January | 2015 | Thinking about Agile

creativity doesn’t follow a schedule

Posted on January 29, 2015 by coachwithheart

“I like to remind people that creativity also isn’t a spark; it’s a slog. Every artist, inventor, designer, writer, or other creative in the world will talk about his work being an iterative experience. He’ll start with one idea, shape it, move it, combine it, break it, begin anew, discover something within himself, see a new vision, go at it again, test it, share it, fix it, break it, hone it, hone it, hone it, hone it. This might sound like common sense, but it’s not common practice, and that’s why so many people are terribly uncreative – they’re not willing to do the work required to create something that’s beautiful, useful, desirable, celebrated. No masterpiece was shaped or written in a day. It’s a long slog to get something right. This knowledge and willingness to iterate is what makes the world’s most creative people so creative (and successful).”
― Brendon Burchard

Software is an art. It is a creative endeavor that needs to be shaped, formed and molded.

Business is a science. Business follows processes, rules, timelines, it is repeatable, predictable and controlled.

Art vs. science. Business would like to control the process of creating art and it fails to do so. How many projects have failed to meet their objectives because the “art” wasn’t completed on time. The unknown of art perplexes those who want things to be ordered and controlled. You’ll hear it in the form “we have limited funds”, “we have to get it done by _______” and projects miss their targets. They get done, they cost more and many will miss the so called deadline.

Ask an artist how long it takes to create a work of art and it is likely they won’t be able to tell you. It isn’t about how long it takes, it is about reaching the state of being done. Sometimes the art has to be thrown away and it all starts over. That is what happens when ideas, thoughts and solutions emerge out of a problem. The solution doesn’t follow a schedule, it emerges.

How do your systems and processes enable creativity?

What would need to change?

Agile Principle:

Responding to change over following a plan

advancing the culture

Posted on January 27, 2015 by coachwithheart

“Unfortunately, in many cases, the rule book goes way too far – it tries to tell people how to be instead of explaining what we’re trying to do.. We need recipes, not rules.”
― Howard Behar

More rules. Isn’t that what happens in a lot of organizations, the creation of more rules, more rules to follow and adhere to. After a while you don’t even know all the rules and just trying to follow the rules takes more effort and time than the work you are supposed to be doing. Software development methods can evolve to a huge number of rules that have to be followed, so much so that a programmer’s productivity falls.

The rules are there to help reduce error and integrate what was learned over time so mistakes are not repeated. We learn and we add rules, learn some more and add some rules. At some point we have rules that have been followed and no one really understands why the rules are in place. It is easier to follow a rule than to challenge the rule or to even be aware that some rules do need to be challenged.

Instead of rules we need to be focused on the intention of the work we are doing. What is it we are trying to accomplish and to think about it with a new mind.

What happens when a culture gets rule bound? It is focused on following rules rather than trying to focus on the intention of the organization and it limits the potential of the organization.

When you think of the Agile manifesto and responding to change over following a plan the idea might be to focus on the intention of the work rather than following a lot of rules. If we can focus on what needs to be done perhaps more can get done. An organizational culture that is rules filled will be challenged by methods that believe fewer rules are better.

What is your organizational culture like? Is it filled with rules or filled with opportunity?

thinking about organizational change

Posted on January 20, 2015 by coachwithheart

“The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.”
― Dee Hock

How do you get an organization, a business to change? Does it start from the top and works it way down? Does it take a voice from the bottom and then become a good idea?

Organizations struggle to change because people struggle with change. It is hard for an organization that is commanded to suddenly embrace the characteristics of leadership. Leadership is about letting go of power and control and enabling the people in the organization to have power. For managers that may mean giving up their power so that the team or group has that power and for many organizations power and position are the same. How do you give up one without giving up on the other. Power and importance are linked and being important or more important than others fuels some people and some organizations.

Let’s say that the organization does a lot of software development and the process is shaped by power and positional authority, how does it adopt agile principles? That is going to be one of the struggles. Agile thinking is about leadership, shared responsibility and shared power. A command and control hierarchical system of management where permission is granted and control is granted will shake when it comes to releasing that control to a group of people.

How do you encourage an organization with a decidedly hierarchical approach to embrace something radically different?

How do you let people who have had control release that control?

It is going to be very unsettling in an environment where control is a part of the culture. Begin as an experiment. Set out to discover how alternative means of leadership can work. A group of people who are given permission to be collaborative and to find their own answers may struggle when they have always reached to a manager to make a decision for them.

One of the reasons changes are hard is the way of doing things today is based on the belief that those things work. The belief that the current system works is a hard belief to change. It isn’t enough to say things aren’t working as well as they could be, it takes evidence to show that things aren’t working and each person is going to have a different level of proof in order to abandon an existing system to embrace something new.

If you’re the person who is attempting to create an organizational change there is a lot tied in beliefs about the current system that have to be overcome. You can’t say the “new” way is better because there isn’t enough evidence that it would be better even if other organizations have said so. What are the truths about the current system? Can those truths or beliefs be tested?

Are you in a place where organizational change is difficult?

What cultural attributes would need to change?

What are the truths the organization believes in?

deeper listening … better results

Posted on January 16, 2015 by coachwithheart

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” –Karl A. Menniger

Any organization, any leader or any person who wants to get better results just needs to listen better. Most people when they listen aren’t really listening to what is being said. Instead they are likely to be thinking about other things and paying attention to their own thoughts rather than your words. It might just feel like words are going into thin air.

Just by spending more effort any person can improve communications results. All it takes is putting energy into listening.

Organizations that are implementing Agile methods often overlook how critical listening is in the process. Are the teams, the stakeholders, product owners, customers and leaders really listening? Probably not. Not at the level that it takes to understand what other people are saying.

Meetings are often held where the words of the speaker are competing with text messaging, email, web surfing, side conversations, or day dreaming. The few that might be listening are only paying attention to part of the words that are being said and not really putting an effort into understanding what is being said. For an organization that represents a huge loss of time and a huge opportunity to improve results.

The next time you are in a meeting virtual or face-to-face notice the level of engagement. What is really going on? Notice your own level of participation (listening to understand). Do you notice yourself losing focus? Is the speaker focused and delivering content on point?

What do you think needs to improve?