“What do you do after you’ve won the World Cup? There’s nothing after that.”

What do I know about football?

I know I don’t know much about football, but I know what I see. Discipline, Teamwork and Common Goal. That’s what I see in a good game of football. And what do I mean by a “good game”?  I mean a game played by a real team as opposed to a disparate and desperate group of individuals.

Discipline, Teamwork and a Common Goal

How would I define Discipline? Practice, practice, practice. The kind of practice that amounts to what Malcolm Gladwell calls “The 10,000 Hour Rule“.  The kind of practice that makes your head and body ache all over but you still continue to strive because you know the prize outweighs the cost.

How would I define Teamwork? When everyone on the team sets aside their ego to get the job done. And not just done, but done well. So well that it makes you swell with pride. Great teamwork means working hard when people are together and when they are apart. A winning football team doesn’t just wait to play together for the several weeks in the runup before the cup (that’s far too late to be learning how to play together and still expect to win the World Cup). They create opportunities to get team practice in. And, of course, everyone learns. From each other. For the team. Even if that means exposing one’s weaknesses and our own lack of knowledge, skills and experience.

How would I define Common Goal? One that everyone in the team truly believes in. One that inspires each individual to be the best they can be so that, together, they can become more than the sum of their parts. And there’ll be lots of passing of the ball, like the way Xavi plays, because there is no single star or hero in a winning team. The brilliance lies in the team playing to each other’s strengths and strengthening individual weaknesses. The gleam comes from the team achieving the Common Goal together.

The secret beyond the riddle

What do you do after you’ve won the World Cup? Will you tie up your laces and hang up your boots? Will that be it? Of course not. I know I don’t know much about football, but I know what life shows me about winners and losers.

Winners carry on winning, moving the goal posts further out with each win, like Armstrong and Ferrera, winning not just once, but many times because the goal is much more than just the space between the posts.

Winners raise the game

Winners turn their expertise into repeatable formulae, achieving “conscious competence of unconscious competence“, so that they become better than they were yesterday every day. And true winners help others become winners, too.

Ouais! L’édition française de La Route de Brique Jaune est arrivéé finalement. Visitez www.agilefairytales.com et téléchargéz ce jeu gratuit. Dépensez des minutes de merveilles avec votre équipe et vos amies pour apprendre comment faire le co-coaching (le ‘peer coaching’ en anglais). A bientôt!

Common Cause for Good

When it comes to organisational change, one of the most overlooked factors is the impact individuals have on an organisation. After all, organisational change begins with the individual. Another commonly overlooked fact is that we can only change ourselves. That’s why much of this blog focuses on working with groups, teams and individuals.

Natural Complexity in Team Dynamics

One of the things I enjoy most about organisational change is the element of surprise. Others would describe this as ‘uncertainty’. While others may fear it, I choose to embrace it. I strive to turn every challenge as an opportunity. A chance to learn and improve. From where I’m standing, we’re surrounded by an abundance of opportunities.

A Tale of the Unexpected

I’ve run the XP Game almost 50 times and the most common assumptions among the players is that they assume each team is competing with another. If they ask, I highlight the fact that I’ve never mentioned this as a rule and that, in fact, they are all teams working for the same organisation. This statement is usually followed by a brief silence as individuals process the information. Nontheless, time and time and again, teams choose to continue to compete against one another, usually to the detriment of the organisation as a whole.

One of the reasons people choose to do this is because staying within your comfort zone is far easier than working together with those outside of your team. What’s not immediately obvious is that the longer you stay in your comfort zone, the less likely you’ll encounter new experiences and pick up new skills as well as develop existing ones to better leverage the change that lies ahead. After all, change will happen around you, regardless of whether or not you are ready to change.

One great way to embrace change is to gain new experiences, develop new skills and acquire new ones. This means that when the change finally happens, you’ll be prepared to get the most out of the change. Better still, you’ll be helping to instigate and shape the change.

An Agile First

So imagine my surprise, when the 3 teams with whom I was playing The XP Game last week decided to deliver value together instead of competing against one another. What’s remarkable is that, in spite of the daunting challenge of collaboration (’I'm not sure it’s possible’, ‘It’s going to make things much harder to manage’, ‘I’m afraid we’ll fail’), the 3 teams continued to come up with ideas of how to make things work better. And they did not stop there. This has never happened before in all my experience of running this learning game.

In spite of a few clamorous voices that continued to express fear, doubt and uncertainty, the three teams continued as one. Together, they planned out the work and re-organised themselves to deliver as much as value as they could. Then they put their plan into action.

The outcome? In Round 1, when the 3 teams worked independently, collectively they achieved a combined velocity of 820 story points. In Round 2, when the 3 teams worked together from a centralised backlog their velocity reduced to 720 story points. Based on what I saw so far, I predicted that the 3 teams working together would match their combined velocity in round 1 by round 3 or 4 and quickly exceed it as they became better at collaboration. That is a small short term cost for a significant longer term return on investment. After all, all good things come at a price.

My Takeaway

I still remember, as though it were yesterday, the moment near the beginning of the course, when I distilled the essence of what Agile meant  in two simple words. “Immer besser”. Meaning literally “always better” in German. And that was the one thought that kept everyone together and spurred them on.

Two simple words. Immer besser. To emphasise the importance of continuous learning and improvement, I also drew a contrast between thinking in terms of being “richtig” or “falsch” (”right” or “wrong”) with “immer besser”.  In my experience, the most successful individuals, teams and organisations are those who care more about becoming better than who got things right or wrong.

How are you becoming better than you were yesterday every day?

I’ll present “Lean out your product backlog with lean product development and business analysis techniques” at the Lean & Kanban Europe 2010 conference.

The session will show how using business analysis and kanban techniques we can create a flow from business goals to implementable user stories with acceptance test, focus on value-delivering capabilities and involve the whole team in product development.

I’ll co-present a session with Christophe Thibaut about the “A3 process” at the Université du SI conference on July 1-2 in Paris.

The “A3 report” is a standardized report format used within Toyota and other companies to make proposals and report. The standardized and constrained format helps the writer and readers to come to the point quickly, concentrate on the essentials and get the important information without wasting time.

However, when applying this technique we often only implement the superficial elements, the fact that the documents are limited in size and have a standardized format. Sometimes, the exact format of the Toyota reports is copied. And then we’re disappointed because this “cargo cult” application only delivers limited benefits.

In this session we’ll look at and let participants experiment with the social aspects of the A3 report:

• How we define the standardized format to support our goals
• How leaders and managers use A3 report writing by their team members are structured one-to-one coaching
• How to build in iteration and feedback from peers to improve the proposals
• How to use the review process as a consensus building tool
• How to present reports in such a way that they’re heard, understood and accepted

Come and play with us if you want to learn more about this powerful continuous improvement and learning tool.

If you want to know more…

I’ll co-present three sessions at this year’s Agile 2010 conference on August 9-13 in Orlando, Florida:

• In “Pinocchio, On Becoming a Lean Leader” (Tuesday August 10, 13:30-15:00) Portia Tung and I help participants along the dangerous journey from toy boy to real boy. You’ll meet all your favourite characters from this Agile Fairytale and come away with some concrete actions to become a better leader.
• “Agreeing on Business Value using Systems Thinking” (Wednesday August 11, 09:00-10:30) is a workshop where Portia Tung and I help participants come up with a “Business Value Model” for their current project. You’ll be able to use the Business Value Model to identify the high value solutions that satisfy your customers. The number of places for this workshop will be strictly limited to 20.
• “Estimation Games” (Thursday August 12, 13:30-15:00) gives participants some rules of thumb to create reliable estimates with little effort. During the session we’ll play some small estimation games to put the lessons into practice. You need never be afraid again of estimating.

If you want to know more…

The Agile Fairytales will be making their second ever appearance in Paris next week. Join us at Agile France (formerly known as XPDay France)  this Tuesday, 1 June 2010, for an adventure on the Yellow Brick Road to learn about Peer Coaching (’La Route de Brique Jaune – De nouvelles manières de penser grâce au co-coaching’).

Places are limited to 18 so arrive early to get your place!

Je présenterai deux sessions à la conférence Journée Agile 2010 à Gosselies (près de Charleroi), Belgique ce 16 juin.

C’est la première édition de cette conférence et aussi la première conférence francophone sur l’agilité en Belgique.

“Les Boucles XP” est une introduction à la méthode Extreme Programming. Vera Peeters et moi avons créé cette présentation il y a longtemps pour donner un goût de la façon de travailler d’une équipe vraiment agile. A travers les pratiques et les exemples d’équipes avec qui nous avons travaillé depuis 1999, la présentation explique pourquoi cette méthode marche et comment procéder pour définir une méthode qui convient à votre équipe. Pour cela, il faut voir les choses comme un système où la valeur du tout est bien plus que la somme des valeurs des éléments.

“Agile + Business Analysis = Lean Projects” explique comment on peut combiner les techniques de Business Analysis avec ceux des méthodes Agiles pour “construire la bonne chose” et “construire de la bonne façon”. Le résultat: des projets vraiment “Lean”, de la demande du client jusqu’à la livraison. L’expérience nous a montré que cette combinaison nous a permis de livrer des projets en beaucoup moins de temps qu’auparavant et en même temps livrer un produit qui avait plus de valeur que prévu. Vous verrez quelques techniques que vous pourrez appliquer dès demain et des pistes pour en savoir plus.

A bientôt!

J’animerai deux sessions à la conférence Agile France 2010 à Paris ce 31 Mai.

“Définir la Valeur Métier avec le Systems Thinking” est un atélier où on utilisera quelques techniques de Systems Thinking pour définir la “Valeur Métier” des projets des participants. Pourquoi? Parce qu’une définition de la valeur métier est le premier pas pour vraiment se focaliser sur ce qui est important. La “valeur métier” n’est pas un concept nébuleux. C’est un outil dont l’équipe se sert tout le temps. On applique le principe du “project economic framework” qui est décrit dans “The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development” de Don Reinertsen. Après cette session vous aurez plein d’idées pour prendre des décisions produit qui rapportent plus ET prennent moins de temps. Le nombre de places sera (strictement) limité à 20 personnes.

“Les jeux de l’estimation” vous aideront de mieux répondre aux demandes d’estimations “parfaites”. Cette session est une combination de présentation avec des petits jeux dans lesquels vous pouvez mettre en pratique les astuces présentés. Après cette session, vous n’aurez plus peur de faire des estimations. Vous saurez faire des engagements fermes avec des estimations incertaines. Si vous avez à faire avec des estimations ou engagements, vous vous devez de lire “Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art” de Steve McConnell.

A bientôt au Chalet de la Porte Jaune!

Si vous voulez en savoir plus…

Imagine. It’s 3.35 pm on a warm summer’s afternoon in New England. I glance through the four-line subway map of Boston and what do I find at the end of the Blue Line? I rub my eyes with balled fists. There, plain as the nose on my face, is a stop named Wonderland. All my life, I’ve been convinced that Wonderland was a place of fiction. I was wrong. My heart’s aflutter. Wonderland exists. And it’s here. In Boston.

Now imagine this. What if not everything you believe in is true?

A week on and where do I find myself but at the doorstep of Arthur’s Seat? Have you noticed how we’re surrounded by stories straight out of books? Alas, that steep hearty 30-min climb is not for today. It’s pencilled for my next visit to Edinburgh. How much wonder have you experienced today?

What I liked about Mini XP Days Benelux

• Pre-conference dinner on conference eve – this is a great way to get to know participants before the fun starts on the day of the conference!
• Olivier’s Aikido morning meditation session. It’s unsettling how it’s so much harder to be still than it is to be engaged in constant activity.
• Learnt at least two new recipes using white asparagus (a regional speciality).
• The remarkable enthusiasm for the twists and turns in Agile Fairytales, an Agile retelling of stories you’ve grown up loving!
• Nicole and Marc’s pair conference opening and closing – what a team! By keeping the ceremony short, sweet and simple, they made everyone smile and kept us all engaged.
• Fresh local food and healthy, too!
• Kappellerput is a breath-taking venue, with rooms titled ‘Challenge’, ‘Collaboration’ and ‘Reflection’ in a setting surrounded by a forest. It even has it’s own human bird house, this is a hard venue to beat! You really must come see for youself at XP Days Benelux on 25 – 26 November!
• The fanatastic organisers for their sense of team, fun and always remembering to put the participants at the heart of everything we do.

What would make it perfect

• A greater selection of hot meal options at lunch time.
• I wish I had spent more time getting to know the first-timers at the conference.

Lessons (Re-)Learnt

• Observers often come up with better questions than an interviewer because they suspend judgment long enough to listen and respond with another question to clarify or deepen their understanding of what’s being said by the interviewee.
• To be a good coach, talk less, listen  more.
• Great sessions, such as Pierluigi Pugliese’s session on ‘Solution Focused Agile Coaching‘, require practice, feedback and continuous refinement.
• When you specify a maximum number of attendees for your session, stick to it to ensure you preserve the overall session experience for the attendees.
• Presenting a session is one of the most effective ways to learn. It gives you a reason to research and get creative about a topic you feel passionate about and one that others are also interested in, too. It’s also the most direct way to get feedback on your presentation style and practice your public speaking skill. If you’re serious about learning, then do consider submitting to XP Days Benelux this year! Look out for the call for sessions here.

We hope to see you at XP Days Benelux, 25 – 26 November in Kappellerput in a sleepy town called Heeze (with a popular ice cream bar) in Eindhoven.

Thanks to Tjakko for the great close-up of the Observer role card from The Yellow Brick Road Game on Agile Adoption Through Peer Coaching!

XP user group event 05/05/2010

iLean will host the next XP user group event on May 5th 2010, in Kontich.

What can Business Analysis and Agile mean for each other?

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) has created the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABoK) to capture the experience of business analysts worldwide on a wide set of projects. According to the BABoK, “Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.”

Meanwhile, Agile methods, with their own methods of understanding needs and proposing solutions, have been sweeping through many companies.

Is there room for business analysis on Agile projects? Can agile teams learn from business analysts? What happens when business analysts work in Agile teams?

The IIBA has started up a workgroup to create an “Agile extension” to the BABoK. This extension will provide practical guidance to do business analysis in Agile projects, based on experience. We’ll present this effort so that both communities can review and contribute to this project.

If you want to participate in the discussion, join the Agile BA Yahoo group.

Register for this free event on the Belgian XP Group wiki.

Why Agile + Business Analysis?

Why am I interested in seeing the Agile and Business Analysis communities collaborate?

Business Analysts could learn something:

• You don’t have to specify everything upfront. You can deliver your analysis incrementally and iteratively, at the pace it’s consumed by the implementation team(s), prioritized by value and risk.
• You don’t have to specify everything in consistently excruciating detail. You can ask your team mates what information they need and only provide just enough detail, depending on how risky the topics are.
• You don’t have to do everything alone. You can coach other team members to apply business analysis techniques.
• You don’t have to specify things before the project starts and move on to the next project before you see the results. You can be a full member of the team that delivers value and participate in the release parties.
• You don’t have to be an intermediary (or worse, a “Shuttle Diplomat“) between “The Business” and “IT”. You can be a facilitator who brings out the best in the whole team.

Agile teams could learn something:

• You don’t have to invent “Business Value”. Business Analysis can help you link the benefits the organisation expects to the capabilities it needs.
• You don’t have to create a “Vomit of User Stories” and spend an inordinate amount of time “grooming” that backlog. Business Analysis can help you to focus on the value-adding capabilities.
• You don’t have to make the giant leap from organisational goals to detailed user stories in one go. Business Analysis provides many techniques to gradually break down large problems.
• You don’t have to limit yourself to User Stories. Business Analysis provides may other ways of modeling what users and stakeholders need.
• You don’t have to go it alone as Product Owner or Onsite Customer. Business Analysts and business analysis techniques can help you get the job done, identify more value and work at a sustainable pace.

I’ve been applying business analysis techniques since my first agile project in 1999 (although we didn’t call it business analysis then). The results:

• Our projects were smaller, cheaper and delivered faster than those of the competitors.
• By focusing on the few high value delivering features, we were able to release incrementally, thereby generating real value quickly for the customer.
• By focusing on what was really needed, not what was wanted, our systems were smaller, easier to understand and easier to maintain.
• By using simple but effective business analysis techniques the cycle time from request to proposal was dramatically shorter than our competitors’.
• By having everyone in the team working on the business analysis we often came up with innovative solutions and delighted our customers. How often do your customers tell you “Wow! I didn’t know you could do that!” ?

It’s not enough to appoint someone to be the “Product Owner” and expect to become a productive team. More likely, you’ll end up with a burnt out Product Owner. First of all, you should give effective tools to your Product Owner. Secondly, you shouldn’t build such a bottleneck into your team; provide your whole team with those tools. I know in which community you can find many such effective tools…

Spaghetti and Marshmallow

The Marshmallow Challenge is a simple team exercise that requires a group of people to build the tallest possible structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, 1 yard of tape and 1 marshmallow placed on top.

Based on a talk by Tom Wujec on ted.com, business school students create some of the worst structures while kindergarten children rustle up the tallest and most innovative of standing structures. Unsurprisingly (and luckily), the winners are architects and engineers, people who have specialist knowledge in structural engineering.

So what does this challenge teach us? That building things iteratively brings us closer to success with every attempt we make. That prototyping works by helping us put Plan-Do-Check-Act into practice. That specialised skills plus facilitation gives us a greater chance of success. That keeping the goal in mind by testing your structure by placing the marshmallow on top as you evolve a structure is why kindergarten children do better than business school graduates. That fun is fundamental to the forming and continuous development of a healthy, well-functioning team. Put all these observations together and what do they spell? Yes! Agile Delivery in action.

Are you ready to take on the Marshmallow Challenge as a team?

‘Tis the eve before the second Mini XP Days conference and I find myself thinking back to the first time I came across the XP Days Benelux conference. It was around 2 years ago. Pascal and I had just begun pairing on conference sessions and he happened to mention that XP Days Benelux as something he was involved in.

Needless to say, I had lots of questions such as ‘What makes the conference different from other conferences? What value could I add? How could I contribute?’ To which Pascal replied in his usual matter-of-fact way, ‘Vera and I started the conference because we needed a conference we wanted to go to near where we lived. You could help by making it a conference you want to go to, too.’

I accepted the invitation and began to contribute with baby steps, first by reviewing conference sessions, then by submitting my own and by helping out on the days of the conference. I’ve learnt so many things through helping out over the years.

What makes a high value conference?

1. A conference tells you a lot about the people who organise it. It’s difficult to distinguish between the organisers and the participants at XP Days Benelux. This is intentional. It highlights the fact that we all have something to learn from each other. Some presenters say that the feedback they get from the participants go a long way to amplify and accelerate their own learning.

2. Effective learning begins in an environment where everyone can be courageous. Many of the participants are equally as helpful and enthusiastic as those who organise the conference. It’s this sense of camaraderie, willingness to muck in and courage to expand one’s comfort zone, that has made this conference the kind of conference I thrive on participating in.

3. Self-organisation is a key characteristic of a successful team. I was able to witness self-organisation firsthand by working as part of the group of diverse volunteers. I noticed there was no one telling the others what to do. When I mentioned this to Pascal, he said, ‘It’s up to all of us to decide and agree on what we want to get out of the conference. Then we can decide how much and what we put in.’  That’s when I realised that there isn’t just one leader in a group. Everyone’s a leader. To be a good leader, you have to lead yourself first. It sounds simple, but it’s not easy.

A Gathering of Adventurers

Participants of XP Days Benelux share a few common traits:

• Open-minded – ‘Aikido breathing exercises to start off the day? Go on then, I’m willing to give anything a go!’
• Good listeners who question everything – ‘Will you qualify your approach? What makes you describe people as “blockers”? What can you do to help?’
• Continuously Learning – ‘What works well? What’s going wrong? Lessons Learnt? And puzzles?’
• Continuously Improving – ‘Thanks to our conversation at the last conference, I’ve helped introduce pairing to my team. What else can I do to improve? How can I add more value?’

If you’re ready for this kind of learning, we hope to see you on Monday and, of course, at the 2-day XP Days Benelux conference on 25 – 26 November!

emergn will be hosting a free one-hour webinar titled “Enterprise Agility” on Tuesday, 20 April at 10 a.m. EST US (3 p.m. BST).
 
It’s going to be an exciting webinar featuring Mike Croucher, British Airway’s Head of Software Engineering, and Alex Adamopoulos, emergn CEO. Mike and Alex will be sharing with you their experiences and lessons learnt on scaling Agile and Lean to meet enterprise requirements and overcome pervasive challenges.

You’ll learn how to apply some of the techniques used by British Airways and those employed by emergn within your own organisation. Join us to learn how to:

• Overcome inefficiencies due to traditional ad-hoc agile approaches
• Attach tangible value to your efforts
• Align business units and set enterprise-wide goals
• Develop an enterprise-wide Agile adoption framework.

Register quick!

Dear Reader,

I’ve been invited to present a 90-minute session about Games Facilitation at Deep Agile 2010. And so I would like to exercise the Wisdom of Crowds and ask you this: what do you want to learn about Games Facilitation and why? Reply by submitting a comment (or two!) and I’ll convert them into a set of presentation goals with acceptance criteria.

All ideas by 1 May please! Many thanks and hope to see you at Deep Agile 2010. Be there or be square!

SPA 2010 will take place once again in Covent Garden, London. It’s a 4-day conference running from Sunday to Wednesday jam-packed with sessions from London agilists and those from Europe and beyond! What better way to enjoy London than to combine the visit with an Agile conference?

Pascal and I will be co-presenting 2 sessions this year: “Solve Conflicts Without Compromise with the Conflict Resolution Diagram”, and “Pinocchio – On Becoming a Lean Leader”. We hope to see you there!

Tickets are still available for 1-day, 2-day and the full 4-day conference. Buy them here!

The theme for this year’s Deep Agile conference in Boston on 15 – 16 May is ‘Empowering Teams with Agile Games’, a marvellous idea thought up by Brian Bozzuto and Michael de la Maza.

This will be the first ever Agile conference dedicated to the application and invention of learning games to help us all learn, improve and work.

I’m really looking forward to making new friends and exchanging ideas with the conference organisers in person!

I’ll be presenting two games from the Agile Coach Toolkit: “The Yellow Brick Road – Agile Adoption Through Peer Coaching” and “The Bottleneck Game – Process Improvement with the Theory of Constraints”. Is it possible to have so much fun under one roof? We’ll have to wait and see!

There are still some tickets left for this 2-day weekend of fun in Boston. Sign up quick before April 16 to qualify for the Early Bird discount! I hope to see you there.

Mini XP Days is an action re-play of the favourite sessions from XP Days Benelux 2009 as selected by you, the participants and the conference organisers.

This will be the second ever Mini XP Days conference thanks to the resounding popularity of last year’s conference! This 1-day conference will take place in the inspiring and beautifully architectured country estate of Kappellerput in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

You’ll also get the chance to refresh your body and your mind with a set of Aikido exercises in an enchanted forest led by Olivier Costa.

I’m looking forward to faciliating “The Yellow Brick Road – Agile Adoption Through Peer Coaching“. My favourite bit has to be the telling of this Agile Fairytale based on the Wizard of Oz!

Read more about the conference from Pascal here.

Ahead of Marketing

It was great to have celebrated this April Fool’s Day by seeing Seth Godin present ‘Ahead of Marketing’ live in Antwerp, Belgium. The event was organised by Flanders DC (District of Creativity) with around 1000 attendees awaiting with bated breath to hear words of inspiration from one of the most famous marketers around.

Seth Godin in Short

Seth shared 7 core messages with the audience:

1. Abandon instructions. According to Seth, we’re all conditioned to strive for mediocrity from school age. It’s this conditioning that stops many of us from daring to be remarkable. We set our own limits.

2. Do work that matters. Seth urged us to make a difference regardless of our job title. Make solving interesting problems a key part of our job.

3. Become an artist. Make a splash of genius by solving a problem like no one ever has before. Make people think. Instead of treating our jobs as a mere means to an end, we should use it as a platform for our ‘art’.

4. Real art demands courage. ‘Art that matters always involves going the other way,’ said Seth.

5. Ship! Ship! Ship! Real artists ship their creations. Ship early and often.

6. Give gifts. Paint pictures. Make the world better.  Give away your art often. Giving makes you create more.

7. Teach people to lead. Seth invited us to begin by leading ourselves. And to encourage others to do the same.

My Takeaway in Market Speak

Practice the gift of giving. Be generous to be better.