Wanted to share my latest slide deck from my presentation at the Atlanta Scrum Gathering on working with culture. About 70% the same as earlier versions.

As FYI, the book is planned for May release on InfoQ and print.

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Overview

Play is a powerful tool for achieving business results. A common question is, how can I do this in my current work environment? The purpose of this talk is to orient you to a variety of different ways that you can introduce play to solve real-world problems. Whether you are a leader, coach, and even individual contributor, there are ways to amplify the workplace with play.

Welcome to a guided tour of the play landscape. This guided tour will help you navigate the different techniques with the space of games and play in order to see how they can help you. We will start our journey with ways to harness the power of play through games to do valuable work. Next stop is about using games for accelerated, deep learning. At the peak of the tour we visit the ways we can develop our play skills. The final stop on our tour is how to embedded play into our work contexts.

At the end of the tour you will have a map for exploring play and perhaps even a burning curiousity about some newly discovered places.

Play and Games landscape

For the infographic on Stuart Brown’s book on Play, please refer to The Science of Play.

Presentation Slides

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1. What are my strengths?
2. What are my fatal flaws?
3. What strengths work best for the company?
4. What strengths work best for you?

Consider Johari Window

Another great approach that is more general is the Johari Window technique. Again you are going to want to get input from others, but this time with an eye towards discovering who you are by sharing hidden perspectives.

Want a high performance team? Then have the whole team do this exercise together. And of course  Strategic Play® with Lego® SERIOUS PLAY® is a great way to explore a topic such as interpersonal perspectives.

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Stuart Brown literally wrote the book on it – Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and invigorates the Soul. It is the tale of a medical doctor who could not ignore the importance of play in the lives of people and the tragedies that result from a lack of play.

Consider the visual note below that captures features of the book that helped me better understand the science of play.   The characteristics of play are that it is voluntary, fun, and results in a flow state of mind.

Play is the foundation of Creativity and Innovation. Our ability to take risks and learn from mistakes are key to innovation. To do this we must be able to play in safety.

Play is innate to animals and humans. Brown shares the science around play being a driving force for learning. Animals (in particular, mammals) use play when young to develop cognitive and social skills. Humans are special in that they play through life. In part this allows us to continue to learn through life. Neoteny describes our trait of retaining youthful characteristics.

Perhaps the most important point is that Work and Play go hand in hand. Play is an enabler of work, not the opposite. The opposite of play is depression. ”All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” And by dull, we mean unable to support the creativity needed to accomplish challenging tasks. “When the going gets tough, the tough go play.” And I know that I use StrategicPlay® with Lego® to solve really big challenges.

If you thinking about building up your play muscles, the place to start is with your play history: think about what got you really excited when you were a kid. There are questions in book if you want to explore further.

It’s no wonder, I am such a big fan of games for learning and doing work.

Curious to learn more? You can start with the TED talk below or pick up the book.

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Jane McGonigal has written a fabulous book, “Reality is Broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world.” In it she explores large-scale online games that are part of the commercial video game industry as well as ones about producing direct real-world benefits.

As is my usual want, I prepared the visual note below to capture the most important aspects of the book to me.

Jane defines a games as having four important characteristics: a goal, rules, a feedback system (so people know whether they are reaching their goals) and voluntary participation. I found the last characteristic very interesting. With Agile and Scrum in particular we promote self-organizing teams where people sign up for work rather than having it assigned. In fact, many facets of Agile make work more like play. The principle of voluntary participation also aligns with good management practices such as “treat everyone like a volunteer”.

I really like how play and being in a state of flow is differentiated from it’s opposite: depression. I just love the definition of play and flow as an “intense, optimistic engagement with the world around us.”

Jane paints a compelling picture of the capabilities and talents of video game players. She states that young adults will have had the 10,000 hours or practice needed to become experts at pro-social collaboration skills through playing video games. Gamers with this level of skill – a superpower – can collectively accomplish great things.

I used to think games were the cat’s meow, but now I see them as just one way to help people reach a state of flow through play (see: Three Ways to Use Play for Business Results). For me (at work), games are a means to an end. At home, one goal is having fun; another is bonding with the people I play with.

The most fun fact I found in the book was: “75% of executives play games at work”. Usually to take a break and relieve stress.

But the BEST of all was learning about and playing SuperBetter to up my game in dealing with some challenges in my personal life. If you are struggling with anything, perhaps you might like to play this game for the win.

If you haven’t already seen Jane’s TED talk – Gaming can make a better world – I highly recommend it.

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If your development team or manufacturing team is considering moving to using Kanban vs. Agile Scrum, one of the biggest decisions is choosing the right agile development methods for the job. Let’s discuss the realities of implementing Kanban and some of the fundamentals that hold back both Kanban and Scrum implementations.

On paper, Kanban is certainly easier to kick-start from a change management perspective because you can leave current roles and processes largely intact; you just need to get commitment from the business to adhere to three basic principles:

1. Provide a high degree of visibility/transparency of the state of all work queued and in progress
2. Establish and respect WIP(work in progress) limits in the value flow
3. Commit to execution in a ‘pull-based’ manner from the prioritized work queue

Yeah, just get commitment and practice of these three things… Much easier said than done in my experience because they are frequently outside the circle of influence of those driving the change to implementing Kanban!

Usually it isn’t that the agile software teams are unable to execute under Scrum; the fundamental issue is that the business isn’t willing to accept a “pull-based” execution model (required for Kanban and Scrum).

Businesses continue to make irresponsible commitments to customers and investors. This only perpetuates crystal-ball thinking, fixed-date, fixed-scope and fixed-cost projects. It’s the classic sales-driven model we see all too often where the sales arm doesn’t respect the capability of its product development group to produce predictable value for the customer in a timely manner, and with an agreed-upon level of quality. After all, quality is a business decision.

This irresponsible action ends up causing organizations to be unpredictable in their delivery, have lower quality, and to burn out their teams. These outcomes in turn destroy brands, ruin company reputations on Wall Street, increase the percentage of each investor dollar serving up technical debt (in lieu of adding new value to products), and causes instability in the organization’s systems due to turnover.

Bottom line, if an organization can’t make the commitment to respect their product development system’s proven delivery capability at the current level, neither Kanban nor Scrum will provide predictability. But even in the face of this dysfunction, agile methodologies like Kanban and Scrum can still provide faster learning to teams, which allows them to test their assumptions faster and provide more value to their customers by delivering what they actually need.

In conclusion, I leave you with this advice: ignore the myths and hype about Kanban. Before you can make any decisions on the Kanban vs Scrum debate, you must first evaluate:

• Your organization’s product development and sales culture,
• The nature of the demand for service from product development,
• The competency of your organization to plan and execute change, and
• The degree to which you’re willing to face the truth

Only then can you choose the best agile software tool for the job.

Michael DePaoli Bio

Over his 26 years in IT, Michael DePaoli’s experienced has included serving in different
traditional roles in highly respected companies. The roles have included analyst, software
engineer, quality engineer, development manager, project manager, Director of Engineering,
VP of R&D, CTO and Consultant in companies, such as American Express, Sprint, Deloitte
Consulting, Sapient, Knowledgepoint, Adobe Systems, AOL, NetApp and VersionOne. Michael
works as an agile / lean coach and product consultant with the VersionOne services group.

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Agile Culture and Adoption Survival Guide from Agile New England on Vimeo.

P.S. I am actively working on an eBook for those who prefer print. Drop me an email if you want to help review it before it comes out.

P.P.S Slides are here.

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Identify your heroes to find out what really matters to you.

I was reading Focus (which is a great book and I’ll blog about sooner or later) and there was a bonus chapter about How to do Great Work that totally rocked my world. It was a simple question:

Who are your heroes?

At first I thought, I don’t have any heroes. But then my mind started wandering. My first hero surprised me. A lot.

But the really interesting part is why they are your hero.

I am sharing this exercise because it can help you discover who you really are and what is important for you. For me this short activity was profoundly insightful. YMMV.

#1 Conan the Barbarian

I imagine that at this point many readers are having a hard time relating to my hero or are perhaps even begin to wonder about me as a person. I was mystified myself until I thought about what attributes of Conan make him a hero for me:

Strength of mind, courage, and for doing what is right. Conan strictly adhered to the warrior code and would often get into all kinds of difficult situations for doing the right thing no matter what the cost. Conan spent much of his life as a wandering mercenary – I finally seems to have found a path as a consultant in the guise of an Agile Coach.

At a young age, Conan was taught what was best in life: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of the women.” Metaphorically, I see this aligned with the Good To Great management practice of getting the right people on the bus.

#2 Mahatma Gandhi

He is my hero for selflessness, courage and wisdom. Gandhi believed in a cause and purpose greater than himself. So do I. My mission is to make a difference in the lives of the people and companies I work with.

“Be the change you want to see” is a famous statement from Gandhi and is central to how I think about myself and my work. Whether at home with my kids or working with clients, the better I am at modeling useful behaviours, the more effective I am in helping others.

One consequence of this is that I am very dedicated to not only learning useful tools (communication, facilitation, etc.) but more importantly mastering my inner game and developing myself as a human being. Like Stephen Covey says, victory begins at home.

#3 Captain James T. Kirk

 I’m 42 and I watched a lot of Star Trek when I was a kid.

The aspects of Captain Kirk that I admire are leadership, ingenuity, boldness and passion.

Leadership: Kirk pursued his objectives with a single-minded purpose. He was caring and supportive of his crew and yet could make difficult decisions in times of great need.

Ingenuity: Perhaps creativity captures what I mean. With laser-like focus on a goal, there were no holds barred in how it was achieved. I get goosebumps when I think of Kobayashi Maru – a demonstration of changing the rules of the game (literally) in order to win.

Passion: Kirk brought energy to any situation he was involved in. He lived life with a vim and vigor, one day at a time.

#4 Sarwan Sahota

I was startled and perhaps even alarmed to find my dad on my list of heroes since I am still working through the usual stuff that goes on in families (See Brene Brown’s Gifts of Imperfections).

When I started to think about what I admired in him, I realized I admire him for doing the right thing and having a strong code of ethics.

My dad was raised as a Sikh. The religion – designed to help people to survive via fighting prowess – says to always carry a weapon (Kirpan); never cut your hair so that long beard and hair demarcate you as a Sikh. I learned the attitude – to quote Rodney Dangerfield – “I don’t take shit from nobody.”

My dad has a strong sense of ethics that would often put him controversial situations with those less concerned. One simple example: I remember as a kid when we visited his office and would use the photocopier (when prepping to play one of a myriad of games) he would have us keep track of the number of copies and pay the cost into petty cash. I still think about this today – when I am at a client site and use a printer, I make sure to offset the cost.

Sacrifice. When if came to doing the right thing, my dad was prepared to make whatever sacrifices were needed. He put his job and career on the line to fight for what he thought was best for Ryerson University (where he worked) and his coworkers.

Deep Insight – what defines me

When I look at my heroes, I see they have a lot in common that define how I see myself and what I value. Heroes are what drive our behaviour.

Do the right thing regardless of personal cost.

This is what defines me. It is a chilling and profound insight.

The scary part is that it explains why I have cared more than others around me for doing what is best for the people, for the team, for the company. It explains why I have swum so hard against the current to the point of rupturing relations and employment. And my own personal cost has been high.

Finding Balance

I am fortunate that in the last year, I have found balance.  Flawless Consulting helped me learn to ask clients what problem they want solved and to focus only on that. So I am doing better than ever staying aligned with those around me.

I do not have a guardian angel like Conan and Kirk, so I remind myself to pause and reflect on my personal safety in potentially risky situations. I am doing a better job, but it’s hard not to be distracted by doing the right thing.

Who are your Heroes?

I encourage anyone interested in self-discovery to do this short exercise. And for those who are particularly courageous, to share them and link back here.

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Agile Failure

I did a hand vote to see how much failure people had seen with Agile adoption they were involved in. See photo on the right: most of the group rated their experiences with Agile success at 3 out of 5.

The results were pretty much consistent with the other times I have  run this: about 50% failure. I guess we can call this one – Agile is heading for the trough of disillusionment. But I haven’t given up – it’s time to up our game and turn this around.

Culture at Participant Companies

 Participants were worked in small groups to discuss what was the dominant culture at their company using the Schneider Model.  The photo below shows a histogram of the dominant culture. The peak is 30 participants identifying a control culture. It is interesting to note the relatively high 16 for Competence culture (vs. previous workshops) that represents the high density of hard-core engineering companies in the Boston area.

Closing Thoughts

Maybe the 50% failure is because 50% of the companies are control culture. Probably not entirely true, but this may be a helpful meme that allows us to change our approaches and behaviours to succeed.

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