Troubleshooting Agile

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 Leadership Conversations"! SHOW LINKS: - Argyris's two column case study: https://blog.benjaminm.net/2011/02/16/argyriscasestudylearningmodelii/ https://hbr.org/1986/09/skilled-incompetence - Dr. David Burns's Interpersonal model & relationship journal https://feelinggood.com/2017/10/16/057-interpersonal-model-and-its-all-your-fault-part-4/ https://feelinggood.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/rj-revised-v-1c-dvl-v-1.pdf - Our SkillsMatter talk on 19 March: https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/11800-leadership-matters *** 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

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 to act in unintuitive ways and discover new possibilities you wouldn't have thought of. The same is true of learning to have the difficult conversations you need to improve your agile team - you can listen to us all you want, but you'll need to try (and fail!) to really master the methods. We get started on some methods for effective practise, including the use of a feeling chart, with more to follow in the next episode. Join us in London on 19 March for our talk on "Sprinting In Place: The Cost of Missing Leadership Conversations"! SHOW LINKS: - Jeffrey's blog post on the piano analogy: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2015/06/07/the-piano-analogy-some-practice-required/ - London Organisational Learning meetup: https://www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/ - NVC 4-part process: https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/aboutnvc/4partprocess.htm - NVC feelings inventory: https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory - Our SkillsMatter talk on 19 March: https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/11800-leadership-matters *** 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

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 coherent stories. Join us in London on 19 March for our talk on "Sprinting In Place: The Cost of Missing Leadership Conversations"! SHOW LINKS: - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576 - Our SkillsMatter talk on 19 March: https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/11800-leadership-matters *** 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

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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y - The Uncanny Valley of A Functional Organization: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/ - Satir curve (J-curve): http://dhemery.com/articles/managing_yourself_through_change/ - Tic Tac presentation (Fredrick/Cockburn): http://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/sdbp06tictactalk.pdf - Six Thinking Hats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats *** 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

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.youtube.com/watch?v=mhDBWiTfNCU - The Uncanny Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley - The Uncanny Valley of A Functional Organization: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/ *** 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

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, indicators of team success - so you can't improve them directly with bigger bonuses or tougher objectives. Instead alignment, focus, and autonomy work to create these results by creating the conditions for happiness and good performance. SHOW LINKS: - Luke Tomas, The Employee Engagement Myth: medium.com/@lukethomas14/the-e…t-myth-3885526782d7 - Brian Marick, Ease and Joy at Work: exampler.com/ease-and-joy/ - Previous episode on technical excellence: Troubleshootingagile – Fowlers-state-of-agile-part-two - Reinventing Organisations (Teal and other colours): www.reinventingorganizations.com/ - Theory X and Theory Y: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y - Daniel Pink, Drive (video): www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc - Niko Niko: www.agilealliance.org/glossary/nikoniko/ - Small Improvements: www.small-improvements.com/ - Joy, Inc : www.menloinnovations.com/joyinc/ - Joy At Work: www.dennisbakke.com/joy-at-work *** 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: itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troub…d1327456890?mt=2

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 rubber chicken. 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 - Continuous Integration on a Dollar a Day (aka the Rubber Chicken): https://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Continuous-Integration-on-a-Dollar-a-Day.html - IMVU continuous deployment: http://timothyfitz.com/2009/02/10/continuous-deployment-at-imvu-doing-the-impossible-fifty-times-a-day/ - CITCON (Continuous Integration and Testing Conference): https://citconf.com/ *** 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

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