1) "Brain on" mode refers to consciously thinking about the impact of introducing new practices or tools and whether keeping current ones helps people adapt to change. 2) It involves asking questions to understand problems fully, consider all perspectives affected, and determine if experiments will truly solve problems or help learning. 3) Only implement changes that will solve real problems or promote learning; otherwise, don't do it unless you have a good reason to revisit it later.

1. Problem solving in
“brain on” mode
Wolfgang Wiedenroth, it-agile GmbH
wolfgang.wiedenroth@it-agile.de
@wwiedenroth
LLKD17, 3rd April 2017

2. Should we start using
[practice, tool]
we just learned about?

3. Should we stop using
[practice, tool]
we just learned about??

4. Standups
Retrospectives
PDCA
Theory of Constraints Cynefin
estimate
record data
digital tool
Kanban
Scrum
Review
WIP-Limits
Task Board Class of Service
Product Owner
Scrum Master
regression test
unit tests

5. well…

6. …it depends!

7. “brain on” mode

8. The team wants to keep its task
board!

9. “I’ve never seen anything like it
before!”

10. “brain on” mode
• Does it hurt?
Nobody is affected.
• Will it help?
It will help the team to go on.
• Let’s do it!

12. We get interrupted very often!

13. • Who is interrupting you and why?
“We can’t say!”
• Do they know how it affects your work?
“Nope!”
• Let’s find out and show them!
“brain on” mode

17. “There are lots of good ideas,
we have already put effort into.”
It doesn’t seem we’ll work on them
anytime soon.
“We can’t just throw them away!”

18. • Our goal was to get rid of tickets we won’t
work on.
“Let’s move them into a digital “think tank”!”
• Great!
“brain on” mode

20. We have a hell lot of
stuff to move!

21. • How can we keep track of all the things?
• Like a Kanban board?
“brain on” mode
Hell yeah!
Visualize it!

24. Islands of knowledge prevent us
from working as a team.
I can’t learn everything!

25. • Would it be enough, if at least 2-3 know a
system?
Yes, that would be enough!
• Let’s list all systems and visualize who
knows what system? Then let’s see where
we have less than 2!
“brain on” mode

27. We don’t know what’s important
and what’s not

28. • Let’s add the importance for every system
to the list we just visualized next to the
board.
“brain on” mode

30. I see potential for improvement/
found a problem, what should I
do?

31. • Is it important to fix , when you see it?
No, chances are high it has been like this for
month.
• How can we keep track of it?
We could keep the ticket on the board on a
special place and discuss those tickets regularly.
“brain on” mode

33. Collecting data is sooooo
“hard”!

34. • What do we want to track?
• Let’s stack those finished cards on a wall
and add the week underneath the stack
“brain on” mode
Throughput

36. Every time we change a policy
we need to print a new sheet

38. • We need an easy way (no printing) to
change policies
“brain on” mode

40. We are blocked all the time!

41. • Let’s collect the blockers, analyse them
every four weeks and get rid of them one by
one.
“brain on” mode

43. So how does “brain on” mode
actually work?

44. Ask yourself…

45. Will it solve a problem?

46. Will we learn something?

47. If not…

48. …don’t do it!*
*though don’t forget about it

49. If yes…

50. What’s the actual problem?
How do we know it’s a problem?
What did we already try?
What would the world look like without it?
What would make it worse?
Who is affected by the problem?
Do they know about the problem?

51. If we experiment with certain
[practice, tool]…

52. …who will be affected by the
experiment?
Can we involve them?
How far are they willing to go?
Is their a way to bridge the gap?
Do we need it now?

53. “brain on” mode
1. Consciously thinking about the impact of
introducing a new practice or tool and its
impact
2. Considering, if keeping a practice or tool
will help people to adapt to change

54. Thanks for listening!
Wolfgang Wiedenroth
wolfgang.wiedenroth@it-agile.de
@wwiedenroth
www.agilemanic.com