The Emperor Has No Clothes

This is going to be a short and hopefully sweet post. 

First, I need to acknowledge Sandy Mamoli. My goodness, I love her perspective. I think she’s smart, relevant, wise, experienced, pointed, and courageous. She’s one of those honest folks we need around us to tell us when we’re off-track. When we’ve made a huge mistake…that we continue to make. That is…when we have no clothes.

Sandy recently published a blog post entitled—Individual performance is not relevant. 

In it, she makes a really compelling case that we should stop worrying about, considering, measuring, and rewarding individual performance. Instead, we should be solely focused on teams and teaming and team results.

I’ve always felt this way. Always.

But I’ve been encouraged (forced) to measure individuals for years. Sure, I can say…

• My boss made me do it

• HR made me do it

• The company culture made me do it

• My peers made me do it

• Etc….

I wasn’t a victim either. I opted into assessing individuals. But years ago, I decided to opt-out of that…forever!

To entice you to read the entire article, here’s a snippet—

Stop “managing” individual performance. I recently spoke in Hamburg at an Agile People HR meetup and someone asked “How do you manage performance?” To that person I want to say, it’s a moot point, really. Individual performance is irrelevant. You can’t win (or lose) as an individual. So, let’s please stop wasting everyone’s time trying to measure and manage individual performance.

Wrapping Up

So… 

What are you going to do with this new information? Are you going to pivot from individual to team considerations as a leader? In the end, you know in your heart what Sandy is saying is true. It just is. 

So, the real question is—Leaders, are you going to change?

Thank you, Sandy! 

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Thoughtful

Tobias Mayer is one of the voices in the agile community that often makes me feel uncomfortable.  

Rarely does he mince words. Or, as I’m inclined to do, use too many words. He’s mastered the art of short, thoughtful, and thought-provoking prose.

And you can tell he’s not being controversial for its own sake. A strong sense of genuineness comes out in his writing. It’s simply him…sharing…his personal discovery and thoughts.

He recently (May 2019) published an article on LinkedIn entitled Small Things. In it, he spoke about getting back to a place where learning, in this case in the agile space, as being a small, person-to-person experience.

It made me reconsider how I engage in “teaching & sharing” my agile experience in the world. Yes, I’ll still do workshops. But I might try to make them smaller, more intimate experiences. Not focusing so much (gulp) on registration numbers.

And instead of my talking so much, I’ll try to create more space for conversations and for story-telling. And this leads into considering the space itself. Space matters. Do I schedule a class in a sterile hotel OR do I look for a much more interesting space where we’re close to nature and have room to lounge, spread out, or even be alone for reflection?

And instead of forcing things like TFTBOTR, Lego games, Liberating Structures, Speed Boat, and a myriad of other facilitative techniques on my attendees, I might just try to create a space for dialogue. Where each person can find their voice, share their stories, and we can all grow and learn.

Wrapping Up

As I thought about Tobias’ article, it came to me that we both might have the same intent in our writing. Or at least I do.

I want folks not to read my words as fixed or prescriptive or declarative or judgmental.

Instead, all I ever try to do is create a space of thoughtfulness.

I’m hoping that I inspire each and every reader to simply consider my stories and my words. Looking for any helpful truth in them. And then decide, for themselves, if there is anything worth acting on? Is there anything useful?

That’s it. I’m not trying to make a global point or posture as some agile expert. I’m simply trying to touch one person at a time.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Does anybody remember laughter?

I’m wondering if the #1 metric for agile teams (individuals, groups, organizations) is joy? Or to quote Robert Plant – Does anybody remember laughter? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZB4hPyPR2M

I’ve often reminisced in my classes that I started developing software for the sheer joy of it. I had fun doing it. It was creative. It was something I could do alone and within teams. It was something that created something useful for a customer/requester and I could deliver it to them and see how it delivered value. It brought me joy.

Then somewhere along my journey, the bean counters took over. As did the project managers. The folks who micromanaged me, putting more stock in estimates than the work itself. Folks who, in many cases, didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. They started pushing me for artificial dates and telling me the wrong thing to build. They didn’t listen to me or treat me like I was a partner. I became a software developing cog in their machine.

Then, I lost my joy.

Developing software became a job, a chore, and joyless. I lost the excitement and fun.

Then in the mid-1990’s, I discovered agile. The manifesto, Extreme Programming, the agile mindset, and a new, more inclusive way to create teams that delivered valuable software. And something magical happened.

I got my joy back. Building software became fun again. Was it challenging, and hard, and sometimes aggravating? Yes. But my overall feeling was again one of joy.

That agile was the best way to build software. And, just as I was feeling good again, then it happened…

Again, I lost my joy.

Enter…The Agile Industrial Complex

Lately agile isn’t fun anymore! It’s lost its joy.

One reason for that is the Agile Industrial Complex that is selling:

• Certifications,

• Training,

• Coaching,

• Frameworks,

• And Bears…Oh My!

For huge sums of money. It appears that they’ve lost their way and that the dollars are driving much of what they do. Instead of leading with agile basics and principles – both personal and agile. 

There is so much failure in the world around agility. Given the money to be made, charlatans are popping up everywhere. They claim to be experienced, but they’re not. They claim to deliver a magical performance result. They can’t. And client success suffers as a result.

In particular, the scaling frameworks drive me crazy. Everyone seems to want a Silver Bullet solution for scaling with SAFe leading the way. Here are my final thoughts on that.

And the bean counters seem to be taking over agile. Along with managers, the Agile PMO, project managers, and everyone else who is trying to take away the spirit of the agile team.

Several others have written about the Agile Industrial Complex and warned against its joylessness -

• Starting with Martin Fower - https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html

• Dan Mizick here - https://newtechusa.net/aic/ and here - https://newtechusa.net/aic2/

• Peter Merel - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/disrupting-agile-industrial-complex-part-one-peter-merel/

• Mo Hagar here - https://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-agile-blah-blah/

• And Jan Wischweh here - https://blog.usejournal.com/the-agile-crisis-2016-9fb1c2f52af5

Wrapping Up

But I’m hopeful.

I’m hopeful that there are initiatives afoot that will bring about another era of agile in practice. One that gets back to the roots of the thing. A back to basics if you will. And, one that reemerges the joyfulness.

I’m looking for my joy and I’m hopeful that I will find it again. And does anyone remember laughter?

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

Oxymoron?

Am I the only one who really struggles with the terms:

• Agile Project Manager?

• Agile PMO (Project Management Office)?

I see them being used all of the time. I encounter them in adds for open positions and in organizations who are striving to introduce agility. The terminology seems to be pervasive.

But at the same time, if you put on an agile mindset, they seem to be oxymorons.

It’s not the People

And my beef isn’t with the people filling those roles. It’s with the role and responsibilities associated with them.

Here’s another “Test”

One side-effect of using these terms, and I hear it all the time, is the organizations also use the term resources to refer to their people.

Again, this terminology doesn’t align with an agile mindset.

Wrapping Up

It’s simple. Really it is.

If your organizations is moving down the road to aligning with agile principles and the mindset. Then you really don’t need project managers and a PMO.

Instead you need accountable, self-directed, and trusted teams who have a goal and understand the importance of transparency.

And you need leaders who support them, get out of the way, and expect great things. With no real need for “projects and project management”.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

BTW: Here’s an article by Anthony Mersino that not only supports my point, but does a MUCH better job of communicating it. Please take the time to read it - https://vitalitychicago.com/blog/myth-agile-project-manager/