AGILE IN ACTION

Courage - how brave are you? was a goldfish-bowl discussion facilitated by Giovanni Asproni about courage and it's opposite, fear. This was the final session I attended on the second day and I was pretty pooped. There was a reasonable turn-out but understandably it wasn't as energetic as the first goldfish-bowl about simplicity . Nevertheless, it was an interesting discussion about a subject I feel strongly about. Fear is endemic in the world of software development. People fear taking longer to do something than they estimated. People fear missing deadlines. People fear saying what they really think. There are too many fears in the industry. Giovanni said fear usually leads to inferior results and failure, which causes stress . And guess what that causes ... more fear! It's a vicious cycle. I like to define courage as your ability to take decisive action in the face of fear. Things get done when people demonstrate courage. Have the courage to show vulnerability. This will help build trust in the team. Have the courage to make small decisions and reverse them if they don't work out. Have the courage to fail fast and learn. Have the courage to make commitments and be held accountable for them. Have the courage to demand fun in work. Feeling empowered in a trusting environment breeds courage . Command-and-control creates a blame culture and breeds fear. Funny that! Who'd have thought? Things don't get done when people are afraid because, like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, fear causes paralysis. Decisions don't get made, actions aren't taken, and opportunities aren't seized. If you can find the courage to be courageous you will find a new way of life. A weight will be lifted. So do yourself a favour and be courageous. Free yourself from your fears. Come on, seriously, ask yourself: In the grand scheme of things, what's the worse that could happen? As Jonathan Clarke said: I only regret the things I didn't do .

Why is simple so difficult? was a goldfish-bowl discussion facilitated by Nat Pryce and Jonathan Clarke . It was an energetic session with people pinging in and out of the bowl at a rate of knots. Here's some of the things that were said: Simplicity emerges. We should be saying - have the simplest thing, not do the simplest thing. Dan North said simplicity is clarity of intent. How clearly can I express intent? If redundant code supports clarity then I'm ok with that. I like 'clarity of intent' as a definition for simplicity.

For the past two days I've been at XP Day 2006 . This morning I arrived at Ironmongers Hall on autopilot and took a seat for the keynote speech, not yet fully awake. I was woken sharply by noise; a lot of it. The session, Love in the Age of Software by Robert Biddle and James Noble had started. It was a truly bizarre session in terms of its style. Lots of noise, music, presenters talking over one another, repeating what the other had said to simulate some kind of echo. I was confused at times and just couldn't figure out what was being said, but I eventually tuned in and was able to follow along. That said, credit goes to the presenters for doing something different. It played out as a tumultuous conversation between the two presenters, who dropped in and out of different characters. I thought getting us all to stand up and recite the Agile Manifesto , like the Lord's Prayer, was worth a chuckle. As was the short dialogue about which is more macho, a train wreck or a death march . I liked the direction they were taking when they declared their distaste for wimpy agile : System metaphor: Most neglected practice - EXPUNGED. Onsite customer: Apparently impractical and unrealistic - EXCUSED. User stories: Promise to have conversations - AUTOMATED. Planning game: Embrace change .. but not for us - RESISTED. Red bar , green bar was a recurring theme as they explored the relationship between the customer and the developers, and how their perception of events and outcomes differ. For example, developers may see project results as technical success while the customers see business failure . The essential message was this: If the customer and the developers don't love one another then the agile magic cannot happen .

The other day we tried a different format for our iteration retrospective. The iteration was a tough one and I saw some old problems recurring. So I thought we'd try some root cause analysis to get past the symptoms to see if we could identify what was really causing the problems.

Compromised agility is, more often than not, the result of a lack of courage to seek, and to persist until you achieve, necessary change. Courage is an important value for me.

Compromised agility or agile mediocrity can be achieved in a command-and-control environment. Full-on agility can't. And so you miss out on all the benefits that come along with it: A whole new level of improved quality and increased productivity, creativity, accountability, leadership, energized work, motivated people and fun. If you're an executive manager serious about being agile and you're in a command-and-control environment you should start changing things to achieve lasting success. Start with the culture and the organisation and then move onto the people. Agility will not happen when scientific management prevails. The values and principles are diametrically opposed. Disband the command-and-control institutions and get rid of the traditional management mindsets. You need to be thinking of agile as a leadership mindset and an omnipresent culture that is built on trust, honesty and courage, and allows teams self-organise empowers people at the coal-face to make their own decisions facilitates collaboration, open communication and information sharing tolerates mistakes and encourages constant learning drives a continuous flow of business value to the customer energises people and creates a buzz seeks to eliminate waste and bureaucracy Create a place where people want to work. That said, agility will not happen without the right people. Given long enough, I'm convinced a command-and-control will create theory-X people. You want theory-Y people who have the right mix of talent and integrity to get things done. Don't have people tell other people what to do. Ask people to make commitments to one another about their work and what they will deliver. And ask them to hold one another accountable to those commitments because delivering against commitments builds trust. Dissolve groups of people who are siloed according to their roles, e.g. QA, Architecture, Project Management, etc, and instead build cross-functional teams organised around single and coherent products or services. These teams should include all the necessary skills - programmers, testers, sysadmins, DBAs, etc - to make decisions, take immediate action and get things done. People in a team work together so colocate them. Give teams the space to succeed and trust them to get things done. Don't use managers. Find leaders who will facilitate teams, maintain focus on the big picture and common goals, and preserve the new culture. Without the vocal support and encouragement of executive management coupled with visible demonstration of adherence to common values and principles, an organisation will not commit to change.

We continue to make our bullpen a more informative workspace . Today we relocated our planning boards to make room for our new 32" screen. This replacing our 18" monitor showing the cruisecontrol dashboard and selenium test runs. I want to get picture-in-picture working so that we can radiate other information at the same time.

More fun and silliness in work. Today I bought Granny Racers from Maplin Electronics and installed it in our bullpen . Qualifying heats start tomorrow. Who'd have thought a granny in a wheelchair was inherently unstable at speed; must be the high centre of gravity and high profile. The wind factor when taking bends at speed makes them prone to flying off the track. They're also liable to get a wheel stuck at the chicane. Granny Racers Originally uploaded by sjb140470 .

In the think-tank at the APLN Leadership Summit we were asked, as agile practitioners what's keeping us up at night? I'll let these people answer for me: Tom DeMarco :

My new MacPro is a real beauty. My new MacPro Originally uploaded by sjb140470 .