Designing a Process that Works for Your Team
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The best processes are those that encourage teams to naturally do the right things at the right times. Amazing processes like this don’t happen by accident; they are specifically designed to encourage desirable behavior while discouraging harmful behaviour. By carefully choosing the process’s affordances -- practices or artifacts that direct our thinking toward a specific goal -- a team can tailor a process that makes success intuitive. The session will begin by presenting the core concepts behind affordence-driven process improvement before diving into a collaborative workshop. During the workshop teams will use information from the introduction to brainstorm practices that will help them promote those values, as you would in a team retrospective.
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Designing a Process that Works for Your Team
- 1. Affordance-Driven Process Improvement Designing a Process that Works for Your Team Ariadna Font Michael Keeling @quicola @michaelkeeling
- 2. Workshop Agenda • The Theory of Affordances • Affordance-Driven Process Improvement • Workshop Time! FYI -- We’ll spend about the last hour hands-on 2
- 3. Goals for this Workshop 1. Unlock your mind so you can identify affordances in your team’s process 2. Practice affordance-driven improvement in a retrospective simulation 3. Map typical team behaviors to common agile practices 3
- 4. Warning 4
- 5. THE THEORY OF AFFORDANCES 5
- 6. You’ve seen these concepts before… • Software Architects • Object Designers • User Experience Experts • Kanban Experts • Agile Coaches • “Systems Thinkers” 6
- 7. Goal: Design an object that makes it feel natural and easy to do the right thing. 7
- 8. What is an affordance? An affordance is any perceivable element, such as an object or idea, that directs a person’s thinking toward a specific set of acAons. J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep:on. Psychology Press, 1986. Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1998 8
- 9. What is an affordance? An affordance is any perceivable element, such as an object or idea, that directs a person’s thinking toward a specific set of acAons. J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep:on. Psychology Press, 1986. Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1998 9
- 10. The Dutch Airport Problem 10
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- 13. The Urinal Fly “It improves the aim. If a man sees a fly, he aims at it. Fly-in-urinal research found that etchings reduce spillage by 80%. It gives a guy something to think about. That’s a perfect example of process control.” Robert Krulwhich, “There’s a Fly in my Urinal” hJp://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=121310977 13
- 14. Good Affordance..Bad Affordance Push Pull Good Affordance 14
- 15. Bad Affordance 15
- 16. Gary Larson The Far Side 16
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- 20. QualiAes vs. FuncAonality 20
- 21. Example: Blend a Drink • Functions – Prepare the blender – Blend – Clean the blender • Qualities – Countertop-ability – Clean-ability – Transportability Galvao and Sato, “Affordances in Product Architecture: Linking Technical Functions and Users’ Tasks” Proceedings of IDETC/CIE 2005 21
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- 23. Portable… but noisy. Motorcycle Gas Engine ThroJle 23
- 24. Application to Software Process • Example Process Functions – Write software, test software, release software • Example Process Qualities – Plan-ability – Performance – Predictability – Reliability – Changeability – Estimate-ability – Quality – Harmony 24
- 26. Goal: Design a process that makes it natural and easy to do the right thing. 26
- 27. Affordance-Driven Change • Observe and Evaluate Behaviors – What is your team doing? – Positive, Negative, Neutral • Identify Affordances – What nudged your team’s behavior? • Alter Affordances – Change the negative affordances, keep the positive ones 27
- 28. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Behaviors Evaluate Behaviors IdenAfy Affordances Alter Affordances 28
- 29. Affordance-Driven Change Observe What is your Behaviors team doing? Evaluate Behaviors How do IdenAfy they act? Affordances Alter Affordances 29
- 30. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Is this the behavior Behaviors you want? Evaluate Behaviors PosiAve IdenAfy NegaAve Affordances Neutral Alter Affordances 30
- 31. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Behaviors What nudged your team to act Evaluate Behaviors the way the did? IdenAfy Affordances Alter Affordances 31
- 32. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Behaviors Keep the good Evaluate affordances, Behaviors change the bad IdenAfy affordances Affordances Alter Affordances 32
- 33. Example: Team Square Root ObservaAons: Arguments about tasking Team over-‐commiang Resist giving up tasks Michael Keeling, “Process Affordances: Ignore at your own Peril” hJp://neverletdown.net/2009/03/process-‐affordances-‐ignore-‐at-‐your-‐own-‐peril/ 33
- 34. Values: Baseline for Evaluating Behavior As a team we valued Predictability Adaptability Respect Open CommunicaAon 34
- 35. Evaluate Behaviors ObservaAons: + – Arguments about tasking – Team over-‐commiang – Resist giving up tasks 35
- 36. Identify Affordances ReflecAng on our pracAces… “Milestone Owners” Nudge: Aatude of lone responsibility No backlog Nudge: Anxiety over future tasks 36
- 37. Alter Affordances Created a backlog Abolished “Owners” New burndown chart – show progress against commitments 37
- 38. Team Values: Evaluating Behaviors “Qualities your team values” • Examples: – courage – scalability – predictability – responsibility – sustainability – feedback – face-to-face – improvability communication – measurability 38
- 39. Examples of Good Affordances • Iterative planning, light documentation – Nudge: changeability • Pair programming – Nudge: knowledge sharing, performance, quality 39
- 40. Examples of Bad Affordances • Large planning buffers – Nudge: procrastination • Developer Branches – Nudge: solitary development 40
- 41. LET’S PRACTICE! 41
- 42. What is an affordance? An affordance is any perceivable element, such as an object or idea, that directs a person’s thinking toward a specific set of acAons. J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep:on. Psychology Press, 1986. Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1998 42
- 43. Goals for this Workshop 1. Unlock your mind so you can identify affordances in your team’s process 2. Practice affordance-driven improvement in a retrospective simulation 3. Map typical team behaviors to common agile practices 43
- 44. Ground Rules • When your team is ready to move on, have somebody wear the party hat • Manage your time, watch the clock! • Raise your hand if you have a question • Have fun! 44
- 45. Workshop Agenda 1. Establish context, agree on team values 2. Evaluate behaviors 3. Identify affordances nudging your team 4. Propose changes to your team’s practices 5. Finish posters and share findings 6. Wrap-up 45
- 46. QualiAes your “team” values Summary of pracAces nudge your team’s behavior AcAon items – how to change behavior? 46
- 47. Establishing Context – 2 min • Task: Introduce yourselves to one another – Briefly share some interesting facts about yourself and your role(s) at work • Context: – You are now a team, working together to build a new awesome piece of software. – You’ve gathered together for a team retrospective…. 47
- 48. Get your package Send one team member to the front to retrieve workshop materials. 48
- 49. Agree on Team Qualities – 5 min • Task: Agree on the 3 – 5 core qualities you value most as a team. – Annotate worksheet and add to poster • Goal: You are going to focus on these through the workshop and use them to evaluate behaviors and determine what improvements to pursue first. 49
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- 51. QualiAes your “team” values Start populaAng your poster! Start 51
- 52. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Behaviors Evaluate Behaviors IdenAfy Affordances Alter Affordances 52
- 53. Evaluate Behaviors – 10 min • Task: Decide whether your team’s behaviors (Blue Cards) are positive, neutral, or negative relative to your values. • Goal: Learn to observe and analyze team behaviors in your work environment. 53
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- 55. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Behaviors Evaluate Behaviors IdenAfy Affordances Alter Affordances 55
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- 57. Identify Affordances – 15 min • Task: Map practices to negative behaviors. What affordances nudged your team? – Try the “5 Whys” technique – If there is no practice in your deck that you think leads to this bad behavior, use one of the wildcards • Goal: Have a handful of patterns like this on your poster <Practice> nudges <Behavior> because ____ 57
- 58. QualiAes your “team” values Summary of pracAces nudge your team’s behavior Don’t forget your poster! Start 58
- 59. Affordance-Driven Change Observe Behaviors Evaluate Behaviors IdenAfy Affordances Alter Affordances 59
- 60. Propose Key Changes – 10 min • Task: Create 2 or 3 action items for your team and document why you think they will get rid of the negative behavior • Goal: Add or remove affordances to your team’s process. Turn the undesired behaviors into desired ones. Practice P(Bad Behavior) è Practice P’ Ø / Good Behavior 60
- 61. Example… Free dinner nudges developers to stay late… Change the Free Dinner affordance Free breakfast – nudge developers to come to work early, not waiting for a signal to mark the end of the day 61
- 62. Propose Key Changes – 10 min • Task: Create 2 or 3 action items for your team and document why you think they will get rid of the negative behavior • Goal: Add or remove affordances to your team’s process. Turn the undesired behaviors into desired ones. Practice P(Bad Behavior) è Practice P’ (Ø / Good Behavior) 62
- 63. QualiAes your “team” values Summary of pracAces nudge your team’s behavior AcAon items – how to change behavior? 63
- 64. Share your findings! – 15 min • Task: Share your poster! • Goal: Tell a story so that others can learn from your thinking process • Reflection – Any surprises in you practice/behavior map? – What can you take back to your team? 64
- 65. WRAP-‐UP 65
- 66. Goals for this Workshop 1. Unlock your mind so you can identify affordances in your team’s process 2. Practice affordance-driven improvement in a retrospective simulation 3. Map typical team behaviors to common agile practices 66
- 67. Practices vs. Affordances? We simplified things a little for the simulation… The world is not this simple. Affordances can be subtle, tricky to identify. 67
- 68. Tools for Retrospectives • Identify valued team qualities • “Like to Like” game – Create your own behaviors and practices card decks • Affordance Awareness – It’s not your fault! 68
- 69. “A bad system will beat a good person every Ame.” -‐ W. Edwards Deming 69
- 70. Go forth and design GREAT systems! 70
- 71. Thank you! Michael Keeling Ariadna Font @michaelkeeling @quicola http://neverletdown.net http://ariadna.font.cat/ 71
- 72. References • Robert Krulwhich, “There’s a Fly in my Urinal” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121310977 • Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1988 • J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Psychology Press, 1986. • Galvao and Sato, “Affordances in Product Architecture: Linking Technical Functions and Users’ Tasks” Proceedings of IDETC/CIE 2005 • Michael Keeling, “Identifying Process Affordances: Nudging Toward Change” http://neverletdown.net/2010/03/identifying-process-affordances- nudging-toward-change/ • Michael Keeling, “Process Affordances: Ignore at your own Peril” http://neverletdown.net/2009/03/process-affordances-ignore-at-your- own-peril/ 72