 million people know how to write and maintain software.  If you do the math, only .05% of individuals on the planet know how to keep the modern global economy moving.  In short, there is too much work chasing too few people able to do the job.

Since software can be written quickly in a café in Nigeria or a pub in Northern Ireland, the laws of supply and demand get twisted into a pretzel.  Domestic developers are pitted against offshore teams to keep wages low but because the skills are still rare wares are relatively high compared to other professionals.  Something has to give, so IT professionals become swamped with work.

IT professionals commonly work long hours and fight unrealistic deadlines because of this labor shortage. Software professionals become contingent workers because much of their work is project based.  They are hired and fired at will and often treated with contempt because they are often “the geeks” they have to pay.  So many people in the profession do receive excellent compensation, but they have zero security or respect.  Like rock musicians, they are only getting paid when they are working.  Unlike rock musicians, we rarely have adoring fans.

Making matters worse is the H1-B visa.  The United States immigration service provides this service.  In short, if you are a foreign national and work in the United States you need an H1-B visa.  If you lose your job you have 30 days to find a new one; otherwise, you are deported. Over my career, I attended many staff meetings where everyone was afraid to talk because if they offended the Vice President, they would be rolled off the project and deported back to the country of origin and this is why I compare the H1-B visa to indentured servitude.

Finally, many managers who lead IT teams have no understanding of the messy nature of building software and treat it like the manufacturing of machine tools.  They use project management and manufacturing techniques to lead IT professions which create numerous situations of labor alienation and crushes productivity.  IT professionals like any other employee have to put food on the table.  IT professionals put up with the lack of respect, overwork, poor security, and incompetent leadership for one reason – the paycheck.

It should not have to be this way.  The Agile reformation started because many smart people felt there was a better way.  People could do work more productively and more sustainably.  It is why I am and agilest.  It is also why I will not put up with ever working in a lousy environment again.  I am getting to old for that kind of grief.

Until next time.

Looking back and forward - 2017

After 2016, I think we
all need a tall glass of wine

Technology is a dynamic industry.  One moment you can be on top of the world and the next you are like Nokia unable to adapt to market conditions.  This week I am going to take a look at some of my predictions from last year and see how accurate I was and look ahead to 2017.

Looking back, it is clear that when I paid attention to technology and trends in the industry, my predictions were accurate.  Apple computer did have a rough year with tax issues from the European Union and sales which dipped for the first time in years.  Microsoft is growing its business with the Azure cloud services and a full embrace of Linux.  It also has surprising sales of its Surface Pro 4.  They are still going to founder in the phone market, but they are ruling in the desktop and enterprise realm.  My prediction that the Scrum Alliance was going to have some growing pains came to fruition.

When I looked at politics in 2016, I was wrong.  I predicted that election season would be a draw with the Democrats retaining the Presidency while the Republicans would keep the House of Representatives and lose the Senate.  Instead, Democrats made slight gains in the House and Senate while losing the White House by the statistical margin of error in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  President Trump's mandate is about 100,000 votes in three states which are .08% of the total votes cast.  Please read this great article with lots of wonky footnotes on how this happened from Vox.  Republicans have complete control of all three branches of government since 1929 in spite of their razor-thin margins of victory.

As a blogger and pundit, I need to take responsibility for when my predictions are correct and when I get them wrong.  I also should learn from my mistakes and extrapolate what I need to do to make better predictions.  Here is what I expect in the coming year.

Big Fight over Net Neutrality.  

There are already rumblings in the new Trump administration that net-neutrality is going to open to discussion.  Changing the current net-neutrality rules will be a gold mine for cellular phone providers and cable companies; it will be bad for everyone else. The internet rose up in rebellion and forced members of Congress to drop support for a law which would have made pay to play access to the web law of the land.  This time around the fight is not going to be in Congress but in the FCC and it is going to be harder because political appointees are going to be much less susceptible to public pressure.

Deregulation a-go-go

Many Republicans have a love affair with Ayn Rand.  Now that Republicans control all three branches of government prepare for a full wave of deregulation in technology and business.  Overtime rules will be cut back.  Financial regulations will be revoked, and a worker in this economy is going to have a more difficult time.

Those are the only two big predictions I have for the new year.  The interesting thing about working in the technology world is that change is a big constant.  If you are not paying attention, then you are bound to be surprised by something.  I look forward to being along with you for the ride because 2017 is going to be a challenging year.

Until next time.

Keeping it simple.

The light switch should be our inspiration

One of the most important principles in Agile is simplicity.  I work with plenty of clever people which means we come up with plenty of complicated ways of doing things.  True innovation and progress happens when we find simple ways of doing complicated things.  This week we are covering the virtues of simplicity.

When we talk about simplicity, we are not talking about something which is simple.  We are talking about something which is simple to use, simple to work with and simple to understand.  The example I like to use most, is the electrical power grid.  When we need to put a light in a room we plug in a lamp and turn on the switch.  The technology and work that goes into getting electricity to that lamp is very complex to but to us it is simple.

Technology like smart phones, web sites and accounting software should be like the electrical power grid.  Sadly, it is not.  Microsoft technologies are great for PC’s but in order to write web applications for a phone you need Xamarin or understand HTML5 to write Windows 10 applications.  Those applications do not work on Android and iOS devices.  This is just a sample of some of the technologies which do not play nice with each other for either market or technical reasons.

The blame for this trend is very smart people who, instead of working together to create simple and elegant solutions, have split into warring tribes.  It would take an entire book to discuss the history of why this has happened.  So to the average consumer we have a layer of complexity to everything we do and it needs to stop.  Even Apple has made music players a colossal mess making it impossible for people to manage the thousands of songs in their music libraries.

I do not have any magic bullets to fix this but is up to everyone in the agile community to try and reduce this kind of complexity.  It will not be easy but neither was setting up the national power grid.
Until next time.

Fighting the F.U.D. as a Scrum Master

Fight the F.U.D.

The world of technology is awash in acronyms.  These acronyms rise and fall with much of fashion in the technology world.  A few of them have lingered over the years and represent a common knowledge among technology people.  This week I want to talk about F.U.D. and how you can fight it.

According to the urban dictionary, the term F.U.D. is an acronym for fear, uncertainty and doubt. The term was born during the start of the open source movement as companies like Microsoft and Cisco used disinformation to try and undermine the credibility of open source advocates.  The idea was that if they could create fear of the new movement, uncertainty of their goals and doubt about if they could actually solve business problems then they could maintain dominant market share.

Since these early open source days, Microsoft has dropped the F.U.D. campaign and has eagerly embraced open source and cloud computing with its Microsoft Azure tools.  It is positive development and has been a money making strategy for the company.

As a scrum master you are going to deal with F.U.D. every day.  Organizations, are riddled with fear of changing how they do business.  Any uncertainty is intolerable to executives and business leaders.  Finally, doubt is going to be used at every turn to try an undermine efforts for change.  To address fear, start small with an individual or team and show how the process works.  A person scared of heights will jump on a zip line if you can prove that they will not fall off the line or injure themselves.  Uncertainty is easily dispelled with hard data and evidence that the new ideas are working and improving performance.  Doubt, is eliminated by your personal conviction as a scrum master and by more real world evidence.

I am not saying there is a magic bullet to deal with F.U.D. but as a scrum master you need to be aware of it.  Otherwise, any effort you make to try and improve the organization is going to be fruitless.

Until next time.

E-mail - the Enemy of a Scrum Master

E-mail can be the enemy

One of the biggest challenges for a scrum master is communications.  The scrum master is sending e-mails, attending conference calls, and walking around attempting to understand how the sprint is going and what people are saying about it.  It is not an easy job.  It requires great listening skills and the ability to communicate vital information in just about every format a modern business can throw at you.  This week I wanted to discuss e-mail because this old standby of the office is the least effective of all the tools at your disposal.

Many argue that the modern internet was born when the first e-mail was sent in 1972.  In the forty plus years since, I have seen how the technology has evolved from something helpful to the bane of a business person’s existence.  Since e-mails had a recipient and the ability to carbon copy people, the e-mail quickly became a way to disseminate information in a large organization.  Sadly, many e-mails resembled the memos which were distributed before the advent of e-mail.

E-mail as we know it today really didn’t begin until the release of two programs which changed business irrevocably.  Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook became the do dominant players in the e-mail game.  Notes not only featured e-mail but primitive forms which could be routed through the organization like paper forms.  Workflow as we know it was born.  Outlook was different, it was a stand-alone tool to send e-mail.  You could attach files to it and forward messages in order to keep people informed.  It was supposed to save paper and speed up collaboration.  What it did was create a vortex of time sucking busy work.  

E-mail communications quickly mirrored the dysfunctions of their parent organizations.  Organizations which were hierarchical demanded reports be forwarded up the chain of command.  This meant that the higher up in the organization you went the more e-mail you received from subordinates.  Soon upper and middle managers were swamped with e-mail.  Decisions were not faster, they took more time as decision makers waded through increasing volumes of e-mail.  E-mail also echoed the lack of trust in organizations as people sent out e-mails to inform others if something was going to go wrong and then use the mail not being read in a timely manner as an alibi.

Soon managers were having conversations similar to this in their offices,

“That sale should not have gone through.  The margin is not high enough and I have to do a major revamp of the vendor portal to make that happen,”

“I sent you an e-mail about it.  I did not hear from you so I decided to go ahead.”

…and so on.

Sometimes as a scrum master I have sent e-mail messages to senior leadership and I have gotten one word responses or the content of the mail has been misunderstood so badly that I have had to print them out hang them on the white board in my bosses office and ask what part of my writing was unclear.

E-mail does have a written record of what was said but if there is too much of it, the record is lost in the constant noise of information modern business people receive.  So e-mail is a poor tool in conveying information to others.  This is why one of the principles behind the agile manifesto is “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”  Instead of sending an e-mail get up from your desk and talk to the people who make decisions.  Instead of sending an e-mail, pick up the phone and make a call.  Instead of sending an e-mail, start a video chat with the person.

I understand that executives have gotten very good at learning how to be unavailable to the “peasant masses” that work for them but as a scrum master we have to be the ones to convey information both positive and negative.  Otherwise, team success will continue to get lost in a flood of e-mail.

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.

My predictions for 2016

Predictions for the new year
are best enjoyed with a glass of wine.

The holidays have ended and now it is time to get back to business in the New Year.  Last week, I discussed how I did with my predictions in 2015.  This week I would like to put myself out there for my predictions for 2016.

Apple stumbles – 

Apple has had a string of hits with consumer technology over the last fifteen years.  From the iPod to the current smart watch trend, Apple has been making lots of money and looking like harbinger of future tech.  I think they are due for an embarrassing product release or major technical failure on par with its spat with Google Maps.  I say this because many of the technical press are noticing changes in the company’s commitment to innovation.  Instead of trying to wow customers, it looks like they are settling on being just good enough.  This is a recipe for failure and once they have a public and humiliating failure, I get the feeling the gang from Cupertino are not going to let it happen again.

Microsoft Stands tall –

The release of Windows 10 has been a very pleasant surprise with a clean interface which is smart enough to know the difference between tablet, laptop, and desktop computing.  It plays nice with most of my peripherals and I look forward to its expanding application environment.  I think that the Surface Pro 4 is a superior computer to anything from Apple.  It is also encouraging to see how Microsoft has embraced the software craftsmanship movement with Moq testing, SOLID principles and open source development with the release of Visual Studio 2015.  I think that 2016 is going to be a great year for the gang at Redmond.

Disruption in the Scrum Alliance –

The Scrum Alliance is the umbrella organization for professional certification with in the agile community.  It has been going through several changes on the board of directors and as I have attempted to earn certification, I have received a front row seat for many of the disputes and family squabbles that have gone on in the organization.

I believe that these are the growing pains of an organization which is trying to provide companies with a competent and experienced work force of professionals who are want to spread the word about Agile and Scrum.  It is not pretty but neither was the protestant reformation and western civilization would not be what it is today without it.  Since business is relying on creative workers more, they are going to need to embrace Agile and Scrum in order to make those creative workers more successful.  The Scrum Alliance is leading that change for the better but they are also trying to practice what they preach.  Change and disruption are not easy and I think that Scrum Alliance will get through it.

Politics and Tech –

Finally, I do not like to get political on my blog but with 2016 being an election year I will make an exception.  I think that Carly Fiorina will not become the republican nominee for president and even if she does, I will do everything in my power to make sure she does not win the general election.  I despise her with the same intensity that Hunter S. Thompson hated Richard Nixon.  She is the representation of everything I have spent my entire career working against.  What she did to Hewlett-Packard when she was CEO was unforgivable and should be an object lesson of what NOT to do in executive leadership.

The Congress will continue to be Republican and the White House will remain Democratic but only barely after a long, angry, and hysterical election season.  I suspect the reason why is that technology used by both sides to solidify the structural advantages each party has.

Those are my predictions.  What are yours?  I would love to know what you think.

Until next time.

How Did We Do in 2015?

Looking back at 2015, I will drink to that.

The end of the year is a special time.  For me, it is an excuse to dress up in formal ware, have a good meal, and stay at a hotel where my only risk is trying to find my room key.  It is also a time to make a few predictions and look back at the previous year.  This week I wanted look at some of my past predictions and see how accurate I was.

Last year, I made three major predictions. The first was that competition will do what it is supposed to do in 2015.  In the world of wireless phone service, this seems to be working as a full scale price war has broken out between Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile.  Unfortunately, this is not the case regarding net neutrality as major cable operators including Comcast were trying to create pay for faster service paths.  I am also concerned about plans which do not use data for preferred streaming services.  It also looks like oil prices are also falling because American production capacity is matching that of the OPEC nations.  Competition works if we let it and 2015 validated this.

My next prediction was that the internet of things would pivot.  To many people outside the tech world, the only kind of internet of things they see are home thermostats and the smart televisions that are being marketed.  I think that we are a long way away from smart refrigerators which will reorder food or water heaters which will conserve energy by burning gas when it is cheaper.  Still smart watch use continues to grow and I helped this trend by getting my father a smart watch for Christmas.  After some hiccups setting up the watch, things are going well.  If my seventy something father can use a smart watch, then the future of wearable technology might have a chance.  As for the rest of the internet of things, I think we are going to have to wait a while longer.

My final prediction in 2015 was that agile was going to grow.  I was correct in that prediction but with that increased growth came backlash.  Corporations are learning that in order to be agile they will have to change more than how software is written.  Financing of projects and the relationship between business people and technology professionals will have to change.  This type of change has been especially hard for more conservative organizations who have been doing things a particular way for so long they see no reason to change.

In addition to push back from the CFO and the finance department, developers are also revolting.  Things like SOILD development and test driven development are skills which challenge many developers who began as hobbyists and then entered the field.  The discipline of scrum also has created push back because for years many developers have been able to hide in plain site without having to create shippable product.  That has changed and now it is easy to spot poor quality work and sandbagging among the development staff.  Software engineering is starting to resemble actual engineering and it is a positive trend.  For those unwilling to adapt they are pushing back.

So those were my predictions for 2015, next week I will make some predictions for 2016.  I look forward to seeing you then.

Until next time.