Turning the Ship Around Requires Trust

Software development is a grown-up activity. It requires intelligence, focus, and the ability to overcome massive frustration. Despite the hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence, only humans can write scalable software that delivers real-world value. It is why developers, in their idle moments, often lapse into childhood playfulness. The focus and mental energy it takes to write software requires a release, manifested in Nerf gun fights or an activity that business people might consider childish. It creates the illusion that knowledge workers are overgrown children. In truth, knowledge workers are the most adult people in the organization, and it is time for business leaders to treat the professionals who generate profit like adults. 

We can see this behavior within the business community as CEOs demand that workers return to the office. Most of the requests are tone-deaf and focused more on power than the benefit to the business. I have written about this tug-of-war between the workers who produce the wealth and those who oversee them. I will side with the workers in this case because the COVID-19 pandemic proved that remote work is not only possible but profitable. 

Old habits die hard in the business world, and micro-management of employees is the hardest to extinguish. For decades, businesses trained managers to ensure people followed policies and procedures. To ensure employees were productive throughout the day, managers scrutinized them to ensure they weren't wasting company time in a factory or traditional office. Instead of fostering teamwork or innovation, middle managers enforced compliance. It worked briefly but was deficient as the global economy became more competitive. Customers demanded value and innovation, so mindlessly stamping out parts or filling out forms would no longer work. As software and technology began to eat the world, it was evident that some other approach was necessary.

My mission throughout my career has been to ensure that work delivers value to customers and employees. This week Fortune magazine pointed out that old-fashioned management styles hurt productivity and treat workers like children. My experience in the business world confirms this theory. The new approach was the birth of lean manufacturing, Agile, Kanban, and digital transformation. 

Treating employees like children boils down to a lack of trust. Managers do not trust the people doing the work correctly, and employees often feel they cannot trust their leadership to treat them respectfully. It is in this situation of mutual distrust where many of us work. We can do better. 

I am a big fan of L. David Marquet's book "Turn the Ship Around." In the book, he talks about his experience as a United States nuclear submarine captain. When he joined the USS Santa Fe was the place where sailors had their careers go to die. Morale was low, the Navy rated the submarine at the bottom of the fleet, and senior enlisted people were retiring or quitting at an alarming rate. Over a year, Marquet helped transform the crew from people afraid to make mistakes to leaders who chased excellence. It wasn't an easy journey, and it had plenty of false starts, but the Santa Fe began practicing something called "intention-based leadership," and I am a convert. 

With the help of senior enlisted people and buy-in from the crew, Marquet transformed a low-performing submarine into an example of the Pacific fleet by treating its sailors with respect and providing them with a sense of pride and responsibility for their work. Since a nuclear submarine costs an average of two billion dollars and has the firepower to extinguish an entire civilization, it is an impressive accomplishment. 

Changing a global company is a difficult task, but if Marquet can do it on a nuclear submarine, then as  Agile coaches or scrum masters, we can lead change in our organizations. The first step is changing the behavior of managers who would instead treat the people doing the work like children instead of the grown professionals they are.

It is a small ask, but the road to psychological safety and intentional leadership begins with one step. 

Until next time. 

Going with the Flow of SAFe 6.0

Working as a technology professional is a mixed bag. Some days you feel like the most competent person in the world. Others, you are brutally humbled in ways that threaten to question your self-worth. The key to survival in this industry is ensuring the highs are not too disorienting and the lows do not undermine your self-worth. Since it is the Christian season of Easter in the United States, I had time to concentrate on professional development. With time to study and prepare, I upgraded my SAFe credentials to 6.0. I was also fortunate to earn my Leading SAFe certification. I skeptically endorsed SAFe 6.0 in a previous blog, and something has occurred to me now that I have upgraded. SAFe 6.0 is all about flow, and we need to discuss it. 

I posted a rather jokey video online about SAFe 6.0. The good folks at Scaled Agile revamped many of their training materials and revised a SAFe principle to emphasize the importance of flow. The critical takeaway from the upgrade is the concentration on improving how work flows through the organization. So what is flow? According to this great article from the BBC, flow is a unique state of concentration where we can focus, time distorts passing quickly, and you feel part of something bigger than yourself. When I program or write and am in a flow state, I liken it to my creator placing their hand on my shoulder and nudging me to do better work. I get lost in the act of building something new and different. It is an intoxicating feeling. While in a flow state, I can write hundreds of words in one sitting. Otherwise, putting together a well-formed paragraph is a significant accomplishment.

Fortunately, the folks at scaled agile have provided some good resources for measuring and managing flow. These practices seem commonsensical to people working in Agile for a while, but it is still nice of them to spell it out clearly and concisely. I am particularly impressed with the metrics section of SAFe when they talk about flow. I also appreciate that the folks at Scaled Agile point out that metrics measure progress instead of acting as guidelines or quotas. Goodhart's law looms large over SAFe 6.0, and it is encouraging to see other agile professionals embrace that understanding. 

Is SAFe 6.0 perfect? No, but it is improved, and that is enough. It isn't straightforward, and the 5.1 and 6.0 materials talk about achieving perfection in the organization. No organization is going to be perfect. We should strive for excellence in word and deed rather than perfection because the standards of excellence will continually improve, but perfection is a mythical and unattainable state. It is easier to be in a flow state when striving for excellence rather than attempting perfection.

So SAFe 6.0 is about flow and achieving it as a leader. It's an excellent addition to the agile canon and a helpful concept to understand when helping organizations achieve excellence. So go with the flow and SAFe 6.0.

Until next time. 

 

Agile Provides both Cash and Control

The business world is going through some strange times. First, we are experiencing full employment in this economy for the first time since the 1960s. Meanwhile, inflation is the highest it has been since the Regan administration. These two factors combined make business people nervous and shareholders restless. Even bankers struggle to understand how to be profitable in an environment of full employment and high-interest rates.

Furthermore, this environment of uncertainty is being made worse by layoffs in the technology industry and the media exposure of advances in Artificial Intelligence. What is a professional to do in this chaos? It is necessary to discuss it. 

The last time the economy was such a tangled mess was during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Banks loaned money to people who had no intention of repaying them. Using sophisticated investment tools like credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations concealed recklessness like this. Everything was going well until people began to default on home loans, and the entire house of cards fell, triggering the Great Recession, which would linger in the economy for over eight years. 

During the panic and with the credit markets beginning to petrify, I read a book by William H. Janeway entitled “Capitalism in the Innovation Economy.” Janeway points out that during times of economic stress, venture capitalists demand two things: cash and control. When markets go sideways, shareholders want to hoard cash to lock in profits and avoid losses. For the business, the money supply from investors will slow down. For the investor, control means ensuring the business generates the profits necessary to justify the initial investment of money. Investors will allow a company to operate with little interference when things are going well. All is well as the share price increases or the dividend checks keep coming. When situations change, investors will micro-manage the money flow through the business. Executives will get fired, projects will get canceled, and ordinary workers might face layoffs. 

With interest rates increasing and tight labor markets, it is no surprise that investors want more cash and control of the businesses they are financing. The good news is that agile gives you the tools to provide the money and power that investors demand. It begs the question of what an agile professional should do when this situation arises at your office. 

First, the agile process allows for rapid iterations and inspection cycles. It is what people who desire control want. Every two or three weeks, you can show venture capitalists and investors what their hard-earned money is purchasing. If changes or corrections are necessary, the agile team can pivot to respond to those changes. It also allows people seeking control to have intimate knowledge of how the business is operating. At first blush, it looks like micromanagement, but it is close collaboration with the customers who are paying the bills for the organization. 

Next, investors and venture capitalists demand cash during uncertain times. As a professional, you must prove value for each technology decision and show how money flows into the organization from the first mouse click until the customer provides a credit card. Show skeptical investors how quickly a customer pays their invoices. Another good metric is showing how revenue improves with each technological improvement. Net Present Value is one of the most fundamental calculations an investor can make. So, calculate the figure and show the investors that the people and technology will pay for themselves quickly. The approach will calm the nerves of jittery investors. 

In these strange times for business, each professional plays an essential role in building wealth. So agile development and management are uniquely designed to provide cash and control to nervous investors. If we collaborate closely with shareholders and investors using agile methods, we will survive these strange days more robust and innovative. 

Until next time. 

My Skeptical Endorsement of SAFe 6.0

The philosopher Heraclitus said you could never enter the same river twice. He observed that change is so prevalent in the world that even though we are crossing the same river, its properties are consistently changing, so it is never the same each time we cross it. The same could be true about the technology business and agile. The last three years have been a whirlwind of change. Many of us in the industry are grappling with these turbulent gusts and making sure our systems continue functioning regardless of which way the wind blows. The Scaled Agile network announced changes on March 14th to its certification process and frameworks. I sat through the demonstrations so that you do not have to, which is the topic this week on the blog. 

The big news was the announcement of SAFe 6.0 from the scaled agile network. In a YouTube video announcement, the Scaled Agile network talked about the changes and how they would make SAFe better adapt to the business world and exploit technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Computing. Color me skeptical because these changes make sense but appear to be additional complexity to a system difficult to implement and achieve buy-in from technology professionals. I am more credible with technology workers when I  talk about agile in SAFe environments rather than the particular teachings of SAFe. 

What was also grating was the nature of the presentation about the new release. Instead of rolling out to an audience of supporters or press the way that Microsoft or Apple does with its products, Scaled Agile produced a perky infomercial with the glossy sheen of an infomercial promoting nutritional supplements or pressure washers. Was the leadership of Scaled Agile afraid of being heckled by its practitioners? What were they afraid of? I am not sure, but now I want to attend the Scaled Agile summit to get a less party-line response to these new improvements to SAFe. 

According to Dean Leffingwell, one of Scaled Agile's founders, "The future deserves a better SAFe." I agree, and some of the improvements do look encouraging. First, there is an emphasis on getting business people to adapt to the needs of agility. Those in the trenches of software development have said this for years, but it is nice to see the acknowledgment. Next, the belief that a business should be a continuous learning culture is now a core value in 6.0. Business leaders will resist being graded like technology professionals, making implementation difficult. Technology people build things that work. Managers and Executives are judged by how likable and persuasive they are in the organization. As a result, business people are good at reducing costs and creating paradoxes, such as the two olive paradox, but could be better at providing customer value. The value delivery is much more complex and nuanced than reviewing an excel spreadsheet. Finally, Scaled Agile is putting together standards for objectives and key results for competency, flow, and business outcomes. The benefit of this initiative is that I can measure something instead of relying on hearsay to effect change.

I will upgrade my credentials to the new standard and adapt to a changing situation. It is easy to look at scaled Agile as the consulting version of a multi-level marketing scheme, but I will give the organization the benefit of the doubt. They still support SAFe 5.1, and their efforts to better train its members are reasonable faith efforts. SAFe does need to change, but it could have been a minor improvement instead of a splashy overhaul. It is the only agile thing to do. 

Until next time. 

It Is Never a Ten Minute Fix

Being a technology professional is filled with ups and downs. It is a well-paid profession, but it comes with plenty of trade-offs. I can cite many examples. I remember getting a tech-support call when celebrating my anniversary dinner with my ex-spouse. One time, I was referred to as the "nerd boy" in the office by the Vice President of marketing. My company fired me a week before Christmas because I made a mistake after working sixteen hours the night before to fix a problem with the credit card billing system. The compensation is excellent, but the job security is harsh, considering that business people think what we do is easy. It explains why software professionals are cranky because each change could introduce a catastrophic failure that can cost people their careers. To save a few hair follicles for business and technology professionals, I am talking about why a quick change is anything but fast. 

I cannot speak for others, but my training in agile has taught me that I should be responsive to change as a technology professional. Plans and the business world transform with frighting regularity, so it makes sense that an intelligent business professional can pivot from their current situation to a different one. What drives technology professionals crazy are what we call ego-ware requests. An ego-ware request is a change made to a system that delivers questionable value but satisfies the ego of the person making the request. For example, a UX designer demanded a text box on a mobile web page move a tenth of a pixel because it created more harmony on the page. Such a minor change took three developers at a rate of $75 an hour three weeks to figure out, which cost the business $18,000. The money did not have any impact on the revenue of the firm. It only achieved one thing: the designer's ego gratification. The now infamous Superbowl meltdown of Elon Musk is also a classic example of ego-ware taken to the extreme. 

Besides the ego-ware request, you often get a "quick change" from colleagues who mean well but do not understand the ramifications of that request on the overall systems. I remember someone asking me to add a field to an HTML web form and make it optional so the call center could use it for notes. The call center supervisor said, "Come on, Ed, it should only take ten minutes." I firmly believe that statement is a sign pointing toward hell. 

Long story short, I made the change. I did some testing and then deployed it to UAT. I was a hero in the afternoon. Three weeks later, I was fired because the change created production problems, preventing customers from making payments. The extra field broke the payment API, and customers were ticked off. The development manager looks at source control and the last production push with my name on it. My boss told me to pack my desk and go home. Stories like this are familiar in the technology business, and it is why developers do not like to make arbitrary changes. 

What looks like a ten-minute fix to the business is a series of events requiring time and attention to detail. The actual code change will take ten minutes. Updating all the unit tests for the application might take four hours. Quality assurance can finish testing in a day if they are not busy. After testing, it will be deployed to a UAT environment so the business can test deployment to production. If anything goes wrong, the entire process starts over again. A ten-minute fix is a whole week's worth of work. It is another reason software engineers get cranky because the change may not be significant, but the implications on the system are. 

To recap, software engineers, are grumpy about system changes because it could first put their careers at risk if something goes wrong. Murphy's Law impacts technology more than any other part of the business, so the risk is higher than most professionals will accept. Second, to avoid those risks, the organization creates test-driven development, quality assurance people, and stage gates to software release. The deliberate friction between the idea and the actual costs, time, money, and the frayed nerves of the IT staff means that if you change a system, you better have a damn good reason. 

Software is one of the few human professions that can not be automated. So the next time you ask a technology person to make a minor change and they tell you to jump into the lake, the software engineer is not being insubordinate; they are responding rationally to something which might threaten their career. It takes real people time to make each technology dream a reality. 

Until next time. 

Mental Heath is a Management Responsibility.

Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor, says in her book that management requires emotional labor. It is just part of the job. When you work as an agile coach, scrum master, or product owner, you spend plenty of time guiding others to accomplish complex goals. It requires listening and helping people navigate emotions and thorny problems. I wish it were easy, but it involves self-knowledge and awareness that I have only developed over the last ten years. Today, we are facing a crisis in the workplace. Mental health issues are becoming more visible in the workplace, and it is up to us as leaders to mitigate the damage. 

Chicago radio station WBBM reported that the newest cohort of workers, Gen Z, is facing problems in the workforce. According to the Mary Cristie Institute, more than half of young professionals require emotional or mental health support. Furthermore, a whopping 53% experience burnout once a week. Beginning your professional career is always stressful, but these survey results are inexcusable. It also reminds me of my struggles in the job market thirty years ago. Entry-level work is not glamorous and often resembles ugly hazing. The low pay and the uncertain career advancement in this portion of the job sector are making matters worse. You grind at a job in the hopes of financial security and satisfaction, and these things are elusive in the entry-level slice of the economy. 

A newly minted college graduate has something that most organization employees lack – enthusiasm. Within a year or two, we crush that enthusiasm out of those people because we partner these employees with poor managers who make a bad situation worse. Forbes magazine and the Harvard Business Review point out that 70% of employees want managers to support staff's mental health better. 

First, employees want to feel like they are part of a team and making a difference in the organization. Next, they want to spend time with their families and friends. Work and business are commercial enterprises, not families, because I have never met a professional laid off from their family. Work allows us to support our families, and we would like to enjoy time with them. So for the staff's mental health, let them take time off to be with the people they love. Please do not make them choose between a client presentation or attending a music recital. Finally, workloads need to be better managed so that people do not feel like the weight of work is crushing them. Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda said, "Happy cows make more milk." Ensuring the staff is respected and mentally healthy will do wonders for the bottom line. 

I can already see a few of my colleagues cynically criticizing mental health in the office. They might argue that new employees lack the mental toughness of previous generations. That argument is hogwash. If anything, this latest generation of employees is more robust. Generation Z has more pressure on them than previous generations, including wages that cannot pay for basic living expenses, large amounts of student debt, and a business environment that treats them like red solo cubs. Reducing the tensions among these people will create benefits that will be unexpected. 

Mental health feels like a touch-feely issue that does not impact the bottom line. Mental heal has everything to do with the bottom line because if your staff is sick or burnt out, your customers will know it. Do not be the company people leave because you don't care for the people who support customers. As a manager, we need to do emotional labor to help our employees succeed, and paying attention to mental health is just another part of the job. 

Until next time. 

When the Going Gets Weird

 One of my favorite literary lines comes from gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. He observed, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" The last three years qualify as weird. COVID-19, insurrections, and an economy behaving like a character from the television series Fleebag qualify as strange from my perspective. As a scrum master and agile coach, how do you deal with all the weird things in the economy and business world? Today, we are going to discuss it. 

CNBC points out COVID-19 created a 'legacy of weirdness' in the economy. The understatement is breathtaking. We have survived a global pandemic and, in the aftermath, had to grapple with fragile supply chains, market concentration, and labor shortages, which generated inflation. The fight to curb inflation forced central banks to raise interest rates, and the increasing rates kicked off a wave of layoffs at large technology firms. It is a strange chain of causes and effects that have impacted everyone in technology. 

I have pointed out that many tech layoffs were executives' fault for not managing their workforce correctly. Those same executives made bad bets which have not paid off, so the technology marketplace is shedding jobs while remaining immensely profitable. The survivors of this process have a hard choice: how do they carry on in a labor environment they do not recognize? 

I keep returning to the agile manifesto for inspiration—first, ship working solutions for your business and customers. Business leaders are looking for revenue and efforts to drive value to customers. Often, we let the perfect get in the way of good enough solutions for our customers. It is up to us to be the person or team which provides that value. Today, more than ever, generating revenue will set you aside from other technical professionals. 

Next, collaborate with your customers. In weird times, clients and customers are looking for reassurance. Meeting customers and getting to know them and their problems will give you a competitive advantage over other organizations. Building trust with clients will eventually lead to more work and an increase in billing. Creating that trust means delivering solutions and accommodating changes with a smile instead of a new contract with more billable hours. It seems contrary to how we see the business world, but sharing risk between the client and your business means that both of you have a vested interest in being successful. I have worked in plenty of situations where that only sometimes happened. 

It is a weird economy; fortunately, odd people like me turned pro and attempted to make the best of a strange situation. There is no way to make yourself completely immune from layoffs. Still, by collaborating with customers and shipping working solutions, you immunize yourself from the worst attentions of corporate hacks who like to destroy careers. You can do it too. 

Until next time.