Archive for the ‘Collaboration’ Category

• Speaking @ USC Code Camp – Oct 23rd & Oct 24th

  Date: 2010.10.15 | Category: Agile, Coaching, Collaboration, Conferences, Presentations, Scrum, ScrumMaster | Response: 0

  It is that time of the year again, time for a trip to USC for SoCal Code Camp.  Here are the topics that I submitted for this year’s event:

  1. Introduction to Scrum – Scrum is a framework for developing high-performing, self-organizing teams to deliver value to customers and the business quickly.  In this hands-on session, Carlton will explain how Scrum works and describe the roles, artifacts and rituals of Scrum.
  2. ScrumMaster’s Toolkit – Are you just getting OK results with Scrum?  One common source of lackluster performance comes from following routine behaviors and ordinary patterns of teamwork associated with the “old way of doing things”.  In this hands-on workshop, you will learn tools that breaks these old patterns, unlocks the potential of Teams and gets them moving toward high-performance.
  3. Selling Your Ideas With a Drawing – Ever stand at a whiteboard & not know what to draw?  Ever watch a good idea got lost in a lot of talk?  Pictures convey ideas more clearly & have a greater impact than a simple conversation.  Come ready to draw diagrams in this hands-on workshop and create powerful diagrams which shift how you visualize your work & convince others.

  I’m pretty excited about these sessions since all of them are new for me.

• Speaking @ Agile San Diego on Oct 7th

  Date: 2010.09.29 | Category: Agile SD, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Games, Scrum, ScrumMaster, Team | Response: 0

  Next week I will be speaking at one of my favorite groups – Agile San Diego – on October 7th beginning at 6:30 PM.  The topic will be “Tools for ScrumMasters and Agile Team Leaders” and this is a quick description of the session.

  Are you just getting OK results with Scrum?  Has Agile not delivered on the much anticipated quantum leads in productivity everyone had been promised?  One common source of lackluster performance comes from following routine behaviors and ordinary patterns of teamwork associated with the “old way of doing things”.  In this hands-on workshop, Carlton Nettleton will share powerful techniques from his coaching toolbox that breaks these old patterns, unlocks the potential of Teams and gets them moving toward high-performance.

  This is going to be a fun evening and a bit experimental since I am going to leave the main learning objective up to the participants.  I will also be giving away a free copy of Lyssa Adkins’s excellent book, Coaching Agile Teams.  Come to The Linkery, have a few drinks and learn something new!

• Innovation Games® at PMI Silicon Valley – Sept 21st 2010

  Date: 2010.09.15 | Category: Collaboration, Communication, Conferences, Games, Innovation Games, PMI, Presentations | Response: 0

  Just wanted to alert folks I will be facilitating an Innovation Games^® session at the PMI Silicon Valley 2010 Annual Symposium on Tuesday, Sept 21st from 3 PM to 5 PM.  The theme of the conference this year is “Beyond Project Success – Business Success” and I have been working with Luke Hohmann and Margaret Motamed to select some fun games to play that will open up some minds on the value of collaborative games in helping your enterprise grow and succeed.  We have also planned some exercises to ensure the participants walk away with a memorable learning experience.

  Stop by if you are looking to do something different, have a little fun and say hello!

• New Offering – Innovation Games®

  Date: 2010.09.02 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Design Excellence, Games, Innovation Games, Product Owner, Scrum, Tools, Voice of the Customer | Response: 1

  On May 6^th and 7^th, I attended an Innovations Games^® consultant’s class hosted by Luke Hohmann.  Innovations Games^® are collaborative games designed to help business people develop and prioritize new product ideas.  In the context of Scrum, these games are tools the Product Owner and product designers can use to engage the customers and different business stakeholders in defining the requirements for a product and thinking about product roadmap and multigenerational release plan.  Not a lot is written about the “fuzzy front-end” for Scrum teams and Innovations Games^® fill that significant gap in way that is consistent with the Scrum values and principles.

  It was quite instructive to hear about the games and how they work from Luke.  From the different case studies discussed, we really illuminated the dynamics involved with selecting the right game for problem.  In addition, a few of my misunderstandings about the purpose of the games and how they are played from reading the book were cleared up as well.  What I liked most about the class was in addition to talking about the games, we played a lot of them in the course of two days.

  1. Remember the Future (played)
  2. Prune the Product Tree (played)
  3. Speed Boat (played)
  4. Product Box (played)
  5. Buy a Feature (played)
  6. 20-20 Vision (played)
  7. Show and Tell (played)
  8. The Apprentice
  9. Start Your Day
  10. Spider Web
  11. Me and My Shadow
  12. Give Them a Hot Tub

  Below are pictures of the Product Box I created for Look Forward Consulting announcing the new service available.  I look forward to using these games more and helping Scrum teams with improving prioritization and collaboration with their customers.

  

  

• You Can’t Phone It In

  Date: 2010.08.19 | Category: Agile, Coaching, Collaboration, Scrum, ScrumMaster, Team | Response: 0

  Being a ScrumMaster is much more than just showing up for the Scrum meetings and lobbing in a few facilitation techniques to keep things moving along.  Yet I think many project managers who are new to being ScrumMasters misunderstand what is required of them.  I feel they read about Scrum in one of the many excellent books on the topic and think, “Facilitation…four meetings…lessons learned…planning…task tracking.  OK, that looks easy – I can do that in my sleep.”  All they can see are the transactional aspects of Scrum.  Since that is all what Scrum is to them, they bring the empty project management mindset to the work and the result is a functional Scrum without any purpose, rituals without any meaning.  And this is where I think many project managers turned ScrumMaster stumble with the role.

  An excellent ScrumMaster has a real presence with the Team.  To become an excellent ScrumMaster one must go beyond the simple transactional elements of Scrum and focus on the transformative aspects of the work.  As ScrumMaster you need to focus, really focus, on the needs of both the Team and the individuals as you work to improve the environment they work in.  You need to be both physically and emotionally there for them in a profound way.

  Scrum’s great promise is that it reconnects people to each other work through empowerment and true collaboration.  As ScrumMaster it is your responsibility to facilitate collaboration, to help people feel comfortable and willing to take both professional and personal risks.  This does not happen in a fifteen minute Daily Scrum, or a two-hour Sprint Planning meeting or during a Sprint Retrospective.  Those rituals have very specific goals and individual coaching is not one of them.  The moments where one-on-one coaching happens and trust is developed are the times when the people are doing the work.  It is those moments when one notices a Team member’s joy, disappointment, frustration, happiness and anxiety.  You catch them being real and experience the moment with them.  This only happens when you share physical proximity, observe and be present when these moments happen.

  In Scrum, we strive to give the Team members slack and ask them to limit multitasking to preserve their focus.  We expect the same from the ScrumMaster and that is why I recommend new ScrumMasters only focus on one Team.  If as a ScrumMaster you are lurching from fire-to-fire, meeting-to-meeting, team-to-team you are still operating in the old project management paradigm and it needs to stop.  People on the Teams need your help.  Stop being so busy and focus on what the Team needs for a change.

• Best Links of the Week – July 16th 2010

  Date: 2010.07.16 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Links of the Week, Product Owner, Scrum, ScrumMaster, Team, Transitions | Response: 0

  Passing on some good summer reading.

  1. Core of Agile and Scrum – essential principles of Agile and Scrum that transcend the software development.
  2. Three Legs to an Agile Transition – George Dinwiddie looks at how teamwork, visible progress and continuous improvement are key to change organizational culture.
  3. Why Multiple Product Owners is a Bad Idea – read the article to find out how having multiple people setting priorities short circuits the role.
  4. Nobody Can Do Agile – Simon Bennett explains why Agile is about thinking, not doing.
  5. Agile Requires Cross-Functional Teams – Johanna Rothman discusses why cross-functional teams are essential for Scrum and other Agile processes.
  6. Sir, Please Step Away From the Team – common the changes in management style for managers when Agile teams start in your organization.
  7. Story Time! The hidden Scrum meeting – ever wonder when the requirements and the analysis happens on a Scrum Team?
  8. How Does a PM and SM Coexisit? – a reader asks Michelle Sliger how the role of the project manager changes with the introduction of ScrumMasters.
  9. Truly Agile CMMI – a short blog and video about a company that gets both Agile and CMMI.
  10. Millennials and Scrum, Made for Each Other – Lyssa Adkins talks about how the Scrum values and principles align with a new cohort entering  the workforce.

• Best Links of the Week – Feb 22nd 2010

  Date: 2010.02.22 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Continuous Integration, Pair Programming, Refactoring, Scrum, Test-Driven Development | Response: 0

  Links to share with your friends and co-workers

  1. Is an Agile PMO possible? – Curt Finch talks about the values of both Agile practices, PMI standards and how to marry the two.
  2. Self-organization: the secret sauce for improving your Scrum team – In this 90-miute video for Google, Jeff Sutherland talks about the role of self-organization and other advanced Scrum techniques.
  3. The Agile Flywheel – a short experience report describing how one company melded Scrum with their mature ITIL processes.
  4. Just do it: a quick intro to Agile’s technical practices – a summary of the technical core of Agile software development by Abby Fichtner.
  5. I love pair programming – Discussion on the effectiveness and the challenges of pair programming after a five month trial.

• Best Links of the Week – Jan 12th 2010

  Date: 2010.01.12 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Links of the Week, Open Workspace, Scrum, ScrumMaster, Simple Design, Team, Test-Driven Development | Response: 0

  Here are some links to the best of the blogs since the beginning of the year.

  1. The Role of Leaders on a Self-Organizing Team - Mike Cohn talks about the important role management continues to play on Scrum teams.
  2. Agile Scales, Waterfall Doesn’t – or so claims Vasco Duarte during this 48-minute video from the Agile Eastern Europe 2009 Conference.
  3. Scrum, But – in this 10-minute video Scrum co-founder, Ken Schwaber, explains the negative impact on your business of “We use Scrum, but…”
  4. Management 3.0: The Era of Complexity - Jurgen Appelo describes the new role of social networks as management dives into the 21st century.
  5. Faster, Better, Cheaper! TDD wins in a simple experiment – a side-by-side comparison of two software developers working on the same project – one using Test-Driven Development (TDD), the other not; the developer who used TDD increased his productivity by 50%!
  6. Agile Game Interview: Simplicity is Hard - Clinton Keith interviews Chris Ulm, CEO of Appy Entertainment, about why Agile is an essential factor in their successful launch of high quality, iPhone games.
  7. Embedded Collaboration - Dave Rooney kicks off this post with a classic quote from “The Princess Bride” to explain the real meaning of collaboration.
  8. Agile Office Space – the Motley Fool shows off their cool Agile workspace and describes the principles they used to create this space.
  9. Wives of Rockstar San Diego Employees Have Collected Themselves – apparently some people are fed-up with yet another death march in the gaming industry and interesting from commentary from Clinton Keith that Scrum is not the solution, but provides visibility and a reality check to wishful thinking.

• Developing High-Performing\Agile Teams Review

  Date: 2009.11.16 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Communication, Team | Response: 0

  Last week, I completed the my Agile Team Training class.  I had a really good turnout (~20) and it was a lot of fun!  While reading the class reviews, a common refrains from the participants were they were surprised at how engaged they were in the simulation and how committed they were to the outcomes.  One participant even wrote these kind words:

  “I was skeptical that it [SIMSOC] would provide any valuable lessons.  I was pleasantly surprised to observe behavior developed that mirrored my professional experience closely enough to be instructive.  I joined in more fully than I anticipated.”

  For those of you that might be curious on what we actually did for the day, here are some photos from the event.

  

  In my experience, having the right venue goes a long way to setting up a good learning experience so I was pleased to have this large space for the class.  This is the great space we had for the event, right on Mission Bay with plenty of natural light, windows looking outside and good food to eat.

   

   

   

  During the simulation participants are divided into different regions.  For this game we had three regions: Green, Yellow and Red.  In this photo, the Red Region trying to understand the SIMSOC rules and figure out a game strategy.  The members of this region quickly coalesced around a common goal, but had some initial difficulties convincing others.  Unfortunately, their riot in the first session was unreported by the head of the mass media (MASMED) and did not have the intended effect of getting the rest of society to pay attention to their concerns.

  While SIMSOC looks like people are just sitting around in chairs all day, the game is much more dynamic than the photos depict.  This a member from the Yellow Region visiting the Green Region to discuss game strategy. Somewhere around the third session, there was freedom of movement and people began meeting face-to-face to discuss issues and share ideas.  Very soon after that, the Red Region proposed a compelling national program to organize the society around and the game came to close during the sixth session.

  Here are some the things the participants learned about teamwork during the class:

  “Maintain the big picture to maximize individual contributions.”

  “We were all seeking cohesiveness and cooperation.”

  “Common goals across teams had an enormous impact of behaviors.”

  “Finding common goals is really needed.”

  “Not reaching out and trusting teams would have made that [reaching our common goal] impossible.”

  “I was pleasantly surprised how cooperative we became with each other.”

  “People do not start out in trust.”

  “Working with different teams [can be challenging] because they have different local goals.”

  “How very important trust is to building high-performing teams.”

  “Define the common goal makes you more efficient and motivates the team.”

  “Trust others on the team, they have best interest in mind.”

  It would say it was a very satisfying, compelling and educational day for everyone. I look forward to the next time I host this game.

• Exciting New Agile Team Training Available

  Date: 2009.10.12 | Category: Agile, Collaboration, Communication, Team, Training | Response: 0

  

  On November 12th, I will be facilitating a first of its kind training for Agile Team members.   Through the use of simulation, I will help the participants reawaken dormant skills such as how to communicate with your peers, give (and receive) feedback, conflict resolution, decision making and other key soft skills each Team member needs to function in a fast-moving Agile Team.  At the completion of this one-day course, I hope to give participants a better appreciation of what skills are needed to communicate effectively, solve problems collaboratively, identify common communication patterns (and anti-patterns) and the application in the participant’s workplace.  Also, this is going to be a lot of fun.

  In my work with Agile teams, I have observed that the greatest improvements of Team come when teaching the Team members soft skills.  These soft skills are more valuable because they allow Team members to connect with each other as individuals and foster true ownership of the work.  Too often people come to work on auto-pilot, go through the motions of their career and go home profoundly dissatisfied.  In my opinion, much of this can be traced back to a poor work environment which encourages isolation from the people we work with and the work we do.

  With the Agile community’s strong emphasis on “individuals and interactions”, you would think as a community we would have some trainings that help people improve their soft skills, yet that is not the case.   Over the past couple of years, we have seen an explosion of training provided for leaders of Agile teams – the Certified ScrumMaster program is an excellent example – or we teach Team members technical skills – the classic two-day TDD class.  These are all really good things to teach people and they are useful to know.  They form a solid foundation for technical excellence and help create and sustain the Team environment.  However, they don’t teach people how to work together as a Team.

  The simulation, named SIMSOC*, will begin the conversation of “How are we going to work together?  How are we going to make this time we spend together more valuable?”.  SIMSOC (pronounced sim-sock) can be thought of as a live-action version of “The Sims” combined with the cutthroat drama of “Survivor”.  The goal of each session is to remain “alive” and further your personal goals.  Some patterns of behavior will be more successful than others and it will be up to the participants to discover the the right strategy to remain alive by the end of the day.  No two strategies will be the same and there are no pre-planned outcomes.  Apart from a few basic “natural laws’, the participants are free to do as they choose, which creates fertile opportunities for cooperation and conflict.  By the end of the day, I hope to arm the participants with an alert mind, some valuable experiences on what types of communication and collaboration strategies which work and curiosity about the next steps they need to take to build and grow that awesome team that makes you excited to get up and go to work each day.

  * SIMSOC was created by noted sociologist Dr. William Gamson to examine the role of leadership organization, power and social change and has been in use for over 40 years in both the business and educational world.