Troubleshooting Agile

The Shoe Principle says that if you buy a pair of shoes, you have to get rid of one. We hadn't heard of it until a client brought it up as a way to introduce a new process without overloading the team. We see lots of places where agile teams could apply the Shoe Principle, including alerting systems that no one looks at or standups that have become rote and useless. Like Marie Kondo, we suggest asking whether each team activity "sparks joy", and if not, try parking it for a week to see if you really need it.

SHOW LINKS:

Marie Kondo: https://konmari.com

Normalization of deviance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

Agile Retrospectives book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/721338.Agile_Retrospectives

---

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 describes two shirts he makes for clients, the How Shirt and the What Shirt, that provide a brief and memorable description of the roles of a technical leader and a product leader respectively, reducing chaos and confusion in agile teams. You may not need job descriptions if four words on a shirt suffice, and as a bonus, the shirts can help your team define what they are doing and how they are working toward business goals—and importantly, what they are *not* doing.

SHOW LINKS:

- Negative space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_space

---

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]

We welcome agile thinker and experienced CTO Chris Parsons, whose blog Delivery Doubled makes the case that cookie-cutter agile approaches don't work. We discuss why out-of-the-box agile training doesn't work, whether we'll have figured out the "right" way to agile a few hundreds of years hence, and how one client discovered that everything Chris was teaching wouldn't work for them and what he and they did about it.

Free webinar upcoming with Squirrel and Jeffrey on Monday 17th August - see https://itrevolution.com/conversational-dojo-webinar-sign-up/

SHOW LINKS:

Chris Parsons, Delivery Doubled: https://deliverydoubled.com

The Mundanity of Excellence: https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-ethnographic-report-on-stratification-and-olympic-swimmers

Dan North, Accelerated Agile: https://dannorth.net/courses/accelerated-agile/

Martin Fowler State of Agile podcast episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/fowlers-state-of-agile-2018-part-one

Squirrel/Jeffrey article on agile training: https://trainingindustry.com/blog/it-and-technical-training/agile-training-isnt-enough-the-key-is-conversations-not-rituals/

---

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 describes a client of his that is "thrashing"—trying to do so many different things that they aren't getting anything finished. We reflect on why this happens, including the idea that being busy feels good while increasing focus can mean disrupting comfortable routines. We suggest asking "why can't we finish this today?" as a forcing mechanism for discovering bottlenecks and alternative approaches.

SHOW LINKS:

- Theory of Constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints

- Domenica DeGrandis, Making Work Visible: https://itrevolution.com/book/making-work-visible/

---

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]

We're joined by Steve Berez, partner at Bain and co-author of Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos. Steve tells us some stories from his 30-year consulting career, illustrating missteps he's seen in digital transformations like "You Folks Do Agile" and "Agile as a Quick Fix". He advocates the metric of "team fun" as the best way to determine whether you're doing agile right.

SHOW LINKS:

- Steve's book and other material: https://www.bain.com/agile

- Article on the Agile C-Suite: https://hbr.org/2020/05/the-agile-c-suite

- Previous podcast episode mentioning Cargo Cult Agile: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/posts/software-factory-to-feature-factory/

---

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 reader points out that our example conversations often show people masking emotions, but we don't say as much about what to do when someone is being rude or when you yourself feel your emotions are out of control. We suggest ways to increase your sense of safety with an escape plan, but also demonstrate methods for staying in the conversation and learning from it even if it's challenging to do so.

SHOW LINKS:

- Stratechery 2x2 chart: https://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-functional-organization/

- Brene Brown: https://brenebrown.com/

- LOL meetup on working with emotions: https://www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/events/xbtmspybcfbgc/

- Nonviolent Communication and receiving empathetically: http://laurelandassociates.com/tip-319-nonviolent-communication-10-receiving-with-empathy/

- Dr. David Burns talking with your EAR: https://daviddburnsmd.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/the-five-secrets-v-1.pdf

- Emotions in decision-making: https://hbr.org/2006/01/decisions-and-desire

---

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]

We respond to an article on user stories that has some good points (user stories are prompts for conversations) and, in our view, misses the mark on others (claiming that tasks are better than user stories for technical work). This leads us to propose "human stories" which may not involve traditional users but do involve humans who are affected by the software we're building in some way (partners, investors, regulators, and more). Finally, we apply these ideas to answer a question from a listener on handling complex technical changes with user stories.

SHOW LINKS:

User stories article: https://www.lullabot.com/articles/not-everything-is-a-user-story

Rant on non-functional requirements: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/squirrels-rant

Agile Manifesto episode on face-to-face interaction: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/efficiency-effectiveness-through-face-to-face-conversation

---

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]

Clarke Ching has been studying bottlenecks and constraints for thirty years, and has lots of stories and insights for us. He explains why bottlenecks are important, why your developers should always be your bottleneck, and how to explain the theory of constraints using a herd of buffalo.

SHOW LINKS:

Our Sloan Management Review article: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/solving-the-problem-of-siloed-it-in-organizations/

Clarke online: https://www.clarkeching.com/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarkeching/

Free book from Clarke: https://share.toc.guide

Theory of Constraints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints

Sixth Sense movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sixth_Sense

Cheers TV show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheers

---

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 and Squirrel had very different experiences at recent tech conferences including DOES London/Virtual. We describe what worked and what didn't for us, and how listeners can apply the lessons to their own remote attendance at conferences and meetings.

SHOW LINKS:

Audiobook Companion at IT Revolution site: https://itrevolution.com/agile-conversations

Podcasts on remote working and affordances: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/posts/active-listening-for-remote-working/

https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/posts/missingaffordances/

Alistair Cockburn's People and Methodologies in Software Development: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253582591_People_and_Methodologies_in_Software_Development

Links from DOES London Virtual: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FsWkeoweWDPYjDDbukCnH4Hj3LLRV3RobIUKa2qWdwk/edit

DOES London Virtual Slack archive:

https://devopsenterprise-archive.itrevolution.com/ask-the-speaker-keynote/2020-06-25

Episode transcript: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/posts/lessons-for-remote-work-from-does-london-virtual/

---

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]

Coming to the final chapter of Agile Conversations, we look at how leaders can not only provide accountability for others, but be accountable themselves, including stories from the early days of agile and from today's clients.

SHOW LINKS:

- XP Explained book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67833.Extreme_Programming_Explained

- Rapid Development book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/93892.Rapid_Development

- Dynamics of Software Development ("don't flip the bozo bit"): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1416996.Dynamics_of_Software_Development

- Nurtureshock: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6496815-nurtureshock

- Greenshifting: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/greenshifting

- Kent Beck Ease at Work: https://www.infoq.com/news/2007/04/beck-ease-at-work/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeA4CBInqKo

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

- Radiating Intent: https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/dont-ask-forgiveness-radiate-intent-d36fd22393a3

- Accountability and Compassion: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/mutual-learning-model-accountability-and-compassion

Episode transcript: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/posts/accountability-leaders-are-accountable-too/

---

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]