Last week, in Copenhagen, I had my first ever taste of moose. I also had my first taste of cowberries. Both different and tasty and new to my palate. And so I suppose you could say my palate matured a little as a result. That alone could have been enough to make for an interesting week. But what do moose and cowberries have to do (if anything) with my passion around Agile transformations
Several weeks ago, I posted about my pending Agile Europe Road Tour . In that post, I mentioned that I’d be on an Agile grand tour in Europe for 6 weeks. And so here I am. The trip started in London, moved to Copenhagen Denmark, Aarhus Denmark, back to Copenhagen, and then on to Stockholm where I am right now. I’ll soon have a brief trip to Estonia, back to Sweden in Malmo, and the a final stop in London as the punctuation of the tour before heading home to Boulder.
Lucky for me, the variety of Agile conversations has been delightful everywhere. At the Agile Business Conference in London, it was wonderful to bring my “Community of Thinkers” message as a keynote. (And yes, for those of you keeping score, I delivered it barefooted :-) The keynote afforded me opportunity to once again promote my conviction about our actions as an Agile community. That is, as Agile matures and as Agile transformations are going mainstream, we must invite dialogue, inquiry and artistry in how we bring our “genius selves” to the continued healthy growth of Agile.
At the GOTO conference in Aarhus, I suspected that the very technical community gathered there wouldn’t be powerfully driven by Agile conversations. And yet, there was a full day of an Agile track. In that track I talked about Simon Sinek’s ”The Golden Circle: Tell Me Why” with regard to Agile Adoptions. (The talk received a nice write up in Danish here.) Both in this track and in my keynote the following day, I found people clearly eager to be transformative agents in their organizations based on their Agile passions. My keynote on “Complexity Theory and Design Thinking in Agile Adoptions” helped further these discussions and even invited several people to approach me afterward to talk about how they now understood they work they really wanted to do in Agile. They agreed. Agile was more than just a set of engineering practices and more than the Scrum framework; organizational Agile and its growth are now moving beyond just a level set with IT disciplines. And it wasn’t too shabby to get to play Pong using my Smartphone, or to watch the annual Lego Mindstorm competition!
Liv, Jean, Aino, and Helene - GOTO Aarhus Denmark
Another part of my GOTO positive experience were the great people of Trifork : tireless volunteers and selfless sponsors of GOTO throughout the organization including their energetic CTO Kresten Krab Thorup. I was grateful to meet so many Trifork people, to enjoy their enthusiasm, intellectual curiosity, passion and knowledge. In particular, it was such a pleasure to meet Aino Vonge Corry, Helene Simoni Thorup, Janne Jul Jensen, Liv Beswick Skov, Marlene Staunstrup Hyldborg, and Simon Hem Pedersen. Also from Trifork, Jesper Boeg was kind enough to provide me with a copy of his book on Kanban, as well as a book on Personal Effectiveness by his colleague Troels Richter. And Jasper Bjergard Arildslund sponsored me in speaking at a Copenhagen ScrumGroup gathering. Such great enthusiasm around Agile and its growth in software development communities worldwide.
But the pinnacle to date of discussions about complex challenging Agile transformations has been during my time at Rally’s Agile Open Forum in Copenhagen October 19th. Why? Because, in that day of tutorials and interactions, we engaged as a community of executives looking to bring Agile success out of the IT group. We created dialogue about the challenges organizations face when we move Agile upstream from the IT work into the business, and downstream into Agile practices for deployment and maintenance. Besides the session presenters from Rally (Ryan Martens in a surprise appearance, Karl Scotland, Wanda Marginean, and me) we were very fortunate to have the insights of Peter Holmelin of NetOp regarding his experiences in adopting Agile and creating significant organizational change.
I feel so fortunate to have engaged as a sponsor, a speaker and a participant in this event. In Copenhagen, During that one day, we concentrated on seeking the next level of maturity with regard to Agile practices effective scaling, and organizational change. I loved it. The level of engagement and the variety of conversations were definitely different than any other Agile event I have attended in the past.
Karl Scotland - Agile Open Forum, Copenhagen Denmark
All in all, you might say that, as I have been on this tour, I see that the Agile community is primed to stretch the “knowledge discovery process” posited by David Anderson in his blog based on his application of Michael Kennedy’s work in Lean Enterprise guidance. In the discussions in London, Aarhus, Copenhagen and now Stockholm, we’ve been challenging ourselves to expand the definition of knowledge and the definition of discovery as Agile expands: when does the discovery begin, and when does it end (if ever)?
To that end, I’ve been listening to these leaders of large Agile adoptions. And I’ve heard the need to create greater understanding around the value and disciplines of Agile Portfolio Steering. (In fact, Wanda Marginean led a great afternoon session game on Enterprise Steering based on work by Rally colleagues Isaac Montgomery and Ronica Roth.)
Now I am in Stockholm. Thanks to a colleague from the LSSC community, Joakim Sunden of Spotify, I have been invited to a number of additional Agile events here. The level of discussions of Agile transformations continues to concentrate on organizational issues. I’m excited about my upcoming talk at the LESS2011 conference on Systems Perspectives in Agile Adoptions through Visioning and Learning Models. I can’t wait to hear the participants’ experiences and challenges, to engage in all the interactions and, perhaps, to continue to expand my palate as well.
And so my Agile Europe Trip continues. As for my taste in food though, I know right now I won’t be tasting the specialty found on my dinner menu in Stockholm last week: “Långhalsar” in Swedish. Or if you prefer English: “Barnacles”. Gotta draw the line somewhere.
Jean Tabaka is a frequent flyer on no particular airline hence no particular status, an author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka
October and November for me are going to be months of travel. Specifically travel in Europe. I’m excited about the opportunity to bring my passions in and around the world of Agile to some great conferences in London, Aarhus, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Malmo. So, I offer this video as view into where I’ll be, when I’ll be there, and what I’ll be talking about. As you’ll hear me say in the video, I hope to see you there!
Jean Tabaka is a frequent flyer on no particular airline, an author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka
(Note: This post originally appeared at leadingresults.)
Several weeks ago, I made a pact with my Rally colleague Ken Clyne to finally begin blogging in 2011.
At the time, I expected that I’d write about agile product development – what it is to “be agile”, the relative merits of different frameworks, various tips and tricks, and basically share my experiences leading agile transformations.
After all, it’s what I do – it’s what I know.
But then I came across the great TED Talk: “The Golden Circle”, by Simon Sinek
(You can also see this video in Jean Tabaka’s recent post “Tell Me Why“).
“People don’t buy What you do, they buy Why you do it”… Its amazing what happens when you start asking the right questions.
Agile isn’t the ‘Why’ – at least not for me. Agile coaching is ‘What’ I do. Why do I do it? What do I believe?
First, I believe in LEADERSHIP.
Leadership tends to get a bad rap in some corners of the agile community. After all, agile is about self-managed, empowered teams and the wisdom of the crowd. Potential leaders are too often equated with traditional, autocratic management – slow, bureaucratic and in-humane – so they’re effectively told to ‘just stay out of the team’s way’ – and that’s unfortunate.
Truly enlightened leadership is the key to high-performing teams. Real leadership unleashes the potential of people; transforms them into a team; inspires their passions and focuses their energies.
And I believe in RESULTS.
When we invest our time, energy and passion we expect to achieve something. To realize meaningful results. Results matter. Results can mean more than making money (though it almost always includes that) – delighting customers, being first to market, and creating a great work environment may all be objectives for you, your team and your organization. Are you achieving results?
No matter the beauty of your process or the philosophical purity of your approach; if it doesn’t yield results it’s a well executed failure.
Too often, results seem to get lost in process maturity and methodology dogma – and that’s certainly not unique to the agile community.
So… Why Leading Results?
Because I believe that enlightened leadership is the key to unleashing the potential of high performing teams that achieve results beyond the imagining of their individual members…
I help unleash this potential by coaching people on how to lead effectively, from any position within the organization…
I just happen to coach lean/agile principles and practices…
Would you like to buy some?
Isaac Montgomery is the harried father of twin sons, the adoring husband of Angie, a frustrated hack on the golf course, and an Agile Coach at Rally Software. He blogs at Leading Results, and you can follow him on twitter at @iwmontgomery
Question: what do Neil Young, Simon Sinek, Don Reinertsen, and Jean Tabaka have in common? We all want to know why.
Several weeks ago, we introduced a new blog series “N Levels of Planning”. Our goal in this series is to investigate how Agile planning can benefit from thinking of planning as a number of levels, or layers, or paths. In this series post, I’d like us to take a conceptual step back from what we mean by “N”. I’d like to instead think about the “Why” of Agile planning regardless of the number of levels.
The Neil Young Connection
Warning: minor non sequitur. In 1970, Neil Young released his “After the Gold Rush” album featuring as its first track the great tune “Tell Me Why”.
Love that song! I had this song buzzing through my head after a discussion with colleagues about “Why.” Lyrics like: “Still the searcher must ride the dark horse, racing alone in his fright,” and, “Tell me lies later.” What can it mean?! What is there that is so important about starting with “Why,” and to ask it repeatedly? What did the Neil Young of yore get about the searcher, the dark horse, and the race that I needed to revisit now? And what does it have to do with Agile planning?
The Reinertsen Principles
I had some suspicions after reading Don Reinertsen’s “The Principles of Product Development Flow” that the “Why” is indeed what should be driving our Agile product development. In his book, Reinertsen exhorts us to inform our decisions about product development by starting with value flow. You may call this stating the glaringly obvious. For me who had been handily sticking to the “How” and “What” in my computer science expertise for decades, this tumbled several of my false idols. Ugh.
Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle
Recently, several colleagues here at Rally pointed me to a great TED talk: Simon Sinek’s “The Golden Circle”. If you haven’t watched it, take a gander. Sinek’s very simple model consists of 3 concentric circles, the innermost being “Why”, the outermost being “What” (See the picture above of the turquoise post-it.). Sinek defines successful businesses as those that start, not with “What” or “How”; they start with the core “Why”. This articulation of the “Why” rallies the business around one compelling vision and creates a vital emotional connection with its customers. “How” the company delivers on the “Why” follows from and is directed by the “Why”. Then and only then does the business move out the circle to the “What”. What exactly will our product be? Well, we know why we are building it, and we know how to deliver on this. Now it is time to build it!
We missed the “Why” boat in our initial Agile scaling advice
I was thinking about Sinek’s Golden Circle with regard to how we plan in Agile teams and Agile organizations. Too often, we have a tendency to start with “What” as the core for our planning. If we are really maverick, we may start with “How”. Too often, I fear that our planning “Why” is conspicuous by its absence. I am fairly certain Ryan Martens and I fell into this “What” trap when we defined 5 steps for Agile scaling and maturing using Flow, Pull, and Innovate.Why were we defining how to scale and mature should have been the first question? And then How shall we do that? Okay, we did get the How: we turned to Lean Thinking principles about Flow, Pull, and Perfect (which we renamed Innovate) for guidance. And then we quickly jumped to What the practices are: 5 steps of what to do, what roadblocks to expect, what benefits to reap.
Agile planning levels need to start with “Why”
This is what I now believe to be true. Just as businesses must be driven by the “Why”, I believe we must consider the “Why” that drives any of our Agile planning. My hope is that we in the Agile product development world would come up with a fairly common answer for “Why”: smooth flow of value delivery. Period. Our “How” can be informed by the set of principles we believe would best address our “Why”. We can turn to Lean Principles as a great guide. Here, I’ll admit I favor Reinertsen’s principles of product development flow as the canon for “How”. We’ve got the “Why” and the “How” for our planning. Now we can declare our “What”: what will be our planning practices in our Agile organizations?
How Jean Tabaka fits in
With “Why”, “How” and “What” as our planning guide, there is one more beautiful gift of symmetry across Neil Young, Don Reinertsen, and Simon Sinek. Not only does this virtuous Golden Circle guide overall planning. I believe that within each of the “N levels of planning”, we can see that there is a “Why”, “How”, and “What”. Here is an example: “Why should we have a daily level of planning?” “How should we guide that planning, i.e. how would we know we were doing a good job of planning at this level?” And now, “What will our practices be around daily planning?” As we regard levels of planning as not just sufficient but necessary, we turn back to the “Why”, find guidance from the “How”, and then create the useful “What” practices.
Back to Neil Young’s “Tell Me Why”. I think we can avoid “riding the dark horse racing alone in fright” if we start our planning with a compelling “Why.” And, with thoughtful “Why”, “How” and “What” levels of Agile Planning, I believe that we can avoid the “lies later” as well.
This is what I believe. What do you believe?
Jean Tabaka is a crash skier, sometime poet, author and Agile Fellow at Rally Software Development. You can follow Jean on Twitter at @jeantabaka
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