Importance of Environment in an Agile Transformation

I attended today a SAFe 4.0 event arranged by a Finnish training company called Nitor Delta. As a guest speaker they Michael Stump from the Scaled Agile Inc. The event was also a good meeting place for SAFe practitioners. I must say that I saw quite a few familiar faces. And met many new people who I can hopefully later exchange experiences with.

After writing a case study, my company has drawn a lot of attention from other (potential) SAFe adopters. I have a bit mixed feelings about it. Of course I'm happy and proud about the attention, but being a Finn, it's difficult to handle the situation. And then again, since I see all the daily difficulties we deal with, I sometimes feel tempted to say "..but we still face these difficulties". But maybe there's no need. I guess everyone understands that things are in reality much more complex than in theory.

From http://finnishnightmares.blogspot.fi

But from the conversations that I participated after Michael had finished his presentation I learned that environment matters a great deal in SAFe/Agile adoptions and transformations. First I was somewhat against the idea of training everyone at the beginning of the adoption process, but maybe my first impression fails me there. In some cases I think even training is not enough, but some people should get their brains totally rewired. I mean, if you have done something in the same way for decades (or even years), it could be overwhelming to modify your daily routines.

If I think about possible factors why the transformation was successful in our case, I could easily list at least a few. There was a big management support. Previous and current heads of R&D were supportive for the idea and also the Chief Quality Officer. I think also the CEO saw potential in the new practices.

We had already been trained in Scrum when the big organizational change was initiated. All developers had received training in Scrum essentials and every Scrum Master and Product Owner was certified. Scrum Master and tester Communities of Practice were also formed right at the start. So good practices had distribution channels.

Release Process was established even though at first we didn't plan the releases. But the decision to shorten the release cycle was made. Release Manager, a person who would facilitate the release planning and execution was also appointed right away.

Then I think a big deal of the change can be credited to a couple of champions. People who were in key roles (RTE, Owner of Software Development Process, Chief Portfolio Officer, line management of R&D) made big contributions. Having a vision of how things could be done was important, but just as important was the support from these champions. And finally the support and engagement of employees. Everyone wasn't eager to embrace the change at first, but enough many were.

During the conversations with other companies I have realized that there are other, more subtle things that supported the transformation. Some that I had never even thought of since they are rooted so deep in the culture and operations. The organization is not flat, but there are exceptionally good possibilities to access information, suggest new ideas and to participate in the decision making. Also the developers are treated as experts. And there's one company value that I hold in the highest respect: Enjoy Working Together.

In the development money is not an issue. I mean, there's no unlimited budget, but people in development get to fully concentrate on the contents. If something is considered worth doing and there's clear potential, it will be done. There's no sharing of the blanket between different business units. (I have never needed to worry about CapEx or OpEx.)

As a conclusion, I think there were quite a few things that made the transformation possible. Some are such that people living inside the system do not even perceive. In a way I'd be tempted to say they don't realize how lucky they are. So let me conclude my post with a few pictures.

Office Breakfast

Foosball table

Hackathon trophy

Answers to Open Questions

This time I'm writing a little differently structured blog post. Pierre Godts asked me the following questions at the Scaled Agile Framework group at LinkedIn. The question is related to the SAFe Case Study I wrote some time ago. So let's dive a bit deeper into some topics that were left our of the study.

Can you tell us more about the change at employee level? 

The change touched mostly people in the development. Previously all developers (coders and testers) had been in one big group and everyone shared the same supervisor. Work was organized around projects that were resourced from this pool of developers on a monthly basis. Projects were steered by people working in the business units.

After the change people were assigned to (Scrum) teams. Each team was appointed a Product Owner who was a member of a business unit. POs reported to the heads of business units (Chief Product Owners or Business Owners). Teams started to follow scrum way of working. During the same time our internal processes were also identified and written down. Release cycle was set to three months although we knew that we would probably face problems in the beginning.

Each team elected their own Scrum Master who then started to facilitate the events and see that we followed the scrum ceremonies. They were all certified (as were the POs). Scrum Master Community of Practice was also established and Chief Scrum Master started to facilitate it.

At the beginning Scrum Masters participated in a weekly Scrum of Scrums meeting. This was later replaced by a meeting that was between any member of each team. Scrum Masters started to have regular get-togethers where they discussed process related affairs and possible impediments that needed to be raised to company level.

What was their commitment to change? Were employees skeptical or not willing to change? 

People are all different. Some were more skeptical and some were more like early adopters. I belong to these guys who usually get excited about new things easily. But generally I'd say people were rather committed to the change. The previous state of the company was not really optimal either so I think there was a really fertile ground for some change.

And as depicted in many change management related books the early and late majority just needed a bit more time and discussion. Maybe with some more coaching the change could have been faster. In our case teams were more or less left to figure out the steps themselves. But maybe we just did it with some luck.

Did some employees got fired? 

No. No employees got fired during the reorganization. But some didn't like the new way of working and decided to seek their destiny somewhere else. Some started their own company, some simply changed employer. I claim that quite many of these people had been thinking about the change already for a bit longer while. The reorganization was just the final nail into the coffin.

But one really positive thing is that some people have returned. They have seen the greener grass but understood that maybe it's due to more fertilization...

Were new employees hired? 

Yes. The company has been growing and new teams have been established during the past years.

Was there an increase in number of employees? 

Yes. Same as previous question.

What about stress level, increased or decreased? 

This is tough one. Depends. No-one probably misses the long death marches when we tried to get the release together after a year of development. Or the feeling that if I don't get this feature into the product the customers will need to wait for it for another year. (This would inevitably increase the scope creep and result in not so well tested additions at the really late part of the release cycle.)

But then the other side of the coin is that previously some developers had a really big areas of responsibility. This would mean that you could potentially save the whole company by fixing some issues and get credit from everyone. When you are working in a team, it's usually the team that gets the credit. But I see this again as one inevitable thing that happens when a company grows over certain limit.

What about the budgets/costs, controlled? 

Honestly I don't know the answer to this one. Probably the budget was controlled, but it was done in so smooth way that it was never evident. More I would say people didn't take the full benefit of their empowerment. When you have been just a resource and someone else has been managing you or your project for long enough, you don't really understand what it means when your boundaries are removed. It's a slow process to get people to see that "Hey, can I do this? Ok, wow, I can!" And it feels great. As an employee it's a bit scary. But as a supervisor I think it's great to empower others!


Did the use of Jira cause problems/difficulties?

Not really. With our distributed setup JIRA was really an essential tool. I like physical boards and post-its but with multiple sites it's a luxury you can't really afford. And when you accompany JIRA with other Atlassian tools you can get real transparency to the development. You can see whole chain from idea to source code to testing and finally to the product. And with documentation included.

Using Scrum for Strategy Work

I'm continuing with the same subject I wrote about last week. Repetition is key to learning. And another important way to make things stick is to tie new information to previously obtained knowledge. At university I noticed the same thing with equations, groups of equations, matrices and linear operators (and functionals). Once you study enough maths you see how beautifully many things are connected...

But getting back to the point. I'm participating in our strategy work. Probably going into details about it would be wrong in so many ways that I won't even consider such option. But I think the (Agile) process how we are producing the new strategy is so interesting that I'd like to share it.

One way to produce a new strategy is to assign the task to a couple of persons. Then they spend some time (X months) to gather data and make relevant analyses and present resulting strategy to CEO and/or Board. Then the strategy might be accepted or some modifications are requested. Process is effective, because the people working on it don't need to negotiate much and they can move fast. On the other hand, the result is produced by the mental energy of only a couple of people. And these are also the only people who know the new strategy at the beginning.

In our case the work is split into work streams. Each work stream has an Owner, a Facilitator and a dedicated team. Teams produce their own piece of the general strategy puzzle, but they need to make sure they are aligned with the other work streams. This is achieved via cross-team communications (which is always non-trivial) and facilitated through weekly Facilitator Calls. Teams also have regular sessions when they all meet, present their current findings, challenge each others current results and generally push each other forward. This is also a session that feeds the overall strategy which will be the crystallized result of all the combined efforts.

If you have used Scrum with multiple teams you might spot some similarities. I think the work stream structure is a one-to-one match with a Scrum Team. It contains (Product) Owner, Facilitator (Scrum Master) and a (Development) Team. The Facilitator Calls are like weekly Scrum of Scrums sessions that are used for cross-team synchronization. (Of course this close relationship with Scrum is not that much advertized.)

I can't think of a good Scrum match for the session that combines the results of the different work streams, but there's one in SAFe model. These regular sessions bring to my mind System Demos. All in all the work is like traveling on board an Agile Release Train. The end result will be full-fledged strategy that is already well understood by the people who have been crafting it. And although this probably costs the company a lot more in the short term than a strategy crafted by only a couple of persons, I think it's a clever investment. If we have N work streams with M members, it totals N x M people who are already quite familiar with the new strategy. I think that is already a really nice sized Guiding Coalition.

And maybe still one thing that I want to add (because I'm so proud of it): the strategy process is out there in the open! Not in the basement, nowhere lurking in the darkness. Anyone is free to give input. People are encouraged to discuss and even the meetings are held in open space. Transparency. A cornerstone in Scrum. To me it signals trust.

Maintenance vs New Development

Blogoverse is awesome! Here everything I say is the truth, because there are no counter arguments. In reality it's not always that easy to get people convinced. :)

I'm giving here an example situation and my opinion for a solution. The readers are more than welcome to offer their opinions and join the discussion.

Our releases are planned in cadence. Teams craft their own objectives which we call simply Release Plans. Then the Release Train Engineer (which is me) gathers those so anyone in the organization can quickly get an idea of what will come most probably is coming out in the next Release. The Release Plan is a list of features and changes to the software that we predict to be ready by the next Release Day.

Now, depending on the magnitude of technical debt, maintenance burden, customer contacts and possible fire-fighting issues, some teams have a lot less capacity for developing new features. It can be that over half of their time is usually spent on something else than new features. Like fixing bugs or refactoring. Taking into account all the facts, that's ok.

Somewhat due to misunderstanding and also because it doesn't feel nice to present an empty Release Plan, the teams urge to have also the maintenance issues in their Release Plan. This would make it easier to communicate why they are not able to create so much new business value. Seeing how some people have failed to understand the difference between Release Plan and what activities the teams are doing during the release period, this seems like a valid point.

But personally I find this to be a dysfunction. I think it's the team's choice anyway how they spend their time. And since we have all the maintenance issues in our Product Backlog, the people who are interested in what's happening in the team's daily work can check the situation there. Or participate in the Sprint Reviews. Or go and have a chat with the team or just look at things are going. There's no lack of transparency, people just need to go and have a look.

I see an analogy between this and the work of individual team members in a Sprint. For me the essence of Agile software development is that we have skilled and disciplined individuals who are the best judges of how to do their work (and spend their time). No-one should be micro-managing them and telling how to do their job. It's an issue of responsibility. And trust. If you are more into waterfall, go get yourself a Project Manager. ;)

But as the Scrum Master is educating and coaching the team, I find myself responsible for educating the organization. Don't worry, I'll do my best. Challenges make life interesting!

Proper Technique

Again, I'd like to share some real life experiences and thoughts they have provoked. I learned how to swim at the age of seven. Since then I have been able to float on the water and transfer myself from one place to another. But I have never been very fast. And some of my friends have politely described my swimming style either as resembling a beater or that I'm "trying to crush the water".

This week I attended my first swimming technique course. We were swimming just freestyle and practicing the breathing technique. We were in the pool and the instructor told us what we could improve. I'm not sure the results were tremendous right away, but with every pool length something was improved. Towards the end of the session, I felt like I had learned to swim in a new way. (Interesting fact: only 10 % of the propulsion is produced by legs. And for amateurs not even that much.)

There are some important lessons to draw from this. Coaching, mentoring and teaching are efficient ways to share knowledge. If you don't know the techniques, you could seek guidance from a master. It's not embarrassing, it's wise. The second thing to note is that you will easily become blind to your own performance. An outside observer with a fresh pair of eyes can help you notice new things. And finally: only practice makes perfect. Now, after the teaching, I have a faint idea of what the proper technique is, but without practice I will just regress back to my old style. 

And the same applies also to Agile software development. Get your team a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach. Or if you are such person, consider seeking guidance from a more experienced practitioner. Mastery is an asymptote which you can never reach. But you can always get better. 

Perfect road is always ahead

Agile and Military Methods

"What? Dude, your out of your mind! Agile methods emphasize individuals and are cool. Military stuff is all about hierarchy, command and control. Yuck!"

Well, that's one view and I don't really argue about the hierarchy and C&C. But I do find a lot of similarities also. If you need to lead people in battle, the level of trust between you and your team needs to be high. You need to show example and as a leader you go always in first. Would be nice to see the other people following. Your people need to trust you and you need to trust your people. I believe that's a characteristic of efficient Agile teams also. Although in an ideal Agile team everyone is a leader.

And really army and the command and control part is not so black and white. Setting goals instead of giving specific instructions works best in both worlds. In software development requirements change and the only reasonable thing to do is to embrace this change. In his book Management 3.0 Jurgen Appelo summarises agility as

"Staying successful in ever-changing environments." 

In the heat of battle it is probably also safer bet to adapt to the current situation than to follow a predefined plan. US Marines and special forces like Navy SEALs operate with small yet effective teams with no centralized control.

The final example is maybe a bit more far fetched, but maybe just for amusement. If you are familiar with close-order drill, you know that it is a training where certain action is trained repeatedly. After each command the trainer will give feedback about the execution. Now my boldest comparison is between these drills and Sprints/Releases. After Sprint, there is a Review where the results are inspected and the team should get feedback. Improving the actions of the team happens in Retrospective. Iteratively the team improves its execution. Only in this case the whole team acts as the trainer (Scrum Master can catalyze the process).

And finally, practice and discipline are the basic requirements in both. Real professionals keep their heads cool and write those tests before making changes! Regarding discipline, I think the people in software development should take inspiration from the world of military. Lack of discipline in implementation seems to be a common stumbling block for many Agile adoptions. I think the pragmatic programmers and Clean Code movement have understood the significance of practice. Mastery doesn't just appear. It is earned through practice.

Personal Communication and Decision Making

Individuals and interactions. Customer collaboration. I find it really hard to do that without meeting the other person. And if at all possible I prefer meeting them one on one. Or if that is not possible, I usually call using phone or voip. Why? Because it is so much more efficient than writing emails! ..or instant messages or anything else in writing.

I use such tools as JIRA, Lync and Flowdock quite a lot during my days. They are all great for asynchronous communication. And so is this blog post. But getting feedback for anything is a bit too slow to be really agile. Maybe one of the most frustrating features in instant messaging clients is to see that the other person is writing. Then you look at that and wait. If the other person has lot to say, you wait for a long time. But if you go and just have a quick chat it will all be done in no time. Simple and you get to do some nice human interaction also. I count it as a plus!

Well, you cannot always win. Sometimes the face to face conversations may not be pleasant. Sometimes you and the other person just disagree and there might be no getting past it. Or you need to give the other person some feedback that is not so easy to swallow. During those times I suggest just to focus on the facts. Don't get angry or frustrated, just deliver your message. Then you might want to let the other person to cool down before attempting anything mentally challenging. Because frustration simply blocks down our ability to think clearly.

Another interesting topic is the decision making. If I haven't totally misunderstood things, it's actually rather central topic in Agile. Empowering teams gives the teams (and individuals working there) power to make decisions. And thinking about it with some common sense, it does seem wise to do the decisions where the best knowledge is: in the teams. In Scrum the role of the Scrum Master is to remove impediments. A pending decision is an impediment. It's better to make a decision and move on than to waste time in pondering. So, Scrum Master can help facilitate decision making in order to keep team moving.

And I think the same principle applies when going "up in the food chain". Management should provide people with decisions. That's their job. Creating a better working environment through making decisions. Or empowering other people to make those decisions. But that's already a valid decision (and often a very good one.)

Finally I'd like to share this interesting link. Cult of Done. So simple yet so powerful! Starting things is easy. Anyone can do that. But what really counts is getting things Done! Finish starting and start finishing. Have working software as your only metric of progress. Done is the engine of more!

Respecting Other People

I think one key ingredient in forming a working team is the respect of other people. People may have different skill sets and they may live in different countries. For as long as we see each others as individuals and equals, we can achieve great results.

I think some people, and maybe more often people with academic backgrounds, have a tendency to look down on others. With distributed or virtual teams this is even easier than in normal teams, since you don't have to see the others face to face so often. It is easier to start thinking about "us" and (or even versus) "them".

I would place respecting individuals and trust as the top characteristics to look for in people who are supposed to work in multinational distributed teams. And of course willingness to learn. But that's probably a must have in knowledge work anyway.

I think in a Scrum Team the Scrum Master should be the champion of these values. Constantly showing example of respecting others. Architects or newly graduates, it doesn't matter. Everyone in the team brings their contribution and help pursuit the common goal. And everyone deserves their place.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Building Trust

One thing that I find very interesting in Scrum is the fact that the Scrum Master doesn't have any power over the team. So there's genuine need to persuade the people. Motivate them and get them to do things through leadership. And I think this lack of power is the key in expert organizations.

In case you are dealing with complex products, you probably have very intelligent people working with you. And usually those people know their value. If you boss them around and manage them too tightly, they will just pack their things and move to another company. So you need to have a light touch. Leadership is required.

And I think one key thing in leadership is building trust. Let's say there's a building on fire. Everyone is exiting the building in a rapid fashion. Who knows, the building might even be collapsing soon. But there might still be people trapped inside and they might need help.

a) You are always telling people what they need to do. They don't usually like it and people talk behind your back. You don't care since you get the job done. Who cares if you have to cut a few corners or lie in a couple of places? And if you hear something useful, you usually take advantage of it without thinking about others too much.

b) You always treat people with respect. You see others as persons who have their own hopes and dreams. And you realize you spend a lot of time with these other people, so you like to make sure you all enjoy your time together. If someone needs help, you offer assistance. When someone tells you something private, you don't spread that around. And every time you are true. Whatever happens, people know that you are telling the truth.

Okay, there are now these two persons: a) and b). Which one would you follow into a burning building?

Communities of Practice

During our Scrum adoption we first started by assigning people to teams. Afterwards it's easy to say that it wasn't maybe the optimal solution, but it was what we did. There was not too much steering from above, so the teams were left to figure things out on their own. There are both good and bad implications from this.

Teams were free to choose how they wanted to do different things. On the other hand, the implementations between different teams could possibly vary a lot. But variance is good. Let all the flowers bloom!

After some time the Scrum Masters saw a definite need for collaboration. We had a Scrum of Scrums, which was first only for the Scrum Masters. After starting as the Chief Scrum Master I wanted to modify this practice slightly. I wanted all the team members to have access to the SoS, but the Scrum Masters could still meet on another forum.

This other forum was named Scrum Master Community of Practice. We meet weekly (and if something urgent comes we have an email group and a Flowdock flow) to discuss impediments that go beyond team boundaries. CoP meeting is also an excellent chance to spread good practices. I think this image by Mountain Goat Software gives a clear idea of what I think a CoP is:

Some approaches that have gained popularity through these meetings are Emergency Guy (one person puts down the fire and others can continue working uninterrupted) and more recently a practice that for each story selected for a Sprint every Development Team member writes at least one test. I'm especially fond of this practice, since it has quality assurance built inside.

Leadership is not telling people what they need to do. It's about helping them realize they want to do those things.