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Yuval Yeret

Larman's Laws of Organizational Behavior - Craig Larman - 0 views

www.craiglarman.com/...index.php

agile-change-management-list

shared by Yuval Yeret on 08 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Yuval Yeret on 08 Jul 14
     
    "Larman's Laws of Organizational Behavior After decades of observation and organizational consulting, here are Larman's Laws of Organizational Behavior. These are observations rather than laws to follow ;) 1. Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo middle- and first-level manager and "specialist" positions & power structures. 2. As a corollary to (1), any change initiative will be reduced to redefining or overloading the new terminology to mean basically the same as status quo. 3. As a corollary to (1), any change initiative will be derided as "purist", "theoretical", and "needing pragmatic customization for local concerns" -- which deflects from addressing weaknesses and manager/specialist status quo. 4. Culture follows structure. i.e., if you want to really change culture, you have to start with changing structure, because culture does not really change otherwise. and that's why deep systems of thought such as organizational learning are not very sticky or impactful by themselves, and why systems such as scrum (that have a strong focus on structural change at the start) tend to more quickly impact culture. i discovered that john seddon also observed this: "Attempting to change an organization's culture is a folly, it always fails. Peoples' behavior (the culture) is a product of the system; when you change the system peoples' behavior changes." "
Yuval Yeret

Creating an Agile Culture to Drive Organizational Change - 1 views

www.borland.com/...creating-an-agile-culture.html

agile enterprise adoption culture

shared by Yuval Yeret on 15 May 09 - Cached
  • It is critical that everyone has the same understanding of, and commitment to, the desired outcome: a business that is reliable through predictable technology processes that deliver business agility. To do this, there needs to be a management commitment to develop a focused, on-going practice around the pursuit of organizational maturity. As part of this, gaps in skills and capabilities should be identified and positive action – training, coaching, process improvement and tools deployment – taken in order to close the gap
  • the work force needs to understand the business drivers for Agility. They need to be challenged to improve their quality, improve their cycle times, to improve the frequency of releases and the value they deliver to the customer. They need to know how these things fit within the bigger picture and why improvement is their responsibility.
  • To change a culture it's important to recognize that every knowledge worker makes decisions and takes actions that affect the performance of the business. The culture in the organization is the reflection of those decisions and actions.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • all the people understand and internalize the concepts and ideals behind the Agile movement
  • translated into concepts that can be widely applied to the many day-to-day decisions each of them will make
  • internalize and live three principles: making progress with imperfect information; existing in a high trust, high social capital culture; and shortening cycle times. These ideas need to be infused into the workforce at every opportunity.
  • it should spread virally. It can start with just one manager, who educates his immediate direct reports on the concepts and then takes the time to reflect and show how each decision is aligned the principles
  • work-in-progress as a liability rather than an asset.
  • Delivering quickly can provide immediate value while delay can result in obviated functionality of little value or missing a more lucrative opportunity while completing existing work-in-progress
  • The Agile Decision Filter
  • . Every member of the team should be educated to understand it, and to be capable of demonstrating how their decisions and actions are concomitant with it. The Decision Filter is
  • Are we making progress with imperfect information? Or are we trying to be perfect before we start? Does this decision add or maintain trust in our organization and with our partners? Or does it remove trust and breed fear? Are we treating work-in-progress as it if were a liability? Or are we treating it like an asset?
  • the team can start to modify their practices one decision at a time and drive towards a goal of business agility
  • The "transition" to Agile will happen slowly, and supporting the change will require training, coaching and tools – but change will be real and long-lasting.
  • By changing your culture using the simple principles captured in The Agile Decision Filter, teams will adopt Agile. Give it a little time and magic will happen. They will voluntarily change their behaviors and adopt Agile practices. They will behave in a fashion aligned with the principles and values behind The Agile Manifesto. They will not resist because they had a say in the changes, which are tailored specifically to their environment and their needs.
  • this approach may seem less prescriptive and straightforward than an "Agile Change Initiative" project plan. And yes, taking on a management-led Agile Transition Initiative looks faster and cheaper,
  • However, it is all wishful thinking, and the only way to get the payoff is to invest the time and show the courage to lead true Agile change. True Agile change requires you to change the culture. To change the culture, teach all your people how to use the Agile Decision Filter and hold them accountable for every decision they make.
Yuval Yeret

Ideal Training for Enterprise-Scale Agility? « Scaling Software Agility - 0 views

scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com/...g-for-enterprise-scale-agility

shared by Yuval Yeret on 04 Jun 09 - Cached
  • training strategy for a significant enterprise that is contemplating an “all in” (immediate and across the entire company) enterprise scale transformation approach
  • for the enterprise, a combination of team-based and role-based training that would touch every practitioner is ideal
  • all team practitioners receive a minimum of two days of agile training, (agile team training for the each team in the enterprise)
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • an additional day or so of training for specialized roles of Product Owner, Project/Release Manager, and Agile/Scrum Master
  • All other executives and managers are invited to attend an overview course on scaling software agility
  • Agile for Teams –Essential, team-based training in a two day workshop
  • philosophy, principles, and benefits of agility, agile methods, iterative and release framework, roles, agile technical practices, and agile management practices (Scrum)
  • Agile Release and Project Management at Enterprise Scale – For Project Managers, Release Managers, Program and Portfolio Managers who have responsibility for helping deliver the product(s) to the marketplace. Topics include differences between traditional and agile product management, iteration framework, multi-level release planning and tracking, the agile release train, planning and executing the release planning event, and measuring enterprise progress.
  • Agile Product Owner in the Enterprise – For team-based product owners/candidates who will become responsible for backlog management, story writing, and iteration and release planning, and who will also be involved in the planning and coordination of larger scale software systems of systems built by teams of teams.
  • The Agile Master In The Enterprise – For potential agile team leads/future Scrum Masters who will be coaching agile teams and who will interact with other teams as well. Topics include: process facilitation, enterprise agility, mastering the iteration, team roles, release planning and tracking, agile leadership, empowerment and conflict management, and integration Scrums.
  • Agile Product Manager in the Enterprise – For enterprise product managers with product, product line, portfolio and business unit responsibilities. Topics include: what’s so different about agile, backlog and prioritization, relationship to product owners, PM’s role in release planning and management, visioning and the product roadmap.
  • Scaling Software Agility – Best Practices for Large Enterprises – For executives and key stakeholders in support, distribution, quality, internal IT, HR and all others whose roles will be impacted by the substantive changes that enterprise agile engenders. Part I – overview of agility highlighting lessons learned from the most common and effective agile methods Part II – seven team best practices of agility that natively scale to the enterprise level Part III – seven organizational capabilities that companies can master to achieve the full benefits of enterprise scale agility
  • The team member doesn’t need a CSM course, but he does need to know how to work in an agile environment.
  • what are the engineering practices need to support agile development? I’ve found that if developers only have their existing tools and practices, then they will continue to specify and develop waterfall-style within the sprints.
Elad Amit

Insights You Can Use » Blog Archive » Seven Lessons from a Top-Down Change - 1 views

www.estherderby.com/...ns-from-a-top-down-change.html

change change management esther derby

shared by Elad Amit on 21 May 10 - Cached
  • Elad Amit on 21 May 10
     
    Changing your dog's bed - an excellent way to describe what happens in a change process
Yuval Yeret

Tailor your Message To Gain Support for your Agile Initiative | Enabling Agility - 0 views

www.enagility.com/r-your-message-to-gain-support

tailor agility agile adoption transformation

shared by Yuval Yeret on 21 May 09 - Cached
  • Connect Agile’s Benefits to your Company’s Priorities
  • aying that Agile is “better, faster, cheaper” may not be enough to cause a company to be willing to go through the often-painful process of cultural and process change.  You could implement Agile, but you could also try Six Sigma or Lean.  Saying that Agile is a general get-better remedy puts it in line with many other get-better methods.
  • f they don’t see a meaningful update from us, at least once a quarter, we’re going to get kicked out of the game.  We’ve all acknowledged that as we’ve gotten bigger, our processes have become more cumbersome and now is the time to do something about it.  Agile will give us the ability to regain that rapid pace of delivering innovations to market that we were know for in our early days.”
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • ur last two releases have looked like me-too updates, where we are just barely keeping up with our competitors
  • We’ve been losing market share
  • If you can refer to a specific business issue and show the linkage, you are much more likely to get a receptive audience.  Here’s an example.
  • The CFO, developer and QA manager have different roles in the organization and their needs are different.  If you want to enlist their support, be sure you know who you are talking to and what they value.
  • Use Focused Messages for Key Individuals or Groups
  • certain volume of people who are enrolled in the idea of Agile before you’ll see adoption start to accelerate,
  • People have specific needs in their role and they want to understand how Agile will affect and benefit them directly.  
  • Developers, on the other hand, probably wants to know if they will have interesting work, the opportunity to learn new things and the ability to make an impact on the company’s products.
  • a QA manager is probably interested in hearing how Agile helps enrich the QA profession.
  • The focus isn’t on Agile, its on business, as it should be.
  • The easiest way to find out what interests someone is to ask them.  When you meet, leave plenty of time for talk.  Motoring through a well-rehearsed Agile presentation usually doesn’t work.  A lot of times I’ll have slides with me, but they are a backdrop for the conversation.  I’ll refer to slides when it helps move the conversation along, but otherwise don’t use them.  You might want to forget slides altogether and just draw things on a whiteboard as necessary.  This technique is particularly useful with an individual or a small group.  
  • Take it One Step Further: Collect Data to Gain Insight
  • you’ll be most effective tailoring your message if you invest some time conducting data through a series of structured interviews. 
  • First, you’ll need a small set of questions prepared for the interviews.  Here are some examples. What is working with our current methodology? What’s not working with our current methodology? How do you think Agile would help our organization? What concerns do you have about Agile?
  • Interview a wide range of people: developers, testers, business analysts, managers, product managers, senior management, project managers and someone from finance. 
  • When you conduct the interviews, it is good to have one interviewer who has the primary responsibility for talking and the other person who has the primary job of taking notes.  You can switch off roles each interview so no one person gets stuck in either role.  Here’s how I typically start off.  
  • stories that people tell about the organization and make sure you write them down
  • I put all of the information we’d gathered into a mind-mapping program (Mindjet) and grouped like things together.
  • Make sure you keep interesting stories intact.  Specifics will help you make your cases
  • When there’s numerical data, people engage with a presentation in an entirely different way than they do when there are stories.  I find stories more effective, but do what works for you.
  • As an Agile evangelist, you job is to get Agile deployed effectively.  Along the way there are many people will be willing to go out of their way to help if you effectively speak to their interests and concerns.
Yuval Yeret

CIO Perspectives: A Conversation on Agile Transformation, Part 2 - 0 views

www.borland.com/...cio-perspectives-part-two.html

agile transformation

shared by Yuval Yeret on 15 May 09 - Cached
  • Part 2
  • The really hard part is around the people transformation - getting developers to work side-by-side with testers and users is a completely foreign concept.
  • The thinking is that IT is mission-critical, so let's not change things without giving it a lot of thought and a lot of consideration
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The reason there's been so much turnover of CIOs in the last ten years is because the end users – the CEOs, the CFOs and the division heads – are unhappy with the results. When IT professionals realize this, and realize that something like Agile gives them the opportunity to create better value for their businesses, then they're going to be a lot more willing to adopt it. I hope that development organizations are starting to see around that corner.
  • We WANT to go Agile. How do we overcome the skepticism at the CXO level?"
  • My recommendation would be "try it." Agile doesn't equal risk, but changing development methods does equal some risk
  • t can be a big deal to say: "I'm going to change our development methodology." It makes people sit up and want to dive into deep detail before getting on board. The question comes in the form of the old development methodology: "Let me see the high level plan and what the change will be in the deliverables and methodology over the next two years." This is exactly what you're trying to avoid by going to an Agile method.
  • try Agile on a few small projects, measure the results, talk to users about their satisfaction, and then readdress
  • nitiate the shift in the most change-prone areas first, and then work it backwards through the rest of the organization
  • It doesn't happen everywhere at all times, and it doesn't work in all areas. It's good to recognize that up front – that software development projects adapt to this easily, but an infrastructure project would have challenges with this approach. So, select a few areas that would naturally lend themselves to Agile, such as application development, gradually introduce it to these areas that need it most, and then measure results.
  • Again I'd say: "Try it." Agile transition is absolutely about organizational change. To win executive support we need to speak in terms of risk management, measurement and the bottom line.
Yuval Yeret

Challenging Why (not if) Scrum Fails | NetObjectives - 0 views

www.netobjectives.com/...questioning-why-scrum-fails

shared by Yuval Yeret on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • I do believe for Scrum to work beyond the team you need more than Scrum
  • what to add to Scrum making it more effective when it won't readily work
  • lack of team agility is not always the major impediment to Enterprise Agility
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • While starting at the team level with Scrum is often good, you often need to start with the product management team - that is, where product enhancements to be worked on are selected
  • Even when Scrum works at the team level, organizations very often report little impact to the bottom line.  While this is better than nothing (if the teams are happier, that's good), it usually doesn't justify a huge investment
  • in many contexts in which Scrum does not work readily, Scrum has no power to improve the context in which it is in.  In other words, the impediments that one must fix are often outside of the scope of what Scrum helps you do.
  • These impediments are often not even seen or if they are, are often viewed as "just the way it is."
  • certain Scrum attitudes often makes things worse
  • Scrum does little to let management to know how the team works or what impact management decisions have on the team
  • There is almost a religious zeal that Scrum tells you little of what to do
  • While SoS works well for certain types of work, it does not work well when the different teams have different motivations. 
  • the high failure rate is due to the fact that Scrum works in certain contexts but has little ability to change the contexts in which it doesn't work wel
  • One needs to pay attention to where to start as well as see how to change the context.  Separating the team from management doesn't help.  Focusing on only the team part of the value stream - giving little guidance both up and downstream of the team also doesn't help.  Lean provides guidance here (meaning Scrum with the aid of Lean could provide insights),
  • look into using Lean as a context for any improvement in your software development organization
  • While Scrum may be an appropriate choice in many circumstances, other methods may be better (e.g., Kanban Software Development).  Scrum's rapid ascension probably has more to do with its success in the places it easily fits.  Now that it is past the early adopter phase, we may see it having even a harder time as people attempt to scale it.
Yuval Yeret

LSSC12: The Improvement Journey - Yuval Yeret on Vimeo - 0 views

vimeo.com/43222643

kanban conference talk vimeo improvement journey yuvalyeret video Continuous Improvement improvement-list agile-change-management-list

shared by Yuval Yeret on 22 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Yuval Yeret on 22 Mar 14
     
    "This presentation was given at the Lean Software and Systems Conference 2012 (LSSC12). Lean/Agile is not just about delivering early and often, it is even more importantly about continuously adapting the way we work towards an improved capability of delivery. Yet how many of us have worked in a continuously improving organization? How many of us have seen one in real life? It's hard to keep management interested in Improvement for very long, making Continuous Improvement a holy grail of sorts. As Lean/Kanban practitioners we believe the only sustainable way to improve is via evolutionary emerging change. But if we the organization is not interested in pursuing it, we have a big problem. Through some challenging situations from real client work we will see a few patterns that fail and a few patterns that show more promise for energizing improvement. We will also look at improvement pace and how to apply kanban approaches to make the improvement more sustainable. We will also explore some local cultural aspects that might affect the drive (or lack of) towards improvement, and how to deal with them, with some interesting insights about the Israeli culture…"
Yuval Yeret

From the Agile Transformation Trenches: Culture Change with Pigs, not Chickens - 0 views

borland.typepad.com/...ge-with-pigs-not-chickens.html

Agile transition agilesparksblog

shared by Yuval Yeret on 07 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Identify the technical leaders within projects; those that are “self-driven to produce quality results on time … combine technical ability with enough people skills …are trusted and respected by both their managers and fellow developers, are determined to make the team succeed, and usually live the work.” (Chief programmers, Chapter 2:  A Practical Guide to FDD).
  • Sell them the vision: if you cannot sell these people on the benefits to them, their colleagues and the organization of the new way of working then something is wrong
  • Provide in-depth training and on-going coaching. It is better to have a single lead person trained in-depth who can coach his teammates through the basics than to have the whole team trained on the basics with no-one on the team to turn to when the basics are not enough.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Providing initial training is simply not enough. When the pressure is on, the temptation to return to previous ways of doing things is often too strong to resist. If technical leads are to work for you, they need on-going support and coaching, and a means by which they can support each other.  Good external coaches (expert chickens?) can help here.
  • Let the technical leads continue working on their projects. Some fail at the final hurdle by doing 1-3 above and then assigning or scheduling the technical leads to coach other projects, effectively turning them from pigs into chickens.
  • To summarize, if you can produce a change in the behavior of the lead pigs, the other pigs will, by definition, follow. However, pigs will not follow chickens for long because chickens are simply not pigs.
  • Yuval Yeret on 07 Jul 09
     
    Last month David Anderson wrote a two-part article on why agile transformation initiatives fail. David's suggestion to concentrate on cultural change reminded me of one of my favorite bits on process initiatives. From Peter Coad's book, Java Modeling in Color...
Yuval Yeret

Agile PMO Role - 0 views

www.gantthead.com/...articlesPrint.cfm

agile pmo

shared by Yuval Yeret on 20 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Institute an agile transition team, and have the agile PMO play a significant role on that team. If you are starting on the journey, establishing an agile transition team can be a critical factor in your success. The agile transition team plans and implements the strategy for the organization’s agile transition (using a backlog, iterations, planning meetings, retrospectives and, in general, responding to change) This group monitors and communicates results throughout the organization, and is responsible for removing organizational level impediments. The PMO representative can act as ScrumMaster for the agile transition team. Members should be leaders representing different departments and functions that are impacted by the agile transition. For example, having leaders from development, QA, product development and the PMO is an excellent practice.
  • Establish a “Meta Scrum” that is tasked with mapping projects and features to corporate strategy. As part of optimizing the whole, it is important for there to be a big picture view across products and features. In general, product managers are tasked with defining, prioritizing and communicating the vision and features for their products. When you have a program that encompasses multiple products with multiple product owners and project teams, keeping everything in line with the corporate vision can sometimes be overlooked.   Unlike the Scrum of Scrums--which is tactical, i.e. focused on execution--the Meta Scrum is focused on the strategic planning and decisions guiding the program or programs as a whole. Establishing a Meta Scrum with the PMO representative acting as ScrumMaster to plan and facilitate meetings (as well as reporting and tracking decisions and action items) can add significant value in having a program able to rapidly respond to change while staying true to the corporate strategy and objectives.
  • I like using story points to establish the velocity of individual teams. From a program point of view, however, story points are difficult to use across multiple teams. The nut there is that one team’s story point is not equivalent to another team’s story point. To crack that nut, I use agileEVM to “normalize” to standard project management metrics like the Cost Performance Index and the Schedule Performance Index, as well as the Estimate At Complete in integrated dollars. These metrics can be aggregated across teams to establish progress against the plan for the entire program.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Establish an agile CoachingCenter. It is important from an organizational perspective to continue to provide coaching and training to agile teams. Team development and facilitation needs continue after the initial shift to agile methods is completed. In addition, new team members are hired, new practices discovered and implemented. Establishing an agile coaching center of excellence can meet this need.   In order to be successful, the center needs to be a legitimate organization with an assigned budget, staff and objectives. The center can be a located within the agile PMO. The center can develop and manage a central agile library, produce various lunch ‘n’ learns and other programs to infuse agile values and knowledge across the organization, and provide proficient, independent facilitators to teams for various retrospectives and other needs. In addition, the center can help the team gather metrics on their agility and health so that the team can take action if the decide to.
Yuval Yeret

The Lean Change Method by Jeff Anderson [Leanpub PDF/iPad/Kindle] - 0 views

leanpub.com/leanchangemethod

LeanChange Kanban kotter leanstartup twitterfavs

shared by Yuval Yeret on 23 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Yuval Yeret on 23 Mar 14
     
    The #LeanChange Method: Managing Agile Change through #Kanban, #kotter and #leanstartup Thinking is on leanpub! https://t.co/JfDmgtyHFV
Yuval Yeret

Permanent Link to Feature Flow - Increasing velocity using Kanban - 1 views

blog.xebia.com/...feature-flow-1

lean kanban

shared by Yuval Yeret on 03 Jun 09 - Cached
  • team that had some problems getting their process right
  • their velocity was decreasing and spirits were low. Luckily we managed to change our process by changing some basic Scrum practices and replacing some of them with Lean practices, inspired by the new Kanban articles and presentations. Productivity is now higher than ever and we can now focus on what really matters: product quality and customer satisfaction.
  • one major issue: getting things done. The major symptom was the frustration of management and the team with the project. The first 3-week time box (sprint) ending with about 30% (!) of all features still in progress, when, of course, they should all have been done and ready for shipment.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • existing solution to this problem was to lower the expected velocity each sprint, so the next sprint would be on-time. But at the end of next sprint, the same problem occurred, so the velocity was going down sprint after sprint.
  • pressure of the rest of the organisation for the team to keep up their tempo. This pressure from both sides was crushing morale.
  • The way this team reacted to pressure was to work harder. Most people would have 2 or 3 tasks in progress at the same time. When a developer would finish a task, the testers were too busy testing something else, so they could give the developer direct feedback. When the tester found an issue with a new feature, the developers were already working on something else, so the tester had to wait. Simply put, there was too much focus on working long and hard, not on cooperation and the stuff that actually matters: features.
  • most dysfunctional behaviour comes from the system people are in
  • biggest struggle of this team: pressure & predictability.
  • Most Scrum masters challenge the team to reach the same (or higher) velocity each sprint. This pressure should give a team focus to perform at its best. However, it can also go haywire if the team doesn't deliver. No focus, no pride, no happy customer
  • retrospectives were dismal and planning meetings were a huge burden. The teams' productivity dropped in the days after the sprint, finding new courage to start the next one. Because they had an ineffective work-process, the only outcome of each sprint was to lower the expected velocity, to make sure we would be predictable. Estimation and predictability are only a means to an end and since they were getting in the way of fixing the root cause (and were bringing down the team's spirit) I opted to cut out the planning sessions and sprint deadlines.
  • first change we made was to set a limit of 8 tasks on the 'in progress' column
  • We spent 3 weeks bringing the numbers of open tasks from 21 to 8, without picking up any new work. Of course the team struggled with this new limit. They were used to pick up new work whenever they were blocked somehow, this wasn't allowed any more
Yuval Yeret

Agile Product Manager in the Enterprise (5): Responsibility 3 - Maintain the ... - 0 views

scalingsoftwareagility.wordpress.com/...3-maintain-the-product-roadmap

agile product_owner product_management

shared by Yuval Yeret on 18 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The Roadmap consists of a series of planned release dates, each of which has a theme and a prioritized feature set.
  • While it is a simple thing mechanically to represent the Roadmap, figuring out the content for anything beyond the next release is another matter entirely. The topic of what else the team plans to ship and when can be a fascinating and contentious topic in agile
  • the easiest way to think about the Roadmap is that it is an output, rather than an input to the Release Planning process.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The dates and themes for the next release are fixed. The features are prioritized and variable.
  • The teams can commit only to the features in the next upcoming release. Releases beyond the next, represent only a best estimate.
  • The Roadmap, then, is a “plan of intent” and is subject to change as development facts, business context and customer needs change. With respect to the upcoming release, perhaps the most important guidance is this:
  • Even though the team has committed to the objectives and we have agreed that the feature set cannot be guaranteed, it is a reasonable expectation that the agile teams will: 1) meet the date 2) accomplish the theme 3) deliver most of the features, and certainly the highest priority ones, with the requisite quality.
  • Anything less would be unprofessional and belie the power, discipline and accountability of our agile enterprise model. Moreover, it will eventually threaten our own empowerment, as failure to deliver will inevitably cause the implementation of various controls to “help us”!
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