Tag Archives: Ken Schwaber

Agile’s broad adoption and mediocrity – the fault lies…

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I have to admit, I cringe whenever I say “agile” or “scrum” (™?) Even as I practice both every workday and care deeply for the values they represent.

Successful movements take on a cloying “fill me with your knowledge” cast. A perpetual newbie state where new adherents come on faster than existing practitioners have opportunity to develop experience and wisdom.

I really don’t need to have another conversation about how to phrase the first sentence of a user story.

And I definitely feel some of the same heat rising from the attention to lean. Buzz, buzz, kanban, buzz…

But can we blame the thought leaders, the coaches, the industry deriving wealth from a movement for the failings of that movement? Is it the corrupting influence of success or rather broad adoption itself?

I think the latter.

First, let me acknowledge that iterative improvement is a lengthy process and has to start somewhere. That your current state is entirely flawed is a given.

You don’t have to be excellent at what you do at this exact moment to begin improving your own practice and your workplace. A broad swath of not soul killing workplaces is at least as valuable as a small set of shining cities on the hill.

But whatever the starting point, taking on agile practice is dedicating yourself to a mission of fundamentally changing the nature of our work to something both disciplined and highly accountable but also collaborative, creative and sustainable.

And broad adoption means that a lot of people who call themselves “agile” just don’t rise up or even aspire to rise up to that mission.

If you claim you’re doing XP: have 24 hour builds, the developers all work solo and your test coverage is 10% then you’re either at the start of a very long journey (which I deeply admire you for) or you’re lying to yourself and you just plain suck.

If you claim you’re doing Scrum and the developers haven’t talked to a business person in months, can’t articulate what your team achieved in the last month, and you require “stabilization” sprints before you can deploy working code, you are either at the start of a very long journey (which, again, I deeply admire you for) or you’re lying to yourself and you just plain suck.

It’s not one of a thousand consultancies, professional coaches, certification tracks, associations or conferences fault if you suck.

It’s not Jeff Sutherland’s or Ken Schwaber’s fault if you suck. As a matter of fact, they and their peers have done a great deal to give a great many of us a chance at sucking less.

The mentor/mentee relationship is powerful but it’s up to each of us to do our work with courage, integrity and passion. It’s up to each of us to hold our peers to a standard of competence and care.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

The Scrum Master’s Dilemma

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My daughter Miya and dog friend Sophie 2002 by kjudy

A metaphor for the Scrum Master is a vigilant sheepdog protecting their flock.

At the Fall Scrum Gathering, I met practitioners facing different challenges in their agile practice.

Some faced profound impediments that their organizations were unable or unwilling to address. The effect on the project and team was dire and the Scrum Master had exhausted all avenues to raise alarm.

It’s human nature, unfortunately, to associate an unpleasant message with the messenger. A vocal Scrum Master can be seen as the problem.

In those fraught circumstances a Scrum Master has to balance the interests of the team, the company and themselves. Can the project deliver in spite of the obstacles? Should the Scrum Master accept the dysfunction or not? At what cost?

As Ken Schwaber says in Agile Project Management with Scrum, “A dead sheepdog is a useless sheepdog.” Still, a useless sheepdog is also a useless sheepdog.

As JP Boodhoo says, “develop with passion.” As my friend Luke Melia says, “live with passion.”

Just do it!

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Just Do It by kjudy

I laughed out loud when I saw Ken Schwaber titled a passage of his book, The Enterprise and Scrum, “Just Do It”.

Ken describes how a customer can sacrifice quality and sustainable pace in the short term but pay it back at a premium, “$4 to remediate every $1 drop in quality.”

Clearly there are pressing bugs, misses and serendipitous opportunities. There are times to inject work into a sprint backlog. There are even times to “stop the line” and reset a sprint.

But when you manage a self-directed team, “just do it” — and I’ve heard that very phrase — is bullshit.

Just characterizes another person’s work as easy. It is the people performing work that need to estimate it. They are on the hook to execute and are incented to think critically in detail about what they are taking on. The worker grasps the actual effort better than the executive.

Do characterizes the work as physical action. Software development is problem solving and abstract modeling, i.e. knowledge work. “I’m typing as fast as I can?!” Even industrial lean practice relies on workers engaging beyond the boundaries of the immediate task to improve the product and the process of manufacture.

It characterizes the work as a single, clearly defined task. Again, the person doing the work determines whether they clearly understand assignment. Otherwise, you’re not admitting to any ambiguity of language, hidden complexity, or potential misunderstandings.

Just do it is a one way directive that splits responsibility from authority, i.e. YOU just do it. It signals a leader is not willing to do their part to remove obstacles for their team.

Just do it hides inefficiency under a veneer of necessity. Is it a surprise that “just do it” finds companionship with “just the way things are done” and “just the nature of the business”?

All this to say “just do it” in knowledge work is bullshit. The value lies not in the truth or falsity of the statement but the effect it has on the hearer. It dismisses workers’ concerns and excuses management from accountability.

Moving from bulls to birds, if self-directed teams are the goose that lays golden eggs, “just do it” is a pellet blast in the ole’ egg layer.

I’m a Sideways Agilist

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I’ve posted about why I need to encourage agile practices outside my department.

Fiddler Crab by denn

If Scrum is isolated within one team, its very success can be used to counter further adoption. “Agile works for you but what we do is different. You do X we do Y.”

This resistance is a direct result of what Andy Hargreaves calls balkanization — groups insulated from each other, with hard boundaries, loyalties and a political complexion.

Creating a culture where groups work together to improve the organization is core to lean and agile. So the best ways to counter balkanization are the very principles under challenge.

I’m tackling this top-down by lobbying senior executives to bring in an agile/lean coach, bottom-up by removing impediments for my team, and, perhaps most significantly, sideways by initiating a Scrum in another department.

I have tentative approval from another department’s senior managers. Now, I have to meet with line managers and identify a backlog of work. Then solicit volunteers for a team.

I’ve taken Ken Schwaber‘s words to heart and asked them to Scrum their hardest challenge or the work they think least suited to agile.

So many things can go wrong. Of course, nothing that isn’t already going wrong. That’s the point.

Scrum will highlight those problems and make solving them obvious and necessary if no easier.

More to come…

Women & Agile Development

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Ken Schwaber made an audacious comment today. To paraphrase:

“One of my canaries in the coal mine is the number of women in the software industry. Women are smarter than men. They tend to gravitate to careers where they are compensated well and find the work rewarding. They are fleeing the our industry in droves.”

He was speaking at Agile 2007 on The Enterprise and Scrum.

The Stanford Daily reported that “13 percent of CS undergraduates are female this year, down from 24 percent in the 1999-2000 school year.” This despite National Science Foundation statistics that show more women are receiving bachelors degrees than men.

I agree with Mr. Schwaber, a software industry more inviting to women entering the workforce would provide a better, more humane environment for all employees.

Also, what potential innovation is being lost? History is rife with examples of gender inequality in service and outcomes across a wide variety of industries — most troubling being medicine. A male dominated field should not be confident it is best serving its women consumers.

My company’s own research indicates that women are men’s peers when it comes to the use, ownership and purchasing decisions around technology. So this is an opportunity as much as it is a concern.

A 2006 paper by McDowell, Werner, Bullock and Fernald found that pair programming practice “may help increase female representation in the field.”

Agile values and practices support a collaborative, empowering and sustainable work place. As practitioners, we should encourage research on whether this can contribute to a more diverse workforce.

Fundamentally, we have to make software development more conducive to the contributions of half our population.