Attaining FluencyCoaching Techniques - Focus on Goals OVER Processes

Ravi Kumar ravi@agilefaqs.com

March 27 2015

Setting the StageCOACHING ? ROLE OF AN

AGILE COACH ?

1 Minute

“…helping to identify the skills and

capabilities that are within the person, and enabling them to use them to the best of

their ability” — wikipedia

1 Minute

Individuals and Interactions over Process and Tools

Agile Fluency Model

Team Culture Shift

Start:Building Code

A Team’s Path Through Agile Fluency

Focus on Value★

See progress from business perspectiveRedirect teams when needed

Deliver Value★★

Ship on market cadenceCapture value frequentlyReveal obstructions early

Optimize Value★★★

Make excellent product decisionsEliminate handoffs

Speed decision making

Optimize for Systems★★★★

Cross-pollinate perspectivesStimulate innovation

Optimize value stream

Team Skills Shift

Organizational Structure Shift

Organizational Culture Shift

For more information, visit:agilefluency.com

© 2012 James Shore and Diana Larsen.You may reproduce this diagram in any form so long as this copyright notice is preserved.

Where do want the team to

BE?

What INVESTMENTS are

you ready to make?

What TIME FRAME are you

looking at?http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html

Attaining Fluency Key Necessities

Benefit Investment Customer Engagement Business Impact

Greater visibility into teams’ work; ability

to redirect.Customers involved in

the review process Value delivery

Low defects and high productivity.

Understand realistic market cadence requirements.

Define IR that map to market cadence

Higher value deliveries and better

product decisions.Validating market

fitmentMonitor ROI for

achieving business success

Alignment with organizational goals; synergistic effects.

Synergy in laying out future product

direction. Strategize business

growth

Team Norms & Working Agreements

Driving Empowerment & Self Organization

makingadifference.typepad.com

The 4 Ps

People (Goals)

Product (Outcomes)

Plan (Success

Strategies)Process (Enablers)

Individual Behaviours, Goals and Aspirations Accountable: Agile Manager Responsible: Team

Understand Customer Expectations, Competition … Accountable: Product Owner Responsible: All

Understand current constraints and engineering needs. Accountable: Agile Manager Responsible: Team

Execution mechanics and measures Accountable: Scrum Master Responsible: Team

Distill Into Working Agreements

People Goals)

Working Agreements

Team Goals Release Goals

Acceptance Criteria

Sprints Sprints Sprints …

Key ConsiderationsWHY WE NEED? (OBJECTIVE)

WHAT SHOULD IT BE?

WHEN SHOULD WE ESTABLISH?

WHO CREATES?

Driving Working Agreements (As a Coach)

Team RetrospectivesDeliberate Practice

Observations from Sprint Execution 1:1 Meetings

Product Quality Business Objectives & Customer Satisfaction

KEY INPUTS

Working Agreements

Look Out For These !!!

Are these guidelines driving right BEHAVIOURS (Commitment, Responsibility, Accountability…) Are these guidelines consistently VIOLATED

What OBSERVATIONS you notice when the team or individual violates. It’s ok to call out but ensure this is done without breaking SAFETY & TRUST

Deliberate PracticePracticing Software Craftsmanship

www.lifehack.org

Mandatory Expectations: Self Motivated, Strong Desire to Hone the Skills, Open Minded, Willingness to Fail Fast and Learn.

People with skills at all levels- testers, developers, leads and managers.

We are not worried on the completion of task but more focused on the best approach we can take to solve the problem.

Problem to Solve: Conway's Game of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

A Complete Day of Deliberate Practice!!!

Key Objectives (As A Participant)

Honing technical development skills. Writing Self Documenting and Expressive Code. Explore alternative ideas and design techniques in a ‘safe fail’ environment. Importance of unit tests. Test driven development basics.

Improving self-organising capability Better collaboration and communication across team. Ability to solve problems by slicing work. Eliminating key-man dependency. Embracing uncertainty.

Key Objectives (As A Coach)

Understand team dynamics and self organising capabilities. Observe key behaviours of individuals

Open minded and strong influencers Passive aggressive Fence sitters

Understand cross functional abilities of individuals. Understand communication and problem solving abilities of people. Understand the depth of skills on agile development practices such as TDD, Refactoring, Expressive Code etc.

WHY DO I NEED TO UNDERSTAND?

ObservationsParticipation

People are skeptical initially

Unlike code retreat people are subjected to a day long exercise

Lack of inclination to learn and experiment.

Individual Influencers ( specially the tech leads and architects )

Passive pairing

Uncomfortable in pairing(with certain individuals) and dropping code

Similar design and approach

Lack of understanding and capability on unit testing.

Experiences

Skill set gap was one of the factors which was lagging for us is what I believe and due to this kind of sessions we can assess how much we have to improve and the manner in which we have to think - Developer

I was amazed by the number of solutions we could think off in the little time we had. It was possible because we paired with different people - Scrum Master

Importance of having Test Driven Development and unit tests in place. The session helped me in learning a technique to fail fast and learn to become successful. - QA

For any team being introduced to pairing, deliberate practice exercise is a pre-requisite - Scrum Master

Scaling AgileCreating a Learning Organization

dartington.org.uk

Learning Organisation

1 MinuteLe ar n ing in organ izat ions me ans the continuous testing of experience, and the transformation of that experience into k no w le dge - ac ce s s i b le t o t he wh o le organization, and relevant to its core purpose.

- The Fifth Discipline - Fieldbook

Brown Bag SessionsCreate community of practitioners. Enable peer learning Role specific communities to learn and share harnessing mutual interests. Forum to discuss issues and challenges Informal sessions that need very little organisation support

Brown Bag SessionsWeekly or Bi-weekly Role Specific (Scrum Master, Product Owners & Functional Managers) Cross Pollination

Experience sharing of Team Coaching outcomes New techniques Team Improvements

Presentations, Talks & Small Workshops Lightening Talks / Open Space

Beware - Things go wrongSacrificing lunch time is a big ask.

Weekly sessions may be overwhelming. Throwing FREE LUCNH as bait to learning may not yield right behaviours and results. Sessions are often thought of as training/workshops Lack of motivation

Challenging to commit over and beyond work responsibilities. Answers to specific questions Varying customer contexts and challenges

Key MeasuresMotivators Ensuring Self Organisation

www.epa.gov

Accomplishment & Fun How are teams doing?

Work PROGRESSION increases motivation

Team A Team B

Accomplishment & Fun How are teams doing?

FUN @ Work equally important !!!

Team A Team B

Accomplishment & Fun How we measure?

No Fun It’s O

K GoodLovi

ng it !!

None Something

Useful Tota

lly

UsefulAwesom

e !!

There’s no ONE W A Y … . i t ’ s important for a coach to have few techniques and understand context.

Thank you

?Ravi Kumar

ravi@agilefaqs.com

We explored the following

techniques…

Using Agile Fluency @ High Level to Set

Expectations

Setting Team Norms & Working

Agreements

Deliberate Practice

Creating Enablers for a Learning

Organisation

Simple Measures

Hope this was useful…