Author Archives: Dan Neumann

Agile Coaches’ Corner Podcast

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I’m pleased to share that the relaunched AgileThought podcast: Agile Coaches’ Corner is now live and available on Google Play, iTunes, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and other podcast listening platforms!
Please help us get the word out by listening, subscribing, providing a review, and suggesting topics for future shows.

You can listen on:

Agile Coaches Corner on Google Play
Agile Coaches Corner on Apple iTunes
Agile Coaches Corner on TuneIn 
Agile Coaches Corner on Stitcher 
Agile Coaches Corner on Android
Agile Coaches Corner on our source, LibSyn

This milestone would not have been possible without the the collaboration of several colleagues at AgileThought, including Sam Falco and Emily Culclasure, along with the support of other AT leadership. Thank you, all.

Indiana’s Biggest Agile Conference Returns

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AgileIndy Conference 2018 is just around the corner. Scheduled for May 11, 2018, the AgileIndy Conference will be held in the heart of downtown Indianapolis. Get your tickets to AgileIndy while they are still available.

Why should you attend?

There are, of course, valuable sessions to attend and learn valuable lessons. There will undoubtedly be a keynote talk with inspiring thoughts. And, of course, there is the laid-back conference reception. But every conference has those, so why attend AgileIndy?

In three words, I’d say the reason to attend is “people and interactions.” Regional conferences are an excellent chance to meet agile thought leaders and practitioners from around the region. In addition to the attendees from Indiana, there will be many folks from the Chicago, Columbus, Louisville, and other surrounding cities.

Do you have something to present?

Disclaimer: I am not involved in organizing the conference. This information is the best that I have, but is NOT official guidance from any of the conference organizers. 

If you have a session you’d like to be considered for the conference, it is time to get those proposals created. The process for submitting ideas to AgileIndy is different than many conferences. While many conferences have a single deadline for all submissions, and then the sessions are evaluated all at once, AgileIndy will be accepting proposals on a rolling basis. So, if you get a compelling session submitted early, it might get accepted early.

For consideration, send an email to AgileIndyspeakers@gmail.com and include the following information:

  • Title of Presentation – 50 characters max
  • Bio of Presenter – 280 characters max
  • Abstract of Talk – 280 characters max
  • Headshot of Presenter
  • Reason why your presentations should be selected.  This can include links to videos, slides, and a description of how your talk will flow.

The final cutoff for submissions is March 26, 2018, but don’t wait until the last minute.

Have you attended AgileIndy in the past? If so, what is your favorite reason?

Personal Kanban on Windows Desktop

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Kanban Windows background with Sticky Note tasksHave you wanted to try a simple and free personal Kanban board? Turn your Windows 10 Desktop into your own Kanban board, and use Sticky Notes app to represent your tasks.

I used Photoshop to create the image with columns “to do,” “doing,” and “done.”kanban board windows background If you don’t want to use Photoshop to make an image,  you could just as easily use the computer desktop kanban board I made, or create your own using PowerPoint’s “Save as Image” feature to make your own slide, and then set that image as your desktop.

If you have your own workflow, you might consider making a PowerPoint slide and use PowerPoint’s “Save as Image” feature to make your own board.

Regardless, once you have an image, you can set that image as your desktop in Windows 10.

Now, all you have to do is use the StickyNote feature to put notes on your background and move them through the Kanban.

Granted, this is an elementary implementation of Kanban, since Kanban is more than cards on a wall.  For a fuller implementation of Kanban, measure and manage flow. But at least this creates some visibility hopefully focus for you.

If you are new to the concept of Personal Kanban, check out the Personal Kanban 101 introduction. Make your work visible, and limit your work-in-progress.

What personal Kanban approaches have worked for you?

If you use this image, please leave a comment about how it worked for you.

The Sirens Song of Measurement

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Like the Siren song that caused sailors wreck their ships on the rocks, the call to measure agile team velocity calls to managers and executives.

Scrum teams often track their velocity, an average of the total story points delivered in past sprints. As teams improve, velocity typically increases. And, mature teams typically don’t have erratic velocities.

Management believes that if a stable, predictable velocity with an upward trend over time is good, we should set a target and boundaries for what “good” velocity is. Track it, and make a dashboard of it.

But here’s the problem: if you start showing team velocities, side-by-side, and coloring them as red/yellow/green, there is no longer emotional safety. Any scrum team with half a brain will figure out how to make that status report look good. And, that often creates artificial, useless, harmful, behaviors.

But, here’s the rub. In the absence of other information, management wants to measure SOMETHING!

Forget about measuring and comparing velocities at a leadership level, and find ways to determine, and measure:
1. How will we Know if we built the right thing?
2. How will we Know if we built it right?

Measure those things, and forget about holding teams to a particular velocity expectation.

What do you think? Do you have ways to measure delivering the right thing, or whether it was built right? Please share.

 

Photo and Model Credits
Model/Editor/Stylist/MUA: Ghost Siren
Photographer: Elizabeth Stemmler
Photographer Elizabeth Stemmler on Facebook
Original Image Source

Measure Agile Teams at Your Own Risk

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Agile methods, when done well, will increase the ability of an organization to deliver value to its customers. Teams deliver frequently. Teams move faster.

In Scrum, the total story points delivered every sprint is the team’s velocity. Increasing velocity is good. Decreasing velocity is bad. That’s the conventional wisdom.

Because we want increasing speed, it’s seductive to make a trend of the team’s velocity. Velocity is easy to measure. Because we measure every sprint, it is easy to make a trend.

Predictability is valuable, so organizations start to set boundaries for what “good” variation looks like, and what “bad” variation looks like. Good variation is modest and generally increasing. Bad variation is erratic and hard to use for predictions.

Because we know what is “good” and what is “bad,” it is easy to set targets for these metrics.  But, guess what? When targets get set, and teams get measured against those targets. Who wants to look bad? Nobody. Team members are smart enough to make themselves look good. And there is the problem.

A team that is evaluated against a target will do whatever is needed to achieve that metric. The easiest thing to do is modify behavior to artificially make the data look good. The metrics will get “gamed.”

Measuring, in and of itself, is not bad. Measuring teams, setting targets, evaluating teams, and comparing teams to one another; that’s bad.

If I had to sum this up in one line, it is this:
If you set a target, the teams might hit the bullseye, but might be bullshit.

Do you have a story of metrics that turned into targets that created unintended consequences? Please comment below.

Do you believe you’ve been around targets that didn’t create unintended consequences? I’d be interested in those, too.

Kanban – More than Columns on a Wall

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If you’ve slapped up a board that says “to do,” “doing,” and “done” and called it Kanban, that’s about the weakest implementation of Kanban that is possible.

If you’re interested in really harnessing the Kanban framework, you have to go beyond three columns and:

  1. Model your team’s actual workflow
  2. Apply discipline to your policies, work-in-progress (WIP) limits
  3. Measure
  4. Get nerdy with the data

If you want to learn more about using data with Kanban, go get a copy of Daniel Vacanti’s book on agile metrics from leanpub, or on Amazon.  Read it.

Then, get a trial to Actionable Agile. This tool visualizes data, and integrates with multiple platforms. Watch the videos on the ActionableAgile YouTube channel that gives an introduction to the tool’s capabilities.

Now, use the data and a never settle for “this is as good as it gets.” Dig in and improve your process!

Five Keys to Your New Years Resolution (and mine)

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Welcome to 2018!

Did you make a new years’ resolutions? Have you managed to keep it through the first day of the new year? If so, congratulations. I’m sure you’re doing better than most folks.

I’ve never really been one to make resolutions. More precisely, I’ve dabbled in resolutions in the past, but never followed through on them. But, as the saying goes “if at first you don’t succeed….” Here’s what I’m resolving to do in 2018, and hope the five keys work for you as well. Please read to the end. There is a way you can help.

Five Keys to Your New Years Resolution

  1. Making a Public Commitment
  2. Have an Accountability Partner
  3. Be Realistic
  4. Habit Stacking
  5. Ask for Help

Step 1: Make a Public Commitment

This will be done as soon as I hit “Publish.” Of course, your “public” commitment might be to anyone who will help you with step 2.

Step 2: Have an Accountability Partner

I intend to have an accountability partner from among the fine agile coach team at my employer, AgileThought.

Step 3: Be Realistic

At times, it feels like sharing ideas needs to be  large, completely unique, or world-changing. This year, I’m just striving to share more of what I find interesting. It may not be revolutionary, but hopefully it at least sparks some conversations.

Ever since I started working as “an agile coach,” I’ve had a vague notion that I should do more public writing. Or, if not writing, I need to share my ideas and experience through conference presentations or sharing at user groups. There have been periods of time where I was fairly consistent in sharing, and there were times where I went completely silent. But, with the new year upon me, I’m going to give it a go. I’ll be posting a blog article at least once a week and tweeting something each day.

Step 4:  Habit Stacking

I’ve started reading the book Habit Stacking by S.J. Scott. This book boasts the subtitle “127 Small Changes to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness.” I’m skeptical about the subtitle’s claims, but there is an interesting notion about building habits and putting a bunch of small activities together into a single time-slot. So, that will be one of the experiments I will be running. And, I’ll let you know how that goes in a future post.

Step 5: Ask for Help

I could use your help.  If you find something interesting, please leave a comment. If you disagree, leave a comment. Just feel like saying “hi?” Leave a comment. I expect to learn from the feedback, so please leave a note.

What do you think?  What has worked for you in the past? Please leave a comment.

Do you want to be the next Wells Fargo Scandal?

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Last week, Wells Fargo put out a press release acknowledging that they had uncovered more than 1,000,000 additional possibly fraudulent accounts. A million! Say it with me: one… MILLION more fraudulent accounts.

Here are a couple comments from the twitterverse, complete with a branded hashtag #wellsfargoscandal:

What’s at the root of the issue? An environment that generated a “bonus” for performance targets and fired people who did not hit them. Read more about the “incentive” program in the NY Times article.

But it’s not just Wells Fargo!

A group called Patriot Majority USA was incented its workers to register voters. I’m sure they mean well. They want to get people to the polls, and to do that, they want to get more folks register. So some genius decided to set a quota of 10 registrations a day. Register 10 people each day, or you risk losing your job. That sounds brilliant!

Guess what… they got 10 registrations per day from their employees.

Now, Patriot Majority USA and some of its employees have been charged with registering fake voters! (No, this is not #fakenews.) The article states:

“A search warrant unsealed on Nov. 14 says some workers admitted to falsifying registrations, saying they faced the possibility of losing their temporary job if they didn’t register at least 10 new voters a day.”

There are tons of other instances, I assure you.

But here’s the point

It’s time to do away with the MBA stupidity of “you get what you measure.” Yes, sure. And, you get a whole bunch of shit you didn’t intend.

People are smart.

If you rig the system, they will exploit the weakness in the game.

Stop the bullshit manipulation with performance-based targets.

If you’re in charge, focus on creating an environment where people feel valued, they know their purpose, and give them the tools to do the job well.

 

What do you think? Leave a comment.