OMS Consulting Partners, LLC

https://weisbart.com/flowchart “Leaders that adopt scrum due to its popularity, or to ‘make their teams go faster’ without a deep understanding of the organizational change required to be successful stand a very good chance of doing more harm than good.  Seriously… They’ll just end up like me in that  bad ScrumMaster video .” ~Adam Weisbart

A misguided 'coach' I once worked with presented an entire organization with a Power Point slide that said whatever the dictionary defines as 'agile' is 'good Agile'. I coach my teams and organizations to be aware of the difference between "little a" agile (the dictionary definition) vs. "big A" Agile (Agile mindset from the Agile Manifesto). Forbes and ScrumAlliance worded it well in their publication "The Elusive Agile Enterprise". AGILITY VERSUS AGILE agility A property of an organization to sense and respond to market changes and continuously deliver value to customers. Agile An organizational approach and mindset defined by the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, often practiced through a framework like Scrum.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask….”     -  Albert Einstein “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”     -  Abraham Lincoln

“To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcomes of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility.” - James Carse

Happy Boxing Day Agile-ists! It's pretty common practice to survey teams to help align and identify areas for improvement, but what about surveying leaders, managers and executives?  Maybe it's the egg nog, but had an idea, wanted to see what folks think about something like this??

It Only Took Jerry Seinfeld a Few Words to Drop the Best Career Advice You'll Hear Today Always remember: It's not about you. https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/it-only-took-jerry-seinfeld-a-few-words-to-drop-best-career-advice-youll-hear-today.html?cid=sf01003 If you're doing it for them, you'll be fine.  If you're doing it for you, that could be problematic at a certain point-- because they'll know it.  They'll feel it.   And they won't like it. Pondering Seinfeld's words, I believe they hold value far beyond the entertainment industry. And we could sum up the key point in just nine words: It is not about you. It's all about them. The power of focusing on others Think about your favorite boss, your closest colleagues, the best salesperson you ever met. What quality did they have in common? I bet it's their ability to put others' interests ahead of their own.

Disclaimer:  Do not lock your executives up in a vault!  Do not try this at home!  https://www.itnews.com.au/news/bankwest-shut-senior-leaders-in-a-vault-to-agree-on-agile-515499 Bankwest has revealed how it put 20 of its most influential and senior leaders in an old bank vault to get them onboard with agile and stop blocking its progress.

Being "Intellectually Honest" is not only a key Agile behavior, it's just good human behavior, and we can only coach the willing. Coaches and Scrum Masters - if you are starting to feel yourself slipping into "selling" Agile to your team or organization, you're probably in the wrong organization. Organizations - if your Coach/Scrum Master presents you with the facts and data and you are not convinced or at least willing to give it an honest try, you are probably a 'laggard' on the Rogers Adoption Curve , and you probably are not ready for Agile. And as far as 'selling' Agile, keep in mind that you can't want more for someone than they want for themselves, and if they don't see the value or feel this is the 'flavor of the month' management fad, no amount of selling will change that. "Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig" - Robert Heinlein

Interesting summary on Visual Capitalist on the subject... http://www.visualcapitalist.com/emotional-intelligence/?fbclid=IwAR1sQ883ftetU7fssIsCJJEgrNMTXFhrPRh5SDkp2gk008VYH_YfSk4Flr8

Although we "beat the servant leadership drum" quote a bit around here, it's such an important topic...

Thank you to one of my favorite new Agile-ists, David Perino for finding this one from our old friend from Forbes magazine, Steve Denning... https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/11/04/the-twelve-stages-of-the-agile-transformation-journey/#538633cb3dd4

Thanks to Nikola Cvetanovski for another reminder that being 'too busy' has become, in many places, a status symbol. When I train introductory Agile, I also share the slide shown below, and try to help people consider that it just might be better to make the hard choice of what is MOST important, focus on that, and do it right instead of trying to "serve too many masters"? What are your thoughts?

With apologies to William Shakespeare, here is a great short video from Geoff Watts on when Agile is a good approach, and when a traditional approach makes more sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ic1ZNx65rU&feature=youtu.be

Another guest contribution from Dan Greenberg... Should we be using Fibonacci, #noestimates, t-shirt sizing, or some other method for estimating work? How should we handle unplanned work? Who is responsible for testing? Should we point bugs? ________ is in getting in my way – remove the impediment, Scrum Master. Whose job is it to enforce that a team finish what they commit to? What does “Agile” say to do? Sound like a typical morning? These questions are probably familiar if you are serving in a Scrum Master or Agile Coach type role. Because our primary responsibility is to champion continuous improvement, we naturally find ourselves in situations that feel chaotic and out of control. I say – embrace the chaos. It’s a good thing. The fact that your team is thinking about these types of issues means they care and they are not complacent. The next step is to get them to own it. My role is to remind the team that Agile has no answers for any of the above quest...

"Culture eats strategy" "Once culture changes in the company everything happens fast." - Indra Nooyi - Pepsico CEO At the heart of any good Agile Transformation is cultural transformation. Or as Ken Schwaber said...

Weak leaders lock people into job descriptions. Strong leaders unlock people's full potential. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/weak-leaders-lock-people-job-descriptions-strong-full-vishnepolsky/ Excerpt: I was not qualified for my fist management job. I acted as such, and my team was not happy. I was too cautious to avoid mistakes and screw ups, and held my team back. My new boss called me into his office, and asked to close the door. He said - Oleg, I want you to make 5 significant mistakes a week. I was shocked. My boss was brilliant. He knew I needed to be liberated. Empowered, I went back and my team and I were set on fire. We launched first in the industry financial web site. We migrated clients to a new system. We moved data centers.

Wow... https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agile-coaching-hurting-dahm-m-hongchai

One of the 12 Agile principles relates to the importance of face to face communication. Here's a great article from the Agile Times referring to "Osmotic Communication" which is one of the advantages of being colocated. https://theagiletimes.com/osmotic-communication-uses-subconscious/ "...The principle behind osmotic transmission and absorption of team members’ conversations implies that we acquire knowledge even if we are not an active participant in any particular conversation . Much like a song playing in the background, even if you don’t know the name of the song, if heard regularly over time, you may just be able to know the melody or lyrics without even trying to memorize them. How this actually is made possible is explained through the way our minds work on a subconscious level ..."

Planning Fallacy is a formal term confirming that humans are - by nature - horrible at planning.  The further out the planning horizon, the worse the prediction. Optimism bias, low-balling to gain project approval and just the fact humans can't predict the future all reinforce the need for the small increment, inspect and adapt feedback loop mindset of Agile. Heres some intriguing info from our friends at Freakonomics on the subject... Why Are Your Projects Always Late (And over budget)? http://freakonomics.com/podcast/project-management/

"I think a lot of people just can’t get out of their own way. I think for a lots of companies and governments they would do better by giving people more freedom and they dont for whatever reason." - Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook founder

Radical transparency accomplishes two key things: 1.  It gets us leveraging our best part of us , our "upper level" 2.  It gets us maximizing the most and best thoughts of ALL of us for the best outcome from the best parts of all of us. The result is we put away our egos and the burden of heroism and as a group make the best decisions. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519?mt=2&i=1000408464664 http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ray-dalio/

Just recently bumped into the concept of "decision latency", which Agile is built to combat when used correctly... First, a rough definition:  T he longer you take to respond to new data, business events, the less value there is in your response. Fast feedback loops, short work increments and regular inspection and adaption help keep decision latency to a minimum with Agile done well. Here's more info on the concept... https://ukcampaign4change.com/2012/03/07/why-prompt-decision-making-is-critical-to-the-success-of-it-projects/

Interesting quote from the founder of Wal-Mart - one of the lowest cost (and largest) but worst customer service retailers...

A fresh take on the Agile Manifesto by "new wave Agilist" Dan Greenberg... I am uncovering new philosophies of leadership, through experience, observation, and contemplation. Through functioning in a leadership role, I have come to value: Safety                            Over        Productivity Simplicity                       Over        Intelligence Doing What’s Right       Over        Fixing it Now Experimentation          Over        The Way We’ve Always Done It While there is value in the items on the right, I value the items on the left more. Metrics are for the team. Metrics should never leave the team. No one outside the team should ever look at a metric. Working software is the primary measure of progress. A releas...

Emotional Intelligence is a key to being the best Agilist you can be, including self awareness of mood. The "Mood Elevator" is a great tool to help you "get to curious"...

Turn the Ship Around! is the true story of how the USS Santa Fe skyrocketed from worst to first in the fleet by challenging the U.S. Navy's traditional leader-follower approach. No matter your business or position, you can apply Marquet's radical guidelines to turn your own ship around. The payoff: a workplace where everyone around you is taking responsibility for their actions, where people are healthier and happier, where everyone is a leader. https://youtu.be/OqmdLcyES_Q

Dan Dan the Scrum Master man strikes again! First off, you should celebrate the fact that you’ve created a safe enough space for a bitch session.   I’ll take a bitch session any day over an everything’s fine session.   Remember, the job of a Scrum Master is to create the container; the team creates the content.   You did not create the underlying issues the team is complaining about, unless they are complaining about you, which is entirely possible but I have a hunch is not the situation you are dealing with.   If that is going on, celebrate twice because not only does your team feel safe, they feel safe enough around you to complain about you. When I hold retrospectives, my number one priority is creating the safety for team members to share openly and honestly with one another.   To do this, I employ set the stage type activities and pay close attention to my body language and the manner in which I am participating throughout the meeting.   C...

From a long time business associate and very wise man, Dmitry Goykhman... These social rules of thumb can help us understand any large organization better... Robert Conquest: 1) Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. 2) Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. 3) The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. Parkinson: I) Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. II) Officials want to multiply subordinates, not rivals. III) Officials make work for one another.

  More from Scrum Master Dan... Working in so-called Agile-minded spaces for the better part of the past year, people always ask me “what does Agile say to do to make sure teams are accountable for their work?” and quite frankly I’m insulted by that question. First off, Agile is a set of four values and twelve principles.  It’s a mindset, a philosophy, a way of thinking.  In the  Spine Model , agility pertains to values and principles and not practices or tools. Agile principle # 5 says “Build projects around motivated individuals.  Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” So let me give all of you the answer to the question “How do I hold my team accountable?” --> Trust them and get out of their way.

How can you get better, more productive, more dedicated, harder working employees for less money?  CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility studies show people will work harder with better performance for 27% less pay for companies that have a "transcendent" mission/vision. Why?  Because people want a job that has meaning, not just a place to earn a paycheck.  Here's more on the topic from the Freakonomics Podcast... "Is Good Corporate Citizenship also Good for the Bottom Line?" http://freakonomics.com/tag/csr/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-want-loyal-employees-stop-making-things-so-brigette-hyacinth/