Experience report on agile tools for management teams

Experience Report: Agile tools for
management teams
19-Nov-14
Presented by Rob Brown

3/ Good development team stuff
4/ Good IT management team stuff
Experience
Report
2/ Foundations are sprinkled
1/ Why management teams?
7/ Pub
ENERGIZED WORK / HMS President Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0HJ / www.energizedwork.com
5/ Good strategic management stuff
6/ Summary
Agenda 19:00-Pub time

Why agile and management teams?
“Manage-Mend” - a job I sometimes have
Increasingly with “agile” initiatives/programmes/career-saving-last-attempts to improve
organisational efficiency and effectiveness (aka productivity)(aka more with same/less),
management teams try their best.
Managers talk the talk, but
They struggle to walk the walk:
● This authenticity gap blocks the rest of the organisation’s adoption of agile methods
● It’s sociology - we imitate our trusted/respected peers, and our leaders/managers
I like challenges and prefer to succeed...so I had to embrace uncertainty and welcome
changing requirements:
● I took/take agile to management, and we all learned/learn a lot!

Doh, a deer

Some good experiences within
development teams
Typical and Familiar Agile Practices
● Weekly iterations (52 opportunities to learn together, vs 26, vs 17, vs 12, vs
Waterfall):
○ Planning Games
○ Iteration Reviews with Customer
○ Iteration Reflections
● Standups (and 22 minute meetings) - aim to have even Planning Meetings standing up
- strive for and achieve process flow
● Facilitate team Norms and team Charter (and team Vision - high performance right?)
● Story Cards, written and accepted by the team members during Planning Game
● C/I or C/D Pipeline Radiator
● Board Walks for Board+Radiator Reviews (constantly pressure what’s valuable, wall
space - and head space - is a limited and precious “resource”)
● Tangible Planning Board, designed by team, for themselves and their stakeholders
○ NEAT!

development teams
Non-Familiar Practices
● 1x Team Lunch Weekly: 1 rule - “no work talk!”
● Feedback: 1-to-1’s:
○ Leader with followers
○ Preferably peer-to-peer
○ 360’s (senior, peer, junior) for all
● Walls to radiate valuable information to all (especially current, transition and future
designs and models)
● Experiential training - Show, Don’t Tell
○ Current research (“Working with Emotional Intelligence” - Dan Goleman)
■ Lecture-only training is nearly useless, especially for workplace behaviour
changes. Negative ROI in fact
■ Create trainings around simulations, role-play, observers-groups
● Use a balance of real-time events to “Stop the Line” / pause the team to
facilitate in depth conversations when opportunities arise

development teams: Board and Basics

Foundations 1: VUCA
Originally military context, now is increasingly being applied to dynamic/chaotic/complex
environments
V = Volatility. Nature + dynamics of change, AND nature + speed of change forces and
change catalysts.
U = Uncertainty. Lack of predictability, prospects for surprise, sense of awareness and
understanding of issues and events.
C = Complexity. Multiplex of forces, confounding of issues and the chaos and confusion
that surround an organization.
A = Ambiguity. Haziness of reality, potential for misreads, and the mixed meanings of
conditions; cause-and-effect confusion.

VUCA versus Clarity

Foundations 2: Clarity (specifying what
is wanted, why, how)
VUCA is countered by clarity.
A way to achieve clarity (Ron Jeffries’ 3C’s included) is via Specification Quality Control
(Tom Gilb inspired)
Entry Condition: Document (or Communication Piece) + Standards
Exit Condition: Violations Counted
Middle Activity:
Comparison of document against basic standards:
- Clear
- Concise
- Quantified Qualities
- No Design!

Foundations 2: Clarity

Doh, another deer

Some good experiences within IT
management teams
In any environment, if the people are not engaged or are able to not be held to be
accountable for their objectives, HBD (“Here Be Dragons”)! The dragons will overcome any
outsider or “lesser powerful person” based on any non-professional behaviour (their own
non-accountable or the other’s fully accountable).
The HUGE difference between a management team and development team: managers have
people to “program” within their dynamic organisations.
Agile-Familiar Practices
● Board designs must be customised to truly reflect the work of this organisation
● Understand the time available, and the time actually spent
○ Beware of hiding behind BAU
● Scrum is not a good framework to deal with an environment where interrupts are
unavoidable (!!) or non-delayable (!!!) and where there is no Product Owner (!!!!)
○ Even a Head of Department or the Pointy Haired Manager is not a good Product
Owner
● Eagle-eye-views over time show trends / surface lurking issues
○ Collect real-world, real-time objective data

management teams
Unfamiliar Practices
● Fix the (dynamic) system
○ 1 piece at a time
○ Maintain/coordinate balanced approach!
○ NB!
■ You can’t fix the people
■ You can fix your standard(s) and publicise them (eg your values) - thus lead
by example
● Specification quality control! (Tom Gilb inspired)
● More experiential trainings
● Capability model/Skills matrix

management teams: Boards

management teams: Eagle-Eye views
Summary of 7
retrospectives:
● Trends beginning to
show in the data
● Repeated hard
questions/realisations
eg Not Improving, Not
Delivering, Not
Attending, Not
Supporting

management teams: Team-owned Skills
Lo-fidelity works best
● High traction
● Self-score and team-self-
commit to change

Foundations 3: All organisations are
dynamic systems
VUCA is countered by systems
thinking, controlled experiments
(PDCA) within the organisation
(team) and feedback.
“The Fifth Discipline” - Peter Senge
● Systems thinking
● Cause-effect
“Designing Dynamic Organisations”
- Jay Galbraith et al
● Star Model

Foundations 3: All organisations are
dynamic systems
● Be aware - dynamic process control systems operate with automatic feedback loop
○ eg as toilet cistern fills up, the inlet water valve is closed by the rising of the
balloon attached to the valve
● We don’t have such closed systems and automated process control/objective
feedback loop mechanisms in organisations
○ We strive to achieve similar effect by culture, communication, reports and
management interventions
● XP Values are incredibly foresightful (and useful) in achieving the required balance
for successful organisational dynamic system:
○ Communication
○ Simplicity
○ Feedback
○ Courage
○ Respect

Foundations 4: Plan-Do-Check-Adjust(-
Dbl Loop Learn)
VUCA is countered by Deming’s Continuous Improvement Cycle: PDCA
But!
Planning theory and practical experience is full of contradictions!
People feel stressed out when they feel they have no control over their life or work.
A plan is just a collection of wants and wishes until actions are performed which turn dreams into realities.
Planning should be done just enough to gain sufficient confidence to proceed with confidence. This level of confidence is
based on understanding of time and experience of how long things take, why and what risks exist, and how risk will be
managed.
Just-In-Time planning, keeping Real Options open until the Last Responsible Moment to Decide.
Plans provide a possible route from a starting position to a possible end position, that is desirable when route is first
formulated.
No plan survives unmodified first contact with reality.
If you don't plan, you plan to fail.
Fail fast. It requires an understanding of the Entry Criteria and the Exit Criteria, before you start. This is how you know you
have not failed AND avoid your subconscious trying to make you feel better by shifting the Exit Criteria around so that you
"succeed".
The Cone of Uncertainty may be unscientific (to a degree) but humans who bother to learn from their mistakes do make fewer
of the same kind of mistake, and/or the mistake has less impact
It should be (significantly) cheaper to plan than to do - a plan helps to derisk the chance of failure by communicating
expectations to everyone involved in creating the desired outcome
Peter Drucker: “[part of] a manager's job is to ensure that a particular crisis only happens once”

Foundations 4: Single-Loop Learning
Doing Things Right
Single-loop learning is like a thermostat that learns when it's too hot or too cold and turns
the heat on or off. The thermostat can perform this task because it can receive
information about the temperature of the room and take corrective action.
Single Loop learning as the most common style of learning is just problem solving, i.e.
improving the system as it exists. This type of learning solves problems but ignores the
question of why the problem arose in the first place.

Foundations 4: Double-Loop Learning
Doing the Right Things
Double loop learning is like a thermostat that asks "why" - Is this a good time to switch
settings? Are there people in here? Are they in bed? Are they dressed for a colder setting?
- thus it orientates itself to the present environment in order to make the wisest decision.
Double-loop learning occurs when an error is detected and corrected in ways that
involve the modification of our underlying norms, policies and objectives. It uses
feedback from past actions to question the underlying assumptions behind techniques,
goals and values.

Foundations 4: PDCA + DLL

Doh, yet another deer

Some good experiences within strategic
(software industry) management teams
In any environment, if the people are having to learn a heck of a lot of stuff (eg startups)
there are going to be a lot of mistakes and the trick is to experiment quickly, fail fast AND
fail safely (without death or unrecoverable consequences), amplify the learning, and move
forward to the next available space.
Luck == Opportunity Meets Preparation
The HUGE difference between a strategic management team and management team:
strategic managers have an entire dynamic organisation to “program” in an epic dance of
the extremely dynamic market place - everything to play for, everything to lose. Strategy is
hard
Agile-Familiar Practices
● Iterations
● Facilitator
● Story cards
● Standups
● Timeboxing (strictly)

Unfamiliar Practices
● Gimmick free
● Wear customers’ shoes by any means (Personas, feedback, role-play, critical thinking)
● Error reflections (instead of Retrospectives)
● “Test driven management”
● Wednesday Quarter-Month-Week review-reflect-planning cycles with different
granularity tools but same “heartbeat”
● Granularity and confidences
● Friday reflections email
● 1 vision / 1 goal / 1 focus per timebox - there really can be only 1 in order to get
anywhere planned at this level of a company

What you
do well
What you
want to do
Learn to
say ‘No’
Learn to
monetise
What you can
be paid to do
Learn to
do this
better
Want-
Do Well-
Get Paid
Strategy is hard

VUCA vs IT people doing strategy
High levels of VUCA found in marketplace, organisation, and the strategic management
team
“We have met the enemy, and he is us”: Beware Analysis Paralysis
VUCA Counter Macro Strategy Beware, IT is people
V Reduce number of changes in environment (ex)Programmer bias: prefer
single-task-ahead-of-us-until-done
work items
U Increase knowledge, experience (ex)Programmer bias:
hate/fear non-deterministic
outcomes
C Learn, simplify the space, apply knowledge from other
context's to this one carefully
(ex)Programmer bias: able to
handle a lot of complexity, that
many others possibly cannot
A Specify unambiguously, qualities quantified, no
design, clear+concise
(ex)Programmer bias:
hate/fear creating "non-tested-
correct" outcomes

Foundations 5: Standards turn PDCA
outcomes into Organs (capabilities,
standards, policies)

Foundation 6: We hate waste, really
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Waiting
Overproduction
Over-processing
Defects
People abilities
under-utilised
Handing stuff over to others
Unused artefacts - KM, processes, checklists
Finding information, chasing people
Waiting around - late start meetings
Unnecessary meetings, artefacts
Extra steps, task switching
Defects not caught be tests
Single role specialists

- Boards
Especially the “scorecard”
Note absence of
burndowns/burnups

management teams: Planning cycles
Every half-day collaboration,
Every day Standup (“What can you contribute today to
move closer to goals?”)
Every Wednesday 10AM Planning Cycle
Every last Wednesday of Month 10AM Planning Cycle
Every last Wednesday of Quarter 10AM Planning
Cycle
Last Wednesday of Financial Year 10AM 5Q Planning
Second last Wednesday of Financial Year 10AM 10
Key Performance Indicators selected, baselined and
targets set.

Foundations 7: Strategic Governance is
a Process
1
PLAN
Visualise future state using
goals. Prioritise key value
drivers. Define investments
in a strategic plan
4
5-quarter
rolling view
/ Quarterly
review
CHECK
Study and assess gap
between actual results
and expectations
3
2
ACT
Adjust
strategic plan
and re-prioritise
key
value drivers
DO
Innovation
Medium-term strategy cycle
“steer the investment”
2
2-quarter
rolling view
/ Monthly
review
Short-term operating cycle
“manage the investment”
Management Information System
• Fast actuals versus prior periods
• Rolling forecasts
• Trends, patterns, and moving averages
• Quantified goals
DO
Manage operations
1
4
3
PLAN
Set
monthly
goals and
action
plans
ACT
Adjust operations
CHECK
Review
measurements
against
expectations

Foundations 8: Iterate on everything!
MARKET
$$
Do not increment!
It unbalances the dynamic system and leads to failure
!?

Foundations 8: Seriously, iterate
MARKET
$
$
$
$
Getting paid frequently, and sufficiently/well, is very
important

Foundations 9: Strategic Planning with
SWOT + PESTLE
You need to know where you are,
And where you want to go,
Before you can imagine or assess how you get there (strategies)
SWOT:
● Strengths and Weaknesses - where you are now
● Opportunities and Threats - external events/truthes/soon-to-be-truthes
○ PESTLE - Viewing lenses to help you identify externals:
■ Political
■ Environment
■ Social
■ Technology
■ Legal
■ Economy

Foundations 9: Strategic Planning with
SWOT-Strategies Matrix
Analysis and Strategies of:
<TBD>
Strengths
1. <1-6 Strengths>
Weaknesses
1. <1-6 Weaknesses>
Opportunities
1. <1-6 Opportunities>
SO-Strategies
1. <1-3 Strengths-Opportunities
Strategies>
2.
3.
WO-Strategies
1. <1-3 Weaknesses-Opportunities
Strategies>
2.
3.
Threats
1. <1-6 Threats>
ST-Strategies
1. <1-3 Strengths-Threats Counter
Strategies>
2.
3.
WT-Strategies
1. <1-3 Threats-Opportunities Counter
Strategies>
2.
3.

Foundations 9: Strategic Planning using
SWOT How-To
Quickly brainstorm (free association style) each S-W-O-T quadrant individually, it is
often easier to follow this order:
Top-Down:
1. Start with what you know for sure: team Strengths and Weaknesses
2. Try to explore the PESTLE external factors under Opportunities and Threats
3. Do a "many-to-many join" where you see new possibilities/ideas/opportunities that
satisfy the condition/make logical sense (yes, Simon Baker is right: everything is a
Venn Diagram):
Bottom-Up:
4. Do free association style brainstorming in each of the SO-SW-ST-WT quadrants
5. Then establish "referential integrity" between each of your strategy ideas and the
Strengths + Weaknesses (and where applicable Opportunities and Threats)
Repeat cycles of Top-Down and Bottom-Up until you have/had enough!

Foundations 10: Selecting Strategy
VUCA makes this hard! Rationalising the Irrational!
Decision Tables on Steroids: Impact Estimation Tables (inspired by Tom Gilb)
Criteria Idea 1 Idea 2 Idea 3
Objective A Impact +90 +10 +50
Uncertainty 10% 20% 50%
Evidence Lots Lots Little
Source Internal Internal External
Credibilty 100% 100% 50%
Cost (K) 1000 1000 1000
Requirement Current
Value
Target
Value
Objective A 10 100
Objective Z 1000 100
Criteria Idea 1 Idea 2 Idea 3
Objective Z Impact -100 -900 -50
Uncertainty 10% 20% 50%
Evidence Lots Lots Little
Source Internal Internal External
Credibilty 100% 100% 50%
Cost (K) 1000 1000 1000

Foundations 11: Team Dysfunctions

Summary + Thanks!
Thank you!
PUB!

References / Recommended Reading
● http://www.energizedwork.com/weblog (especially author = Simon Baker)
● VUCA (wikipedia)
● Systems Thinking / Cause-Effect Thinking/Modeling: “The Fifth Discipline” - Peter
Senge
● Galbraith’s Star Model: “Designing Dynamic Organizations: A Hands-on Guide for
Leaders at All Levels” -Jay Galbraith, Diane Downey, Amy Kates
● Specification Quality Control and Impact Estimation Tables: “Competitive
Engineering: A Handbook For Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and
Software Engineering” - Tom Gilb
● “Hard facts, dangerous half-truths and total nonsense” - Jeffrey Pfeffer, Robert I.
Sutton
● “How to measure anything” - Douglas W. Hubbard
● “Secrets of Great Management: Behind closed doors” - Johanna Rothman, Esther
Derby
● “Balancing agility with discipline” - Barry Boehm and Richard Turner
● “Scrumban” - Corey Ladas
● “Essential Drucker” - Peter Drucker
● “Practices of management“ - Peter Drucker
● “Homo Imitans” - Leandro Herrero
● “Maverick” - Ricardo Semler
● “Seven Day Weekend” - Ricardo Semler

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