Speaking in Seattle [Scrum Gathering]

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Ken Judy

I’m expanding my talk from last October’s Agile NYC for the spring Seattle Scrum Gathering.

Instilling Agile Values – A Manager’s Perspective Tuesday, May 17th, 3:30pm

The scale and speed of an agile adoption are external measures that don’t speak to the founding values of the practice. Collective ownership, continuous improvement and trust are hard won but lead to craftsmanship and joy. They are enabling conditions for innovation and beneficial change.

I will retrospect on my contributions both positive and negative towards cultivating these values in two organizations. The first was a practice that matured over four years, led to a new mission for the team and direct collaboration with the founder and CEO. The second is a team establishing its own agile practice after winding down an engagement with a much larger agile offshore team.

What will I do more off? What will I do less of? What impediments got in the way?

The existential joys of agile practice: angel on your shoulder

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Ken Judy

At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the fourth and final part.

Angel on your shoulder

Agile values call for honesty and trust. A shared ambition to do better and be better while causing each other less unnecessary pain.

I try to remember this in one on ones, retrospectives, coaching and in reflecting on my own decisions and actions.

The great thing about these values is that even as you strive towards them your co-workers will give you permission to demand more of them.

Just as they will demand more of you.

This demand gives you an angel on your shoulder. Watching you as you work. It inspires even as it shames you into substantial actions that go against your nature. And you do this because your team needs you to.

You invest in the hard daily work of adjusting your own bad habits one behavior at a time in the interests of the people you work with and the work you do together.

This isn’t easy. It’s mortifying. It’s scary.

But the reward is that you get to be the same person with your boss that you are with your peers that you are with your staff.

The reward is that you get to work at your best with other people working at their best.

And you carry that potential with you as you move on to other projects and other teams.

Ultimately, I want more than success on a project or in a particular job. I want a career.

I want to be proud of my accomplishments and I want to be proud of who I was as I attained them.

I want to spend my life loving what I do.

And I want to build things that are useful and delightful to people.

My pecha kucha topic was inspired by Samuel Florman’s book, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering

The main goal has always been to understand the stuff of the universe, to consider problems based on human solution, and to follow through to a finished product.

Existential delight has been the reward every step of the way…

— Samuel C. Florman

The existential joys of agile practice

The existential joys of agile practice: people over process

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Ken Judy

At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the third of four parts.

People over process

Cathleen P. Black, who took over as New York City schools chancellor in January, at the Tuesday meeting of the Panel on Educational Policy.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Cathie Black was Chancellor of New York City Schools for three months. She was hired despite having no education experience and no affinity for public schools, parents, teachers and students because she was, “an excellent manager”.

I love that agile doesn’t celebrate management. It relies on individual contributors. It relies on community.

The oozy failure wrapped in the chocolatey success of agile is when we focus on process mechanics and lose sight of people.

If we do, our practice becomes arbitrary and abstract.

There’s a study that claims the best and worst performers have more in common with each other than those in the broad middle.

While the best are energized by their caring and use that passion to drive to the best outcomes, the worst are demoralized and ruined by it.

The indifferent middle, they just plug away.

When we impose a process upon a workplace to avoid failure. We rob the best performers of opportunities to engage and care.

We preclude the best in an attempt to avoid the worst and ensure mediocrity.

I acknowledge that successful products can emerge from awful workplaces. And that that good teams often create failed products.

But working in a way that tears down talented people’s desire for work is tragic. To repeatedly do this this is to sap the world of its limited supply inspiration, creativity and joy.

The existential joys of agile practice

The existential joys of agile practice: I want to live in our imperfect reality

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Ken Judy

At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. This is the second of four parts.

I want to live in our imperfect reality

As agile becomes popular it becomes a buzzword. It gets promoted as a tool that solves problems when at its heart it is a set of values that encourage you to confront problems.

We should all recognize these organizing principles…

Collaboration over negotiation
Working software over specification
People over process
Responding to change over following a plan

In addition, Bob Martin’s “Quality over crap”

Let’s talk about following a plan… worshipping a plan

I think of this every time I think of worshipping a plan…

A driver put her faith in her satellite navigation system. It told her to turn onto a bridge. Problem was the bridge had been washed away. She drove her $160,000 Mercedes into the flood where it was swept away. She had to be rescued as it sank.

Where the customer doesn’t entirely know what will succeed… Where they aren’t entirely steeped in the technology…

Specifications become a black hole so dense with detail that even light cannot escape.

Project schedules become the most boring fairy tails ever told.

Mocks mock us.

And process gates (“handoffs”) kill collaboration.

We put a lot of energy into delivering the wrong thing on time and on budget.

And we don’t even recognize or care about that thing by the time it goes live – if it ever does.

I want to live in our imperfect reality.

…Focus on what I did, what I’m doing and what I want to do next.

I want to know what we are trying to achieve and converse with people I’m achieving it with.

I accept failure if we call it out as we recognize it, applaud the attempt and make changes so that we don’t repeat that exact failure again.

In short, I love an iterative, reflective way of working because I dearly want to spend each day doing a little less crap and a little more not crap than the day before.

And I want to do it without simply handing off my crap onto others.

The existential joys of agile practice

The existential joys of agile practice: a family tradition of care and craft

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Ken Judy

At Agile NYC I presented a pecha kucha. 20 slides. 20 seconds per slide. I’ll post in four parts.

A family tradition of care and craft

My mother is college educated but made her living through physical labor. She made valances on fancy drapery and upholstered fine furniture.

She took pride in her work matching the pattern at the seams no matter how complex. And she worked long hours.

She has arthritis from years handling heavy fabric.

My father is a retired engineer.

He’s always pursued hobbies with an engineer’s precision. Book binding, restoring tube amplifiers, annealing, reshaping and tempering fishing hooks into an authentic 19th century fly fishing hook shape.

If people offered to pay him for his hobby, he’d move on to something else. He did these things for pleasure.

Fireworks by Ken Judy, All rights reserved.

My ten-year old daughter aspires to be an engineer or scientist. She been a member of a Lego FIRST Robotics team since she was seven.

When she first tried out, her teachers wrote:

“You were chosen based on your ability to work well with your team and how well you cooperated with others.

We also looked at your ability to problem solve, on your own and within the group, your endurance, enthusiasm, and your handle and care for the pieces.”

My girl is a born agilist…