Notes from Agile2012

Last month I attended the Agile2012 Conference, where the core themes were Agile Organization Transformation and thoughts challenging the effectiveness of the currently defined Product Owner role.

Agile Organization Transformation

• We are failing at agile adoption 3 out of 5 times - Sahota

• Do you have a deliberate plan on how you are going to change the organizational culture? - Sahota

• The only thing of real importance that leader sod is to create and manage culture - Edgar Schein

• Culture = how do we do things around here to succeed - Sahota

• Read more: The Reengineering Alternative: A Plan for Making Your Current Culture Wor k by William E. Schneider

• Lots of talk about Being Agile vs. Doing Agile

Doing - Process, Tools, Instructions, Ceremonies

• Being - Values, team reaction, understanding, adaptability, leadership everywhere, failure is ok

• Wait until there is friction before you define new roles or processes

• Navy seals have teams of 4 and some argue for 5, but everyone agrees 6+ is too much as it creates to much communication overhead

• Bad interactions pack 5x the wallop of good interactions

• Bad is stronger than good. Bad behavior is stronger, longer-lasting, more contagious and more difficult to stop than good

• Spiral Dynamics was an interesting tool to use when trying to measure team maturity

• Jurgen Appelo How to Change the World

Product Owner Role Change?

• Most companies are drowning in a sea of opportunity - Rubin

• Interesting dimensions that affect what type of PO and process work - Patton

Are your users internal or external?

• Do your users have control over the use of your product?

• Velocity isn't a measure of value. The outcome is where we need to measure if we are delivering value. Are we changing the world? - Patton

• Found a Jeff Patton presentation where he talked about the Underpants gnomes. He is now one of my new favorite thought leaders.

• What if the PO role was defined as a servant to the team to help facilitate bringing the customer perspective closer to the team? - Patton

• MVPe = minimal viable product experiment. Smallest viable experiment to validate a product hypothesis - Patton

• We need to be focused on learning about outcomes - Patton

• David Hussman

The product backlog is too much about delivery and not discovery

• The Product Owner is structured as a singular failure which needs to be distributed

• We need a group of people speaking with one voice

• Stories often miss the real value

• Focus on User-centered user experiences over user stories and product backlog

• Once you are not bad at delivering, then you need to start focusing on delivering the right thing

• Discovering through mapping

Name the goal

• List a few examples (simple complex)

• Walk a day in the life of each activity

• Back up and resell the experience

• The problem is that documentation isn't read. It doesn't allow us to get interaction and discovery

• Can everyone on the team tell the story?

• Leave the map whole. The map gets you discovery and then you create the delivery stories underneath which may duplicate.

• Story maps show examples

• Examples are a type of test

• Story maps can drive testing

• A test would be one scenario of a path through the story map

• Story maps foster product thinking, product learning (MVP) thin sliced product discovery

• Pragmatic bookshelf Videos $50 for 6 hours of content

• When you are unclear, say " can you give me an example?"

Misc.

• Played a great game where you start a story and each person in the circle adds to it

1st round you start your statement with "yes, but"

• 2nd round - "yes, and"

• 3rd round - "yes, and because of that"

• Try it and see which one takes the team into a very negative place and which one creates a much more positive and constructive discussion

• High trust companies outperform low trust companies by 300% - Pixton

References:

• When you're Agile you get Lean by Charlie Rudd