Agile soft skills suitecase - iad 2011

A soft-skills suitecase
openware

Soft-skills
 Soft skills are interpersonal skills such as the ability to
communicate well with other people and to work in a team.

(Antonym: hard skills)

Suitecase
 A suitcase is a box or bag with a handle and a hard frame in
which you carry your clothes when you are travelling.

Agile
 adj Someone who is agile can move quickly and easily.

Agile
 adj mentally quick or acute
If you have an agile mind, you think quickly and intelligently.

[from Latin agilis, from agere to do, act]

Agility means that things will be
done differently
Agility does not mean ...
 To no longer do project management
 To be a chaotic organization that no longer respects its IT governance
framework
 To no longer produce documents
 To leave the team to itself
 To do things partially
 To change every thing overnight
 That there will no longer be any problems
It simply means to do things differently!

Agile adoption means
 Personal change
 A focus on delivery of value - early and often
 Understanding that people are different

Personal change
Agile adoption means personal change
 not just for developers, but for other folks across the whole
organization.
 And by personal change here, we mean coming to see the
world (and the world of work) from a different perspective.

Focus on delivery of value
Agile adoption means a focus on delivery of value - early
and often
 By value we mean, things of value to stakeholders;
 and by early we mean within a few days or weeks
(sometimes even, hours) of starting a new project.

People are different
Agile adoption means understanding that people are
different
 seeing people as individuals, and recognizing that a one-
size-fits-all attitude to people has serious drawbacks.

Coaching is not Training
 While training and coaching both promote learning, they do
so in different ways

Coaching is not Counseling
 Again, there may be a superficial similarity in that both of
these activities are one-to-one conversations, but their tone
and purpose are very different

Coaching is not Mentoring
 There are some superficial similarities between coaching and
mentoring, as they are both typically one-to-one
conversations aimed at facilitating professional development,
but there are also significant differences.

Being an Agile Coach is
challenging in many ways

Agile coaching
 Balance many things as you work with different teams and
stay true to your own values.
 Understanding of the social psychological and complexity
aspects of team.
 Sense-making models for analyzing teams and situations.
 A method for designing non-intrusive interventions for
changing team dynamics.
 Learn what’s really needed to get people to work together as
teams.

Self-organization issues
 Self-organization of human beings is a tricky thing.
 Agile coaches are constantly challenged with how to
motivate/persuade/trick their teams into doing things, without
telling them what to do, but there is very little information or
training on this topic.
 Allowing a team to self-organize along the lines of “oh well,
they’re all adults, they’ll figure it out” is just as irresponsible
as reverting to the command-and control school of
management.

What skills are important to
build for agile coaches?

Three categories
 Working with people
 Facilitating change
 Systems thinking

Working with people
 Listening
 giving feedback
 asking questions
 building trust and rapport

Facilitating change
 enlisting support
 reaching agreement
 spreading success
 learning from failure

Systems thinking
 seeing the bigger picture
 identifying levers for change
 communicating danger signals

Adapting your
Agile Coaching Style

Old
Nands

New to
Agile

Team members

gives
instructions

Directive

Non
Directive

asks shares experiences + mentor
questions
Coaching style

Coaching
Expertise

Agile
Expertise

Coach/Consultant

Working with people
Agile coach soft-skills categories

Working with people

Agile Manifesto

Working with people

Neuro Linguistic Programming

Working with people

Set a goal

Working with people

Communication

Working with people

Leadership

Working with people

Agile Teams

Teamwork
Forming

Performing Storming

Norming

Tuckman's Group Development Model

Team development model
 Teams go through four stages

Team is dependent on
Forming the Leader


Forming


Leader mediates and
Storming focuses

Forming


Storming

Forming

 Teams can regress when membership changes

Norming Leader facilitates

Storming

Forming

Performing
Norming
Storming


Norming

Storming

Forming

 A mature team may need no leadership Performing

Leader delegates and
overseas
Norming

Storming
The Leader’s goal is to
make the team self-
Forming reliant and than move on

Self-sufficient teams produce best results
 People are more motivated when they manage themselves.
 People are more committed when they make their own
commitments.
 Teams and individuals are more productive when they are
not interrupted.
 Teams are improving when they solve their problems by
themselves.

Self-sufficient teams produce best results
 Productivity is compromised when changes are made to the
team composition.
 Face-to-face communication is the most productive way for a
team to work and exchange

Working with people

Team roles

Team Roles
 The individuals who make up the team need a range of
attributes that are complementary so that, to coin a well know
phrase, ‘its whole is greater than the sum of its parts’.
 This is how teams achieve exceptional performance and,
again, sporting analogies abound.

What are Belbin's Team Roles?
At Henley Management College whilst researching effective
teamworking some years ago, Dr Meredith Belbin analyzed the
composition of high performance teams and discovered that
there were a number of behavioural attributes that were
crucial.

Working with people

The 7 Habits

Independence or Self-Mastery
The First Three Habits surround moving from dependence to
independence (i.e. self mastery):
 Habit 1: Be Proactive
 Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
 Habit 3: Put First Things First

Interdependence
The next three have to do with Interdependence (i.e. working
with others):
 Habit 4: Think Win-Win
 Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be
Understood
 Habit 6: Synergize

Self Renewal
The Last habit relates to self-rejuvenation:
 Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Working with people

Time management

Getting Things Done (GTD)
 is an organizational method created by productivity
consultant David Allen, described in a book of the same
name.
 The Getting Things Done method rests on the principle that a
person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording
them externally.
 That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering
everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on
actually performing those tasks.

First Things First
The book by Steven Covey asserts that there are
three generations of time management:
 first-generation task lists,
 second-generation personal organizers with deadlines and
 third-generation values clarification as incorporated in the
Franklin Planner.

Urgent Not Urgent

• Crisis • Preparation
• Pressing Issues • Planning
Important

• Deadlines • Prevention
• Meetings • Relationship
building

I II
Not Important

III IV
• Interruptions • Trivia
• Some mails • Some Phone Calls
• Many popular • Excessive
activities TV/Games

Working with people

Creativity

Working with people

Retrospective

The prime directive says:
Regardless of what we discover, we understand and
truly believe that everyone did the best job they
could, given what they knew at the time, their skills
and abilities, the resources available, and the
situation at hand.

Iteration Retrospective
Set the stage

Deliver product
Gather data
increments

Generate
Build product
Insight

Incorporate
Decide what to
experiments &
do
improvements

Close
Retrospective

Structure of a retrospective
 Set the stage
 Gather data
 Generate insight
 Decide what to do
 Close the retrospective

Facilitating change

Facilitating change

Manage the fear of change

Virginia Satir’s Change Model
 describes the change patterns she saw during therapy with
families
 the patterns she describes occur with any group of people
when confronted by change

Stage 1: Late Status Quo
 The group is at a familiar place.
 The performance pattern is consistent.
 Stable relationships give members a sense of belonging and
identity.
 Members know what to expect, how to react, and how to
behave.
 Implicit and explicit rules underlie behavior.

Stage 2: Resistance
 The group confronts a foreign element that requires a
response.
 Often imported by a small minority seeking change, this
element brings the members whose opinions count the most
face to face with a crucial issue.
 A foreign element threatens the stability of familiar power
structures.

Stage 3: Chaos
 The group enters the unknown.
 Relationships shatter: Old expectations may no longer be
valid; old reactions may cease to be effective; and old
behaviors may not be possible.
 The chaos stage is vital to the transformation process.

Stage 4: Integration
 The members discover a transforming idea that shows how
the foreign element can benefit them.
 The group becomes excited.
 New relationships emerge that offer the opportunity for
identity and belonging.
 With practice, performance improves rapidly.
 The members need reassurance and help finding new
methods for coping with difficulties.

Stage 5: New Status Quo
 If the change is well conceived and assimilated, the group
and its environment are in better accord and performance
stabilizes at a higher level than in the Late Status Quo.
 A healthy group is calm and alert.
 All members provide feedback to improve the process.

Satir’s Change Model
Stage Description How to Help
Encourage people to seek improvement information and
1 Late Status Quo
concepts from outside the group.
Help people to open up, become aware, and overcome the
2 Resistance
reaction to deny, avoid or blame.

Help build a safe environment that enables people to focus
on their feelings, acknowledge their fear, and use their
3 Chaos
support systems. Help management avoid any attempt to
short circuit this stage with magical solutions.

Offer reassurance and help finding new methods for coping
4 Integration
with difficulties.
5 New Status Quo Help people feel safe so they can practice.

Facilitating change

Fight a Blaming Culture

Facilitating change

Don’t escape from problems

System thinking

From a Hierarchical Model …

Organizational structure

… to a Social Network one

Organizational structure

Kaizen
 Kaizen a Japanese term which means “continuous
improvement” by doing little things better and setting and
achieving increasingly higher standards
 The exact translation is:
Kai = change
Zen = better
 It is a Japanese philosophy that originally comes from
Japanese culture and Japanese practice of management.

“The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step"

Rooted in the two thousand-year-old wisdom of the Tao Te Ching

Kaizen
 Kaizen is the art of making great and lasting change through
small, steady increments.
 Kaizen is the tortoise versus the hare.

7 Small Steps
 How to Think Small Thoughts
 Take Small Actions
 Solve Small Problems
 and more …
 How to perform mind sculpture-visualizing virtual change so
that real change comes more naturally.
 Small rewards motivate better than big rewards.

Plan Do

Kaizen

Act Check

Evaluate Assess

Continuous
Improvement

Implement Design

Succeeding with Kaizen Programs
and Events
 Avoid common implementation mistakes
 Find the right champion and establish an effective steering
committee
 Create timelines, select teams and leaders, and define
objectives
 Use kaizen events to implement 5S, standard work, Kanban,
and new line designs
 Includes a chapter-length case study from a real
manufacturing firm

Agile Leadership
Soft-skill suitecase

How will we proceed?
 We are coaching rather than commanding or controlling.
 We create environments promoting collaboration to foster
team work.
 It is ideal to reorganize the physical location, but this goal
could be reached gradually.
 We involve business people right from the beginning in order
to promote commitment.
 We create communities so people can communicate and
improve themselves.
 We use tools to disseminate information

Quality

Management Performance

What does it mean to managers?
LEADERSHIP
• Definition of the objectives and performance management
• Management and leadership style

ENVIRONMENT
• Work environment and organizational culture

PROJECT TEAM
• Self-sufficiency and accountability
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Communication and knowledge sharing
• Skills and professional development
• Continuous improvement e and organizational learning
• Processes and tools

208

Managers are also impacted by
the transition from a traditional to
an Agile approach
 Transfer authority and responsibility to the team so it can do
its work adequately
 Avoid interference and micromanagement
 Promote collaboration and teamwork
 Support learning and not systematically penalize failures
 Review best practices in order to adapt them to changing
realities
 Make adjustments to the facilities so the environment
facilitates the execution of Agile projects
 Adapt the management style to the context of the team

Managers will be supported by
organizational coaches
 As members of the expertise centre, organizational coaches:
 Offer training courses to groups of managers (e.g. Agile for
managers)
 Participate in steering committees of pilot projects (ETC)
 Individually support the managers that are related to pilot projects
in order to go from a traditional management style to a more
Agile one
 Provide individual or group coaching in order to address fears,
challenges, and resistances and to provide appropriate support

How managers are being
supported?

Characteristics of a Agile organization
 Management Pyramid is inverted
 Greater Liberty and Freedom to accomplish the task at hand
 Constant Learning, Knowledge Creation and Knowledge
Sharing
 A More Enjoyable and Humane Work Environment
 A Hyper-productive Cooperative Work Mode
 Emergent Planning, Architecture and Requirements
 New values that generate a cooperative culture
 The Quality of Life

Conclusion
 A transition from a traditional approach to an Agile one
is not an IT project, it is rather an organizational
change.
 An Agile approach highly impacts project teams but it
also impacts managers and their management style.
 When this type of transition is successful, it gives a
competitive advantage to the organization.
 Supporting managers is critical to the success of this
type of initiative.

Credits
 Stock photo: 123rf.com
 Original photo: Giulia Armani
 Music: “Ladies of Ireland” » Mike Oldfield
“Mirror” » Fabio Armani

Agile soft skills suitecase - iad 2011

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Agile soft skills suitecase - iad 2011