patkua@work

The intersection of technology and leadership

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Real Options with Sticky Notes

February 17, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been a big fan or Real Options since I heard about them a few years back. It gave me a better way of calculating the Last Responsible Moment. I look at decisions very differently now, recognising when we need to make decisions now, and when we can defer those decisions until it is too risky to make them.

Looking at the agile toolkit of index cards and sticky notes, I’ve come to realise using these during facilitated discussion is a great way of implementing real options when it comes to organising ideas.

Compare this situation:

Situation 1: The team sits in a room with a facilitator helping the team brainstorm ideas to a problem they have. As a team member thinks of an idea, they call it out, waiting as the facilitator kindly writes it up on a flipchart using a permanent marker. The facilitator then looks at the flipchart, inviting people to make observations. They comment about seeing a pattern, so the facilitator uses a different coloured pen to start drawing lines between ideas. They try crossing out ideas, rewriting them closer to places that seem more relevant. As more discussion ensues, the board becomes covered in more lines, rewritten words, and the facilitator becomes flustered with people changing their minds all the time. Out of frustration, the facilitator stops the group and asks them to make up their mind for the final time.

Situation 2: The team sits around a table in a circular format, each with a pile of sticky notes and markers in front of them. As each person thinks of an idea they write it down on a single sticky note and put them into a pile. The facilitator takes the sticky notes, and starts to arrange them on a wall. The team notice a pattern, moving certain sticky notes closer to each other. More discussion ensues and everyone suddenly helps moving, grouping, sometimes ungrouping ideas as they experiment to best find how the ideas relate to each other. The facilitator stands back at the end of it, and takes a photo to share as the outcome of the meeting.

Deferring commitment using sticky notes
I love using index cards and sticky notes as they let you capture ideas and move on before needing to classify, categorise and relate them to each other (somethign you can spend a lot of time on). They let you experiment cheaply seeing structures in the ideas by moving them around. Rather than being restricted by a piece of paper (flipchart), your only restriction on experimenting is the time you spend on rearranging and looking for patterns. Sticky notes (or index cards) allow you to defer the commitment of linking ideas together in a model. In my experience, even if you substituted a whiteboard, you spend more time rewriting (recapturing) ideas than finding ways to relate them to each other.

Kaikaku or Kaizen

February 13, 2010 / / 3 Comments

I hear about two major approaches to introducing agile methods to organisations. Kaikaku (known in lean circles as radical change) is the brute force method of pushing all the change you want upon the organisation. You recognise this when basically the “normal” way of working is flipped on its head and a whole swarm of new practices are introduced.

Kaizen (known in lean circles as continuous improvement) is the softer, gentler approach to change, tweaking one bit here, and one bit there. Think of this as a way of introducing a single practice a time.

Now that we are clear about what is what, comes the interesting question of what is better?

You seem to be faced with two choices. A radical change that seems like a high chance of failure, but could also be a huge success, or smaller incremental change to do this.

In order to answer this question when I join a new team or organisation I like to consider how much their environment supports them in what they want to do. Those with supporting, nurturing or safe environments I would probably head towards Kaikaku, using education and building trust with senior stakeholders to establish longer term safety. You can increase safety and reduce the likelihood of failure if you can bring in a high proportion of the culture you’re looking for. I’ve seen this succeed really well when you have at least 50% of a team with lots of agile experience, something you tend to have when you hire someone like ThoughtWorks.

Work with less than 50% experience mixed support, and you start to decrease safety. At this point, I would start to look towards kaizen methods of improvement. Of course there are many levels at which you might apply kaizen and kaikaku, but consider safety levels when doing so.

Professional Scrum Master Certification Disappears from Scrum.org

February 11, 2010 / / 1 Comment

More interesting developments as @carlton858 points out there doesn’t seem to be a Professional Scrum Master certification announcement on the home page of Scrum.org anymore.

Fortunately I still had a copy of the page as it looked yesterday below:

ScrumOrgYesterday

Here’s what google’s cache of it had several days before that:

ScrumGoogleCache

And here it is today:

ScrumOrgToday

I’m intersted to see what future developments occur in this Scrum world. Here’s the original PSM announcement. (bearing in mind it’s probably going to change or not be relevant when it comes back up)

It had to happen

February 10, 2010 / / 4 Comments

The split in the Scrum community with Ken Schwaber going independent of the Scrum Alliance sees Scrum.org announce the Professional Scrum Developer program.

An interesting development indeed. There’s also now a competing certification for the Professional Scrum Master instead of the Certified Scrum Master. I’m sure this is going to be confusing for everyone. (I wonder if that means Certified Scrum Masters are then implied as Unprofessional as a result?)

Articulate your Incompetence

February 9, 2010 / / 5 Comments

A few weeks back, Andy and I got together to walk through all the different iPhone examples that we’ve been playing around with. We both learned a great deal.

I’ve found that teaching whilst learning is actually the most effective way of learning. There’s something about trying to put words to the things that you think you know that makes you reason actually how little you really know.

I think the best learning model where this experience fits in is the following model:

Unconscious Incompetence -> Conscious Incompetence -> Conscious Competence -> Unconscious Competence

The act of trying to explain something is trying to raise you from one level to the next. If, for instance, you think you know what you’re doing and then find yourself having difficulty explaining something, you’re perhaps you are at a stage of Unconscious Incompetence. However if you know you are already incompetence (Conscious Incompetence), then the act of explaining is helping your understanding, testing the boundaries of where your knowledge fails. You are trying to move from Conscious Incompetence to Conscious Competence.

Interestingly, articulating your competence (or lack of) is an integral part to both a software craftsmanship model and pair programming, where in both you are expected to articulate your reasoning. The benefits work at all sorts of levels including the novice-novice and even the expert-novice pairing arrangement.

Agreeing to Agree at London Geek Night

February 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Conflict is a natural part of your every day life, whether it is at work or home. A certain amount of conflict is healthy as long as you work out how to resolve it.

Liv Wild and I will look at a number of conversation models we’ve found healthy teams use, in agreeing to agree. We’re holding it at the Thoughtworks UK office from 7pm this Tuesday (9 Feb). More details can be found here.

Limitations of the Dreyfus Model

February 2, 2010 / / 4 Comments

Last year, I ran a workshop at XP2009 and Agile 2009, helping people map behaviours to the different levels in the Dreyfus Model. Being a workshop for only 90 minutes, we only had time to introduce the model, generate a set of behaviours mapping them to each level in the model and only a small fraction of time thinking about where this might be useful in a coach’s toolbox.

I tend to use it as a way of encouraging people to self-assess their own behaviours, and as a way of seeing concrete, specific sets of behaviours that people in more advanced stages might find themselves.

We didn’t really get an opportunity to discuss the limitations of using the model in this way (remembering that all models are inherently limited in some manner).

Most useful for Novices
Ironically enough, this set of behaviours mapped in this way is only most useful to those who still remain Novices and less so, the Advanced Beginner. Novices need concrete rules, and directions. Advanced Beginners start to see context, yet it’s often helpful being specific about what sets of behaviours you might see at different stages.

Ironically, as you progress, using the Dreyfus Model in this way becomes less useful as you progress. I like to introduce this set of behaviours after people have had some experience with a certain practice. It helps people answer the question, “What does good look like?”

It’s not an exhaustive list
When I’ve run these workshops with other coaches, I find it interesting to see how they notice different sets of behaviours from what I would observe. Even when looking at a single practice, you have a multitude of behaviours at lots of different levels. It’s preciseness at describing specific sets of behaviour also has the risk of people only focusing on the prescribed behaviours instead of thinking about the sorts of behaviour that sits at this level.

I can’t imagine trying to list every single set of behaviour. As interesting as that might be, I think it would be impossible to capture, and difficult to communicate succinctly.

Best for personal development, not as performance evaluation criteria
It’s easy for managers to see a list of different levels, and then attempt of fit people into a box for performance evaluation. As much as their intention might be good good (professional growth) I think it’s easy to game.

I like to emphasise that this model is best used as a way for coach’s to help people self-assess, and for people to set their own goals about where they want to be.

Not the only tool to use
I like using this tool as a transitional tool, helping people jump the gap from Novice to Advanced Beginner and from Advanced Beginner to Competent. Beyond that, I would use less of this tool and look at other tools that help people self discover their information.

Giving feedback to defensive people

January 27, 2010 / / 3 Comments

A few people have arrived at this blog looking for the terms, “Giving feedback to defensive people.” Before focusing on the fact that the recipient may be “defensive”, I’ll refer to you to several different posts outlining some principles of giving effective feedback. Read them before continuing on.

Firstly, if you’re giving feedback to a person, ensure that you follow the principles of effective feedback.

  1. You intend on strengthening their confidence; or
  2. You’d like to help them improve their effectiveness

Many times I’ve heard several people give feedback and it is not in the spirit of either of these. Often, they give feedback with the intent of improving their own effectiveness, not necessarily the recipient. For a variety of different reasons, it’s easy for me to improve my own effectiveness by asking people what to do – something that is selfishly easy. It takes more courage and effort, putting yourself in the recipient’s shoes to help them out.

CrossedArms
Photo taken from Noii’s Flickr stream under the Creative Commons licence

If someone comes across as “defensive”, I’d ask yourself what circumstances they could possibly be under that make them so. Perhaps they have other things on their mind, and are preoccupied in a manner that makes it difficult to listen to feedback. The solution? Ask them if now is a good time to give them feedback.

Maybe the recipient associates “feedback” with “criticism” due to others “giving them feedback” ineffectively, fuelling a cycle of defensiveness. The solution? I find it easy to spend a quick minute or two describing the basic principles of feedback, and help them understand you are here with the true intent of either strengthening their confidence or improving their effectiveness. I like to emphasis it should be a conversation and that I will try to be a specific as possible, but encourage questioning if the recipient needs clarity.

Another reason the recipient may be defensive is for fear of being judged as a person. The solution? Focus on behaviours and impact, rather than attempting to describe what you think their motives are. This doesn’t mean you cannot have an opinion, however it should be clearly stated about how you interpret the impact, not on how you interpret them as a person.

They may truly believe that whatever situation you describe, they disagree with. The solution? Start with the model I describe here, seeking agreement for observations, then impact, before thinking about recommendations. Any disagreement on the early stages will inevitably lead to disagreements on future stages.

Finally, as a person giving feedback, you need to accept the recipient may choose to acknowledge, disagree with or do nothing with the feedback you gift to them. I remember one incident, quite recently, where a colleague gave me feedback with recommendations. We talked about it, both understanding the variety of forces unbeknownst to each other. At the end of the conversation, I concluded I would have repeated the same behaviour in the same circumstances, however that’s when the feedback donor got frustrated.

My lesson: if you’re giving feedback to someone, be prepared to say, “I respect that we disagree on something, and thank you for being prepared to listen.”

Shu Ha Ri as the flow of Energy

January 26, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Andy wrote a great blog post trying to relate Shu Ha Ri to the Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition. When I posted my thoughts, he suggested I blog about my story, so here it is.

In it’s simplest form, Shu -> Ha -> Ri roughly translates to Follow -> Detach -> Transcend. When I think back to the days when I studied Aikido (where I believe these concepts originate), I considered Shu Ha Ri as the flow of energy, or where you focus the majority of your efforts.

Flow

Photo of energy taken from HocusFocusClick’s Flickr stream under the creative commons licence

A Shu person, for example, focuses their energy on simply executing a very basic move. They repeat the kata, over and over, with the weight of their conscious mostly on thinking, “I move my arm up to block”.

The Ha person, no longer follows the rote kata, “detaching” from the original conscious thought, now focused on its application. They spend their time thinking, “An arm is coming my way, I better block”.

The Ri person is certainly spectacular to witness with energy flowing from move to move, something the dojo sensei demonstrated during a yearly open house. During this event, lasting a good twenty minutes, five black belt students attacked the sensei from all sides. They attacked with their hands and a small assortment of weapons. The sensei defended by turning, locking and throwing each student back in return. What I still remember vividly was comparing the black belts, completely drenched to the skin in sweat, to the sensei, who barely showed any signs of sweat.

I see this same flow of energy and focus of effort when watching people learn development skills. At one end of the spectrum, the Shu developer spends an enormous effort thinking about how to execute a particular practice. At the other end of the spectrum, the right practices occur and great quality code (and tests) appear.

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