 Going to just in preparation I'm going to hand out some index cards. Would you mind taking one and pass it along? Just take one and pass it along and if you could all Make yourself acquainted with a pen Be ready to write something down. I have two sharpies So if anyone needs a pen, I need one You can have the other. You're all okay So you guys at the door decide Come in go away. Who's saying hello? Yes. Have you guys had a good day? What's the best thing that you've heard today? programming Sean the speaker that was in here just then told a really really good story about agile coaching or any of you guys agile coaches Did you sit through his talk? Oh my goodness? And I was listening to him and I thought it was a really good Presentation he told the story really well, and it was good information and about halfway through I went oh crap The mob probing programming thing is next door, and I was I was towards the front and I Anyway Thank you very much for coming in today I Did an activity or two last year at Agile India. Did any of you guys come along to that? None of you. Well lucky you did Yeah, so as you know, I don't like to work very hard. I'm management I Work I work at a company called Akin X and we've got a team here in Bangalore And I just happened to be here this week, so it was convenient that the conference was on What I what I was doing on Thursday and Friday as I was running a conference and agile conference in Melbourne in Australia And so I flew from one to the other and that's kind of funny. It's it's like it's even less work than management So I put this together Intending to do this session at the conference in Melbourne and to have practiced it for you guys But I didn't because I was I was running the I was running Well, I was not running the conference, but I was at the conference and have you guys heard of Alastair Coburn? Right agile manifesto guy one of the good dozen men that started the agile manifesto So he came to the conference as a keynote and on Friday afternoon I was running a workshop activity and a little bit beforehand he comes up to me is Craig Craig I've got this great idea for a game Be my guest and so he took over the the session that we ran so I haven't actually rehearsed this What could possibly go wrong? Yeah, exactly exactly Anyway, here we are. We're ready to start. I think we're settled down. So The theme is improved together and the reason it's improved together is two or three years ago Coburn as One of the grandfathers of agile and I were having a conversation in Melbourne and he was talking to me about It's so complicated these days. There's all these methods. There's all these frameworks There's all these elaborations and it's getting harder and harder to buy into it at the end of the day He came up with this meme called the heart of agile Some of you might have come across it on the internet and if you haven't it's worth having a look at the heart of agile and it what he's what he's saying in that is like, let's let's put some Principles back into the conversation and get away from frameworks and methods because frameworks and methods can sometimes be a red herring What we really need to do is have guiding principles when we're applying the frameworks and methods We can check them against the principles and see if we're heading in the right direction right, so Hello, so So So the heart of agile idea comes up with these kind of four Four principles and it's almost like a plan to check axe cycle and and the heart of agile is Starting anywhere you like in the cycle deliver reflect improve and collaborate Alternatively, it could be Improve collaborate deliver and reflect you start anywhere And you just cycle through that and you keep on going where are we at right now and you can ask yourself questions Do we need to collaborate more? You know what collaboration feels like and looks like and maybe you could do it better Do we need to deliver better? Maybe we do right do we need to improve better? Do it anyway all of that the topic that I chose to anchor my talk on is this idea of improving and so and so This is what I'm talking about with you guys. It's linked to that heart of our journey and then I thought About where I work and what we do we build software for the construction industry, okay? Fair enough. Most of us are involved in building software What we do is we build a collaboration platform That's what we call it and so this this notion of collaborating together is in the DNA of our company and I look around and I go You know the industry's got its ways of working and then a connects is a kind of a peculiar beast It's got a very weird personality when you work inside it And it purposefully doesn't follow industry patterns and standards and it purposefully tries to do things different Sometimes in a good way often in a really frustrating and stupid way but that's okay because in general the company gets a little bit better year after year and everything's kind of heading in the right direction, but it's interesting because There's there's a map of our teams and and the reason I'm in Bangalore like I come from Melbourne That's our head office and that's where it started and then six or seven years ago we opened our second development center here in in Bangalore and It's grown slowly and now it's kind of big enough that we've had to change offices a couple of times but but we're in the we're in the business of Collaborating and we're in the business of helping customers Work together just like you guys are in the agile community, right? It's like what do you see you see if we put people together and get them on the same page and unify their goals and get Them to talk to each other and get them to get the power relationships out of the way and all that sort of stuff things just Work better and so we kind of put that into software and other people do the same sort of thing and you know And as a result our company does things like you know, we've got these nice little Statements about you know, we make the world a better place and everyone wants to have that as a part of their part of their story, right? But but linking that back to improving together, that's the little preamble right linking Why would I come along and want to talk about this? That's I guess I'm just trying to explain myself well What does improving together? You might have read the introduction that I had right so it was it was full of assertions Right, and I'm gonna leave it to you to research those assertions and find out how true they are but it's the the question is how does your team improve and What are the limits to what you can do? So I've got this notion that best practices, right a dead end a red herring and When we look at things like scrum or XP or Kanban, and we think that's a pattern. We should follow it We're making a terrible mistake It's not that scrum XP and Kanban in themselves are bad It's just if we lift it up and we drop it on our teams We've done something wrong, and I guess this links up to what Shane Sean was saying in the talk before There's an annoyance to this like looking at the work and figuring out how to improve things Which is about the context and the situation and the people and we need to attend to those people so Don't seek a standard But do seek to do better and continue to do better like a connects as a company started around 2010 Sorry around 2000 or so and it kind of drank the agile Kool-Aid in about 2007 and so We've been doing this agile stuff for 10 years and it came from when the company was small So it wasn't like an enterprise you're trying to disrupt it and break it It's just like at a certain point we needed to put some practices and disciplines to kind of pull the team together and get them Oriented the right way, but then the team kind of grew through that and matured through that and they left Scrum and you know there are aspects of XP and there are aspects of scrum all over the place But but no one's got a scrum master We don't have any standard processes and practices around software development We do around some things you got to kind of coordinate communication and taking things to market and all that sort of stuff But at the end of the day what we're doing is we're kind of stumbling into the problem and then going What are we going to do about this and one of the problems we have at the moment is linking up all the teams Right, we got at the moment 20 something teams 28 teams or so and they're all pumping stuff out every couple of weeks maybe every month and What does that do the sales force? Yeah, the customer service people how do they absorb all that information? It's really hard We don't know the answer yet, but it's a new problem So we're going to go figure it out and we'll look around and we'll look for patterns But then what we'll do is we'll we'll go what do we need to do for our circumstance? Yeah, so So that's the thinking that's behind this thing this workshop that we're going to do together Workshop I hear you say well That's because I'm almost finished talking very soon. You're going to do all the work So the theme improve together. Why did I put those two words together? The first part is improve and the second part is together So I've got this kind of three-step activity that I want to go through with you and It involves believing this right it involves that better The assertion that better is better than best right so continually involving to improve is better than attacking your best practice And I kind of get this my connection to the agile manifesto is this bit right the rest of it You know, we've all looked at that thing over and over again I'm sick of looking at it, but I'm never sick of looking at this bit like figuring out new stuff with each other and sharing Air information, that's the cool bit the rest of it. It's just stuff continually learning and continually improving is the best bit so Improving so here we are in the activity bit. You've got your cards. Does anyone not got an index card? Excellent. Here you go. Could you just pass that that way? Where's it hands up? Yep. Come and get them. There's a collection You go just pass him back that way so It's good practice when doing these sort of things too. I've got more up here if anyone needs them It's good practice when doing these things to explain the learning outcome You seek explain all the steps then go back to the step in front of us and explain that If I were to do that, I would be a good facilitator instead of a manager Instead, I'm going to give half ass explanations and hope you do your best Well, I'll do a little bit. I'll do it. I'll try to explain it a little bit. So So so so what's the activity right? So what I want you to do on the card right now is with your pen to kind of big but just pick a thing Right one thing right on the card just watching the room people thinking scratching their heads wondering When you've done that what I'd like you to do, I've already bored somebody What I'd like you to do now is write why that is a useful practice Right? What problem does it solve for you? Okay, so you've written an agile best practice on the card now underneath that I want you to write why it is good for you. What problem does it solve for you? sorry one Well, you can have two or three reasons, but only one practice But when you're when you're done, just give me some sort of wave of the card or something So I can get a vibe of how much of the room is completed. Just give it a second longer While we're waiting for the other guys to finish writing their notes You can sit there and be very mindful think deeply about why that's such a good practice Okay now What was that word that we were looking at a minute ago? improve better that was it flip the card over and thinking about The or one of the problems that you are addressing with that best practice think of something better think of something better than that best practice and Actually, it's going to be difficult. So what I'd like you to do is pair up with someone near you if you're sitting by yourself Maybe you just get up and move around So take a minute take two minutes hell take three but better Right, so if you went let's think of something you got retrospectives. Did anyone say retrospectives? Right, so I'm not going to use that did anyone go daily stand-ups Right, that's if you did anyone do test-driven development. You're a software developer Sorry coding sorry Just coding right well pick something obscure right like I'll say Domain-driven design right no one's used that have they right so we go well Why do we use domain-driven design and the reason we use that approach is so that we can navigate through the app later Right right now for the next few weeks or even months. We all know what we're working on and we get it Right, but in four years time when someone comes to work on this again, they're gonna have no clue So let's label things properly when we're writing up our solution. Yeah That's the problem. So what's better than domain-driven design? Is there a better thing that you could do right? I don't have an answer right now in my head But is there a better thing so that's what I'd like you to do now flip the card over write something that's better than retrospectives Right that solves the problem. You're trying to solve Yes, can't hear me Is alright did you get the instruction? I will repeat it. I'll come and stand here So the idea is you've written a good practice How are we going and when you're done just give me one of those little waves it's not that easy is it? Yeah But talk to the people around you if you need help brainstorm together When I was in that conference on Friday Thursday Sorry, when I was at that conference on Thursday, what was I gonna say? On Friday it was actually on Thursday. It was a two-day conference when I was on on the conference on Thursday If you'd like to pair up to solve this activity I'm not now. I was just giving that as a technique to work through this activity. Have you got your answer? What have you got? I'll use you as an example. How are we going done? Give me a little wave Okay, it's harder than it looks right keep going keep going. Yes Can be but you want to look for better. So take take a good example is take scrums Let's deliver Quarterly or monthly or every two weeks, right an improvement on that was Kanban. They just said continuous flow, right? So and it kind of solves the problem of like reducing the big batch problem, right? So there's an example what other examples do you have a lot of you guys said retrospectives and stand-ups or problem You're trying to solve could you do something better? So, you know, there's the 15-minute stand-up. Why do we do 15-minute stand-ups? What about 10 minutes does that solve the problem? What about no stand-ups? Does that solve the problem, right? So what could you do that's going to get you to better? Now the trick is you have to do this bit because I need the answer to this for the next activity Doing stuff like this certainly does Give you an appreciation for those people that come up with frameworks or any of you guys agile trainers that like any trainers that do scrum training or anything like that one of the activities in the training milieu is To get people to design their own frameworks, right? So you teach them a whole bunch of stuff and then you go right now a class design your own framework and then people Do their stuff and more or less it looks like scrum So, yeah, that's a thing. We're good. How are we going? Anyone need more time? Because we're not in a rush at the end of the day. I'm just chatting away with you all right So click click click, right, so you've got your thing now what I want you to do is Just take a moment to share that with the person next to you what was your better, right? Now it's the conversation time. So turn to your partner and say and I'm going to use you as an example. Sorry, Tarek Tarek here wait wait wait wait wait follow the instructions. Don't start yet Hold it on your lip So Tarek came up with retrospectives and the problem that they address is Um Can you what is it? It's addressing. Yeah, the prob the good thing about retrospective is addressing the performance proactively and Visiting the doctor before being dead So there you go. So retrospectives Proactively getting in front of problems visit the doctor before you're dead All right, can I have a look and his version of better is rather than do say fortnightly retrospectives Is to do a daily retrospective so you could at the end of each day do a health check How are we going as a team is there anything we need to do better right lovely idea? Yeah, and maybe that's going to take five minutes instead of an hour and a half right great improvement So you're all talking to each other now because they are Don't be left out get into the conversation has everyone had their turn now you warmed up Now you're warmed up. I can't shut you up Okie-dokie in 30 seconds. I want you to stop Okay. Thank you everyone Wrap it up Wrap it up. I got this microphone going on. Hello Is this better guys? You really do have to have it sitting on your lip if I do this look at That's a finger with the way and you can't hear me anyway, so can I just have some of our esteemed audience members share an improvement Yes, my friend hang on. Don't forget put this on your lip Initially I wrote a retrospection, but then when it is better I wrote it as daily retrospection else to improve on daily basis Could I have an yes you look ready? So so I wrote sprint planning as the best practice the reason people come together in a meeting They estimated together commit for it and it's more likely to succeed sprint planning was the best practice the improvement So I mean in real world normally there is a sprint plan set out there There there are the plan changes over the course because there's some other urgent tasks or Which which normally hamper the plan so the improvement is to discuss it on a daily basis Are we there are we following it and is there a need to recalibrate and ensure that? Yeah, we are all interested That is an outstanding activity to do isn't it like let's replay and every single day make sure we're on track for doing the right thing Yeah, the thing that I have mentioned is Thing that I have mentioned is more or less related to continuous delivery although we have not been able to achieve all of it, but Up to some extent we have achieved it the improvement which is there is that even if the things are available Associated stakeholders are not probably spending enough time or at right moment to give those valuable feedback So improvement would be to increase the frequency or increase the efforts by stakeholders to use things which are available and give their inputs Cool, so pull the stakeholders into the project more intimately great improvement one more. Does anyone What about the back row? No, sorry. I'm gonna go to the very back row Did you guys you guys got one? Yeah, the very back corner of the back row. I talked about the retrospective, but I didn't share anybody because it's like I was in the middle and They do shared so so I couldn't get a better practice. I was just wondering what to write and whatnot. So Well, at least he's brave enough to stand it up and say I didn't do my homework Okay, cool, so Did you see that did you see that there's great ideas or you got to do a stop and think about them? And they're not necessarily in a manual, right? So great potential in all of you to find better ways of working So that's the improved bit. That's just a great example. Well, that's a simple example I should say you're gonna say something to me. I'm gonna bring it over That's a simple example of just a technique to keep pushing the boundaries What are you gonna be doing in 10 years time after all this basic agile stuff is way behind you? Yes, I was just going to ask you that, you know, why we do did the exercise we said that these are better ways of doing stuff and You know, there has been Foundation laid and people practicing it for so many years and then they've come to this conclusion. These are the best practices now Not knowing how this will turn out. So maybe daily this retrospectives Might not turn out the way we are expecting it to be So, you know, in our minds, it is a better way to doing it, but it may not be the better way Right. So the question The bottom line in that question is like, how do I know to trust the patterns and practices in front in front of me, right? And the answer is trust but check, right? Maybe it's a good idea, but look at your circumstances Try everything as a hypothesis as an experiment, right? Let's try this fortnightly retrospective thing and see what happens, right? It doesn't work. Don't necessarily throw it out straight away. Maybe look at the way you run it and improve it, right? So when Retrospectives are widely adopted across the industry and people are talking about how good they are. Maybe there's something to master But maybe not. I don't think all our teams run retrospectives. I think the majority of them do not Right. And actually out of the ones that do back in Melbourne, most of the retrospectives involve whiskey and beer And it's more like the end of the week. They get together and say, did any of you guys ever see a show? It had, I can't remember both of the actors. One of them was William Shatner and It was called Boston Legal Did any of you see that TV show? Some of you did. At the end of each episode, there were these two lawyers And the other one was, what was the other actor? James Spader, James Spader and William Shatner and there's a big fancy law firm in Boston And at the end of each episode, they'd be standing on the balcony with big fat cigars and whiskies And they'd go, well, wasn't that an exciting adventure, right? So that's the vibe that some of these retrospectives are like It's like, how about that week? Let's not do that again Or, well, that was good, wasn't it? Aren't we proud of the things that we did? But they're quite casual So that's the first part, right? Don't think that these best practices are an end state. They're just a stepping stone They're taking you somewhere else, right? But the somewhere else is something that you're going to design with the people you work with The next part of this activity, how are we going so far? Right, you okay? Happy so far? Cool I'm really tired I flew over from Australia on Sunday into the evening, and then I got to the hotel at 4am And then I slept for two hours, then I went to work And then last night, I went to sleep at 10.30 And when you're in the wrongs of time zone, never go to sleep at 10.30 Stay up as late as you can because I woke up at 12.30 and didn't go back to sleep I tell you that because it builds some amicability and some rapport Which points us at this next activity When we bring change to the teams and the organizations that we work with What vector do we approach the change from? Are any of you guys agile coaches, scrum masters, managers? Just give me a little one of them So, change managers? No change managers willing to admit that Oh, you too, brave Just joking So the idea is, do we assert change on people or do we change things together? And so, you don't improve people and teams People and teams improve themselves And I suppose that's a theme that you've heard throughout the day Yes? No I'm the first person that's hinted at this Everyone's been saying it all day long, right? And so, Thucydides I was just looking for an interesting picture at this point I went, hmm, my slides are pretty shit so far So I thought I'd get a good picture and I got this one But, you know, this idea of the strong will be strong and the weak will be weak And there's a power imbalance there and it's going to play itself out So we as mindful practitioners of this agile stuff or this management stuff Or this software development stuff, whatever it is we do We should be aware of the power dynamics And especially if you're in a role of authority And you should try to not assert your authority on to other people But partner with people So when Sean, the guy that was talking in this room before me He was talking, as an agile coach, when I was successful What I would do is I would walk around and I would share knowledge And then the teams that were keen on that would pick it up and use it And then they would be effective and successful But when I tried to tell people how to do their job Oh my goodness, right? Have you ever been in that circumstance? Yeah, right, so you know, let's partner together So to demonstrate that, I'm going to do an activity with you Once again I need you to partner up with someone And my friend in the back corner, you're a good man Yes, no, no, you can stay there Actually, let's all give him a round of applause for being a good man What I want you to do is pair up, it's got to be pairs And if there's odd numbers, there can be one odd number Everyone should be in pairs, there can be one group of three Can you all just organize yourselves really quickly into that? Okay, so with these index cards What I would like you to do, the tallest of the two of you You might have to stand up, come on, on your feet On your feet, stand up Right, look at your partner, which is the taller Right, you've recognized who the tallest of the pair is Great, you can now sit down again Okay, so I'm all about collaboration And I'm all about doing it with you, not to you So just shut up for a minute What I would like you to do, tall people Is tell your shorter companion how good your idea is Explain to them how to execute on it And convince them that it's something that they should take to work next week Right, you've got good ideas, right? Did anyone come up with a rubbish idea? Right, so there's lots of good ideas in the room So now you're going to pitch your good idea at the other person And convince them that it's a really good thing to do Can you please take three minutes to do that? At the end of three minutes I'm going to call time No, the idea that you wrote on the card Yeah, anyone need any help? Okie dokie, time, time Have you managed to tell your story yet? Have you explained it? Yeah, you got the basic ideas across Some people still going I'll stop them in a minute Okay, can you please stop talking? Hello microphone, oh The Wi-Fi's got a rate, hello Hello, is this working? You can hear it, I can't hear it Okay, so short people Stand up No, no, no, if Stand up if you're convinced Compellingly that you need to take this good idea back to work next week Okay, so Okay, so what I want you to do now is Once again Once again I want the tall people to start the conversation You got people? It's not that you don't count You're going to do most of the talking But this time I want the tall people in the pair To ask the other person about their good idea To explore it, to have a conversation about how it could be used And how it could be useful, alright? Just go through that conversation Same sort of thing, we'll call it three minutes And it'll turn into five So, go, you got it? Okay, so I'll say it again What I want you to do is this time The tall person is going to turn to the short person with them And say, hey, about the thing you wrote on the card Can you tell me what it was? And can you tell me how it's useful? And can you tell me how it's better than a standard agile practice? And I want you to inquire, to discover What that good idea is And to discover how it might be useful for you So go ahead, do the interview, do the asking Okie dokie, last 30 seconds Yeah, I'm just going to start shutting you down It's time, you ready? Hello, hello Thank you very much Hello, thank you, hello So, the first time somebody pitched their idea The second time somebody inquired How did it feel? What was the difference? So, not the idea, but the experience Let's just take a moment and think about The experience you went through Thinking and listening And asking questions versus telling, telling And can I have a couple of people Just, yes, I'm going to ask For some people to reflect out loud for the room So, basically I was asking him So, basically I was asking for There are problems in the design And there are some leakages that are happening And people are finding it later in the QA And development time So what is the way we can handle these things And by himself, he identified as to What are the possible solutions And ways to capture, catch hold of them And they themselves came out with the solution That the design reviews could capture these problems So, with the previous one Where this was imposed And saying that the team should do the design review Or the team should do the code review And the acceptance was not there So, I as a recipient Or the person who was inquiring It was more of that I was not imposing So, I was free I was learning from the ecosystem As to what people will have in their mind And what they will accept So, basically I had this daily stand up And my initial partner Had suggested three ways to improve it And it was one with sending Minutes after the daily stand up Another was daily stand up with optional retro And Thor was doing twice a week If there are longer stories So, when he was trying to explain me Okay, this is the solution Or can be the better way I was not very convinced initially Then I went through all of them And analyzed, okay What if then I liked the second one Daily stand up with optional retro Very nice And when I was pitching to my Second partner I was more confident Like this is something, yes This will help to make it better So, that was more So, in the first scenario Your partner pitched an idea to you In the second one Your new partner asked questions Now, how did it feel Being in that different type of dialogue? Well It feels more confident When I'm telling something to other people And I feel like More empowered Like that I feel that, yes I can explain something To people like that Not based on this particular experience But typically you face this Always in your work life If somebody tells you to do something There is always that initial reluctance Okay, this guy is telling me Does he know better than me, right? Whereas He's teaching me, you know But if you Willingly go out to the other person You ask for a suggestion And that person gives it to you It's your need So I think the receptivity of it At a personal level is so much more Yeah, like I mean This is obviously the point That I'm trying to make Does anyone else want to share one last example? You So one thing I noticed was In the first case I was already thinking in my mind That I have to frame my Statement Like it has to be bulletproof I will say this, this, this And hence that person has to accept Whereas in this I was like just I was speaking like I was thinking And like as I was Thinking it, I was saying it And there was no Cognitive load Like I was comfortable Because there was no judgment Probably Yeah, so I reached a second too long But I love that statement like I felt more free To speak because I wasn't being judged Because we were having a conversation Not because somebody's telling something That what, where And how. So I love that That was essentially the two parts The yin and the yang to improve together Right, so one part is like How can we think about more Better than best What are the pathways to finding a better way to do things And the second way is Not telling people how to improve But finding improvements together And having conversations And doing it in partnership with each other So they're the two things And so I made it an activity I feel like you can sit here and listen to people Talk, talk, talk At the end of the day, you're sick of that, right You want to do something, you want to have a conversation with each other And then you can build some little muscle memory Around this, you can try something And now you've had this type of conversation Maybe you're all used to it, maybe some of you aren't And you can go back to your teams And you can do similar types of conversations So that's what I wanted to get out of it And the last point before I wrap it up Because in 30 seconds I'm going to get thrown out of the room It's It's It's the last Two sentences This happened last This happened last year too That's one sentence Damn it, that's the algebra coming on in I might see you next year Bye bye