Aggregation of the Best Agile Coach Posts & Blogs on the Web
In my user stories book and in all my training and conference sessions on user stories I advocate writing user stories in the form of:
“As a , I want so that .” While I consider the so-that clause optional, I really like this template. At a conference, someone asked me why. Because I get that question fairly often, I want to give three reasons why here:
Continue reading here:
The early founders of the ‘agile movement’ we’re just people who had been involved in solution development and just spent time thinking about how they could do their jobs better. They spoke plainly and tried to use basic concepts that could guide their decision making and be repeatable.
Often in our daily lives we will tend to try to make ourselves look ‘smart’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘technical’, ‘innovative’ and so on. usually to do this, we end up sounding like a lawyer or a professor from university.
On a recent trip, I had a chance to speak to farmers from another country. In the US, we tend to see farming as a science now. We use chemicals and computers and computer modeling.
As I spoke with these farmers they told me of how important weather was to them, and their planning. The weather, or bad weather, could risk crops, animals and harvests as well as have negative and ripple effects on other planning. In fact, they spent so much time telling me about the weather it was easy to see this information was extremely important to them and they would not risk getting it from a trusted source.
Interestingly, as the weather report came on the radio in the shop I was in, I noticed no one paid attention to the radio broadcast. I found this really odd, as a tourist I was very interested in the weather too, and while I strained to hear and understand what was being said, they went about their business.
I asked the shop operator if he could help me by explaining some of the terms used in describing the weather better. The operator, in a heavy accent, said ‘Nye’, if you want the weather accurately don’t listen to that ‘Uni’ TV guy, call up the postman.
Without a translator, I felt lost. Why would I ask the man who delivered the mail about the weather? Did he get some special piece of information possibly controlled by the government to ensure mail delivery? Was this kept secret from people who’s lives and livelihoods depended on it? Why weren’t these farmers annoyed and alarmed? It was very confusing.
As I returned to the tour bus I asked the local guide about this odd conversation. The following is how it was explained to me, without the heavy accents and as little folklore as I can use!!
The local farmers had for years complained about the weather reports in the area. They had become so frustrated with the accuracy that they even tried to remove the weatherman on the ‘telly’. He used to ouch science and words to make simple things complex and accuracy and precision were lost as he tried to impress with his explanation of ‘how’ weather was forming rather than getting the predictions correct and timely. This problem lead to the ‘need’ for someone to step in and solve this problem. Enter the ‘Postman’
Every day, after dropping the mail, a local man would go home and consult several pieces of information and create a file for the next day. The file predicted sunrise and sunset, chances of rain, El Niña, La Niña etc, winds and interestingly the tides, and predicted time times, as well as previously reported reports for the dates and accuracy of the reports. Lastly of course was the high and low temps.
This man was not university educated, but rather spent time improving his craft through basic plan, do, check and adjust cycles. Over time, he had become a local celebrity. His passion for accurate weather reports, and experimentation with his own beliefs about what impacted weather lead him to form his own set of experiences and learnings. He didn’t allow what he had been taught to always direct his reports, but instead spent time continuing to learn and adapt this thinking. The goal was not the report, the goal was improving his own accuracy, incrementally, over time.
As I listened to the story I thought how agile of this man. He took his simple principles and followed them, and then applied the data he had to make his next set of predictions about the outcomes. He then recorded the outcomes, made notes about how his predictions had come out, then add any adjustments he felt necessary, repeated the process. Maybe that is really Agile, not agile.
What is your experience? Are you being asked and are you doing, the right thing, right?
In many organization when they decide to do an agile transformation it is typically to do either a process swap or ‘agile’ or scrum for waterfall. Usually this is done with the noble goal of producing ‘business agility’. The transformation should not be about the business, it should be about the people.
This misrepresentation is part of the common fallacy that causes many organizations to fail in their efforts or to get outcomes that do not measure up to their original business objectives. This false objective causes organizations to focus their efforts on the wrong things. The transformation should not be about the business, it should be about the people. In the end, businesses are not agile, they can only employ people that embrace and exhibit agility. These false objectives stem from some common misconception that process and discipline are the same thing and that discipline and agility are at odds with each other.
Webster’s dictionary defines these notions as follows:
Discipline:
Process:
Agility:
Clearly business cannot be nimble. It is a collection of people and processes, nothing more. However, the people can exhibit agility and cause the direction of the business and the activities of the business to exhibit the dexterity we associate with people. To achieve that, we must concentrate on the discipline of the people, not the processes that control the business.
Agile is about people and unleashing their creativity and passions to drive outcomes. Processes deliver consistent outcomes, agility drives unexpected outcomes that are directed to the objectives that are desired. Discipline allows agility to learn in a consistent fashion that creates incremental and sometimes extraordinary increases on outcomes.
For a long time in IT we have sought to gain efficiency improvements in a very consistent way. This approach fueled IT growth for a long time, but produced minor year over year gains but never really unleashed the significant efficiencies that can be delivered by the discipline associated with minor adjustments to how outcomes are achieved usually individual creativity and passion.
The connection between agile and discipline is very strong and the very best agile teams consistently use very disciplined approaches to their work so when outcomes deviate, they can trace the deviation, good or bad, to the trigger and can maintain very high confidence in how those outcomes were achieved, and repeat them or improve them.
Ultimately discipline, not process, is what allows agility, in people and in turn, businesses. Your focus on doing the right things right is what will enable and unleash your agility.
A group of graduate students did a very bizarre experiment. They took lab rats and put them in a tank of water and placed the tank in a totally dark room. They went into the adjoining room and monitored them with video equipment. The rats swam for almost six hours before giving up and drowning. The students then took another set of lab rats and put them in a tank of water and placed that tank in a room where there was a small lamp. Their hypothesis was that the light would give the rats hope and they would survive longer. As it turns out, the rats swam almost 17 hours. Much longer than the rats in total darkness. Something about the light enabled them to survive longer.
The above experiment illustrates we always have a choice on how to deal with change and demonstrates what happens when we choose to find hope in situations that may initially appear hopeless. Change is the only constant. As we deal with the recent organizational changes there may be a tendency to give up on hope rather than seek out the new opportunities it offers. The Agile Transformation activities, another change opportunity, is about enabling us to respond to, instead of reacting to, change. The distinction is captured by Steven Covey in the First Habit:
| HABIT 1 : BE PROACTIVE |
| Your life doesn’t just “happen.” Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear. Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results.
Habit 1: Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can’t keep blaming everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able.” They don’t blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they choose their behavior. Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power–you have the freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you say. Your language is a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses proactive language–I can, I will, I prefer, etc. A reactive person uses reactive language–I can’t, I have to, if only. Reactive people believe they are not responsible for what they say and do–they have no choice. Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas–Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence. Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern–things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive. |
Is the Sun coming up or going down?
Last weekend we saw the NFL coaching staff on the sidelines dressed in camouflage and other clothing that celebrated the military, in recognition of the sacrifices made by Veterans as well as to celebrate Veteran’s Day.
With the Veteran’s Day in mind, the focus this week is on servant leadership … there is no greater demonstration of servant leadership than the service to one’s own country.
What is servant leadership?
Skip Prichard notes that a Servant Leader is one who:
In summary, servant leadership is about putting the needs of others first and helping people develop and perform to their highest potential. In the Agile world we look to the role of Scrum Master to be a beacon of servant leadership. The Scrum Master puts the team needs first and has the responsibility for protecting the team from external noise that may distract from the planned activities for value delivery while also fostering their growth and development.
Writer James Hunter explains how to become or hone your Servant Leadership approach in a book titled: The Servant Leadership Training Course. In his book he states:
He describes Leaders such as Ghandi, Dr. King, Mother Teresa and others. As you read the information below see if you agree that these people served others, and also led them. Then ask yourself if you do.
Hunter breaks Servant Leadership into three critical areas: Skill, Influence, Character
Leadership is the skill of influencing people to enthusiastically work towards goals identified as the common good, with character that inspires confidence!
The United States Marine Corps defines leadership as:
If you are interested in learning more about how to become a better servant leader, or you think you are ready to help, please let us know!
Thanksgiving is celebrated this week.
The origins of the holiday provide us a great way to view the important work we do every day for delivery of additional value to our customers; internal and external, and how the agile mindset of continuous improvement and learning facilitates that.
The story goes:
In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could freely practice their faith and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World. After a treacherous and uncomfortable crossing that lasted 66 days, they dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, far north of their intended destination at the mouth of the Hudson River. One month later, the Mayflower crossed Massachusetts Bay, where the Pilgrims, as they are now commonly known, began the work of establishing a village at Plymouth.
Throughout that first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from an Abenaki Indian who greeted them in English. Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping to London and returning to his homeland on an exploratory expedition. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans.
In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days. While no record exists of the historic banquet’s exact menu, the Pilgrim chronicler Edward Winslow wrote in his journal that Governor Bradford sent four men on a “fowling” mission in preparation for the event, and that the Wampanoag guests arrived bearing five deer. Historians have suggested that many of the dishes were likely prepared using traditional Native American spices and cooking methods. Because the Pilgrims had no oven and the Mayflower’s sugar supply had dwindled by the fall of 1621, the meal did not feature pies, cakes or other desserts, which have become a hallmark of contemporary celebrations.
The lesson of the pilgrims is shared by farmers and others today. In order to harvest and get your bounty, you must invest in the time. ‘You reap what you sow’ is the saying. In that simple wisdom is the thought behind continuous improvement and the agile philosophy of ‘lifelong learning’
Every day we get a chance to take small risks, learn new things and invest in ‘sharpening our saws’. For this Thanksgiving we offer you the ‘seeds’ you can harvest next year.
Below are several opportunities for you to improve yours skills or learn new ones, many for free. In today’s competitive marketplace everyone has to control their own personal development plan, you have to seek new opportunities and challenges and you have to embrace change for your own competitive advantage! Feel free to share your own learning spaces! Remember when you make anyone on your team better, we all get better, and provide better results!
This post wishes everyone a great and SAFE Thanksgiving and hopefully the seeds for a successful harvest next year!
Enjoy your holiday!
Packt offers FREE technology books:
https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning
EDX offers free courses or you can pay a fee for some certifications:
The Khan Academy offers many types of free learning:
The Microsoft Virtual Academy offer many free trainings: