Agile Stories Series
Took up my complete day, I have been reading and brainstorming about possible ways of telling these stories. What does the community want to know about companies? Actually is a very difficult question to answer. I have some ideas which I'll share by the end of the week.
Over and out
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Agile Coaching | A little bit of war
They reminded me at those projects were playing nice wasn't always the only way to go...
Although I do know the rule states that as an Agile coach you can never get mad, you can't blame, you always talkkk attt tthheee saammeee ppittchhh (this one actually scares me about people). But I'm a human being filled with emotion and passion, and I do wonder, do those people never have a fight with their wife or husband at home. Come on people we do all know that the best conversations happen during a fight, you feel SO relieved afterwards... (and let's not even mention the make up ... afterwards) Is playing nice ALWAYS the best solution? Perhaps it is perhaps it isn't... that Noorkaap was a great band is without doubt. Enjoy!
Would a little war may not have been better
Loudly than spoken words and nights of pain
Would a little war may not have been better
Then unexecuted murders and smiles of venom
Would not
would not
After all this grief goes much too deep
A short fight it really does not take long
A short burst and then continue
A short fight it really does not take long
A short burst and then continue
Would not
would not
After all this grief goes much too deep
Would not
would not
After all this grief goes much too deep
Would a little war not have been better
Lean Thinking - 5 Steps
Just a recap on the 5 steps that make up for Lean Thinking before we continue or posts on Lean software development:
- Correctly specify value for the customer
- Identify the value stream and remove waste
- Make the product flow
- So the customer can pull
- By managing towards perfection
The ugly truth about predictability
As software systems grow more complex , more people become involved therefore managing software development becomes increasingly difficult. To keep up with this increased complexity the industry experts have been telling companies for year to add more metrics, more control, more rigor. Surely, if we could control everything up to a single keystroke we should be able to predict the future, right? To ensure such prediction people needed to be told what to do exactly, when and how otherwise chaos would be lurking around the corner waiting to jump out and take over. Therefore companies added more layers of control and even more resource were wasted on making sure process compliance was met.
So what did we learn, complexity leads to uncertainty. Uncertainty is evil so we added all these mechanism to be able to forecast and predict the future. The main problem with organizational cultures that focus on forecasting is that they significantly decrease any flexibility needed to deal with changing markets. On top of that we can see a significant decrease on innovation and learning.
As flexibility decreases, market responsiveness also significantly decreases. The system that has been put in place to eliminate chaos, to give us control over our projects, has now turned its back against and it causing companies not to be able to deal with market changes due the many layers of the chain of command and the lack of a culture of learning and innovation. Even worse, due to an increasing focus on predictability and control this has let to a major decrease in seeing and hearing what the customer really wanted. Companies aren't just being incapable to deal with market changes they stopped seeing them!
Last, let's see what's the impact of a culture of predictability is on people? Too be able to plan so much in advance managers need to treat people as resource with a certain performance rate. That way when deviating from a project plan you can calculate exactly which resource with which performance rate you need to be able to get back on track, much like machinery parts.
Unfortunately software development is anything like mass manufacturing. It's a creative role one for which creativity and problem solving skills are key. The tools we use are never the same, the software we built always differs from that what we made before, technology and market change on a daily basis, learning truly is king. What we need is way of thinking that stimulates organizational learning while focusing on delivering customer value first.
Lean Thinking beyond world class manufacturing...
So what did we learn, complexity leads to uncertainty. Uncertainty is evil so we added all these mechanism to be able to forecast and predict the future. The main problem with organizational cultures that focus on forecasting is that they significantly decrease any flexibility needed to deal with changing markets. On top of that we can see a significant decrease on innovation and learning.
Last, let's see what's the impact of a culture of predictability is on people? Too be able to plan so much in advance managers need to treat people as resource with a certain performance rate. That way when deviating from a project plan you can calculate exactly which resource with which performance rate you need to be able to get back on track, much like machinery parts.
Unfortunately software development is anything like mass manufacturing. It's a creative role one for which creativity and problem solving skills are key. The tools we use are never the same, the software we built always differs from that what we made before, technology and market change on a daily basis, learning truly is king. What we need is way of thinking that stimulates organizational learning while focusing on delivering customer value first.
Lean Thinking beyond world class manufacturing...
Survival
This quote becomes more true by the day:
"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running."
Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat 2005 p. 114
Captain's Log | Monday, April 19, 2010
Agile Stories Series
When I started out with AGILEMinds, the whole idea behind it was that it should be something for and by the community. For the community is the 'easy' part. I started out with focusing on events and trainings right from the industry experts offering the agile enthusiasts a better platform to hear and learn about agile. A way better alternative than all those big consultancy companies offering less than basic training from consultants who hardly read 4 blog posts about the topic... I had to start somewhere :-)
What's up next?
Since mankind stories have played an important role in knowledge sharing. Stories endure, connect but most importantly stories get passed along from person to person from generation to generation. One thing I notice while organizing these events is that it is VERY hard to get companies - not consultancy companies but end clients - to share their stories. So starting from know I'm going to pro-actively go out there and search for companies that are willing to share their Agile roadmap up until this point, their pain, their joys, what's up ahead....
Stories are important because it gives people and companies the feeling that they are not alone out there...
These stories will be part of the AGILEMinds community site which I hope to launch asap :-)
Interested in sharing?
Let's get in touch!
Also, should you have a good name for this series let me know!
Training | Business Model Innovation
Our Business Model Innovation workshop with Alexander Osterwalder just got more excited. I got in touch with Karen Boers from IBBT which is a government supported research center and they seem to be doing research on ways to rapidly generate business models through a multi-touch collaborative device called SIMBU. As usual these multi-touch things get me all excited so I'm happy to tell you that professor Pieter Ballon from IBBT / iLab-o will be demonstrating this device during the 2-day workshop. Great!
I'm probably going to meet him in person this or next week after which I can tell you more on the device and its possibilities.
Some boring facts
- my office chair broke down so I went out to buy a new one... 6 week waiting period, arghhhh.
- as usually I ran out of printer ink on the worst possible moment, although it the warning sign has been blinking fore weeks I just ignored it. Off course the store was out of ink, again 2 days of waiting.
- bought myself a digital voice recorder to be used for interviewing companies for the Agile Stories Series
Training | Cold Calls
Alright, first of all I'm 1000% AGAINST making cold calls. But I have been trying to find ways to get people to notice our trainings and events. One of the things you notice is that we are not in London or the US. It is actually very hard to convince people over here to get them all excited about new ideas. Most of the people just don't want to hear about innovation I guess. Or their budgets are still frozen due to the financial crisis.... yeah right. Anyway, I never thought it would be easy but I also never thought it would be this hard... we'll get there some way some how.
So I tried out cold calling on two companies being KBC and BNP Paribas Fortis. I thought why not give those old giants a call at least they sent out their employees on trainings more often than most companies. What happened was exactly what I imaged what would happen when placing a cold call... worst case experience with mankind and banks you can even imagine. I'll try to write a separate blog post about it somewhere during the day. It's a laugh...
When I started out with AGILEMinds, the whole idea behind it was that it should be something for and by the community. For the community is the 'easy' part. I started out with focusing on events and trainings right from the industry experts offering the agile enthusiasts a better platform to hear and learn about agile. A way better alternative than all those big consultancy companies offering less than basic training from consultants who hardly read 4 blog posts about the topic... I had to start somewhere :-)
What's up next?
Stories are important because it gives people and companies the feeling that they are not alone out there...
These stories will be part of the AGILEMinds community site which I hope to launch asap :-)
Interested in sharing?
Let's get in touch!
Also, should you have a good name for this series let me know!
Training | Business Model Innovation
I'm probably going to meet him in person this or next week after which I can tell you more on the device and its possibilities.
Some boring facts
- my office chair broke down so I went out to buy a new one... 6 week waiting period, arghhhh.
- as usually I ran out of printer ink on the worst possible moment, although it the warning sign has been blinking fore weeks I just ignored it. Off course the store was out of ink, again 2 days of waiting.
- bought myself a digital voice recorder to be used for interviewing companies for the Agile Stories Series
Training | Cold Calls
So I tried out cold calling on two companies being KBC and BNP Paribas Fortis. I thought why not give those old giants a call at least they sent out their employees on trainings more often than most companies. What happened was exactly what I imaged what would happen when placing a cold call... worst case experience with mankind and banks you can even imagine. I'll try to write a separate blog post about it somewhere during the day. It's a laugh...
Friday, April 16, 2010
Lean & Kanban 2010 | Venue booked
Mission accomplished!
The bar is about 48m2... that's big!
A deadline was set for finding and booking a venue. That deadline was today, close call! Let's move that post-it to the right...
Visited about 10 venues, one worse than the other until I visited Stuurboord in Antwerp. As I already mentioned in one of my previous posts Stuurboord is an old hangar which has been renovated to a not so traditional venue to say the least. It's one gigantic open space, I think it can fit about 2000 people standing-up in total. The venue is divided in 5 units, one of them is the bar, another one will be taken - in combination with the bar - for reception / lunch / networking area. So that leaves 3 units (there are some smaller meetings rooms we can use if we want), unit capacity is +/- 250 people. Oh yes, before I forget, there are mobile walls between the unit so no, you cannot listen to two talks at the same time ;-) Two units will be used for hosting the normal sessions. The last unit will be used either for workshops, or can even be divided more for more Open Space rooms, depending on the program.
Some more picture I found on the web...
Naked venue
Customizable to make it more Lounge (Sponsors???)
View over the Schelde (river)
Stuurboord by night
Looks great doesn't it?
Now I just got to find a dozen sponsors to cover costs :-D
The bar is about 48m2... that's big!
A deadline was set for finding and booking a venue. That deadline was today, close call! Let's move that post-it to the right...
Visited about 10 venues, one worse than the other until I visited Stuurboord in Antwerp. As I already mentioned in one of my previous posts Stuurboord is an old hangar which has been renovated to a not so traditional venue to say the least. It's one gigantic open space, I think it can fit about 2000 people standing-up in total. The venue is divided in 5 units, one of them is the bar, another one will be taken - in combination with the bar - for reception / lunch / networking area. So that leaves 3 units (there are some smaller meetings rooms we can use if we want), unit capacity is +/- 250 people. Oh yes, before I forget, there are mobile walls between the unit so no, you cannot listen to two talks at the same time ;-) Two units will be used for hosting the normal sessions. The last unit will be used either for workshops, or can even be divided more for more Open Space rooms, depending on the program.
Some more picture I found on the web...
Naked venue
Customizable to make it more Lounge (Sponsors???)
View over the Schelde (river)
Stuurboord by night
Looks great doesn't it?
Now I just got to find a dozen sponsors to cover costs :-D
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