Archive for the ‘Sustainable Pace’ Category

Multitasking game from Alan Cyment

no comments | Posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Games, Sustainable Pace, Visual Management'

In the agile world we have a few exercises to show the effects of multi tasking.

Last year I when I did a personal agility workshop with Gerry Kirk, he teached me a new one. He learned it from Alan Cyment

It became my favorite exercise about MT.

We divide the  group in two. The two parts are standing in a row facing each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We do 3 exercises in multiple ways.

 

  1. a complex hand exchange (like in a child song)
  2. Count from 1 till 10 with your partner using your fingers. (Person 1: shows 1 finger, then person : 2 fingers, person 1 shows 3 fingers…)
  3. “sing” a song. Person 1 says one word and then her partner says the second word and then again person 1.

The first round we do the exercise in sequence. First exercise 1, then exercise 2, then exercise 3.  What makes this exercises harder is that for each exercise you have a different partner. So after you have finished exercise 1, one row shifts one position to the left. (and the first person moves to the last position.) And the same again after you have finished exercise 2.

In the second round, people start the first exercise and when the leader says so, the group switches to exercise 2 or 3. Now this is when it becomes interesting as people have to remember where they were and they have to find their new partner and remember at what part of that exercise they where.

This exercise reminds most participants about their worklife. Always changing priorities, finding partners back. Before you can do a small task, the priorities have changed again.

One of the interesting things about this exercise, is that everytime I did this, in the first round all 3 exercises are finished in less time then finishing the first exercise in round 2.

So switching priorities does no help, not even to give the impression that things move faster.

 

Yves

 

 

 

 

Who Is Nicole Belilos

2 comments | Posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011 | Read more articles about 'BookList, Sustainable Pace, Who is ?, WorkLifeBalance, XPDay'

I’m happy to announce todays WhoIs: the Nicole Belilos. Nicole is very active in the Agile Benelux Community. She is one of the people that when she does a session I want to go it. I remember her playing our “Help My Team is at War” session at XpDay Benelux, she was playing a women that had to undergo the meeting.  Her bodylanguage was fantastic, her whole body was shaking, but she did not say anything (relevant) in the meeting. (As she was requested to do.) This year I was happy to see that at XPdays Benelux she did a session that was related to that session 5 years ago.
One of the reasons I like Nicole, is that she is not afraid to push me. When she disagrees with me, she will tell me. And I will listen.

What is something people usually don’t know about you but has influenced you in who you are?

I studied Math at Bryn Mawr College, in the USA. Bryn Mawr was, and still is, an all women’s college. Having spent four years among highly intelligent and motivated young women has influenced me a lot. It gave me the conviction that women can, and should, shape their own lives the way they want to. I also became very interested in cultural and gender differences in different societies and communities. For example, why is it that at Bryn Mawr the percentage of students studying Sciences was a lot higher than at coed schools? And why do so few girls in Holland choose a career in IT, while in other countries this is very common?
In my daily work, I see how we work more and more with international teams, with a varying mix of men and women of different nationalities. All these teams have different dynamics, which is fascinating.

If you would not have been in IT, what would have become of you?

I would probably be a translator or a teacher. I actually did both for a couple of years. I worked as an independent translator and was specialized in translating user manuals from French and English into Dutch. I have also taught French evening classes to adults who wanted to learn some basics to go on vacation in France. My challenge was to make these classes fun and interesting, so that people stayed motivated throughout the evening. Do you know which sentence they always wanted to learn first? “ Je ne parle pas français”.

What is your biggest challenge and why is it a good thing for you?

Playing all the different roles I have in life, and still staying sane. I am passionate about my work, but I also have my family as well as many other hobbies and interests, such as theater, sports and travel!
There simply isn’t enough time to do all the things I want to do. So I have learned that I need to set priorities and make choices. As I am a perfectionist, I still learn every day that things don’t have to be perfect.

What drives you ?
I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing things well. I seem to also have to challenge myself regularly. When things become smooth and easy I get bored and need to find a new challenge.

What is your biggest achievement?
It’s really hard to point out the biggest achievement. Professionally, I think it would be the Agile rollout I did at Ericsson. This was one of the first end-to-end rollouts at the Enterprise level in The Netherlands. At that time, there wasn’t much literature yet about Agile introductions or coaching. Intuitively, we did what we thought was right and learned from our mistakes. It was very challenging and therefore also very rewarding.
But in general, I believe that life is full of challenges and many small achievements lead up to a big one. Every time I challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone and do something I don’t really dare to do, I think that’s a big achievement.

What is the last book you have read?
Professionally, I have read “Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams and Projects”, by Diana Larsen and Ainsly Nies. I was honored to be one of the  storytellers in their book.
I also recently read Kluun’s book ‘Komt een vrouw bij de dokter’ (In English called: Love life). It’s about a young woman’s fight against breast cancer, that she eventually looses. I cried from beginning to end. Currently, one of my best friends is fighting breast cancer. I admire her strength; it’s such a horrible disease and such a tough treatment. I therefore support fund raising initiatives like Alpe d’Huzes and Pink Ribbon.

What question do you think I should also ask and what is the answer?
What’s so special about the XP Days Benelux conference?

It’s the atmosphere! The community feeling, the energy, the fun… It’s so different from any other conference I have been to. Take a look at his video, you will understand what I mean.

For me, as a co-organiser, it is also the opportunity to work on an Agile team of volunteers. We are a truly self-organizing, international, distributed team. For us, XP Days Benelux is a yearlong event, from the first reservation of the premises, through the call for sessions, the reviews, the program selection and finally the 2 days themselves. And the moment the XP Days are over, we start to plan the Mini XP Days!
At times it’s a lot of work and I ask myself why I got involved. But then, when the conference is running successfully, I get so much in return!

Who do you think I should ask next?
There are so many wonderful people who should be part of your Who Is series!

First of all Vera Peeters. I bet that world wide thousands of people have played the XP Game that she has developed together with Pascal van Cauwenberghe. She deserves to get a lot more attention and credit for that achievement!
Then I’d like to mention Portia Tung and Jenni Jepsen, whose workshops at the XP Days are always refreshing, energetic, interesting and… sold out.
And finally Dusan Kocurek, who is a true Agile evangelist in Eastern Europe. I had the chance to work with him last year. He taught me a lot about the cultural differences between Eastern and Western Europe and how it affects the Agile communities.

 

The story of who is: how success can lead to stock and waste….

14 comments | Posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2011 | Read more articles about 'Agile, Estimations, Iterations, mindset, Retrospective, Sustainable Pace, Who is ?'

About 2 months ago I started my “Who Is” serie. The idea was to ask a a bunch of diverse people some questions and publish one set of answer every week.

The first mail I send out, I did not got any answer for a few days. I was not sure if it was a good idea or not, so I send the questions out to a few more people. Then I thought it is almost holiday. I will be gone for a few weeks, and I wants to be sure I can schedule answers while I am gone. (And I don’t want to take the risk that I don’t get any answers for the rest of the holiday period.) So I started to send out my questions to some more people.

When people replied, I started looking at the last answer (who should I ask next) and send out questions to these people. When people told me, I need some time to think about these people I asked hem, could you already give me new name(s).

I published the first set of answers from Lisa Crispin 10 days before my holiday. During my holiday I started to get lots and lots of answers. I needed a tool to keep track of who I invited and who accepted. I created a spreadsheet to write down all the names of people I invited. When I started to record them, I quickly realized I had already invited lots of people.

By the time my holiday was over, I had 76 people invited, 52 people had said yes (2 said no) and + 30 had written an answer. I started to add a publication date to my spreadsheet.

Somewhere along the way I had decided that I would schedule answers “in a first answer, first published” order. I communicated that to the next people I invited. (I did not do that to the first people I invited.)

When I received a new set of answers, I read the answers (I just love what people are doing with the questions.) Then I thank the person for his time (as I know that answering these questions takes a lot of time for most people.) And I tell them when their answers will be scheduled. More and more I started to feel guilty, as I had to tell people in July that they would be published in October, November etc…

Last week I received an answer from a person I admire a lot. I invited her before my holiday. I had told that person it was ok to answer after my holiday as I already had answers for the next weeks. I forgot to tell her about my “first come first serve policy”. By the time she answered, I had people scheduled until February 2012. I told her, the probably publication date. She was mad. Really mad. She had spend part of her holidays writing the answers, rewriting it a few times. The result was one of the most touching answers I received, very personal. She was mad because she found my release schedule ridiculous for an agile coach. She was right.

Lets look at this project:

  • I had a weekly release schedule.
  • A large project backlog of people (76)
  • A velocity of one

I realized I treated my project backlog all the same way: from the moment a name got added to my backlog I started to work on it: that is I send an e-mail asking that person to start working on it. In my defense I had an almost unlimited team for working on the backlog (one person a story feels unlimited for me.)

Start to see some links with agile projects? Wait it get’s better.

Not only did I have an unlimited team, they also started to deliver very fast. (That’s is why I now have 39 answers.)

I said I had a velocity of one, but I have 39 answers in a couple of weeks, shouldn’t my velocity be 39/nr of weeks? Aha great question mr Watson. To answer this question we have to look at my definition of done. When is a story done? It’s done when it is delivered to the customer. When is it delivered to my customer. Well the customers of this blog are my readers, yes I ‘m talking about you. The stories are delivered when they are published on my blog.  Aha that shows a a glitch in my explanation. I don’t have an unlimited team. I actually have a bottleneck. Remember TOC, there always is a bottleneck. Find it. And eliminate… Oh wait I am the bottleneck.

I’m publishing only once a week. That is a choice I made. Publishing more would be lot of work for me. Mmm when I coach teams I tell them, when it’s hard do it more often. Ok maybe I should publish more often. So I asked my agile friends on twitter (and in person)

Turns out that my customers liked my publishing limit and actually asked me to keep it.

Ok. That is a dead end. What else can I do to solve this problem?

Let’s see what is the problem again? The time between the receiving of the answers and the publication is too big.

Let’s have a visual look at the work:

Todo Asked Said yes Answered Published Total
46 24 13 30 9 117

I wrote this table as in Kanban. Every column represents the Work In Progress.

(Except that I added the total at the end)

Aha Visual Management helps again. Clearly the biggest block is in publishing.(Tell me something I did not know.) I already know that publishing faster is not an option.

Ok so now you are doing Kanban, so what would David Anderson do? He would limit the work in progress.

I can’t stop people from saying yes.

I can’t stop people from being added to the TODO list (really I can’t because it is part of how the answer that I expect people to give.)

The only place where I can limit the work in progress is Stop asking people to answer questions. (For clarity I did not write: ask people to stop answering questions.)

As you can see I have already 46 more stories ready on my backlog (they are ready when I have a name and an e-mail adres.)

For all the people that have answered the questions, I’m sorry the time between your answers and my publication is so long. This was in no way my intention to disrespect the work you did to answer the questions.

If I already asked you, and you haven’t answered, what should you do?

Today (2011/08/18) I have a publishing schedule until 2012/04/10. This means I ‘m not urgently waiting on your answers.

You can answer at your own pace, write the answers when you have time.(I do keep my scheduling based on first come first served.)

A big thank you for the person being mad at me at pushing me to blog about it.

(You know who you are)

Y

Ten reasons to take babysteps…

one comment | Posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 | Read more articles about 'Agile, mindset, Refactoring, Sustainable Pace, TTD'

One way to gain trust in people, is to gradually give them more responsibility. By splitting work up in very small steps, that is possible. There are actually lots of reasons to work in babysets.

My friend Pascal says, if its hard to do, do more of it.
My partner says to our kids: chew smaller pieces (of meat).

In babysteps multiple dynamics come together:

  1. When the work is smaller, the problems are smaller.  Joshua Kierevsky launched the limited red society in 201. He wants people to do TTD and refactoring in smaller steps. The idea behind it is to keep the time of a none working project as small as possible.  As part of his e-learning course, they offer a tool that graphically shows when people are in the red.
  2. One interesting observation they saw was that people that are less in the red, usually end up with nicer designs.
  3. People that achieve a series of small steps, gain more confidence then people that do everything in one step. When I try to achieve one big goal I encounter a lot of problems, I only have a feeling of achievement at the end. (While trying I actually am frustrated most of the time)
    When I do something with small steps, I achieve one goal after another. Like with tdd where I implement one test after another.
  4. At the end of the day I actually feel I have done something (implemented x tests).==>  I gain confidence.
  5. Its easier for other people to see what I am doing.
  6. With babystep not only is what I am doing visible. It also shows my real progress.
  7. Because all the sub-steps are visible, they can congratulate me on specific actions. When they are specific in their congratulations, I tend to believe them more thus trust them more.
  8. When the direction I am going is wrong, people have the option to give me feedback (not possible if they only see work when my work is done after a few days)
  9. Depending how the work is splitted, other people might have the options to help me. When I do everything in one large chunk that is never possible. This way people see me less as the hero, but the work gets done.
  10. Not only can they help me, it is also possible for people to take over when my priorities change. (Both  personal or company driven priorities)

Update: Or like Peter Sims from TC says Don’t bet big.

Sustainable pace & failing in public…

11 comments | Posted on Saturday, March 12th, 2011 | Read more articles about 'Games, Reading, Sustainable Pace, WorkLifeBalance'

This year I am focusing on my work life balance. At one moment I was talking to a customer about project portfolio. While I was explaining why they needed it, I realized that I needed that also for my own life.

My creative mind invents new projects to start every free second. For a lot of these, I have find collaborators that help me to do the project. Last year my colleague Deborah told me that she toughed it was a bad idea to start yet another project. I was not ready for that message.

This year some of my the teams I’m working with, have a hard time stopping projects. Then it struck me. Start stopping projects is exactly what I should do.

There are multiple ways to stop a project.

* Finish it, in a way it goes into production, is the best way.

* Not starting (Saying no to) new projects is another way to keep my life into balance.

* On top of that, a project that is not working and dragging my time should be stopped.

A coaching talk with Johanna (from project portfolio fame) made me realize that it is hard for me to stop a project I believe in. Reflecting on the talk, I though of how Jerry Weinberg writes about writers block. If he is blocked on a book, he starts writing on what he has energy for. It felt totally logic for me when I read it. Until I have to tell people I failed at a certain project.

I know failing fast is good. Failing at a first iteration is good for the project. That does not mean it feels good.

My positive brain rephrases the experience as ‘It’s good as a coach to fail from time to time’ and my heart says damn you positive, it hurts and I need time to digest that pain.

I’m mad, sad, afraid that I failed at the first attempt to create an agile games book. Trying to release a version for agile games 2011 was a good learning experience. I learned an awful lot about myself. Learned about book writing, learned about distributed collaborative working and sustainable pace. The agile practice that is hardest for me.

So what is the future of the Agile Games books?

I will let the DropBox folder live. When I have energy I will add stuff to it. I hope other people will do the same. From time to time I will compile what I have in a PDF.

 

y

Ps Michael, Deborah I know you warned me for this. I am glad that I did not listen to you as I learned a lot. ;-)

 

Update: I forgot to thank Jurgen De Smet for the perfect picture match