Troubleshooting Agile

Why listen to team members and peers when your feelings and behaviours are obviously justified? We continue our how-to series on undermining your agile team with two stories about people who, believing they are clearly correct about how to improve their agile teams, move to shut down communication and manipulate the environment to ensure their approaches are adopted - with, predictably, zero internal commitment from the rest of the team. SHOW LINKS: - Roger Schwarz on unilateral control: http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/ - Jeffrey's "Frustrated? It's Probably Your Fault" session: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2015/07/18/video-frustrated-it-is-probably-your-fault/ - Model I characteristics: http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and *** 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

Another in our top tips for ensuring your agile team does not achieve its goals - assume you have pure motives and others are actively malicious. We describe several helpful biases that, if adopted, can help you take up this mindset, and describe a founder duo with negative beliefs about each other who had mastered the art of "Getting to No" - until they read Fisher/Ury and discovered they actually had a common interest and positive motives. SHOW LINKS: - Roger Schwarz on unilateral control: http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/ - Geoff Watts Top Ten Agile Podcasts: https://twitter.com/geoffcwatts/status/1057310923218698241 - Biases: Bias blind spot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot , Negativity bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias , and naïve cynicism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_cynicism - Getting To Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_to_Yes *** 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

More this week on ways to fail with agile by making unilateral assumptions - this week's tip is to believe you are right and everyone else is wrong. In fact, even the underlying assumption that there is a single right answer should get you a long way to fracturing your team and ensuring discord. Squirrel tells a story of someone particularly skilled at explaining why he knows the One True Agile Way and Jeffrey recalls that Mark Twain quote about the problem being what you know that ain't so (and one thing that ain't so is that the quote is from Mark Twain!) SHOW LINKS: - Roger Schwarz on unilateral control: http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/ - Dan North: https://dannorth.net/ - Jon Allspaw on the root cause fallacy: https://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/02/10/each-necessary-but-only-jointly-sufficient/ - Twain's quote (or not): http://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-things-we-know-that-just-aint-so/ *** 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

Turning our usual subject on its head, this week we start a short series on how to make sure your team does NOT improve. The first assumption to this end: the belief that you understand the situation while others don't. The change that's needed is obvious; all you have to do is convince others to adopt it. Easily adaptable to kanban, scrum, SAFe, or any other method that seems (to you!) to be the solution to your problems. Try it today, and tune in to further episodes for more ways to ensure you don't succeed in making effective changes! SHOW LINKS: - How Unilateral Control Undermines Team Results and Relationships, Schwarz: http://www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-performance/how-unilateral-control-undermines-team-results-and-relationships-2/ - Naive realism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism *** 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

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: https://medium.com/@lukethomas14/the-employee-engagement-myth-3885526782d7 - Brian Marick, Ease and Joy at Work: http://exampler.com/ease-and-joy/ - Previous episode on technical excellence: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/fowlers-state-of-agile-part-two - Reinventing Organisations (Teal and other colours): http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ - Theory X and Theory Y: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y - Daniel Pink, Drive (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc - Niko Niko: https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/nikoniko/ - Small Improvements: https://www.small-improvements.com/ - Joy, Inc : https://www.menloinnovations.com/joyinc/ - Joy At Work: http://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: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

A Squirrel-only show since Jeffrey's away. Squirrel described the Post-It Factory Game which illustrates both work-in-progress limits and the more general notion of "Throughput over Utilisation" - as well as making your colleagues fall over themselves trying to produce blue squares at top speed. SHOW LINKS: Kanban by David Anderson: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402 Similar games to illustrate agile and kanban ideas: https://availagility.co.uk/resources/games/lego-flow-game/ https://www.agile42.com/en/training/kanban-pizza-game/ *** 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 (for now) in our series responding to Martin Fowler's State of Agile 2018 speech. This week we look at Fowler's third claim - that software projects should be replaced by software products - and go further, arguing that organising around user conversations is the key to a successful business outcome. SHOW LINKS: - Fowler on the State of Agile 2018: https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html - Commandos, Infantry, Police: https://devblog.timgroup.com/2013/07/24/invading-the-product-landscape-a-metaphor/ - Wardley mapping: https://medium.com/wardleymaps/doctrine-8bb0015688e5 *** 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 continue our series responding to Martin Fowler's State of Agile 2018 speech. This week we look at Fowler's second claim - that agile software development has forgotten that it's about software, and that technical excellence in practises like refactoring, testing, and architecting should be (but isn't) central to discussions of good agile practise. We agree with Fowler and go even further, arguing that we should be making the (strong) case for technical excellence as a source of business value - to make our products more flexible, easier to use, and more satisfying to users. SHOW LINKS: - Fowler on the State of Agile 2018: https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html - Marick on forgotten agile ideas: http://www.exampler.com/discipline-and-skill.html and http://www.exampler.com/blog/2007/05/16/six-years-later-what-the-agile-manifesto-left-out/ - Reinertsen, The Principles of Product Development Flow (cost of delay): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Product-Development-Flow-Generation/dp/1935401009 - Accelerate book: https://itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/ - Our previous episode on technical excellence and the agile principles: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/enhancing-agility-through-technical-excellence-and-good-design *** 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

Martin Fowler gives us lots to chew on in the form of a speech on the state of agile software development in 2018. We start a series responding to Fowler by examining the Agile Industrial Complex - proponents of the "one true way" of agile development and out-of-the-box methodologies - and why Squirrel thinks the buyers and sellers of these "solutions" are doomed to failure by their "Theory X" cultures. SHOW LINKS: - Fowler on the State of Agile 2018: https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html - Theory X and Theory Y: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y - The Military-Industrial Complex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex - Crossing the Chasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm - Cynefin Framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework - Community of Solutions and Community of Needs: https://theitriskmanager.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/communities-of-need-community-of-solutions/ - CITCON: http://citconf.com/

A listener asks us how we reconcile the perceived conflict between learning and design - if you're iterating fast, how can you also build solid, scalable architecture? With examples from OO and Domain-Driven Design, we describe how early agile adopters addressed this issue (and how the meaning of "design" has evolved), and then make suggestions for modern teams. SHOW LINKS: - Elephant Carpaccio: https://dzone.com/articles/elephant-carpaccio-user - OO design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_design - DDD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design *** 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