Agile Advice - Working With Agile Methods (Scrum, XP, Lean)

(Parts of this posting were adapted from an email written by my business partner, Dale Kiefling)

We recently had the disconcerting experience of having a client cancel our engagement because they’d felt that we weren’t being agile enough. In hindsight there were a number of reasons why this might have happened but I think the most important one was simply that we did not provide a clear overview of the engagement. This meant that the client was confused about the value of what we were doing. I myself am confused about how the situation arose. I thought we had been very clear but obviously that was not the case.

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In agile development circles self-organizing teams are all the rage nowadays. And I often hear people bemoaning the “evil managers”. And no doubt in many circumstances and organizations there is real work to do here and real dysfunction to resolve. But I’m less concerned with the analysis of what’s wrong and more concerned with what can we do differently and better. IE: How can we develop the skills necessary to practice effective self-organization.

So what does it mean to be a participant in a “leaderful” group?

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On the Retrospectives Yahoo Group, Michael Webb posted a link to his article Eight Barriers to Effective Listening. This article provides practical advice on how to improve communication. Since one of the basic practices of Agile Work is to maximize communication, this article is essential reading!

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I recently completed reading An Introduction to General Systems Thinking by Gerald M. Weinberg. Since it was mind-blowingly fantastic, I thought I should probably write a brief review of it so you-all can check it out!

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At the Coach’s meeting ten days ago, several of the attendees used a series of phrases to refer to the learning process or cycle that Agile Work promotes. These vocabularies all have a different slant or implication but they all map to each other fairly well.

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In Jean Tabaka’s new book, “Collaboration Explained : Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders“, she describes several methods of collaboratively prioritizing a list of items (for example a project’s work item list). The methods she suggests are excellent, and I would strongly recommend the book. However, there are a couple variations and additional methods that I have used successfully that I would like to share.

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In the entry “Essential Advice for Agile Coaches” I mentioned seven responsibilities that we have. These seven responsibilites can be used as a framework for self-evaluation and goal setting. I have created a simple spreadsheet tool to help track this work.

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This simple simulation exercise helps people to understand the efficiency that can come from moving away from a waterfall or large batch process. The exercise can be done with 20 pennies, 5 people and a clock with a second hand.

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As a coach, it is nice to have some simple ways to show people the power of Agile methods. This quick little exercise is an excellent way to demonstrate the weakness of the waterfall approach to working with up-front requirements analysis versus the power of the agile iterative/adaptive approach. UPDATED 20051213!

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Not everyone will master the techniques of Agile. Mastery of any discipline takes much more than reading a few books and taking a few courses. Here’s my take on mastery…

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Twenty-five years ago American-Israeli Medical Sociologist, Aron Antonovsky developed the theory of salutogenesis. As opposed to the traditional pathogenic model of medicine focused on the study of disease, salutogenesis is the study of health. Since then, his work has been integrated into the field of public health and health education. This asset or strength based type of approach to individual or institutional development has been found in other fields such as organizational development and community development. In organizational development the field of Appreciative Inquiry and in community development the Asset Based Community Development model share the essential premises of salutogenesis. Quoting Garmezy, Antonovsky highlights the medical professions focus on deficits:

our mental health practitioners and researchers are predisposed by interest, investment and training in seeing deviance, psychopathology and weakness wherever they look.

This type of approach to work based on weakness and deficit can be found in most of our organizations. It seems to me that although Agile exposes inefficiencies and problems in organizations, it’s focus never-the-less is to build on strengths and assets. It is in this light that I have been thinking about Antonovsky’s work and what it can offer to Agile.

Antonovsky came to this theory of salutogenisis when he carried out a study on Israeli women going through menopause. He found that there were a number of women who, according to all indications of the pathogenic model, should be suffering severe symptoms (because they faced severe stressors which cause illness). But they were not suffering at all. To his surprise he discovered that these women happened to be survivors of concentration camps. He found certain qualities in these women that resulted in what he called a higher “Sense of Coherence” than the other women.

Sense of Coherence is made up of three factors; comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness.

Comprehensibility means that whatever happens to a person, she is able to make sense of it and understand it, that is, the challenge is in some way “structured, predictable, and explicable.” Manageability means that either the resources are available to one to meet the demands posed by the stimuli,or one has a way to find them. Meaningfulness involves having a sense of meaning in the important areas of one’s life or recognizing “these demands are challenges, worthy of investment and engagement.”

Antonovsky found meaningfulness to be the motivational factor of the three, although he also found that all three mutually reinforce one another. For example if one has a high sense of comprehensibility but is low on the other two, one ends up not having the motivation to find resources and soon after this causes comprehensibility to be lost. If one is high on meaning and missing the other two, Antonovsky explains that there is a good chance to find the other two.

The theory of Salutogenisis may provide researched and proven reasons why Agile is so empowering for people. This research may also provide more insight into how to deepen Agile experiences to higher levels of empowerment. Agile methods help people to make sense of the market place by allowing for iterative delivery and adaptive planning, thus increasing their level of comprehensibility. Iterative delivery, adaptive planning and the concept of amplifying learning are all conducive to increased sense of manageability. Because people spend most of their time at work, it is quite important that they feel a sense of meaning in their work. The concept of empowering the team and the practice of self-organized teams and appropriate metrics can contribute to increased sense of meaning in one’s work.

Salutogenic food for thought for the Agile practitioner:

Antonovsky associated comprehensibility with consistency which he defined as “the extent to which one’s work situation allows and fosters the clarity of seeing the entire work picture and ones place in it, provides confidence in job security, and supports communicability and feedback in social relations at the workplace”.

How can the concept of consistency be promoted in Agile projects?

Manageability is related to under load/overload balance which is defined as “the availability of resources to the individual and to the collectivity within which there is interaction to get the job done well” and “…the extent to which the work situation has room for allowing potential to be utilized in substantively complex work.” The opposite of the former results in overload and the opposite of the latter is a situation of under load.

How can Agile projects guard against overload? How can an Agile coach and Agile teams fully utilize the capacities of its members?

Meaningfulness is closely associated with participation in shaping outcomes. Antonovsky explains beautifully the relationship between these two concepts:

When others decide everything for us-when they set the task, formulate the rules, and manage the outcome-and we have no say in the matter, we are reduced to objects. A world thus experienced as being indifferent to what we do comes to be seen as a world devoid of meaning.

In light of the concept of meaningfulness how can the principle of self organized team and shared decision making be deepened in Agile work?

Reference:
Antonovsky, Aron (1988). Unraveling the Mystery of Health: How People Manage Stress and Stay Well (Jossey Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series)

By Dr. Patricia Cranton

“I value and see myself as an authentic teacher. To me, authenticity means three things: the expression of the genuine self in the community, understanding how others are different from us without attempting to make them into our own image (helping others discover their authenticity as a way of fostering our own authenticity), and critically participating in life—questioning how we are different from the community and living accordingly.”

http://www.stfx.ca/people/pcranton/

Debra Langon and Ron Sheese Professors at York University

They have a transformative learning research project with their first year sociology and psychology students. Their focus is on incorporating transformative learning into their practice as educators.

Principles:
Engagement, deep learning v.s. surface learning, reflection, caring and at the center of all this is collaboration

Old approach to learning is just a critical thinking approach. They use the work of Thar Bacon on constructive thinking “Playing the believing game” beyond just logic.

They prize listening as much as speaking so that quiet students are not marginalized.

They have been surprised that simply stating a value like caring in their project has affected the students and also changed their own inward orientation towards their work. Students have repeatedly reported that feeling cared for in the classroom has enriched their learning experience. The focus on caring has also rejuvinated their work as professors.

“What Might Education for Transformation Look Like?”
Dr. John M. Dirkx, Michigan State University, Oct 8

Ego and rationality are servants of the education process. Learning centered on text (i.e. books, students writing, teachers writing and dialog between, or individual etc…) therefor forming a dialogical relationship of teachers, students, subject and context.

Jung speaks of pulling us out of the womb - individuation- this is about having a sense of self so that one can experience union and communion with others.

Create an opening
Engage the interest of students in the subject by activating the emotions, cognition and memory. Learning is fundamentally connected to emotion. Emotion is essential to the process of thinking, analysis and synthesis.

Construct and hold together patterns of information gathered around text. Use text as basis and have student re-story (that is, students use the text to create their own story).

Cultivating creative and critical thinking
Encourage analytic critique and synthesis and imagination. Foster the dialectic of intuition and analysis.

Fostering understanding - seeing the world through the “eye of the heart” heartfulness…building connections… deep relatedness or intimacy with subjects

Nurturing wisdom - learning to act wisely
Stay with ambiguity, cultivate a sense of wonder, put aside quest of certainty. Discovering the nature of the self “the transcendent self.” Deepening what it means to be in the world. Find out what we love.

What is transformative learning?
Holding the tension between:
Feminine and masculine
Agency and communion
Autonomy and interdependence
Will and willingness
Intuition and analysis

Transformative Learning has to be:
Experience based
Subjective
Depth instead of breadth
Reflective
Use of story
Imaginative and symbolic
Embodied (how the body takes on what it feels, for example when I am teaching my body also comes alive)

Further Reading:
“Nurturing the Soul in Adult Learning.” John M. Dirkx
“Strategies of Transformation Towards a Multicultural Society.” David Ablos
“Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood”. Jack Mezirow
“From Information to Transformation: Education for the Evolution of Consciousness.” Tobin Hart

A review of Tara J. Fenwick’s “Limits of the Learning Organization: A Critical Look” (article found in Learning for life: Canadian readings in adult education).

This article is a critique of learning organization literature (as presented in the works of Peters, Senge, Watkins, Marsick, Argyris, Schon and others). I chose to do a review of it because learning organization literature can and does inform the work of Agile practitioners. The writer, Tara Fenwick, offers a critique of this literature as an academic and practitioner in the field of adult education. Even though the language and tone of the article is judgmental and at times affronting to the corporate trainer audience, it is never-the-less challenging and valuable because she raises interesting ethical questions that can serve as cautions against potential trends that can distort agile practice. I will summarize her argument in the some of the areas most relevant to Agile practice.

Fenwick’s summary of the model of learning organization found in the literature, is an organization that: “creates continuous learning opportunities, promotes inquiry and dialog, encourages collaboration and team learning, establishes systems to capture and share learning, empowers people toward collective vision and connects the organization to its environment.”

The following is a summary list of some of Fenwick’s critiques:

Who’s Interests are Served
Although the learning organization literature holds great promise for a more humanitarian and egalitarian workplace, it has the potential to distort learning “into a tool for competitive advantage” and in turn, exploit people as resources in the pursuit of profit. To explore this idea she asks a valuable question: “Who’s interests are being served by the concept of learning organization, and what relations of power does it help to secure?” She argues that learning organization literature tends to serve the interests of educators working as trainers in organizations and managers interested in their own self preservation.

How Learning is Defined
Learning, in learning organization literature seems to be defined as that which benefits the organization, all other learning falls into the dysfunctional category. This perspective negates other ways that people create meaning and learn and potentially causes a person to become “alienated from their own meaning and block flourishing of this learning into something to benefit the community.”

Assumptions about Learners
The learning organization literature subordinates employees by seeing them as “undifferentiated learners-in-deficit”. Educators and managers are the architects of the learning organization while employees are busy “learning more, learning better and faster” trying to correct their knowledge deficit. In the learning organization workers become responsible for the health of the organization without the authority to determine alternative ways to reach that health. The fear of being left behind in a quickly changing market environment is used to create anxiety and fear as motivations for learning. All of these factors serve to put serious limits on the potential of people to learn in the work environment.

Diversity and Privilege Overlooked
Perspectives of race, class and gender -which research has shown affects the way people learn and collaborate- are lacking in the literature. Fenwick challenges the notion of achieving a democratically ideal situation for open dialog -that the learning organization literature calls for- when all people in the work place do not “have equal opportunity to participate, reflect, and refute one another” (for example because of the status of ones job, character, gender, class, age etc.)

Fenwick sheds a clear light on where the good philosophies of the learning organization are found wanting. The Agile community can benefit from asking some of the same ethical questions she asks in relation to our work. Her critique is a good challenge for Agile practitioners. It challenges us to:

• Continue to strive for higher levels of ethical excellence in our work
• To consider issues of power in our work
• To become conscious of how we use our own power
• To give thought to what voices are included / excluded in the creation of the learning organization
• Pay attention to how we motivate learners
• How to foster collaborative environments that are conscious of the privileging of some over others
• Think about who decides what is valuable knowledge and learning and how that affects the knowledge creation process

Reflecting on these issues will go a long way to contributing to the development of agile practice.

The full text of an old version of Fenwick’s article can be found here.