Its been a while since I’ve been a part of a corporate structure with a pay for performance program, but there was always something that never quite sat right with me. I just saw too many people become so consumed with managing what their objectives were, managing how those objectives were measured, basically managing everything except their actual work. [Read more...]
The Agile Super Coach
Of all the abused words in the Agile domain, none seems to be more abused than the simple word “coaching”. There are numerous people out there professing to be “agile coaches”, and while I don’t mean to denigrate what any of these people do, there is a very broad latitude in the types of things that they do. This can further confound our ability to work with organizations as there may be a disconnect between coaches and clients about what exactly they are doing.
Unfortunately, in the absence of a clear understanding, I have seen people begin to expect that the “Agile Coach” is nothing short of a super human being. The can swoop into any project, turn around the results, and simultaneously coach that group into effectively preventing all those problems from ever occurring again. Or they may have an unnecessarily narrow view of the role and try to put an Agile Coach in a box by insisting they only do training, for example. To be fair, when I encounter these missed expectations, they are usually my own fault. I did not do a good enough job of articulating what the role is I, or anyone else, would potentially be playing in that organization as an Agile Coach.
I can’t profess to be the keeper of truth on this topic, but here’s a model I’ve used to help organize my own activities and to make sure I’m articulating clearly what role I see myself playing.
Ever have one of those days when everything seems to go your way? From the time you wake up in the morning until you retire at night it seems that the world is behind you – you are in full sync with the events and people in your life. You are focused, sharp and alert. You move with purpose; your actions are crisp and exact; when you speak you are clear, succinct and convincing. Your hearing is acute and you process new inputs rapidly and respond appropriately, quickly and with ease. Everything seems more vivid and alive. [Read more...]
“All Models are Wrong, Some Models are Useful”
I’m just coming back from vacation and will be resuming my personal goal of one meaningful post per week, but I came across this quote and thought it was incredibly relevant. With the continued discussion about Scrum vs. Kanban vs. RUP vs. whatever comes next, as well as some of the concerns raised about the PMI now getting into the Agile certification business, I think it’s important for us to remember that all these models, frameworks, sets of practices, and other simplifications of the complex craft of software development are wrong. It just so happens that some of them may be useful. Our goal isn’t so much to find a perfect model, or to obsess over the warts on someone else’s, but rather to put to use the ones we find useful so that we can help organizations improve.
We all know that bureaucracy is bad, right? The tales of insanely complex, rube-golderg-like processes residing within large organizations are too numerous to cite. Most people universally agree that this type of overhead is a negative thing. More process is a hindrance on human creativity, something that should be avoided at all costs. Indeed, many Agile teams see their first big productivity boost from casting aside the detritus of unnecessary rules, roles, and other organizational straight jackets that were keeping a group of individuals from working as a productive team.
If we accept this truth, then does that mean the goal should be to eliminate all bureaucracy? The process rigor seen in most organizations is excessive, but many view it as a necessary evil. Necessary in order to maintain the scale, performance, or consistency required for there particular organization. With this in mind, managers may agree that organizational structure and rules can become stifling, and yet continue to implement it as a necessity for their organization. Quite possibly, they are right. What if the question isn’t about whether or not we have process, but rather what that bureaucracy should look like? Not all processes and organizational structures are created equally.
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