Small Aha’s

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Small Aha’s

I often feel that we’re looking for very large revelations in our agile teams.

  • In our learning;
  • In our experiments;
  • In our discovery;
  • In our progress;
  • In our delivery;
  • In our experiences;
  • In our journey.

But Joshua Kerievsky reminded me in this article that agile progress, and life in general, is best experienced and measured by the smaller moments. He calls them Aha’s.

But we need to “find them”

I often ask students in my classes to identify any Aha’s they’ve had during the class. I have no magic number that I’m looking for, but I am looking for some self-discovery and inspiration for each individual.

Quite often I get very few Aha’s. Now you might be saying that it’s because I’m a boring teacher teaching less than relevant ideas. And that might be somewhat true.

But I also think the challenge is that we’ve been programmed to look for big, hairy, audacious Aha’s and to look over the smaller, incremental steps. But that's a mistake in my view. Of course, sometimes we advance by leaping a tall building. However, those events are rare. Much more often, we advance with little "baby steps" of discovery and learning. An Aha! if you will.

Josh made me re-realize how important these steps are. 

Wrapping Up

So, the one additional thought I have for Josh’s article is for all of us to be on the lookout for Aha’s.

  • To always look for them;
  • To be ready for and receptive of them;
  • To be thoughtful and reflective about them;
  • And to appreciate the Aha for the positive forward step that they are…

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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My Heroes: David Hussman

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My Heroes: David Hussman

There are individuals who have influenced my professional journey significantly. Sometimes, by working with me directly. Other times, by their writing or position in our software community. And other times, simply as a role model.

I want to start a new segment on my blog called – My Hero’s. I’ll post intermittently, perhaps every 1-2 months. But it serves as a reminder to me to be thoughtful and appreciative about the folks who’ve influenced my growth and skills. And of course, they get none of the credit for my many foibles.

The first one up is: David Hussman.

David is one of those original voices in the agile community. He’s been around for a fairly long time and I’ve interacted mostly with him at conferences. I’ve also followed his writing and conversations. One of the cool things about David is he challenges the agile status quo and always, always makes me think. Something that I value greatly.

He’s a musician, turned programmer, turned entrepreneur, so he’s followed a rather eclectic journey compared to my own. I suspect that’s what makes him have such an interesting view on things.

It so happens that he is ill now. I won’t get into the details, but to say that it is life threatening. And it’s this knowledge that influenced me to reflect on the impact he’s had on my life.

Beyond agile, David helps those in our agile community. He is generous in giving of his time and helping others whenever he can. He’s humble and all about others. And when I say humble, he’s truly humble.

I remember a year or two ago we invited David to speak at our local agile conference – TriAgile. Now David is incredibly well-known and a big audience draw. However, when we setup the rooms and tracks, we put David in the smallest room. By far the smallest room.

Needless to say, it was packed. And many were turned away. Many speakers would have been upset or affronted by this lack of awareness on the part of the conference team. David, literally said nothing. He came in, did a great job, collaborated with the attendees, and went on his way. He was far more understanding and humble than I probably would have been.

But that is David.

Wrapping Up

One of the defining aspects of my hero’s, is that they’ll probably be embarrassed to be categorized in that way. Nonetheless, they are my hero’s.

They’ve helped me to become the person, trainer, speaker, and coach that I am today. Whether they’re aware of it or not.

David Hussman, you’ve made a great impression on me in your journey that I can never thank you enough for. You’ve been a role model to me and many others in so many ways. And you sir, walk your talk. Something that I prize very dearly.

I’m incredibly blessed to know you and want you to know that you are my Hero.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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What a Drag!

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What a Drag!

There’s an Extreme Programming concept, tool, practice that many have forgotten. Sure, we remember user stories, refactoring, TDD, continuous integration, and pair-programming among the more popular XP practices. 

But there are some that were quite useful and meaningful that we’ve misplaced. One of them is release planning as described in the Planning Extreme Programming book by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler.  

Another is the notion of “Yesterday’s Weather”, which is a much simpler concept. I want to focus on it though as a powerful thinking tool for today’s agile teams.

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Building an Agile Coaching Team

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Building an Agile Coaching Team

I was writing another blog post about the lack of an agile engagement having a cohesive coaching team and it dawned on me that I’ve never shared what an agile coaching team might look like.

Given that inspiration, I thought I’d spend a few minutes discussing aspects of creating (finding, forming, and building) a great team of coaches for a larger-scale, agile transformation initiative.

Followers

I honestly don’t know where the quote comes from, but I’ve heard that in order for you to become a great leader, you need first to become a great follower. That by following, and putting on the mindset of service, you better understand leadership.

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Mixed Feelings about Roles & Responsibilities

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Mixed Feelings about Roles & Responsibilities

In our last Meta-cast, Josh Anderson and I explored the good and the bad around defining roles and responsibilities in agile contexts.

It’s a mixed bag really that requires some common sense and nuance. I think we landed on the need for them, but caution around the negative effects that they can have IF you’re trying to create a healthy instance of self-directed agile teams.

The Basics

One place to start is looking at the Scrum Guide and how it handles the Scrum roles.

Beyond the basic definitions of the roles, I really like the collaboration advice given BETWEEN the roles. I’ve found that it’s the interplay between the Team, Product Owner, and ScrumMaster that really makes the difference in high-level team performance.

I’d recommend you read (and share) the guidance in the Scrum Guide.

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Post Agile World…A Post Reply

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Post Agile World…A Post Reply

My friend and colleague, Lee Eason, recent wrote a post entitled – Redefining Success in a Post Agile World. In it, he generally shared thoughts around the evolution occurring (and needed) in the agile community towards understanding and delivering on business factors.

First, I want to congratulate Lee on a thoughtful and well-written article. I look forward to those moments when Lee shares his thoughts. While they are infrequent, they are important and timely observations from an agile practitioner in the trenches.

However, I do want to react and add a perspective to Lee’s. One that I think he may have underemphasized or missed altogether.

Here’s a snippet from his closing thoughts:

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Agile Coaching – An Awful Truth

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Agile Coaching – An Awful Truth

I attended an agile coach’s gathering about a year or more ago. It was a “coaching the coaches” session and it was very valuable. But an aspect of it has stuck with me ever since. One that I’ve mulled over and over and would like to share.

There were a group of coaches in attendance from the same client engagement, a large, multi-billion-dollar organization that had been going Agile for a couple of years.

When they decided to go agile, one of the first things the client did was reach out to an agile coaching firm for help. On the surface, that sounds like a good thing to do. However, the firm was largely staff augmentation focused, so that was their background and comfort zone.

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Pair-Coaching

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Pair-Coaching

I’ve been doing more pairing lately. Much more.

I’ve been trying it in my conference workshops and talks. Pairing with Mary Thorn quite a bit on the agile quality and testing side of things. I’m also pairing with Josh Anderson on our Meta-cast and I’ve done a few presentations with him. Very enjoyable.

I’ve also been pairing more in my writing. For years, I’ve been a lone wolf writer. Nobody but myself saw my writing before it entered the light of day. But now, I’m learning the value of having reviewers and editors. Second opinions matter. A second set of eyes matter. And having a partner in your endeavors can be quite a bit of fun.

An example of this is Mary Thorn being my “Chief Story Teller” in my 3-Pillars book. We had a blast writing the book and her stories complimented my own experiences to give readers two sides to many coins.

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ScrumMasters – Just Say No

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ScrumMasters – Just Say No

Tanner Wortham is a ScrumMaster and coach who I’ve quoted on this blog before. He recently wrote a blog post entitled: When Can a ScrumMaster Say No which I read with interest.

I’ve been sharing of late around the notion of more prescriptive coaching stances and, at least in my mind, this seeps into the role of ScrumMaster. So I wanted to hear what Tanner had to say.

Here’s a snippet from the article:

[…] Doing away with the sprint review simply ignores the problem.  Help the team experiment with new ways to conduct the review but that align with the intent.  Over time, they will find their solution.  At no point did we have to say no.  In fact, we should avoid it.  I believe our responsibility is to understand and to guide.  Rarely is it to deny.
Even so, I occasionally encountered two situations where I’ll say no as a Scrum Master:

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