Troubleshooting Agile

How are you briefing your team? What measurements are you using to help them learn? Today, we discuss cases where giving the team incentives to make more mistakes produces positive results, and others where urging them to make fewer is catastrophic. SHOW LINKS: - Andon cord: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andon_(manufacturing) - Toyota Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Homepage.html - NT...

Today we describe a technique for avoiding micromanagement and promoting autonomy - first pioneered by the Prussian military! We describe how briefing and back briefing help Boeing build airplanes and how the method increases efficiency and reduces drama in the agile teams we work with. SHOW LINKS: - Art of Action by Bungay: http://www.stephenbungay.com/Books.ink - Boeing weight economy: in https:...

Today we relate three great stories we heard or told at CITCON in Ghent, all starting with different answers to Jeffrey's question, "Why can't we ship that today?" The answers lead us to different suggestions for helping teams to move faster and get customer feedback. SHOW LINKS: - Value stream mapping: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-stream_mapping - CITCON notes: https://citconf.com/wiki/ind...

After the Mutual Learning and Unilateral Control models, this week we examine one more model for working with your team, perhaps the easiest: giving up! This one feels the best, since everyone is involved and gets to express his or her feelings. But unsurprisingly, giving up control means you give up valuable information that could help you make a better decision. SHOW LINKS: - Giving Up Control a...

After our series on mutual learning values, we look at those of an alternative, the Unilateral Control Model, which match our default behaviour but don't normally lead to the type of learning your team is probably looking for. We look at why convincing others usually doesn't work and welcome Al Pacino for a brief cameo. SHOW LINKS: - Unilateral Control article by Roger Schwarz: http://www.schwarza...

Third in our series on using the Mutual Learning Model to improve your agile team. We look at accountability as a frightening prospect and as a route to ease at work (thanks Kent Beck). Then we consider how you might benefit from compassion - not only for your team and stakeholders, but also for leaders and for yourself. SHOW LINKS: - 8 Behaviours for Smarter Teams: https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/a...

Agile teams do better, we find, when they are transparent ("here's what I did last sprint") and curious ("what business problem are you trying to solve?"). Most people we meet claim they are both transparent and curious in their conversations and processes - but usually their actual behaviour when there's something at stake is very different. We introduce a 2x2 matrix that can help you measure whe...

First of a series on using the Mutual Learning Model to get better results in your agile team. Today, why informed choice can help us avoid mistakes as minor as missing a requirement or as major as launching a rocket with a fatal flaw. SHOW LINKS: - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team - 8 Behaviours for Smarter Teams: https://www.csu.edu.a...

When your team talks about "what the business wants", do they know who they mean? Do they have evidence for the wishes of this amorphous group? It's impossible to negotiate with an undefined entity, but we offer some not-too-surprising ideas for making progress and discovering the real needs of "the business". SHOW LINKS: - XP Explained: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extreme-Programming-Explained-Embra...

Triggers and Tells We explain how to use observations of your own and others' behaviour to understand how to improve your conversations and get better agile results! SHOW LINKS: - Previous episode on learning from observations: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/learning-through-case-studies-the-4-rs - Previous episode on "why" as a trigger: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/why...

In response to Michael Bolton's comment on last week's episode, we discuss genuine questions, reminding yourself to be curious, and converting your internal "why" to a more constructive question. SHOW LINKS: - Tweets from Michael Bolton and Brian Deyo: https://twitter.com/michaelbolton/status/1111083757971345413 and https://twitter.com/briandeyo/status/1111252749658869760 - Chris Voss, Never Split...

What Happens After Why Last week we explained how asking the simple question “why?” can help you make big improvements in your agile team - and this week we prove it, with two examples from Jeffrey. In one case his company landed a big client, and in the other an angry person actually listened to him! Hear more in this week’s episode! SHOW LINKS: - David Burns, the disarming technique: https://dav...

In which we meet Squirrel's client Mr. Why, who wants to know the reasoning behind requests he gets but never actually asks, and we describe how this pattern holds back agile teams and how to break out of it. Surprisingly, lawyers feature prominently in this episode, as both positive and negative examples of effective "why" communication! SHOW LINKS: - Lawyers don't ask "why?": https://aqrlaw.ca/b...

Last week we emphasised the importance of practise to help you have better agile conversations and negotiations, and this week we describe two ways to practise - Argyris's two-column case studies and Dr. Burns's relationship journal - and a framework to use with both: record, reflect, revise, and roleplay. Join us in London on 19 March for our talk on "Sprinting In Place: The Cost of Missing Leade...

Today, we explain that when you learn a new skill - whether it's playing the piano, kitesurfing across a lake, or negotiating with others inside and outside your agile team - it's vital to practise to develop your abilities. Don't jump onto the double black diamond run the first time you hit the slopes; instead, find a coach and watch her carefully as she goes down the mountain first. You'll learn...

Your brain has two halves - not called left and right, but System 1 and System 2. Today we explain how these two halves of your own brain wind up fooling you and your team into believing things like "New York decided to do this", "customers don't want that feature", and "the business won't let us write tests" - and what you can do to keep your brain from tricking you into believing suspiciously co...

The agile principles talk about empowerment and autonomy, but do we have to make a complete switch from our current centralised-decision culture to a fully autonomous one? The Satir curve, six thinking hats, and a theory of Tic Tac change (really!) from Jeffrey and Alistair Cockburn, shows us a way to make a series of small changes rather than one big shift. SHOW LINKS: - Theory X and Theory Y: ht...

Theory X organisations don't trust their people - or do they? To be agile we have to move our organisations to a Theory Y model with empowerment and autonomy - or do we? Organisational change has to be painful - or does it? And what does all this have to do with creepy robots? SHOW LINKS: - Theory X and Theory Y: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y - J Jonah Jameson: https://www.yo...

Due to illness and travel, Jeffrey and Squirrel present one of their greatest hits of the past! *** Squirrel and Jeffrey look at a recent article by Luke Tomas on the "employee engagement industry" (we didn't even know it *was* an industry!) Jeffrey rapidly links this to Brian Marick's idea of Ease and Joy at work and we all agree that engagement, happiness, and joy are all useful, but lagging, in...

The US Defense Department (yes, the huge bureaucratic government body) recently released a brief and readable guide to troubleshooting your agile team. We have a look at three more of its key recommendations for figuring out whether you're agile team is really agile - which leads us to discuss when software developers should wield soldering irons and how continuous integration is better with a rub...

The US Defense Department (yes, the huge bureaucratic government body) recently released a brief and readable guide to troubleshooting your agile team. We have a look at three of its six key recommendations for figuring out whether you're agile team isn't really agile - which leads us to discuss what end-users really are and why financial traders are so insane. SHOW LINKS: - Detecting Agile BS: ht...

Once you've been vocally critical and identified areas to improve in your agile team, what next? "We should" too often turns into "We won't", so good intentions aren't enough. Jeffrey tells the story of teaching TDD and the tools he learnt and developed to foster internal commitment to change - paradoxically, this involves questioning whether the change is actually worth doing! SHOW LINKS: - SPIN...

Inspired by a listener comment, we look at one of Amazon's leadership principles, which describes how leaders are expected to earn trust in that organisation. It seems to us that the principle lays the foundation for effective psychological safety for the avoidance of error, but there are some traps to watch out for on the way to that end. SHOW LINKS: - Amazon leadership principles: https://www.am...

In our one-year anniversary episode, we start with a story about "flickering" tests and generalise to look at the idea of normalisation of deviance. We suggest that psychological safety lets you hear from those who see the deviance but aren't speaking up, with examples from oil rigs, and tie to pair programming as a way to create a safe environment for reiterating agreed non-deviant behaviour. SHO...

We've been talking about building trust in agile teams by aligning your stories; an important ingredient for this is being predictable, so others can believe you actually have a story they can align with. We tell an extended story about a developer with a severely misaligned story and how Squirrel's route to trust with him included crawling around on the floor reconfiguring cables. SHOW LINKS: - A...