Listen to ME!

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Listen to ME!

We were sharing stories in a recent CAL class. One of the students talked about the dynamics of release engineering related to gaining customer feedback. I shared a recent post from Jason Fried where he mentioned the importance of releasing a product to get feedback. Making the point that customers are the only arbiter whether you were on track or not in your MVP development path.

Here’s the link -

https://uxplanet.org/10-things-i-learned-from-jason-fried-about-building-products-5b6694ff02aa

The young man brought up his frustration with the phenomenon of organizations often listening more to outsiders rather then listening to their own teams or internal experts. Either in person or as names being dropped in conversation.

I sometimes liken this to bandwagon syndrome and I shared on that here –

http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2014/4/13/bandwagons-the-good-and-the-bad

I fully resonated with his comment. Being an outside consultant, I often hear “insiders” say something like:

I’ve been giving my leadership team that feedback for several (days, months, even years) and they’ve never really listened to me. You (consultant Bob) come in and say it once and suddenly everyone takes it seriously. 

Do you know how frustrating that is?

Actually, I do. And I’m incredibly empathetic to the point.

I remember when I was at iContact as their agile transformation coach, I had everyone’s ear for the first year or so. And my recommendations were easier to make and have them stick. But as time passed and everyone got used to my voice, stories, and style, they started to tune me out a bit.

So, this phenomenon happens to us all.

I started to bring in other thought leaders, either hired or invited, to mix the ideas (and voices) up a bit. And this seemed to work beautifully to break through the ice and renew some of my influence.

Wrapping up

While this can be a bit frustrating to folks on the inside, I think this is a natural occurrence in all organizations. Folks get accustomed to our voices and we need to augment them with book / article references, outside perspectives, and other ideas.

I think it’s simply the way it is. And you know…

It doesn’t matter where or who the idea comes from as long as the organization gains a flow of ideas, tries and experiments with new things, and continues to learn & evolve.

It’s all good.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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The Agile Coaching Dilemma

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The Agile Coaching Dilemma

Renee Troughton is someone that I don’t follow nearly enough. But when one of her articles crosses my path, it nearly always resonates nicely with my own experience or helps define a concept or notion that I’ve been struggling with.

Renee published - What do people want agile coaches to do? on May 7th.  

I’ve found that striking the right balance (or stance) in my own agile coaching journey is a constant exercise of self-awareness, situational-awareness, and leveraging all my years of experience. It’s really, really hard.

Here’s a snippet from Renee’s article that explains the dilemma from her perspective –

I have had a lot of feedback in the past that I tend to be different from other coaches. I’ve even seen people refer to coaches as two different types, often not in good terms. One commentator referred to the schism as “fluffy agile sprinkles coaches” who are all oriented around mindset and “delivery coaches” who are all oriented around practices and techniques. To this commentator, the middle ground of coaches who are both and have the expertise to know when to use one approach over the other is a dark art that few know well.

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Back to Basics…Part Deux

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Back to Basics…Part Deux

In May of 2018, I published this Back to Basics post -  

http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2018/3/5/back-to-agile-basics

The intent was to refocus attention back to some of the original thinking and mindset of the early days of agile. Not to sound too nostalgic, but life was much simpler then.

I want to add to the list I shared then:

If you want to get back to the roots of agility I encourage you to research the following…

And you might want to investigate how Spotify is implementing agile practices. Not putting them up on a pedestal but considering them a role model for learning the basics of agility in practice. https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/10/no-spotify-model

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Book & Video Recommendations – Agile Coaching

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Book & Video Recommendations – Agile Coaching

Since agile methods have become a mainstream approach to software development, the coaching of agile teams is a HOT topic and role.

It seems as if EVERYONE is an agile coach nowadays. And I literally mean, everyone! I see people leaving a 2-day ScrumMaster certification class and then hanging out a shingle as a coach.

Or someone with 1-2 years of experience. But I digress.

I’ve already recommended Lyssa Adkins book in the ScrumMaster book list. But it certainly applies here as well. I’m just not going to count it against my quota ;-)

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QPPE Metrics Model – A Measured Reaction

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QPPE Metrics Model – A Measured Reaction

First of all, it’s been far too long for me writing something about metrics. It’s one of those topics in the agile community that keeps on giving ;-) 

But I’ve been inspired (yet again) by an article that Anthony Crain wrote a while back on the topic. He introduced it as his QPPE Metrics Model, where:

Q – represents Quality,

P – represents Predictability,

P – represents Productivity, and

E – represents Engagement.

You can find the article here –

https://techbeacon.com/how-software-teams-can-measure-anything-qppe-metrics-model

I shared this article with my friend and colleague, Shaun Bradshaw. I’ve known Shaun for the better part of two decades and he’s my go-to guy when it comes to all thing’s metrics related. Here’s his initial reaction to the QPPE post:

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Retrospective Redux

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Retrospective Redux

It seems like retrospectives are still one of the more challenges agile activities/ceremonies to execute and get right. Which is somewhat surprising to me in that it’s a fairly simple activity. For example –

A team sits down periodically to look in the mirror and brainstorm way(s) to improve themselves.

How hard can that be?

We could also apply the word kaizen or kaizen event to it. Here’s a snippet as to what Wikipedia has to say about its meaning –

The Japanese word kaizen means "change for better", with inherent meaning of either "continuous" or "philosophy" in Japanese dictionaries and in everyday use. The word refers to any improvement, one-time or continuous, large or small, in the same sense as the English word "improvement".[5] 

Again, it’s a simple, yet core element of your agile culture and I don’t necessarily understand why it’s so challenging. But let me share a few stories to illustrate the point that it IS challenging. At least to do it well…

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Building an Agile Coaching Team (redux)

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Building an Agile Coaching Team (redux)

Awhile ago, I’d written a blog post about the lack of an agile engagement having a cohesive coaching team. But later it dawned on me that I’ve never shared what an agile coaching team might look like.

Given that inspiration, I spent some time developing the first version of this post in which I discussed aspects of creating (finding, forming, and building) a great team of coaches for a larger-scale, agile transformation initiative.

Since then, I’ve updated my experience and renewed my focus on this important topic. I’ve also developed some additional posts that support the ideas. So, I thought I’d share an update with everyone.

Here’s a link to the original post. And let’s explore it again, below:

Are they followers?

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Sprint Planning – Simple, and yet…

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Sprint Planning – Simple, and yet…

It’s really quite funny. I’ve been coaching and teaching Scrum for nearly 20 years. But sometimes, my knowledge and experience sometimes gets in the way, in that I sometimes forget that the simplest of the ceremonies can often be hard to get…”right”.

One of those is sprint planning.  

I recently stumbled across two references that I think are very helpful in executing this simple and important, yet sometimes hard to get right ceremony.

The graphic is from Joshua’s article. I really like it!

I’ve also written a quick helper guide around how I’ve found it best to get started in sprint planning. Mostly with new teams. It’s a recipe I’ve successfully been using for well over 10 years and I hope you find some useful hints within.

Here’s the link: https://robert-galen.squarespace.com/s/Scrum-Sprint-Planning-Overview.pdf

Wrapping Up

Sprint planning is one of those ceremonies that embodies quite a lot of agile skills:

  • Backlog refinement

  • Estimation (at a story and task level)

  • Effective story writing

  • Collaborative workflow

  • Done and delivery

Getting it “right” can help you and your teams accelerate towards delivering on the promises of Scrum.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Situational Coaching – Models

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Situational Coaching – Models

I was running one of my coaching circles the other day and someone brought up the X-wing Coaching Model. To be honest, I had to admit that I didn’t know what that was. 

Then they sent me a link, http://agilecoachinginstitute.com/agile-coaching-resources/

and I realized it was the Agile Coaching Competency framework put forth by the Agile Coaching Institute. It’s a model (picture) that speaks to the various capabilities that one should have when approaching agile coaching.

I wanted to share a couple of reactions to the model.

First, Can I Really DO It All?

One of the problems I have with the model, and it’s one of the few, is the implication that a coach needs to have competency/skill in all of the areas. Or to be growing their skills broadly across all of them. And my issue is, I don’t think that’s possible.

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Checking for Safety

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Checking for Safety

Safety is a hot topic in agile contexts today. Continuously begging the question – 

Is it safe?

With a nod to the film Marathon Man. Safety is incredibly relevant to the level of true agile performance at a team level.

In the following post, Joshua Kerievsky mentioned a technique originated by Norm Kerth that explores ways to “check for” safety.

https://medium.com/@JoshuaKerievsky/norm-kerths-safety-poll-bcccd5be6e44

While this may be a relatively short post, it’s an important one. And this is NOT simply focused on safety at a team level. It’s also applicable for all levels of the organization.

I also really like that Josh gives a nod to Norm. A true pioneer in this space!

Norm wrote the book Project Retrospectives, which is a foundation for nearly all of the agile retrospective advice (books, articles, etc.) that followed it. I don’t think he gets enough credit for this important work.

Anyway, please read the post and renew your focus on safety awareness within your teams.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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