Troubleshooting Agile

Squirrel and Jeffrey have different takes on the value of estimating a tech team's planned work at the beginning of a longer cycle, like a sprint or a quarter: Jeffrey says the discussion of an estimate often leads to insights and better outcomes, and Squirrel says you can get the same results without the estimates. Both agree that sharing and measuring against the estimates outside the team is counterproductive!

SHOW LINKS:

- LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dsquirrel_my-friends-at-cto-craft-are-45-right-about-activity-6983761206993899522-raHE

- Squirrel Tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1578315480472985602

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss various ways to make statements about the future ("this feature will take a week" or "users will buy 20% more if we cut prices in half") and disagree about exactly how valuable they are and how to use them.

SHOW LINKS:

- Tilted Slider: https://agileconversations.com/blog/dont-add-more-metrics/

- Toyota Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Homepage.html

- Thinking in Bets: https://www.annieduke.com/thinking-in-bets/

- Estimates are Lies: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/09-15-estimates.html

- Superforcasting: https://www.amazon.com/Superforecasting-Science-Prediction-Philip-Tetlock/dp/0804136718

- Betting Market: https://manifold.markets

Events:

- Jtf at CITCON Europe Oct 14th & 15th: https://citconf.com/zwolle2022/

- Jtf at DevOps Enterprise Summit Oct 18th-20th: https://events.itrevolution.com/lasvegas/

- Squirrel live in Vienna Oct 20th: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/10-20-vienna.html

- Squirrel live in Miami early November: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/11-09-miami.html

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

One of Jeffrey's clients solves their burnout problem, and then the same problem comes up in other coaching sessions: needing the freedom to disagree. Squirrel finds a related problem of burnout from being unwilling to disappoint others. Both the need to disagree and to disappoint require difficult conversations, but you can’t really say yes without being able to say no!

SHOW LINKS:

- The Uncanny Valley of a Functional Organization: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/

- Amy Edmondson (author of Teaming): https://amycedmondson.com/#books

- Hard Work Not Hard Conversations: https://agileconversations.com/blog/hard-work-not-hard-coversation/

Upcoming Events:

- Squirrel live in Berlin Sept 29th: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/09-29-berlin.html

- Jtf at CITCON Europe Oct 14th & 15th: https://citconf.com/zwolle2022/

- Jtf at DevOps Enterprise Summit Oct 18th-20th: https://events.itrevolution.com/lasvegas/

- Squirrel live in Vienna Oct 20th: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/10-20-vienna.html

- Squirrel live in Miami early November: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/11-09-miami.html

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel has a suggestion for collaborating with people who are irrationally wedded to particular "agile processes", and Jeffrey has related ideas for working to their polar opposite, the anti-zealots who say no process will ever work.

SHOW LINKS:

- Squirrel's tweet on zealotry: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1570321020543696897

- CITCON Europe: https://citconf.com/zwolle2022/

- DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/lasvegas/

- Squirrel in Berlin and Vienna: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events.html

- Xavier Amador, LEAP: http://dramador.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnbOizw_zS0

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel describes how deals with overly vague strategy descriptions: tune them until they’re specific enough that someone could disagree with them. He and Jeffrey discuss how this applies beyond strategy, the value of asking probing questions, and the productive conflict that can arise from getting past the "motherhood and apple pie" answers.

SHOW LINKS:

- Podcast episode, Adversarial Analysis: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/scoring-briefing-and-back-briefing

- Agile Conversations: https://agileconversations.com

Squirrel describes how he tells clients to handle overly specific, too-coherent directions: consider what an adversary would do to comply with the direction and still get bad results. He and Jeffrey discuss illustrative examples and applications from military history, economics, and pizza delivery.

SHOW LINKS:

- Little Bobby Drop Tables: https://xkcd.com/327/

- Goodhart’s Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

- Pizza Arbitrage: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage

- Art of Action, Briefing and Back-briefing: https://www.stephenbungay.com/Books.ink

- Podcast episode, Briefing and Back-Briefing: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/briefing-and-back-briefing

- Podcast episode, Scoring Your Briefing and Back-Briefing: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/scoring-briefing-and-back-briefing

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

A client challenges Squirrel on his directive style when coaching, wondering whether this clashes with his espoused belief in joint design and inquiry. Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on the crucial differences between being asked for advice and help, and manipulating the situation and information flow to "win" an argument. These considerations turn out to be relevant to product and technical decisions too!

SHOW LINKS:

- Unilateral control & mutual learning values: https://infed.org/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and

- Coaching Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/The_Coaching_Kata.html

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel and Jeffrey trade stories about leaders who live in fear of key software developers leaving, and therefore avoid honest feedback and effective reprimands. The ironic result is that this "skilled incompetence" leads to exactly what they're trying to avoid: the best engineers do leave because of the negative and secretive culture. The way out, of course, is the Accountability Conversation.

SHOW LINKS:

- Tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1559121793830379521

- Squirrel Squadron: https://squirrelsquadron.com

- One Minute Manager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Minute_Manager

- Unilateral control values: https://infed.org/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and

- Accountability Conversation episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/accountability-leaders-are-accountable-too

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Responding to a listener's question, Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on the difference between a product owner and a process owner, and how IT projects differ from building products for external users. Unsurprisingly, methods for delivering value and saying no feature prominently!

SHOW LINKS:

- Project to Product: https://itrevolution.com/book/project-to-product/

- Mik Kersten interview: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/project-to-product-with-mik-kersten

- Reengineering the Corporation: https://bookshop.org/books/reengineering-the-corporation-a-manifesto-for-business-revolution/9780060559533

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Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

We look at why "prop trading" companies like Jane Street have phenomenally profitable technology operations, and how we can learn from them and improve, even in organisations where IT is a "cost centre".

SHOW LINKS:

- Jane Street article: https://www.thediff.co/p/jane-street

- DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/virtual/

- Spike and Stabilise: https://dzone.com/articles/patterns-effective-delivery-%E2%80%93

- Previous episode on ROI: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?i=1000574885063

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]