The conversation went something like this.

“People who know they are being assessed will pay more attention in a training course or at their daily work. We need to use exams and assessments to getthem to pay more attention because otherwise they will just flake off. People are inherently lazy and we need to make sure they work.”

The conversation above sounds like a hidden threat. The threat I see goes something like… If you miss something you are in trouble on the exam or “Pointy Haired Dude” is watching…. This is an old school paradigm that destroys critical thinking in my experience. For example, the issue of an Exam has dogged classic PMP training and has generally pulled down the quality of critical thinking across the spectrum of corporate environments. It dogs classic workshop training when the conversation moves from “whats the best way to think about this ….. to ….. will this be on the Exam? If not on the exam then, can we move on to stuff that will be on the exam?”

When people become more concerned about the exam or assessment they have often stopped thinking critically. For agile training, which is most of what I do these days, people can easily fall back to old learning styles of known answers to known questions. Most of today’s business problems are demandingly complex and do not have predictable outcomes. A test or exam is a simple predictive Q/A model and that includes the situational stuff as well. For situational stuff, I just memorize the abstract pattern for which the situational question is written for and then answer according to the pattern. To deal with complexity people need an empirical thought process for the finding stuff we don’t know we don’t know. Cramming more factoids into adult heads is counter productive. As adults we typically have more than enough information crammed in our heads. The question becomes “Can we make better use of what we already know or have experienced to deal with uncertainty?”

In my experience, open reflective learning will occur and empirical behavior will result when, as a trainer/leader to I make the environment safe for learning. As a manager/director of people the same policy holds true, if you punish people for making mistakes they will stop making mistakes by trying not to do to much beyond what is painfully obvious that needs doing. In either case, learninig is shut down for knowlege workers. Sharing of knowledge, both tacit and explicit, comes to a halt and the organization’s ability to learn atrophies because those muscles are no longer being used. At this point the best we can achieve is a pursuit of efficiency and what you find is a focus on faster / cheaper / quicker. Anything that is different and innovative gets squeezed out by the fear of not doing something that is well understood and controllable.

Innovation is needed across most areas of today’s corporation. Learning should be part and parcel to every engaging job and challenge. For innovation to occur people need to focus on learning and that means expect mistakes. If they do not feel safe they will make feeble attempts to do some new things but, never really bravely reach out of their comfort zone. If you are hiring for factory / robot type positions then expect robots but, knowledge workers are key for innovative culture and fresh ideas.

People in my workshops pay attention because they care and I care. It is a social bond. As a leader/trainer you set a behavior pattern that will be modeled. Are you modeling “I am watching you!” ? People that work/report to me pay attention because we both care to do the best. Those that don’t care can and should be asked to leave or excuse themselves until they sort out their destructive tendencies. I call not caring destructive because it destroys empirical behavior .

Generally, it is useless to retain people that do not care. In most cases the overhead of managing them is in excess of not having them there. Which sadly means I am better off doing the job myself. As a leader or trainer your first job should be to foster an atomosphere where learning is safe and encourage your people to become learning machines. Better teams make better people who make better products.

• At the forefront of learning is where innovation occurs.
• Learning is about knowledge creation (see Nonaka’s paper).
• Knowledge creation is an interactive process.Organizations that foster learning reach new heights.
• People that are in learning mode are paying the best kind of attention.
• A good scrum process enables the team learning process.

Maybe I am completely off my rocker but, I found the conversation interesting.
Comments?
- Doug

VersionOne was kind enough to invite me as a presenter to a small conference event in Austin on December 7th 2009. The Austine keynote went well and I was lucky enough to be ranked as the best presenter at the event. There were 90+ people in attendance and 78 people filled in an evaluation.

Catch me in Austin, TX delivering a Keynote for the Agile Journal December 7th,  http://www.accurev.com/seminar/austin20091208-4

Kanban for software development is a newer kid on the block, at least in the US. Besides being just another word like Scrum that is not commonly understood in the English language, how does it stack up? Both Kanban and Scrum align with the well with the value system described in the Agile Manifesto. And they make an interesting pair.

As much as we love Scrum, even we would have to admit that it’s not perfect.  Nothing is. In fact, a large part of the literature describes workarounds for various deficiencies that Scrum presents to us in certain circumstances.

One of the more commonly noted deficiencies in Scrum is that it plans its work a whole Sprint at a time.  This “batch” planning process is often not agile enough to cope with the actual rate of change of requirements.  In fact, PlaceHolder Stories, discussions of mid-Sprint Re-planning, and discussions of renegotiating the scope of a Sprint are common deficiencies that teams must cope with.

The new kid, called Kanban, which solves some of these deficiencies and presents others, is becoming popular for software development projects.

Altogether, Kanban, Scrum, XP and many other agile methods rely on a task boards and index card like systems to simultaneously decompose and manage the work. What’s new about task boards and index card systems? Index card systems have been around at least since 1925, when the first one was formalized by Dr. Crawford and used later to build NASA rockets. Increasing task orientation is a well understood method for improving team performance and has been well documented since the 1950s. Our goal will be to highlight both Kanban and Scrum and then touch on why we need to reinvent them ourselves so often.

Learning Objectives

• An overview of Kanban
• An overview of Scrum
• Stacking them side by side
• The Power of Index Card Systems and Task Orientation
• Can one reduce or evolve from one to the other?
• Why do we repeat ourselves so often?

Discussion: The word self organizing is a little fuzzy for me.

The way I think about self organizing teams is that they are  pre-assembled. After assembly a pressure is applied to respond to a demand. The demand is articulated
in the form of a story/project (don’t want to dice those words right now!) And the pressure is from a business that provides support as long as … You produce something of value! “Eye on the Prize”

The demand is applied such that we get feedback. That feedback has a sensitivity that can be adjusted or tuned like a dial. The dial for agile/scrum teams is easily seen in the form of a story (Chunk of Work) level  and can go up to the thickness of a project/product. If the demand goes unfulfilled then there is an implied threat of dissolution against the team or even loss of job individually.

Sometimes the support is so strong that we can ignore the demand and turn our noses up in the air. Big government / orgs often feel like that to me. It just do not matter because nothing bad will really happen so why sweat the small stuff. Even if that is not true and something bad will happen if it feels like nothing bad will happen then the behavior often develops a “don’t sweat the small stuff” approach.

Is self organizing the best way? I think that depends if it humanizes the workplace and makes better people with more compassion while igniting creativity to help the business thrive. Demands must be seen as real and consequences for failing to work well with others must be imposed.

Comment: The idea here is that there can be only one source for Scrum knowledge. I guess that depends on where you get your definition from and what you need. Should there be only one way to think about scrum? Probably not, although,  a rookie mistake is to modify without have deep applied practice and experience under your belt. The 1st common mistake we see people make is modifying scrum without understanding it. They often confuse themselves and their organization.

Below in purple is a post from a past attendee at a Hard Times Course I delivered.

I am not sure what to say or how to acknowledge this post. I am very grateful that someone choose to say these things and hope that others will be inspired to do similar things. The other pattern I hope to see more of and encourage others to do the same is to call attention to each others good work. This is social media at it’s best and encourages us all to be better.

Thank you Robert

The real America just stood up

Posted by Robert Merrill on August 29, 2009 under uFunctional Values

Doug Shimp of 3 Back LLC trained me as a Certified ScrumMaster early in 2009. It was some of the best training I’ve ever had.

He’s still training people to be Certified ScrumMasters. But that’s not news.

He’s training people in “Hard Times Detroit” to be Certified ScrumMasters at cost—$249 a pop. That’s news.

I choose to believe that Doug Shimp—not the selfish, short-sighted scoundrels who landed us in this mess, or the politicians who tell us what we want to hear and not the truth, or the journalists who inflame and incite instead of inspire (even when they’re not skewing the truth)—is the real America, and that there are about a half million more where he came from.

Because of that, and by God’s grace (that word gets tossed around a lot—it means “unmerited favor”), we may have a future after all; H1N1 flu, peak oil, eight-month’s-pay-worth-of-debt and climbing (how else do you put $10,000,000,000,000 or 75% of GDP in perspective), climate change, and all. (Sorry if I triggered a stab of fear, or left out the thing that scares you the most).

If you’re a Doug Shimp, please stand up. If you see a Doug Shimp standing, watch, listen, and act.

This past weekend I delivered a Scrum training course to unemployed people in Detroit. The name if this course was “Hard Times ScrumMaster Detroit”. This course has given rise to a concept we are calling HTU “Hard Times University”

HTU’s purpose is to deliver high quality, low cost, open source knowledge, current training, in a community driven way. It has clear to me that large parts of our educational system are simply holding our learning hostage by high price, huge loans and organizational patterns that create barriers to doing it any other way. The people in this course were amazing and the energy to drastically reduce these barriers is there. Expect to hear much more on “Hard Times University” in the upcoming weeks.

2nd

It looks like we have a couple of publishers interested in our book “Advanced Topi cs in Scrum“. Chapter 4 is ready to read and waiting for anyone who wishes to comment on it. Find it here CHAPTER 4

Previously, I had seen Luke deliver a couple of games and read his book. And I have tried, with good success, to apply many of his techniques. However, like all busy people one thing after another had crowded Innovation Games® out of my head and I was no longer using them as actively. The reason for this is simple: too many things to do, a busy schedule, time for mastery and lack of a deep appreciation for the techniques. So, my current thought is, Innovation Games are subtle, powerful and really require hard work to master and apply well. Innovation Games now has my full attention and I am actively applying them.

Luke is a Grand Master Facilitator. I have facilitated many meetings and discussion around product development and consider myself a good facilitator. After the 1^st morning of training on day one, my notebook was filled with quickly scribbled thoughts. Luke’s style, breadth and depth of applied experience as a facilitator were staggering. What could be learned by using the games became so much more apparent as the workshop progressed. When Innovation Games® are applied well many “hard to discover things” are teased to the surface through subtle artful facilitation and collaborative interaction. With trained observers these games can be used to capture powerful ideas for evolving products.

The workshop was a double success because many of my peers where there from the Scrum Alliance. We were all being trained to become Innovation Games certified facilitators. Our days were filled with Luke artfully facilitating numerous games. Most people would not notice the facilitator’s presence; however, because all of my classmates are professional trainers, coaches, facilitators we paid close attention. After each game we ran a retrospect and review of the numerous techniques being demonstrated. All of us were able to personally relate to numerous experiences we have had and could immediately see applications to improve our work.

Summary:

Master of the these games is aquired through application. I would encouarge anyone to try applying them and see what can be learned.

When the games are delivered by a skilled practioner they become a powerful set of techniques for figuring out product development needs. In Scrum the role of the Product Owner is well defined facing into the team. However, there is little to no help directly from Scrum for figuring out what to build. Generally, building the right thing is easy if we know what the right thing is. Innovation games are serious tools for determining what the right product should be.

It is not often that my head is left reeling from two days of intensive training. I am used to cramming information but, Luke’s training challenged my head in fundamental ways. These challenges caused me to reflect on how I was conceptualizing approaches to product development. My Big Thanks is too Luke and my classmates for making this possible. We make each other better through our collaborative interaction and Luke has raised the bar for me on what great facilitation can look like!

A BIG THANK YOU TO LUKE!

A great recent blog post by Vikas Hazrati caught my eye.

The story starts like this …

You have been feeling great. Recently, you met a lot of people in \the software community who knew little about Agile and you felt good telling them on how you are practicing Agile on your new project. You tell them about the wonders it has done to the business value delivered to the client and how your work life balance has improved since you started following Agile methodologies religiously. How you have felt so committed to the project that you are working on a that you have a great team of professionals.

So far so good.

The climax in the story comes on that dreaded Friday evening when the less committed people of the organization, which includes all of your team, are give the pink slip, and of course you are one of them!

You wonder, Why us, Why me, How the hell am I not committed? I thought that after years of developing software the wrong way this is the first time that you have done the things right, then why? The reason is that somehow your organization believes that you are not committed. Neither to the organization nor your work.

This is not a surprising outcome and all to common. Agile has gone mainstream but it will be attacked from many angles.

My Observations

The current systems are thought models, essentially living thought models, changing them is slow and painful.  Like any living thing when it is attacked or challenged it will fight back and lash out in fear, anger, igonorance and for pure simple survival. The people defending the old tired models of thinking are simple acting reasonable from their frame of reference.

Additionally, for big companies to even recognize that they have an incredibly valuable asset in a well formed team is a huge step acknowledge that performing teams are capital assets. With a great team I can deploy it towards a challenging business problem and generate a myriad of ways to thrive. Knowledge is a commodity, it is the ability to do something useful with that knowledge that will distinguish these companies long term. Eliminating your good teams (capital assets) from the business is fiscally irresponsible and it will come back to haunt the organization.

Expect real change to take years. You can do things to dramatically accelerate this change but, you have to be very thoughtful about your approach. It will not rely solely on a rationalized conversation (i.e. 1+1 = 2) people just don’t care when it comes to habits and perceptions driven from an emotional bases. And like it or not we are most often dealing with emotional issues since our rationalizations are anchored by an emotional part of our brain. Intentionally changing behavior is a long haul propositioin and the scrum framework is an means to inspect and adapt a change state into existence.

- Doug

http://3back.com

I hope you enjoy. Please leave a comment on your experience.

Look for more videos coming soon from a wide audience of practitioners, coaches and trainers.