February 4, 2012

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BigVisible Blog

To Unit Test or not to Unit Test? That is the question. Really!?!?

January 14, 2012 By Tom Looy Leave a Comment

Is considering having a development team do Unit Testing something an Agile Coach should ask regarding their client?  Shouldn’t it be obvious?  Let’s see…

Introduction

My current assignment has me coaching a software development group that is responsible for adding features to a legacy product that is on a yearly ‘shrink wrap’ release cycle.  The product is over 25 years old and is approximately 18M lines of code and has millions of users.  There are not many software products out there that are this old and this big and are being developed by a team that wants to embrace Agile.  We are like pioneers in a new territory.

The product development group (approximately 20 teams) started their Agile adoption process approximately 18 months ago on their own.  After a year of adopting Scrum they decided to get an outside perspective on their progress so they contacted BigVisible to help them assess where they were and help plan next steps for Phase 2 of their Agile adoption.
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Filed Under: Agile Coaching, Experience from the Field

Faces of Power in the Organization

January 11, 2012 By David Bland 1 Comment

Faces of PowerThe lines between political science and organizational culture continue to blur. Those who venture into organizations need to become well versed in the dynamics of power. One such explanation of these dynamics is Steven Lukes’ the “Three Faces of Power”.

Three Faces of Power

1. Decision Making – The power to make and implement decisions

2. Non-Decision Making – The power to set agendas and therefore limit what is even being discussed

3. Shaping Desires – The power to manipulate what people think they want

Lukes’ work is an extension of Max Weber’s Three Types of Authority, in which Lukes argues that Weber only focused on the first face of power, Decision Making.
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Filed Under: Agile Adoption, Agile Coaching, Agile Transformation, Enterprise Agile, Leadership

A coach’s moral dilemma

January 11, 2012 By Alex Singh 10 Comments

A fellow coach recently asked me for my opinion on an ethical dilemma — was it morally right for us to show people a new way of doing things knowing fully well that we were setting the group for eventual disappointment. Disappointment in his case is inevitable and will start setting in as soon as the parent company begins assimilating the subdivision and mandating that the latter operate under the parent organization’s restrictive rules and policies. My simple and somewhat glib answer was that we were doing the right thing by helping people get better and were providing them the wherewithal to make informed decisions about their future career. And, if in the end, the employees were unhappy they could take their knowledge elsewhere to an employer who would value their expertise. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Adoption, Agile Coaching, Agile Transformation, Enterprise Agile, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Validated Learning in Agile Projects

January 1, 2012 By Brian Bozzuto Leave a Comment

A recent question about sprint goals got me thinking about the lean startup concept known as “validated learning” and how something like this applies to agile projects. Eric Ries describes the concept of validated learning as:

 

“not after-the-fact rationalization or a good story designed to hide failure. It is a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty in which startups grow. Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects.”
Ries, Eric (2011-09-13). The Lean Startup (p. 38). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

At first blush it seems this concept is just made to be utilized by teams working in an iterative manner. They can define sprints, validate learning, and adjust course. The challenge is that validated learning is more than just conjecture or forecasts, this means we must align the product of sprints with empirical, measurable goals. Enter the sprint goal.

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Filed Under: Agile Coaching, Agile Transformation, No Tags, Product Development, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , ,

Happy (Agile) New Year!

December 30, 2011 By Tiffany Willis Leave a Comment

As 2011 comes to an end, set aside some time to reflect on what you wanted to achieve, and what you did achieve this year.  Then consider whether or not it is important enough to continue striving to achieve in 2012.  In the spirit of Auld Lang Syne and a retrospective, answer these questions for yourself:

  • What went well this year, or what did I do well this year that contributed to my personal, professional and company’s success in 2011?  Celebrate these successes and consider ways to leverage them in 2012.
  • What wasn’t successful and I should try to stop doing or do differently?  Celebrate these attempts, laugh where possible and leverage what you learned in 2012.
  • What changes am I going to make or try in 2012 to improve my results?  Focus on one or two things that you believe are important to try.

 

Now consider what you’ve done, learned and will try relative to the challenges you know are ahead in 2012.  Planning or strategizing for the nearest challenges in the New Year relative to what you accomplished and learned in 2011 will provide some guidance on the first steps you should take.  Additionally, here are three things for you to consider as you begin to think about the work ahead:

Alignment – Is there alignment between your customers needs and what you are delivering?  Is there alignment or agreement on goals?  Is there alignment between your personal and professional goals and what the company needs to be successful?

Transparency – Be open, honest and respectful in communicating and delivering what needs to be accomplished, why it is important to accomplish and how it will be accomplished.  Alignment is not possible without transparency.

Success – What does success look and feel like to you?  Create your vision of what success feels like and work with your team, your management and your peers to create a shared vision of success to help guide the organization.

I have often found that creating a shared vision of success for a team provides a compass for a team as well bringing the team together to work collaboratively towards a goal.  Understanding the organization and your client’s needs begins the necessary step of aligning priorities, and determining how best to meet the challenges.  Finally supporting and enabling transparency helps create an environment where the team can self-organize, where the learning process is valued in determining how best to solve a problem and collaboration can be improved, ultimately improving delivery.

 

Filed Under: Agile Coaching, Collaboration, Experience from the Field, Leadership, Project Management

There is no one definition of Agile

December 22, 2011 By Alex Singh 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, I asked my co-workers to distill the concept of Agile/Lean to its simplest essence and do it in no more than 10 words. The statements had to clearly convey what Agile was really about and why anyone should really care about it.

There were two reasons for the request:

  1. I recently critiqued a 2-day “Introduction to Agile” class by a coach-in-training. Everything that I expected was covered in the class but I felt the lack of an underlying theme; the content didn’t seem to fit well together.
  2. I wanted to understand whether Agile meant the same thing to different people and whether they emphasized the same points in their class/presentation.

Here is a sampling of the responses I received.

  • “Deliver value frequently at a sustainable pace while adapting to business needs.” — Brad Swanson
  • “Be one with the customer.” — Steve Johnson
  • “Sense & respond quickly to changes that have measurable value.” — Skip Angel
  • “Do the right things sooner.” — Jonathon Golden
  • “Agile is about knowing what NOT to do.” — Mike Dwyer
  • “Continuously adjust our actual process to reflect our improved understanding.” — John Ryan
  • “Utilizing continuous prioritization and feedback, collaboratively develop incremental business value.” — Jim Elvidge
  • “Continually improve value delivery via experimentation, feedback, and retrospection.” — Alex Singh
  • “Do Something, Self-Organize, Inspect & Adapt” — Scott Dunn (stolen from Aaron Sanders)

Not surprisingly, people emphasized different aspects in their distillation. I assume that these are the same things they emphasize when coaching teams and organizations as well. It is important to note that everyone is right and no one definition is better than another; people with different backgrounds emphasize different things and have a different worldview.

What do you think is the intrinsic nature or character of Agile that makes it what it is? How would you define the most important aspects of Agile in no more than 10 words?

Filed Under: Agile Coaching Tagged With: , ,

Top 10 Ways to Help Your Clients

December 21, 2011 By mfortunato Leave a Comment

Top 10 Ways to Help Your Clients – adapted for Agile coaches from Edgar Schein’s 10 Consulting Principles

Edgar Schein is a former MIT professor at the Sloan School of Management and author of numerous books on organizational development, the consulting process as well as other subjects. Schein’s work is based on over forty years of consulting experience. He is also generally regarded as the originator of the term ‘organizational culture’.

Schein views the consulting process as essentially a ‘helping’ relationship between the consultant and the client. He gauged each interaction with a client by the degree that the relationship had been helpful and whether or not the client felt helped.

I found Schein’s list of ten tips on creating and maintaining a helpful client relationship to be directly applicable to our work as coaches and essential to helping us create and maintain great relationships with our clients. I have included Schein’s list below along with one additional tip and a bit of personal commentary.

1. Always try to be helpful – Coaches have to know when to help, how to help and learn to see what the client is really asking.
2. Always stay in touch with the current reality – this could be the most important principle because it is really about being mindful. Staying present and aware of what is happening here and now is one of the most fundamental skills that a coach should develop and the key to performing well with all of the other principles listed here.
3. Access your ignorance – asking ourselves what we really know vs. what we think we know is an important exercise for coaches and one that can help keep us grounded and in touch with what is happening now. In other words, question your assumptions.
4. Everything you do is an intervention
5. It is the client who owns the problem and the solution
6. Go with the flow – if you remember principles one through three you should have not trouble with this one
7. Timing is crucial –Finding the proper moment to bring up a sensitive subject is crucial to building and maintaining a helpful relationship with your client.
8. Be constructively opportunistic with confrontational interventions – there are times when clients are more likely to respond to intervention. Be patient and wait for the right time. Any questions see principles two and seven.
9. Everything is a source of data; errors are inevitable – as Schein says, we all make mistakes. We, as coaches, have to accept the fact that we make mistakes and do what we tell our clients to do – learn from them.
10.  When in doubt share the problem – this one is about coaches helping each other, which is something that we do continuously at Big Visible.

I really like this list and find it helpful to refer back to it occasionally. However, I would like to add one of my own…

11) Set expectations up-front and adjust as necessary – your personal preferences and coaching style and that of your client’s will contribute to the specifics of this conversation, but suffice it to say that open, authentic, conversation about expectations is essential at startup and throughout the process.

Filed Under: Agile Adoption, Agile Coaching, Collaboration, Experience from the Field, Leadership Tagged With:
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