Mike Burrows's Blog, page 42

Interview: “How to Start a Lean Agile Transformation?”

Last week I spent a very enjoyable 45 minutes being interviewed by Dima Moroz at Kanbanize for the fifth episode of the LAMP podcast. See it here:

How to Start a Lean Agile Transformation? LAMP ep.5

Enjoy!

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 18, 2017 06:47

Agendashift revision 4

As promised on Friday, revision 4 of the Agendashift book is now out. The same book, but with some polish:

An intro that’s much more explicit about what it’s all about, a much clearer distinction between delivery and transformation frameworks, and identifying up front Agendashift’s main elements (its activity flow , its Lean-Agile True North , the assessments , and the change leadership principles )
The poster , seen in full in the intro and excerpted at the top of each chapter
Summaries of key points at the end of each chapter
In chapter 1, Discovery, references to Remember the Future (www.innovationgames.com) and The Future, Backwards cognitive-edge.com)
In chapter 2, Exploration, calling out more clearly the flows into later chapters
In chapter 3, Mapping, more about the orthogonality (without using that word) of the ‘spine’ or ‘narrative arc’ of the map and priorities (see last week’s quick LinkedIn update / tweet for a taste)
In chapter 4, Elaboration, a reference to Solutions Focus

Moreover, all mentions of a part II have been removed – it stands alone as a 5-chapter book, running to about 150 pages in the PDF version (not a minibook, but still digestible).

This revision owes much to the comments of Steven Mackenzie, Allan Kelly, and Dieter Strasser and I’m very grateful to the three of them. I don’t mind admitting that I’m very pleased with it and I really don’t anticipate making significant further changes.

If you have bought the e-book already, you will receive notification from Leanpub that there is new version to download. If you don’t yet own a copy, get yours here:

Agendashift: clean conversations, coherent collaboration, continuous transformation

There are PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats available. For iOS devices (iPad and iPhone) I would recommend EPUB for viewing in iBooks in preference to MOBI for Kindle –for reasons still not fully understood the formatting is noticeably better in the former.

[image error]

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 16, 2017 05:55

Some mid-month / pre-weekend announcements

Quite a lot happening that won’t wait for the usual end-of-month roundup:

Super early bird for Lean-Agile Strategy Days London (II) (Agendashift + Lean Strategy Deployment workshop) expires this coming Tuesday (the 17th)
Early bird for the Agendashift practitioner’s workshop, Cape Town (November 8th, ahead of the Regional Scrum Gathering) expires Sunday 22nd. If you’re attending the conference or are a Scrum Alliance member, ping me for a special 20% discount code
On Friday 27th, Webinar: Agendashift Debrief (15:00IST / 10:30UKT / 11:30CET) – a great way to find out what the Agendashift workshops are about. I’ll be presenting the outputs of my most recent workshop in Bengaluru last month.

I’m greatly looking forward to all three: my collaboration with Karl is something I value very highly, the Cape Town event will be the first practitioner workshop south of the equator, and India was a blast!

While we’re here, look out for a 4th revision of the Agendashift book appearing on Monday. If you have it already or you buy it today or over the weekend you’ll be notified via Leanpub (updates are free) and there’ll be a blog post too. You can sample the latest intro and first chapter now by request (PDF only – not via Leanpub for other formats until the complete book is updated).

Have a great weekend!

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 13, 2017 07:35

Lean and Agile origin stories

From the comments on last week’s Agile and Lean are just toolkits, right?:

Regarding “respect for how these different schools came into being” do you have any thoughts on how to do this? Besides being there at the creation or talking 1-1 with the creators what else is there? There is very little documentation…

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 07, 2017 00:18

Because every framework needs a poster…

I’ve posted a few teasers in various places over the past few weeks, but now I have a poster I’m pretty happy with and the opportunity to refresh some key pages on the main site.

[image error] Because every framework needs a poster…

Check out the new pages! Visit:

About
Resources
Poster
Home

As always, feedback very welcome. I’m grateful to partners Martien van Steenbergen, Dieter Strasser, and Steven Mackenzie for theirs.

Related:

Lean-Agile transformation as Lean-Agile process

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 05, 2017 03:12

Agile and Lean are just toolkits, right?

Agile, Lean, Kanban, Scrum, SAFe, … plenty of tools to choose from, so why does ‘toolkit’ set my teeth on edge? Perhaps it puts me in mind of the journeyman worker who knows his tools but never really excels at anything.

To be more than a mere journeyman and to progress towards mastery, you need to know more than just the distinguishing features of each tool or body of knowledge. If I were looking for expert advice or inspiration I’d want to see:

Some respect for how these different schools came into being, the conditions prevailing at the time, the problems being solved
An understanding of the values and principles that explain their design choices and implementation strategies (and I don’t mean just being able to parrot them; values in isolation of practice are meaningless)
An ability to describe their ‘lessons’ – key takeaways that you can apply non-prescriptively, perhaps using alternative tools

Some examples of these lessons:

From Agile: the power of working collaboratively in carefully controlled chunks goes way beyond what you’d learn from studying psychology or queuing theory separately. It’s not magic (it’s easy enough to explain technically and it’s not hard to bring about) and there’s a positive reinforcement feedback loop there, one in which success breeds greater success.
From Lean Startup and Kanban (bedfellows almost from their respective beginnings): make the processes by which you learn about your customers, your product, and yourselves as visible as you can make them. You make rapid progress by continually testing your assumptions about all three.
From Scrum: don’t underestimate the value of rhythm. It’s not just the ritual and the predictability, it’s also the opportunities to achieve something meaningful in between (see lessons 1 and 2)

I’d love to see more of these. Can you describe a ‘lesson’ non-prescriptively?

Related:

Scrum and Kanban revisited
(Non-)Prescription, frameworks, and expertise

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on October 02, 2017 23:43

Agendashift roundup, September 2017

In this edition: Launch anniversary; India trip; Public workshops; Speaking; Top posts

Launch anniversary

As mentioned in last month’s roundup, September 14th was the first anniversary of our public launch. Here’s the post made on the day:

Agendashift is 1 today

Since the 14th we’ve added Switzerland to the list of countries represented by our partners, and additional partners in the UK and Austria. In the next few days we’ll add Ukraine and Australia too. That’s every continent now except Antarctica!

India trip

This month I made by fourth trip to India, and definitely my most enjoyable and productive trip of all. While there I published the slides for my keynote at Lean Kanban India 2017:

My #lkin17 keynote “Managing change in the 21st century: what we know and where we must do better”

Also a blog post about communication and scaling:

A quick post from #lkin17 – Synchronous vs asynchronous: which is better?

With Patrick Steyaert we ran a 2-day workshop covering both Flowlab and Agendashift. Among the participants were 4 Agendashift partners (Irshad Nizami, Sanjay Kumar, Alper Tonga and of course Patrick). The Flowlab day was stimulating, and the Agendashift day gets better with every iteration.

In October our hosts Innovation Roots are kindly hosting a webinar in which I’ll walk through the Agendashift workshop via the outputs we produced. Sign up here:

October 27th: Webinar: Agendashift Debrief (15:00IST / 10:30UKT / 11:30CET)

Public workshops

8th November, Cape Town, South Africa: Agendashift practitioner’s workshop

– Quite possibly the first full Agendashift workshop to take place in the Southern Hemisphere, and it’s happening before the regional Scrum Gathering on the 9th and 10th, at which I’m a keynote speaker.
22nd & 23rd November, London: Lean-Agile Strategy Days London (II)

– Not a repeat because we’ve improved it! This is Karl Scotland and I joining forces again for two days of Agendashift and Lean Strategy Deployment goodness.

I’ve moved the Cape Town event from the Eventbrite ticketing platform to Goeventz, which allows it to be priced in ZAR (previously USD).

If you’re an Agendashift partner or plan to become one, discounts apply. We’re also happy to discount generously for employees in the government, education, and non-profit/charitable sectors.

Don’t see an event in your part of the world (here, or in our Events calendar)? Then help us organise one! Not only are we happy to cooperate on a commercial basis, we’re tweaking the corporate partner model to make sure that your efforts can be properly recognised.

Speaking

UK, South Africa, and France:

1-3 November, Bristol, UK: Agile in the City, Bristol 2017
9-10 November, Cape Town, South Africa: Scrum Gathering South Africa 2017
22 November, London, UK: Lean IT meetup London kick-off & keynotes
29-30 November, Paris, France: Lean Kanban France 2017

Top posts

Scrum and Kanban revisited (August)
My #lkin17 keynote “Managing change in the 21st century: what we know and where we must do better”
A quick post from #lkin17 – Synchronous vs asynchronous: which is better?
Agendashift in 5 principles (July)
A True North for Lean-Agile? (May)
(Non-)Prescription, frameworks, and expertise (August)

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 29, 2017 06:58

Cape Town, London and online

Three dates for your diaries:

27th October (15:00IST / 10:30UKT / 11:30CET), online:

Webinar: Agendashift Debrief

– An online tour through the exercises and artifacts produced during the Agendashift day at the Bengaluru Flow Days Workshop last week. If you’re not sure what Agendashift (and in particular its workshops) are about, this is a great way to find out.
8th November, Cape Town, South Africa:

Agendashift practitioner’s workshop

– Quite possibly the first full Agendashift workshop to take place in the Southern Hemisphere, and it’s happening before the regional Scrum Gathering on the 9th and 10th, at which I’m a keynote speaker.
22nd & 23rd November, London:

Lean-Agile Strategy Days London (II)

– Not a repeat because we’ve improved it! This is Karl Scotland and I joining forces again for two days of Agendashift and Lean Strategy Deployment goodness.

Notes:

I’ve moved the Cape Town event from the Eventbrite ticketing platform to Goeventz, which allows it to be priced in ZAR (previously USD).

If you’re an Agendashift partner or plan to become one, discounts apply. We’re also happy to discount generously for employees in the government, education, and non-profit/charitable sectors.

Don’t see an event in your part of the world (here, or in our Events calendar)? Then help us organise one! Not only are we happy to cooperate on a commercial basis, we’re tweaking the corporate partner model to make sure that your efforts can be properly recognised.

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 25, 2017 04:01

My #lkin17 keynote “Managing change in the 21st century: what we know and where we must do better”

[Update: added reference to On not teaching PDCA]

Slides from this morning’s keynote at Lean Kanban India 2017 (scroll down below the slides for related info):

Related resources (most of them free) here:

www.agendashift.com/resources

References and recommended reading (including of course my two books):

www.agendashift.com/reading

Related posts, further detail on some of the content:

A True North for Lean-Agile?
Agendashift in 5 principles
Revisions to the book and cue cards
Lean-Agile transformation as Lean-Agile process
Agendashift as coaching framework
On not teaching PDCA

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 15, 2017 21:33

A quick post from #lkin17 – Synchronous vs asynchronous: which is better?

A quick mid-conference post from Bengaluru and Lean Kanban India 2017. This morning I gave a repeat what I thought was a one-off talk, the provocatively titled “Scaling without cross-functional teams”, a title set me as a challenge by the organisers of Øredev 2016 (video of that original session below).

Scaling without cross-functional teams from Øredev Conference on Vimeo.

A nice little paradox occurred to me as I was wrapping up today’s talk: systems are often more performant, more robust, and more manageable when they communicate asynchronously, and yet Agile is founded on collaboration and therefore highly dependent on synchronous forms of communication. We want people to be working with each other, talking to each other, face-to-face if possible.

Which is better? Synchronous or asynchronous? Of course neither one is intrinsically better; it’s important to understand the costs and benefits of both in context and choose appropriately. Often a mix of styles is required:

People working mostly independently (communicating only as required) or in pairs (communicating all the time); the team comes together daily to synchronise.
As work items change status, it is signalled on the board (allowing an asynchronous response). Key events such as planning and deployment bring people together to coordinate and may cause multiple work items to move in tandem.
Communications arising from things happening outside the team generally arrive unpredictably. Mostly of the time, the team responds only when ready, if indeed it needs to respond at all. Similarly, the team will from time to time issue announcements or requests without any reliable expectation of how they will be responded to (if at all). Whatever the direction of the communication, some situations will require a synchronised response (eg a meeting) when (say) email is no longer the appropriate medium.
Typically, well-engineered business applications can started, stopped, and upgraded at will, independently of other systems. The ability to do so makes them much more manageable and enables a significantly faster rate of change. This isn’t just a technology issue; it also requires people to deal appropriately with those cases in which it seems that multiple systems must be upgraded together because guarantees of backward and forward compatibility will be broken. With good architectures and a degree of proactivity and forethought however, these situations (dependencies) can often be managed away painlessly behind the scenes.

If there’s a general principle here, it’s that synchronisation is a good default at small scale (eg pairing, standup meetings) but that asynchronous communication soon becomes the more efficient default as systems get larger, beyond the size of a single team or application component. Self-organisation is possible at these larger scales; even 20 years ago I was working in environments that could roll out changes affecting multiple systems, multiple sponsors, dozens of people, billions (yes billions) of dollars worth of business, and not a single project manager in sight. It can work!

We have a name for large-scale systems that rely significantly on large-scale synchronisation, featuring combinations of coordinated releases, management approvals, stage gates, complex schedules, frequent large meetings, and large documents that few people want to read: the word is heavyweight. Yes that’s a loaded term (pun 100% intended), but I would only choose to engineer a heavyweight system of any kind (process or application) if I were sure that the alternatives were worse. As far as I can recall, I don’t think that has ever happened. There are usually faster, cheaper, higher quality, and more humane ways of getting things done, even at scale.

See also: A True North for Lean-Agile?