2016 12-21 rules for radical project managers
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There seem to be some interesting Design Patterns in common between Alinsky-style community organizing and Scrum. In this talk, I explore what makes each unique, and what they share in common. In particular, I suggest that looking at Design Patterns might help practitioners in both spheres, as well as traditional project managers, build more effective teams. The original talk was given to a PMI Roundtable. From the feedback to the talk, I was reminded that not even Project Managers necessarily know much about Agile or Scrum. For a broader audience of organizers, how much more so. I have therefore added several slides about Agile in general, and Scrum as a popular Agile methodology. Hopefully, I'll get to test them out at future talks and/or they'll be useful to people who find these slides on SlideShare.
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2016 12-21 rules for radical project managers
- 1. Rules for Radical Project Managers Ari Davidow, PMP, CSM for the MetroNorth Roundtable 21-December-2016 ari@ivritype.com @aridavidow
- 2. Design patterns for organizers and scrum masters?
- 4. What is Agile Development? • A set of software development processes that focus on putting usable code in people’s hands as soon as possible • A vision of software development as an ongoing process, rather than as a one time project
- 5. 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.
- 6. Agile Development • Put usable tools in people’s hands quickly
- 7. How does it work? • Use cards/whiteboard to note requests
- 9. A user story is a brief description of functionality as viewed by a user or customer of the system (Mike Cohn) As a <type of user>, I want <capability> So that <business value> As an archivist I want a pulldown menu with my metadata terms So that we can keep terms consistent
- 11. Agile Development: In progress
- 13. And now, Saul Alinsky
- 16. “Power over” vs. “Power with”
- 17. An IAF Engagement • Not a mass movement • Instead, a coalition of community organizations: primarily churches, synagogues, mosques join together • Before IAF sends in an organizer, there must be a commitment to fund 2-3 years of activism. • Organizing takes time.
- 18. What does “self-organizing” community organizing look like? "Under Alinsky, organizing meant 'pick a target, mobilize, and hit it.' In the modern IAF, issues follow relationships. You don't pick targets and mobilize first; you connect people in and around their interests*." (see also Jim Collins and Good to Great)
- 21. Some qualities of an Organizer • Curiosity, • Irreverence • Imagination • A sense of humor • An organized personality (constantly seeing patterns, learning) • A well-integrated political schizoid (don't become a true believer--must believe, but also must be able to compromise)
- 22. Organizer as servant After all thos audacious qualities describing organizers as macho outlaws, Nicholas von Hoffman wrote in his memoir of Alinsky: [Although some compared Rules for Radicals to Sun Tzu’s Art of War,] “Saul would have identified himself with another ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu, who is supposed to have said:
- 24. Types of organizations/relationships • Business: entrepreneurial, buy/sell • Government: bureaucracy, universal service • Relational: person-to-person (churches … and bowling or softball teams are often cited as examples of relational organizations)
- 25. Business, Gov, Relational Peter Drucker wrote an essay in The Public Interest several years ago about the growing division of labor into two large categories--service workers and knowledge workers. I wrote him and argued that there was a third category: relational workers. He responded, "You are absolutely right--but they (relational workers) consider themselves knowledge workers." Of course they do ... where only two choices are available. ... They wanted to teach and to heal, protect and coach. They imagined themselves relating to people, helping people, even saving people. [Mike Gecan]
- 26. Relational orgs and time The arc of recovery and revitalization is long-- longer than the eight years a president may serve, far longer than the quarterly, monthly, or weekly updates scrutinized by shareholders in the market. Only the steady and restless leaders of mature citizens power organizations--and other third sector groups--are ideally positioned for it.
- 27. Change … can be advanced only when real differences are bound up together in a web of relationships anchored in the institutions that bring [people] together…
- 28. How does it work? • Research (groom: refine epics and user stories) • Action—carry out the organizing activities that will culminate in a concrete action (sprint, followed by a review) • Evaluation (retrospective)
- 29. Organizing is iterative "Something else that comes with experience is the knowledge that the resolution of a particular problem will bring on another problem.... [W]hat we fight for now, will be soon forgotten, and changed situations will change desires and issues.... You begin to build power for a particular program--then the program changes when some power has been built. –Saul Alinsky
- 30. What can Scrum teach the IAF? • Transparency – The IAF tends to be very poor at making information available – What are we working on? – Where is the story in the workflow? – What does the current sprint look like?
- 32. Alinsky’s Legacy • Community organizing as a profession, independent of ideology
- 33. Alinsky’s legacy: organizations • Affiliate organizations in more than sixty-five cities across the United States and in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany. • Offshoots include United Farmworkers. • In the Boston area, check out the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, http://gbio.org
- 34. IAF Resources • Industrial Areas Foundation, http://industrialareasfoundation.org Books • Alinsky, Saul, Rules for Radicals (1972) • Gecan, Michael, Going Public (2002) • Chambers, Ed, Roots for Radicals (2003) • Horwitt, Sanford D., Let them call me rebel (1989) • Von Hoffman, Nicholas, Radical: A portrait of Saul Alinsky (2010) Web • Seal, Mike (2008) Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals’, the encyclopaedia of informal education. [www.infed.org/thinkers/alinsky.htm]. • Riley, Theresa (2012) Who is Saul Alinsky? [http://billmoyers.com/content/who-is-saul-alinsky/] • Moyers, Bill (2012) Newt Gingrich and the real Saul Alinsky [billmoyers.com/segment/bill-moyers-essay-the-real-saul-alinsky/
- 35. Some Agile Resources • AgileBoston—http://www.agileboston.org— especially imaginative speakers and camraderie. Each free monthly meeting is preceded by a half-hour class related to Scrum, or Agile development. • Agile New England–http://www.agilenewengland.org –monthly meetings, likewise preceded by practice sessions, classes in Scrum and Kanban. Speakers tend to be more establishmentarian, likelier to be pushing recent books. Attendees seem to average a bit older • PMI–http://pmimassbay.org – has an Agile SIG, and a new-ish certification focused on Agile methodologies: ACP
- 36. More useful books • Sutherland, Jeff. Scrum: The Art of doing twice the work in half the time. (2014) • Pollack, Stanley & Mary Fusoni. Moving Beyond Icebreakers. (2005)— useful to anyone building teams or organizing communities.
Notas del editor
- Design Patterns are what we call repeating sequences or workflows. The term comes from building architect Christopher Alexander who published an influential book, “A Pattern Language,” in which he described common architectural problems and good solutions—how to set up a breakfast nook, or to ensure that a roof doesn’t leak. Over twenty years ago, software developers, striving to create re-usable code and working in the new field of object-oriented programming realized that the term could also be applied to their work. Last month, in the wake of the election, I had the pleasure of doing a short three-day training in community organizing. It seemed like a good place to start thinking about how to best respond to the government we had just elected. To my surprise, much of what I learned was quite familiar. This talk is a thought experiment—are there really design patterns common to software development and community organizing? At the very least, what can we learn, one from the other
- When I first gave this talk to a PMI roundtable, I belatedly released that half of my audience was not very familiar with Agile, nor with Scrum, the Agile Methodology that is currently most popular. So, I am inserting some slides in the version I share on SlideShare, and will refine further next time I give this talk.
- The movement started when a group of software developers met one weekend and talked over what might make for a better software development process. Several specific “Agile” methodologies—Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal, Scrum, Kanban, others—ideas to turn the manifesto into practice, eventually evolved from that group. You can find out more at http://agilemanifesto.org . I should add that at a talk for AgileBoston a couple of years ago Alexander Cockburn, one of the signatories, suggested that we not treat the manifesto (and its accompanying “12 principles” as holy writ: “On a different weekend, we might have weighted some things differently, or ended up with a slightly different statement or principles.”
- Among the the most basic ideas of Agile is to get a “minimum viable product” into people’s hands quickly so that they can provide feedback. This is also reflected in a parallel influence on current software (and product) development called “Lean”.
- You start by making short notes about what you want to achieve. Sticky notes, or 3x5 cards are often used.
- Gradually, stories “decompose” into smaller pieces until you have lots of pieces. In Scrum, this can take a week of meetings. The bigger stories are called “epics” or “features”. The smallest will be “user stories” (under which we will ultimately note “tasks”).
- Eventually, you will decide on a set of User Stories that can be carried out in one cycle. In Scrum, these cycles are called “Sprints”. Figure out what goes in a sprint takes place in a Planning Meeting wherein the Scrum Master facilitates a bargaining session in which the Product Owner (the person responsible for what is actually delivered) will present a prioritized series of stories. The team then figures out what can be done in the next cycle. At the end of the sprint, there will be an “Action.” In Scrum parlance, this is called a “Review.” Actual working code is presented for review and acceptance by the Product Owner and Stakeholders.
- An important concept in Agile software development is the idea of “transparency”—making sure that you have “information radiators”—displays that show exactly what is being worked on by whom and what is done. This lets everyone see what is happening, what is coming up, and what is done. Although the origins of the practice lie in using wall space and physical notes, there are many “virtual” variants enabling people to participate, or to view status, without needing to be physically in one location.
- The User Stories that don’t make it into the current sprint remain in an area called the “backlog” to be refined further as you prepare for the next+1 sprint—what you’ll be doing next. There will be some “grooming” done to refine the stories, and eventually, they will be presented at a Planning Meeting for the next Sprint.
- Born in 1909, Saul Alinsky originally studied criminology at the University of Chicago. His first job out of college was evaluating potential parolees at the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet. In 1936, he returned to Chicago as a graduate student. As a student of sociologist Clifford Shaw, he was very much influenced by the theory that criminal behavior owed much to the environment—poor neighborhoods with poor schools and poor services created criminals. Shaw set up the “Chicago Areas Project” in 1934 and Alinsky went to work exploring the idea that to stop delinquency one must actively engage local residents in community self-development. He came to feel that sociologists were on the wrong path—university-educated outsiders parachuted into a neighborhood to save it from itself. Instead, he formulated the IAF golden rule: “Never do for others what they can do for themselves”—the organizers is a facilitator, someone who removes blockages and helps communities coalesce as one organization. In 1939 he founded the IAF—the Industrial Areas Foundation and began his first project in the “back of the yards” neighborhood immortalized by Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle.
- Alinsky was much influenced by John Lewis, former head of United Mineworkers who established the Congress of Industrial Workers (CIO). The question was, “how do you organize when the power is on the other side?” “Without power, he explained, nothing can be done, no rock moved, no law written, no wrong righted.” Power, Alinsky taught, comes in two forms only: money and people. If you have the money, you don’t need people. Without money, the way to power is to organize people. [von Hoffman, p. xii]
- Alinsky wrote two books. Reveille for Radicals was labeled “the filthiest book since Tom Paine” (which Alinsky took as a compliment). Each of them a best-seller. With Rules for Radicals, written largely as a distillation of what he had learned in over 30 years of organizing (and coming out shortly before he died) got him labeled “the American Machiavelli.” That book was also a response to the anti-war and civil rights movements which, as we’ll see, he felt were going to achieve far too little.
- A prime issue in organizing (whether in communities or organizations, themselves, is power. In Western culture, power has come to be interpreted and practiced as one-way influence. One person's power is his or her ability to get someone else to do as that person chooses. Here, power means "power over.” It is seen as a “zero sum” item—if you have it, I don’t. Because they have no verb, "to power," English speakers have a hard time understanding that power is more like a verb than a noun. Spanish speakers, have the verb poder, meaning "to be able.” Relational power, however, is additive and multiplicative.... As you become more powerful, so do those in relationship with you. This is power understood as relational, as power with, not over.
- Alinsky felt that the way to organize people was to get to know them, and then let them figure out what their priorities should be. It takes time to unlearn powerlessness, to get the initial small victories, and to come together strongly enough to exercise power. In our terms, you need real, top-down commitment, not just “management fad of the month” commitment.
- Antipatterns are design patterns known to fail. Activists' expectations for change are far too short-term: “Their time frame is immediate. 'What do we want?' 'Freedom.' 'When do we want it?' 'Now!' 'No justice, no peace,'” he explains dismissively. “Movement activists appeal to youth, frustrated idealists, and cynical ideologues, ignoring the 80 percent of moderates who comprise the world as it is…. Organizing is generational, not here today, gone tomorrow.”
- An “antipattern is a design pattern that is sure to fail—something we know that doesn’t work. Alinsky wasn’t just allergic to “isms” and their dogmas. He took extreme issue with what he called “charismatic movements.” In his time, most promient was the Civil Rights movement under Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At one point, Dr. King moved to Chicago to try to organize the North. It was a major failure. Charismatic movements have no roots, no local presence. The Civil Rights movement was important, but much of the work is still in progress.
- Alinsky presented a romantic, macho image of organizers. Here are some qualities Alinsky lists in Rules for Radicals. He doesn’t mention, however, the need to listen to people, the need to be an active listener, and the need to initiate processes that work for the organizations and the people involved. Project Managers and Scrum Masters would probably see these latter as more important.
- Ed Chambers: This is the most radical thing we teach. Relational meetings are one-to-one guided conversations: What moves a person to action, how did she or he get there? Alinsky claimed that the stories of Moses at the burning bush, Paul on the road to Damascus, and Muhammad in the cave on Mt. Hira are classic accounts of relational meetings.... When people asked the Buddha in his later years what sort of being he was, he replied, 'I am awake.' A good relational meeting wakes somebody up.” Movements focus on finding people who agree. You want people who think. You want to build following people's passion. Relational meetings are probably the major IAF idea that Scrum lacks. When we talk about Agile culture and the frustration of getting there, Relational meetings may offer one missing link. But, we’ll talk about this some more, soon.
- Where do these relational meetings fit? What does a relational organization look like?
- I’m going to argue that project managers and scrum masters are relational workers.
- The liturgy of public life ... is "research, action, evaluation." Action is the middle term in a three-part formula, sandwiched between moments of hard reflection. Alinsky didn’t do demonstrations. He did “Actions”. In GBIO, for instance, we have ongoing working groups that research issues, talk with stakeholders, and gradually potential, specific user stories are refined—legislative goals, perhaps—and then we set up an action to make specific goals happen. Immediately after that action, leaders will gather for a retrospective. It is critical that Actions are always followed by Evaluation.
- Iteration is a key element of community organizing. And, in Agile development, even though the shape and motivations often seem dissimilar.
- Alinsky wrestled a lot with diversity. He managed to get Catholic, Protestant, and Jew to work together, but was less successful getting colors to mix. It remains an issue for political organizers, and not surprisingly, remains an issue in our scrum teams. We know that having a team featuring diverse skills, background, gender, culture, etc., makes a significant positive difference. But we’re not there. As a Scrum master, I would note that the gain to the team in having someone “not like the others” on board is great enough, that I would take a lesser coder if it brought me someone who approaches problems from a different background.
- Indeed, Tea Party activists, when not railing against that “communist” Alinsky, have adopted Rules for Radicals as their own, and even distribute a shortened version of it. Hilary Clinton wrote her college thesis on Alinsky. Barack Obama got his start in an Alinsky-style organization in Chicago’s South Side.