Getting Better Before You Get Bigger

At most of my Scrum training classes, people ask about how to scale agile at their company. When coaching at a company, what we are doing is typically the #1 need for scaling - getting better.

As Woody Zuill said so well at the Agile Open SoCal conference last month, "People ask how to do it right in the large, when they're not even doing it right in the small."

Yes, there are methods, tools and techniques for doing agile with 10+ teams, or multi-team projects, or distributed team members. But those practices won't solve the most common problem - lack of organizational alignment, buy-in and support (and from top to bottom). Most of the issues I find are with mid-management handling the change that come with introducing agile. But this is the same challenge that happens with introducing any change. The book Leading Change reinforces this point with 10 years of stories around introducing change at difference organizations. 

My experience has been that you'll be much better off getting one or two teams excellent. And by that, I mean success that everyone can see, and that is obvious. Nothing wins arguements and gets support like success, and this helps mid-management's willingness to go out on a limb with this new thing that will surely: raise more questions, change they way they do their job, move them out of their comfort zone, upset some of their reports, make mistakes. Help make that gamble for them as easy as possible. 

And keep in mind that we're in the Late Majority with agile adoptions. These are companies, customers, and managers who generally do not like change, resist change, and have been at the same company (and maybe job) doing things mainly the same way for 10, 20 or 30 years.

Salesforce.com's Success with Agile

Perhaps the best slideshow I have seen on agile implementation\agile adoption in the enterprise.

• How do you roll-out Scrum?
• How do teams learn Scrum?
• Are there metrics or proof that agile works?
• How do you get executives to buy-in?
• What about the problems with Scrum or some saying that Scrum is failing?
• What is the role of agile coaches?
• How many product managers should go to product owner training?
• What does successful agile adoption look like?

From the Scrum Gathering conference of 2008 in Chicago, presented by Salesforce.com, titled "A Year of Living Dangerously".

The Year of Living Dangerously: Extraordinary Results for an Enterprise Agile Revolution

View more presentations from Steve Greene.

Technorati Tags: agile, scrum, management, saas, web2.0

Offshore Agile Teams

Good webcast on offshore development teams using agile (perhaps Scrum). The image below shows the medicine that must be taken - colocated teams. Although it sounds like a tough sell, companies that have done this report not only good results but positive experiences from team members.

The notes in red are mine, pointing out the fact that most offshore teams that I have worked with or know people involved with are operating in a dysfunctional structure.

Technorati Tags: agile, offshore, Scrum, software development

Looking Outside for Ideas

As much as people want to "think outside the box", it really is very difficult to think of an idea or a viewpoint that you wouldn't naturally think of.

As recent Wall Street Journal article describes how Campbell Soup is looking outside for ideas (MarketingProf's summary here). This same approach that a gold mining company took is described in detail, including the great results, in Mavericks at Work.

If this is a good, successful idea, how are you doing it? Scenarios could include asking a Scrum Coach to review your work (your product backlog, sprint backlogs, user stories), setting aside time regularly to read on the topics you're involved in at work (Scrum, QA, automation, tools, the business sector you are in), and setting up periodic meeting-of-the-minds, whether trusted colleagues, a conference or seminar.

I have not once regretted the time I have set aside for any of these. There are always new ideas that I never would have considered that were immediately application to situations and challenges that I was facing. Yet I still don't make it the priority that reflects the value it is.

How about you - where do your ideas come from? How do make sure you put things in place that help you at what you do?

After Scrum, the Agile Enterprise

The other day, Joseph Little (blog here) posted to the Scrum Development board on Yahoo! asking for input on what to include in an advanced course that he and Jeff Sutherland were leading (Agile 201). One item I raised was "What do you do when your agile project efforts are going well? What's the next step to capitalize on successful to move agile into the enterprise?"

Well, I came across a great post on exactly that - Agile Leaders - The Next Hurdle from Steve Garnett. Simply put, the next step is Lean Thinking & Financial Understanding

"It's alright being bloody great at Agile, and knowing how to deliver software and create self-organizing teams, but always remember that the engine for change, the real way to effect change, is control of the P&L."

Office Developer Conference - ODC 2008

Some notes from the Microsoft Office Developer Conference (ODC 2008) in San Jose -

I was most impressed with InfoPath 2007. It allows for simple creation of forms for data entry or lookup without code, while allowing access to workflow and .net object model for coding if required. I also read how designers and developers are using it for prototyping user experience (UX) on new sites, applications and features. This sounds good, given that you can build a page in a couple minutes that accesses and displays real data.

InfoPath and SharePoint, and any custom programming, can use Windows Workflow to automate emails, task or list creation, and follow-up actions. The assignee of an IT Ticket can have a task created and assigned to them, as well as sent follow-up emails including escalation until the ticket is completed. Also, you can publish InfoPath forms to SharePoint to be accessed as webpages. No need for InfoPath on every desktop.

Visual Studio 2008 is geared to leverage SharePoint for .Net developers, both with access to workflow, workflow templates, tools to simplify building and deploying new features. SharePoint Service Pack 1.1 just came out, and it’s loaded – almost a Service Pack 2.0 release.

A new XML standard allows sharing data across the Office applications, and allows customization of the ribbon in those apps. Microsoft recommends keeping office workers in the applications they are familiar with, rather than go to other, separate apps to do parts of their job. Examples include the AdSage add-in, and the Xobni Outlook plug-in (http://www.xobni.com/learnmore/). Lot's of talk of the user experience as "contextual" or "immersed". For example, if most the the information a user (typically an information worker) is doing is in, they shouldn't have to leave Outlook to use another application to get related information or do a related task, such check the status of a task specified in an email or send a fax of a document attached to an email.

SharePoint has been used to build applications for a New Hire Process, a Project Management app for cross-functional (matrix) organization, a network sppt and monitoring solution, and Sales Generator. These rough apps were each built overnight by teams of three .Net developers trained for only one day in SharePoint.

CRM Live, at $60 per user, might be a good option for sales force automation (SFA) needs of most small to medium sized businesses. See http://crm.dynamics.com/ for more information.

Gartner recently announced MS BI Platform is now in the "magic quadrant" of being an industry leader. It is matching up well against big players like IBM/Cognos and Oracle. Microsoft's strong recommendation is to use Excel and Excel Services as the end-users BI tool. Report Services can be difficult to implement due to multiple security layers. For the first BI project, put all software and data on one machine and go for the smallest data domain possible.

Speakers recommended a number of tools, templates and helper applications on CodePlex. CodePlex was likened to SourceForge for Microsoft apps. See http://www.codeplex.com/Project/ProjectDirectory.aspx?ProjectSearchText=moss for an example of user contributions for WSS and MOSS SharePoint development. Most teams should first review what's out there before building any new applications.

What companies can do with these new tools and functionality depends on their company's priorities. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and actions items could be:
1. Increase revenue - Leverage the AdSage\AdCenter Excel Plugin for keyword and campaign analysis. See http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/addin-demos .
2. Control spend - Automate and simplify expense reports
3. Gain customers - Flow customer feedback to site and Customer Service into key performance indicators and analytics
4. Retain existing customers - Automate reports on customer email, comments or other Customer Service data capture of feedback
5. Increase productivity for Sales, Operations, SEO, Editorial, Customer Service and IT
6. Streamline 3rd party interaction and interfaces
7. Automate and simplify business reporting with scorecards and key performance indicators
8. Allow drill-down and trend analysis of business data

The 2007/2008 toolset allows a greater ability to deliver on all of these items.

Insights from Southwest

Southwest Airlines is an exceptional company. They are the only U.S. airline to have made money every year since 1973 (since 1978, 120 other airlines have gone bankrupt). Southwest has consistent market share of at least 60% in almost every nonstop city-pair market it serves. Southwest has the best customer service record in the airline industry and is the only carrier in the U.S. to win the industry's "Triple Crown" - baggage handling, on-time performance and customer complaints. Southwest has a turnover ratio of 6.4 percent, one of the lowest in the industry, and was listed in the top 10 best companies to work for in America.

Several interesting quotes from Nuts! Southwest Airlines Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success:

• When people work really hard for something they believe in, a special bond inevitably develops between them.
• "Most companies fail in their growth because they don't have a vision." Howard Putnam, former Southest CEO.
• "Market share has nothing to do with profitability. Market share says we just want to be big; we don't care if we make money doing it. In order to get an additional 5 percent of the market, some companies increased their costs by 25 percent. That's really incongruous if profitability is your purpose." Herb Kelleher, former Southwest CEO
• "We'll train you on whatever it is you have to do, but the one thing Southwest cannot change in people is inherent attitudes." Kelleher
• Southwest was, in the words of Gary Barron, chief operations officer, "nimble, quick, and opportunistic." How did Southwest get that way? Whenever possible, Southwest flies in the face of bureaucracy: it stays lean, thinks small, keeps it simple."

Moving IT from Victim to Visionary Advisor and Vehicle for Progress

Two consistent patterns I've seen in IT shops are:
1) Being order takers, rarely bringing innovative solutions to the business and often unaware of what their problems are unless told
2) Feeling like victims, unable to do what we feel is best due to lack of resources (time, people, or money).

How do we move from victim to visionary adviser and a vehicle for progress towards supporting and empowering the business' strategy?

For my current situation, I'm going to do a cost-benefit analysis to show how a content-management solution should save the time of at least five people, as well as get us off the hook for guaranteeing quality on a business process we can't control. From there, I'm requesting my team members to give me a list of the the trouble-spots as they see them and go from there.

Technical Architect

Here's a job description for Technical Architect that I recently submitted for a position that I believe is a need of my current client. The description is at the bottom of the post. Along the way, I found some good resources on understanding this new role of Architect (Technical, Systems, Application, Data, Web, Software, Solutions, Enterprise, Information, or any specific platform such as Java or .Net).

One good source was Seven Habits of Highly Successful Enteprise Architects. There is also some brief descriptions and a wealth of links on Worldwide Institute of Software Architects (WWISA) New Zealand Chapter's site. Dana Bredemeyer has also published some articles defining the role of Architect, and has a resources site for for Software Architects.

After reviewing those sources and reviewing some job descriptions on dice.com, I came up with the following:

Job Title: Technical Architect

Duties and Responsibilities
Assists and guides in effort to move from reactionary to proactive (trouble-shooting environment to problem prevention).
Enable tighter business/IT alignment, better-quality decisions, and the successful implementation of an enterprise architecture
Assists in business strategy and process engineering
Responsible for solution options, trade-offs, design and implementation. Responsible for application integration. Responsible for review and implementation of third party solutions or tools. Responsible for standards definition and review.

Qualifications, Skills and Abilities
Personal Traits / Behavioral Competencies
1. Strong leadership skills
2. Excellent written and oral communications skills
3. Proactive – Identifies problem areas and opportunities and makes recommendations
4. Provides thought leadership, thinks strategically
5. Exceptional interpersonal skills
a. Builds rapport & trust
b. Excellent team player and team builder
c. Strong facilitation and negotiation skills
d. Persuades & communicates effectively
e. Ability to moderate and build consensus
f. Ability to articulate and sell a vision
g. Ability to mentor and coach
6. Delivers practical results – Quantifies return on investment
7. Is agnostic toward technology vendor and product choices; more interested in results than in personal choices
8. High tolerance for ambiguity. Resilient
9. Entrepreneurial and creative
10. Practical and pragmatic
11. Empathetic and approachable
12. Committed, dedicated, passionate

Skills and Credentials
1. Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, systems analysis, or a related study, or equivalent experience.
2. Three to four years of experience in at least two IT disciplines OR three to four years of experience in business analysis or business strategic planning.
3. Exposure to multiple, diverse technical configurations, technologies, and processing environments.
4. Excellent analytical and technical skills.
5. Excellent planning and organizational skills.
6. Knowledge of all components of a technical architecture.
7. Knowledge of business re-engineering principles and processes.
8. Understands the business, business drivers, and business strategy
9. Demonstrates technical prowess
10. Strong understanding of network architecture.
11. Strong understanding of client/server and object-oriented analysis and design.
12. Ability to understand the long-term (“big picture”) and short-term perspectives
13. Ability to translate business needs into technical architecture requirements.
14. Ability to apply multiple technical solutions to business problems.
15. Ability to quickly comprehend the functions and capabilities of new technologies
16. Good understanding of technology trends. Technical vision
17. Good interviewing skills
18. Understands system analysis and synthesis, modeling, conceptualization
19. Trade-off analysis. Technical reviews and assessments. Technology selection
20. Project/transition planning. Able to manage and coordinate key project elements

Other Abilities
1. Researching: must become adept at understanding issues and finding answers quickly and creatively.
2. Analyzing: must be able to formulate questions used in business conversations to elicit facts or statements from them, and be willing to listen to what these individuals have to say.
3. Engineering: must be able to apply principles of logic, science, and mathematics to the understanding of systems and processes so the latter can be improved.
4. Communicating: must be able to expound on an important subject to inform and instruct an audience, convincing members to take further action. This entails persuading, marketing, and selling.
5. Arbitrating: must be able to reconcile differences to achieve a common objective and find appropriate solutions.
6. Teaching & Mentoring: must be able and willing to transfer knowledge to others, if necessary, identifying their weaknesses and helping in their correction.
7. Organizing: must be able to put things together in an orderly, functioning, structured whole. This entails handling multiple things at the same time effectively.