Matt Jones

“Of all of us he would be the last to crack in the torture chamber”

Something nice someone said about me recently.

I’m no agile expert by any means but I have observed several attempts to fire up an agile software development process only to see them routinely fail to deliver the attractive benefits they promise.  Consequently and perhaps unsurprisingly to those that know me, I have been a bit of an agile cynic, at least up until recently.

How agile needs people, practice, time and tools to work

Every skill a person or business acquires takes practise to develop, especially to an expert level.  Something about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rings true for me, routine, sustained and mindful practise is what is needed to embed a skill.  For groups of people the challenge is greater.  Individuals learn at different speeds and in different ways, determined by their capacity and their willingness to learn.  One major cause of the failed agile projects I have seen has been the lack of work put in to perfect the skills needed to mindfully embrace the key principles that underpin the method.  Or simply put, a lack of stamina in the team and the leadership to see it through properly.

So having a landscape set for practise and the skills laid out to learn is key; next you need to ensure your processes and toolsets are also aligned and in place.   Currently a range of tools can be picked up off the shelf to help lay good foundations for integrated lifecycle management, Jira, Basecamp, PivotalTracker, subversion, wikis etc. All can help team members work together and centralise their efforts.  When used with diligence and conviction, these tools can help at least integrate existing tools into something that approaches a continual development environment.  This infrastructure is essential in being able to deploy code as soon as it is ready and if you’re doing it right, all code should be production ready at the end of the process.

Finally people are important, not just the R&D staff who know how to work in your agile machine but everyone in your business needs to be engaged and bought into the method and to understand how it differs from other approaches to delivering software products.  I have recently been able to witness the prescribed construction of an agile team, where specific skills have been sought amongst candidates and hard decisions made over coding gurus when their agile DNA has been weak.  I have seen this team grow and develop their craft with some surprising results when compared to more traditional engineering based methods of delivery.  Building a team of people with the rights agile skills and outlook is the KEY component for agile success.

When dealing with the inevitable internal nay sayer and some tentative customers it is important to note that most people are used to a waterfall approach mainly because it is the predominant method used by many software businesses.  It is also more readily intuitive when trying to understand how a business might deliver to a deadline.  Agile muddies these waters somewhat, favouring working product over deadlines and documentation.  This can make people used to having spec’s and sign-offs nervous.  The eureka moment for me was demonstrating a working product to a large customer within weeks of the project starting.  Prior to that demonstration I had been pestered for information our process just did not produce; project plans, specifications etc.  These requests immediately stopped when replaced with confidence in what we had done at a stage early enough for changes to be worked in based on real usage and feedback.

The effect of a mindful practice on productivity

Another lesson in the obvious for some is the fact that once your team is in place and your agile machine is up and running, being mindful and ensuring that the requisite feedback loops are all in place is essential.

One place where waterfall does fail is the change, impact, learning loop is generally too long.  The impact of a lesson learnt is all in the context.  Agile ensures a regular enforced feedback loop or retrospective at the end of each iteration.  This keeps the team focused on practising the method and also retains the power of the lesson to ensure a good solution in time for the next iteration or at least very soon afterwards.

Over time, as with any skill, these awkward and apparently cumbersome activities become second nature and automatic, not just to the team but to the wider business too.  Information flows more freely, feedback opportunities abound and the cycle based approach enables the business to make more granular decisions, increasing flexibility.  It’s not called “agile” for nothing.

Conclusion

Am I an born-again agile advocate.  Absolutely; but be under no illusions, the benefits come through persistence, careful attention and a unified desire to execute as cleanly and as consistently as possible.  If you’re considering an agile approach, research, invest and support the move with a tough level of vigour and focus.  Don’t become a pretender or worse a failure.  You’ll know the latter, chaos will abound; it may feel like agile but you’ll end up stretched to the end of your tether.

“Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super, [laughs maniacally] no-one will be.”

If you have children (or even if you don’t) you may recognise these lines from the brilliant The Incredibles movie. It’s one of my favourites…

When it comes to product features though and the easy choices to match the competition rather than out-manoeuvre them with innovation and creativity, why do so many companies insist on copying, recreating and effectively levelling the playing field?

Feature matching is usually the death of innovation. Although I accept it is sometimes necessary for key aspects of a product, feature matrix mirroring can often lead to failed or fumbled implementations as the features concerned may not be a natural fit with your base product set, either logically or technologically.

It is a difficult decision to avoid the sheep instinct to follow, afterall you may lose business to competitors with fuller/different feature sets. But surely differentiation is the key? Surely making the most of your *unique* selling points is what traditionally drives sales? Otherwise it’s battle of the brands and nothing more, surely.

Huertas de Mijas 2.0

A lovely sunny morning today, with oases of cool in the shade on the hilly climb up to Mijas Pueblo.  Wasn’t sure I’d be up for this today due to the continued sexual antics of our neighbours; whilst I admire their stamina and appetite, I need some sleep!

My goal is to try and get this run done in under an hour.  Just need to push harder through the hills and take the scenery in on the hoof rather than use it an excuse for a breather.  With 1200 ft of climb, over 6 miles it is a bit of a toughie for me.

FoD Half Marathon Training

Five of us ran the FoD Half route this morning, starting early enough to catch sight of deer, buzzards and very few other people.  It was -5 when we set off at 7.20, cold enough to give me harsh face-ache in the shade, but the temp. lifted a little and we managed the loop in 2hours 4 minutes.  I removed the stops for a time of 1 hour 57 minutes which bodes well for the real event.  Will try and do this again next week at some point and see of Sarah will chase me on her bike.

FoD Parkrun Trial

A good flat option considering the local topology, if a little muddy. Need to consolidate some of the paths for this to become a true parkrun. Hopefully the forest ranger will be able to help.

This time a year ago, I had been to Center Parcs and cycled each morning through the grounds and out onto the trails around Sherwood Pines Forest Park.  I resolved (after a scare with The Beer at the ultimate ML Xmas Party a few months earlier) to try and do some regular exercise; so I started cycling each morning when I returned home.  This meant an early start to plug it into my working day and to be fair a pretty galling first few months whilst my gut bounced off my knees and I struggled up hills which weren’t really hills (I later realised).  Anyway, playing to my compulsive nature, I persisted and formed a good habit.  I published each trip with a view to drawing scorn from those interested enough to read, should I quietly stop.  These are all here.

My return to Center Parcs over the past week has been a brilliant closing page in this year’s activity diary.  I am now a good healthy weight, having lost a tad over 4.5 stone and fitter than ever before in my life, having completed some gruelling races in the last month or so to test and drive me forward.  I have had help directly from friends and family (my wife especially, she never can sleep so a 6am start is as good a cause as any for her to be grumpy in the morning), John, Malcolm and Andrew all of whom have travelled some of this path with me and I hope will continue to do so, along with some upcoming challenges to boot.

I have drawn inspiration from some more public figures, Danny Dreyer and his amazing ChiRunning techniques, which have quite literally turned me from a running-hater to a running-nutter.   Lance Armstrong and his recent Biography which was fascinating as a story of a return from the brink, let alone staggering to be true life.  His LiveStrong.com web site also taught me the pretty obvious but often ignored balance between what you consume and what you do with that fuel. Last but not least some of the people and publications I follow on Twitter have also led me to sources of inspiration and knowledge to help me on my way.  They are too numerous to be mentioned here but they are sorted under my Twitter lists (http://twitter.com/remba/running-cycling).

I have some short term goals to attend to, not least my first half marathon at the end of March.  Beyond that, it will be about balancing activity with productivity and trying to fit everything into a seven day week as I move the bulk of my working week back to London.  I would like to go further though, and I hope to set something up around that in the near future.

For those of you that have provided encouragement and feedback along the way, thank you, it has really helped.

My week at Centre Parcs was a brilliant active time with my family and friends, a great week which was another indication that no matter how hopeless things can seem, time and determination – whilst holding on tight to what really matters – is all that is needed to turn things the right way round.

The runs:

• http://connect.garmin.com/activity/25439602 – 10km Around Sherwood Pines
• http://connect.garmin.com/activity/25439601 – 5km Nature Trail (sore knee)
• http://connect.garmin.com/activity/25589110 – Sherwood Pines 12 Miler

Aztec Scott Forest of Dean Trail – Race 2

Slightly more uphill than expected but a nice change from the crazy hill races I have been doing this month.  That’s it for February, next scheduled races are in March culminating in the Forest of Dean Half.  And rest…

My Dursley Dozen

Long and torturous, lots of energy sapping hills and shallow sticky slippery mud.  Didn’t put in a stellar performance but this is the furthest I have ever run and it was harder than I anticipated, despite being warned!

It is known that in a crisis manager/leaders will often immerse themselves in the detail of a problem to help their team navigate through to a solution. This is a natural instinct and to some extent has to be unlearnt to make sure that teams can achieve their best results and be free to collaborate with their colleagues rather than separate themselves from them. But what of those micromanaging control freaks that you sometimes find higher up your food chain?

The Specimen Collector or Matchbox Manager is one who craves or demands control over their staff and the decisions they can make. Hard horizontal and vertical boundaries are implemented and enforced and free flowing teamwork is discouraged or even prohibited.

Imagine a tray of butterfly specimens, all neatly pinned to display their individuality but actually dead and unable to move or interact with each other. Each one has a label explaining what it is and nothing more.

This type of leader will be highly politicised and potentially divisive, akin to the Toxic Manager type I have written about previously. The Specimen Collector diagnosis can be made through the following observations:
* ALL decisions lead to them, a low level of real delegation
* Levels of micromanagement will be very high
* Collaborative initiatives are avoided, enquiries rather than workshops will guide them
* Low levels of freedom of activity in the downward team, stick to your your job description or else…
* Blame is always an option even when they “don’t want to point fingers”
* Messaging and communication will be highly managed/massaged

There are other indicators but keep your eyes open for these symptoms and challenge this type of leader, especially if you are getting mixed or poor productivity/morale from your teams.

Remember most people leave managers, not businesses.