British Computing Society [Software Practice Advancement]: What is possibly possible in large organisations adopting agile?

BCS SPA 6 JUNE 2018: WHAT’S POSSIBLY
POSSIBLE IN LARGE ORGANISATIONS
ROB BROWN EXPERIENCES AND
REFLECTIONS

©2018 ROB BROWN (HTTP://CHANGE-CHALLENGE.BLOGSPOT.COM/)
SUMMARY
▸ “All models are wrong, but some are useful” - George EP Box
▸ First Order Changes do not change the system
▸ Second Order Changes transcend the system - they are change changes
▸ Understand the constraints, the people, the structures, the complexities, the
system of forces, and the magnitude of those forces
▸ Understand and/or respect, but do not get caught by the system
▸ Discover and communicate the paradoxes
▸ Cause people to pause, reﬂect, think deeply, respond with new insight - and
change their mindset(s) and/or behaviour(s) as an intentional result
▸ Small (tiny) ﬁrst: 1 human at a time
2

TALKING WITH IMMO ABOUT TOPICS FOR TONIGHT - AND AGREEING THE GENERAL SKEPTICISM OF WHAT AGILE IS POSSIBLE IN
LARGE ORGANISATIONS
▸ Immo and I worked together at Zuhlke Engineering
2007-2010
▸ A LinkedIn Immo “like”
3

I AM NOT OFFERING CURE ALL(S), JUST SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND PERSPECTIVES
▸ So… unpacking my world, a little :)
4

HUMANS RUN ON MENTAL MODELS
▸ Remember when the world was ﬂat…? ;-)
▸ Mental models simplify our thinking patterns and help us deal with
what’s happening faster
▸ Everyone’s perception is a subjective experience on everything they
sensed (peripatetic axiom) or imagined
▸ But / So … “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” -
George EP Box (this is really important!)
▸ The Map Is Not The Terrain
▸ When they differ, always always believe the Terrain!
5
Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

THERE ARE 2 KINDS OF SCIENCE
▸ Traditional/taught
▸ hypothesis / theory formulation
▸ experiment in controlled environment
▸ observation of outcome
▸ comparison
▸ proof or disproof
▸ reﬁne hypothesis or controlled environment
▸ Heisenberg/Hawthorne/Observer effect seriously messes with outcomes
▸ Phenomenology
▸ Everyone’s subjective experience is real to them and relevant
▸ You are the subject of every story in your mind
▸ We are not able to validate and verify exact changes in a mind, and their
exact causes and effects, but there are many examples of “enlightenment”
and “heroism” throughout history
▸ And, gravity is still only a theory! Just 1 counter-example unravels the theory
▸ So what about St Thomas and the mystics who … levitate? ;-)
6
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy (Alchemy of happiness)

“AGILE” IS AN ABSTRACT WORD
▸ The meaning people (individuals) assign to the word “agile” creates many “misses”
▸ “agile” an abstract concept, not a “real world” concept like “chair”
▸ So very easy to get a personal subjective understanding and communication intention fast
▸ “agile” is a describing word in the dictionary (quick and nimble; able to move at speed in a direction and change direction without loss
of speed; like a ﬁsh, not a cheetah)
▸ In 2001 the agile manifesto added layers of abstract meaning
▸ BTW, the most important [top] line “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it” is
sadly often overlooked :-(
▸ In 2004, the 12 agile principles added more practical and abstract layers of meaning
▸ Throughout time the 1000’s of agile practices added more practical personal positive and negative experiences
▸ The dozens of agile frameworks (opinions over the combination of agile practices and role-responsibility distributions) have been
adding even more experiences of possible “agile” structures and interpretations being replicated
▸ Now agile leaders, agile pm’s, agile <everything> is going viral: certiﬁcation programmes are incredibly lucrative!
▸ People’s own experiences of “what works [good enough]” (and what did not work, or did not resonate) play a large part
▸ “agilistas” seem to spend much time talking, modelling, and thinking in principles, processes, and practicals - not a lot about people in
their own reality. And it’s people at the heart of agile.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoaling_and_schooling
©2018 ROB BROWN (HTTP://CHANGE-CHALLENGE.BLOGSPOT.COM/) 7

WHY DO LARGE ORGANISATIONS TAKE THE RISK / PAY THE COST?
▸ The promise/benefit of agile adoption (again more meanings added to “agile”)
▸ Happier, more productive people
▸ Who stay longer, the organisation gets more ROI from them, knowledge only exists in people’s heads
▸ People churn is really really costly - mostly too complex to properly account the real impact of a leaver
▸ More innovative work systems to produce more innovations to support the future of humanity
▸ More effectiveness, sometimes efficiency
▸ English is one of the few languages in the world that separates effectiveness and efficiency into different meanings - most others use
1 word for the same thing and talk about “more better” or “less better”
▸ What are the implications?
▸ Standard quantitative business objectives
▸ Reduced defect count
▸ Reduced time to market
▸ Cheaper
▸ “More for less”
▸ Competitors who are beating “us” claim to be “agile” and that is their competitive advantage - so we need to catchup / overtake!
▸ Tried many times before in several complex organisations, e.g. GM copying Toyota, … copying Zappos, … copying SpaceX
▸ The promised rewards / return-on-investment are simply too great to not invest / gamble from the Top-of-the-House: who are measuring
Facebook/Google/Apple/etc share price and/or their own EBITDA
8

EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
▸ Round 1
▸ Round 2
▸ Washup
▸ Grounding
Source: http://www.ricsfractals.net/
9

Source: https://www.quantamagazine.org/ants-build-complex-structures-with-a-few-simple-rules-20140409/
MANY INSIGHTS RUNNING THIS EXERCISE OVER 10 YEARS, 100’S
OF GROUPS AND 1000’S INDIVIDUALS
▸ One of the best conclusions: “Self-
organisation is the way to beat the
dependency problem”
▸ Remember Conway's Law, restated:
“software design reﬂects the organisation
[of people] that creates or maintains it”
▸ Suggestion: run it with every one of
your teams/groups whenever you ﬁnd
a new one, and observe…my latest
(May 2018) was that this can be used
to explain architecture complexity
10

SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
▸ Bauhaus?
▸ Key Principle: “Form Follows Function”
▸ Great principle for software design
▸ And naming standards…!
11
Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

ORGANISATION ARCHITECTURE
▸ 4-6 years ago, Craig Larman
▸ Component Teams produce Waterfall, hence
must reorganise to (Scrum) Feature Teams
▸ (minute 32: “Large-Scale Scrum - Craig
Larman - BCS Agile Methods SG” on
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/44428277?
ref=em-share)
▸ And also - Designing Dynamic Organisations
▸ A complex adaptive dynamic system
which explains a lot when examined
▸ USE WITH CAUTION!
12

ORGANISATION ARCHITECTURE
▸ My observation for organisation design -
“Function Follows Form”
▸ People who sit next to each other, but in
different teams don’t talk to each other
easily - send emails instead
▸ Colocated team members have fewer
communication issues
▸ Component team structures generally
spend a lot of their time arguing
▸ Remember Conway’s Law restated
13
Source: http://www.theagileelephant.com/the-anna-karenina-principle-10-tests-for-new-organisation-structures/

AGILE TALKING AND WRITING FOCUSES ON THINGS
▸ My observation - “Things that are easy to talk about are talked
about a lot”
▸ Frameworks, methods, models, practices, guidelines,
rules, checklists, etc… because easy to talk about and
transmit to others
▸ Not a lot actually deals with dealing with people as
people
▸ Which is much more in the sociology, psychology
and philosophy spaces
▸ Harder / very different for people who’ve
acquired their models of how stuff works from
the computer/IT spaces
▸ 1971 “The Psychology of Computer Programming” - Jerry
Weinberg
▸ Has anyone here read it?
▸ I have not read it, yet.
14

SOME USEFUL MATHEMATICS - FROM PSYCHOLOGISTS!
▸ All of them qualiﬁed hypnotists
▸ Comfortable inﬂuencing
another at their request
▸ Palo Alto - looking for “brief [but
complete] intervention therapy”
15

▸ Four Properties, briefly examined as examples
▸ Property 1: Members of a group are all alike in one common characteristic. They all share a
common denominator regardless of their actual nature, and as long as the combination of any
group members still results in a member of the group.
▸ eg: The hours on a clock are the set of integers 1-12
▸ No matter the combination (addition/subtraction) of these integers, the hours “wrap
around” and you still have only the 12 members of this group
▸ The grouping of “stuff” is the most basic and necessary element of our perception and conception
of reality
▸ ie: We all form mental models of our worlds from childhood - eg chairs, tables, houses, doors -
we have to learn them as blank slate minds, and once we have our first “instance” in our mind,
we compare and contrast later encountered instances against that first one
GROUP THEORY HAS BEEN EVOLVING SINCE EARLY 19TH CENTURY
16
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_position

GROUP THEORY PROPERTY 2
▸ Property 2: Varying the sequence of combining group members
the outcome is always the same.
▸ eg: Moving 4 times only in North, South, East and West
directions once, with a standard unit of 1 inch/foot/yard/mile/
etc
▸ No matter the sequence you always return to where you
started
▸ Could say there is changing in process, but invariance in outcome
17
Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass

▸ Property 3: A group contains an identity member such that combining any
group member with the identity member the identity of the member is
preserved.
▸ eg: in groups whose combination function is addition, and members are
integers, the identity member is 0
▸ 1+0 is still 1
▸ eg: in the group of all sound, the identity member is silence
▸ eg: in the group of all movements, the identity member is immobility
▸ A group member may act without making any difference
18

▸ Property 4: For any system satisfying the group concept, every member has a
reciprocal member such that combining any member with its opposite produces the
identity member
▸ eg: in groups whose combination function is addition, and members are integers,
the identity member is 0
▸ 1+ (-1) = 0
▸ eg: noise cancelling headphones
▸ eg: 1 step forward, 1 step backward
▸ So the combination does produce a marked change, but the outcome is still a
member of the system and is thus contained within it
19
Source: https://www.iconﬁnder.com/icons/2918280/copy_direction_mirror_reﬂect_split_icon

SO GROUP THEORY HELPS TO THINK ABOUT WHAT IS COMMONLY OBSERVED
▸ Common observation: lip service / superﬁcial change / “not
sticky” / new role names for same old positions
▸ Group Theory helps us to think about the interdependence of
persistence and change
▸ Useful to think about this in all the complex work systems we
ﬁnd ourselves trapped by - and why despite so many best efforts
and intentions, the French Proverb “the more things change, the
more they stay the same”
▸ Dr Deming “A bad system will beat a good person every time”
20

THEORY OF LOGICAL TYPES
▸ Group Theory does not help us to think about changes that transcend a given system
▸ For this we need the “Theory of Logical Types”
▸ Members ✅
▸ Group ❌ Class
▸ “Whatever involves all of a collection, must not be one of the collection” - Principia
Mathematica
▸ e.g. treating society as an individual or treating an individual as society would
lead to nonsense and confusion
▸ Logical levels must be kept strictly apart to prevent paradox and confusion
▸ Going from 1 level to the next higher level entails a shift, a jump, a discontinuity, a
transformation. This is critical - it provides a way out of a system!
21

THE 2 THEORIES
▸ Group Theory gives us a framework for thinking about
the kind of change that can occur within a system that
itself stays invariant
▸ Theory of Logical Types is not concerned with what goes
on inside a class - ie between its members - but gives us a
frame for considering the relationship between member
and class, and the peculiar metamorphosis which is the
nature of shifts from one logical level to the next higher
▸ The 2 theories are complementary
▸ Accepting the distinction between these 2 theories, it
follows there are 2 different types of change:
▸ One that occurs within a given system which itself
remains unchanged (First Order Change)
▸ One whose occurrence changes the system itself
(Second Order Change) - and expect that practical
manifestations will appear illogical and paradoxical
22
Source: http://www.ricsfractals.net/

THE 2 THEORIES IN PRACTICE
▸ A person having a nightmare
▸ First Order Change: run, hide, jump,
ﬁght, etc but still in the dream state
▸ Second Order Change: wake up
▸ A change of change
▸ Which Aristotle denied
categorically
▸ I suspect he never watched
life-changing horror movies!
23
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street

A LITTLE SPRINKLE OF MORE SYSTEMS THEORY
▸ Complex adaptive dynamic systems
▸ The system of interdependent causes and effects has too many
“decision trees” with too many variables (many unknown-unknowns)
that are changing real time and thus the system as a whole is
unplannable
▸ Like the self-organisation exercise earlier where we constantly
inspected and adapted based on our updated frames of reference
▸ Like day jobs - humans working next to each other in any organisation
▸ Especially large organisations, usually designed by people not
working in them (any more)
24

A SPRINKLE OF HUMANISTIC/PURPOSE PSYCHOLOGY
▸ Like Dan Pink “intrinsic motivation” Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose
▸ Or Design Thinking do what you love, etc
▸ Or Maslow - as individuals, we’re drawn to peak experiences; self-
actualising people have more peak experiences
▸ physiological, safety, belongingness+love, esteem, self-actualising
[living your true self]
▸ We wish to express ourselves authentically
▸ Look to children - curious, learning, expressing, creative
25
Image Source: https://medium.com/org-hacking/when-do-you-feel-ikigai-35e310269cb9

PUT THE MATHEMATICS, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY ALL TOGETHER
▸ Discover/uncover/identify the paradoxes and raise them
▸ “Brief Intervention Therapy” boils down to using paradoxical questions aimed at disrupting
mindsets, ego, superego, and other abstract mind model constructs we use to understand
humans.
▸ The brief confusion causes people to think differently
▸ A little goes a long way in organisational transformations
▸ Things are not polar opposites of each other (like effectiveness and efﬁciency) they’re ALL on a
multi-dimensional/axis continuum where a 3rd perspective that is able to embrace/contain both
light and dark/good and bad/better and worse/etc-etc creates space for there to be
possibilities of “another way”
▸ And this gives incredible advantage to be aware of the system, with deep knowledge of the
system, and yet not be caught all the time within the system “traps”
▸ Not trapped == options => strategies to effect the change people themselves want
26
Image Source: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/people/ﬁre-at-night-free-stock-photo-4.htm

SOME POSSIBILITIES: WHERE TO START
▸ Start with the person in the mirror
▸ Demonstrate the agile word, agile
manifesto and agile principles in
everything you are involved in
▸ Show them, don’t tell them
▸ Don’t waste the energy and
time arguing
▸ “agile” might have started from a
software perspective, but because
of the thin brainwave-software
barrier, it applies to all humans do
27
Source: https://medium.com/@ngozi/dignity-a-la-michael-jackson-4c9b46d26a47

SOME POSSIBILITIES: AFTER STARTING, START RECRUITING!
▸ Find 1-2 potential allies and totally respect their free will
▸ Choose them wisely
▸ “psychographics”
▸ “early adopters” - “Predatory Thinking” by Dave Trott
▸ “early adopters <-> early mass market” - “Crossing the Chasm” by
Geoffrey Moore
▸ “fence sitters” - political campaigners
▸ Ask them for feedback regularly (suggest: “What do I do that helps you?
What do I do that hinders you?”)
▸ As the 1-2 come on the journey
▸ Recruit the next 1-2
▸ Coach the ﬁrst 1-2
▸ Choosing 1-2 themselves, wisely
▸ Taking them on their journeys
▸ Asking for and receiving feedback
▸ Respect the power of compound [social bank account] interest…
▸ Time is required…”good food takes time” (Fred Brooks, “Mythical Man Month”
28
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_Wally%3F

SOME POSSIBILITIES: WHAT AGILE TO CHOOSE
▸ Any practice, framework, method that helps with your agreed live problem right
now
▸ Frequently:
▸ BDD is a big game changer
▸ Scrum properly is a game changer
▸ Kanban properly is a game changer
▸ Any/all of XP are game changers
▸ Any/all of DevOps too
▸ Decide the deﬁnitions of “continuous development”,
“continuous integration”, “continuous delivery”, “continuous
deployment”
▸ And decide your target objective
▸ Most older organisations really battling to merge
Operations and Change teams
▸ Any/all of Lean too
▸ But don’t call it “waste”, call it “muda”
▸ Drip feed the next helpful practice for the next agreed live problem as and when
29
Source: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/560979697313116139/

SOME POSSIBILITIES: A LITTLE LEADERSHIP FROM ANY PERSON GOES A LONG WAY
▸ Create the space for yourself
▸ Create the space for your allies and/or your people
▸ Encourage “Learn 1 new thing every day”
▸ Remind “What did you learn yesterday?”
▸ Track
▸ Praise any and all progress in public
▸ These are totally possible in any organisation
30

SOME REAL ORGANISATIONAL PARADOXES: INVEST IN PEOPLE
▸ The old adage “CFO to CEO, what if we spend all this money and train all our people
and they leave us? CEO to CFO, what if don’t train our people and they stay?”
▸ Becoming more popular “Learn 1 new thing every day”:
▸ If people who actually learn 1 new thing a day, learn so many things they want a
raise, a promotion, become conﬂicting/unaligned/hostile/terrorist or they decide to
leave us?
▸ And join our competition?
▸ What if no one learns anything?
▸ Use sparingly: “It is not necessary to change. Survival [of an organisation of
people/individuals] is not mandatory” - Dr Deming
31

SOME REAL ORGANISATIONAL PARADOXES: SAVE BUDGET
▸ we need to save x% of the IT budget in the next 3 months/
quarters/years
▸ Oh that’s easy, just stop developing and supporting your
software, send all the delivery folks home
▸ Unfortunately this ﬂippant response causes senior managers to
walk away with “person is too theoretical/not helpful/disgust at
the so-called expert not actually helping”
▸ Though it does allow the senior manager to identify 1 of the
ﬁrst people to send home…
32

SOME REAL ORGANISATIONAL PARADOXES: SCRUM DOES NOT WORK
▸ Scrum does not work here
▸ Oh yes, you are doing great Scrum! Your Scrum teams’
▸ Daily Standups take 30-180 minutes
▸ Are 18-30 people big
▸ Don’t hold Sprint Reviews with anyone/only the PO
▸ Don’t have qualified Scrum Masters who love their job
▸ Don’t hold Sprint Retrospectives
▸ Don’t exit Sprint Planning (Part 1 and/or Part 2) with a Sprint Plan the team owns
▸ Don’t have a Definition of Done
▸ Don’t have ALL the capabilities required for the teams’ objectives
▸ etc
▸ Let’s quickly check the latest Scrum Guide for anything accidentally overlooked
▸ Unfortunately this flippant response causes senior managers to walk away with “person is too theoretical/not helpful/disgust at the
so-called expert not actually helping”
▸ Though sometimes this allows the recipient to think they just acquired some ammunition to use against you….if you stay respectful
and cheerful and “by the book” eventually other individuals will hear the message and start agitating the change
33

SOME REAL ORGANISATIONAL PARADOXES: KANBAN DOES NOT WORK
▸ Kanban does not work here (This one caught me!)
▸ But, your team has not created their Value Stream Map collaboratively and designed their workﬂow Kanban board off the back
of that
▸ “Yes, because unlike in other organisations Rob, we’re like a really close family, and we’re not ready to make our work, our
inputs and our outputs to and from each other visible to each other”
▸ Tolstoy came to mind “All happy families are happy in the same ways. All unhappy families are unique”
▸ But I bit my tongue and waited much much longer continuing to bring other teams nearby on the Kanban journey
and praising everyone’s efforts to get all the pieces efﬁciently in place
▸ Meanwhile, they built a little app to more easily track their Start-Stop times
▸ And, they wanted to collect 6-12 weeks of data before making use of the scatterplot etc to identify their
outliers and make improvements on their averages…
▸ So, they “beat” me in the short-medium term
▸ But long-term others are now “beating” them
▸ And the team is facing a kind of extinction for their tribe (disband and redeploy under different leader, 1 or
more roles redundant)
▸ Kanban works everywhere, just actually implement it properly!
34

SOME REAL ORGANISATIONAL PARADOXES: BDD/TDD/REFACTORING DOES NOT WORK
▸ We have complexity, that you don’t understand
▸ And that’s why we have so many bugs
▸ In our solution, in our architecture, and in our specification
▸ “So let’s debug the requirements a bit as that will have major benefit for everyone, especially the
end of line 3rd party testing outfit who are good at finding bugs”
▸ Let’s implement BDD (and maybe some TDD+Refactoring as and when)!
▸ No, that’s overhead, slow, impossible, risky, costs a lot of time and money of the key
players. It’s not efficient
▸ But the bugs are really effective…especially when they are found as production incidents!
▸ BDD/TDD/Refactoring always works if you actually implement them properly
▸ (and no, 100% coverage is not the target)
▸ Insight from a recent BDD training course - “BDD is like reverse engineering the solution from the
requirement” (after 5 years of training and “rolling out” out BDD where useful)
35

SOME REAL ORGANISATIONAL PARADOXES: BECOME A TEAM OF 1
▸ Get on board with self-organising/“team of 1” initiative, our company is
dying every moment we don’t. If you don’t want to, please join our
competition - we’ll give you fantastic references to make the transition
smoother.
36

SUMMARY
▸ “All models are wrong, but some are useful” - George EP Box
▸ First Order Changes do not change the system
▸ Second Order Changes transcend the system - they are change changes
▸ Understand the constraints, the people, the structures, the complexities, the
system of forces, and the magnitude of those forces
▸ Understand and/or respect, but do not get caught by the system
▸ Discover and communicate the paradoxes
▸ Cause people to pause, reﬂect, think deeply, respond with new insight - and
change their mindset(s) and/or behaviour(s) as an intentional result
▸ Small (tiny) ﬁrst: 1 human at a time
37

38
SOME TRUTH IN THESE VIDEOS

39
SOME MORE TRUTH IN THESE VIDEOS

British Computing Society [Software Practice Advancement]: What is possibly possible in large organisations adopting agile?

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