This is an excellent series of videos by Lyssa Adkins:

Part One of Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvYqhYEaqMs

Part Two of Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9tSjpqeBa4

I highly recommend taking the twenty minutes to watch these two videos.  Anyone who is a ScrumMaster, a Project Manager or an Agile Coach should take the time!

OpenAgile is similar to Scrum in many respects. Both are systems for delivering value to stakeholders. Both are agile methods. Both are frameworks that deliberately avoid giving all the answers. So why would we choose OpenAgile over Scrum?

The most important difference is in applicability: Scrum is designed to help organizations optimize new software product development, whereas OpenAgile is designed to help anyone learn to deliver value effectively.

OpenAgile is an improvement over Scrum in the following ways:

1. More effective teamwork and team practices, in particular the Consultative Method of Decision Making, and
   applicability over a larger range of team sizes from a single individual on up.

2. Recognition of the individual capacities required for effective learning, namely Truthfulness, Detachment,
   Search, Love and Courage. Scrum acknowledges a separate set of qualities, but does not show how they systematically connect with the requirements of a Scrum environment.

3. Systematic handling of more types of work beyond just “new artifacts” and “obstacles”. In particular, OpenAgile includes calendar items, repetitive items and quality items and acknowledges their unique qualities in a work
   environment. OpenAgile also provides a framework to include additional types of work beyond these five.

4. Improved role definitions based on extensive experience.

   1. There is only one role defined in OpenAgile (Team Member) vs. three defined in Scrum (Team Member, ScrumMaster, Product Owner).

   2. There are multiple paths of service that allow Team Members and Stakeholders to engage with an OpenAgile team or community in different ways. There are five paths of service: Process Facilitation, Growth Facilitation, Tutoring, Mentoring, and Catalyst.

   3. The Process Facilitator path of service is similar to the ScrumMaster role with the following major differences:

      • is not responsible for team development
      • is not necessarily a single person, nor is it a required role

   4. The Growth Facilitator path of service is similar to the Product Owner role with the following major differences:

      • is responsible for all aspects of growth including value (like the Product Owner), and individual and team capacity building.
      • is not necessarily a single person, nor is it a required role

5. Integration of principles and practices from other methods. Two examples suffice:

   1. From Crystal: creating a safe work/learning environment.

   2. From Lean: build quality in, value stream mapping, root cause analysis, standard work.

6. OpenAgile allows interruptions during the Cycle. Scrum has the concept of Sprint Safety. This makes Scrum
   unsuitable for operational work and general management.

7. The distinction between Commitment Velocity and other uses of the term “velocity” used in Scrum. Commitment Velocity is the historical minimum slope of a team’s Cycle burndown charts and determines how much work a team plans in its Engagement Meeting.

8. Flexibility in the length a Cycle. Scrum requires that Sprints (Cycles) be one month in duration or less.
   OpenAgile allows a Cycle to be longer than that and instead provides a guideline that there should be a minimum number of Cycles planned in the time expected to reach the overall goal.

9. The Progress Meeting in OpenAgile does not require people to take turns or directly answer specific questions.

10. Avoiding conflict-oriented models of staff and management (Chickens and Pigs in Scrum).

11. Terminology changes to be more clear in meaning and applicable beyond software. A comparative glossary is
    included below.

Another major difference between OpenAgile and Scrum is how the community operates. OpenAgile is an open-source
method that has a specific structure for community involvement that allows for continuous improvement of the system. Scrum is closed. It is closely managed by it’s founders and this has led to challenges with the method becoming dogmatic. OpenAgile is meant to constantly evolve and grow.

Comparative Glossary between OpenAgile and Scrum

References on OpenAgile:

http://www.openagile.com/

http://wiki.openagile.org/

References on Scrum:

http://www.scrumalliance.org/

http://www.scrum.org/

“Agile Software Development with Scrum” - Schwaber and Beedle

“Agile Project Management with Scrum” - Schwaber

“Scrum and the Enterprise” – Schwaber

Imagine your father is in surgery for a routine tonsillectomy.  Something goes wrong with the anesthesia and his heart goes nuts.  The defibrillator is brought out, the paddles applied to your father’s chest and the surgeon yells “CLEAR!”.  He triggers the defibrillator, but nothing happens, just a small clicking noise.  He quickly checks the machine, and everything looks okay.  He tries again.  “CLEAR!”  There’s a small buzzing noise and your father’s body trembles slightly.  The surgeon puts the paddles down, and, getting frantic, yells at the nurses to find another defib machine, “NOW!!!”.  Thirty agonizing seconds pass.  One of the nurses rushes into O.R. with a cart with another defibrillator machine on it.  It gets set up.  Another fifteen seconds pass.  It charges and the surgeon applies it again.  “CLEAR!”  There’s a huge shock and your father is killed instantly.  It takes a few more minutes for him to be officially pronounced dead.

Is this how projects are run in your organization?

If this had been a description of a real event, you would be furious.  You would demand that the defibrillators work better – one hundred percent of the time would be about right!  You would sue the hospital for buying shoddy defibrillators.  You would sue the company that made them.  You would sue the surgeon.

Let’s stop running projects this way.  Agile is a reliable defibrillator for your organization’s heart.

What motivates human beings to do the right thing?  To do good deeds, to be truthful, to be kind, to be helpful, to try to make the world a better place?  First of all, we have to realize that everything we say and do has an actual, real effect on our environment for better or for worse.  Every time we help someone, or tell the truth, it actually makes the world better in some small way, just as when we lie, cheat, steal or speak unkindly to someone, no matter how small the affront, we actually make the world worse.  In fact, our thoughts, words and actions can really have only one of two basic effects on the world – they can make it better or make it worse.  Period.

There are some powerful cultural forces in our society, most obviously the constant stream of materialistic propaganda through various forms of hypnotic media, that influence the way we perceive our ability to contribute to the betterment or worsening of our environment.  The basic message is that individuals can’t affect any real fundamental change in society (i.e., their environment) and that the best any of us can do is to change our position, rank or class within the permanent structures of our society.  Therefore, “only the strong survive”, “get what you can while you can” and the “pursuit of happiness” have become not only slogans that we live by, but conceptions of human nature that have constructed our social reality.

For example, the concept behind “the pursuit of happiness” is that happiness is something external and fixed that a person has to find somewhere “out there”.  Embedded in this “right” is the implicit message that “average” individuals and groups do not have the potential to exert influence on, and contribute in any meaningful and lasting way to the shaping of the prevailing social order.  Thus, there is always a better neighborhood to live in, a better employer to work for, a better school for your kids to go to, etc.  It disempowers us all from thinking that we can get together and do something right now about our immediate reality.  ”Don’t even bother”, it says, “you won’t be able to change anything anyways – you’re wasting time, effort, and worst of all – money!  Better to lie just a little, cheat just a little, step on your neighbor just a little in order to protect your own little piece of turf.”

Understanding the truth about our reality – our potential to contribute to the betterment of the world – is what will actually begin to motivate us to be good – that is, the fact that our good thoughts, good words, and good actions can and do make the world better.  ”Better” becomes not merely an external pursuit that we fight to get our little piece of; rather, it is an organic, sembiotic process of growth.  For one thing, it requires vision: What would the world be like, for example, if everyone always tried to tell the truth?  Would it really be so bad?  Would human affairs come to stand still?  Would the economy crumble?  Or would it, rather, begin create something new… something better?

I had a fantastic discussion this weekend while on a road trip with my colleague David Parker.  We talked about the different aspects of Truthfulness.  This is what we came up with.

Honesty

Are you perfectly honest?  Is every statement you make factually correct to the best of your knowledge?

Behaviors that are not honest include: hyperbole and exaggeration,  sarcasm, falsehoods, omissions.

Honesty is the quality most obviously associated with Truthfulness.

Integrity

When you make a commitment, do you keep it?  Are your deeds an accurate reflection of your words and thoughts?

Behaviors that erode integrity include hypocrisy, unreliability, lateness.

Transparency

When someone wants to know something can they find it out from you?  Can you provide simple proof of your words and deeds?

Behaviors that prevent transparency include stonewalling, passing the buck, verbal diarrhea, and the use of esoteric or inappropriate jargon.
Serenity

Do you accept that the unexpected is natural?  Have you given up trying to control your environment?

Things that block serenity are anxiety and worry, reactionary anger, backstabbing, and manipulation.

Humility

Do you accept that others have wisdom, knowledge and experience that you don’t?  Can you admit both the possibility of being wrong, and the fact of being wrong?

There are many things that prevent the development of humility: taking offense from comments about yourself, your ideas or your actions, insisting on your way, vanity, boasting, and even ostentatious self-deprecation.

On April 1, 2009 Scott Ambler posted on his blog “a parody of a very serious ethical lapse within the agile community.”  It was an April Fool’s joke – a fake ad for a 2-day agile certification course called “SCUM Certified™ Agile Master, or more colloquially SCAMmer”.  The mock-ad states that

We want to be perfectly clear about this, by taking this ‘certification course’ what we’re certifying is that you attended the course.  It is your choice (nod nod, wink wink) if you wish to present yourself as a professional SCAMmer.  Yes, about 99.8% of course attendees choose to do this, why would you take the course otherwise?

This piece will not be a direct response to Ambler’s joke.  That would be…well, rather foolish.  Instead, what I intend to address here are the concerns raised by his “Parting Thoughts”, which take on a more serious tone and seem to be getting to the heart of what’s really (and understandably) bothering him.

In his “Parting Thoughts”, he states “I believe we can do much better.”  He is referring, of course, to the “ethical lapse” jokingly addressed by his mock-ad.  He goes on to say:

My hope is that this joke has made you step back and think about what’s going on around you. Being a “Certified X”, whatever X happens to be, implies that you’ve done something to earn that certification. If you’ve done very little to earn a certification then at best that’s what your certification is worth: very little.  If you’re involved in a questionable certification scheme, regardless of whatever justifications that you tell yourself you have still shamed both yourself and your so-called profession.  If you turn a blind eye to people who claim to be “certified masters” after doing almost nothing to earn that certification then you too are complicit: As Edmund Burke first said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  I invite everyone in the agile community to read Ethics for the Real World and to stand up and show some integrity.  Enough is enough.

What Ambler seems to be saying here is that for those of us in the agile community to “do much better”, what we really need is to do something about “questionable certification schemes”.  The “something” he proposes is that we should not “turn a blind eye to people who claim to be ‘certified masters’ after doing nothing to earn that certification”.  What he then prescribes to all of us in the agile community is to read a book and to “stand up and show some integrity”.

So I decided to take the challenge… sort of.  What I mean by “sort of” is that I didn’t read the whole book; rather, I followed the link to amazon.com and read the first chapter entitled “Almost Ethical: Waking Up to Compromise”.  I think I got it.

So, let’s say that we can all agree that integrity is a good thing and it would be a good if everyone’s actions were always distinguished by integrity and uprightness.  At the same time, let’s assume for the sake of this blog that we can also all agree that we live in a very complex world that constantly presents us with situations that make it very difficult to live up to such a standard.  Perhaps we may also all agree that in many of these situations, we often fail to live up to the standards of integrity that we espouse and would like to see established in the world.

In Ethics, Howard and Korver identify that “Lying, a form of deception, plays a central role in ethical compromise” and that lying “appears… commonly in ethical thinking.”  They point out that “Most of us are practiced liars.”  They offer the results of one study as evidence of this:

147 college students and community members kept daily diaries of lying.  The students reported telling an average of two lies per day, the community members one.  None thought their lie telling was serious (although none of them asked the people they lied to).

They go on to make the following observations:

If we hold a video camera up to our lives, we may be astonished at the incredible sweep of lies on the landscape.  If we pan that camera to view the lives of others, we see disingenuousness everywhere.  Imagine being in the shoes of the following people, whose stories are based on real events:

• You are a consultant, and you know your bid for phase one of a project, $300,000, will turn off your client.  You could bid $200,000, knowing your client will soon agree to the extra work and expense anyway.  You are tempted to understate the cost.
• You are a young engineer, and you can’t get a software test to run as specified before an industry trade show.  Your manager urges you to run past tapes of the test at the show, pretending that it is a live test.  You are tempted to go along.
• You are an entrepreneur seeking money to fund your new start-up.  You know venture capitalists chop revenue forecasts by 50 percent.  You are tempted to inflate your revenue forecast by a factor of two to compensate for the expected discount.

Whether or not you’ve ever been in these situations, you no doubt have been in similar ones.  Every time, you have probably had at least one very good reason to compromise – and at times you did.  You lied.  You may feel uneasy about it.  You may even be haunted by it.

But you shouldn’t feel alone.  Using compromise as a helping hand in life has a storied, if seamy, tradition.  Even revered leaders lie routinely…

No doubt, subsequent chapters of this book offer helpful advice about how to overcome the temptations to lie that so many of us so often find ourselves feeling.  What I would like to point out, though, is Howard’s and Krover’s insight that lying “has a storied, if seamy, tradition.”  In other words, lying has become an ingrained, normal and expected habit of our culture.  Temptation is one thing, but breaking out of a culture of lying requires a sea change in human morals, standards and codes of conduct.

Now that the immensity of what we’re actually dealing with when we start talking about “integrity” has become more clear – i.e. integrity is a really hard thing to figure out in a complex world that is really messed up – what can we actually do about it?  In other words, is it futile to try to be a person of integrity in a corrupt world?  The short answer to this question is, unfortunately, “No”.  Just like you cannot be a just person in an unjust world.  A brief example will illustrate this fact:  It is almost impossible for any one person living in North America to be able to guarantee that not one article of clothing that they own was manufactured in a sweat shop or by child laborers.  Indeed, most of us can agree that sweat shops and child labor are examples of flagrant injustice.  By participating in an economy that feeds off of their existence, i.e. paying for goods manufactured under such conditions, we are investing in the system that perpetuates the oppression and exploitation of the people whose survival depends on that system.

Being a person of integrity is equally elusive to being a person of justice.  In order to survive in the jungle, you have to obey the laws of the jungle.  So what is the solution?  What can we actually do?  Is it a hopeless situation, this reality of ours?

Indeed, it is not enough for people to just “be good”.  We must also all strive to transform the social environment, structures and institutions that we are a part of in our daily lives.  In other words, it is not enough to be a “good” person who attacks everything that one perceives as being “bad”.  You can’t just decide that you are going to be civilized in the jungle and complain about all the things that are going to eat you and hope to survive.  You also have to contribute to building the civilization that will replace it, contribute to cultivating a new garden.  You will need to find like-minded individuals and work shoulder to shoulder with them and learn to overlook all of their many shortcomings as they learn to overlook yours.

There is another good book that I’ve been reading:  Beyond the Culture of Contest by Michael Karlberg, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Western Washington University, whose research and writing focus on the relationship between communication, culture and conflict.  Here is how Karlberg opens his book:

We live in a culture of contest. In western-liberal societies our economic, political and legal systems, as well as many of our other social institutions and practices, are competitive and conflictual.  Surrounding this culture is a culture of protest.  In response to the social and ecological problems engendered by our culture of contest, we engage in protests, demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience, partisan organizing, litigation, strikes and other oppositional strategies of social advocacy and change.

These competitive and conflictual norms have become so ubiquitous that they appear natural and inevitable to many people.  Indeed, conventional wisdom suggests that these social norms are an inevitable expression of an essentially selfish and aggressive human nature.  The prevailing social order, according to this logic, is an inevitable reflection of human nature.  But is a culture of contest and protest really an inevitable reflection of human nature?  Or is it possible that human beings have the developmental potential for either adversarial or mutualistic behaviour? Is it possible that human culture, rather than human nature, determines which of these potentials is more fully expressed?  Is it possible that the prevailing culture of contest and protest cultivates the former rather than the latter?  And if so, what are the implications?

It seems that by taking Ambler up on his challenge, that is, in trying to figure out how to “stand up and show some integrity”, some initial conclusions can be drawn:

1. Lying is a big, complex problem – a central part of our culture.
2. You can’t stop the problem of lying by pointing fingers.
3. Lying is a social problem engendered by a culture of contest – a social norm that is so ubuiquitous that it appears natural and inevitable to many people.  Many would even believe that it is an inevitable expression of an essentially selfish and aggressive human nature.
4. Overcoming such a powerful cultural norm is not as easy as getting everyone to just read a book or attend a course.

I hope that everyone who reads this finds it to be an attractive invitation to participate in a mutualistic discourse on how we in the agile community can find ways we can work together to contribute to building a better world – a world characterized by integrity, uprightness, justice, truthfulness, prosperity and joy.

The first day of the Scrum Gathering in Orlando is finished.  I had a great day all-in-all.  I went to 3 and a half sessions, took a nice sun break in the afternoon, and then mingled at the evening reception.

Some observations:

More People Using Agile and Scrum for Non-Software

This was interesting.  When I actually spent time talking with people I heard several times that people were using agile approaches in non-software environments.  One person is working with an oil company to apply agile methods to all project work.  Another two people are extending agile / Scrum into marketing departments.  And one other person was applying agile into the whole organization.

Of course, with OpenAgile, I’m very interested in all this.  I’m hoping that I can organize some sort of group / institute / organization for people using agile methods outside of software development.  If you’re interested, please contact me on LinkedIn or Facebook or any other method you wish.  People seemed to be in general agreement that this is still new stuff, and that they are having to make adaptations to make agile work in these other environments.  After all, not all work is purely creative or problem-solving!

Economic and Recession Fears

Gregory Balestrero gave a talk about the relationship between the PMI and the Scrum Alliance.  I felt that his talk was much more 30000 foot level and that it probably wasn’t quite right for the audience.  The questions people asked at the end seemed much more appropriate for someone who was an author of the PMBoK rather than the CEO of the PMI.  There was a mis-match between presenter and audience.  At any rate, Gregory spoke quite a bit about the economy and the fears people have about it.  He emphasized that this time actually represents a real opportunity for organizations to get better at doing projects by focusing on value.  I couldn’t agree more!

As well, in my discussions with several other individuals who are coaches or run agile coaching businesses, I heard quite frequently that the past few months have been hard on business here in the United States.  One company has actually laid off some coaches.  This is in line with our experience at Berteig Consulting… up to a point.  December and January were slow, and in fact slower than “normal”, but we still did very well in the Dec. to Feb. quarter.  Clearly the Canadian market is still moving well, and there is a recognition that agile and Scrum are a means to help organizations get through these tough times.

One a related note, the resort we are staying in and in which the conference is being held is the Gaylord Palms.  Apparently, bookings are way down at the hotel to the point where they have temporarily closed some of the restaurants in the resort.  Likewise, when my family went to a water park during the day today, some of the rides were closed because there were so few people.  Please remember: this is Spring Break!!!  Clearly tourism is _way_ down.

Reconnecting with Friends and Collegues

I’ve met up with (in no particular order): Tobias Mayer, Alistair Cockburn, Catherine Louis (from Nortel), Sanjiv Augustine, Mike Vizdos, Carole Marks, Mitch Lacey, Jim Cundiff, Gabby Benefield, and probably others that I can’t remember.

I also met for the first time several people.  I hope I can keep in touch with everyone!

Highlight of the Day

Mike Cohn gave a presentation on Leading Self-Organizing Teams.  It was fantastic.  My favorite part of it was his introducing the CDE (Containers, Differences and transforming Exchanges) model.  In this model, self-organization is positively influenced by appropriate constraints on the containers, differences and transforming exchanges among the people who are asked to self-organize.  To explain: containers define in-ness vs. out-ness for participation, scope of work, environment of the group that is self-organizing.  Differences are the variations in the skills, qualities, attitudes, knowledge etc. of group members.  And transforming exchanges are the interactions between group members both amongst each other and with outside groups, where such interactions cause a transformation of some sort: creation of value, sharing of knowledge, new activities, etc.

By using the CDE model, we can diagnose challenges facing an agile team.  Mike Cohn included a number of scenarios for us to use to practice the application of this model.

Looking Forward to Day 2

Hopefully Day 2, which is primarily and Open Space event, will be even more interesting that Day 1.  I will continue to post frequent articles about the events of the day!  Please feel free to ask for more details in the comments… or to suggest that I connect with someone, or to bring up a topic for the Open Space portion.

Two very interesting videos.  The first, a presentation by Rod Jeffries, goes through a treatment of “Lateral Violence”.  The second is three role-play scenarios to demonstrate the concepts.  Both of these videos are in the context of nursing in hospitals… however, it takes little imagination to see how they apply in other environments.  I would actually assert that the problems described in these videos are endemic to most organizations.

Alistair Cockburn has also written about safety in a team context.

Scrum and other agile methods all have some mechanisms for dealing with this sort of challenge, but they can start failing quickly if the sponsors of the agile effort do not overcome the habitual and cultural challengs.

“Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems that we created with our current patterns of thought.”  -Albert Einstein

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but habit.”  -Aristotle

Among leading Agile thinkers, coaches, trainers and practitioners there is a rich, ongoing discourse around a subtly deceptive concept  – the concept of the Definition of Done.  Within this discourse, a singular constant challenge is emerging:  old patterns of thought.

For example, there is an old pattern of thought that tells managers of software companies that at least some part of the Definition of Done must be imposed on teams in order to protect a universal standard.  Rationalizing this antiquated thought pattern seems to have become a rigorous intellectual discipline in and of itself.  One of the most prevalent excuses to which many managers have invested a great amount of mental and emotional energy seems to be around the challenging concept of multiple Agile teams working together on the same project (or product).  Surely, in such cases there needs to be some kind of imposed standard that all teams need to comply with in order to avoid chaos in the main build, yes?  In fact, this is the exact wrong approach to take.

We also seem to become confused at times by our own limited understanding of the words that we use when attempting to talk about things we are or are not trying and learning to do.  The more we learn about doing something, the more we are able to talk about it in practical terms.  Since theoretical discussions around semantics rarely result in appreciably improved behavior/results, we will endeavor here to address this subject with both brevity and caution.

Our old patterns of thought make understanding many words, including the word definition and the word done, problematic.  We tend to think of these words as implying static, rigid, absolute conditions; for example, the way we tend to think of the word definition in terms of the definitions of words.  We like to think that those definitions are relatively stable.  Indeed, there are some real benefits to this.  We can have conversations with people and assume that for the most part their understanding of the definitions of the words we are using are similar to our own.  But even with words, there can be more than one definition, which already makes the definitions of words less static than they often seem.  At some level, one might even ask – who actually decides on the definitions of words?  Is there an actual authority out there (not merely the self-proclaimed “official” authorities) that decides on definitions and hands them down to us?  Some may say “yes, indeed, namely the authoritative texts of the world’s religions,” for example.  On the other hand one could also say that the definitions of words have evolved through the ages (just as languages have) as humanity has received progressively more complex guidance from religious texts according to its evolving capacity (compare, say, the Bhagavad Gita to the Quran).  But that is another conversation.  What is important to acknowledge here is that the meanings of words expand and evolve over time given the capacity of the individuals who use them to develop new patterns of thought and that the energy required to do so is tremendous, even epochal.

An old pattern of thought construct around the word done is equally problematic.  A conversation limited by a rigid understanding of the concept of what done means, is and looks like can quickly take us spinning off into the stratosphere of “nothing is ever done.”  When there is a lack of trust and respect among people, as is generally the case in our society, and since ownership and ego are often entangled with limited and rigid understand, we then find ourselves in situations in which the limited and rigid understanding of a few with arbitrary power and authority take precedence over the understanding of others.  In other words, people in authority are expected to solve every problem and people that do work are expected to be robots.  Both are set up by this arrangement to fail.

Indeed, there is a real problem in trying to talk about things that we do not do, or that we do not sincerely try to do.  True learning, on the other hand, consists in people striving to be truthful and sincere working together  engagement in a continuous cycle of action, reflection and consultation.  Learning also requires us to be truthful – if we think we have all the answers, learning becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible.  If we are not at least trying to learn to define what “done” is to us, we will never be able to actually talk about it in a knowledgeable and meaningful way.  Furthermore, it will likewise be impossible for us to help anyone else learn to understand their own Definition of Done if we haven’t learned through real experience about how to understand our own.

As we engage in a real learning process, through action, reflection and consultation, new patterns of thought begin to emerge and perhaps even crystallize.  These emerging new patterns help us to bring concepts out of the stratosphere of semantics, rhetoric and theory back down to earth where we can actually act and reflect on them in order to implement creative new solutions to the problems of our world.

In her Agile 2007 presentation The Role of Leadership in Software Development (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/poppendieck-agile-leadership), Mary Poppendieck offers powerful insights into the history of patterns of thought around leadership and the emergence of Agile thinking out of the wisdom of Lean Manufacturing.

As with all Agile methods, Scrum is a framework for learning in which new patterns of thought that began to crystallize in Lean Manufacturing practices have been adapted and applied to software development practices.  It then follows that the Definition of Done in Scrum is consistent with a specific Lean Manufacturing practice, namely Standard Work.

In his book Workplace Management, Taiichi Ohno, the father of Lean Manufacturing, defines Standard Work as such:

“There is something called standard work, but standards should be changed constantly.  Instead, if you think of the standard as the best you can do, it’s all over.  The standard work is only a baseline for doing further kaizen [change for the better].  It is kai-aku [change for the worse] if things get worse than now, and it is kaizen if things get better than now.  Standards are set arbitrarily by humans, so how can they not change?

“You should not create these away from the job.  See what is happening on the gemba [shop floor] and write it down.”

Based on the assertions of the previous two paragraphs, we must conclude that just as standards should be changed constantly in Standard Work, so too should definitions change constantly in the Definition of Done.

How, then, does our work benefit from a Definition of Done that is always changing?  This is a deceptively simple question, as it is an example of a problem posed by old patterns of thought that can only be solved by new patterns of thought.  In order for the old patterns of thought thinker to be helped to form new patterns of thought, he must be accompanied by the new patterns of thought thinker to develop the capability to adopt new patterns of thought.  In other words, in order to really learn, people need to be accompanied by those who have more experience.  Such an exercise is far beyond the scope of any article and requires a completely different venue – namely the coaching relationship.  More about capacity-building and accompaniment later.

For now, suffice it to say that the point of having a Definition of Done that is always changing is to allow for kaizen – the Definition of Done, therefore, like Standard Work, is only a baseline from which we constantly change for the better.  In other words, the Definition of Done is the record of what we are actually doing now. It allows us to be absolutely confident that we know as much as possilbe about what we are actual doing now so that we can make real, concrete, and confident decisions about actual improvements to our work.

Actually doing the Definition of Done, as Ohno tells us is simple:  “See what is happening on the gemba [shop floor] and write it down.”  For many of us though, this simplicity is deceptive in that it is actually often very difficult – both the seeing and the writing.

The ability to see what is actually going on is clearly vital to the capability of defining done.  It is valuable, therefore, to examine more closely the sense of sight:

We have physical eyes that see.  What do our eyes see?  Light.  Is this what Ohno is talking about when he says “see what’s going on” – literally seeing light – or is he talking about a different kind of sight?  Clearly, what he is talking about is what we might call true sight, or the ability to see the truth.  We can think of truth, therefore as being like light.

Is it our physical sight that sees the light of truth?  This, of course, is impossible since our physical eyes only see physical light.  So what is the sense in us that allows us to see the light of truth – in other words, what is true sight?   Some may say that it is our sense of justice.  One must have a strong, developed sense of justice in order perceive truth, especially in environments like software development in which the truth can be easily hidden.

Writing down the Definition of Done with accuracy and clarity requires us to be both truthful and precise.  This is very difficult to do well in our present environments of opacity, defined roles, command and control management, fear of failure and general distrust.

Clearly, we can see now that the Definition of Done, challenging to understand in its subtlety as a concept, is far more difficult to apply effectively in reality and therefore fully realize its value in practice.

The concept that allows for the value of the Definition of Done to be realized is the concept of expanding the Definition of Done.  Expanding the Definition of Done in Scrum and Agile is the equivalent of kaizen in Lean Manufacturing.  In order to expand the Definition of Done, the actual Definition of Done needs to be well understood.  In other words,  “Where there is no Standard there can be no Kaizen.”

Ohno says:

“When creating Standard Work, it will be difficult to establish a standard if you are trying to achieve ‘the best way.’  This is a big mistake.  Document exactly what you are doing now.  If you make it better than it is now, it is kaizen.  If not, and you establish the best possible way, the motivation for kaizen will be gone.”

This brings us back to the initial problem created by our old patterns of thought around our understanding of the Definition of Done – namely the misconception that at least some of the Definition of Done must be dictated by management in order to have consistency across teams working on the same large project.  The solution to this problem is challenging yet simple:  It’s irrelevant.  An organization is a living, breathing entity.  When management makes room for kaizen by not dictating standards, kaizen has more power to pollinate the entire organization and transform the way people think and work than imposed standards could ever begin to hope for.  Dictating standards, in other words, is limiting while kaizen harnesses the creativity of all.

Again, Ohno says:

“We need to use the words ‘you [the worker] made [the standard]’ as in ‘follow the decisions you made,’  When we say ‘they were made’ [for you] people feel like it was forced upon them.  When a decision is made, we need to ask who made the decision.  Since you also have the authority to decide, if you decide, you must at least follow your decision, and then this will not be forced upon you at all.

“But in the beginning, you must perform the Standard Work, and as you do, you should find things you don’t like, and you will think of one kaizen idea after another.  Then you should implement these ideas right away, and make this the new standard.”

Changing our patterns of thought requires creativity, but who’s creativity?

Ohno:

“Years ago, I made them hang the standard work documents on the shop floor.  After a year I said to a team leader, ‘The color of the paper has changed, which means you have been doing it the same way, so you have been a salary thief for the last year.’  I said ‘What do you come to work to do each day?  If you are observing every day you ought to be finding things you don’t like, and rewriting the standard immediately.  Even if the document hanging there is from last month, this is wrong.’

“At Toyota in the beginning we had the team leaders write down the dates on the standard work sheets when they hung them.  This gave me a good reason to scold the team leaders, saying ‘Have you been goofing off all month?’

“If it takes one or two months to create these documents, this is nonsense.”

People on the shop floor or the Scrum teams need to be given the freedom and authority to figure out how to do their work better and change the standards of their work as they learn.  Ohno was really first and foremost a master coach who knew how to accompany people to develop their capabilities to perceive truth and generate and apply their own knowledge and creative solutions to challenging problems.

Gary Hamel, in his article “Management Innovation” in the February 2006 edition of the Harvard Business Review, wrote:

“Only after American carmakers had exhausted every other explanation for Toyota’s success- an undervalued yen, a docile workforce, Japanese culture, superior automation- were they finally able to admit that Toyota’s real advantage was its ability to harness the intellect of ‘ordinary’ employees.”

In Scrum, the Team itself defines Done by what it actually gets done.  The ScrumMaster removes obstacles so that the Team can expand its Definition of Done (kaizen).  Scrum assumes that all Team members are dedicated to expanding the Team’s Definition of Done from Sprint to Sprint and that the Team will achieve this as long as organizational obstacles (such as managerial control fetish) are not impeding it from doing so.  When a Team is empowered in this way to expand its own Definition of Done (as well as empowered in other ways, according to the rules of Scrum), it will have the space it needs in order to grow into a hyper-productive Team.  That is to say that no one outside of the Team (i.e. management) dictates any part of the Team’s Definition of Done (a common management practice that results in kai-aku).  The Definition of Done is one ingredient in the remedy for curing our culture’s leadership disease – the failure to learn.

“…your failure is an internal disease…You firmly believe that sound management means executives on the one side and workers on the other, on the one side men who think and on the other side men who only work.”  -Konusuke Matsushita

(Shameless Plug: we offer excellent Certified ScrumMaster Training and in it we discuss the Definition of “Done” in the context of people’s actual problems.)

In Scrum, there is a concept of the “Definition of ‘Done’” that is used to understand what teams produce every Sprint.  Unfortunately, it is not well understood, nor is it consistently applied.  Part of the problem is that the name of the concept is misleading.  Every time we do coaching or training in organizations, we spend an inordinate amount of time getting this concept across clearly.  Recently, one of our coaches, Travis Birch, had an insight about the name of the concept.  The word “definition” makes us think of something static and permanent.  Definitions don’t normally change.  However, in Scrum, the definition of “done” is always changing.  Doneness is not something that we get perfect at the start, rather, teams develop their capacity to deliver more and more each Sprint… and not just in terms of features.  As I explained in another article called Four Methods of Perfecting Agile, the definition of “done” is something that can and should grow over time.

So what can we do?  Can we rename the concept?  The concept is really a snapshot description of the activities and attributes that a team puts into a Sprint’s worth of work.  For example, at first a team might not be writing automated unit tests.  Therefore, automated unit tests are not part of the definition of “done” – a snapshot of their work at the end of the Sprint does not include automated unit tests.  Then in a retrospective the team decides that they need to create automated unit tests.  They do so in the next Sprint.  Now, automated unit tests are a part of the definition of “done”.  Finally, a few Sprints later, one of the members of the team attends Agile Software Engineering Practices training [shameless plug] and decides that they should start doing test-driven development.  The team learns how to do this and from now on the definition of “done” includes test-driving all production code.

<strong>A New Name</strong>

Let’s try another name for this concept: the “Expanding Benchmark”.  I think this term much more accurately conveys the sense of the concept.  It is expected that this concept is not static, rather, as the team overcomes obstacles, automates things, learns new skills, and gains new trust and authority, that their work will expand.  And specifically, we are expanding the benchmark of what activities and attributes of software are delivered at the end of each Sprint.

So – let’s get rid of the Definition of “Done” and start talking about a team’s Expanding Benchmark.  What sayest you?