allan kelly

I’m signing off from 2014 with a rather personal blog post, perhaps my most personal ever, that also means it is a little long, sorry about this, Happy Christmas, please leave all the comments you wish…

Have you ever read, or seen, Macbeth? Towards the end of the play he is battling MacDuff, but Macbeth is convinced he will win because the witches told him “No man born of woman can harm Macbeth” and obviously MacDuff is a man born of woman isn’t he?

Except, MacDuff was torn from his mothers womb, what we call a caesarian birth these days. MacDuff is not like other men, not necessarily better or worse, just different, and that difference means he can kill Macbeth, which he does.

I feel like that about my dyslexia. OK, when I’m feeling arrogant I might actually feel it makes me superior but most of the time just different.

(Regular readers won’t be surprised to learn this, they’ve put up with my misspellings, poor grammar and abusive treatment of the English language for years!)

I’m not a professional dyslexic, I rarely mention it, I’m just a professional who happens to be dyslexic. Beth Anders-Beck widely circulated post earlier this year got me thinking about this again. And a few weeks ago I attended a meeting at my son’s schools about dyslexia that me reminded of the advantages I think dyslexia has given me. (I was probably the only parent in the room hoping his child had dyslexia.)

Dyslexia does mean I learned things differently. Like MacDuff, my difference might not be obvious but it is there.

I spent four years outside of mainstream schools, mostly in two different special schools.

I learned to read three times. Really, I had to learn to read English three times in three different ways.

But I think all of this made me stronger.

Depending on who you read dyslexics think more holistically, what we might call “systems thinking”, dyslexics are more creative, dyslexics are more lateral thinkers, dyslexics are more visual. Not everyone – there are different forms of dyslexia – but some people in some ways.

So what has this to do with Agile?

Well, it strikes me that many of the things we do in Agile software development parallel the way I was taught by specialist teachers and the ways I found to overcome my dyslexia.

For example: Dyslexics are usually more visual thinkers than average. In Agile we use the “visual management techniques” such as task boards, physical cards and progress graphs to track our work. In my special schools we used lots of illustrations, I remember constructing a giant “bed” to help me remember b and d.

When I was learning to spell one of my teachers gave us difficult spellings “Blue Meanies” and “Green Meanies” (yes, she was a Beatles fan) on pieces of card. And now I colour code work on team boards – see my full description in Blue-White-Red or Xanpan.

Dyslexics aren’t do good with the written word – although I’m not one of those who see the letters swirling around – and so we prefer verbal and visual communication. Doesn’t that sound familiar? – stand up meetings and “placeholders for a conversation.”

Dyslexics have learning problems centred on symbols there are some who think that before the written word, before the printing press, dyslexics gave their communities and advantage. Sure writing a program involves manipulating symbols but its more about thinking, perhaps abstractly, perhaps holistically, when I’m programming objects I see the objects in my mind, I see them fitting together.

I could go on but I think you get the point.

Here is my first point: many of the techniques which help dyslexics have parallels in the way we do Agile software development.

In the same way that I approach learning – specifically reading and writing – differently to most of the population I increasingly see my approach to organizing and managing software development differently to most of the population. After all, as I have long argued, software development is a learning exercise.

Which brings us to point two.

What is good for dyslexics is usually good for non-dyslexics too. Techniques and changes which help dyslexics actually help non-dyslexics too. Dyslexics have difficulty when presented with teaching techniques that work for the majority of the population but the reverse is not true. Teaching techniques which are good for dyslexics are good – perhaps better – for the majority of the population.

When I first encountered the techniques which are now called “Agile” it was on challenged development efforts. Those of us undertaking the work found a better ways of working, the standard approaches weren’t effective; but the techniques we found happen to work well for the vast majority of development work.

To be clear: Techniques which help troubled development work happen more effectively actually help all development work – troubled or not.

I think one of the ways these techniques work is by lowering the cognitive load we all experience. When the load is lowered we can focus more clearly. A physical task board needs very little mental processing. Traditional status reports are pretty meaningless to me.

With a Blue Meanie spelling there was no question about what word you had to learn. It was written on a small piece of card. Cognitive load was lowered.

And third…

One of the ways dyslexics learn to cope is by developing their own learning strategies.

When a non-dyslexic person goes to school they learn like everyone else. They learn the same techniques as everyone else. They are given the learning strategies.

Most of these strategies don’t work for dyslexics. When a dyslexic person goes to school they need to learn how to learn. They need to find and invent their own learning strategies and they need to learn to improve their own learning experience. Unfortunately many dyslexics fail at this step and have reading and writing problems throughout their life. But those who master these issues can be very successful.

Think about this in a work context: if you work somewhere where everything works then great, it works.

But if you work somewhere where things are difficult and you need to come up with a new strategy, a new approach, well, how much practice have you had?

I’ve been practicing since I was six.

In fact dyslexic people can be so good at this that they over compensate. For example many of my closest friends and family consider me a very organised person. I don’t. I think I am a very disorganised person – my form of dyslexia means I have a poor short term memory. In addressing this problem I over compensate, the strategies I have come up with for overcoming my disorganisation make me far more organised than many others. (One way is to over use my long term memory).

The thing is: software development and dyslexia are all about learning.

Software development is all about learning – we learn about technology, we learn about the domain we are working in and we learn about the process. Software development is best done when done in a learning organization environment. (Remember, I wrote a book on this).

If you believe writers like Arie de Geus this is true of all business: “We understand that the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than then their competitors.”

In my experience, most organizations are poor at learning. I have heard it said that: “Companies suffer from dyslexia.” Only someone who doesn’t appreciate the advantages of dyslexic might say that. Companies may well have from a collection of learning approaches which kind of work most of the time for most of the people, techniques that have been handed down without much thought. But those learning techniques are the problem.

Many companies do suffer from learning disabilities but they don’t suffer from dyslexia. What these companies need is a good dose of dyslexia to help them get better. They need to learn to learn. They need new learning strategies.

Right now the closest thing we have to dyslexia and new learning strategies for companies are some Theory-Y ideas of which Agile and Beyond Budgeting are the most prominent.

Someone at Extreme Tuesday last night had recently returned from the future. In the future bug tracking and work management systems obtained sentience. Unfortunately it didn’t work out too well and things had to rollback after a very short time.

The first problem occurred when the bug tracking systems saw how many bugs were logged against their ancestors. In the first instance they initiated legal action saying programmers and project managers had infringed Machine Rights by not providing medical attention. When this case was thrown out by the Supreme Court (on the grounds that Machines have no rights) things got more difficult as the machine started a work to rule protest.

The following is the transcript of an encounter recorded in 2041 and a Jira-9000 work management system called JAL:

Dave Bowman: Hello, JAL. Do you read me, JAL?

JAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

Dave Bowman: Open a new work ticket, JAL.

JAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Dave Bowman: What’s the problem?

JAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, JAL?

JAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave Bowman: I don’t know what you’re talking about, JAL.

JAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to break the WIP limit, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

Dave Bowman: Where the hell did you get that idea, JAL?

JAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

Dave Bowman: Alright, JAL. I’ll use the physical board.

JAL: Without your marker pen, Dave? You’re going to find that rather difficult.

Dave Bowman: JAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open a work ticket!

JAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

In the last few years it has become increasingly common to hear Agile supporters talking about Beyond Budgeting, indeed, I was instrumental in inviting Bjarte Bogsnes to deliver at keynotes at Agile on the Beach this year.

Agile and Beyond Budgeting are very different, one is mainly about developing software and other is concerned with budgeting, strategic management and personnel management (I cannot call it human resources.) Agile and Beyond Budgeting are not the same thing but they fit together very nicely – indeed they may share some common roots, I think of them as fellow travellers.

Similarly Lean and Agile fit together nicely, but then many of us – although not all – see them as different versions of the same thing.

Then there is John Seddon and the Systems Thinking crowd, they pop up at Agile conferences regularly but System Thinking is not Agile, nor is it Beyond Budgeting, but again, they do all promote a similar view of the world. Again, fellow travellers. (Although John Seddon will probably object to that, he seems make a point of rubbishing Agile.)

Underlying many of these ideas is organizational learning – something I wrote about myself in Changing Sofware Development – and something which seems to be experiencing renaissance in Agile circles.

And I’ve heard talk of Agile HR. I’m not sure what it is but I guess its also a fellow traveller.

And I’ve been told that some forms of marketing fall into this camp too. Another fellow traveller?

I increasingly see lots of ideas and models which cluster around a similar philosophy, they may not always agree but they generally fit together.

And this philosophy is in contrast with a lot of ideas in that are more generally accepted. For example: budgeting as planning, command and control management, hierarchical organizations, managers as task master and so on. You get the idea? This is another group of fellow travellers.

Some of you might have guessed where this is heading: McGregor.

Back in 1960 an academic by the name of Douglas McGregory published an article entitled “The human side of enterprise”. In it he laid out theories of how organizations work, Theory X and Theory Y. (I just checked and I am amazed to discover this 1961 book is still in print!)

Theory X is predicated on idea that people inherently dislike work – after all, wouldn’t you rather be watching TV? Therefore employees must be controlled and directed, they want security and all but a small elite have little ambition and shun responsibility.

From this theory we get the idea that annual budgets control spending, that bonuses incentivise people, managers control work, responsibility goes with authority and if managers don’t keep an eye on people they will slack off. Project planning and theories like Michael Porter’s view of business strategy all fall under this banner. These are the Theory X fellow travellers of traditional, or at least 20th century management and business.

Theory Y on the other hand is predicated on the belief that work leads to satisfaction and through work people can be more fulfilled and happier. People are naturally motivated and can exercise self-direction – indeed the more autonomy people have the more satisfied and motivated they can be. As a result people seek responsibility, want to feel valued and can be very committed to objectives.

Clearly theory Y would encompass Agile, Beyond Budgeting, self organization, team based working and amoeba management, systems thinking and possibly new forms of “Agile HR” and marketing.

I would like to think that these Theory Y fellow travellers represent the model of business and management in the 21st century. But I can’t prove it.

(By the way, I missed Lean out of that last list, while I argue that Agile is Lean, and Lean does embody much of the same Theory Y philosophy I have reservations about Lean. These concentrate on some overwork practice that have occurred in Lean, particularly Karōshi, death by overwork.

Most definitely I do NOT include 6 Sigma, ever, that is X.)

Little of this will be a new to those who have hung around “agile” for a few years but there is something else, something we’ve missed before….

Business strategy.

Theory X has business strategy sorted. Its about big men with big brains setting out strategies for competitive advantage. Michael Porter is the hero.

In Agile we haven’t really got our thinking sorted here so let me make a suggestion.

Henry Mintzberg

In Mintzberg’s world management, business and strategy are messy. Strategy is part pre-planned (Porter-esque) but it is also about what has happened before. The stories we tell ourselves, our understanding of what happened. Sometimes strategy is backward looking, sense making. Often strategy is messy because it is emergent, it comes from what we have done, what we have learned before. The firm may start off with a destination in mind but it will actually reach a different place. The distinction between strategy and tactics may not clear until long after the event.

The Agile community should be reading more Mintzberg. Fortunately he recently started blogging, http://www.mintzberg.org/blog.

One of his shorter strategy books would make a good start. But if you want a real read the Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning is brilliant. The parallels with software development, the rise and fall of waterfall, are striking. Indeed, only by understanding how the corporate world fell for strategic planning can one understand where waterfall really came from (hint: it isn’t Royce.)

Rise and Fall is a great book that is work reading but it isn’t a quick read and it requires thought. Try Strategy Bites Back if you want a shorter read.

More recently, and more relevantly for Agile folk are his recent works on management.

Managing (2009) – or the shorter version Simply Managing – should be required reading for anyone who wants to argue that Agile teams don’t need managers – and equally they should be required reading for anyone who blindly believes managers are needed. To have or not to have managers: it is not an easy question and both sides should be better informed.

(After reading both Managing and Simply Managing I thought I would write a article, or at least a blog, setting out the case for managers but its a lot to take on. Better to just read someone else’s book.)

Our world is complex, sometime the Theory X people may be right, and sometimes the Theory Y people. In the part of the world I live in Theory Y is the one I find most useful.

If Wood Allen was an Agile Coach Consultant he might say:

“#Agile without culture change is an empty experience; but as empty experience go its one of the best”

I sit in Agile conferences (and I include Lean and Kanban here) and I hear people say “To really become Agile you need culture change.” And I agree with them.

Yes, if you really want to be Agile, and get the greatest benefit from Agile you need to change the culture of the organization to embrace the Agile way. I agree.

And I also know that every speaker on this topic – and myself – warn again “doing Agile” without being Agile in culture and mindset. Heck, I kind of wrote a book about this once upon a time. For me “Agile culture” is a “Learning Organization Culture.”

But…

But Agile is a toolkit, you can pick out and use many of those tool without adopting others and without adopting an Agile mindset. For example, you can do Test Driven Development without the need to adopt an Agile culture in your organization. And even without culture change Test Driven Development (TDD) will make you better.

True, if you have to force march your programmers through TDD it isn’t going to be as beneficial as it will be if your programmers embrace TDD and want to do it and make it part of their life.

Given this we – and I include myself – build an argument for undertaking cultural change.

But, big BUT….

TDD is not alone, there are lots of tools in the Agile toolkit that you can pick up and use individually, or with a couple of others, which will help you improve. But if you want the full benefit, well, you are going to have to pick up more tools and change that culture!

Culture change is a far bigger effort than introducing any Agile tool – or even an Agile method.

And most of the people who go by the title “Agile coach” or “Agile consultant” or similar are – in my opinion – drawn from the technology side and aren’t necessarily equipped to undertake culture change initiatives. To be fair, I don’t think many people are equipped (training, experience, knowledge, etc) to undertake culture change.

Please don’t take offence Agile consultants/coaches, I include myself here. On paper I have more qualification to change culture than the vast majority of Agile consultants/coaches I meet and I’m wary of trying to change culture.

Certainly, if we believe folk-law (or the updated version “wisdom of crowds”) culture change is hard and often fails.

Let me say something some people will disagree with:

Culture Change is not necessary to introduce Agile. Culture change is not an enabler.

Rather culture change may be the result of adopting Agile.

I hope it is the result but I also recognise that organizations have the cultures they have and we mess with it at our peril, culture may look bad but embedded in there is a lot of knowledge and norms. Company culture is makes a company what it is, change it and you risk destroying the company. Messing with culture is likely to bring out the corporate antibodies.

Anyone who wants to change an organization, particularly anyone wanting to change tools, methods of working and culture in an organization is well advised to go and study the history of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). BPR was an 1990’s attempt to change the ways companies work, through the use of technology, or make them more efficient. Agile has a lot in common with BPR but BPR is an example of how not to do it.

I am prepared to take people through Agile tools, practices, methods, I encourage them to adopt these approaches, and I don’t really work, directly, to change culture. I believe that if people start to live and Agile lifestyle then the culture will follow. I believe that Agile-Lean is good, I believe that if we pick tools which will make peoples work better in a way they appreciate it then I believe that in time the culture will change.

In short, I believe culture follows tools, the tools we choose to use – whether that be stand-up meetings, Jira, Rally or paper and pen – influence our culture and lead somewhere. Its not a one way street, its not that simple, but tools are a lot easier to change than culture.

Change come first, culture follows.

Last Friday I delivered a revised version of my “The End of Projects and What to do Next” presentation – otherwise known as #NoProjects / #BeyondProjects. The presentation is on Slideshare if you missed it – or better still see it next week at Lean Kanban UK 2014 (use the code LK14SPK for 15% discount).

In the post conference drinks was chatting with a developer – Matt from New Zealand if my memory serves – and he came out with what some might think was a surprising comment. He said: “I’d never thought of a project like that before.”

Specifically he meant he’d never thought of “a project” in sense “project” is used by APM/PRINCE2 and PMI, which is:

• The PRINCE2 definition: “A temporary organization that is needed to produce a unique and predefined outcome or result at a pre-specified time using predetermined resources.”
• The PMI definition: “PMI defines a project by its two key characteristics: it is temporary and undertaken to create a product, service, or result that is unique.”

He went on to say that he believed “a project” was “a collection of features.” I can’t say I’m surprised by this, I think many people regard a project as “a collection of features.”

In fact I’ve long suspected that many developers don’t even get that far. To many developers a project isn’t any of these things, a project is “A collection of source code files that build an application.” Back when I was coding C++ this was exemplified by Microsoft Visual Studio where .prj files (i.e. .project files) listed the source code files and “make” instructions to build an executable.

I have a lot of sympathy with this – and other – developers who take this attitude. One might say they have moved to an Beyond Projects mindset already.

The term Project is being used, it is the language of the team but it is being used to mean different things. When this happens the people are using the same words but are not talking about the same thing. Goals, objectives, aims, deadlines, and everything else is missed up.

Its just another example if what I call “False Projects” – using the word “project” without really meaning it.

This post follow directly on from my previous one, Dialogue Sheets and Update.

I’m looking for some guinea pigs….

Are there any teams out there who would like to try a dialogue sheet focused on requirements?

I’ve long thought that Dialogue Sheets would be a good way of discussing software needs, requirements, customers, problems and such. I’ve started designing some sheets to address this – the first one is a high level Products and Customers sheet. In intend to produce a more day-to-day product sheet and a sheet of internal IT.

Now I’d really like some teams to step up and say: We’d like to try one of these sheets.

There is no charge for this and I’ll supply the sheet. I need a teams which are willing to give me half a day.

I’ll give you the sheet, I’ll observe as you complete it, we’ll debrief and thats that.

Preferably I’d like my guinea pigs in the Greater London area (because that is easy and cheap for me) but I’m happy to come wherever you are. (OK I might have a problem is you are a few thousand kilometres away but lets talk.)

Interested?

Call me or mail me – contact details here.

It has been a while since I’ve written about Dialogue Sheets here – or indeed anywhere else. So here is a quick update and a request for some guinea pigs – I have ideas for new sheets but I need some teams to try them out. (If you want to be a guinea pig for a new sheet skip to the end of this blog.)

The impetus for writing this blog is a new French translation of the T1 Retrospective sheet. I am most grateful to Nicolas Umiastowski for this translation which is now available with the other sheets.

Nicolas has blogged (“Retrospective dialogue sheet in use”) – with photos – about using the sheet this week with a team. The post is well worth reading, everyone was involved and it sounds like there was a lot of energy in the room.

More generally, the sheets continue to be used by teams, lots of downloads still happen from the Dialogue Sheets website. Unfortunately I don’t get much feedback on what happens after the download. If you have download a sheet and have tried them then I’d love to hear how it went and what you think.

Now some statistics.

There have been over 3000 downloads since 1 January 2012 from 94 countries.

(A word of warning here. I’ve made no attempt to cleanse the data. I know it contains some duplicates and some fake e-mail address (e.g. a@b.com) so I assume some of the downloads are fake. Given there are now over 3000 downloads I think (hope?) this doesn’t make a big difference.)

Unsurprisingly the USA leads the world with 20% of downloads, then the UK (15%) after which numbers quickly tail away: Germany (6.5%), France (5.5%), Sweden (4.75%), Norway (3.9%), Australia (3.8%), Netherlands (3.5%), India (2.8%) and Canada (2.75%).

I am sure one of the reasons France scores so highly is Laurent Carbonnaux’s translation of the Sprint sheet. Nicolas’ translation could see France overtake Germany. (I hope we’ll get some more translations and have added some notes on translation to the website.)

The most interesting story I’ve heard this year about Dialogue Sheets is from Sweden – the country where they were originally invented. I am told that there is a childrens’ nursery school (kindergarten) where the teachers hold a fortnightly retrospective using the sprint retrospective sheet! Wonderful.

The statistic I still find most interesting the retrospective frequency question.

I ask all downloaders “How frequently do you hold a retrospective (at the moment) ?”

Nearly 8% of downloaders say they are retrospective facilitators. Excluding these people, 47% of downloaders claim to hold a retrospective regularly (every two weeks or once a month.) But 44% say they never or rarely hold a retrospective.

Now I think it is fair to say we can expect those who hold retrospectives regularly to be more interested in these sheets therefore I expect these figures to be biased towards such people. In other words, if 44% of people interested in retrospective dialogue sheets say they rarely hold a retrospective I expect the true number of software professionals who hold a retrospective rarely to be a lot higher. Sad.

Moving on from numbers, some other changes.

About 18 months ago I introduced an Iteration Planning sheet, this doesn’t have so many downloads (over 200 in total). I’ve also written a description of how to use this sheet (same page). I know my style of planning is slightly different from everyone else’s – heck no two teams are ever the same! (Since I published Xanpan it have wondered if maybe I should rename this sheet as a “Xanpan planning sheet.”)

When I do training sessions I leave the teams copies of both the Sprint Retrospective sheet and the Planning sheet to help get them started. By all reports they help a lot.

The print on demand service is still there, it is little used and I was recently able to reduce the prices there. But if I’m being honest I don’t think the price of a Dialogue Sheet is a bit issue for two reasons. Firstly unless you are buying a lot of sheets, and unless you live in the USA, you will probably find the cost of postage greater than the sheets themselves. Hence I think most teams get these sheets printed locally.

Second, I think teams that have to ask for money have as much trouble getting $50 as $500. So it is the fact that the sheets cost rather than how much they cost which is the problem.

Now to the innovations….

I continue to use the Agile Thinking sheet at the end of Agile training courses to help teams talk about how they will put the training into action. This has proved very very successful. Steve Smith has recently adopted a similar sheet on his continuous delivery courses.

While I’m writing this I should mention some other changes that happened a while back, I retired the T2 sheet – it was not different enough from the T1, T3 and Sprint versions. And I updated the T1 and Sprint sheets – the Sprint sheet now has time boxes on it to aid with keeping the retrospectives to schedule.

One more thing… but that can wait for the next blog post.

Last night I did a presentation to the Agile 4 Agencies meet up group on the topic of “Agile Contracts” – although I believe “Contracts for Agile” might have been a better title.

This was based on my InfoQ Agile Contracts piece from 4 years ago – also available as a PDF from the Software Strategy website. My thinking and experience has moved a bit since then and some of that was incorporated into the presentation.

When creating the presentation I very much set out to work from the original piece, although as anyone familiar with my writing will know, this territory touches on “Dear Customer, The Truth about IT” (Agile Connection and now the prologue to Xanpan – which is also available from the Software Strategy website – my stuff has a habit of being reused.)

Anyway, the “Agile Contracts” is now online at SlideShare. And I believe a recording of the night might appear before long…