Good Stuff Happens in 1:1 Meetings: Why you need them and how to do them well
Driving change by encouraging right behaviours
1. Driving Change by Encouraging
Right Behaviours
Mahesh Varadharajan
20th October 2012
2. Mahesh Varadharajan
• Education
o B.Tech – Information Technology
o PGWPM (Great Lakes Institute of Mgmt)
o Certified Scrum Master
• Current Role:
o Agile Consultant & Coach
• Organization:
o Cognizant Technology Solutions
• My Activities:
o Agile Trainings / Simulation Workshops
o Agile Readiness / Maturity Assessments
o Coaching Agile Transformation
o Agile Project Management Support
3. Change from
Waterfall to Agile
Normal response to change to being a
part of the change
Working against set targets to
continuously raising their own bars
Management commitment to team
commitment
Normal function roles to agile roles
4. Today’s Business Scenario
Businesses forced to respond at a
more rapid pace to keep up with
changing landscape
Competitive forces increase the rate of
speed even more as product cycles
grow shorter and shorter
Customers and stakeholders fists
adamantly pound for more or different
application requirements
Solution:
The value proposition of an Agile
process is delivering continuous
business value faster and ensuring
that that value lasts over time
5. Why should we Change/Care Now?
• The Answer is Simple !!! Agile Really Pays
• Promotes rapid delivery of tangible results to customers through iterative
application releases
o This allows the business to provide feedback resulting in business-
driven feature prioritization
• Increase IT and business alignment by focusing on only delivering the
functionality necessary to meet business goals
• Realize benefits in productivity, quality and return on investment
• Improve responsiveness to change
• More Importantly, consider adopting agile because it helps teams
fulfill their moral duties and obligations as product developers
beyond the “Faster-Better-Cheaper” motivators.
6. Key Messages
• Focus on thoughts, feelings and values to achieve
great results
• Start making changes by changing yourself
• Continuous reflection and continuous improvement
are the keys to success
7. Why People Aspects?
Any change involves people
People’s belief, crucial to Agile
Agile values people, interaction
Good projects are built around
motivated individuals
Agile helps you to leverage Tacit
Knowledge through conversations
Research says..
Challenge:
Agile Roles performing in Current
Organizational setup
8. It begins with an Agile Belief
• How will it be ?
• If in a Basket ball match,
Players
o Don’t know how to play,
o Un aware of the rules of the games
o Un aware of their common goal
o No score board
o Coach instructs every move as the
game is played
o Have no winning spirit
• Agile
o Value and beliefs
o Common Goal
o Winning Spirit
Agile Belief: Key to Success
11. How can we bring Self-Organization in
Agile Context?
• Apprenticeship over Classroom Training
o Tacit Knowledge
• Collaboration over Document Handoff
o For Knowledge Management
• Argumentation over Passive Acceptance
o For Logical conclusions
• Constructive Conflict Mining over Artificial Harmony
• Aggregating Team Intelligence over Intelligence of Individuals
• Psychological distance solvent over Geographical distance solvent
13. The Stop Doing List
The Stop Doing List by Marshall Goldsmith:
Selfish Programming
1. Winning too much
2. Adding too much value (giving too much information)
3. Passing judgment
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with ‘No’, ‘But’, ‘However’
6. Telling the world how smart we are
7. Speaking when angry
8. Negativity, or ‘Let me explain why that won’t work’
9. Withholding information
10. Failing to give proper recognition
11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve
12. Making excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Play favourites
15. Refusing to express regret
16. Not listening
17. Failing to express gratitude
18. Punishing the messenger
19. Passing the buck
20. An excessive need to be ‘me’
21. STOP trying to change others
15. Solution - Team Leadership Model
Team Leadership is a condition of a team
Reduction of uncertainty
Comes from clear messages
Leads to focused actions that cannot easily be
misinterpreted
Developing channels for continuous feedback
Uniform effort balance - Sustainable pace
Having a very high fun factor
16. Belbin Team Roles:
Measures Behaviour not Personality
Team Roles are used to identify people's behavioral strengths
and weaknesses in the workplace. This information can be used
to Build productive working relationships, Select and develop
high-performing teams, Raise self-awareness and personal
effectiveness, Build mutual trust and understanding, Aid
recruitment processes.
17. Team Role Definition By Dr. Meredith Belbin
“A tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others
in a particular way”
“A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a
congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is
understood by other members. Members of a team seek out
certain roles and they perform most effectively in the ones that
are most natural to them” ~ Dr. R. M. Belbin
20. Lean disciplines brainstorming
Eliminate waste Build Quality In Create knowledge
Defer commitment Deliver as fast as possible Respect people
Optimize the whole
Principles of Lean Software Development
21. Shu-Ha-Ri Pattern In Team Members
Followers
– Initial guidance needed to come up to speed
– Show progress after some hand holding
– Need to be mentored to grow into volunteers
Volunteers
– Self inspired
– Take technology and process initiatives
– Come up with ideas that build the team
– Implement innovative concepts
– Lift the team
Mentor
– Servant Leader & Authority used to serve the needs of others
– Genuine compassion for his people & knows the problems as a whole
– Finds the solution to the problem
– Has the skill to carry out the solution
– Develop the next generation of leaders
23. Conclusion
• If you want great results, you should focus on the roots
(thinking, values, etc.)
• Stop changing others (and start changing yourself)
• Continuous improvements is the key at all levels
24. A Chinese Proverb
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.
“ You must be the change you wish to see”
- M.K.Gandhi, Father of Modern India