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Feb 05 2013 Meeting: Agile Coach Frank Saucier on: EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNERSHIP

Slides from this talk are available: Effective Product Ownership

The Product Owner role is essential in Scrum. Get this right, and your product delights end-users and customers. Play this role ineffectively and you have a failed Scrum implementation.

This month’s meeting is about work with Product Owners and how to be effective in the role of Product Owner. Agile Coach Frank Saucier from FreeStandingAgility brings a tutorial presentation and a set of group activities that convey an understanding of the Product Owner role.

Presentation:  EFFECTIVE PRODUCT OWNERSHIP

Ken Schwaber says “The Product Owner role is both challenging and rewarding.” The Scrum Guide says “The Product Owner may not be the Scrum Master.” It also says “The Product Owner is a single person.”

“As a [user], I want to…”

If you’ve written requirements as stories, you are probably very familiar with this phrase, but who exactly is the user we are talking about?

Ultimately, the Product Owner role’s primary task is to create a Product Backlog. How exactly does this magic happen? Who makes a good Product Owner? Who selects or nominates the Product Owner? Attend this session to learn:

  • How to select a Product Owner
  • How to work with the Product Owner to build a backlog
  • How to effectively occupy the Product Owner role in your organization
  • What skills are essential to be a good Product Owner
  • Specific guidance on how to gather requirements, assess value & make frequent trade-off decisions
  • What the Product Owner DOES NOT do
  • Sources of more guidance, resources and information

If you are a project sponsor or executive considering agile or Scrum, you do not want to miss this presentation.

Attend this session to learn the inside scoop on tips, tricks and techniques for occupying the role and/or interacting with the person in the role of the Product Owner

 

About The Presenter:

Frank Saucier is an Agile coach and trainer at FreeStanding Agility. He delivers experiential Agile training courses and Agile coaching. Frank works with company leaders, conducts team starts and provides Agile coaching guidance to teams, managers, and project sponsors. His Agile coaching and training experience includes work with individuals and teams from Aetna Insurance, MetraTech, Mass Mutual Insurance, F5 Networks, and Philips Electronics.

Frank has over 20 years experience in software and technology spanning software development, computer engineering, application engineering, technology marketing, & project management. He has domain expertise in  Enterprise Mobile, Insurance, Financial Systems, Design Automation, Defense Systems, and Web Technologies. Reach Frank by email at franks@freestandingagility.com

 

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Agile Coaching: Core Values & Supporting Principles

The idea of hammering out a set of guiding Values and Principles for Agile Coaches is an idea whose time has come. Increasing reports of problems in Agile Coaching are tarnishing our profession and diluting our effectiveness as change agents. This is a very serious problem.

A set of community-built, open-source Values and Principles is one solution we can all act on today. Rather than looking to institutions to lead us, or assigning blame, we can choose instead to look to ourselves and do something about it, right now. Click. Done.

I invite you to come and play with this idea. The aim of the group is to hammer out an opt-in set of Agile Coaching Values and Principles for Agile Coaches, with intent to improve the working lives of Agile Coaches and Agile Coaching Clients throughout the world.

Please come and play!

 

 

 

Click here to JOIN the Agile Coaching Values discussion group on Google+

Will you please also forward this invitation to other agile coaches and agile coaching clients that might be interested in this conversation?

Thank you!

Intrigued? Here is more detail:

Agile Coaches are familiar with the patterns of naive and vulnerable client organizations that are new to Agile. In my view, Agile Coaching pros have an obligation to help clients understand what is best for them. This always includes helping the client take 100% responsibility for their own learning. This usually means the coach must refuse opportunities to play a larger role.

Being there, 5 days a week, full time, for 3 months or more can be lucrative and hard to resist. As coaching professionals, we do our best (and live up to our potential) by serving the learning of the client organization. This includes challenging the client org to take 100% responsibility to reach a self-sustaining state of Agility, without the need for an external coach.

These Agile Coaching values and principles listed below are a good and solid basis for guiding coach-client relationships and interactions. These values and principles are listed in the familiar ‘agile manifesto‘ format.

The content- these values and principles– are optimized on the continuous, progressive and ongoing organizational learning of the coached organization.

 

In serving our clients, we have come to value:

Creating Independence over generating billing
Championing Learning over avoiding risk
Building Relationships over building transactions
Inviting Participation over assigning responsibility

We use these Principles to guide our work with clients:

Voluntary engagement of everyone involved in organizational change is an essential requirement for success.

Coaching every single day in an organization creates a serious risk of client dependency and is to be avoided, consistent with common sense and good judgement with respect to client needs.

Organizations are responsible for their own learning. Arms-length, time-boxed working agreements between clients and coaches are essential.

Coaches must look for every opportunity to increase the learning of the organization as a whole, with strong intent to vacate or otherwise evolve the current coaching role as soon as possible.

Coaching requires the willingness to identify any cultural impediments to continuous improvement, and to communicate these to the people in the organization who have the authority to address them.

The primary task of a coach is to help improve the effective results and working lives of the people employed in the organizations they serve.

The ability of an organization to respond to change is the primary measure of progress.

Leaders in an organization must continuously signal positive encouragement, and create safe space for others to think and learn, if positive culture change is to be lasting and effective.

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Jan 23 WALTHAM MEETING: The Relationship Between Software Hacking, The Agile Movement, & Culture Design

Eric Raymond, Author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”

Eric was an invitee to the 2001 meeting in Snowbird, Utah where the Agile Manifesto was conceived and ratified. Interestingly enough, he declined the invitation due to previous commitments. At tonight’s session, Eric will discuss the relationship between software hacking, the Agile movement, the emerging world of culture design. He’ll also reveal specific tips and tricks for getting what you want from authority figures in your own company to keep agile alive and growing inside the culture of your own organization.

At this session you will learn:

  • Specific methods for convincing management to make large investments in TDD and Continuous Integration
  • What language NOT to use when discussing investing in Agile in your company
  • How to champion agile in your company by having OTHER PEOPLE WITH MORE AUTHORITY do it for you
  • Lessons from hacking the culture of the Open Source movement
  • Why Agile is actually part of a wider discipline of Culture Design and what it means to you at work

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/316557

About The Presenter:

Eric Steven Raymond, often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, Raymond was frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement. He is also known for his 1990 edit and later updates of the “Jargon File”, currently in print as the “The New Hacker’s Dictionary”.

Meeting Agenda:

6:30 pm Introduction

7:00 pm Food, beverages, and socializing

7:20 pm Main event

8:20 pm Done

8:30 pm Done Done

Meeting Location:

CORPORATE OFFICE PARK
200 West Street
Waltham, MA 02451

The event room is located on the 1st floor. Enter the building. Take the hallway to the left. Walk past the elevators. The door to the event room will be on your right before the restrooms.

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/316557

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Jan 24 DOWNTOWN MEETING: Culture Hacking: Making Work Productive and Fun

NOTE: Due to a schedule conflict, Eric Raymond will only be speaking in Waltham on Wednesday 1/23.

Do you convene meetings at work? Do you have some say regarding who is or is not hired? Are you bored at work, and ready to make changes now, and tired of waiting for your organization to really “get it”?

If so, “culture hacking” is the game for you. Culture hacking is the act of intentionally experimenting with influencing culture, for your betterment and the betterment of others in your organization. The most fruitful culture hacks are those that tip your organization in the direction of more learning at the group level.

Agile is a learning framework built on 4 core values and 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto. Agile practices are built upon this foundation, which encourage learning. Agile is a culture hack. Agile practices and patterns are culture hacking techniques.

Attend this session to learn about culture hacking. Learn specific hacks you can implement tomorrow. A hack is a specific, small intervention, a small change in your behavior individually and with others, which has the potential to make a big impact. Culture hacks are small, low-cost, low-risk changes that have at least the potential to make a significant impact. When effective hacks are implemented over time, and in harmony with each other, the results can be quite impressive.

Harmony and balance is the name of the game with culture hacking. Effective hacks leverage what is already in taking place, and make a small tweak of change that makes a big impact, or has a high “learning yield”. Human systems are living, like a tree, or a garden. Composition is the act of arranging things so they work better together. Culture hacking is all about that.

Contrary to popular belief, culture is always available to be tweaked, modified and refined. The trick is to start small, and start small. Start generating new expansive stories, and make those old limiting company stories more difficult to tell.

Culture is malleable and responsive to change. This session explains how to make small changes that have a big impact inside your team, department or division.

Attend this session to get introduced to culture hacking. You will exit this session with the following takeaways:

  • Quickly understand how you already have permission to do this, and how to stop asking for permission
  • Learn about the concepts and facilities of culture hacking, and the wider culture hacking movement that is taking shape worldwide
  • Learn about how to apply culture hacking to your context, where you work, and have fun doing it!
  • Examine specific Agile practices as culture hacks, and analyze why they work. Investigate Scrum and Kanban through the lens of culture hacking
  • Explore the agricultural (emphasis added) discipline known as permaculture and how it relates to culture hacking
  • Explore an enumeration of 16 specific hacks you can pick from and experiment with tomorrow, at work, in pursuit of more learning, productivity and fun in your organization.
  • Gain access to books, web pages and papers that provide you with a toolkit to start playing the game of hacking the culture of your organization.

Ten copies of the book THE CULTURE GAME written by the presenter will be raffled off at this event.

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/316562

About The Presenter:

Dan Mezick is a coach and trusted adviser to executives, project sponsors, managers and teams developing complex products. He is the author of THE CULTURE GAME: Tools for the Agile Manager. Since 2008, Dan has delivered Agile coaching and training to over 7500 individuals working in organizations like Zappos Insights, CIGNA Insurance, Sikorsky Aircraft, SIEMENS Healthcare Diagnostics, and dozens of smaller organizations throughout New England and the United States.

Meeting Agenda:

3:30 pm Introduction

4:00 pm Beverages and socializing

4:20 pm Main event

5:20 pm Done

5:30 pm Done Done

Meeting Location:

NOTE: The downtown event is being held at a new location.

Workbar
711 Atlantic Ave.
Boston, MA  02110

Workbar Atlantic Ave is right down the street from the MBTA Red & Silver Lines (South Station stop).  It is also just a short walk from the Orange Line (Chinatown or Downtown Crossing stops) and the Green Line (Boylston or Park Street stops).

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/316562

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Organizational Permaculture: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Organizational permaculture is a concept whose time has come. The idea of doing  planned, predictable, scheduled, and altogether LARGE campaigns of culture change in organizations is not useful. It does not work. It is ineffective. It is misguided. This idea is analogous to clear-cutting a forest, bringing in bulldozers, moving colossal amounts of earth, and repurposing the land for a new and higher “best use”.

 

We know that does not actually work with people, at work, in organizations.

Can you see why?

We need a much better way.

The philosophy and design principles of permaculture offer an alternative. Permaculture offers a proven set of values, principles and practices for creating lasting culture change in living systems.

And what exactly is Permaculture?

Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. (source: PermaCulture Institute)

And what exactly is Organizational Permaculture?

Organizational permaculture is the application of permaculture principles to the observation, analysis, design, development, testing, implementation, integration, and maintenance of culture in all human social systems, including: teams, families, and organizations.

 

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.

Families, teams and organizations are living systems. Permaculture provides a set of principles that promote a rational, bottom-up, incremental and effective way to encourage authentic and lasting cultural change … in human systems.

 

 

Organizational Permaculture Overview

Examine these links to get oriented.

Blog Post: Introduction to Organizational Permaculture

Blog Post: Permaculture’s 12 Guiding Principles

 

 

Organizational Permaculture Hacks: Tools and Techniques

Examine these links to get some ideas about how to apply permaculture to your work and play in social settings. These are (perma)culture hacks.

Organizational Permaculture Hack #1: KANBAN

Organizational Permaculture Hack #1: COGNITIVE RECYCLING

 

 

Organizational Permaculture: Additional Links and Resources

Cruise these links to see what others are saying around the web about Organizational Permaculture. Be sure to take a look and consider joining the FaceBook group!

 

 

FaceBook Group: Organizational Permaculture

Blog Post: Business and Permaculture Principles

Blog Post: Organizational Permaculture: What Can Failures Teach Us?

 

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Organizational Permaculture: The 12 Design Principles

The principles of permaculture are an important and perhaps even essential in working rationally with organizational culture.

For those of you intrigued by the Organizational Permaculture concept, I am providing you with a detailed enumeration of the 12 essential principles of permaculture design.

NOTE: These detailed essays come from http://permacultureprinciples.com

You might want to think about your teams, departments and the wider enterprise as you ponder what these principles might mean for how you approach culture change:

The 12 Core Principles of Permaculture. Included are related blog posts from member of the Organizational Permaculture Group on Facebook:

Principle #01: Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in?)

Principle #02: Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in?)

Principle #03: Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

Lloyd, Adreas. Obtain a Yield (link)

 

Principle #04: Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

Mezick Daniel J. Principle #4 of Organizational Permaculture. (link)

Principle #05: Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #06: Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #07: Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in?)

Principle #08: Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #09: Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #1o: Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #11: Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

Principle #12: Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

Organizational Permaculture Blog Posts on this Principle:

(none as of yet, why not jump in? Explore the group on FaceBook)

 

Agricultural permaculture principles are in complete alignment with the Agile Manifesto.

Or is is the other way around?

Related Links:

More blog posts from Daniel Mezick on Organizational PermaCulture

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.

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Organizational Permaculture

In a previous post, I explained how Kanban is a tool of Organizational Permaculture.

In another post, I told you about Cognitive Recycling, and how a very small adjustment to your meeting scheduling can have potentially huge leverage in terms of obtaining better results… by harnessing a readily available supply of human cognition.

Organizational Permaculture

Organizational Permaculture is a permaculture approach to elevating levels of team and group learning in organizations. It’s taking advantage of what is already there, and using it. It leverages the often ignored, underutilized, undervalued, abandoned, or otherwise unleveraged human cognition that is readily available to power a task at the group level.

Organizational Permaculture techniques are aligned with the philosophy and approaches of agricultural permaculture. Organizational Permaculture takes the philosophy of agricultural permaculture and applies this philosophy of design to organizations.

Non-invasive, Organizational Permaculture techniques include:

There are many more. I believe that over time, we are going to see more and more of the successful techniques used by organizational consultants recognized as permaculture techniques, successfully applied to organizations.

 

Please investigate and consider joining the Organizational Permaculture Facebook group. In this group on Facebook we are mixing people from the agricultural permaculture movement with folks from organizational development, agile coaching, culture hacking and others tribes who are interested in this concept.

 

Organizational Permaculture techniques align on the design principles of the wider permaculture movement:

Permaculture Principles

  1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.
  2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.
  3. Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.
  4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.
  5. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature’s abundance to reduce our consumptive behavior and dependence on non-renewable resources.
  6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.
  7. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.
  8. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.
  9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.
  10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.
  11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
  12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

Source: Wikipedia Permaculture Design Principles

 

Are the best organizational interventions those that leverage and make use of  what is already there?

Can permaculture techniques be the key to achieving genuine enterprise agile?

Does an understanding of permaculture as applied to organizations help explain how Kanban actually works?

Is iteration and incrementality an essential design principle when dealing with all manner of culture, be it agricultural or organizational?

 

Related Links:

The Permaculture Institute

Permaculture principles, and ethics

More Blog Posts on Organizational Permaculture

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Engagement & Disengagement Part2: Perceived Progress

In the previous post, I explained how when we are denied a sense of control over our space or environment, we check out, aka “disengage.” When taken to extremes, we might even disassociate. This can happen for example when we experience a trauma.

Knowledge workers need to have a sense of autonomy. Mandates and prescription kill any sense of freedom, autonomy and control. I think there is a pandemic of disengagement at work.

Engagement does require a sense of perceived control over one’s space or environment in my view.

Progress

Even with a sense of control, if there is no progress, then the typical person will disengage and “check out” on you. They usually will not physically exit the room. If you are an authority figure, they may even work hard to appear they are with you. They are not.

We all want perceived progress. If you have ever got off the highway during a traffic jam, to take your chances navigating the side roads, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Without movement and a sense of progress, it is easy to feel frustrated and stuck. Without a progression and some sense of movement, I think it is easy to disengage. And that’s exactly what I do.

Therefore: to kill engagement, refrain from paying attention to creating any sense of progress whatsoever.

Therefore: to kill engagement, do not iterate, because that might provide an opportunity to feed a sense of progress by ending the previous step, reflecting on it, and starting another.

Therefore: to kill engagement, don’t depict progress visually with a burndown chart, task board or other visual device, since that might provide a sense of progress and therefore increase at least the potential for engagement. Never depict the current state of progress in any visual way. To kill engagement, don’t provide a progress bar, checklist of completion, or any kind of scoreboard.

Therefore: to kill engagement, never bring time to the attention of the group, since awareness of the passage of time might arouse people to notice that no progress has taken place since last Tuesday.

I think you get my point.

There is not even the potential for engagement without a sense of progress combined with a sense of control. The good news is that it is really, really simple: deliver a sense of control and a sense of progress and you deliver the conditions under which engagement can happen. And yes, engagement can be designed.

Experience design. It’s a big deal, and can be simple, if you get the fundamentals right. If more and more of us start thinking of ourselves as experience designers, we can create engagement where we live, were we play and especially where we work. It starts by acknowledging that everyone wants and needs a sense of control before they can authentically engage. Then it continues by acknowledging that we all need a sense of progress before we can continue to engage in any sense of that term.

Perceived Control + Perceived Progress = Potential for Engagement

en·gage

/enˈgāj/
Verb
  1. Occupy, attract, or involve someone’s interest or attention.
  2. Cause someone to become involved in a conversation or discussion.

See also:

How Good Games Deliver Happiness and Learning

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Engagement & Disengagement, Part1: Sense of Control

Everyone knows what engagement is, even if it is hard to define precisely in words. We know when we are experiencing it. It has to do with immersion and focus and “being there”. Engagement rarely has negative connotation. It’s almost always associated with good feelings.

While the exact recipe for generating engagement at work may be subject to debate, we know for sure how to kill engagement: simply reduce any real or perceived control that people have inside their environment. For example, a simple recipe for killing engagement is to simply reduce the level of liberty and the freedom to choose and decide. When prescription is the norm, we can reasonably expect disengagement. This is exactly what goes on in most knowledge-workplaces. Prisons also create a prescriptive environment that is low on freedom of choice. I’m being flip here.

The productivity increases from agile processes like Scrum come from elevated levels of engagement. It’s really that simple. Productivity and engagement are correlated. Same exact people, higher levels of engagement. Scrum properly implemented helps this to happen.

When Jeff Sutherland talks about doubling team productivity and then doubling it again, in my view the workers were about 20% engaged at the start. Then engagement went to 40% (a double) with the introduction of Scrum and then 80% (another double) after a few more months. This assumes of course people are willingly opting in and not compelled to do Scrum.

In summary: To kill engagement, simply remove any options to decide or to  choose, and make everything a prescription and a mandate. That eliminates any sense of control and with it, any legitimate engagement. The reality of this is self-evident. To reduce engagement, reduce liberty. Liberty means choice, choice means at least the perception if not the actual experience of control. Reducing engagement is a simple matter. Simply replace the option to choose with a mandate. The founding fathers referred to this as ‘tyranny’.

See also:

How Good Games Deliver Happiness and Learning

How to Botch Perfectly Good Agile Adoptions