patkua@work

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Category: Facilitation (Page 2 of 2)

XP2009 Day 1

June 1, 2009 / / 0 Comments

General impressions about the conference
I really enjoyed this year’s conference with the combination of a remote island in Italy and the small numbers (100+) giving many great opportunities for chatting with our experienced practitioners, and a handful of academics about lots of different topics. I found it refreshing that there seemed to be significantly more experienced practitioners and thus, I found it extremely nice to be able to chat about similar experiences rather than simply unidirectional advice I find when present with a higher proportion of beginners.

conferencepool

Who wouldn’t want to gather around this place for some great conversations?

The quality of sesions was better than the last two conferences, once again focused less on the introductory nature and more focused on specific aspects. Of course, I had recommendations about how to improve, particularly the organisational aspects, of the conference and I’ve at least had an opportunity to give that feedback having shared a return train with one of the organisers for next year’s conference.

Thoughts about the first day
The first part of this day was a keynote delivered by lean evangelist, Mary Poppendieck. Titled, “The Cultural Assumptions behind Agile Software Development”, Mary proposed that there are several (American-style) cultural assumptions behind many of the agile practices that make it all the more difficult to implement. She referenced heavily the work discussed by Geert Hofsted in his book, Cultural Dimensions.

I didn’t find the keynote particularly inspiring, nor particularly challenging. Country-based cultural dimensions are just one of the factors that permeate the way that people behave. As an agile consultant, you end up fighting corporate culture, and the systems that encourage and maintain that corporate culture and I see country-based cultural dimensions yet another contributing systemic effect. This does not mean that just because a country has a high degree of individualism, working in pairs or working collaboratively in a team will be impossible (perhaps just all the more difficult). As much as I enjoy hearing Mary speak, I also found her presentation a little bit too heavy in the whole powerpoint presentation with far too much text and outdated clipart.

I also ran my workshop in the morning, titled “Climbing the Dreyfus Ladder of Agile Practices” and want to thank all the experienced people that attended as it resulted in some really rich discussions. We managed to discuss seven different agile practices in detail, brainstormed a large set of behaviours for each, classifying them and classifying them into the different levels described the the Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition. The results from the workshop can be found here (photos to be updated).

In the afternoon, I helped out Emily Bache’s coding dojo, focused on Test Driven Development. We saw four different pairs tackling four different coding problems using different tools and languages. I learned about the tool JDave (it’s still a little bit too verbose for my liking), and saw different styles in the way that people executed the code kata. For me, I was hoping to demonstrate more on the pair programming side of test driven development as a pair, and I had a lot of fun even though I felt a little bit out of my depth with the tools. Thanks to Danilo for complementing my lack of experience with tools like Cucumber. 🙂

More to come…

Why ORID matters?

May 26, 2009 / / 2 Comments

Last time I wrote about the ORID (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive, Decisional) model for conversations. Software development is hard because not only do you have to deal with technical challenges, but there are so many opportunities for poor communication. Detecting when poor communication occurs is important, as it lets you ask questions and steer conversations back into a much more productive result. Here’s a classic conversation I hear on software teams all the time:

Person A: We’re going to use <tool/framework/library>
Person B: No! <tool/framework/library> sucks. We’re going to use <alternative tool/framework/library>

Note that both of these people have jumped to the Decisional stage of the conversation (i.e. What to do). I’m sure that individually, both people went through the model, yet didn’t attempt to step through together (or as a team) each of those stages. I’ve learned that it’s easy to jump to different conclusions (D) if you don’t share the same background.

Using the ORID model as a guide, here’s a much more effective way the people could have had that conversation:
Person A: I’ve noticed we write a lot of code that deals with files. (O)
Person B: I’ve noticed that as well. (O)
Person A: It makes me feel frustrated (R) because we spend less time doing interesting stuff (I)
Person B: I didn’t realise you were frustrated about it! I also notice we tend to have a lot of bugs in that area as well (I)
Person A: I’d like to use some <tool/framework/library> so that we can improve our productivity (D)
Person B: I definitely would like to as well.
Person A: I think <tool/framework/library> would work well
Person B: I’ve had bad experiences with <tool/framework/library> because it also has lots of bugs (I). I think <alternative tool/framework/library> might still do the job, and help you feel less frustrated. What do you think? (D)
Person A: Let’s give it a go.

The conversation may not still go in the same direction of agreement, however there is much more opportunity to discuss why one particular solution will fit the issues both parties are feeling. Without making those items explicit, the discussion becomes an argument about choosing one solution over another. With a shared understanding of how both people are feeling, there are many more opportunities to clarify what problems the solutions are trying to fix. In fact, the solution each party originally thought of may change as a result.

Facilitation Tool – ORID

May 19, 2009 / / 2 Comments

Last year, Esther Derby and Jean Tabaka shared a model at the 2008 Retrospective Facilitator’s Gathering that I now think about all the time. Esther Derby and Diana Larsen used it as the base model to describe how to run retrospectives. It also got me thinking how it mirrored different models described by other facilitation approaches, negotiations strategies and advice on how to give effective feedback. Apparently this originated in the book, The Art of Focused Conversation.

The base model starts with the acronym ORID that means:

  • Objective – Focus on the facts, hard evidence data
  • Reflective – Focus on how that made people feel or other associations
  • Interpretive – Focus on the impact and significance
  • Decisive – Focus on next steps.

I thought it’d be useful to share this model with a wider audience, and I keep forgetting what the “I” specifically stood for, so I’m putting here so I can find it later.

More on how to apply this later.

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