Troubleshooting Agile

The agile principles talk about empowerment and autonomy, but do we have to make a complete switch from our current centralised-decision culture to a fully autonomous one? The Satir curve, six thinking hats, and a theory of Tic Tac change (really!) from Jeffrey and Alistair Cockburn, shows us a way to make a series of small changes rather than one big shift.

SHOW LINKS:

- Theory X and Theory Y: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

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

- Satir curve (J-curve): http://dhemery.com/articles/managing_yourself_through_change/

- Tic Tac presentation (Fredrick/Cockburn): http://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/sdbp06tictactalk.pdf

- Six Thinking Hats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats

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Theory X organisations don't trust their people - or do they? To be agile we have to move our organisations to a Theory Y model with empowerment and autonomy - or do we? Organisational change has to be painful - or does it? And what does all this have to do with creepy robots?

SHOW LINKS:

- Theory X and Theory Y: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

- J Jonah Jameson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhDBWiTfNCU

- The Uncanny Valley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

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

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

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Due to illness and travel, Jeffrey and Squirrel present one of their greatest hits of the past!

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Squirrel and Jeffrey look at a recent article by Luke Tomas on the "employee engagement industry" (we didn't even know it *was* an industry!) Jeffrey rapidly links this to Brian Marick's idea of Ease and Joy at work and we all agree that engagement, happiness, and joy are all useful, but lagging, indicators of team success - so you can't improve them directly with bigger bonuses or tougher objectives. Instead alignment, focus, and autonomy work to create these results by creating the conditions for happiness and good performance.

SHOW LINKS:

- Luke Tomas, The Employee Engagement Myth: medium.com/@lukethomas14/the-e…t-myth-3885526782d7

- Brian Marick, Ease and Joy at Work: exampler.com/ease-and-joy/

- Previous episode on technical excellence: Troubleshootingagile – Fowlers-state-of-agile-part-two

- Reinventing Organisations (Teal and other colours): www.reinventingorganizations.com/

- Theory X and Theory Y: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

- Daniel Pink, Drive (video): www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

- Niko Niko: www.agilealliance.org/glossary/nikoniko/

- Small Improvements: www.small-improvements.com/

- Joy, Inc : www.menloinnovations.com/joyinc/

- Joy At Work: www.dennisbakke.com/joy-at-work

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

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The US Defense Department (yes, the huge bureaucratic government body) recently released a brief and readable guide to troubleshooting your agile team. We have a look at three more of its key recommendations for figuring out whether you're agile team is really agile - which leads us to discuss when software developers should wield soldering irons and how continuous integration is better with a rubber chicken.

SHOW LINKS:

- Detecting Agile BS: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF

- The Defense Innovation Board: https://innovation.defense.gov

- Continuous Integration on a Dollar a Day (aka the Rubber Chicken): https://www.jamesshore.com/Blog/Continuous-Integration-on-a-Dollar-a-Day.html

- IMVU continuous deployment: http://timothyfitz.com/2009/02/10/continuous-deployment-at-imvu-doing-the-impossible-fifty-times-a-day/

- CITCON (Continuous Integration and Testing Conference): https://citconf.com/

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

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The US Defense Department (yes, the huge bureaucratic government body) recently released a brief and readable guide to troubleshooting your agile team. We have a look at three of its six key recommendations for figuring out whether you're agile team isn't really agile - which leads us to discuss what end-users really are and why financial traders are so insane.

SHOW LINKS:

- Detecting Agile BS: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF

- The Defense Innovation Board: https://innovation.defense.gov

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

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Once you've been vocally critical and identified areas to improve in your agile team, what next? "We should" too often turns into "We won't", so good intentions aren't enough. Jeffrey tells the story of teaching TDD and the tools he learnt and developed to foster internal commitment to change - paradoxically, this involves questioning whether the change is actually worth doing!

SHOW LINKS:

- SPIN selling book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SPIN-Selling-Neil-Rackham/dp/0566076896

- Previous episode on earning trust through vocal self-criticism: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/earning-trust-at-amazon

- Previous series on unilateral control: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-to-fail-by-acting-unilaterally-part-i

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

Inspired by a listener comment, we look at one of Amazon's leadership principles, which describes how leaders are expected to earn trust in that organisation. It seems to us that the principle lays the foundation for effective psychological safety for the avoidance of error, but there are some traps to watch out for on the way to that end.

SHOW LINKS:

- Amazon leadership principles: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles

- Ladder of inference annotated diagram: http://troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2

In our one-year anniversary episode, we start with a story about "flickering" tests and generalise to look at the idea of normalisation of deviance. We suggest that psychological safety lets you hear from those who see the deviance but aren't speaking up, with examples from oil rigs, and tie to pair programming as a way to create a safe environment for reiterating agreed non-deviant behaviour.

SHOW LINKS:

- Diane Vaughan and links to normalisation of deviance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Vaughan

- Bystander effect and smoke experiment; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect#Social_psychology_research

- Psychological safety: https://www.businessinsider.com/amy-edmondson-on-psychological-safety-2015-11?r=UK&IR=T

- Oil rig creating psychological safety: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/17/482203447/invisibilia-how-learning-to-be-vulnerable-can-make-life-safer and https://hbr.org/2008/07/unmasking-manly-men

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

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We've been talking about building trust in agile teams by aligning your stories; an important ingredient for this is being predictable, so others can believe you actually have a story they can align with. We tell an extended story about a developer with a severely misaligned story and how Squirrel's route to trust with him included crawling around on the floor reconfiguring cables.

SHOW LINKS:

- Argyris, Espoused Theory vs Theory in Use: http://infed.org/mobi/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Theories_of_action

- Previous podcast on acting unilaterally: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/how-to-fail-by-acting-unilaterally-part-iv

- Annotated Ladder of Inference diagram: http://troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf

- Schwarz, Eight Behaviours for Smarter Teams: https://www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/917018/Eight-Behaviors-for-Smarter-Teams-2.pdf

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

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We answer a listener question about standups for feature teams, but we think the problem is actually a larger one of disengagement. A common symptom is people sitting down for their standup (oxymoron alert!) We recommend some ways to overcome disengagement using Coherence Busting and the Ladder of Inference, tools we've been discussing on recent podcasts.

SHOW LINKS:

- Feature teams: http://featureteams.org

- Ladder of Inference episodes: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/test-driven-development-for-people and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/introspection-with-the-ladder-of-inference

- Coherence busting: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2016/04/08/coherence-busting-explained/ and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/removing-the-blame-frame

***

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

Email us: see link on troubleshootingagile.com

Tweet us: twitter.com/TShootingAgile

Also, if you'd like to leave us a review on iTunes (or just like and subscribe), you'll find us here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?mt=2