Guest lecture - Uppsala Universitet - Introducing Agile

Citerus - Tobias Fors, 2009 - tobias.fors@citerus.se

Introducing Agile
Guest lecture at Uppsala University, September 2009

Tobias Fors, Citerus AB
tobias.fors@citerus.se
0709-43 90 86

My company: www.citerus.se
My blog: www.tobiasfors.se
Twitter: @tofo
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Citerus - Tobias Fors, 2009 - tobias.fors@citerus.se, 0709-43 90 86

About Citerus
• Citerus is a consulting company specialized in helping clients succeed with their software
development projects. Since 1996, we have developed software, led projects, refined
engineering practices and improved management methods for companies from a diverse
set of trades. We gain break-through results by raising the quality bar, putting people first
and reducing bureaucracy.

About Tobias Fors
‣ Consultant since 1999, developer, project mgr, consultant, coach
‣ Experience from being a scrum master in both development and change projects
‣ Helped introduce Scrum as development method at Tain, Readsoft, Entraction, Wireless Car
‣ Trained and coached Scrum projects at SMHI, Arbetsmiljöverket, Siemens, Digital Illusions
‣ Certified Scrum Trainer, Scrum Alliance. Has trained staff of many of Sweden’s big consulting companies
‣ Also: project startups, planning, workshops, evaluations, retrospectives
‣ Introduced kanban for eTraveli operations and marketing
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Agenda

1. Start
2. A Little About Change
3. Introducing Agile
4. Assignment
5. End

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Start

• Times?

• Format!

• Why are we here today?

• Who am I?

• Why did you choose to come here today?

• What do you expect from today?

4


A Little About Change

5


Going Agile - In Plain Language

We want to use agile software development

We want to change the way we act

Some of us want to change the way some of us act

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Exercise: Perspective

• A man is driving his car, and stops by a hotel. He realizes that he is bankrupt,
gives up, and becomes very disappointed.

• What happened?

• I will answer your questions about the situation with a yes or a no.

• The answer to this exercise is simple

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The Blind Men and the Elephant

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Violent and Non-Violent Change

Violent Non-Violent

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Non-Violent Change

First: Then:
Understand Change

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Using Resistance as a Resource

“No matter how it “Assume they are
seems, people are rational.”
trying to be helpful” - Russell Ackoff
- Jerry Weinberg

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Exercise: Understand Forces For and Against

• What are some forces that work or
against agile?
Plan:
For Introducing Against
• Let’s put these in a force field Agile

analysis
For-force 1 Against-force 1

For-force 2 Against-force 2

... ...

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The Dangers of Pressure

Pressure can crush
things for good

When pressure stops, Pressure
Change
to Change
change stops

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A Too Simpliﬁed Model of Change

Performance

Need to change

Time

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A More Nuanced Model of Change

Performance
New status quo

Integration

Foreign element
Late status quo
Time
Resistance

Transforming idea

Chaos

Learn more here: http://www.stevenmsmith.com/my-articles/article/the-satir-change-model.html

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Exercise: Experience Change

• Grab a blank index card and a pen

• Write your full name on the card

• Turn the note over

• Write your name again - but this time with the other hand

• What are your reactions to this experience? ✎

• Will you share an experience of change you’ve been part of? ✎

Thank you Steve Smith for this exercise!

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Chaos -> survival -> short term thinking

“Fear makes the short term almost the only thing that people see or focus on.”
-- Pfeffer, Sutton, 2000

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Survival Instincts in Management
• “Teamwork sounds good, but …”

• “Let’s just test it in the live system …”

• “I hear what you’re saying, but …”

“It can’t be done”

What would it take for
this to be possible?

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Example: The Reward Once You Make it Through

“I’ve gotten more done the last three weeks than the previous three years here.”
– Developer, gaming company

“The way we talk to each other now, we’ve never talked before.”
– Project member, another gaming company

“Before, I always felt like a pain in the ass when I came in with questions and
suggestions. Now I feel really welcome.”
– Product owner

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Simple Works Better

“We observed that organizations that were better at learning and translating
knowledge into action understood the virtue of simple language, simple
structures, and and the power of common sense …”
– Pfeffer, Sutton, 2000

Don’t forget the Law
of Strawberry Jam

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Introducing Agile

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An Old Source of Conﬂict: How Should We Develop?

Manifesto for Agile Software Development
We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

Kent Beck James Grenning Robert C. Martin
Mike Beedle Jim Highsmith Steve Mellor
Arie van Bennekum Andrew Hunt Ken Schwaber
Alistair Cockburn Ron Jeffries Jeff Sutherland
Ward Cunningham Jon Kern Dave Thomas
Martin Fowler Brian Marick

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Do We Really Need Something New?

“Second, research demonstrates that the success of most interventions
designed to improve organizational performance depends largely on
implementing what is already known, rather than from adopting new or
previously unknown ways of doing things.”

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Vision: Towards, not Away From

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The Vision: A Goal Beyond “Introducing Agile”

“We really don’t have any problems, it’s just
that we think that it would be convenient to
have a new way of working.”

• Quality?

• Time?

• Cost?

• Quality of work life?

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Exercise: Vision of Change

• Think for a minute: Can you identify a powerful vision you’ve encountered, that
attracted either you or someone else

• What made the vision so compelling? ✎

• Have you felt alienated from a vision at some time?

• What made you feel alienated? ✎

• What are the ingredients of a powerful vision? ✎

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Find Change Owner and a Change Team

“Anyone who is to use Scrum would benefit from trying it once in an environment
where it is truly supported by management, as I got to do.”
– Product owner

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Invite Everyone Early

• Start with retrospectives

• Capture experiences

• Reduces speculation and rumors
Y! are hereby invited to a chan" for

#e be$er of us all
• What you co-create, you:

• understand

• believe

• own

• develop

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Example: You Can Do it With the Entire Group

• Goal: Design and implement visual management system
• Constraint: work cannot stop
• Method: workshop with laptops and cell phones on
• Result: a popular and very efﬁcient management system

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Forming Effective Teams

Goal
ues
o d , val
Meth

• Create teams that can complete
valuable functionality as indepently
as possible

“Our part of the
system”

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You’ll Need Agile Change Artists

• Key role in change work

• Teams and rest of organization need support and coaching

• Understands and teaches agile

• Gently pushes on “Fish bone diagram”
• Helps when someone falls
Policies Process

Impedi-
ment

People Product

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Training and coaching

• The development process itself

• Solid engineering practices

• Steering the product

• Building in quality

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Deﬁne Done

• Needed for estimation of work

• Enables cooperation

• Clarifies expectations

• Minimum: frequent testing, frequent
integration, effective release
management

• Expand as learning happens

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Tip: Behavior Inﬂuences Attitude

“There is a large literature demonstrating that attitudes follow behavior. That
means that people accepts new beliefs as a result of changing their behavior.”

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Common Challenges

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Challenge: The Change is Reverted

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Challenge: Inadequate Engineering Practices

• Critical challenge if you lack:

• Effective configuration management (late integration, merge conflicts)

• Test automation at several levels

• Smooth release management (builds, packaging, deployment)

• Going forward:

• Expand your definition of done

• Coach, train, practice

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Challenge: Going From Expert to Team Player

Expert: Instructions, veto right, knows Team players: Helps, supports,
best teaches
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Challenge: Cherry Picking From a System

• Can you “cherry pick” specific
practices?

• Scrum, for example, is a system where
the parts interact to give a result

• When you take the parts out of the
system, they no longer function the
same way

• Example: You cannot take one leg of a
chair and expect to get a certain
percentage of “chair functionality”

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Tip: Be “Programatic”

Dogmatic “Progmatic” Pragmatic

1. Think about consequences
2. Make the change
3. Evaluate the result

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Common Challenge: Disruptive Incentive Systems

• Rewarding lines of code produced

• Acknowledging heroes

• Collisions between the individual and the team

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Assignment

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Assignment: More Change

• When you go from your home to class the next time, take a different route

• After this, start a new mail in your favorite mail client

• Journal for exactly 5 minutes about your reflections on this change

• If you want to (and I’d love it if you did), send the text to me

tobias.fors@citerus.se

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References

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Suggested Reading

• Pfeffer, Sutton: The Knowing-Doing Gap

• Schmaltz: The Blind Men and the Elephant

• Kotter: Leading Change

• Everything by Jerry Weinberg, for example: Quality Software Management I – IV

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End

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Return on Time Invested

‣ Was today a good time investment?
“ROTI”
‣ 2 = “Even Steven”
‣ 4 = An excellent investment

‣ 0 = Wasted time
4
3
2
1
0

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Guest lecture - Uppsala Universitet - Introducing Agile

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