Agile misconception – fixed scope and fixed deadline
July 28, 2014 Leave a comment
Drive: What Motivates Us
January 20, 2014 Leave a comment
The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said “man is what he eats”. I would say that a man is also the books he reads and Drive, the book of Daniel H.Pink about motivation is one of those books that can influence you and change the way you think, inspiring you to act. An amazing book.
Drive of Daniel H. Pink
Drive teaches us that, when it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what the science knows and what business does. “The current system of motivation put in place in organizations often doesn’t work and often does harm. If we want to build better organizations, elevate our lives and improve the world a new approach is needed”.
In the introduction Pink explains that human beings behaviour is driven by what is known as the biological drive that comes from within and includes hunger, thirst and sex (Motivation 1.0). Then a second drive that comes from without is to respond to rewards and punishments in our environment (Motivation 2.0). In the middle of the last century however few scientists began to discover that there was a third drive that they called intrinsic motivation, our innate need to direct our own lives, to learn and to create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world (Motivation 3.0). Read more of this post
Impediments to agile
December 10, 2013 3 Comments
Just reading an article on things that impede agile… I share two points here (extracted from the original article):
- Technical Practices
” …you cannot scale agile on crappy code, without collective code ownership and continuous integration – period, no debate!”
- PMO
“The mother-ship of all agile impediments – actually not my quote!
A bit harsh? Well it depends.
A PMO that is steeped in governance that adds no value then absolutely! Gated controls are great provided they add value – have the requirements been signed by the Business, has the design been signed by the CTO, have you produced your weekly report, have you correctly RAG your Risks and issues. Mother-ship!
But a PMO that has made both the cultural and mindset shift to agile can be a huge enabler.”
People is more important than everything
October 17, 2013 Leave a comment
I’m more and more convinced about this: “people is more important than everything”. For many years in the software industry we tought to have found the good method for successfull software development, always searching for processes, practices, framework… but did these practices and methods provide the expected results? Today the risk is that agile will be another of such methods that didn’t bring the expected results if we don’t understand what “agile” is.
I see a situation in which many people wants to use “agile” and start to do it, but what I see in reality is the fall of agile: “fragile”, “wagile”, “srum-buts”… so the question is: what “agile” really means?
My passion for agile comes from the idea that the interactions between people are more important than processes, that people are the key factor in the software success. Attendind people’s need and the close collaboration among people can bring back the enjoyment to developing successful software. The agile manifesto defines what agile is, we can find in it the same idea:
“indivuals and interactions between process and tools”
“customer collaboration over contract negotiation”
“Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.“
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.“
Agile is not doing it but “being agile”… for that we should start focusing more on people.
My book list after the Scrum Gathering
September 27, 2013 Leave a comment
Back from Paris I looked on my notes to search for the readings I put into my “must read list” and I ended up to order these books on Amazon:
1) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – Daniel H.Pink
2) The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager – Daniel Mezick
3) The Power of Scrum – Jeffrey V. Sutherland, D. M. Van Solingen, Eelco Rustenberg
4) Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Thinking and Organizational Tools for Large-Scale Scrum – Craig Larman, Bas Vodde
I think I will be busy until the end of the year…
Scrum Gathering Paris – “Shu Ha Ri” and Spiral Dynamics
September 23, 2013 Leave a comment
The first day of the Scrum Gathering in Paris is finished. It has been really a great day. The sessions I have attended were mostly about the same theme: “Expanding an Agile Culture in a Complex World”. This theme aims to define cultural tools (patterns, management practices, methods, etc) helping to install in a sustainable way an Agile culture within organizations. Below the sessions I liked most and my main takeaways:
“Cuture > Process” – Henrik Kniberg
The opeining keynote from Henrik Kniberg showed what “agile culture” really means and how this is achieved in Spotify the company where he actually works.
My Takeaways:
Shu-ha-ri (Follow the rules, adapt the rules, Ignore the rules)
“People > *” (People are more important than everything else)
Agile à la mode? The long-Term Viability of an Agile Culture in France – Petra Skapa and Mack Adams
This session showed how it’s difficult to have an agile culture in French organizations: the French values are not in lines with the agile ones.
My Takeaway:
The transformation to agile in France is more difficult than in other Countries. Agile is a mindset and it’s adoption and success is directly influenced by the Country’s culture.
Changing Cultural DNA with Spiral dynamics to become thouroughly Agile – Dajo Breddels
Interesting session on how the humans interact and behave according to the spiral dynamics theory and how this theory can help on the cultural change needed for agile transformation.
My takeaway:
Spiral Dynamics theory can be helpful for the agile cultural shift.
Transformation to Agile is not easy
August 20, 2013 1 Comment
I had the opportunity to meet Peter Measey as trainer of my Certified Scrum Product Owner course and since then I started to read his blog. Some time ago I read an article about how the transformation to agile can be difficult and he made me think about it. I know that the transformation to agile is not easy for large organizations that worked many years with a waterfall methodology. It requires time and it requires a change in all the level of the organization and after all these changes it can happen that the organization is still far to be really agile. One important aspect of the transition is overcoming the individual resistance and it’s not easy because human being are involved. From Peter Measey’s blog:
“If you think that transforming an IT system from one technical platform to another is challenging, try doing a technical transformation where the platforms have a mind of their own and may not want to change, or even have the ability to change!”
Working in a large organization that wants to go towards agile and knowing that the transformation is complex I always had one question in my mind:
Can a large organization, alone, be successful in the transformation to agile?
When I say “alone” I mean without asking for help from external agile transformation experts.
Maybe the transformation is possible but more painful and longer because you cannot rely on lessons learned or common patterns among different organizations or maybe it will end, as Peter says, to what is known as “FRAgile” or “WAgile” where organizations are not really agile even if they think to be. I don’t have my personal answer to this question right now… In the meanwhile I’m still thinking on Peter’s questions:
“Would you try to write a software system without employing expert software developers ? So why would you think that something much harder (such as transforming an organisation of human beings) can be done by people who don’t understand transformation? ”
Change your Organization: it’s about trust.
May 2, 2013 Leave a comment
Some days ago a colleague suggested me an interesting blog of James Shore about changing the organization. How an organization can become more agile? How an organization can improve their processes?
Successful organizational changes cannot be fully top-down or bottom-up, but is there really a difference between the two? James Shore thinks they are essentially the same thing: “Both are extremely difficult. Both require that people want to change.” So how can you introduce new ideas and help the change to happen? The central point is trust. James says “It’s as simple as that. When people trust me, I’ve been successful. It hasn’t even been hard. And when people don’t trust me, no amount of cajoling, persuading, beating with sticks, etc., will make a difference.” The way to change something in the organization is no-change. The approach is more to show people ideas, seeing what they think, talking about alternatives, listening to experiences, etc.
“#1: the Way to Change is No-Change. I’ve seen how hard organizational change can be, and so I no longer attempt it. I just share ideas, lead by example, and have fun doing it. If things change, great! It’s a much easier approach to life… and you know what? I think it’s made me more effective as a consultant, and as a change agent, too.”
I like this thought and I think James is right: at the end change is about trust and respect to earn this trust.
“We must be the change we wish to see.” – Ghandi.
Rotating the ScrumMaster Role. I let the team decide.
March 26, 2013 2 Comments
Recently I have been asked by some stakeholders why it is always me in the role of ScrumMaster instead of just rotating it periodically inside the team. The motivations following this remark have been:
– It is recommended by agile.
– It has been done by another Scrum team inside the company and it worked well.
Is it really true that the SM role should rotate inside a team?
I don’t agree with the idea of having a permanent rule to rotate the SM role specially when it comes from outside the team and those motivations seemed to me not really valid ones. I also clearly remembered what is written in “Succeding with Agile” by Mike Cohn about rotating the SM role. What he says is that the habit of rotating the job of SM is not recommended and it could be done in some occasions and for specific reasons but not as a permanent practice. The risk to rotate systematically the role is that the stakeholders don’t really understand the duties of the ScrumMaster and they can start thinking that everybody can do it. We know instead that to be a good ScrumMaster we need particular skills.
Furthermore in companies that haven’t fully transitioned to agile and are mainly organized in a different way (ex: waterfall development) I find that there isn’t always a clear understanding of what a ScrumMaster really is. In such organizations the role of ScrumMaster can be a little different from team to team and it can depend on the context. Sometimes when these companies need a ScrumMaster they need also other skills and other responsibilities and in this case I think rotating the role is even more complicated and risky.
Why it worked well for one team inside the company? Why the rotation cannot be applied on every team?
The asnwer is simple: every team is different. It’s a mistake to think that what worked well for one team should work well for another and in my particular case between the two teams there were some differences: one team was a cross-functional team with no project manager and working on different functionalities of the application (from UI to DB), the second team was a UI team working in a dedicated UI project with a project manager be also part of the team. The context was different and the role of the ScrumMaster in the two team was a little different too. As we told earlier, the context is important.
I didn’t think the motivations were really valid and I didn’t think it was a good idea too to put in place a permanent rotation. I clearly expressed my position to stakeholders but I didn’t want to defend this position alone… I was there to represent the team, I was the servant leader for the team so what the team thought about this? Did they feel the need of this rotation of SM role?
What I did as ScrumMaster
I decided to schedule a retrospective meeting with the team, dedicated to the subject of rotating the SM role, to know what the team thought about it and what they wanted to do.
The results of the Retrospective have been that the team didn’t feel the need to rotate the ScrumMaster role and they didn’t want to have a predefined rule to rotate it. It should have been a team choice when someone in the team wanted to try the ScrumMaster role. One team member told in the retrospective that he would have been interested to try the role temporarly in view of taking then a CSM certification, but not immediatly. The team agreed also to put in place something to improve the situation when the ScrumMaster wasn’t available (back-up).
As a result of the retrospective we added in the team wiki a section dedicated to the role of the ScrumMaster with all the responsibilities and the tasks to do. This guide is actually used as a reference for the back-up ScrumMaster and to give also visibility outside the team on the duties of the role.
What I learnt
As ScrumMaster I tried to express my position to stakeholders giving the reasons why the habit of rotating the role wasn’t really a good idea but sometimes is not easy to convince people. In these situations you can do a step back remembering that as ScrumMaster you are a servant leader for the team and you can let the team decide. It’s much more easier if all the team agrees on a position to defend and legitimate it.
Gather data in the Agile Retrospective
March 23, 2013 Leave a comment
At the end of every Scrum sprint there is the retrospective meeting, where the team gathers after completing an increment of work to inspect and adapt their way of working and teamwork. The agile retrospective can follow a precise structure as described in [1]:
- Set the stage – to prepare the team for the work they’ll do in the retrospective
- Gather data – to create a shared picture of what happened during the iteration
- Generate Insights – to indentify and analyse the causes that contributed to the team success or that need improvement
- Decide What to do – to create actions for the next iteration
- Close the retrospective – to express appreciation and have feedback on the retrospective
As ScrumMaster and facilitator of the retrospective I dind’t always follow the full structure suggested in [1]. Sometimes the step to gather the data was skipped and the retrospective just started to generate insights identifying what went well and what we needed to improve. It was a mistake. Since some retrospectives I reintroduced again this step and I found that it really helps the team to remember what happened during the sprint: impediments, difficulties, positive moments, feelings. It’s not only important for the team to create a shared vision on what happens but it’s also a way to check how people inside the team consider the same event (positive or negative) and generate discussions.
Timeline – Agile Retrospective
The activity I use to gather the data is mainly the “Timeline”. It’s a very simple but powerful activity to stimulate memories of what happened during the sprint and the aspect that I found really interesting is when the timeline is used to collect not only the facts but facts and feelings.
To do this after having collected all the facts in chronological order I ask each team member to put a colored dot to show if they consider the event positive or negative or if their energy was high or low. This part can be considered as another activity called: “Color Code Dots” [1]. Once the facts are associated with feelings we have interesting data to start discussions.
I ask why an event is considered positive or negative, I look if all the people put the same feelings or there is someone that consider the event in a different way and in this case I ask why we have this different perspective. Sometimes I ask to draw a graph for the ongoing emotional ups and downs during the iteration. It’s interesting to see again that no all the team has the same emotional status.
I found the part that add feelings to the facts really effective because it helps the team focus not only on technical issues related to the development process but on the team and team issues, as it should be for a good retrospective.
In conclusion after having seen the difference of agile retrospectives with a step to gather data and without it, I suggest to always find time and do this step. As said by Aristotele: “Well begun is half done”.
[1] “Agile Retrospective – Making Good Teams Great” – Ester Derby, Diana Larsen.
AgileEspresso 