Troubleshooting Agile

We are joined by the wise and thoughtful Misha Glouberman, who organises Internet cocktail parties and better, more human-friendly meetings for organisations and teams—and the two turn out to have a lot in common.

SHOW LINKS:

- Misha: http://www.mishaglouberman.com

- Trampoline Hall: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/trampoline-hall/id1190668782?mt=2

- Internet Cocktail Party Instructions: https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-run-a-zoom-cocktail-party-and-have-better-classes-conferences-and-meetings-too-dc2c5b58f8be

- Gather.town: https://gather.town/

- CITCON: https://citconf.com

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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 is gobsmacked by user stories that appear to be about aliens, who want "intuitive interfaces" and "modern technology", where customers from Earth want "fun with my kids" or "relief from boredom". Jeffrey reminds us that such stories can lead to conversations that tease out the emotions and the human stories behind the words. Both agree that once we revise our stories to create empathy, we also allow the team to discover amazing new ways to solve problems.

SHOW LINKS:

- Personas: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them

- User stories as conversation promises: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story

- Feature factory: https://medium.com/hackernoon/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory-44a5b938d6a2

- User Stories Gone Wrong: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/blog/user-stories-gone-wrong/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]

Jessica Katz is an agile coach who uses curiosity and conversational skills to help agile teams perform better. She explains why you need to liberate the elephant in the room, how you can do that through nonviolent communication, and how one person saying "good morning" unlocked better performance for a whole team.

SHOW LINKS:

- Jessica Katz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeskatz/ https://liberatedelephant.com/events/2020/10

- Agile Ireland talk: https://www.agileleanireland.org - “Creating Boundaries, Practicing Curiosity, and Making Requests”

- Gallup poll: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/284180/factors-driving-record-high-employee-engagement.aspx

- B Corporation: https://bcorporation.net/

- Dare to Lead: https://daretolead.brenebrown.com/

- Nonviolent Communication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]

Jeffrey is inspired by Jon Smart and the DOES Virtual conference to discuss homeostasis as a source of resistance to change, and Squirrel tells a client story about curiosity as a way to help a complex system adapt.

SHOW LINKS:

- DOES Virtual "Las Vegas": https://events.itrevolution.com/virtual/

- Jon Smart: https://itrevolution.com/sooner-safer-happier/

- Complex Adaptive Systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system

- Paradoxical Agenda-Setting: https://feelinggood.com/tag/paradoxical-agenda-setting/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]

Following last week's praise of Taylorism, a suitable approach for making complicated problems simple, this week we look at a similar revolution in democratising innovation and creating a learning organisation—by uncovering hidden complexity and removing status as a barrier to discovery of error.

SHOW LINKS:

Team of Teams: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529127-team-of-teams

- Cynefin framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

- Art of Action: https://www.stephenbungay.com/Books.ink

- High Velocity Edge: http://www.thehighvelocityedge.com/

- Don’t be a Zombie Organisation:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-be-a-zombie-organiza_b_3306513

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6kqnQZuIHg

- Normalization of Deviance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

- Status as obstacle to learning:

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/09/19/learning-worst-industry-practices/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]

Frederick Taylor gets a bad rap - even from us, as we had a lot to say in Agile Conversations about how his methods have been misapplied in "software factories". But in the right circumstances, his ideas about repeatable, simple processes have a lot of value, and can lead directly to valuable automation opportunities. We describe examples including how continuous integration developed from an arcane art to a routine process along Taylorist lines.

SHOW LINKS:

- Taylorism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

- Cynefin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

- Team of Teams: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22529127-team-of-teams

- IdealCast: https://itrevolution.com/the-idealcast-episode-11/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]

Both of us learned to improve our conversations through regular practise with others - and today we describe how you can do that too, by organising a Conversational Dojo using our (free!) kits and videos.

SHOW LINKS:

- Free Dojo kit: https://itrevolution.com/conversational-dojo-kit-free-download/

- Conference talk on conversational dojos: https://events.itrevolution.com/virtual-programming/

- London Organizational Learning meetup: https://www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/

- Action Design: https://actiondesign.com/

- Shu Ha Ri: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ShuHaRi.html

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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 Squirrel's clients finds herself "harping on" a particular point in her technical team, and is frustrated that behaviour doesn't change. Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss how this and other "tells" indicate that you're stuck and how to come up with a pre-planned action to address these that will help you be curious and get to improved performance.

SHOW LINKS:

- Self-sealing: https://pages.uoregon.edu/mgall/designmemo%233.htm

- Bozo bit: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/the-bozo-bit-and-duelling-ladders

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]

Reacting to an insightful comment from Elisabeth Hendrickson, Squirrel and Jeffrey have a minor tussle over how to interpret the idea of "reflecting and adapting". They eventually agree that adapting works, but only if your definition of "team" is broad enough.

SHOW LINKS:

Idealcast with Gene Kim and Elisabeth Hendrickson: https://itrevolution.com/idealcast/idealcast-episode-3/

Elisabeth Hendrickson: https://twitter.com/testobsessed

Single Loop vs Double Loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-loop_learning

CITCON: https://citconf.com/

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Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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 tells Squirrel about a "horrible" meeting where his team accused him of pushing them to overwork and take shortcuts, but we discover it was actually a great breakthrough.

Learning is the detection and correction of error, and in this case, Squirrel's client discovered a major cultural problem that he's now able to correct. We reflect on why feeling horrible can be a great indicator of valuable learning.

SHOW LINKS:

Burn up chart: https://www.modernanalyst.com/Careers/InterviewQuestions/tabid/128/ID/3433/What-is-a-Burn-Up-Chart-and-how-does-it-differ-from-a-Burn-Down-Chart.aspx

Kathryn Schulz on being wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QleRgTBMX88

Theory X and Theory Y:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-we-cannot-learn-damn-thing-from-semco-toyota-niels-pflaeging/

Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.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]