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What’s going on?

August 31, 2011 No comments

When I ask someone “How’re you?” the response I usually get is, “fine”. If I ask “What’s up?” the response is, “not much”. These questions prompt rote responses. I can detect a little of how someone really feels in the inflection of the answer. There’s a subtle but important difference between “not much…” and “not much!”, but I am interested in knowing more than if you might be bored at the moment.

For me, “What’s going on?” is the question that garners more than a habitual answer. In most instances, it triggers someone to tell me like it is. Not sure why, it’s just what I’ve found to work for me.

It would be hard to tell what’s going on with me lately, by reading this blog. I haven’t posted in like, (ahem) 8 months. So go on. Do it. Ask me.

What’s going on? Well I’m glad you asked. Quite a lot since my last post in late January of 2011.

For starters, I was approved as a CST! That only took a couple of years. Now I get to travel to exciting places like Milwaukee and Dallas to run public courses. Maybe Bulgaria in a couple of months. I would consider that truly exciting!

I also ran the ball point game at my wife’s school. She teaches 4th grade. They enjoyed it a lot. I hope to go in soon with the new class and do that again. It really went better than, say… the marshmallow challenge. A lot more understanding, way less griping, and I wonder about those reports of how well kindergardeners do.

There was a large-scale roll-out of Scrum for a Business Unit in March. The VP mandated Scrum during a re-org and hired some support for Agile on his staff. A part of the unit had been practicing Scrum for some time. Training ensued for everyone and inside of 6 weeks all teams were working in 2 week Sprints. There was some talk of Kanban and of the desire to work in 3 week Sprints when I was last in. It might soon be time to check in and see how things are going.

Then there was a slight run-in with the learning and development group of one organization. They were expecting a more traditional approach to training, where ours is more interactive. For instance, almost all of us had “Back of the Room” training with Sharon Bowman in May.

Everyone involved learned something through the experience. I learned once more to watch out for an org that tries to run everyone through Scrum training, based on roles. Dragons most certainly be there!

One highlight was getting to work with Jeff Patton on a CSPO course in Boulder. I always learn an amazing amount working with him. The fact that he’s so kind and humble is refreshing in this world where people can get a little full of themselves.

We had an all-out blitz where a bunch of us coaches from Rally responded in no time to a customer request, around the world, and presented at a leadership forum. It was so much fun to collaborate with colleagues. It can get a little lonely out here in the field. This was also around the time of our RallyOn! conference in Boulder. Always great to get back there and see everyone. I mean, hey, it’s home!

It was around this time that I learned my session was accepted for Agile2011. An experience report on “Ten Tales of Positive Change“. I had to write a paper on it. Before then, I thought I was a decent writer. That experience changed my style completely. I had no idea I was so passive…

My wife and I say that we work in the winter to play in the summer, and it was a playful summer indeed. Several festivals, some camping, a trip back to Colorado to visit my folks, Agile2011 and the next thing you know it’s a new school year!

So, that’s what’s going on with me. I’m now going to pay attention to this blog, more on that next time later. What’s going on with you?

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What do you think the INVEST acronym is for #Agile User Stories?

January 29, 2011 No comments

This is a question I asked recently of a newly-formed Scrum team in a User Story Writing workshop. It occurred to me to not just blurt it out and to let them offer suggestions instead. They were very willing to contribute and I’d like to share the answers they came up with:

I
Improve, Innovate, Integrate, Intent, Invent, Interesting, Initial
N
Navigate, New, Novel, Negotiate
V
Viewable, Viable, Value
E
Effective, Easy, Evaluate
S
Stable, Scope, Simple, Satisfied, Success, Scalable
T
Testing, Time

After a couple of rounds of shout-outs I asked if they’d like the answer, and they kept asking me to hold off as they were really enjoying coming up with their own. In my opinion, what I stands for is the only one they didn’t get. A great reminder of why it’s good to be the “guide from the side” instead of the “guru in front of you”. Thanks again, Sharon.

If you’re interested in the “correct” answer, here‘s a really good explanation.

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Inside the #lsmsf Lean Startup Machine

January 25, 2011 5 comments

For the first time since snowboarding for a living, I once again love my job as an Agile coach. Sometimes I wonder if working with transforming large enterprises would be easier if I invested some time working with younger people attempting newer concepts in smaller companies. I got my first chance to test that theory the weekend of 16 Jan by joining The Lean Startup Machine in San Francisco. The picture to the left links to a book we were all given as homework to read for the event. While I did skim it, along with the Lean Startup Machine page as well as browse the lean startup circle Google group I was still incredibly surprised by how the weekend played out. It was a great time of learning by doing and now that I’ve had (maybe too much) time for reflection I thought I would include a brief retrospective on the time spent. I’m using the “Temperature Reading” activity out of the Agile Retrospectives book.

Appreciations

  • The presentation by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits encouraged me to take a deeper look at their book during the weekend.
  • Shelley Chang really convinced me that she had a well thought out idea and her proposal immediately made me want to join her group.
  • Our team got some great help from Janice Fraser with the questions to ask potential customers. Janice and Susan Alexander did a fantastic job modeling what a good interview would look like.
  • The Twilio space was a great place for this kind of an event and it was nice of them to let us trash their place for the weekend.
  • Thanks to Eric Ries for popularizing the Lean Startup concept and for the very down-to-earth presentation to get things started on Friday night.
  • This could go on for awhile and thanks to Trev Owens, Ben Fisher and Josh Horn for founding the Lean Startup Machine and bringing it to San Francisco.
  • I appreciate Vince Lacey, Jason Ho, Roshan Khan, Vincent, as well as Susan and Shelley for spending the time together figuring out if we could turn OutFitters from some assumptions in to an MVP.

Puzzles

  • Where were the mentors on Friday night? And Saturday night as well?
  • Why are people so enamored with Dave McClure? At least it gave us a cheerleader joke for camaraderie throughout the weekend.
  • Is a weekend enough to gather enough data to validate assumptions, even when “getting out of the building” to talk to prospects?
  • Have any successful startups been formed out of a weekend?
  • How could the learning taking place throughout the weekend be amplified?
  • Is there a better way to reinforce the lean startup framework that everyone, including mentors, can follow?

Complaints with Recommendations

  • Even with a schedule mentors were late and unavailable and suddenly there might be three or four talking to a team at one time. Besides demanding to stick to schedule, how about having teams approach mentors when the team is ready? More like a clinic where the doctor is “in” with published office hours.
  • It was feast or famine, with no mentors around and then speaking to three or four and all of them had wildly different advice. One would say go do customer development while another would say building a product was the most important while another would say it’s not worthwhile to proceed without a solid business plan. Once again maybe the clinic approach may help to match teams with specific issues with the mentor best available to address the problem. I saw more than one team in a tailspin from contradictory advice. It may also help to make sure each mentor is briefed on the format and there’s some agreement among them as to what advice should be dispensed.
  • Most teams hit a wall some time around Saturday evening and we were all walking around dazed having invalidated some assumptions, built some sort of prototype if only on paper, collected data by interviews, surveys and other means and could really use some help. It’s one thing to get teams started and quite another to coach them through specific issues being encountered. This would have been a great time to have found a mentor, had a clinic or to have had a check in where all teams gathered to debrief what they’d discovered. Instead it was when everything felt chaotic with very little structure apparent.
  • Our team was eager to go and build product and it took some convincing to get out of the building. We could have done a better job coming up with activities and a schedule. I would have liked to use the pomodoro technique for the weekend.
  • Stop saying pivot all the time! Sometimes it’s just adapting and not a total change in direction. It would be good to read the book and to really understand the concept.

New Information

  • People will tell you what you think they want you to hear. Random sampling is tough and digging for the truth even tougher.
  • It’s easy to believe your assumption is invalid. And to proceed with it anyway.
  • Small teams and new ideas are just as complicated to deal with as big corporations and status quo. It must be a human condition.
  • Collaboration and Agility are not default behaviors and take a lot of practice to get right.
  • Just because the name Lean is plastered all over an event and information readily accessible, doesn’t mean all the people joining really know what that means.
  • Paying attention to what (at least one) the judges were looking for would help the chances of winning.
  • Lean startup is not like a hack-a-thon. NOT producing code is important to keep down waste.
  • While I knew it would be intense and I was prepared to be surprised it was more invigorating, fun and enlightening than I thought it would be.
  • It’s possible to iterate and increment on an idea for a weekend and come out with an MVP that actually takes in revenue.

Hopes & Wishes

  • I hope the Lean Startup weekend becomes a regular event in San Francisco.
  • I hope that awards are also given out for the best mentor as well as best team next time.
  • I wish that some of my clients would participate in one of these. What an amazing amount of learning!
  • I hope that I can help make this a regular event and that my services would be seen as a valuable addition to make the next weekend even more better.
  • I hope I keep in touch with my team and that they carry the idea forward.
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Barely Sufficient Scrum

November 9, 2010 1 comment

What’s the simplest thing that can possibly work and still be called Scrum?

What Scrum “says” you have to do comes up plenty with teams I work with. Many have a difficult time remembering all the rules and get hung up in what they are. Or people blame Scrum for various reasons, like it insists on all these meetings or doesn’t allow for any up-front nor long-term thinking. That self-organization means hands-off.

What are the rules, or the constraints of Scrum for teams to evaluate themselves against? What can people remember easily? It’s something I tried to discuss a bit in this message. Don’t do stupid crap was my favorite response. I have decided to add these “rules” as the bonus set* when introducing the Scrum Framework:

3 Sets of 3
3 Roles
Scrum Master, Product Owner and (Delivery) Team

3 Artifacts
Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Burndown Chart

3 (now 4) Ceremonies
Planning (daily and Sprint), Review and Retrospective

*Bonus Set
3 “Rules”
Do Something, Self-Organize, Inspect & Adapt

As I was writing this I see that Ron Jeffries thinks that “Scrum is OK …”. What do you think? Is this too simple? Not simple enough? Is it barely sufficient to be called Scrum?

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I’d tell Max, learn to putt.

August 19, 2010 No comments

fremitic ideation 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?

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Applying to Become a Certified Scrum Trainer

June 12, 2010 No comments

Throwing Your Hat Into The Ring The Scrum Alliance is accepting new applicants to become Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) and I’ve decided to throw my hat in the ring. If you would like to know why I am applying, please feel free to read my letter of intent.

Tobias Mayer has a post on the new CST application process, including a link to the full process description.

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Kool-Aid, Dogfood or Champaigne?

May 11, 2010 3 comments

The saying, “you drank the Kool-Aid” may be a derisive way to say someone has been indoctrinated. Similar to a Borg-related “you will be assimilated“. Admitting to drinking the Kool-Aid seems synonymous with “going native“. I think it’s worse than that. It’s forever linked to the Guyana Tragedy for me and is tantamount to committing suicide.

The concept of dogfooding I understand and I am a fan. Both of the verbification of nouns and of using your own product. Just not of the words. Similar to not wanting to be a pig, I do not want to be a pig noshing on some dog food. Although pigs are smarter than chickens. Pigs must not have that sophisticated of a palette, I guess. I wouldn’t want to work in a dog food factory that practiced this, either.

I am a fan of brew making and like to go wine tasting at smaller places. It helps me understand the craft so that I may try to practice it myself. Understanding all the ingredients, the process and the taste sought after. I think the phrase is gaining some popularity and I am now blatantly advocating for its use. Let’s drink our own champagne!

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Joining the community of thinkers

January 28, 2010 No comments

I am a member of a community of thinkers.

I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.

I challenge each community in the software industry to:

* reflect and honor the practitioners who make its existence possible;
* provide an excellent experience for its members;
* support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
* exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
* engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
* embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and
* thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual reflection and improvement.

I believe that leaders builders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders the community’s builders.

I am a member of a community of thinkers. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.

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”A community of thinkers” by Liz Keogh, Eric Willeke and Jean Tabaka is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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Kanban is the Agile way of saying “Phase Gate”

November 12, 2009 2 comments

So that we can easily find ways to constantly improve while collaborating effectively and sustainably, I like kanban as a tool which shows what constrains transforming concepts into cash. I believe it allows us to see the whole system and our part in what to do to help in the transformation of the system into a better one and our ideas in to innovation. It seems to me there would be greater benefits for all involved.

For software a kanban tool must be highly visible, with a policy to strictly limit work in progress and a policy to only accept work when there’s capacity. To be effective, it requires consensus on these policies from the people involved.

Kanban is a Lean way of saying, “I trust and respect you”.

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Traditional Hotel Managers on Duty

October 16, 2009 1 comment

The last time traveling highlighted for me examples of managing by delegation. One example was with checking in, and the other was in getting another copy of my room key. In both examples I was led to believe that my requests would lead to action and instead, both examples led to disruption and stress for those involved.

Walking in to the hotel lobby I observed a line with about 3 people waiting. There were 4 people behind the desk working fastidiously. It seemed I wouldn’t have to wait long. The Manager on Duty (MOD) was greeting people in front of the desk and asking what he could do for them. I was in a very relaxed, patient mood and the MOD’s frenetic I NEED TO HELP YOU!!! attitude as he greeted arrivals was distracting. I tried to avoid him as I took my place in the line, bags at my feet. Alas, the desk people were slow enough that he reached me before I reached them.

Giving me a WELCOME and a hand shake and nervous laughter he demanded to know how he could be of help. I said, “Well, you could check me in.” and he said, “I cannot do that for you, is there anything else you need?” and I muttered, “I just want to check in…”. When traveling by plane I try to enter a near-meditative, relaxed state to help with how long the day will be. Even on short flights, I find the door-to-door commute usually takes no less than 6 hours and typically takes 8 or 9 before I truly reach my destination.

The manager’s attitude and behavior was definitely starting to wind me up. He actually interrupted one of the check in people and told her that I needed to check in and to get to me as soon as possible. So now we were all flummoxed and she was stressed even more and rushing and the atmosphere in the lobby went from relaxing to… PANIC! We need to get people checked in! AAAAUUUGH!!! DO YOUR JOB! His meddling just made everyone tense and actually elongated the process.

A couple nights later I had left my room without the key. I was at the very far end of the building, about 2 city blocks away from the front. So I began the excursion to the front desk. I stopped and resupplied at the vending machine and continued on my way. I finally got to the desk and there was one person behind the desk helping someone and one person waiting for help. A different MOD came up and asked if he could help with anything. I said, “Apparently not.”.

“What does that mean?”, he asked fairly enough.

Thinking of my last experience with the MOD I said, “I guess managers here are only allowed to tell others what to do, but not actually do anything themselves.”.

He expressed a bit of outrage and insisted, “I take that as a challenge and promise to help you. What can I do for you?”.

Standing in gym clothes, pocket-less and nearly late for my workout class I asked, “Can you get me a key? I’ve locked myself out”.

His reaction did not surprise me. “Oh, I can’t do that, but this young woman will be glad to help.” turning to her and interrupting her service of another customer, “this gentleman needs a key, can you get one to him as soon as possible?”.

She looked at me and we rolled our eyes at each other. It was the same person who checked me in and and I muttered, “How empowering! Please, take your time.”, being a little self-conscious of looking arrogant to the customer being helped, and to the staff. She was helpful and I got my key in enough time to make my class.

These situations remind me so much of how traditional managers behave, and how upsetting it can be for everyone involved. Do both these people have the same management style and personality? Were they trained the same? Is it a point of privilege not to do anything as a manger? Is it the people, or the system?

I would love to know your thoughts. If you have some answers or questions of your own, I invite you to leave a comment.

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