The Hidden Ingredient in
Hyper-Productive Teams
Ron Lichty, Ron Lichty Consulting
www.ronlichty.com
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 1

Ron Lichty,
Managing Software People & Teams
SOFTWEST
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 2

Coauthor, Study of Product Team Performance
http://www.ronlichty.com/study.html
3Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Addison Wesley: http://www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.netRon Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 4

Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*
* 300 in the book / more at http://managingtheunmanageable.net/morerulesofthumb.html
5Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Rules of Thumb / Nuggets of Wisdom*
• Measure twice, cut once.
• Life is simpler when you plow around the
stump.
• Brooks’s Law: Adding manpower to a late
software project makes it later.
– Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
* 300 in the book / more: http://managingtheunmanageable.net/morerulesofthumb.html
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 6

Agenda
• Teams
– and hyper-productive teams
• Agile Practices
– and agile values
• Being Agile
• Fostering Greatness
• Practice Greatness
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 7

Teams
By Pictofigo (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commonsense,
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Free to share and remix/adapt. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pictofigo-Scrum.p
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 8

• Think about…
The best team you’ve been on?
The most high performance team?
Brainstorm: What were the…
• characteristics
• relationships
• qualities
• ways of being
. . . that made it stand out?
At Your Tables…
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 9

Agile
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 10

Agile Practices Deliver Value
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 11
By Michaelblinkpipe (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAn_Abcam_stand_up_meeting_using_BlinkPipe_video_conferencing..png

Agile Practices Deliver Value
• Planning Daily
• Planning Weekly (or biweekly or…)
• Planning Publicly
• Ordering Work Based on Customer Value
• Together defining “Done”
• Delivering Frequently
• Sharing how we’re doing
• Reflecting on how to do betterRon Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 12

Agile Practices Deliver Value
• Standups
– Standups matter:
– Effective, Daily Standups
--2015 Study of Product Team Performance
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 13

Agile Practices Deliver Value
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 14

Voting Machines Deliver Value, too
15Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams
By Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA (Voting machine, 1971)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Voting Machines Deliver Value, too
• But voting machines don’t make us a
democracy
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 16

Similarly…
Agile Practices Don’t Make Us Agile
Agile Practices Don’t Deliver Great Teams
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 17

Agile Values Inspire Great Teams
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 18

Agile Values Inspire Great Teams
• Build projects around motivated
individuals
• Trust… to get the job done
• Face-to-face conversation
• Self-organizing teams
• The team reflects, …tunes, …adjusts
-- http://agilemanifesto.org/
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 19

Self-Organizing Teams
• If our self-organizing team were an
acting troupe, …
What kind of acting do we do?
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 20

Self-Organizing Teams
• If our self-organizing team were an
acting troupe, …
What kind of acting do we do?
• If our self-organizing team were a
music group, …
What kind of music do we perform?
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 21

Self-Organizing Teams
• If our self-organizing team were an
acting troupe, …
What kind of acting do we do?
• If our self-organizing team were a
music combo, …
What kind of music do we perform?
• Who is the leader?
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 22

Best Teams
• A relationship? between
– Shared Leadership (Agile Values)
– Best Team characteristics
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 23

Shared Leadership  Best Teams?
• Build projects around motivated
individuals
• Trust… to get the job done
• Face-to-face conversation
• Self-organizing teams
• The team reflects, …tunes, …adjusts
-- http://agilemanifesto.org/
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 24

Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 25

Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
• Micromanagement
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 26

Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
• Micromanagement disrupts Agile
• Micromanagement prevents Best Teams
• Micromanagement prevents Learning
• Micromanaged teams become order-takers
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 27

Projects Not Suitable for Agile?
• Micromanagement disrupts Agile
• Micromanagement prevents Best Teams
• Micromanagement prevents Learning
• Micromanaged teams become order-takers
• Agile calls for everyone on the team to step up
• Micromanagement causes everyone to step back
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 28

• Managers of teams
• Project managers
• Program managers
• Scrum masters
• Product managers?
• Product owners?
Shared Leadership… and Managers
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 29

• What do all those managers have in common?
Shared Leadership… and Managers
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 30

• What do all those managers have in common?
– we run things
– we give direction
– we tell people what to do
– we like being the center of attention
Shared Leadership… and Managers
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 31

“If you’re the ScrumMaster and everyone is
looking at you, you’re doing it wrong.”
--Marilson Campos
Shared Leadership… and Managers
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 32

Managers and Agile
• “A common misconception is that because
of this reliance on self-organizing teams,
there is little or no role for leaders of agile
teams. Nothing could be further from the
truth.”
--Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile
33Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

--Agile Learning Labs, Laura Powers
34Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Agile: “Servant Leaders”
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 35

Managers and Agile
• Fostering an Agile Culture
• Modeling, Defending, Evangelizing Agile
Values
• Empowering Self-Organization & Excellence
36Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Managers and Agile
• Fostering an Agile Culture
• Modeling, Defending, Evangelizing Agile
Values
• Empowering Self-Organization & Excellence
• Removing Impediments
37Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Managers and Agile
• Fostering an Agile Culture
• Modeling, Defending, Evangelizing Agile
Values
• Empowering Self-Organization & Excellence
• Removing Impediments
• Counseling, Coaching and Mentoring
• Scaling Scrum
• Hiring and Firing
38Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Managers and Agile
• Fostering an Agile Culture
• Modeling, Defending, Evangelizing Agile
Values
• Empowering Self-Organization & Excellence
• Removing Impediments
39Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Creating an Agile Culture
• Theory Y: “enabling”, “empowering”, “developmental",
“continuous improvement” -> Servant Leadership
McGregor's X-Y Theory
40Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams
Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams , http://www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net

Managers and Agile
• Creating an Agile Culture
Lean-Agile management is the art of leading people, not
managing them... Leading people involves creating the
correct environment, focusing them on the right things,
and trusting them to do their work...
In Lean-Agile, the manager has two primary
responsibilities:
• setting the outcomes or goals expected of the team;
• assisting the doers in creating a better process and
workspace to get their jobs done...
--Alan Shalloway, Net Objectives
41Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Leaders and Agile
• Rules of Thumb
Management sets the boundaries of what needs to be done
and says to the team, I trust you to figure out how to get it
done.
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 42

Empowerment
Trust but verify.
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 43

Empowerment
44
Trust but verify.
-RONALD REAGAN
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Empowerment
45
Trust but verify.
-RONALD REAGAN quoting VALDIMIR LENIN
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Empowerment
46
Trust but verify.
-RONALD REAGAN quoting VALDIMIR LENIN
– imperative not to micromanage
– the essence of delegation
– setting expected outcomes for teams
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Empowerment
47
Trust but verify.
-RONALD REAGAN quoting VALDIMIR LENIN
I inspect what I expect.
- ALAN LEFKOF, Netopia CEO, quoting LOU GERSTNER
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Creating an Agile Culture
• Establishing Culture
48
http://www.ManagingTheUnmanageable.net
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Managers and Agile
• Empowering Self-Organization & Excellence
When teams self-organize there's still plenty for
managers to do... a managers job is to engineer
the organization so that teams can do their best
work.
--Esther Derby, co-founder, Scrum Alliance
49Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Managers and Agile
• Removing Distractions and Impediments
Be a damper to the noise. --Joe Kleinschmidt, CTO
John Evans, Winchester, Hants, United Kingdom, www.thetippingpoint.co.uk
50Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Managers and Agile
• Model, Defend, Evangelize Agile Values
“Managers are still needed. Not so much for
their planning and controlling ability, but for
the important job of interfacing on the team’s
behalf with the rest of the organization.”
--Diana Larsen, co-author, Agile Retrospectives
51Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Communicating
• Create a culture of communication
– at every level
– with everyone
• up, down, within and across
• “We have two ears and one mouth. Use them in
this ratio.”
— Kimberly Wiefling
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 52

Communication
53
You cannot overcommunicate.
-RON LICHTY
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Communication: Virtual Teams
• There is never enough communication
• Commitment to communicate
• No substitute for face-to-face meetings
54
The more distance between teammates, the more you
have to formalize communication and make it explicit.
-TED YOUNG, Development Manager & Agile Coach, Guidewire
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

How Do We Foster Shared Leadership?
• Foster an Agile Culture
• Model, Defend, Evangelize Agile Values
• Trust Our People
• Shield Teams from Politics & Distraction
• Remove Impediments
• Empower Self-Organization & Excellence
• Create a Culture of Communication
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 55

How Do We Do Shared Leadership?
• Let’s personalize it: At your tables…
– 2 minutes:
• envision what shared leadership looks like
– 5 minutes: create a poster
• at least half: a single graphic, created by your whole table
– everyone at your table contributes to the graphic
– see if you can hand off “leadership” fluidly
– everyone leads!
• no more than half: words around your graphic
– prepare how you’ll share it with us
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 56

How Do We Do Shared Leadership?
• How did that go?
• Share your posters, one table at a time
Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 57

Ron Lichty Consulting
• Mentoring, coaching, training, consulting:
– http://ronlichty.com, Ron@RonLichty.com
• The book:
Managing the Unmanageable:
Rules, Tools & Insights for Managing Software People & Teams
– http://ManagingTheUnmanageable.net <-----tools, excerpts, more rules of
thumb
• The study:
The Study of Product Team Performance
– http://ronlichty.com/study.html
• Training:
The Agile Manager
Managing Software People and Teams
Zero to Agile in Three Days 58Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams

Ron Lichty: Hidden Ingredient in Hyper-Productive Teams 59