winning the agile race · 2019-12-16 · winning the agile race stop watching the runner and pay...

Winning the Agile Race

Stop watching the runner and pay attention to the baton!

Jay Packlick @jpacklick [email protected]

Erik G. H. Meade @public_eghm [email protected]

Me – Jay Packlick �  Traveler �  Guitar Player �  Nerd

The Agile Race

�  Change the context �  Goals and Priorities �  Structure �  Culture

Scrum! (1.21 gigawats)

Leadership Improvement

Style, Vision, Strategy, priorities, budget, portfolio

Culture Improvement

Language, rituals, values, assumptions

Structure Improvement

Org, roles, jobs

Process Improvement

What’s The Question?

What’s the activity? What’s the baton (decision)? Breakdown tasks

Update product backlog (write stories) Plan the release Plan the iteration

Write acceptance criteria Daily Standup

Scrum of Scrums Create UI Wire-Frames

Iteration Demo Retrospect

Refactor Code

What is agility?

Agility is the ability to quickly and effectively make, verify, and revise

decisions to achieve a desired outcome

�  Should we pursue this line of business? �  Should we update, rewrite, or buy? �  How much should we offer to acquire our competitor AgileSoft? �  What’s the ROI? �  When should we start the project? �  Which vendor will best satisfy our needs? �  What should we include in the first release? �  How do we determine ‘done’ for this User Story? �  What stories should we include in this iteration? �  Should we implement this in Java or Ruby? �  How many servers are we going to need? �  Should we lift the hiring freeze to bring in a Grails expert? �  What’s the best way to break this Epic down? �  What should we name this class?

We are in the business of making decisions

“Once we shift to considering decisions as the items being handed from person to person, gathered into larger and larger assemblies, then suddenly, there is a very real parallel between design and manufacturing.”

Decisions are units of work

– Alistair Cockburn, What engineering has in common with manufacturing and why it matters - Humans and Technology Technical Report HaT TR 2006.04, Sept 6, 2006.

In the Agile race…

decisions are the batons

Ask a silly question… get a lousy outcome

A problem well stated is a problem half solved (Charles Kettering)

Are we on schedule?

How far off schedule are

we?

Bob, what change are we making (to scope,

schedule, etc.) so that we can achieve our release

goals?

Smart (high leverage) questions clarify and foster: " Ownership " Mindfulness " Action " Purpose

Ask A Smarter Question Get A Better Baton

Bob, what changes are we making (to scope,

schedule, etc.) so that we can achieve our release

goals?

What are we most afraid of?

4

Bad Decisions

" The CFO wants to know how much the project is going to cost and the CIO wants to know how long

" The team working with the product owner has created a backlog of over 180 user stories

" Nathan, the scrum master, gets the extended team together (all 12) to use planning poker to estimate the backlog

" Nathan comes to you after the first day and warns that it will take at least 5 days to provide an estimate

" What can Nathan and the rest of the team do to get the baton to the finish line sooner?

Move The Baton! Scenario 1

Pampered Decision

“Being right is highly overrated. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbch

!! !! !! !!

!! !! !! !!

!! !! !!

!! !! !! !!

Decide how to decide

High

Low

Cost / Delay

Unilateral

Participative

Democratic

Consensus

Ask: Which decision model will best

enable us to get to a solution?

!! !! !! !!

!! !! !! !!

!! !! !!

!! !! !! !!

What should I name that variable? foo or bar?

Low High

High

Low

Cost / Delay

Impact / Payoff

Unilateral?

Consensus?

!! !! !! !!

!! !! !! !!

!! !! !!

!! !! !! !!

Should we buy Instagram?

Low High

High

Low

Cost / Delay

Impact / Payoff

Unilateral?

Participative?

" Our team has finished less than half of the stories planned in the last 4 iterations

" There are 5 iterations left planned in the project " Half the stories in the backlog lack estimates " Nobody has raised any flags about meeting the

release goals " You’re the director; what batons are being dropped?

What smart questions might you ask to help the team win the game?

Move The Baton! Scenario 2

4:15

“Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan”

Orphan and Neglected Decisions

?!!

RAPID™ – A Role Refactoring Tool

Recommend generates options

Decide who has the ‘D’?

Perform acts on decisions

Inform provides information

Agree approves recommendations

Who Has the D?: How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance – Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko Harvard Business Review Jan 2006

Decide 4 Things: 1.  What’s the question? 2.  Who’s going to answer it? 3.   Who’s going to ask it? 4.  When (how often) are we going to ask?

Adopt An Orphan!

�  Aruna’s boss wants her to cut the company’s site deployment cycle time (UAT, regression, approvals, production load, etc.) by at least half

�  The process has evolved over years and is highly reliable although highly cumbersome

�  ‘Naturally’, the process depends on many groups and stakeholders: security, QA, etc.

�  It’s taking forever to get everyone to agree on a strategy �  Aruna can only get critical contributors to meet for an hour every few weeks �  Contributors cancel at the last minute �  The conversations aren’t terribly productive as old ground is covered and pet

interests are discussed �  As Aruna’s leader, what can you do to help get the baton to the finish line sooner?

What can Aruna do?

Move the baton: Scenario 3

Fragmented Decision

1 hr

2 weeks 1 week 2 weeks

1 hr 1 hr 1 hr

Effort Delay

This never happens….. Right?

"Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing" --Lao Tzu

Defragment Decisions

Stop wasting time in meetings: Decide how to decide

1.  Ask: What question are we trying to answer? 2.  Ask: How are we going to decide?

(participative, democratic, consensus) 3.  Ask: Who has the D?

Stop Trying To Hit Me And Hit Me

Learning To See the Baton Visualizing Agility

Perfect World!

% Time

Effort Delay

= 100% ‘Agility’ 6 days effort 6 days duration

Effort = Duration

Not so perfect…. % Time

Effort Delay

Duration = 19 days

= 30% Agility 6 days effort 19 days duration

Effort = 6 days

Parasitic Delay

= Decision Agility* Effort Duration

“Agile is the art of eliminating delay” – Alan Shalloway

Observe

Orient

Decide

Act / Test

* a.k.a. ‘PCE’– Process Cycle Time

Reduced Delay = Increased Agility

Duration = 14 days

= 43% Agility 6 days effort 14 days duration

Effort = 6 days

% Time

Effort Delay

Watching The The Batons

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

1.1 1.2

Agility

Agility

Refactor problem decisions " Orphans " Fragmented " Delayed

Strategies To Win The Agile Race

Frame decisions with smart questions that clarify and promote: " Ownership " Mindfulness " Action " Purpose

Decide how to decide " Decide who using

R.A.P.I.D.™ " Decide how: unilateral,

participative, democratic, consensus

Leaders

Vision, Goals, priorities, budget, support

Paving the road to Agility includes..

Culture

Language, rituals, values, assumptions

Structure

Org, roles, jobs

Process

STRUCTURE: What changes to our organizational structure are we making to reduce delays in getting decisions made?

Some Missing Batons

CULTURE (values) What are we doing to focus on throughput rather than utilization?

Some Missing Batons

LEADERSHIP: What are we doing to make decision flow a priority in our organization?

Some Missing Batons

What critical decisions aren’t we making? What questions should we be asking that we’re not? " Our Leaders? " Our Teams? " Ourselves?

What Else?

Leaders: What you ask matters

(and what you don’t ask matters too)

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change” – Eckhart Tolle

Agility is the ability to quickly and effectively make, verify, and revise decisions to achieve a desired

outcome

" Decide and Deliver: Five Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization - Marcia Blenko , Michael C. Mankins

" Smart Questions: Learn to Ask The Right Questions For Powerful Results - Gerald Nadler, William Chandon

" Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin Of Error – Kathryn Schultz " Product Development FLOW – Second Generation Lean Product

Development – Donald Reinertsen " Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

– Tom Demarco " Managing The Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of

Complexity - Karl Weick, Kathleen Sutcliffe " Individuals and Interactions An Agile Guide –Ken Howard, Barry Rogers

Suggested Reading

Jay Packlick @jpacklick [email protected]

Erik G. H. Meade @public_eghm [email protected]

Winning the Agile Race Stop watching the runner and pay attention to the baton!

winning the agile race · 2019-12-16 · winning the agile race stop watching the runner and pay...

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