Agile Fashion

1. Agile Team Members – Roles and Responsibilities
2. Naked Planning Explained – Kanban in the Small
3. Kanban Ground Rules Example for a Specific Team
4. 12 Agile Adoption Failure Modes by Jean Tabaka
5. Leading a Retrospective Before Introducing Kanban to a Team
6. Kanban is the Agile way of saying “Phase Gate”
7. Death by Scrum Meeting
8. Applying to Become a Certified Scrum Trainer
9. What a Pile of Product Backlog
10. Setting a Minimum Bar for Scrum

Have you ever heard of strengthsfinder.com? It has nothing to do with the image on the left. I searched for Ideation and don’t you think this one is pretty crazy?

Anyway, some time ago at the place I worked we all read the first 2 books. The second we’d refer to as now-disco. Almost like one word. I’ve always thought of them as, “First, Break Now, Disco”. One guy added “stabby” to his strengths.

I took the test again and this time, my top strengths are: Ideation, Intellection, Maximizer, Learner and Input. A colleague suggested to create a mnemonic and “I’d tell Max, learn to putt.”, is what I made. If you’ve taken the test, what are your strengths? What acronym or other phrase could you craft them in to?

Last night at the BayAPLN, Jean Tabaka from Rally Software gave a presentation about the typical failure modes of Agile. This is distilled from her observations and being asked from people who have heard the hype, what are the real problems with adopting an Agile approach?

Which is your current favorite?

1. Checkbook commitment doesn’t support organizational change management. CEOs create within the company their own personal family dysfunction.
2. Culture doesn’t support change. Reward plan, and a static and prescriptive standard of work. Try to keep cross-organizational uniformity and use PMO as enforcers.
3. Do not have retrospectives, or they are bad. Actions which come out get ignored or written off.
4. In a race to finish features, the infrastructure gets worse and architecture becomes unstable. Distributed teams make this worse.
5. Lack of collaboration in planning. Like having the whole team for release planning.
6. None or too many Product Owners. Both cases look the same. Agile is yet another hat to wear and the person is already too busy. They check out and ask the team to just do Agile. Can’t get past the ‘this sucks’ phase of adoption if the business is not bought in.
7. Bad Scrum Master which uses a command and control style with the team to look faster, yet in reality slows things down. Low morale lowers IQ. Take decisions away and it actually makes people stupider!
8. No on-site evangelist. If the teams are distributed, need one at every site. Can’t reap the benefits of Agile or offshore without an on-site coach at each location.
9. No solid team. Actually missed this one, inferred. Empowered teams amplify learning.
10. Tsunami of technical debt if don’t pull tests forward.
11. Traditional performance appraisals. Individual heroics rewarded, glad you’re not a team player!
12. Revert to traditional. Change is hard. Hit the threshold where this sucks. Revert back to old ways of doing business.

Jean then challenged the group to choose the one issue they would like to see changed at their work and come up with an action plan right now to change it. In a month, retrospect on how well it went. Perhaps that would be an interesting open space subject in a couple of meetings for the BayAPLN?

It isn’t all bad. In writing this blog, I found that Rally has also started posting the top 10 characteristics of an Agile organization.

Update: Adding the video from Agile Australia mentioned by Mike Alber.

Day 1 – 9.45am – Jean Tabaka from Zoltan Deak on Vimeo.

1. I’m an only child. Some people ask if I feel like I missed out. I don’t know what they mean.
2. I shake the hand of any people who tell me they are a native of Colorado as well.
3. Consuming adult beverages is enjoyable, and I have a low tolerance so it’s easy for me to get a light buzz. Dangerous for me to consume in quantity and so I merely sip.
4. The pinnacle of existence for me is enjoying a day of deep, untracked powder.
5. I don’t like ‘stuff’ and tend to give away or get rid of many things.
6. Some people think I am quiet and reserved. I wonder how they got that impression.
7. Experiences delight me and I seek out new ones all the time.
8. I like to turn a light on before turning the previous light off as I walk through the house. Sometimes it means I walk in serial laps.
9. Actually, I prefer to leave the lights off and let my eyes and other senses adjust.
10. I called a meeting with my principal to explain why I should move from 4th to 6th grade, she let me. It just seemed to me like 12+ years in formal education a lot of my life. More than I had lived at the time.
11. My first crush was on Kristy McNichol in ‘Family’ and established my penchant to fall for the tom-boy.
12. My second crush was on Blondie and established my penchant to fall for wild women.
13. Around this time I insisted people call me Tim. Nobody did.
14. I had surgery on my left foot due to a 1 in a million condition. If it had failed, I would hardly be able to walk now. Instead, it just merely hurts.
15. I went to Spain to visit a friend, and lost my appendix. Good thing I had my bi-lingual friend who grew up in the area to help me.
16. There are 7-year-olds who have more drawing talent than me. Do not choose me for Pictionary.
17. Having change in my pocket drives me crazy.
18. I’ve never worn a watch.
19. People compliment me on my touching eulogies. It’s melancholic to be a good speaker for the dead.
20. I’m myopically prescient. What I see, happens about 3 seconds later.
21. Sometimes I become aware that I am dreaming and even more rarely I can start actively creating it.
22. Alaska is the only state I’ve not seen, and I’ve never been to Mexico.
23. I am not, and never have been, a note taker.
24. Working for a paycheck always seemed to get in the way of life. What I am doing now and the compensation fits my lifestyle much better.
25. My wit may be esoteric and therefore I appear to be just strange to some.

It’s a rather long list on Amazon.

http://icanhaz.com/AgileForSoftwareDevelopmentOrganizations

Sorted by fundamentals, then technical, some management and enterprise in there, too.

What would you like to see added to it?

Places for me to seek advice.

1. sounding boards
2. informed opinions
3. the present moment
4. realization

Sounding boards are my friends and family which offer their permission for me to test their reaction to a statement or feeling of mine. Through discussion with knowledge experts and researching their work, I look to the informed opinions of those with solid facts, or experience with my problem domain. Awareness of the present moment is enhanced for me through meditation and physical activity; such as hiking, dancing, drawing or snowboarding. Moving in and out of the present keeps me in tune with my body, thoughts, feelings and intuition when pondering questions and come to a realization of how to proceed.

• Stretch
• Be active
• Go outside
• Genuinely compliment someone
• Eat well
• Read
• Give thanks for being alive!

1. leave work there
2. stay in shape
3. express humble opinion
4. actively listen
5. remain patient