 Welcome to Agile Roots 2010, sponsored by Version 1, Rally Software, Vario, Amirsis, Agile Alliance, and Xmission Internet. The new methodology isn't a methodology by Alistair Coburn. So who's ever had the pleasure of having a conversation with Alistair? If you haven't, I suggest at some point in your life you do. It's a very powerful experience. I'm just going to leave it at that. He's going to give his talk about methodology. He's a methodologist. Hopefully, if you're getting sleepy, I suggest you drink the energy drinks because you don't want to miss Alistair's talk. Take it away. Thank you. This hat, which I'm not going to wear, and one of the reasons I'm not going to wear it is because it's got this like a pill-shaped problem, is a kind of a ritual because this is what I wore in 2003 at the first Agile Development Conference. And last year I passed it on to Andrew when he and they started the Agile Roots. So this is kind of a limbo, but I'm not going to wear it. And by the way, Andrew, you probably need to get some pills for this hat for next year. There you go. All right. I'm going to start with some activities, so I'm kind of hoping people will come back into the room. Kay and the organizers knew that I wasn't good enough to do an 18-minute talk. For those of you who know what that refers to, or a 12-minute talk. So they gave me 40 minutes, because I'm not good enough to do an 18-minute talk, but in fact I'm so bad I really need an hour. So we're going to see if I can get this thing into 40 minutes, because I'm going to ask your help and I'm going to ask you guys to do some playing and stuff like that. Because the time's going to be of interest, I'm going to give you a little of silence to do in 90 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes. I'm going to ask you when I do that to just really stop fast so we can move forward. The reason is, because I actually need your help for this, that methodologies these days aren't methodologies. And so we're looking, we need a new word. The problem is that we've advanced enough in the last 15 years that what we used to call methodologies and the limitations of what we used to call methodologies, we've moved beyond that into things that aren't methodologies anymore. We just don't have a word for it, and we suffer because we call them methodologies. Scrum, the new can band stuff, the crystal stuff, are not methodologies. I just don't know what they are, and I don't find a name for it. So I'm actually going to use half of my time here to see if you guys can help me out with this. Now the first, to get you there to the kind of a state where you're kind of understanding what I'm talking about, I'm going to ask you to do a couple of different exercises. So here's what I'd like you to do. I'm going to give you three to four minutes, and I want you to work in groups of about about five, six people is good, and practice your East Coast dialect. You know, this is very, very Boston, it's very New York. Stanford is one-upping the East Coast on this little thing. So take three, four minutes and just practice your like personal jabs, a little one-upsmanship, you know, that kind of stuff. Groups of five or six, like nothing too, too direct, heavy insult stuff, but just you know, a little one-upsmanship, cut, cut, you know. Practice that, and I'm going to give you three, four minutes to do that. Go ahead, start. That means stop. Are you people who can't count to five, and you can't follow instructions? All right, you get the idea. So now, I want you to reverse it. Same groups. Same about length of time, but do the reverse, right? Build each other up. Ali, I love you, man, that ping-pong that was awesome. Persians are the most polite people in the world. Next to Egyptians, of course. Egyptians are awesome. Okay? Same thing, build each other up, any way you can. Ready, set, go. All right, thank you very much. I hope you get a sense that the second was very, very different in tone than the first, right? And actually, what was scary for me, there's a good part and a good news, bad news, is the first way is, though I hate to drag it up, is sort of kind of like how Hitler got into power in the 20s, right? That kind of jabbing. The second is actually, you know, your contribution to world peace, if you just did that, right? So I let that run an extra minute longer for the good stuff to the bad stuff so that I can increase, you know, world harmony just in here. So just think about that when you go back to work. If you were to do that exercise sometime with your work group, but just have a periodic, let's say, a little three minutes is a long time, right? Three minute build up session could be really interesting at work. Best comment I heard, and I won't say who it was and who she was saying it to was, your butt really does look good, she said to him. Score. All right, now the reason I bring this up is because what I gave you, it wasn't a methodology, right? Was it? Totally different behavior, completely different behavior, fairly sort of predictable kind of characteristics to the behavior. And all I did was to say, put yourself in a certain space and act that way. That's all I said. That's what the new methodologies are. That's what Agile methodologies are calling for is put yourself in a space and act a certain way. What the scrum say really says, demo or deliver every month, self-organize, inspect and adapt. That's it. That's really scrum. All the rest is decorations, you know, shoe level helpful hints for beginners, but that's really what it's saying. And Crystal says about that much or less. So it's kind of tough. The new Kanban stuff, so David Anderson has a new book about Kanbans, it's not a methodology. It's just, no, it's not a methodology. Here's the point. When I go around and I try to say what is scrum, there isn't a word. It's not a methodology. So half of this exercise, half of my session, my 40 minutes, I want to spend brainstorming with all of you as to what is a potential name. So this is going to be very experimental, like my way out on a limb here. We're going to do brainstorming with 240 people in about 15 minutes. So we're aiming for and see what we get. So stay with me. I'll give you short time frames. When I go ping-pong, like stop. In groups of three people spend two minutes nominating names for all of this, like what the exercise you just went through or things that aren't methodologies, but ask you to operate in a certain space. I'll start now. Groups of three people, write down names, potential names, brainstorming, ready, set, go. All right, just keep rolling forward. In 60 seconds in your three-person group, pick out your top two names. We're going to do single elimination term on these. Pick your top two. All right. We're going to do single elimination here. Find another three-person group. I'm going to give you 90 seconds between your two groups. Top two names you can do anywhere you want. There's a sample technique you might try. Ready, set, go. Stop talking. Make the selection. Be done. Last round of single elimination. Find another group. 90 seconds. Pick the top one. I only want one. All right. I already moved on to the next slide. There are eight steps in this. We're on step six. I'd like, need the quiet please. Need the quiet please. Quiet. Like really, thank you. All right. Each group, you're going to have one speaker. Probably somebody wrote it down. You're just a caller. Don't worry about it. You're not going to give a speech. And this is where I have to take the mic off my glasses because I need my glasses. So we're going to see what happens here. Maybe it'll dangle. I don't know. Try the dangly mic version thing. All right. I'd like all the speaker from each group to stand up. I'll point to you. You call it out. I'm going to write it down. You sit down. That's how I know what I'm going to be done. I've got this little spreadsheet set up here. Scott. What? Approach. Next. Ethos. Next. Say it again. C-A-S-T. Casting. Next. Mind sprint. Next. Action. Sticky, yes. Action. Environmentality. I'll get there. Allergy. Environmentology. I got it. I don't know if my, we'll see if this thing still fits. Next. Valuology. Valu-g. It's a good thing I can type. Mono. Did you guys like connive on this culturalgy? Yes, please. Generative. I thought the word methodology was bad. Generative constraints. You know, people are supposed to like say this afterwards. Yes, please. Mind set. Mind set. Yes, please. Flowology. Flowology. Mind set. Hype. Hype. Okay, we have got a spelling. Real-time spelling correction doesn't matter about the time going by. Yes, please. I'm sorry, I have trouble hearing. Culture mob. A-L-T-E-R. Culture club. Do you guys, somebody's, one person spell it. Culture mob. Thank you. Social, what's the second word? A social accord. Anybody in the back? Diana? Excellent. I'll leave it. Brownian notion with an N? Notion. I just can't type. Brownian notion. Over here, please. Evolution. I was guessing it'd be 20 groups. We'll see how close I got. Squid. Thank you. Down here. Jabber size, excuse me, squid. Jabber size like that. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Creative, resourceful, agile people. Which, which I'll let you, uh, acronymize. Thank you. Somebody help me value something. Value delivery. Are we all, are we have somebody standing up here please? One more? Framework. Framework. Are we all down here, down here? Is there anybody upstairs, Scott one? You people up there just like, we have one up there? Activity. Pattern. Okay. All right. So that took, so now I'm going to try to get votes on these and now I have to muck with the Zoom stuff. We'll see if we can make this work. It barely fits. All right. So I've got some additive stuff going on there. So let's go see what the next instruction is. The next instruction says each person, no talking, write your favorite name on a card. 30 seconds and what I'll do is alphabetize those suckers. Oh, what we're going to do out of this? What are we naming? So basically it's going to be a replacement word for methodology. For the methodologies that aren't methodologies, this is a bigger thing that's just whenever we just went through in our little sample exercise. Wow, okay. Names. Something will happen out of this. Like I will run out of time, which is really cool. So let's see how I'm running out of time. I'll get to give the Ted three minute talk at the end of this. Okay. So you all have your names on a card. In your 12 person group, I'm only going to give you 60 seconds, we're going to collect the cards with the three most popular in each 12 person group. That's about how much time I can mess with. And you might, for instance, just collect the cards. All I care is the speaker's going to have three words like that and the numbers next to them. Okay. In your 60 seconds, in your 12 person group. See if you can collect those. All right. This is where we're going with that. I hope you're there. Since you guys have done all this work, I want to see if we can get some closure out of this, whatever comes. So again, we're going to do have everybody stand up. And I've got this alphabetized. The only way I can think to get through this in like this ridiculously short amount of time is I will say action environment telltology. Any speaker, you know, group speaker who's got that word on the card, stand up. And when I point to you, just call out the numbers. I'll put them in here and the spreadsheet will run. Yes, please. I don't care. I'm going to do something. I'm all about self-organization, cheating, you know, so I would like a number at the end of this thing. All right. Action environmentology. Any takers? Any speakers? Just stand up. What's the number? Six. Anybody else? Going, going, gone. Next. Activity pattern. Any speakers? Yes. Two. Anybody else? One. I guess I go there. Anybody else? Going, going, gone. Approach. Speakers. One. Four. Anybody else? Going, going, gone. Brownian notion. How many? One. Anybody else? Going, going, gone. Casting. No takers. Creative resourceful Agile people. Obvious winner. I mean, this is like, so I'd be great. How many? Two. Seven. Two. Is Excel behaving itself? What? Four. Anybody else? Two. A lovely. Another. What did you do? Like buy the people all around you or something? Culture mob. Three. Anybody else? No other speakers? Like we're saving up or something? Cultureology. Three. One. Where are the takers? Ethos. Two. Five. Evolution. Any takers? Two. Thank you. Fluology. Any takers? Three. Thank you. Framework. Two. Three. One. Generative constraints. Three. Going, going, gone. Jabber size. Three. Thank you. Mindset. One. Four. Two. Two. Four. Seven. Two. You had a ten over there? Thank you. Mind sprint. Second floor's got the biggest set. Mind sprint. How many? Two. Takers? Going, going, gone. Two. Thank you. Social Accord. One. Two. Squid. Value delivery. Valueology. Three. Two. Going, going, gone. All right. See the result? Anybody else? Okay. All right. That's what I got. That was the experiment. You see the problem. People like me get up and stand in front of people like you and try to come up with a word for this thing. It ain't got a name with an H. So I'm going to give you now the three minute TED Talk version of where I am on this whole stuff. Methodology, when I went in 1991 to IBM, the representatives of the Big Five consulting companies got together to discuss methodology. One of them gets up there and puts this thing like on the left. This is when I say the word methodology. I mean this, right? Activities, processes, milestones, teams, roles, techniques, products, standards, tools, skills. And I was a newbie, right? So I didn't attend any. And they all go, yeah. So it was clear to me amongst those people that's what they mean with the word methodology. All the roles, all the people, everything. Everything. It's a big. You cannot be small. It's big. Write down XP with all that stuff. It's big. We've gotten away from that these days. And that's the problem is because methodology means that. Now the shift is that about, I don't know, 12 years ago, I started seeing the interplay between the ecosystem, which is the actual people who show up. And the problem is the actual people who show up are stuffed full of personality. And the role definitions presuppose a certain kind of a personality. What kind of a person is a good scrumester? What kind of a person is a good project manager or BA or tester or, right? The people who show up at personalities that don't match the role, the presuppositions of the role descriptions. So they kind of bend each other around. The real people and the methodology kind of bend each other around. So the thing we talked about, we've heard some talk about culture. So methodology is, frankly, culture design. Methodology design is culture design. And you're trying to have to do that alignment like we heard in the lightning talk yesterday. You're doing culture alignment amongst the corporate culture, the group culture, the individual culture, right? So this is all stuff that was 12 years old. Trying to update crystal in the light of these, I've got very little to hang on to because I understand the complete relativity of all the stuff that we talked about. I've got kind of two things that if I were going to create a crystal two point it would look like. The first is something that someone alleged referred to yesterday. It's the oath of non- allegiance. And we're thinking of getting t-shirts made up. The badge is already there. It's not attached to crystal because if anybody comes in with crystal they have to show you the oath of non-allegiance, which means I'll tell you stuff that isn't in crystal. Like I totally don't care if the PM Bach has a good idea, we'll use it. If the CMMI crowd has got a good idea, we'll use it. I don't care. If Carpentry has a good idea, we'll use it. Even if some of these weird wacko agile people ever have a good idea, we could use it, right? Possibly. So that's the first thing is we're getting out of these. There are people who are begging to end the methodology wars, right? Good ideas from anywhere. So you can go get that as the website. The second to try to like frame what I'm talking about, I find that I put things on these three steps. People tend to hire a consultant or hire people or get started with practices and techniques. Teach me how to do that. And that's what the whole Shuhari discussion comes in that we talked about yesterday. Stuff I've been working on for the last 20 years is why does it work? What's the underlying basis for thinking any of this makes any sense? And that's theory. And that's where you get lean processes, cooperative gain, knowledge acquisition, the seven properties of successful projects. All of that fits on the theory step. And none of these steps is the correct step. You have to always move. There is no correct step. All the steps influence the other steps. You have to always keep moving. The third one, you'll hear people talk about and talk about and talk about. I just want to make it explicit. Self awareness. What are your values, your priorities? Who are the, what are the personalities? When do you do reflection? The personalities will affect the techniques you can use. The priorities will affect the techniques you can use. The theory affects the techniques you can use. So these things are all in play. So I just find that in discussions these days after Shuhari, I draw this three step. And I find I point at the different steps. Try this in a discussion you'll find you'll talk about theory. You'll talk about a technique. And you'll talk about yourselves and your values. And you'll keep your finger moving up and down those three steps. So we're looking for words around all of this. The last thing I want to give you is I've given this diagram now for a couple of years, like about five. And it says that the unit of inventory in design is the unvalidated decision. And thanks to Luke Homan and Jeff Patton beating me over the head enough times, I finally put the users on the far right end side. And actually that should be users and buyers, but could be I mean buyers and sponsors. But anyway, so we talk about decisions flowing through the network, but it's missing something crucial, which was revealed to me recently when I was consulting at a company, that actually what we're talking about, we want to pay attention to, are the systems of conversations between people. It's not the decision, but rather when two people get together, two groups, they have a conflict of parameters. It's not a conflict of interest, it's a conflict of parameters about the budget, about the time, about the scope, about the quality, right? They have parameters they're working toward. And they've got particular job assignments and certain, you know, recognition and reward structures they have to live within. And so I've got there pairwise, although sometimes you have more than two specialties in a room. And I'm starting to look at and consult on how do we articulate the sets of discussions that take place and what are the conventions around those discussions. So I call it systems of conversations. There's not methodology, or maybe it's methodology, or maybe it's this new word, right? I don't know, but I'm desperate because this is the space we're moving into when we talk about what used to be called methodology. We need a word, but I just wanted to give you where I am on this whole story. This new X, it's a mindset, it's cultural rules like we did at the beginning. How are you allowed to talk to each other? What's the tone of voice you speak in, the structures of these conversations, and so on. If you ever want to do this brainstorming, naming exercise when you go home, that's awesome. Don't send me a single name. Just get a couple of people to agree on some interesting name. And, you know, I'll post it. I'll start using it whenever a good name shows up that I can get away with. And if it's one of these that we came up with today, I'll give the attribution to the Agile Roots Conference, where it came up. Aside from that creative thingy, right? That was a... Anyway, so when the take home, I hope you get out of this, when you go back to your places of work, don't look at the methodology. Don't look at the artifacts. Don't even look at the decisions. Look at the system of conversations that you have in place. And what are the rules, the implicit or explicit rules around how those conversations are held? That's what I've got for you today. Thank you.