Tag Archives: failure

Agile Management, How-To Apply Agile, Reference Information, Scrum, XP and Lean

Pitfall of Scrum: Stretch Goals

4 Comments

The team decides on how much work it will do in a Sprint. No one should bring pressure on the team to over-commit. This simply builds resentment, distrust and encourages low-quality work. That said, of course teams can be inspired by challenging overall project or product goals. A stretch goal for a Sprint is just a way to 100% guarantee failure. Even the team should not set its own stretch goals.

There are a few interesting principles that apply here. For example, the Agile Manifesto mentions sustainability:

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

The Agile Manifesto also points out the importance of trust:

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Stretch goals are incompatible with both of these principles from the Agile Manifesto.

There are two types of stretch goals. The first type are those assigned by outsiders to the team. The second type are those which a team sets for itself. Both types are bad.

Stretch Goals Assigned by Outsiders

The worst extreme of this type of stretch goal is also the most common! This is the fixed-scope-fixed-date project deadline. In this type of stretch goal, the project team, doing Scrum or not, is forced to work backwards from the deadline to figure out how to get the work done. If the team can’t figure this out, managers often say things like “re-estimate” or “just get it done.” (Note: another thing that managers do in this situation is even worse: adding people to the project! Check out “The Mythical Man-Month” by F. Brooks for a great analysis of this problem.)

My anecdotal experience with this sort of thing is simple: quality suffers or sustainability suffers. I once worked with three other people on a mission critical project to help two banks with their merger. There was a regulatory deadline for completing the integration of the two existing systems for things like trading, etc. Fixed-scope-fixed-date. Coffee and sleepless nights were our solution since we tried not to sacrifice quality. We actually ended up working in my home for the last few 24-hour stretches so that we would have access to a shower. Suffice it to say, there’s no way we could have sustained that pace. It’s anti-Agile.

A quick search for ideas and opinions about stretch goals makes it very clear that there is no commonly agreed “correct” answer. However, from an Agile perspective stretch goals assigned by outsiders are clearly against the principles of the Agile Manifesto.

Stretch Goals Set by the Scrum Team

The Scrum Guide states:

The number of items selected from the Product Backlog for the Sprint is solely up to the Development Team. Only the Development Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint.

For emphasis: what it can accomplish – not what it (the Development Team) wants to accomplish, or what it should accomplish, or what it could accomplish if everything goes perfectly. A Development Team should be accomplishing their Sprint plan successfully (all Product Backlog Items done) on a regular basis. Of course, exceptional circumstances may intervene from time to time, but the team should be building trust with stakeholders. Here’s another story:

I had a good friend. We would always go out for coffee together. We just hung out – chatted about life, projects, relationships. Of course, from time-to-time one or the other of us would cancel our plans. That’s just life too. But there came a time when my friend started cancelling more often than not. There was always a good excuse: I’m sick, unexpected visitors, work emergency, whatever. After a little while of this I started to think that cancelling would be the default. I even got to the point where I was making alternative plans even if my friend and I had plans. I got to the point where I no longer trusted my friend. It didn’t matter that the excuses were always good. Trust was broken.

It doesn’t matter why a team fails to meet a goal. It reduces trust. It doesn’t matter why a team succeeds in meeting a goal. It builds trust. Even among team members. A team setting stretch goals is setting itself up for regular failure. Even if the team doesn’t share those stretch goals with outsiders.

Stretch goals destroy trust within the team.

Think about that. When a team fails to meet its own stretch goal, team members will start to look for someone to blame. People look for explanations, for stories. The team will create its own narrative about why a stretch goal was missed. If it happens over and over, that narrative will start to become doubt about the team’s own capacity either by pin-pointing an individual or in a gestalt team sense.

Trust and Agility

The importance of trust cannot be over-stated. In order for individuals to work effectively together, they must trust each other. How much trust? Well, the Agile Manifesto directly addresses trust:

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.

Here is my recent YouTube video about stretch goals… check it out and subscribe to our channel!

Affiliated Promotions:

Register for a Scrum, Kanban and Agile training sessions for your, your team or your organization -- All Virtual! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Please share!
Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Agile Management, Links to Agile Info

Another Agile Article on Slashdot – Andy Hunt has Failed, not Agile

Leave a comment

For reference, here is the link to the article on Slashdot called Is Agile Development a Failing Concept?

This article will generate lots of great discussion, but most of it will be ignorant.  My biggest problem with this is that one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, Andy Hunt, has asserted that Agile just isn’t working out.  My opinion: Andy has failed to have the necessary patience for a decades-long cultural change.  This is a lot like a leader at Toyota saying that lean has failed because 50 years after they started doing it, not everyone is doing it properly yet.  One organization that I know of has been working on changing to Agile for over 10 years and they still aren’t “done”.  That’s actually okay.

Affiliated Promotions:

Register for a Scrum, Kanban and Agile training sessions for your, your team or your organization -- All Virtual! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Please share!
Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Theory of Agile

Agile Scam – Abusive Comments… What To Do?

8 Comments

This is “my” blog – I write most of the articles, and it is owned by the business in which I am a major partner.  I recently was reviewing comments in the moderation queue and came across this “gem”:

This man is a scammer, agile snake oil only 600, what a bargain. Filthy scamming piece of crap, he’s probably stupid enough to believe his own s**t too.

I’m assuming this person, who is anonymous, is upset either about something I said here on this blog, or possibly something that I (or one of my colleagues) did while we were working with one of our clients.

Several months ago, I was also made aware of a posting about Berteig Consulting (and myself) on Ripoff Report.  I’m not going to link to it, but I will quote it here:

Our company undergoes Agile transformation. Our management decided to hire Berteig Consulting

– a bunch of charlatans spending hours talking absolute nonsense.

They promise sky rocketing performance because they teach us to ( than follows a great number of words with no meaning). We must reflect in Buddish manner, talk to each other, discuss obstacles, be truthful, play stupid games,…. They charge company big money for waisting employees time for endless meetings and providing us with useless information.

Honestly, these sorts of comments make me a bit sad, a bit down.  But here’s what I think about them.

The Agile “Scam”

Let’s make sure we know what we are talking about.  Agile is defined in the the Agile Manifesto.  If you aren’t familiar with it, please take a look.  Basically, the purpose of Agile is to find better ways of building software that are based in practice.  In other words, by people actually building software, and sharing their knowledge, experience and the values and principles that helped them do what they did.

The thing about values and principles is that they are a bit like axioms in formal logic: you can’t prove them.  They are a starting point.  So, if you read the Agile Manifesto and you happen to think that

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

is “Buddish” (whatever that is, presumably Buddhist), and that being “Buddish” is bad or useless, then that is certainly your right.  I can’t prove that this principle of the Agile Menifesto is “right” or “correct” or “always the best thing evar.”  But I like it.  I think it’s good.  I believe in it.  So I guess I am stupid enough to believe my own s**t.  Except that it’s not my own.  I didn’t write the Agile Manifesto.  But I do fully support it.  And, without exception, I think that if work environments tried to put in place the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, the world would be a (slightly) better place.

So is it a scam?  Well, if it is, I’m being scammed too.  I work crazy long hours, and although I make a decent living, I’m certainly not getting rich off this Agile thing.  When I think of a scam, I think of “get rich quick” or “lose 20 pounds in 20 days” or those sorts of things that promise unbelievable results with little or no effort.

Unfortunately, Agile isn’t like that.  Here is how I think of three Agile methods:

  1. Scrum: incredible results at the cost of incredible pain.  This is kind of like I imagine detox.  An organization is near death and needs to be revived so extreme measures (Scrum) have to be taken.  Requires significant outside help.
  2. OpenAgile: good medium-term results that require significant investment.  This is kind of like making a conscious change from a poor diet with lots of junk food to a good diet: takes discipline, but do-able with good encouragement and support.
  3. Kanban: modest long-term results with relatively low effort.  This is like deciding to change only one thing about your health at a time even if you have lots of health problems.  Lots of small wins accumulate over time.  Doesn’t require much outside help.

Of course, my descriptions of these are _vast_ simplifications for the purposes of discussing the Agile “scam”.  Do professional sports teams or Olympic athletes need coaches?  Probably most people would agree they do need that outside help.  Is coaching sports teams or athletes a “scam”?  Nope.  Not all coaches are good, certainly, but coaching is an essential (sometimes difficult) investment to get to that level of high performance.

Bad Agile

Of course, not all Agile transformations or adoptions are good.  The Agile Manifesto is not easy for most people, teams or organizations to truly embrace.  One of the most common problems I see is that an organization believes that it can have distributed or remote team members and somehow have effective communication among those team members.  This is just one simple example that comes directly from the Agile Manifesto:

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

I guess, technically, the Agile Manifesto doesn’t out-and-out say that a team must be co-located, but boy-oh-boy does it ever make a difference.

And yet, doing radical collocation is damn hard for most organizations.  So lots of organizations try to adopt Agile techniques without collocation.  And, mostly, their results suck.  Or they try to do collocation, but totally botch it.

Any given principle or value of the Agile Manifesto has its own challenges.  And so most Agile implementations are distant echoes of the incredible results that some rare organizations achieve when they really get Agile.

My Track Record

As a consultant, coach and trainer, I sometimes wish that I could say that I have never failed, that I have never given bad advice.  That’s because in complex human systems, it is very very very hard to sort out cause and effect relationships.  If one of my clients fails to have a dramatic transformation is it because:

  • I gave bad advice?
  • Someone at the client subverted the transformation effort?
  • An executive didn’t support it enough?
  • Market forces destabilized the transformation?
  • The organization’s culture treated Agile as an invasion and fought it off?
  • Agile just wasn’t “right” for the organization?
  • Agile wasn’t adopted soon enough?
  • etc….

On the other hand, I couldn’t very well be a coach, consultant or trainer if I didn’t have a clue.  My colleagues, Paul and Travis (who are named in the Ripoff Reports article), and others whom I have worked with (Nica, David, Mike, Deborah, Christian, another Mike, Allistair, Holleh, yet another Mike,a Michael, and another Michael (wow!), Garry, Jim, Mark, Mary, Sanjiv, yes even another Michael, Julien, Brenda, Derek…) are all smart, experienced, sincere, helpful people… who all know what it takes to produce good results.

The “Secret” Essence of Successful Agile

And, strangely, the essence of it is encapsulated in just a few basic basics:

Truthfulness (vs. hypocrisy, lies and deception)

Collaboration (vs. competition or individualism)

Service to Others (vs. greed and apathy)

and, ultimately, love between people.

So.  To those two people who felt they needed to spew out their hatred, their pain, or whatever it is that they are suffering from, I encourage you to contact me directly.  My email address and phone number are public.  I can’t promise to solve your problem, but I will give you love and whatever help I can extend.

 

Affiliated Promotions:

Register for a Scrum, Kanban and Agile training sessions for your, your team or your organization -- All Virtual! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Please share!
Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Agile Case Studies

The Start of a True Team

1 Comment

I wrote this article for our Real Agility Newsletter, but I wanted to share it here too, just in case some of you don’t get it.  I think this is important to share because it gets to some of the deep values of Agile and good teamwork.

– – – – – – – –

The team really is important. Last month I wrote about love. This month, I’ll write about commitment. Our team has gone through some extreme tests this last month. Commitment kept us together.

Our business has been through crisis before. In the second half of 2005, my own financial mis-management led to near-bankruptcy for the business and for myself personally. My dear long-suffering wife and business partner, Melanie, kept things under control as we recovered. In late 2009 the Great Recession hit us hard and we had to cut our staff back to just Paul and myself by laying off three talented friends and cutting work to a loyal subcontractor. That was incredibly painful for everyone involved. A similar crisis occurred again in late 2011, although it wasn’t as severe. In September last year, our projections were showing a looming crisis… but we narrowly averted any layoffs when a smaller consulting deal closed and one person was let go for unrelated reasons. We still needed more work, and in late fall we were expecting to close three important deals.

In January we knew we were in trouble. Business was not booming. In fact, those three important deals had fallen through with nothing obvious on the horizon to replace them. Our office management was in a shambles with two recent changes in staff and very little continuity. Our accounts receivable had several items that were waaaay overdue. We were starting to dig deep into our operating credit with no obvious way to climb back out. The partners, Paul, Travis, Melanie and I started to talk about serious stuff: deep layoffs. We were worried we may even have to cut all the way back to just me doing work (mostly CSM classes) – a staff level we haven’t seen since 2007!

Two weeks ago, the four partners had an emergency weekend meeting after our early February attempts to build sufficient immediate cash flow failed. We consulted for over four hours around a single question: what should we do? Our projections were showing us running out of credit in just four weeks, our business development pipeline was almost empty and the few things in it were clearly long-shot deals, at least in the timeframe we needed. It seemed almost impossible to avoid deep layoffs. Our love for each other seemed almost irrelevant to the crisis, despite the depth of our feeling.  The consultation was difficult and filled with despair.

My memory for exact words is poor. I remember concepts, relationships and feelings. During that weekend consultation, one thing really stood out: we started to talk about commitment. We talked about what it would mean to be committed to each other and to the business vision of transforming people, process and culture. Most powerfully, we talked about the commitment of our newest employee, Nima, who seemed determined to go to the ends of the earth, to the very last moment to help us all succeed. As we talked about commitment, we came to our most powerful decision: sink or swim, we are all in this together to the end.

After that critical point in our discussion, we set some goals, determined some important activities, and decided to go literally day-to-day in deciding if it was time to wrap up the business. And, strangely enough (I say ironically), we decided we needed to shorten our planning cycle from a month to two weeks, increase the discipline of our team’s interactions to bi-daily check-ins, create a detailed set of dynamic plans for the two weeks, and have a review meeting at the end of the two weeks. Sounds a bit like an Agile team, doesn’t it?

What happened? Well, we’re still around. We’ve closed enough business that our projections are now showing us staying in a steady state financially for the next three months. That’s a dramatic turnaround from just two weeks prior. We aren’t going to run out of credit. In fact, we now have enough prospects that we expect to be extremely busy in just a couple more weeks. Our end-of-cycle review, which happened on Friday, was still difficult. There is still great uncertainty about many things. But the one thing that is crystal clear, strong as steel, and deep as the deepest ocean is our commitment to each other to succeed together. We are a true team.

– – – – – – – –

If you have similar stories to tell, I would love to hear them!

Affiliated Promotions:

Register for a Scrum, Kanban and Agile training sessions for your, your team or your organization -- All Virtual! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Please share!
Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmail
How-To Apply Agile, Links to Agile Info, Scrum, XP and Lean

The Decline and Fall of Agile and How Scrum Makes it Hurt More

6 Comments

James Shore wrote a great post about the problems he is seeing with agile adoptions that start with Scrum called the Decline and Fall of Agile.  Please please please (pretty please) read it before you read what I am about to write here!  I agree with what James is saying 100%.

Now, let’s hear the truth:

Scrum is really really hard!  Doing Scrum well is like quitting a heavy, long addiction (I think).  Don’t ever make the mistake that because Scrum is simple (lack of complexity) that it is somehow therefore easy (lack of effort).

Doing Scrum properly takes:

sacrifice – sacrifice of our ways of thinking, our habits, our comfort

wisdom – wisdom to see the small improvements while struggling with the humongeous ones

and most importantly,

truthfulness – honesty to see and say the truth, integrity to act on the truth, detachment to avoid believing in what you want instead of what is real, courage to continue even when things aren’t perfect or easy

Scrum depends heavily on commitment both at the small scale of an individual committing to a small piece of work, and at the large scale of an organization committing to real deep cultural change.  Without that entire spectrum of commitment, it is unlikely that adopting Scrum will be anything but the latest fad imposed by management or done stealthily by staff.

But Scrum isn’t the only “agile” method.  As James points out, the engineering practices of Extreme Programming such as pair programming, test driven development, continuous integration, evolutionary design and refactoring are all critical.  Do they have to be done and perfected first?  No.  But eventually, if you are using Scrum to build software (not everyone is), they do have to be done.

As a Certified Scrum Trainer, I have always emphasized how Scrum is hard, and how being a ScrumMaster is very very very hard.  This is why my training class is three days instead of two.  This is why I don’t encourage anyone to come to it, only people who will be ScrumMasters.  This is why after the first day of my course, most students are actually feeling quite discouraged!!!  It takes three days minimum for people to understand and process the incredible shift in mental model.  And of course, even after three days, it is oh so easy to revert back to our normal thinking habits.

So what should people do?  Do Scrum by the book.  Yes that means putting a whole team in a single room.  Yes it means that you have to really remove obstacles, and fast!  Yes that means that your teams actually have to be cross functional (and not just in the weak sense of multi-skilled developers).  Yes that means that it – will – take – a – long – time – to – get – it – right!!!!

And please, it is so worth getting help beyond just the training!  If you think that I’m just trying to promote my own coaching services, please go check out:

www.ccpace.com

www.rallydev.com

www.outformations.com

www.lithespeed.com

www.mountaingoatsoftware.com

www.controlchaos.com

www.bigvisible.com

www.kittyhawkconsulting.com

They all have great coaches and I would absolutely way rather see you succeed than believe that I am just trying to promote my own business.

Affiliated Promotions:

Register for a Scrum, Kanban and Agile training sessions for your, your team or your organization -- All Virtual! Satisfaction Guaranteed!
Please share!
Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Berteig
Upcoming Courses
View Full Course Schedule
Scrum Master Bootcamp with CSM® (Certified Scrum Master®) [Virtual Learning] (SMBC)
Online
C$1895.00
Jun 7
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Team Performance Coaching with BERTEIG (COACHING-TPC)
Online
C$750.00
Jun 9
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Real Agility™ Ask Me Anything / Coaching
Online
C$750.00
Jun 9
2023
Details
Win as a Manager with Your New AI Coach: Max Good (WEBINAR)
Online
C$0.00
Jun 9
2023
Details
Kanban System Design® (KMPI)
Online
C$1895.00
Jun 13
2023
Details
Product Owner Bootcamp with CSPO® (Certified Scrum Product Owner®) [Virtual Learning] (POBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Jun 14
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Team Performance Coaching with BERTEIG (COACHING-TPC)
Online
C$750.00
Jun 16
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Real Agility™ Ask Me Anything / Coaching
Online
C$750.00
Jun 16
2023
Details
Kanban for Scrum Masters (ML-KSM)
Online
C$495.00
Jun 20
2023
Details
Kanban for Product Owners (ML-KPO)
Online
C$495.00
Jun 21
2023
Details
Team Kanban Practitioner® (TKP)
Online
C$1015.75
Jun 21
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Team Performance Coaching with BERTEIG (COACHING-TPC)
Online
C$750.00
Jun 23
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Real Agility™ Ask Me Anything / Coaching
Online
C$750.00
Jun 23
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Team Performance Coaching with BERTEIG (COACHING-TPC)
Online
C$750.00
Jun 30
2023
Details
Real Agility™ Real Agility™ Ask Me Anything / Coaching
Online
C$750.00
Jun 30
2023
Details
Scrum Master Bootcamp with CSM® (Certified Scrum Master®) [Virtual Learning] (SMBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Jul 5
2023
Details
Kanban Systems Improvement® (KMPII)
Online
C$1610.75
Jul 11
2023
Details
Product Owner Bootcamp with CSPO® (Certified Scrum Product Owner®) [Virtual Learning] (POBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Jul 12
2023
Details
Team Kanban Practitioner® (TKP)
Online
C$1015.75
Jul 19
2023
Details
Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® (ACSM)
Online
C$845.75
Jul 19
2023
Details
Scrum Master Bootcamp with CSM® (Certified Scrum Master®) [Virtual] (SMBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Aug 2
2023
Details
Team Kanban Practitioner® (TKP)
Online
C$1015.75
Aug 15
2023
Details
Product Owner Bootcamp with CSPO® (Certified Scrum Product Owner®) [Virtual Learning] (POBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Aug 16
2023
Details
Scrum Master Bootcamp with CSM® (Certified Scrum Master®) [Virtual] (SMBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Sep 19
2023
Details
Product Owner Bootcamp with CSPO® (Certified Scrum Product Owner®) [Virtual Learning] (POBC)
Online
C$1270.75
Sep 26
2023
Details