Life after your First Agile Project

This blog post is adapted from a workshop/presentation I recently led at the May NWA PMI Professional Development Day.​



So, you just finished your first Agile project in a Waterfall organization. Now what? Let me put my Agile Coach hat on and tell you, “It depends.” It depends on whether or not it was a positive experience and how supportive the overall organization is of this “Agile thing”. Let’s run through a few possible scenarios.

Agile Sucks

You may be one of the many people whose first exposure to Agile is a negative one. Maybe your team was uncooperative. Maybe there were too many practices that were too new for the team to successfully adopt. Maybe the organization was so un-Agile that your team got exhausted from trying to swim upstream the whole time. Or maybe your team never really became an Agile team; you were a bunch of silo’d individual contributors with Waterfall mindsets trying a new front-end to the same process you’ve always used to get the job done. Whatever the reason, all you know for sure is that Agile sucks. It simply does not work; not for you, maybe not for anyone.

As an Agile Coach, I am sincerely bummed if this was your experience. I wish I could have been there to help make sure you knew why you were adopting Agile, not just how to go through the motions. I wish I could have been your heat shield, to protect you from the Agile defeatists and remove organizational impediments for you. I wish I could have helped you through the forming and storming stages of a team into norming and performing, so that you could benefit from a team who, corny as it sounds, was greater than the sum of its parts. I wish I could have helped you learn how to continuously improve not all at once, but incrementally.

But I wasn’t there, so what will you do? I hope that you will take pause and consider the possibility that those Agile proponents can’t all be crazy. What did they do or have that you didn’t? What might you have missed? Get involved in virtual and physical Agile communities, remain open-minded, and stuff your toolbox with as many practices and approaches as you can. Study the Agile Manifesto and its principles and recognize that what it’s defining is a mindset, not a methodology. You have to be Agile before you can successfully do Agile.

Agile Recipe

Maybe you had some success with Agile – or at least you think you did – and you want to keep doing it with all your future project teams. What really happened is you ran a successful Scrum project, and you’re ecstatic that you found a working recipe that will turn any team into a high-performing team. The team followed the Scrum Guide to the letter and there’s no doubt in your mind that this is what Agile is all about. Agile is Scrum, Scrum is Agile. If you follow the exact same approach, you are confident you will have similar results with your next team. After all, this is the same company, same culture, same organization support and/or impediments. Why shouldn’t you expect the same results?

The short answer is because it’s not the same team. Even if some of the people are the same, if the make-up of the team isn’t exactly the same then it’s a different team. You’ll be starting back at the forming stage with a new backlog, maybe even a new Product Owner, and there’s no guarantee that this group of people will interpret and embrace the Scrum Guide the same way the old team did. Hopefully you learned enough about teaching, coaching, and/or facilitation from your last team that you can guide this new team through the same pitfalls in a faster, safer way. Hopefully you learned Servant Leadership skills that will help you get buy-in from the team to try this new thing. Hopefully.

Hopefully you learn by the end of this project how much more successful the project would have been if you would have kept your previous team together. There is a cost associated with breaking up a high-performing team and knocking everyone back to the forming stage. There are also reasons that you may want to incur that cost in order to reap specific benefits, but “because the project ended” is not one of those reasons.

Keep the Scrum Team

Not only did you have success with the team, the team became a family. You are now a high-performing Scrum team that knows the process and each other so well that you couldn’t dream of breaking them up. You manage to keep the team together for the next project, and you hit the ground running.

This is great, but you have to be careful. If you have decided that Scrum is the be-all end-all of Agile then, eventually, the team will begin to stagnate. Scrum ceremonies will become ritualistic instead of productive, thought-provoking team activities. Group-think may begin to crop up, and the electric feeling of respectful debate will flicker out of the team. Some team members may become too comfortable, others restless. If you don’t do something, you’ll lose everything you fought to keep.

My hope is that you learn that Agile isn’t about following a recipe. It’s about starting with a recipe and making it your own. It’s about evolving the way you cook, trying new flavors, and learning how to transition from cook to chef. Hopefully you find all the success you were looking for and more, because our successes motivate us to keep going, keep trying.

Become comfortable with mining for conflict and facilitating conflict to unearth change that will make the team better. Stay in tune with the latest ideas and do your best to keep the team in the “Learning Zone”.

Grow the Agile Team

credit: universal studios

Perhaps you’re one of the rare few who, by the end of your first Agile project, recognize already that the team should be together and should not be limited to just Scrum. Perhaps you’ve already begun incorporating aspects of Lean, Kanban, DevOps, Lean Startup, Lean Enterprise, eXtreme Programming, or any number of other Agile approaches to help your team stretch and grow. You have a vision for how amazing your team can be – a unicorn among horses – and you recognize that Agility is a journey, not a destination.

The team can only become so awesome before running into major roadblocks within the organization. The team can become locally optimized, but the benefits will be limited until the entire system is optimized. After all, this is a Waterfall organization – you can run whatever methodology you like within your team, but there’s still an overall process that must be respected.

You’ll soon find that, in order to best help the team, you have to spend less time with the team and more time fixing the environment they live in. Maybe it’s the dependent teams – adjacent teams doing similar work or component teams, such as Security, Infrastructure, or Release teams. Maybe the Operations team is pushing back, trying to drive constancy at the sake of functionality. Maybe it’s the way work is approved and projects are formed that prohibit the team from responding to customer requests and market demands as quickly as they are capable. Maybe there are leaders or others in the organization that are afraid of change and, consequently, are passively or actively sabotaging the spread of Agile.

If you are successful, you will find that organizational Agility provides orders of magnitude greater than a single Agile team. You’ll find that what the team does rarely have as great an impact on their performance as the environment in which they operate.

"I Like that Old Time Rock 'n Roll"

I'm am constantly amazed with the power of first impressions. As much as we may try to avoid it, the initial impressions we get when we're first introduced to a person, place, or idea tend to stick with us for the rest of our lives. This sentiment is embodied in the classic Bob Segal hit, "Old Time Rock and Roll". The song starts with its thesis:

"Just take those old records off the shelf, I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself. Today's music ain't got the same soul; I like that old time Rock 'n Roll"

This same phenomenon happens in Agile as well. When people think of Agile Transformations being hindered by first impressions, they usually jump to those who "didn't do it right", who failed and were left with a bitter taste in their mouth. I would argue that, in the long-term, the more hazardous first impression comes from those who have greater-than-anticipated success with the first thing they try. From that point on Agile is defined solely by what they did the first time.

Let's say your first approach was Scrum - and I mean by-the-Scrum-Guide Scrum. It works so well for you that you scoff at Kanban, DevOps, or anything else that violates your 5 ceremony, 3 role, pure and holy Agile approach. Nevermind that you are supposed to be looking for ways to improve every Sprint. Nevermind that the best way to improve team performance is adjustments to the process, not the people. "I'm sorry, you don't use time boxes?" "How do you plan without using User Stories?" "Clearly you don't know what Agile means."

I find it telling that the first line in the Agile Manifesto states that "we are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it" (AgileManifesto.org, emphasis added). They didn't say that they had uncovered the best way of developing software, they were in the never-ending process of uncovering better ways. They didn't come up with the Manifesto by getting doctorate degrees and jumping into a think tank, they came up with it based on their experiences in doing it and helping others.

I find it highly narcissistic for anyone to have claimed the best way to do anything. Given how long mankind has been on the earth and the fact that nothing has yet been proven beyond improvement, saying that you've "figured it out" means you're either selling something, deluding yourself, or both. Those who really get Agile know that it's about the journey, not the destination. If you keep reliving the glory days of your first Scrum team then you'll never give proper attention to challenging the status quo and innovating the next big idea for delivering software in a better way.

I know, I know, it's hard to give up those first impressions, the glory days, the golden years when everything was perfect and your selective memory hadn't kicked in yet. But you have to if you want long-term success. It's risky business, but somebody's got to do it.

Not just Agile - ____ Agile!

Let's do whatever we want and call it a new flavor of Agile!

Every now and again, I meet a team that's doing things very differently than your traditional Agile team. They often label themselves with a prefix - they're not just Agile, they're "Extreme Agile" or "Hyper Agile". Personally, I think that the term Agile encompasses all that a team would ever aspire to be, though Agile teams may be at varying levels of maturity. Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, DevOps - whatever you want to call yourselves, your team should strive to get better and better at aligning with the Agile Manifesto and its Principles. This means your practices reflect Agility and your are continuously improving.

So how can you tell if you're Agile? I recommend asking three groups of people: your peers, your clients, and yourselves.

Your Peers
If you're an Agile team operating as part of a larger organization, there should be a balance between competition and collaboration between teams. Everyone wants their team to be the best, but not because the other teams are so bad. You should be working hard to improve your competition, a.k.a. the other teams in the company, so that they, in turn, will push you to be better.

Ask your peers how Agile you are and be prepared for some candid yet constructive feedback. Remember, you're all in this together. Cross-pollination and frequent feedback from your peers makes everyone better.

Your Clients
It doesn't matter what the nature of your team is, your code is being used by someone. Whether it's an end-customer, a business user in another division, another system within your technical organization, etc., there's somebody who uses what it is you're building. The Agile Manifesto and its Principles make it very clear what kind of relationship with and service to our customers we should be striving for. All you have to do is ask your clients whether they feel that relationship and service is there.

You should also look for ways to continuously improve how your interact with and serve your clients. What delights your customers today will soon become the status quo. If you're a good Agile team, you're meeting with your customers and getting feedback on a frequent basis, anyway. Take some time to go over how you're delivering, not just what you're delivering.

Yourselves
We are often our harshest critics. I encourage all Agile teams to have everyone on the team fill out some sort of self-assessment on a regular basis (a quick search will provide you some examples). By getting as many responses as possible, you avoid the extreme ups and downs that come from individuals. Look at the mean and median results, then discuss your perceived strengths and weaknesses as a team.

Sometimes we feel we're at the top of our class because we're excelling at what we understand Agile to be. It's important to stay involved with the greater Agile community so you can find out the latest and (potentially) greatest practices and techniques for driving Agility. Even more importantly, recognize that there's no such thing as perfection, only better, and instill a passion for continuous improvement within your team.

And Also...
I'm sure there are other ways to gauge a team's Agility. What other ways would you recommend for teams to assess how Agile they are? Is there a place for "Extreme" or "Hyper" Agile in our vernacular? Is it a positive thing to have pockets of disproportionately high Agile maturity in your organization? What are you doing to drive an overall increasing Agile maturity?

Discord in Agileland

I've seen a lot of blog posts and articles circulating about how horrible the state of Agile has become. The central theme to these is that the term "Agile" has moved away from the principles that they established to the practices that are commonly used by "Agile" teams and organizations. I'd like to gently suggest that we not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Look, I totally get it. I really do. A quick glance at my own blog's history will tell you that I'm a huge advocate of sticking to the Agile principles and paradigm. Adopting practices, techniques, frameworks, or methodologies without internalizing the Agile Manifesto and its Principles is an exercise in diminishing returns (if any). However, it's also very difficult to ascertain how well an organization has internalized Agile into its culture. Like the saying goes, "The proof is in the tasting of the pudding," meaning that Agile teams do, in fact, behave differently because of how they've internalized Agile.

Theological Agility

"You will respect the sacred parchment" -- 5 reasons Agile is like a cult

One of the better blog posts that I've read on the subject was written by Dave Thomas, one of the Agile Manifesto's original signatories. In "Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility)", he writes, "Once the Manifesto became popular, the word agile became a magnet for anyone with points to espouse, hours to bill, or products to sell. It became a marketing term, coopted to improve sales in the same way that words such as eco and natural are. A word that is abused in this way becomes useless—it stops having meaning as it transitions into a brand."

People have exploited the agile brand to push their own agendas, that's for sure. All too often these days you meet someone trying to sell a practice or approach who can't name more than a couple of the Agile Principles (if any). I have personally trained people on Agile who had "heard so much about it", yet had never heard of such a thing as the Agile Manifesto.

So yes, we do need to work on getting back to our roots. However, that does not make all practices and approaches evil. This way of thinking is way too theological for an approach that must be practically applicable.

Making a living off of changing people's lives is not a crime against Agile. Furthermore, there are some practices that have existed for long enough that I would consider a team to be un-Agile or a low-maturity Agile team if they weren't doing them.

By their Fruits

By their fruits ye shall know them - Agile Teams have Agile practices, produce quality value, and are happy!

In his blog post "The Corruption of Agile", Andrew Binstock writes about the evils of building a brand off of Agile. He states that teams can be doing Agile practices without being Agile, and they can be Agile without doing Agile practices. My confusion is: how do you know a team is Agile if they aren't acting Agile? Practices such as TDD and Continuous Integration enable the team to deliver the values stated in the Agile Manifesto and its principles. If a team's not doing them, what are they doing to get there? Do they inspect and adapt on a regular basis? Are they striving to deliver something to their customers every 2 weeks to 2 months (with a preference for the shorter timescale)? How do you know they are Agile if their practices aren't Agile?

Agile practices can be a good gauge for a team's Agility. I do not advocate their use as the only metric of Agility, but they provide a good starting point for assessing a team. If a team is using Scrum and has implemented TDD and Continuous Integration, it's going to take a fair amount of convincing for me to believe they aren't "Agile", for how did they get to that point if they weren't continuously improving? Perhaps they were Agile at one time and had grown stale, but there is certainly evidence that they were at least Agile at one point in time.

Keep an Open Mind
Do we need to focus on our roots, the foundation of Agile culture that will breed lasting success in our teams? Absolutely! Our people should be consistently reminded of what it means to be Agile to ensure they are adapting towards greater Agility instead of away from it. Are people who introduce practices, approaches, and techniques that enable and empower a team to become more Agile inherently evil? Absolutely not! A team that understands what Agility is can tell when someone's trying to pull one over on them versus a person who genuinely has their best interests at heart.

I love going to conferences and learning about the latest and greatest in the Agile world. I love being a part of a community that is so obsessed with making people's lives better. I love the healthy debate and pragmatism that comes with experience. And I loathe those who are clearly pushing their own agenda without a reality check or an understanding of what Agile is really all about. I think it's time we took a more measured approach to our criticism, understanding that not all Agile consultants are wolves in sheep's clothing; indeed, more of them than you think are just trying to make the world a better place.

Understanding Agile Planning

One common myth about Agile is that those who practice Agile don't plan. I've found the opposite to be true: those who truly understand Agile are planning all the time. The difference is that the planning they do is much more lightweight. They also anticipate change, rather than pretend it doesn't exist, resulting in plans that are living documents instead of notarized relics. Their plans are always accurate, but with varying levels of precision. How do they do this? Using one of the simplest, most powerful planning tools out there: the backlog.

The Backlog
A backlog is really nothing more than a prioritized list. If you've ever made a To-Do List (or its popular cousin, the Honey-Do List) then you've made a backlog. If your backlog was short, you probably got a lot done and felt a great swell of accomplishment. If your backlog was exhaustive and poorly prioritized, you probably got overwhelmed and did little to "move the needle".

Levels of Planning
I'm tackling this from an enterprise view of Scrum, but the concepts are the same regardless of how many levels you use or the terminology you pick. In general, an enterprise using Scrum should have five levels of planning.

Levels of Planning

I'm not the first to notice these five levels, so I can't take credit for the concept. The idea is that you start with a Vision that serves as your "True North". Everything that you do should align with your Vision, and your Vision statement should be updated infrequently. At this level, you're looking at Themes or Strategies that execute the Vision at a very high level.

Everything in your Roadmap - lets call them Epics - should align to one or more Theme. You may call it something different, and the word Epic may mean something different to you. When I say Epic, I refer to a set of one or more Features that provide significant strategical value to your organization. Waterfall project charters usually consist of one or more Epics as I've defined them here. Your Roadmap may go out 3-5 years or more, but becomes more "squishy" the further out you go. Roadmaps should be revisited at least quarterly and updated whenever necessary.

Releases should align to the Roadmap and should consist of one or more Features. When I say "Release", I'm referring to a production release with significant functionality. If you're in a shop that employs Continuous Delivery, this would obviously not refer to the type of release that happens multiple times each day; perhaps the word "Release" doesn't even make sense in that context. Regardless of the term, this is the level that is easiest for end-users to understand. Everything above this level is too abstract, and everything below this level is too granular.

Sprints should have goals that align with the Release plan. The Scrum teams do this by committing to User Stories that contribute to the completion of the next Releases Feature(s). My recommendation for Sprint Duration is two weeks. I've tried 3-week, 4-week, and month-long Sprints and I didn't care for any of them. Two weeks seems to be the sweet spot. Changes to the Sprint plan should be kept to a minimum, especially if the team is a less-mature Agile team. Again, the mechanics of this change for Kanban, DevOps, or similar teams.

At the lowest level, the team aligns in their Daily Scrum on how they will work together to accomplish the Sprint's goals. They may be aligning in the context of tasks, which may or may not be planned out at the beginning of the Sprint, but they are not likely to be discussing their daily work in terms more abstract than User Stories. After all, they know how their Stories are tied to Features, how those Features are tied to Epics, and how those Epics are tied to Themes; there's no reason to revisit the higher levels every day.

The Planning Engine
The mechanism for moving work intake to something that's actionable is actually quite similar across all levels. The cadence, level-of-detail, and people involved may differ, but the process is essentially the same.

1. Discuss the item
2. Estimate the item
3. Prioritize the item
4. Implement or Decompose the item
• If Decomposing, the sub-items are fed to the next level down and the process repeats at step #1.

At the team level, this is done in the Backlog Grooming sessions (or, as I like to call them, "Story Time"). The same concept can and should be used at the other levels of Planning, simply modified to be appropriate for said level. For example, you may have more executive people meeting quarterly to groom the Epic backlog; you may have representatives from each Scrum team in a product area get together monthly to groom the Feature backlog; and you may meet as a Scrum team each Sprint to groom the Product (User Story) backlog. Use whatever cadence and team members that makes sense for your organization and circumstances.

A SAFe Approach

If you're familiar with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), then you know that what I just described is accounted for in their Big Picture. If you wanted more advice on how to implement this planning engine then I recommend you view the abstracts found on their website. I've found their advice to be very useful and pragmatic.

You can implement the five levels of planning with a backlog-driven planning engine without SAFe. Indeed, there are many non-SAFe Agile companies that have established an Agile planning process before the advent of SAFe. I'm simply suggesting that, if you're new to this and don't know where to start or if you're in the middle of this and struggling with what you have, check out what SAFe has to offer. Take what works for you and toss the rest.

A Rose by Any Other Name...

As I stated at the beginning, mine is only one perspective on Agile Planning, and the terms I use may be different (or defined differently) than what you use in your organization. I would love to get your perspective on how Agile Planning can be done. After all, I'm always on the lookout for better, more Agile ways to do things!

Introspective: Max allowed BMI at the Gym

As I've mentioned before, I'm overweight and have been for the majority of my life. I've been trying to change my habits and behaviors to foster increased health in hopes of lowering my BMI (Body Mass Index). One of the behaviors that I'm trying to make a habit is attending the gym regularly.

I have a friend that I usually work out with, and we've had conversations before about how non-judgmental most people at the gym are (at least at my gym). We've talked about how detrimental it would be to someone's health to feel unwelcome at the gym exactly because they are overweight and needed it more than those who are already fit. What good would a gym be if it had a maximum allowed BMI required for admittance?

Gyms want overweight people to go to the gym so that they can improve their quality and quantity of life. They know that not everyone who signs up will show up, and they know that not everyone who shows up will attain the same results. That doesn't stop them from doing everything they can to provide options and incentives for people to get the most out of their membership. Gyms would love for everyone to get down to a certain BMI or PBF (Percent Body Fat) and increase their lean muscle mass and stamina. Yet they also celebrate with those who are still overweight but have manage to get off of half their blood pressure medications. It's about developing a mindset and behaviors that help people trend towards greater health.

One thing that really bothers me is when "Pure Agilists" declare that you must be doing certain things or following certain methodologies or frameworks to be considered Agile. They further condemn any organization that's not operating under their gold standard of Agile. Some examples I've heard recently include: "If you have a hardening Sprint then you're not Agile"; "If you estimate in hours then you're not Agile"; "If your Scrum Masters aren't dedicated then you're not Agile"; "If your customers can't get involved daily with the team then you're not Agile"; "If your approach isn't endorsed by one of the original Manifesto signatories then you're not Agile"; etc.

As an Agile Coach, I have in my mind what I think an "ideal" Agile team looks like. Just as a team should have a Product Vision and a Technical Vision that guide the team's plans, they should have an Agile Vision to help guide their practices. Mine Vision is basically a flat organization of self-organized teams that are running DevOps using Kanban or something similar. They leverage SOA and have near-perfect APIs, making dependency management trivial. Production releases occur as frequently as new functionality is developed with zero defects slipping to production and high levels of customer delight. The teams are like families and there is no overtime.

Now I'd like you to take a stab at what my teams actually look like. Spoilers: it's not what I just described. It is impossible for an organization that is entrenched in heavyweight policies, Waterfall approaches, and a Command-and-Control management style to up an become "Pure Agile" one morning. It's too painful to succeed. What they can do is establish an Agile mentality and start making incremental changes. As they cut waste and increase value, they'll find themselves more and more resembling an ideal Agile organization.

"Scrum...but" gets a lot of flack, but I'd rather work with a "Scrum...but" team that's trying to continuously improve than a Waterfall team that thinks it's got it figured out. There is not maximum allowed waste cutoff for teams to start trying to improve. Those who promote Agile approaches need to be more open-minded about what is and isn't "permissible" for an organization that's trying to adopt Agile.

I had the opportunity to present on Agile to the local PMI chapter last night. For many of them, it was their introduction to Agile. If I'd have told them they had to go all or nothing, they would have shut down. My focus was on the Manifesto and its Principles, then showing them just how many Agile tools are at their disposal. I told them to respect reality, learn what's available, and continuously improve. Isn't that what Agile is really all about?

I know this is probably going to rustle some jimmies, and that's okay; if your jimmies are rustled, let me know why. What do you not agree with? How am I wrong? I don't claim perfection, and I'd love to learn from your perspectives.

A(nother) Response to SAFe Criticisms: Part 2

Full Disclosure: I am a certified Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program Consultant (SPC).

In the first part of this series, I explained my intent behind answering some of the criticism for SAFe and asked for concerns that you would like to see addressed. I haven’t received any direct feedback, but the offer still stands. In the meantime, I’m going to dive into some of the more common criticisms I’ve seen already published. I’ll try to focus on one concern or small group of related concerns per blog post.

25% Scrum Masters

Edit: I originally published that "This is something that I have yet to find on the SAFe website but did come up in my SPC training. And I can tell you that it was not well received! If you want to hear about exactly how well it went over, just ask Valerie Santillo. Here’s what I got out of it:"

It has since been pointed out that this guidance is on the main website. I'm not sure if this is a new addition or an oversight on my part. It can be found in the Scrum/Agile Master Abstract in the Details section, under the heading "Sourcing the Role: A Part Time Responsibility".

Accommodating Reality

The truth of the matter is that you can’t always get Scrum Masters that are dedicated to that role. This should absolutely be avoided if possible, especially when working with teams new to Agile. What they’re saying by 25% is that, if you absolutely cannot get someone to be a fully dedicated Scrum Master, you should expect the role to take up about 25% of their time. I’d say that should about cover the administrative aspect and keep the wheels moving, but that’s about it.

Four Teams

A better approach is to make Scrum Master a dedicated role and allow them to work with multiple teams. The 25% recommendation tells me that Scrum Masters can handle at most four teams. Again, if you can avoid it, I would recommend having fewer than 4 teams sharing a Scrum Master. The most I’d personally recommend is two, with a preference to only one. However, this guidance is supposed to accommodate reality, and sometimes you just don’t have enough SMs to go around.

Starting Point

The 25% justification really only works when you’re just starting out and trying to get organizational buy-in. If you can suck it up and make it work well enough then, hopefully, your management will see the benefit a good Scrum Master could make and will make it happen. They’ll remove the part-time role, reduce the number of teams per Scrum Master – anything necessary to continue the improvements the teams have started making. That was actually the case with my first team. They went through their “Sprint 0” and their first two regular Sprints without a dedicated Scrum Master. They were struggling, but they were showing management that they were committed to making Agile work. I was allowed to come in as their Scrum Master – and only as their Scrum Master – to see how it would work. The rest, as they say, is history.

Final Destination

Good Scrum Masters always talk about how it’s their job to work themselves out of a job. If that’s the case, then eventually you’ll have teams that don’t have Scrum Masters. In those cases, there are certain responsibilities or overhead that the Scrum Master took care of which will now fall to the team. In those cases, the overhead work will need to be accounted for. From a Sprint Planning perspective, I think that cutting the velocity to account for 25% of a team member’s time for Scrum Master duties is entirely appropriate.

Thoughts?

That’s my response to the “25% Scrum Master guidance” from the SAFe training. Hopefully I was able to provide some context to show that it’s not as evil as you might have thought. Whether I was successful in addressing this concern or not, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Continuing the Series
Part 3: HIP Sprints

Agile Complements

I was recently asked to explain the relationship between Agile and Innovation. I was intrigued by the question as I've never really tied the two together. In thinking about it, I've concluded that Agile complements many things, but it doesn't necessarily drive any of them.

The Role of Practices

The Agile Manifesto clearly states that one who considers themselves Agile values "Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools". However, we know that there is some value inherent in Processes and Tools, primarily in the behaviors that they reinforce. Given it's popularity, let's take Scrum as an example. Scrum has a highly prescriptive process that still manages to leave a lot up to the team. Sprint Planning reinforces commitments and transparency; the Daily Scrum reinforces face-to-face communication and self-managing teams; Sprint Reviews reinforce feedback loops within the team, as well as with stakeholders and customers; Sprint Retrospectives reinforce continuous improvement; the Sprints themselves reinforce small time-boxes; and on and on and on.

If you want to reinforce something positive at work, whether it be innovation, elimination of waste, any of the items listed below, or pretty much anything else, you can find an Agile process, tool, or practice that will reinforce it. With Innovation, you can take the practices of Capacity Allocation and Spikes to explicitly include time and effort for innovation into your process. This is assuming we're talking about developing innovative things, in addition to a Retrospective or other feedback mechanism for innovating the process and team themselves.

However, it is possible - and happens all too frequently - that teams adopt these processes, tools, and practices superficially, thus obtaining little, if any, of the intended benefit. In order to effectively reinforce behaviors, those behaviors have to already exist as part of your culture.

The Role of Culture

I've blogged multiple times about the difference between doing Agile things and "Being Agile" ("Agile: The Book vs. The Movie", "Understanding the 'Why?'", "Descriptive versus Prescriptive", "I Madge I'll - Agile Posers", etc). To deliver the best results possible, your team has to be Agile - they can't just superficially adopt an Agile implementation. When asked to explain Agile, they should go to the manifesto first and the day-to-day second. At the risk of getting too theological, Agility is a state of being and influences all aspects of a person's life (at least at work). Simply put, you have to establish a culture of Agility, where the principles are embedded in your company's DNA.

The same is true of Innovation or anything else. When people think of innovative companies they think of companies that have a culture of Innovation. Innovating isn't something you do as much as it's part of who you are. Of course their processes, tools, and practices reinforce Innovation, but that's a byproduct of something deeper.

As I said before, you can use tools from the Agile toolbox to help drive Innovation, but it can't just be lip service. If your company was built on Innovation (and it probably was) then get back to your roots and tell that story; remind people where they came from. Make Innovating seem natural, like coming home and eating comfort food.

No Silver Bullet

I'm going to be going more in-depth in the coming months on the idea that no one Agile implementation should be seen as a Silver Bullet. Before you implement anything, ask yourself "Why?"; what result or behavior are you hoping to get from it? Understand that different Agile processes, practices, and tools have their own strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes you'll have to blend different solutions to make something new that fits your needs. Sometimes you'll have to invent something that hasn't been done before. Most importantly, you will always have to examine what you're doing and ask what you need to change to be better. Keep the mantra "Never Perfect; Always Better".

Can Agile help drive Innovation? Sure. But some approaches will do that better than others. Begin with the end in mind, but remember that this is a journey and you don't know what you don't know. Be willing to adapt, but don't lose sight of your vision. If it sounds hard, that's because it is; if this were easy then we wouldn't be having this conversation!

What do you think?

Seriously, what do you think? Please tell me! I really don't like the "thought leader in a vacuum" setup. What I've shared here is the result of my learning and experience, but I recognize I don't know everything. I crave the perspectives of others. I want your insights, suggestions, criticisms, reinforcements - all of it. Leave a comment or tweet me @MLCarey321.

Muscle Memory vs. Muscle Confusion

The most popular Agile methodology in practice today is Scrum, which relies heavily on ceremonies. Any decent Agile coach working with a new Scrum team will drill these ceremonies into them in an effort to get the most out of the framework. They drive cadence, alignment, continuous improvement, transparency, etc. One of the big benefits of doing this is that it becomes a part of their routine. They no longer have to figure out how they're going to align on a daily basis; plan their work; communicate with their customer; inspect and adapt; etc. All of those things are "baked in" to the framework. Because there's so little prescribed, it's easy to pick up and repeat forever. By making those things rote, you develop a sort of Agile "muscle memory".

Wax on, wax off, stand up for 15 minutes

Muscle memory is a condition where a task is repeated so frequently that it can be performed unconsciously. Just think of Mr. Miagi and Daniel-san in The Karate Kid. Mr. Miagi had a lot of landscaping work to be done, and Daniel wanted to learn Karate. As luck would have it, the motions required of a Karate black belt are the same as sanding decks, staining fences, and washing cars - who knew? Right as Daniel is ready to throw in the towel, Mr. Miagi attacks him Daniel's muscle memory kicks in to save himself from being pounded by a Karate master. Likewise, those Scrum ceremonies become reflexive and help new Agile practitioners focus on the hard task of developing new software instead of thinking about how they're going to go about "Being Agile".

However, too much of a good thing can be bad. Once that muscle memory kicks in, it makes it harder for our Agile "muscles" to grow. The body has optimized how to do the repetitive thing, and doing it more doesn't really result in any added strength. This is a problem that strength trainers and body builders are familiar with. Your workout routine can't be too routine or you'll plateau. You have to introduce what's called "muscle confusion".

Muscle confusion is the concept of varying the types of exercises you do, as well as the number of sets and reps of those exercises, to avoid muscle memory and keep building muscle by tearing it and letting it repair stronger. If muscle memory kicks in then it becomes harder to tear the muscles. You see this concept manifest in workout regimens such as P90X and Cross Fit. One of the difficult things to get right, though, is the right amount of muscle confusion. Switching 100% of your exercises 100% of the time won't get you optimal performance.

I liken muscle confusion to a Kaizen mindset in Agile. You have to have an urgency about change, but it has to be small, incremental change in order to be effective. Change too little and muscle memory sets in - boring scrums, useless retros, tedious planning, etc. Change too much and the disruption causes everything to start falling apart.

P90X and Cross Fit are not for everyone. You will have to determine as a team how much change you can handle on a sprint by sprint basis. Some will change almost daily, others will be lucky to successfully adapt on one thing per sprint. As long as you're being honest with yourselves, that's fine. Just beware of muscle memory and muscle confusion. Optimize the change, and there are no limits to how much you can grow your Agile strength.

Caution: Spikes

                Several misconceptions exist around the concept of a spike in Agile Development.  Spikes are an essential part of the development cycle but are inevitably either over- or under-used due to a failure to understand why we create spikes.  Hopefully I can help shed some light on how to use spikes to best drive business value and when to eschew them in favor of directly driving business value through stories.

                Taken from the Scaled Agile Framework website (www.scaledagileframwork.com): “the purpose of a spike is to gain the knowledge necessary to reduce the risk of a technical approach, better understand a requirement, or increase the reliability of a story estimate”.  So that seems fairly straightforward, right?  Unfortunately, due to the nature of human language, different people draw very different conclusions from the same source, taking a fairly simple, direct statement and completely misrepresenting it in ways the author never dreamed of.

                Let’s take the last two parts of that statement first: “better understand a requirement” and “increase the reliability of a story estimate”.  This means that if a team comes across a story that has so many unknowns they can’t accurately provide an estimate for the story, then a spike is in order to perform some research to determine how to best tackle the story.  This research may mean meeting with the end users to get more in-depth knowledge of the business process involved, meeting with other developers to determine the best way to implement a solution, working through external dependencies with other teams or many other activities too numerous to list here.  Performing this research will provide a better understanding of the given acceptance criteria, thereby raising the comfort level of the scrum team.  So how is this one botched?  Developers get spike-happy.   It is not uncommon for developers to become uncomfortable even with small levels of uncertainty and create spikes unnecessarily clogging up the backlog.  As a general rule of thumb, if you are creating a spike for an hour or two worth of research, it is probably not necessary to create that spike.

                Climbing further down this particular rabbit-hole, one must ask the question, “Why does it matter how many spikes I create if it helps make the story more accurate?”  The answer to this question is alluded to in the title of this article.  Customers do not care about spikes.  A spike by its nature delivers no business value and is generally throwaway if anything is actually developed during it.  As a result, it is important to minimize the spikes created unless necessary. 

When faced with uncertainty, the team must assess the level of unknowns in the story and make a determination.  Create a spike?  Perhaps increase the story points a little to account for some possible research needed?  Locate an SME on the story in order to provide feedback on the complexity of the story while pointing it?  The last option is preferable as it eliminates the unknowns immediately and gives the team a reasonable comfort level while actually pointing the story.  In this instance, it is important to be proactive and make sure that SME is invited to the discussion of the story or consulted with beforehand.  The second option of buffering the story points is not the optimal solution but is still preferable to creating a spike since most likely both the spike and story will not be completed in the same sprint.  This delays business value delivery to the customer.  On the downside, it still increases the size of the story, potentially making it too large to be taken in the preferred sprint.

Moving on to the first part of the definition of a spike (in case you’ve forgotten already, “gain the knowledge necessary to reduce the risk of a technical approach”), a spike may be created if a new technology has been decided on and some research or a proof of concept (POC) may be needed in order to proceed forward with development on the stories in question.  I have observed a couple of key pitfalls when dealing with this particular kind of spike that should be avoided if the spike is to be effective in the long-term. 

The first pitfall when dealing with POCs is the failure to time-box it properly.  A POC is throwaway by nature.  Please do not spend more time on it than necessary before completing the story.  Specify a time-box beforehand when planning the spike and ensure that once that time-box is met, the story that initiated the spike is revisited (Many sources recommend specifying the time-box in days or even hours to ensure that the developers involved are actively keeping track of the spike’s time).  If at that point, too many unknowns still remain in order to point the story, then another spike may be needed.  It is critical that the spike is kept as short as possible since again, no business value is being delivered.  That time-box is important because developers typically like to develop (go figure…) and may want to get that POC completely working.  Guess what?  That POC is junk.  Throw it away once you’ve gotten what you need from it and work on something the business cares about.

This leads me to the second pitfall.  Don’t turn the POC into the story.  If the developer starts actually coding the story, then why are we doing a spike?  This is risky for a couple of reasons.  For one, typically POCs are very short-lived and ad-hoc, leading to coding them with looser standards than we might have for our flagship applications.  If the POC starts to turn into the actual application, there are likely some bad habits that do not need to be carried forth.  Another concern with mutating a POC into story is hidden in intrinsic idea that we are in agile development and as such, things change.  The developer runs the risk of working on an actual story, integrating into the environment, and then ultimately undoing it when priorities shift or the technology being used doesn’t pan out.  And I haven’t met a developer yet that loves rework.  If you are still trying to decide what color to paint your house, you are probably not going to just start painting the front of your house with the first color you find that you sort of like the look of, right?   The important thing to remember with POCs is to keep them simple and keep them focused on the key unknowns that are being solved for.  Your POC does not need to adhere to all coding standards.  It does not need to have a full suite of J-Units.  It does not need to look pretty.  Heck, it really doesn’t even have to completely work, as long as you’ve gotten what you need out of it. 

In summary, spikes are absolutely important when used properly but are easily abused.  A good rule of thumb is not to spend more than a day or two on a spike unless you are dealing with a large number of complex unknowns in which you may have a few spikes to deal with.  Use your best judgment and remember than your customer does not care about these spikes.  Treat them like the begrudging necessity that they are and not as your top tool in the tackle box.

I Madge I'll - Agile Posers

When I meet someone who wants to talk about Agile I start by asking, "What do you know about Agile?" Most of the time I begin to hear those key buzzwords the newly indoctrinated are so proud to spout off: "It's where, instead of Waterfall," said with a grin and a wink, "your scrum has sprints and they stand up and there's no requirements and you demo and it's amazing!" I often think to myself, "Seriously? Why do these people think this?" So recently I decided to apply Occam's Razor and ask what the simplest answer is. My conclusion? Somebody told them this.

Consultant Speak*

Okay, so I don't think anyone told them something quite so incoherent as what I put, but they definitely started out with 1) a specific methodology in mind, almost certainly Scrum, and 2) an unholy amount of buzzwords and Agile vocabulary to accentuate just how different Agile is from the dreaded Waterfall. I get it - you're probably (relatively) new to Scrum and you're super excited about it and want the whole world to know how it changed your life. Unless, of course, you're a consultant who's trying to confuse a potential client into throwing money at you to turn their IT shop around. Tsk, tsk.

"...It's Not What You SAY, It's What You HEAR!"

The problem is these people don't know what Agile is. They don't fully understand what it is they're saying. All they know is that if they keep saying certain words with enough conviction then people will think they know what they're talking about. It reminds me of the game "Mad Gab". In case you're not familiar, players in the game read words on a card that don't really make any sense. They're not supposed to. The words on the cards, said with the correct inflection and pacing, are supposed to sound just like a commonplace phrase that your team is trying to guess. For example, these new, hopeful, and largely ignorant future Agilists are saying "I Madge I'll" in hopes that you'll hear "I'm Agile"! The problem is they aren't.

Agile Posers

I was recently working with a fellow Agile Coach (I know, I don't care for the term, either, but I'm not sure what else to call him) and we were collaboratively taking notes via Google Docs. On occasion we would have an impromptu discussion in the document due to a tangent that our notes took us on. One such tangential conversation was about Agile Posers. It went a little something like this:

"‘how to spot an agile poser’ (consultant-speak?)

1.one who pretends to be someone who's not. 2. who tries to fit in but with exaggeration
urban dictionaryl33t speakpwned you, you poser

'5. Someone whos acts like someone they’re not,but not realizing that there being fake, basically a loser trying to fit in.' - UrbanDictionary.com

'6. A poser is someone who tries hard to be something they arent. Usually, posers call other people posers because they are jealous that the person they called a poser is more skater/stoner/goth/punk/rocker/grunge/Agile/etc. than they will ever be.' - UrbanDictionary.com

posers often fool themselves first.  they aren't always (deliberately) not

ask probing questions.  why do you like it, what was good, test their belief."

On the off-chance any of my readers are Trekkies...

Our conversation went on to include things such as mining for conflict and Open Space sessions as means to help draw out and coach Agile posers. Take another look at definition #5. These are the people I'm talking about here. Those who want to be Agile, who hear about it and crave to belong. They'll ask anyone who claims to be Agile what that means and they'll cling to whatever they're told. So what's the take-away here? Tell them the right thing!

Being Agile vs. Doing Scrum

When people ask me what Agile is, I always go to the Manifesto and backing Principles first. I emphasize over and again that Agile is a way of thinking, a paradigm, a perspective, an approach. Yes, there are implementations and yes, Scrum is the most popular by far and yes, there are those who will tell you that the definition of Agile is Scrum. I'm here to tell you that it's not.

So what's the harm in people thinking Agile is just Scrum? Scrum's not all that bad. Of course it's not. I love Scrum, it's helped my organization tremendously. The problem with believing that Agile is just Scrum is it sends you on a quest to be the best implementer of a set of practices. Your Retros will eventually dry up because you can't get any more Scrum-like. But you'll keep doing them because "that's Scrum." You have to understand why Scrum is set up the way it is. Why you're asked to perform certain ceremonies. You have to know in what direction to Adapt when you Inspect in your Retros. And, most importantly, you have to be willing to break the rules like an artist once you've mastered them. You have to be willing to try things that are not in the Scrum Guide. You need Kaizen!

I'm Right!.. Am I Right?

As per usual, I don't have much to go on here other than my experiences and the stories I hear from others. So I want to know: What does being an "Agile Poser" mean to you? Have you experienced those "Mad Gab" Agile enthusiasts? Have I hit the mark on being Agile versus doing Scrum, or am I way off base? I want to know what you think, and I want to use your ideas to make myself better (being completely transparent here). Please leave a comment or shoot me a message on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you.



* I received some feedback that this post was offensive to consultants. I would like to clarify that I am not trying to group all consultants together and say that they are all this way. I am basing this on conversations I've had with people who were introduced to Agile by these types of consultants; observations from a friend who is a former consultant; and my first-hand experience with sub-par consultants. I know there are amazing consultants out there - I've met them, too, and admire the work they do - but there are an alarming number of consultants out there who do fit this bill.

Descriptive versus Prescriptive

“Imposing an agile process from the outside strips the team of the self-determination which is at the heart of agile thinking.” -Martin Fowler, Agile Manifesto signatory, from his October 2006 blog post, “Agile Imposition”

As a member of the SAFe community, I've heard and experienced a lot of concern and displeasure with what is perceived as a highly prescriptive Agile framework. However, having actually met and worked with Dean, Colin, and Alex, I have never felt they were trying to shove a framework down my throat. To me it felt more like "your organization is new to Agile and we come with decades of experience; try this framework on, including all of these recommended practices, see how it fits, then tailor it accordingly." Granted, that vibe came from face-to-face conversations, not websites and white papers.

This problem is not unique to SAFe. Pure Agilists have always pushed for a more "hands-off" approach. It's interesting to me how married some of agilists become to a certain methodology - conversations with these people usually boil down to "you should let people do whatever they want, but if you're a good coach and they really get the principles then they're most likely going to go with my favorite methodology." This is often coupled with, "I also offer Agile Coaching services..." The problem is, they've got a point about the coaching. You can't leave teams all to themselves; you have to support them somehow. I'm not saying all Agile teams need a dedicated Agile Coach, but they need the resources necessary to ensure the direction in which they adapt is in accordance with Agile principles and the environment that will support them when (not if) they fail.

Many of my thoughts on this subject have recently been affected by the information I was recently exposed to at OpenAgileAdoption.com. One of the references cited is Martin Fowler's "Agile Imposition" - an article written nearly seven years ago and more relevant now than ever before. Of course, Fowler and Open Agile Adoption are both focused more on organizational transformation than prescriptive frameworks, but I think the principles still apply. It all boils down to enacting change through influence but without mandate. It's a principle that every good Scrum Master is already familiar with - Servant Leadership. You've got to not only lead the horse to water but get them to realize just how parched they are!

So how do you do this within the context of a framework? My opinion: change the way you say what you're trying to say. More specifically, make it clear why you recommend certain practices, when they're relevant and highly likely to improve results, and when it might make sense to try something else. You're still going to lay out the recommended practices, but you'll be taking a descriptive approach to explaining them rather than a prescriptive approach.

The Scrum Alliance uses the term "Common Practices" instead of "Best Practices" to describe what would traditionally be considered "Best Practices". By changing the term they change the reader's perception. They're not saying "you need to do this or you can't be considered among the 'best'"; they're saying "this is something that a lot of people do in this situation, and here's why." That's the approach the entire industry needs to be taking. I would bet that many framework authors already think that way. The problem is that way of thinking is not reflected in their writings.

What do you think? Does this resonate, or am I way off base? How would you expect websites and other communication regarding what are typically seen as "prescriptive frameworks" to change to be more in line with a descriptive approach?

Titles

I work for a company that is predominantly (for the time being, anyhow) NOT Agile. As a person who is passionate about Agile and leads one of three areas in his Division that are all-Agile, this wreaks havoc on my job title. Technically, my job title is "Systems Analyst". But I'm not that. That doesn't describe what I do at all, really. Maybe if you use "System" to refer to a team of people, as in Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd's teachings. However, that's not what the title is meant to refer to internally. So I'm stuck with the dilemma of how I describe who I am and what I do for the company.

Okay, I know I started this post out on a somewhat pessimistic note, but I have to be honest: coming up with my own job title has been fun. It's rather liberating to just make something cool-sounding up when you are asked what you do. One example of this is my LinkedIn profile, where I brand myself as a "SAFe RTE, Agile Evangelist, and Scrum Ninja". What does that mean? Exactly what it sounds like. I've also referred to myself as a Defender of the Agile Brand; Agile Enthusiast; Head of the Walmart Agile User Group (which isn't so much silly, as I really did found and lead the Walmart Agile User Group); and Über Scrum Master (I really like that one because the Ü looks like a ridiculously happy face). I also have a whole slough of non-Agile titles that describe me outside of my professional life, such as Dad, Brother, Son, Captain Obvious, and Snarky McSarcasticson.

Titles are a funny thing because they define so much of who we are, whether we want them to or not. In some cases, such as my "Systems Analyst" title, that can be a bad thing (read more about the cons of titles here). Yet I wouldn't refer to myself as anti-titles. I consider myself a proponent of creative, descriptive, and self-appointed titles. Your title should be part of your brand. If you don't live up to your title then it quickly becomes apparent and does you more harm than good, so it's in your best interest not to pick something entirely inappropriate.

What do you think? Are you a fan of titles? If so, what titles do you hold? If not, how do you describe yourself succinctly when asked what you do?

Taming the Wild West: the Differences between Agile and Cowboy Coding

One of the strongest arguments for Agile is that it’s not Waterfall. However, not everything that isn't Waterfall is Agile, a fact that’s not always understood. This misunderstanding hurts the Agile brand when people familiar with only Waterfall begin associating all other methodologies, including a lack thereof, as Agile. I want to be very clear about this: Agile is not Cowboy Coding, and Cowboy Coding is not unique to Agile teams. It is important both to understand how Agile and Cowboy Coding are different and what Cowboy Coding looks like so that you can identify it on your teams (yes, even Waterfall teams).

The Loner

One of the easiest signs of a Cowboy Coder is that he’s a loner. He may be working under the name of Agile, but there are no Agile methodologies or frameworks I’m aware of that support such behavior. In fact, the backing principles of the Agile Manifesto state, “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project”; “Build projects around motivated individuals”; “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation”; “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams”; and “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” The manifesto, its principles, and all Agile methodologies and frameworks I know of are very human-centered with an emphasis on collaboration.

If you have a loner on your team that insists on working in a silo, there’s a possibility that you have a cowboy in your midst. Try to rein them in using mandatory meeting/ceremonies that promote meaningful conversations and practices like Pair Programming. If they absolutely refuse then you will likely end up spending considerable time managing the work around them – holding ad hoc conversations, formal code reviews, knowledge transfer workshops, etc. – with diminishing returns.

Straight to Production

Working directly with Production code or with a source code repository that isn't versioned is a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong, I love Continuous Delivery and working off the trunk, but a software development team must be very mature and disciplined to make this work. They use feature toggles and branching by abstraction to protect code that isn’t ready for Production. They build test suites around the code so that each commit is verified against regression. They do their due diligence to make sure that a change isn't going to blow up if it’s pushed to Production. Cowboys, simply put, don’t.

If you find yourself consistently in a situation where the same person or people are making changes directly to Production without due diligence then you might just be working with Cowboys. Have them read up on DevOps and Continuous Delivery so they can learn the right way to get changes to Production quickly. Emergency situations that require quick, non-vetted changes to Production should be avoided at all costs.

Wastes of Time

The Cowboy will often refer to Testing and Documentation as a waste of time. They may even commit the cardinal sin of Agile, reciting the Manifesto blasphemously: “‘Working software is the primary measure of progress’; anything else is just a waste of time!” To those people, I would ask them to define “working”. Does it pass the Acceptance Criteria associated to the work (or did you even bother to ensure you had Acceptance Criteria)? Can anybody actually use it, or is it too buggy or complex? Is anyone other than yourself aware of the assumptions made around input, output, workflow, etc.?

Without proper testing and documentation, you can’t prove your software works nor can anybody understand how it works. With that being said, if your tests and documentation don’t contribute to the value and usability of the software then they are, in fact, a waste of time. Focus your testing efforts on tests that actually stand a chance of failing and finding vulnerabilities. Don’t spin your wheels creating “write-only” documentation. This is the approach that Agile espouses; anyone who says tests and documentation are altogether useless is operating with a Cowboy mindset, not an Agile one.

“Emergent Architecture”

One of the backing principles to the Agile Manifesto states “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams”. There are those who believe this means “just make it up as you go.” That’s not entirely accurate. There still needs to be intelligent design, and that design needs to make the software as easy to comprehend and maintain as possible. As another principle clarifies, “Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.” This means having a thorough understanding of the latest design patterns and practices. It means taking the time to refactor working code into something better. It means taking a little bit of time up-front to design what you think will work and adjusting as you go.

Agile developers do not shoot from the hip. They take pride in their applications; they have a sense of ownership. They will throw research spikes, read books, build proofs-of-concept, attend conferences – do what it takes to build the right thing in the right way. You’ll spot a Cowboy by their purposeful lack of direction, sticking code wherever they please with the sole purpose of “getting something to work” so they can move on to the next thing. If they do it in the name of “emergent architecture” then call shenanigans. That’s not architecture, it’s just reckless.

Somewhere to Hang their Hat

The good news is that cowboys can be tamed if they can come to appreciate the practices, tools, and frameworks that Agile provides. Cowboys won’t jump on the bandwagon just for the heck of it. There will always be some that refuse to be tamed, but many will see the benefits and forsake their wandering ways once you give them a safe place to hang their hat.

One of the great things about reformed Cowboys is they are used to developing quickly and cross-functionally. If you arm them with XP practices, Agile tools, a Kaizen mindset, and continued training and development, they can become model developers that contribute quality software time after time.

Just don’t make the mistake of trying to get them to do something for which there is no tangible benefit. They don’t take too kindly to that.

Understanding the “Why?”

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where –" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"– so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

I've written a couple of blog posts on understanding the principles of Agile, the “book version”, as it were, in order to achieve the success that is associated with Agile. If you've been in the Agile arena for any significant amount of time, you know there are a lot of disagreements as to the “How” of Agile. There are many different methodologies, frameworks, tools, and practices out there to support Agile teams. Some believe this is because people simply disagree on how to best implement Agile and, in some cases, this is true. Others understand Agile was never intended to be “One Size Fits All”. There are many options because there are many teams and each team must determine what solution works best for them – and evolve that solution over time in the spirit of Continuous Improvement.

This means you cannot determine “How” you want to implement Agile until you understand the needs of the team. “We need to have a Daily Scrum.” Why? If you can’t answer this then it’s not going to bring as much benefit as it should. If you understand the Daily Scrum as a touch-point to align across team members; identify risks and dependencies the team is encountering; and jump-start communication that will occur throughout the day then it becomes a stale and stagnant status update meeting.

My recommendation to Agile teams, and all human beings for that matter, is to not adopt something without understanding the “Why?” behind it. True Agile teams do not do things for the sake of doing them. They do them for a reason and nothing is sacred; if a tool or practice outlives its usefulness then it must be “put out to pasture” so as to not get in the way of the team’s continued growth. By regularly re-evaluating the usefulness of your current implementation, you also get the benefit of being open to new things. No matter how good your team is, they will never be as good as the team they could be.

Conversation

Many Scrum practitioners don't realize that Scrum did not invent the idea of User Stories - XP (eXtreme Programming) did. They are, however, often familiar with Ron Jeffries' "3 C's of a User Story", namely Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. The more I train teams on User Stories, the more convinced I am that the Conversation aspect is the most important of the three, and it is applicable to all things Agile, not just User Stories.

I recently facilitated PSI Planning for my area's Agile Release Train (Potentially Shippable Increment). I’ve noticed that, with each new PSI, the teams become more concerned with extensive pre-planning. They try to get more out of the meeting by doing as much of the actual planning before arriving at the meeting. Unfortunately, they do not understand that the primary reason for PSI Planning is not to generate a plan as much as it is to have conversations. Teams must communicate and align with each other and their customers. They must examine their work to determine what dependencies and risks are inherent in the work so that they can communicate, manage, and mitigate them as much as possible. This process happens to produce a better plan, which is why we do it. However, those who come to the event with pre-determined plans often find they must be reworked or scrapped altogether.

Rework manifests itself as delay, and delay indicates waste. Agilists hate waste. In fact, an Agilist’s views on waste and rework can be found in the 10^th principle that accompanies the Agile Manifesto: “Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.” How do conversations help prevent rework? If we talk before acting then we get a better sense of the truth, established in an environment of shared context. Conversations mean multiple perspectives, which bring difficult questions and challenge our assumptions. They force us to produce something as a group that is better than could ever be produced in a silo. They reinforce the paradigm of “just enough, just in time” instead of “big up-front”.

Once I realized that conversations are integral to Agile, I began to review the tools and practices within Agile, specifically Scrum, for conversations. All of the prescribed ceremonies – Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Planning – center on team conversations. Pair Programming and Test-Driven Development are XP practices that rely heavily on communication, both within the development team as well as between the developers, testers, and customers. A good Scrum Master helps the team most by facilitating conversations, and the Product Owner’s backlog is meaningless if they don’t ensure the team understands the work. There are conversations baked into literally every aspect of Scrum!

Conversations are often overlooked because people do not view simply having the conversation as an objective in most cases. They focus on the stated outputs: plans; acceptance criteria; status updates; confirmation of stories completed; etc. Consequently, it is not uncommon for teams to find alternative means to deliver these results without the “overhead” of the conversations. They rely heavily on tools and individual efforts to maximize their time without hindering the team with human interaction. They may, at first, feel an increase in productivity as the perceived burden is lifted. Yet, inevitably, they find themselves struggling to deliver quality quickly and do not understand how Agile could betray them so. Hopefully they have a good Scrum Master or Agile Coach watching them adapt in the wrong direction that can have them take a step back so they can see the error of their ways. If not, it becomes easy to blame their frustration on Agile and revert back to their comfort zone of more “traditional” methodologies.

As a safeguard, I recommend teams, and especially Scrum Masters, go back to their roots frequently to make sure they’re staying true to the founding principles that make Agile methodologies so great. Remember that “business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project,” and that “the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” Don’t just blindly follow a framework or practice; instead, try to understand why you are asked to do things a certain way. If the purpose that you perceive is not aligned with the Agile manifesto and its accompanying principles, you’re probably wrong. Acknowledge your failure, “Fail Fast”, and change your approach so that it fits the Agile paradigm. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it will pay off in the long run.

Bottlenecks: the Enemy of Agility

I am the Release Train Engineer for one of my company’s first Release Trains. One of my early struggles when we first adopted the Scaled Agile Framework was understanding what the responsibility of the System Team was and how to concisely articulate it to others. That understanding finally came during the Quick Start event where I heard Alex Yakyma say the System Team identifies, manages, and eliminates bottlenecks. What a powerfully simple mission! I’ve since dedicated time to understanding and helping the team understand what that means, and this is what I’ve come up with so far.

First, how do you identify a bottleneck and what does it mean to be a bottleneck? Sometimes this can be rather obvious, but often it is difficult to separate the symptoms from the root cause. This can be a process, practice, culture, etc. I have come up with a process to help myself and my System Team identify bottlenecks.

First, envision what it would be like if we could deploy to Production a dozen or more times per day. Not that we would, necessarily, but what would it take to be able to roll new functionality to Production the same day we get the request? Second, document our current process and lead time from conception to Production. Third, identify the gaps between our current process and the ideal of Continuous Delivery.

If you find yourself defining symptoms and not the root cause, start using a Lean perspective and start asking “Why?” For example:

“It takes too long to get a package to Production once it’s been approved.”
“Why?” “Because we have to find someone who has the bandwidth to get it deployed.”
“Why?” “Because we do not have an automated deploy process in place.”
“Why?” “Because our application runs on WebSphere in a Mainframe environment, and we can’t set up auto-deploy until it’s migrated to a Linux environment.”

Here we have identified the primary bottleneck – the environment on which our application lives in Production – by asking 3 “Why”s. Expect to ask as many as 5 “Why”s before getting to root cause.

Next, we need to time box the bottleneck. This basically means you’re going to work with what you have for the time being and basically “deal with it”. This is a temporary phase until you are able to eliminate the bottleneck. You should have a timeframe for how long it is acceptable to manage a given bottleneck and hold yourself to that timeframe. You may not always meet your goal, but time boxing is the first step in giving the bottleneck some form of finality.

Last, we need to eliminate the bottleneck. The easiest solution is to just do away with it – stop doing it outright. This is also usually the least feasible. The best solution is usually automation, simplification, or combination. If you can automate it, automate it! This way you’re not diminishing the task, you’re making it take less time. If you can’t automate it, see if you can apply Lean thinking and simplify it somehow. Can you get what you really need with less? Agile encourages just-in-time and just-enough to limit the amount of waste we allow in the software development process. One of the backing principles to the manifesto states “Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential”. Finally, if you can’t automate or simplify the task, see if you can combine it with another task to “kill two birds with one stone”. Pair Programming, an XP practice, is a great example of this – you’re essentially rolling your development, code review, and knowledge sharing all into one activity that typically doesn’t take any longer than development normally would.

Once you’ve eliminated one bottleneck, repeat the process indefinitely. Kaizen mindset tells us there’s always room for improvement and it’s always urgent that we improve. By all means, take the time to acknowledge and celebrate your improvement, but don’t get complacent.