The qualities of a good leader

Mr. X is good looking, very intelligent and has a high formal education. Also, he is funny (“ha ha”-funny, not weird-funny) and people like him.

Do you think that Mr. X’s good looks and his degree will help him become a good leader?

Being funny is a desirable leader quality; a good sense of humor can help you create a good working atmosphere and diminish tensions. The other features listed above are not essential and not even necessary as leader qualities.

What is essential?

Empathy is essential. If you want to work with a group you have to be able to understand how its members feel.

Sympathy (compassion) is as important; you want people you lead to be happier and more content with time? If you are a sympathetic person, it will be easier for you to react to their concerns and problems.

Being able to distinguish important from unimportant is a very useful ability. It may be my favorite at times. Doing and reacting upon things in the right order makes your and other’s lives much less complicated, and help you minimize waste.

Personal integrity and reliability are also crucial. I want a leader who does the right thing even when nobody is watching. Someone that keeps his promises and whose words can be trusted. A person with weak personal integrity can not motivate others to truly commit to common goals, since his own commitment may be questionable.

Furthermore – humility; mental robustness; being just and fair; having capacity to come up with and to realize a vision; inspiring and stimulating others – those are qualities a good modern leader needs, they are not only in the “nice to have” domain.

Leadership has many dimensions to it; what I wonder is – can it be learned, or are we born to be leaders?

Got the gene?

Is there such a thing as a “Natural born leader”? There is a study done (maybe several, I am aware of this one; Dr Senior, Aston University), and a link between certain genes and a leadership ability is found.

Transformational leadership is a style where leaders use their charisma, empathy, support, and intellectual stimulation on their team members, in order to motivate them and help them max their potential. That style of leadership is found to co-relate with a certain gene responsible for synthesizing dopamine.

Some people have “the right version” of the gene, some don’t. Those other people (brrrrr…”The Others”) are simply unable to develop efficient charisma and they score low on ability to intellectually stimulate others.

My guess is that people with “the inefficient version of the gene” probably, or just – maybe, would not make either happy or excellent leaders.

Another option is that if The Others get into leader roles, they may just practice Transactional leading style (“Respect my authoritah!!!“, clear chain of command, motivation by reward and punishment…). That leading style is actually the most common one, but definitely not my cup of tea.

Even if we start getting tested for the presence of  ”the good gene” as a part of a job interview (which I do not think will ever happen and if it does something went seriously wrong with human kind) – that is only a single gene, and we are very complex organisms, with a few more genes with interesting features.

A leader since the tender age of two?

Whatever the case is; if we get born as such or we develop into small children-leaders thanks to some circumstances in our early life – some of us do show good leading abilities early in life. Already at a very young age there are children that other little ones follow, imitate more than others and do as they are told by them.

Is being a good leader from en early age a desirable feature of an excellent leader? I think it is a plus. All genetics aside; it is an experience, and therefore valuable.

Can someone learn how to be empathic, inspiring, fair, blah blah blah?

Many of us already have at least some of those qualities; they are not all that uncommon. And I guess that everyone can learn about them – what they incorporate, how they manifest themselves etc. A bit of googling and reading would get you well informed. Then comes practice, and that may take some time, depending how you are as a person today.

For example, it seems to be hard to learn how to develop empathy, if one has none or very little as a grown-up. Empathy is a skill we develop in childhood (the ability to be empathic is probably partly innate [ref]), and it is harder to build it up later in life. Still, it is not impossible; there are techniques on how to develop it further (role reversals, play acting…).

The level of charisma, personal magnetism, may also be hard to push up (though, in Sims 3 it was pretty easy to practice speech in front of the mirror and earn quite a few charisma points ).

Some theories are that charisma comes from an inner self-confidence that a person projects onto others. Therefore, if you think you lack charisma, the solution sounds simple to me – work on your self confidence and charisma will come to you!

I believe that all the qualities that make a good leader can be achieved, improved and excelled if one works on that.

There is no universal recipe; it is about improving what you already have and learning the skills you lack.

Conclusion

You definitely do not need a plastic surgery and obtaining various degrees is not essential if you want to be a good leader.

If you want to become a leader or whatever else, the fact of the matter is: even if you lack a good gene or two and your start position in the race is shifted behind compared to others, you still may win.

One of my favorite movies, “Gattaca“, sends a great message “There is no gene for human spirit”.

You do not need a wonder for your wishes to come true and not everything is written in our genes. All that it takes is the will to change for the better. Determination and persistence will take you far.

Phone conversation #1

I was on the phone talking to this guy some time ago, the usual blahblah when he mentioned that he was in his parents’ apartment, checking if everything was fine, since they were on vacation. 

“Yeah, so I am watching some football on TV and now I am about to go home and sleep.”

“Cool. Did you water the flowers?” His mum has a lot of flowers, very pretty flowers, a jungle!

“Eww, no…” 

“But you said that your parents are away for like, 2-3 weeks.”

“Ewww, yeah, but no one told me to water the flowers.” 

“Okay, how do they look?”

“I donno, like flowers, eww…” 

“Well, maybe you should just water the flowers, or, if in doubt, call your mum and ask if you should water them”. I was getting a bit upset, partly because I love flowers so much, partly because that attitude was a bit too familiar, and a bit too wrong, for my taste.

 ”Eh, I donno, I am not calling anyone. I got no instructions about their thousands of flowers and now I just want to go home…”

“But… Well… Okay.”

Phone conversation #2

So today I talked to that guy’s mum who called me all upset because Ingrid Bergman was dead.

“Ah… I am sorry to tell you, but Ingrid Bergman actually died some 20-30 years ago. I know you are not a fan of Internet and Google News, but… to get THAT upset NOW is a bit too much of a strong reaction… I think.”

“Well, please – your hubby gets REALLY upset every now and then that The Alexandrian Library was burnt centuries ago! But, anyway, it is not the actress…”

Yes, that  is true, my husband is very sensitive, do not dare mention The Alexandrian Library in front of him unless you are prepared to listen to whining and raging for the next two hours because of the idiots who burned it. All of the different ones.

“Okay, your argument stands. And back to Ingrid…”

“My rose, my Ingrid Bergman is dead! Well, when we got back from the vacation half of my flowers were dying… I saved the most of them, but my pretty rose, my beloved Ingrid Bergman kind of rose died… buaaaaa…”

Ah, Ingrid was some kind of rose…  The conversation went further and I did not mention to the lady the chat I recently had with her son. But, I got really upset, too.

And that was EXACTLY…

Yes, that was EXACTLY what I encountered numerous times in various projects, from different project members. That is a serious attitude problem, and can be very visible, blunt, in your face, or – very nice, covered in sweet chocolate crispy phrases… 

“Well, when you tell it like that – it sounds very logical, but, I am sorry – it was not in the specifications, so we did not implement it.”

or:

“Yes, the code is broken, but I am not fixing it since I did not break it. No one told us we are supposed to fix other people’s mistakes.”

or:

“No one told us that code has to be tested, so we didn’t do it. No, why would we do double work if not forced to?”

or:

“He knows how to restart the server, but he is sick today. No, I can not try it, no one said what to do in situations like this one, so let us wait for him. Yes, what can we do, the whole team can not continue now…”

or…

Grrrrrrrr!!!

All of you out there; and you know which ones I am talking to – you, Ingrid Bergman killers - that attitude is NOT OKAY!!!

Some background

This happened a while ago, long enough so that the main characters can not be easily identified. Except for me, of course. It is okay, I can take it. I am blond. And I am lean. No, I am not Paris Hilton in disguise. I am a freaky-geeky kind of blond.

Some time ago I was given an opportunity to work with an offshore team from India. It was a very valuable experience from which I learned a lot.

I never went to India. Some of the team members came to the Stockholm office, where I work, now and then, but very rarely. We had a space distance between us, yet we were working tightly, every day. That does not come easy, you have to work a lot on keeping a long distance relationship functional.

Down with the Agile bat! (Long live Agile!)

To cut the long story short – among other things, I was trying to coach the team in Agile methods. Instead of hitting them on their heads with a big bat with “AGILE” written all over it, I had this idea that we should work on adopting a set of common values as a first step.

So, I started a series of workshops we held via WebEx, since that was the best way of communication we had available. Face-to-face communication is always the best, but we could not do that. Visual conferencing involving web cameras is second best, I think, but we did not have that either. Well, we had WebEx. They could see my screen and presentation and we had an audio connection.

Long live innovative examples!

During one of those workshops I was talking about Lean principles and was trying to explain why it is important to decide as late as possible. Then I brought up one example. Now, what not all of you may know is that I am quite proud of my examples. I am also proud of the fact that very often I come up with my own ones in order to simplify and explain things. And then it came:

Decide as late as possible

“You know, it is like when a guy meets a girl. You don’t really go and say the day after you met her: “I want to marry you!”, and run off to buy a ring. No, no, you wait for some time, until you have more information about her, your feelings, her feelings, how you get along etc. THEN you start thinking about the possible proposal.”

SILENCE.

“My point is that this is an IMPORTANT decision, and that is an example why it is valuable to decide as late as possible. You will simply gather more of the relevant information during that time! You will minimize uncertain assumptions and crystal ball predictions, and maximize the facts that will help you make better decisions.”

SILENCE.

Okay, silence or not, I was so happy  how I quickly came up with such a great example, without any preparation that I just continued with my presentation.

The feedback

During the upcoming two days I did not get much feedback on my presentation, which made me feel a bit down. I was new to the assignment, it seemed hard to work with all the distance, and I was warned about the cultural differences I might encounter, but anyway – I was very enthusiastic and happy to work in such a challenging setup! Still, I got no feedback for my first action, and my enthusiasm started to suffer some damage.

It is very hard to try to coach a team you never met. You do not even get to see their faces during the workshop. We humans get so much information through the non-verbal communication, and now I was stripped of that!

And then it came – the team told me that what I did was “A Milestone for the Team!”. Wow. They liked Lean! My interpretation seemed to have helped them! My efforts were not in vain! I was sooooo happy!

Some more feedback

Shortly after that great first feedback, a guy from the team contacted me via Skype in the evening, after the working hours. Usually all of the guys from the Team were “just business”, very nice and polite, but very serious and formal. Well, what I could not see coming at the time, their usual ways were about to change a bit.

This guy, after all the introductory apologies for what might follow, dared to ask me the following:

“Are you married?”

Hm, okay, that WAS a bit different. “Yes”, I answered. 

“Love marriage?”

“Well, yes.”

Of course, I mean – the usual story – you fall in love, you date, you move in together, and then, after some time – you marry the one you love. Or – you live happily ever after without getting married. What else could it be. I was thinking… and thinking…

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. THEN it clicked for me. What I said during the presentation and all… NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Love and marriage

But, my new Skype-friend continued to chat with me:

“I will ALSO get married for love!”

Aha. This was getting interesting. I was recovering from a Am_I_A_Jessica_Simpson_Clone_? experience, but put that aside quickly. What this guy had to say seemed really important.

“… Ok. That is good! I recommend it!”, I was recovering quickly.

“No one shall choose my wife! My parents will have nothing to do with it!”

“That sounds like the way to go. Yes, some parents might try to get too involved sometimes.”

My new friend did not give up on clarifying his views even more.

“I will also find love, and get married to my true love!”.

My heart melted. He was so sweet! We chatted for a while, about India and arranged marriages, among other things. I was so touched that I got to know someones private thoughts and appreciated so much a view through that window to another culture I got to experience. What I learned later, through close interaction with the guys from India, is that, put very simplified, the ones who practice arranged marriages see marriage as a union of two families, not only two individuals. That made me understand it better.

It is a very complex question, about the arranged marriages and the whole different culture than the western one. Millions of pages were and millions more could be written about it, and it is not my aim to tackle that here. Personally I do not think that there is an ultimate right or wrong way to find your significant other, and what works for one, might not work for other. Still, I am for the freedom of choice.

Embrace mistakes

I learned something that day. It is okay to make mistakes. People will forgive you as long as you are honest and true to yourself. And after a mistake is made, you will hopefully learn something. It is not what happens, but how you deal with it. 

 BTW, whatever your hair color might be, my dear friend, remember – being blond is a state of mind.

 Joakim and I wish you all a merry Christmas and an agile New Year with a Christmas user story:

Turn for the conditions of satisfaction->

(Some of our friends that are geeky enough to appreciate this got similar cards in paper via snail mail today )

Many hugs,

Jelena & Joakim.

ADHD sufferer?

Are you an Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder sufferer? Should I say “sufferer”?

Some of the symptoms you may have if you have ADD are: 

• problems getting organized
• problems staying focused (decreased ability to screen out distractions)
• delays in starting and completing your work
• troubles in managing your time and money
• difficulties in remembering all the small things in your everyday life etc… 

Going global

Even if you are not experiencing any of these symptoms, today we apply shorter and shorter time-boxing on all of our activities. We get bored so easily. We need something to stimulate us all the time. We jump from one activity to another often and fast.

Need for constant stimulation, getting bored easily and having problems to stay focused on one thing for too long (where “too long” may be as short as 5 minutes) have become global conditions.

The Condition

What to do with a seemingly unfocused mind? Some chemicals may help relieve the symptoms, but maybe we can change how we deal with ADHD or a condition with similar symptoms in the first place. What would happen if we would not fight it, but tried to embrace it? Are there some good sides to The Condition? Yes, there is always that other side to every story. Intensity of experience one can achieve, for example.

One advantage – the ability to hyper-focus

While grown ups with ADD sometimes have a hard time maintaining attention, those same individuals often are able to “hyper-focus” for long periods of time on something they find interesting. They can even be compulsive about it, losing the concept of time, spending hours engaged in the activity, oblivious to their environment and even to their own needs.

This ability to hyper-focus can lead to amazing achievements, discoveries, and creative breakthroughs. (Also, it can get one severely hungry, dehydrated, sleep deprived and not very popular among his family members… but, let us focus on how to use the positive sides of The Condition, while minimizing the negative ones).

Jack London, one of my favorite writers, said that longevity and intensity usually do not coexist. I do not remember where I read that one, but – this another quote by him is quite famous, and it addresses a similar theme:

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Make it short and intensive. Be entertained. Get your daily dose of endorphins.

Short and intensive works for me as a writer. I write flash fiction. Some would say that if a story contains up to 1000 words it classifies as flash fiction; 1000-5000 words, it is a short story. It is fast to read. If it is good it clings for some time. One is able to deliver a real punch in that form, it is challenging and fun to write. The best of all is that it makes me entertained. Writers deserve to be entertained, too. One should enjoy what one does, and the other way round – one should do what one enjoys.

Having this in mind, I am asking you programmers out there, who are reading this - are you having fun when coding? You should.

Time-box, hyper-focus and have fun. Get those endorphins flowing. If you manage to focus intensively and achieve what you want in a short time, you will get the slack, that wonderful slack! And do not overdo your intensive focusing moments, enjoying them too often is not maintainable in the long run. They are draining your powers, they absorb you and make you tired if you over-consume them. We are all different, try to pin down your own magic formula.

Links

Attention Deficit Disorder/ADD Online Test (use only as an indicator of potential ADD/ADHD). I read somewhere that 80-90% adults who have this condition are undiagnosed.

Some researchers claim that whopping 40-50% of programmers show statistically significant amount of ADD symptoms. Those numbers are only a speculation, as far as I am aware, but it is probably true that certain professions may suit and attract certain type of individuals better than others.

My other blog, short stories and flash fiction.

Why do you want to become Agile? What are the goals you want to achieve with that? Think about it. And then - think again.

In another post, I addressed some commonly used antipatterns, when one wants to get Agile just because it is cool, because everyone else already went Agile, or similar.

Here are two very different models that can be used to describe the transition to Agile from one perspective (Small versus Big). Which one is the most appropriate for your organization depends on many factors.

Please observe: in both cases we have to deal with the unknown of Change! Surprisingly enough, many people are not that fond of changes. Any change brings stress and opens many, many questions.

Also, not everything is black and white, there are many shades of grey in between and other dimensions to consider. The best way is the one that works optimally for you.

The most important is that you should not expect to figure it all out from the very start.

1. “Baby Steps” model

PROS:

• less initial investment
• less risky
• freedom of choices when putting together your team, order of adoption of practices etc

CONS:

• slower
• uncertainty how the micro achieved conclusions and lessons learned can scale/be applied to the whole organization
• the dynamics of resistance towards the transition to Agile within the organization is hard to predict
• hard to maintain the pace – one can just fold back to the previous state of non-Agile existence
• if the pilot project depends on the rest of non-Agile organization, some bottlenecks may occur.

Steps:

1. start with a pilot project
2. learn from it
3. spread Agile within the organization

Think about:

• How fast should the transition be? (Let “the others” catch up soon; do not let the pilot project run for too long before you decide if you will go for the whole organization transition or not.)
• How many people and from which parts of the organization wish the transition to Agile?
• Should you announce to the whole organization that the “Agile experiment” is going on or keep it secret for a while? (If something goes wrong in the first iteration, inspect and adapt your practices until you are satisfied with the results - that minimizes the time and arguments for building up the resistance.)
• How to compose your team for the pilot project? (Be careful: do not create “elite” teams.) 

2. “Big Bang” model

PROS:

• fast
• must come officially from committed management (to not have to convert the management while struggling with going Agile at the same time is a big plus.)
• not much time left to “The Dark Side” to build up a strong resistance

CONS:

• can cause an “organization nervous break down”
• higher cost at risk
• requires some serious reorganizing and possible “messing up” of established internal relations
• a danger of forming of Cargo cults – imitation of “Agile behaviours” without the real Agile values being adopted.

Steps:

1. Do it The “Starsky and Hutch” Way: “Do it! Do it!” Everyone, just – do it.

(BTW, if you want to perform the transition of the whole organization fast, you may need to hire some external coaches on Agile, if you do not already have enough of experts internally. And no, I do not think that Starsky and Hutch are the kind of experts you are after.)

Think about:

• How big is your organization? (The bigger it is, the harder the transition may get.)
• How “stressed” is your organization? (This approach is not recommended for already “stressed” organizations; unpredictability of consequences, people may leave, etc.)
• How hierarchical is your organization? (Strongly established hierarchy is less preferable than relatively flat organization with roles overlapping.)
• How much money are you willing to invest initially and when do you expect to break even? (For example: external coaches are usually very enthusiastic and good, but do not come cheaply; still, the investment may pay off well.)

Related to the subject this post is addressing, but specifically within XP (Extreme Programming), Kent Beck and Cynthia Andres wrote an e-booklet “Getting Started with XP: Toe Dipping, Racing Dives, and Cannonballs” that can be found here.

The Guy 

My first guess is that you all heard of him. He was my idol when I was a child, and a some of that infatuation remained even when I grew up (sort of), but I am not sure if he would make My Top 10 Favorite Famous People list today. (A mental note: Jelena, compile that list!)

My other guess is that you have some similar feelings of respect and amazement with the guy.

He was just plain cool, beside being a charismatic genius. He also had quite a unique hair do; he was eccentric, but likable; he was branded as a mad scientist, becoming a prototype for one for years and decades to come.

Also, it is said that he was a womanizer, emotionally detached, sometimes engaging in bizarre behaviors. All that I do not really care about, all those personality specifics make him more human, in a way. And there are so many flawed characters around, let us not talk about those aspects of his life.

I do care about what he did and said that changed the world of science. Also, I care a lot about what he did and said that inspired so many people, forever. He is one of the most influential people ever. His greatness is indisputable. In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1999 Time magazine named him the “Person of the Century”.

What he said, among other things:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

 We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

 Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

 Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.

 Imagination is more important than knowledge.

 If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Do you feel what I feel when you read these? There were moments when these thoughts gave me inspiration, helped me find strength when I felt I did not have it, reminded me that I should go on and follow my own silly little path, rely on my intuition, unleash my imagination, fail now and then, but get up and continue.

But…

 … why, oh why, did he say the following one… And did he say it exactly like that?

I see people quoting it now and then, but I am not sure if it wasn’t one of those things that get pulled out of context and start a life on their own. Or did I get it wrong somehow? It conflicts my logic and reason, and it also bothers that infantile part of me that just felt that Albert was The Guy for a year or two of my childhood.

When asked what he would do if given one hour to save the world, Albert Einstein supposedly replied that:

I would spend 55 minutes to understand and formulate the problem, and 5 minutes to come up with ideas/execute the solution.

Oh, no, that smells like Waterfall!

Now, now, dear Albert (or whomever might have pulled this out of some context – a bad bad person!), I beg to disagree!

Those 55 minutes of analyzing and 5 minutes of coming up with ideas and execution may work in math or somewhere else, for a static kind of a problem, but not in the world saving business. In those 55 minutes conditions might change seriously. Do not let me start with everything that might change rapidly, significantly, essentially.

Inspect, adapt and overcome!

Trying to understand

Strictly speaking, Einstein did not say that he would spend THE FIRST 55 minutes on understanding/formulation. Maybe he meant 55 minutes IN TOTAL. 

Personally I have a hard time dividing the processes of Problem_Analyzing and Coming_Up_With_Ideas into two clearly separate categories, time-wise. I especially do not see them as Coming_Up_With_Ideas part strictly following after the Problem_Analyzing.

Now, the ratio is maybe correct. If you try to estimate the ratio of:

• the time spent on analyzing, coming with ideas and testing them (while even taking into the consideration possible new inputs from the outer world) to
• the time spent on pure execution (deployment) of the solution,

55:5 sounds about right. Still, I would put Coming_Up_With_Ideas part in those 55 minutes, not the other 5.

That means that much more time will go into the proper setup and problem solving part than the final deployments. Maybe the ratio is individual, and about 55:5 is correct in average. I know that many are using the 80:20 rule of a thumb today, it is not that far off the 55:5 one (well, everything is relative… both are comparable to 10:1 ratio, not 1:1 or 100:1. Close enough, IMO).

The plan B

So, if I am wrong, and Einstein did not refer to 55:5 minutes rule only in the ratio sense, but also as to an ordered 1. Analyze and 2. Come_With_Ideas_And_Implement sequences, he really would be in the Waterfall team in the case of the world going under within one hour.

In that case, I would go for my safe Plan B, as always: Bruce Willis – that guy never failed to save the world.

Respect 

So, even if you said it and meant it as commonly interpreted, dear Albert, in my book – you are still cool. We all make mistakes sometimes. And, as you would have put it:

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

My respect for you is deep, unharmed and true.

*** 

The quotes above I read/heard from different sources, during the past gazillion years. Those are the ones that really stuck with me. Then I verified my memory while writing the post simply by – googling, in fear of misquoting the great words of a great person.

One more Einstein’s quote, to end with, that is my husband’s favorite:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Now, if that is not pro-Agile, I do not know what is!

Do you want to increase the effectiveness of your working process?

Do you want to fight your tendency to procrastinate?

Do you want time to be your friend, not your enemy?

We are humans, not machines. We can not work non-stop, we need maintainable pace.

Did you hear about the Pomodoro technique before?

This is how my cat helped me capture the essence of Pomodoro on camera:

Staffan Nöteberg blogs, among other things, about the Pomodoro technique in a smart and cool way. He makes it easy to understand the mechanisms behind it.

Check out his Pomodoro Technique in 5 minutes, you may find it valuable. I recommend it!

(common Agile transition antipatterns exposed)

(High Crap Factor warning!)

So, you want to become Agile… everyone is on that track already, and you feel that you are lagging behind. Do not worry! Agile is not hard, it is not magic. There is so much information out there, it can be overwhelming. Let me help you. Here is how to become Agile – fast.

1. Announce to everyone that from now on, you are Agile. Communicate it to your employees, put the ads in the relevant newspapers, underline that you are doing (whatever you are doing) - The Agile Way!

2. You do not need to dive into all those Agile methods. There are too many around. You may get confused.

Pick Scrum. Enlighten everyone that for you Agile = Scrum. Everyone modern is using Scrum anyway. Get yourself informed – google a bit about it, so you get some idea what the hype around it is. Get familiar with the buzzwords.

3. Send all of your project managers to a Scrum Master course. Yes, it will cost you some money, but it is a safe bet – none ever failed the course, and you will have a bunch of certified experts within only two days!

Now, we all now that Scrum rocks, but why don’t you take it a step further and do it your way! Here is how to optimize and improve Scrum:

4. Daily meetings are a waste of time. Calculate how much time it takes away from your resources and mail everyone about the result! They will be shocked with your revelation, and praise you for saving the money and preserving their precious time (after all, it is a well known fact that no one likes meetings and frequent interruptions). So, the daily Scrum meetings should be scoped out.

5. Now, this is a huge flaw in Scrum – the planning meetings are just too short. That is what Scrum does wrong!

We should perform a careful planning to avoid any mistakes. If we use 60% of our time for detailed planning, it will be easy to just implement our solutions once we are done with the planning phase, since we took everything into account!

6. The Retrospectives – those are a bit unnecessary, you’ll agree. We should focus on the future, not dwell on the past! The time we save by scoping these out can be used for our planning activities!

7. The Artifacts. Scrum incorporates several artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Burn Down Chart. Artifacts are good, keep them. Add even more!

The value of artifacts and documentation is great. It is very important to have a well documented overview of what every team member is doing. Transparency is what we value! Create a document where people write down what they did every day, in details. Assign someone who checks whether they did it and send reminder mails regularly to the ones that did not.

This is just a start. Soon you will be ready to improve your Modified Scrum with even more of your own modifications! Good luck on your way to success!

***

This post is dedicated to all the Modified Agile practitioners I met that inspired me to compile this wonderful list.

***

Please check out these two posts: Why would anyone want to become Agile? and Two steps to become agile written by Joakim and Daniel, respectively. Those are two guys that (more often than not) have the same values like I do. No crap warning there, I promise.

“I had such a nightmare last night, you would not believe it!” announced dramatically LittleMissLisa entering the office on a rainy Tuesday morning.

“Good morning to you too!” Annie answered with a smile.

“Yes, hi, I am sorry, but… it was so terrible, a real Armageddon!”

“Apparently you are fine! Did Bruce Willis come and saved you?”

“Obviously! And also, I got this neat idea! Let’s go and get some coffee. And then we will do a Disaster exercise!”

The Disaster Exercise

What are your worst fears in this project right now?

Think Murphy, think negative. Think about all those things we complained about to each other now and then, but never did anything about them. Think about things that bothered you before yet you did not say anything to anyone.

Use your Monday morning anxiety… it is Tuesday? Well, try to recall that precious Monday 9AM feeling, okay?

To be clear – please stay real! Do not put something like “A meteor strikes the building and all we ever did is gone”. The chances that will happen are small, but I guess we may be in the building when it happens and I would worry more about that than my project artifacts… So, stay real and pragmatic.

Please, take the post-its and write your dark what-if-this-happens on them, one per post-it. Now!

After 10 minutes:

Negative thinking

“Good, great, I mean – bad, really bad! Let us go through them and see if we can think even of the worse ones, add some more!”

“No, LittleMissLisa, will we do one of those risk analysis things now? I have seen it before!”

“A very good question! No, I am not trying to demonstrate risk analysis. This exercise is about the power of negative thinking and how to use it to our benefit. This is about how to get the best out of the worst.

In psychology and medicine, it has been researched and shown that negative thinking influences how we feel. People with negative thinking patterns have poorer overall health and lower stress tolerance.

Teaching an individual how to use her negative thoughts and transform them to positive ones is a simple task (well, not easy to adopt and practice in everyday life, but simple to explain). Using the energy of negative thinking and converting it to positive, is good for diminishing your stress levels and improving your overall health”.

“Hmmm, OK. But, how do we convert our negative post-its to positive?”

“It is simple! Negate the negative! And then, do something about it! Let us add two more columns to the whiteboard.”

DISASTER NEGATION PRESCRIPTION; negate the negative

The Aftermath

LittleMissLisa: “What do you think?”

Igor: “I like that we started with bringing up the negative thoughts and our worries and made them more visible!”

Annie: “I like that the exercise ends with a prescription! We have the power to do something about this and it is up to us!”

Toby: “Yes, that sets this exercise apart from the traditional risk analysis workshops I attended before. They just leave you with an ordered list of risks as an input to someone else, who is usually undefined, to go through and do something about. It was never clear that it is really up to the team.”

LittleMissLisa: “Sometimes it is much faster and easier, as a first step, to say what bothers us, and talk about the dark clouds we see might be coming, than to just come up at the spot with new beneficial things we should do and practices we should adopt.

It is good to use all the potential we have to our advantage; in this case – the negative thinking!”

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The Disaster Exercise can be practiced before you run the Sprint planning (if you are practicing Scrum), as a part of the Retrospectives or whenever.

Related to my previous post, it would be interesting to know the general sentiments about the issue. Please vote here:

OBS: This is just a poll. If you wish to comment, please do it here.

What would be your very first, the most spontaneous answer to this question? And why?

Definition of “art”

Do you know what “art” means? Probably you do, everyone has an understanding for the concept of art, but if you try to formulate it, it may be hard and challenging. The definitions vary greatly, and many argue that it is actually impossible to define art and that is how it should stay. And when I say “many” here, I mean – people who know a lot about art; people who teach about art, professors, philosophers, experts.

Coding is an art… some think

The Alien has a headache. He was up all night reading about art, surfing the net and studying the history of art, but he feels even more confused now than before he started his research.

It all started yesterday during a coffee break, when he heard Mario bragging about his coding, how his creations are nothing but pure art. Is coding a form of art?

LittleMissLisa thinks that coding is not really an art. It is a relatively young discipline, that will hopefully evolve to a full blown branch of engineering. She also believes that the best practices in software engineering come from other branches of engineering.

No, it is some kind of engineering, or it is on its way there… some others think

The Alien scratched his fluffy forehead:

“You said software engineering – is this what our team does? Is all programming – software engineering?”

LittleMissLisa shook her head.

“Hm, let me put it this way – is putting three logs over a creek – construction engineering? At the very start of the construction engineering humans probably just did pile up a few logs over a creek in order to construct a bridge… but look at us today, we came a bit further in that discipline.

In some cases, yes, coding is engineering. All engineering branches encounter more or less the same issues like – complexity, external and internal disturbances, risks, contracts, legal stuff. The social and artistic aspects are also very present in all the engineering disciplines.

Also, all engineers need the same basic skills – ability to analyze, solve problems, work in teams… all of those things we encounter when working with software development. Also, creativity – it seems to me that many believe if they are creative, that makes them artists! No, art does not have a monopoly over creativity. Still, the best engineers I met were very creative.”

“So software development is engineering after all? Not an art?”

“Well, in some cases I was so inspired and amazed by the uniqueness and the elegance of the design of the solution I saw that I felt the thing I was looking at actually was a work of art!”

“Ah, I understand! That is the same as when you look at a beautiful bridge that embodies a complex harmony that someone brilliant made look elegant and simple, and you just feel it is a true piece of art!”

But sometimes, it is just crap (if Robert C. Martin can say “crap”, I can say it too)

“Yes, exactly. Unfortunately, I must say, in some other cases, the code, the whole systems I saw were just plain badly written, literally ugly, full of bugs and uh… how should one name that?!”

“Oh, I see… can I suggest some word from my extended dictionary?!”

“No, please don’t! We said you can learn those only for pure academical purposes, to make your education more complete! Well brought up humans and aliens, I guess, do not actually use those in everyday speech!”

“Okay, it was just an idea…”

A note on education

“When we already are on the subject of education – a lot of people doing programming today have very different formal and informal education, because a lot of software has been developed so rapidly and so recently, and the best ones I met actually have learned things on their own, informally. Some are engineers coming from some other areas, some are not engineers at all! Some groups and individuals may be better or worse, it is ungrateful to generalize, but, I think that the quality of the code produced is too uneven. That is why I have a hard time saying that all the coding is engineering… But it should be.”

“Do you think that education would minimize the occurrence of “DoNotDareToName kind of coding” and raise and even the quality of developed code in general?”

“I do not know… maybe. Formal education for construction engineers allows us to safely cross bridges many times… but I think that formal education, how it is done today is far from perfect.

Namingly, in certain areas the world of software develops faster than the corresponding university courses follow… that should be solved as well. Or maybe we should try to teach people “just enough” of the good basic stuff to start with, not too much of the things that will have only a historical value tomorrow.”

The conclusion (the place where one got tired of thinking)

“One more question before I go to sleep – the best software developers – would you describe them as Artists?”

“No, I would describe them as Problem Solvers.”

The team has their first iteration ahead of them, and they will be working on several different tasks during the 4 weeks period. The tasks are picked out, the time estimates are done, the backlog is filled in, but now, since this is their first Sprint together, the team members have to start finding out answers to several questions they have before them.

LittleMissLisa believes that there are no absolute best answers, but that they have to come to what will work best for just them. The team may not discover it from their first attempt, but one has to start somewhere!

The Team is having a short brainstorming to solve the following:

Meaning – when describing a possible workflow for a task, how many and which statuses should they use for that?

The Team decided to have a coffee&chat break before each member writes on the post-its their suggestions – one post-it per proposed status.

The Alien: I have looked up “status”, and the meaning we are after here is “A situation or state of affairs.” What I found interesting is that plural of “status” is “status” in British English, and “statuses” in American English.

LittleMissLisa: We will be using AE plural to avoid confusion that might arise in communication because of such a simple thing as a plural form of a noun! Anyway, should we maybe write our ideas on the whiteboard?

The Team: Yes! Let us define what is important to have in mind when adopting our possible task statuses!

1. CLARITY – They should be self explanatory.
2. MODULARITY (WORKFLOW BUILDING BLOCKS) – We should be able to order them so that they correctly represent the workflow – in a time dependant sequence – like the Semaphore light states can be ordered in Red-Yellow-Green sequence.
3. NO REDUNDANCY
4. VISIBILITY – It would be good if we could divide the whiteboard in columns – a column per status, and organize tasks written on post-its within those columns, so that we keep the progress very visible at all times.
5. A REASONABLE NUMBER – There should not be too few, but not too many statuses either. For example – DONE, NOT DONE may be a bit too few statuses. But, how many is too many?!

The post-its are written and the following statuses suggestions came up:

- Analysed
- Approved
- Assigned
- Cancelled
- Closed
- Duplicate
- Forwarded
- New
- Opened
- Postponed
- Rejected
- Resolved
- Submitted
- Verified

LittleMissLisa: Okay. So, we all agree that… let me see… 14 may not be what we here called “a reasonable number” ?

The Team: We agree!

LittleMissLisa: Okay. Maybe we can all together put all the post-its with the statuses on the whiteboard, and then try to move and group the similar ones together?

LittleMissLisa: This looks great! Can we maybe name the groups now?

The titles get put spontaneously, with the team members consulting each other around the whiteboard, in the same manner when they were moving and grouping and re-grouping the post-its.

The Team: This looks good! We can use these titles for our statuses! If a need to add or change something arises, we will do it. It would be silly to pretend we can figure out everything from the start.

The Alien: Hmmm, I heard about this old Waterfall methodology, when people honestly believed that they could figure it all from the start…

LittleMissLisa: It is not really that archaic. Not yet… that one and the clones of it are still used very much. The “Embrace change” wave works slower than many hoped it would.

The Alien: You humans are just too funny!

… if someone messed with “your code”!?

Toby was on vacation for a week. He came back to work on Monday, somewhat earlier than others, still jet lagged. He was all ready to dive back happily into the piece of code he was working on just before vacation (the post-it note was still standing untouched on the wall, under ”In progress”).

Toby synchronized the code, looked for all the familiar class names… and got stunned! All of his nice framework blahblah handling classes were in a different package. No, in a two, wait, three different packages! WHAT!!!

Changed interfaces, I see, new functionality added, refactored the old one… but wait, this is not a nice solution. Hey, we agreed last week when we discussed this how we will do it… and it was my task, I started it!!!

Cold sweat, checking the history, frantically running all the tests… looking through all the recent mails…

Mario, that self proclaimed architect blah! He who does not distinguish a recursion from an iteration!

Pressure rising, ego boiling, teeth clenching, Toby was actually getting a bit angry now.

Toby has officially entered a Monday from hell. 

Some of the setup related facts:

Toby and Mario work in the same group, supposedly self organizing, running Scrum.

The group is still in a start up phase (someone might say that they just entered “The Storming” phase).

The members did not know each other from before.

The members are not very experienced Agile practitioners, and their enthusiasm and good will to run certain practices differ a great deal from a member to member.

In order to follow their progress during one Sprint, the group uses a whiteboard divided into 4 categories: “Defined”, “In progress”, “Finished” and “Accepted”. All the tasks from the Sprint backlog are written on post-it notes and put under the appropriate category, moving from left to right during the 4 weeks of the Sprint.

The group members usually take one task each, and drive it from the beginning to an end, without switching tasks or working in pairs. Sometimes they consult other team members when not sure how to implement a solution or how it will fit in with the other parts of the system and the things the others are working on.

And then, in the middle of one Sprint, Toby went for that vacation and now he is back and not happy.

What is the right thing to do? What would you do if you were Toby? 

Our friends offered some advice:

The Alien: First and foremost – dear Toby, do not stress! Remember – you are not the code you write!

Furthermore, I recommend you all to raise the awareness of the collective code ownership, but also, to adopt common rules of nice behaviour within the group.

LittleMissLisa: I agree. Also, I think that it would be good to start working in pairs; share your developing time together. It will help you improve your common trust and communication tremendously.

Eric Theodore Cartman: God damit! You should just kick that hippie’s a**! This is no common hippie code, it is YOUR code!

Baxtentialists:

What are personas?

Personas are not real persons, they are voices of the author behind them, masks she puts on in order to communicate to the public.

The personas I created here do not breath or eat, but they are not meant to be any less real for you who read about their thoughts, behaviour and dialogs.

They help me make sometimes pretty abstract concepts and theories more digestible, they are my voices that spice up the silly little stories I write that would otherwise be also boring to the most, not only silly.

I believe that the philosophy and abstraction should not be complicated and available to the rare ones, the ones well trained in reading and absorbing the boring stuff written in a manner ripped of freshness of figures and voices telling them.

Also I think that a story teller, if she really understands what she wants to present, should be able to express herself clearly and simply. Please remember, “simple” does not equal “easy” and some really hard concepts and complex ideas can be expressed in a simple manner. That is what I am aiming for. I hope that my personas will help me with that.