Troubleshooting Agile

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: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF - The Defense Innovation Board: https://innovation.defense.gov *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

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 selling book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SPIN-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/0566076896 - Previous episode on earning trust through vocal self-criticism: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/earning-trust-at-amazon - Previous series on unilateral control: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-to-fail-by-acting-unilaterally-part-i *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

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.amazon.jobs/en/principles - Ladder of inference annotated diagram: http://troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

Celebrate a year of insights with a discussion on the perils of normalisation of deviance in tech. Flickering tests lead to deeper issues that can mirror historical disasters. The conversation emphasizes the necessity of psychological safety, encouraging team members to voice concerns about risks. Pair programming is revealed as a powerful tool for enhancing team alignment and communication. Discover innovative strategies for fostering safety in high-risk environments like oil rigs, spotlighting the need for open dialogues and support.

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: - Argyris, Espoused Theory vs Theory in Use: http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Theories_of_action - Previous podcast on acting unilaterally: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-to-fail-by-acting-unilaterally-part-iv - Annotated Ladder of Inference diagram: http://troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf - Schwarz, Eight Behaviours for Smarter Teams: https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/917018/Eight-Behaviors-for-Smarter-Teams-2.pdf *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

We answer a listener question about standups for feature teams, but we think the problem is actually a larger one of disengagement. A common symptom is people sitting down for their standup (oxymoron alert!) We recommend some ways to overcome disengagement using Coherence Busting and the Ladder of Inference, tools we've been discussing on recent podcasts. SHOW LINKS: - Feature teams: http://featureteams.org - Ladder of Inference episodes: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/test-driven-development-for-people and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/introspection-with-the-ladder-of-inference - Coherence busting: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2016/04/08/coherence-busting-explained/ and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/removing-the-blame-frame *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

Last time we talked about sharing reasoning and building trust in your agile team using TDD for People, one way to use the Ladder of Inference. Today we look at how the Ladder can help you discover your own reasoning as well, to discover ways to promote mutual learning with your own behaviour. SHOW LINKS: - Top Business Podcasts for CEOs, from Fiona Anderson: https://www.rocktime.co.uk/insights/listen-and-learn-the-art-of-podcasting-for-ceos/ - The Ladder of Inference (annotated by Jeffrey): http://troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf - The London Organisational Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/ - Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

As promised, we start describing our favourite trust-building technique: the Ladder of Inference. Our take this week is on using the Ladder to understand someone else's reasoning and align your stories, creating trust as a foundation for further improvement in your agile team. Surprisingly, the experience of using the Ladder in this way is similar to Test-Driven Development: careful, understandable, small steps with confidence, and meaningful signals from both success and failure. SHOW LINKS: - Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003ELY7OW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 - The Ladder of Inference (annotated by Jeffrey): http://troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf - Cognitive biases book and more: https://youarenotsosmart.com/ - Schwarz on unilateral control (again!): http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/ - TDD for people video: https://www.douglassquirrel.com/how-i-work.html - Schwarz 8 behaviours (Paula/Ted are on page 4): https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/917018/Eight-Behaviors-for-Smarter-Teams-2.pdf *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

We start previewing the ideas in our forthcoming book on using conversations to improve your agile results. First up: why you need trust before you do anything else (including hold a standup, write unit tests, or move your desks together). Next week, a step-by-step technique to build trust. SHOW LINKS: - The first thing to build is trust, Brad Appleton: http://bradapp.blogspot.com/2005/02/first-thing-to-build-is-trust.html - Psychological safety: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2666999?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents - The story I'm telling myself: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2015/08/31/the-story-im-making-up/ - Naive realism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_%28psychology%29 and previous TA episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-to-fail-by-acting-unilaterally-part-i *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

We cap our five-part series on undermining your agile team with the pinnacle of ineffective behaviour: the belief that you are not contributing to the problem. Inaccurate estimates, useless meetings, directionless standups - so long as you're sure all these are entirely someone else's fault, you'll be sure never to fix them, and thus leave your team high and dry. Master this technique and never worry about having an effective team again! Bonus at the end on what's next for the podcast... SHOW LINKS: - Roger Schwarz on unilateral control: http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/ - Belief bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_bias - Emotional reasoning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_reasoning *** We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2