Abstract:
We spend so much energy and effort in understanding popular frameworks( scrum, kanban, leSS, SaFe) , we study about these frameworks, spend so much money on getting certified and learn working on tools like Jira. But do we spend the same amount of effort to understand people with whom we are working, what’s their style of working, what challenges they face, are we good listener who can understand their issues ? Culture in which people work play a huge role in this transformation journey.During agile transformation, our focus gets so much on process and tools that we neglect people and mindset aspect.There are no training and coaching which can help in understanding people, their behavior and mindset. People resist change or new process even when they know it can help them, this again comes down to the mindset of people. If people will have a growth mindset and right attitude to try new things they will adopt processes easily and won’t push back, whereas on the other hand people with fixed mindset keep doing things they know and will not accept anything new.
It is very important to understand the mindset of leadership team before we start: It’s important to coach leadership to have a right mindset before we start working with people on process implementation. People’s context and experience levels in team also play a role. We all know processes are useful. They formalize things, documenting them make life easier for new people coming into your team, and keep things clear. But they aren’t more important than people. Lean principles that we follow focus on value stream and flow, like lean manufacturing system used by Toyota. But we are not building cars here, we build software which behave differently in different circumstances. We are not working with machines or resources here, we are working with people and smart people. One of the Agile principles says “ Individual and interactions” over process and tools. We focus on interactions and make sure people are communicating, it’s time to focus on individuals and their mindset too.
Key Takeaways:
1. Culture plays a big role in agile transformation
2. People and their mindset should be understood before starting an agile transformation
3. The process should solve problems, if they are not solving anything, they are useless
4. Don't copy what other organisations are doing, follow something which will work for your organisation
5. If something is not working, don't stick to it. Inspect and experiment.
Agile gurugram Conference 2020 | People and their mindset-Agile's transformation's most neglected aspect | Minu Sachdeva
1. Minu Sachdeva
Principal Program Manager
Cadence design Systems
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People and their mindset:
Agile transformation's most neglected
aspect
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❖ Intelligence is something very basic that you really can't
change much. You’re born with it.
you can learn new things, but you can't really change
how intelligent you are.
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PHASE 1: Students were given very easy tests.
PHASE 2: Students were given option to choose from
-Difficult test( where they can learn)
-Easy test like in phase 1
PHASE 3: Students were given very difficult test.
PHASE 4: Students were given choice that they can see exams of students who did
-Better than them
-Worse
PHASE 5: All students given easy test like in phase 1
PHASE 6: Students were asked to write advice to future students who will attempt this very difficult exam and were
asked to include their scores.
Interesting experiment to understand mindset:
13. Agile Mindset attributes:
Set of attitudes supporting an agile working environment
RESPECT
COLLABORATION
LEARNING OWNERSHIP
FOCUS ON
VALUE
ADAPT TO
CHANGE
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15. How can we work on Mindset change in Agile
Transformation ?
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16. 1. Set Mindset Goals:
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Copyrights: https://www.agilealliance.org/
17. 2. Hire people with right attitude:
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Copyrights: https://www.agilealliance.org/
On a dream team, there are no “brilliant jerks.” The cost to teamwork is just too high. Our
view is that brilliant people are also capable of decent human interactions, and we insist upon
that. When highly capable people work together in a collaborative context, they inspire each
other to be more creative, more productive and ultimately more successful as a team than
they could be as a collection of individuals.
– Netflix culture memo
18. 3. Measure Mindset goals:
We can use a 3-item scale for performance:
● Exceeds Expectations – someone who consistently demonstrates the new mindset goal (and
encourages others to do the same)
● Meets Expectations – someone who regularly demonstrates the goal
● Developmental – someone who occasionally demonstrates the goal
Person Name: X
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Values Rating Comment
Respect for team members, Avoid
conflicts, Value other’s ideas
Exceeds expectation Good work!!
Collaboration and team work Exceeds expectation Good work!!
Commitment( Give 100% efforts in
meeting commitments done)
Meets expectation Sometimes overcommit, Proper
analysis and planning will help
Open to learn, Take initiatives, value
innovation
Developmental Focus on learning new technologies,
explore some open source tools and
frameworks. Knowledge share with
team if learn anything new.
