Interesting question… agile is all about creating a close partnership with the business, and getting them back in the driver’s seat when it comes to product development. You’d think that would lead to greater customer satisfaction, right? In some companies I’ve worked with, the commitment cycle is so out of whack… with [...]]]>

Interesting question… agile is all about creating a close partnership with the business, and getting them back in the driver’s seat when it comes to product development. You’d think that would lead to greater customer satisfaction, right? In some companies I’ve worked with, the commitment cycle is so out of whack… with developers committing to stuff they’ve got no chance of delivering… sometimes because of intense pressure to commit… getting real about what’s possible can get pretty uncomfortable.

If you’ve been promised a Cadillac and now you’ve got to drive around in a Chevy… it doesn’t matter that you got to pick the transmission, or the color of the car, or the really awesome stereo… it still doesn’t live up to expectations. What makes things especially uncomfortable, is that your customers have been promising their customers the Caddy… and now they have to go back and sell the benefits of the Chevy. I don’t care who you are… that’s no fun… and sometimes people lose jobs.

Over the long haul, your customers should be able to count on you to do what you say your going to do, when you say your going to do it. They should be able to balance their expectations against the proven ability of the team to deliver. Agile should help your customers make better decisions and better commitments to their customers. Over time, that WILL increase customer satisfaction. Just understand in the near term, if you’ve been promised everything, and now you are getting less… that sucks.

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In September we have new elections in The Netherlands. Our current ruling parties cannot work together anymore.

I always vote. I think it’s important. As years go by I find it harder to choose which party to vote for. And we have a lot of [...]]]> I am lost. Or confused. Or at least something non-expert-like.

In September we have new elections in The Netherlands. Our current ruling parties cannot work together anymore.

I always vote. I think it’s important. As years go by I find it harder to choose which party to vote for. And we have a lot of them.

This time, I really have no clue.

This bothers me.

As I remember it, I used to have only a couple of choices. And the parties I could choose from represented a social group. Factory workers, small business owners, religious folks. If you’re a member of a certain social group, you’re choice is almost already made.

Both my grandparents were small business owners and I can trace my early voting behavior back to this.

Every party also had a single story for how things should be run: let the free market do it’s thing, tax the rich folks and redistribute wealth evenly, give priority to families. Stuff like that.

Easy choice. Easy solutions.

I love to map stuff. I like to know where I am in the political landscape.

Now I have many parties to choose from. Now I am not sure which social group they represent. I can only see a very small amount of flags.

Even within parties I am now confronted with internal elections broadcasted on television. Who will be the frontrunner for this party? So I get to see all the many faces from within a party. Increasing my options.

Media is providing me with information about every single candidate. Conflicting information of course.

There are no single stories any more. Or easy solutions that resonate with me.

Is this good or bad?

Yes.

Is this what Barry Schwarz meant with the Paradox of Choice? If you have too much options to choose from, you run into the risk of paralysis and being unhappy about your final choice, because you keep comparing them to the alternatives.

Perhaps.

It can also be a personal thing.

Perhaps when I started to vote there actually were many parties, but my vision of the landscape was limited.

Perhaps there are parties now with single stories, but I just don’t want to hear them. (blaming immigrants for example).

Perhaps I am not sure which social group I belong to.

I am glad I have the right to vote.

I am glad I have still 3 months to narrow my selection.

Lost. How To Choose Who To Vote For? is a post from: Project Shrink.

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This is a guest post from Krister Ungerboeck, the CEO of Ungerboeck Software International.

The most successful event planners have started using mobile technology to more quickly connect with customers and meet their needs. New mobile applications can drive business to their websites and help them provide better service. Yet, current mobile technology [...]]]>

This is a guest post from Krister Ungerboeck, the CEO of Ungerboeck Software International.

The most successful event planners have started using mobile technology to more quickly connect with customers and meet their needs. New mobile applications can drive business to their websites and help them provide better service. Yet, current mobile technology has several deficiencies that make it not only expensive to implement, but it also limits the types of devices that can access a particular app.

HTML5 coding aims to change all of that. By developing websites and applications using HTML5, marketers will be able to interact with all mobile users, regardless of the device they are using. This brings many benefits to event planners and others in the industry.

Better Connection Between Companies and Customers

HTML5 will allow for more interaction between users and websites through more dynamic interactive apps. This means that companies harnessing HTML5 technology will have a better opportunity to connect with their clients through mobile applications. For instance, a company can create a virtual personal assistant to help their customers plan events. Event planners that provide such a service to their clients will likely convert them to repeat customers.

Immediate Access for Users Across Platforms

HTML5 is compatible with all devices and operating systems, giving every customer with a mobile device access to the app and thus increasing its effectiveness as a marketing tool. Instead of creating an app that can only be used by a certain mobile device type (Android, iPhone, etc.), creating an app with HTML5 ensures that every customer has access, no matter what mobile platform they have.

Better Linking Capabilities

One of the primary problems with native apps is the difficulty of deep linking from a specific part of the app to another. Linking in apps and on mobile web devices is almost non-existent, yet it can be a valuable tool for marketing. HTML5 allows linking to be integrated into apps as easily as on a traditional website, which provides many more opportunities for the events industry to use mobile apps.

Search Engine Inclusion

Creating a traditional app for your company is valuable for your business because it keeps your organization connected with your clients through their mobile devices; however, it doesn’t provide any visibility for your site with search engines. The major search engines do not crawl through these apps, so they do not help drive organic traffic to your website. In order to get that traffic, you need a secondary HTML version of the content contained in the application. You can bypass that extra step with HTML5 apps, as the HTML code is already contained within the app. For example, when a user uses Google as their mobile browser and your app is HTML5 based, it will be ranked higher in search results because Google can understand the code.

HTML5 is still relatively new in the world of mobile apps, but it appears to have a strong future. Those event planning companies that want to make their mobile apps as accessible as possible to all potential customers should embrace this new platform when creating mobile applications to connect with customers.

Editor’s Note: As someone who has attended conferences that developed native iPhone and Android event apps, the benefits of HTML5 are very intriguing. App development is much more expensive, especially for a short duration event. HTML5 is likely a faster and cheaper application development option.

This is a guest post from Krister Ungerboeck. Krister is the CEO of Ungerboeck Software International, a trusted provider of comprehensive event management software solutions.

Related articles

• Sencha Unveils Sencha Touch: The First HTML5 Mobile Application Framework (prweb.com)
• Mobile Development Job Trends – February 2012 (regulargeek.com)
• What are the Best Tools For Mobile Application Development? (doctorfox.wordpress.com)

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Agile relies on cross-functional teams of individuals. These individuals bring a set of personalities and skills to a team. In great teams, these [...]]]> The first post in this series provided an overview of the synergy between The Speed of Trust and Agile. This post focuses on the first wave of trust, Self Trust.

Agile relies on cross-functional teams of individuals. These individuals bring a set of personalities and skills to a team. In great teams, these individuals have credibility. That is, they contribute character and competence that helps make the team more than the sum of its parts.

The Speed of Trust describes “four cores” of credibility, two dealing with character and two dealing with competence:

• Integrity
• Intent
• Capabilities
• Results

Integrity

Congruence, humility, and courage are three qualities of integrity mentioned in the book, but one passage on humility really struck me:

A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it.

-Covey, Stephen M.R.; Merrill, Rebecca R. (2006-10-17). The SPEED of Trust (p. 64). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Humility is all about the success of the team over success as an individual, knowing that by lifting others up instead of climbing over them, is the right thing to do. There’s also a hint of servant leadership in there.

Intent

Transparency is one of the most appealing aspects of Agile when it is done well. With everything visible, there is no question about the intent of those involved. However, if someone comes to an Agile team with a nefarious motive, agenda, or behavior, that person and the team pay a huge tax on the speed at which they can deliver value. In an Agile environment, you can’t fake it and you get punished when you try to.

Capabilities

The Speed of Trust uses the acronym TASKS to discuss capabilities. Talents, Skills, and Knowledge are expected members of this list — they’re needed no matter what approach you’re using. Attitudes and Style are the elements that grab me when I think about Agile. My attitude — genuinely excited to be at work with my team and sincerely interested in continuous personal and team improvement — make a significant difference in speed of value delivery.

A variety of styles are valuable in Agile. Personally, I have struggled to deal effectively with people who approach challenges differently than I do, but as I mature (i.e. get older), I am getting better at realizing that there is more than “my way”. As long as people have integrity and proper intent, I try really hard to consider that their style could lead to a desirable result.

Results

And finally, results matter. Well, duh, but the book makes a point that demonstrates the mutually-reinforcing nature of Agile and trust. It is critically important to focus not only on what is achieved, but also on how it is achieved. Agile emphasizes accountability for results, but it also focuses on sustainability, repeatability — predictability!

“…suppose you hit the numbers, but you do it by creating a team spirit of abundance and collaboration. You help team members work together so that everyone succeeds, no one reaches burnout, and the credit is freely shared. What’s going to be their attitude the next time the challenge comes up? What if you can get the same great results—only this time, it’s going to be 30 percent faster and easier?”

Covey, Stephen M.R.; Merrill, Rebecca R. (2006-10-17). The SPEED of Trust (p. 114). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In an end-of-chapter section on how to improve your results, the book encourages focusing on results, not the activities needed to achieve the results. Agile does this via user stories or features defined in business terms by the customer or product owner instead of a task breakdown and by working in small batches that deliver results in a short timeframe. These activities build the customer’s trust in the team who then gives more work to the team, reinforcing the team’s trust that the customer is paying attention to the results and the direction. It’s a mutually reinforcing system that leads to performance that is greater than the sum of the parts.

If you’re going to be an excellent teammate on a team, you’ve got to trust yourself. You’ve got to know that you’re credible. You’ve got to walk your talk. You’ve got to know you’re doing things for the right reason. You’ve got to bring relevant capabilities. You’ve got to deliver.

It ain’t easy!

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I am really excited to announce that Dennis and I both had talks selected for the Agile2012 program this year. Personally, I’ve slowed down my speaking and writing to focus on the operations of LeadingAgile and growing our client base.  Given my schedule, I almost missed the deadline to submit… even though it [...]]]>

I am really excited to announce that Dennis and I both had talks selected for the Agile2012 program this year. Personally, I’ve slowed down my speaking and writing to focus on the operations of LeadingAgile and growing our client base.  Given my schedule, I almost missed the deadline to submit… even though it was on my radar for months. I’m glad it all worked out in the end, I really wanted to be at this event and speak.

Here are the abstracts, location, and time for the selected talks:

Patterns for Agile Adoption and Transformation – Mike Cottmeyer
Room: Texas D           Time: Wednesday 13:30 – 15:00

Introducing agile into an organization is more than just running people through a few days of training and hoping for the best. Training is part of the equation but only addresses one part of the adoption and transformation cycle. The problem with a training-only approach is that we can learn new ways of working, but if the structure and culture of the organization don’t support those new ways of working, the training won’t stick. The trick is to create an organizational structure and culture that is congruent with training in agile practices. We need a structure and culture where Agile practices can flourish and grow and produce the business outcomes we all hope for.

This talk will start by exploring the main differences between agile adoption and agile transformation and how to distinguish between structural transformation and cultural transformation. Next we’ll explore criteria for how to assess your organization and create an adoption and transformation roadmap to help you pragmatically and safely introduce agile methods to your enterprise. Finally we’ll explore three primary dimensions of adoption and transformation: competency, frequency, and scale that will assist in guiding your adoption and transformation roadmap and change management strategy.

After establishing the theoretical underpinning of a successful adoption and transformation strategy, we’ll consider several case studies where these ideas have been applied and what has worked, and more importantly, what hasn’t. The case studies will consider 3-5 companies of varying sizes where these ideas have been applied in the past 18 months.

Beyond Functional Silos with Communities of Practice – Dennis Stevens (with Brian Bozzuto)
Room: San Antonio 4-6          Time: Wednesday 11:00 – 12:00

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… An organization aligns its operation around business products with cross-functional teams focused exclusively on each one. The business likes the focus, but soon people start to complain. Functional experts feel isolated and aren’t able to tap into their technical peers now isolated in other teams. Common practices become difficult. Functional managers feel left out now that their people are permanently assigned to dedicated cross-functional teams. Overall, the organization gains benefit from the re-alignment, but people can’t help but feel they are neglecting their institutional knowledge and have reduced their technical capacity to solve problems. You might think we’re talking about an Agile development team, but actually we’re talking about Chrysler in the 1990′s when they re-organized their engineering around auto lines. (Wenger et al, Cultivating Communities of Practice 1)

This session will explore the concept of communities of practice and how they are a vital component for agile organizations. From providing tactical support in issue resolution, to being stewards of knowledge across vast enterprises, and even helping create support for the larger organizational change, communities of practice are a vital component in improving organizational agility. We will walk through the history of communities of practice, from their emergence in fields as disparate as auto manufacturing, consulting, and oil exploration, and show how these concepts apply to agile organizations. Participants will hear several cases about how communities have been used at our actual clients to help support the organizational change, as well as get some tactical steps they can use to implement their own communities of practice at work.

Understanding Agile Program and Portfolio Management – Mike Cottmeyer
Room: Austin 1-3          Time: Thursday 09:00 – 10:30

More than 10 years after the signing of the Agile Manifesto, agile is now officially mainstream. PMI is offering an agile certification and you can’t hardly find an IT job description that doesn’t ask for some sort of Agile experience. As a community, we’ve become pretty good at setting up agile teams and delivering agile projects. The next frontier for agile methods is tackling the enterprise and one of the toughest nuts to crack will the the traditional PMO.

In larger more complex environments, it isn’t sufficient to pair a single product owner with a single team and expect that the work of the business is going to get done. We are dealing with larger, more diverse groups of stakeholders, stakeholders who’s needs often compete for the attention of the team. Furthermore, the teams have to work together in more complex ways that require tighter integration across teams to deliver larger, more complex feature sets.

This talk will explore patterns for dealing with more complex organizations, managing interdependencies between teams, and balancing tradeoffs to optimize the project delivery organization. The key question to answer is ‘when will we be done, and what will we get for our time and money’. We want to give the PMO a way to answer this question without having to resort to traditional plan-driven approaches. This talk will lay out just such an approach.

Agile and the Nature of Decision Making – Dennis Stevens
Room: Texas 3           Time: Monday 13:30 – 17:00

Organizations are really bad at Risk Management. And the typical approaches to risk management are flawed – resulting in bureaucratic overhead and not much improvement in the performance of software development projects. Agile efforts have rejected bureaucratic and non-value adding efforts and in the process have rejected most of what is practiced as risk management. This is unfortunate – because the nature of agile development fundamentally changes how to benefit from effective risk management.
Risk management is about managing uncertainty to reduce the probability and impact of unfortunate events and the maximize the realization of opportunities. This workshop builds on concepts from SEI’s MOSAIC project and Eric Reis Lean Start-up to present a practical and proven to a systemic approach to integrating threat and opportunity identification and response into the management of Agile projects. Useful for typical delivery teams, this approach is particularly valuable in the large projects and large organizations.

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Guest Post from Peter Callies:  As LeadingAgile grows, you are going to start seeing more posts from people other than me.  One of these days we’ll get Dennis to do a post… probably Rick as well.  One of the things I’ve considered for a few months is the idea of having one or [...]]]>

At about the same time, the company recognized that it had an issue with trust within the company.  Instead of burying their heads in the sand, hoping the issue would resolve itself like I’ve seen done other places, the leadership team confronted it head on.  The company brought in training and coaching help from CoveyLink, formally reflected on trust behaviors at regular intervals, conducted “360″ assessments — even made trust part of their performance management processes.

Those two decisions and the actions undertaken to become agile and to build trust have had a profound impact on the company’s culture and ability to build products.  Because Agile and trust are behaviors, not destinations, the company continues to work at them and is continuously conscious of them.

I believe that Agile and trust are mutually reinforcing.  In this post, I’ll provide an overview of The Speed of Trust and how it relates to Agile.  In the future, I’ll delve into specifics.

In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey puts forth an argument that “trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create [i]”.  While many, including me until recently, think of trust as a squishy, nebulous concept that is difficult to measure, Covey looks at it a measurable formula where trust impacts speed and cost.  When trust goes down, speed goes down and cost goes up.  When trust goes up, speed goes up and cost goes down.

↑Trust = ↑Speed ↓Cost

↓Trust = ↓Speed ↑Cost

Covey goes on to describe trust taxes and trust dividends.  These are the sometimes hidden variables that quantifiably increase or decrease trust in measurable ways.  As an example, he puts a twist on the traditional business results formula that says results (R) equal strategy (S) multiplied by execution (E).  He says (where T is trust):

(S x E)T = R

In this case, high trust (i.e. trust above 1.0) can be an enhancer of strategy and execution or low trust (i.e. trust below 1.0) can be a deterrent no matter how good the strategy and execution are.

The Speed of Trust uses a model based on waves of trust.

Covey, Stephen M.R.; Merrill, Rebecca R. (2006-10-17). The SPEED of Trust (p. 33). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The outer waves evolve from the inner waves – it’s difficult to successfully start with organizational trust without relationship trust and it’s difficult to build relationship trust if you don’t trust have self trust.

Self trust relates to our own credibility.  The book focuses on four cores of credibility: integrity, intent, capabilities, and results.  This is the foundation of being able to effectively contribute to an Agile team.

Relationship trust is based on behaviors, demonstrating to others that you are capable of trust.  You need to walk the talk for others to trust you.  Many of these behaviors really resonate with me when I’m thinking about Agile and trust together.

Organizational trust deals with aligning an organization’s structures and systems to decrease trust taxes and increase trust dividends.  This is where leaders can impact the ability of Agile to impact product development from top to bottom.

Market trust reflects an organization’s reputation and trust level of external stakeholders.  If you’re defining “organization” as a company, this wave of trust could get into high-order Agile adoption.  However, looking at “organization” on a smaller scale (e.g. Product Development) with external stakeholders that are internal to the company (e.g. Marketing, Operations, or Account Management) might make market trust easier to grasp.

Societal trust is pretty self-descriptive.  It deals with contributing to the community at large. As with market trust, this wave can be applied with different definitions of “society”.  Society may truly be the city, country, or the world you live in.  It could also be the company you work in.  Or maybe it’s a loosely knit group with a common interest like the Agile community.

Although the relationship between Agile and trust has been percolating in my mind for months, this is the first time I’ll be writing about it.  I’m looking forward to the process of developing my thoughts and getting your feedback.

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