From Agile to Scrum Aligning Principles to Practices

Organizations implement agile (principles),

while teams implement frameworks (practices).

By Robert Weidner

Why Focus on Principles?

´  Agile frameworks all subscribe to the same set of core principles.

´  The various frameworks will enact those principles into practice.

´  Teams implement practices that are ideal to their unique circumstances, while organizations should implement principles, which unify all practices.

´  Consequently, the change effort should target principles, not practices, which will then evolve accordingly, and in alignment, with the organization’s strategic vision.

´  The leading agile frameworks, based on market share, include the following:

´  Scrum

´  Hybrid / Kanban

´  Lean Software Development

´  XP

The Change Process

´  The steps in the change process are as follows (Hayes, 2010):

1.  Recognize need and start change process

2.  Diagnosis

a.  Review the present state

b.  Identify the future state

c.  Quality of the vision

3.  Plan and prepare to change

4.  Implement the change

5.  Sustain the change

Ongoing Activities

´  Review progress and feedback

´  Manage the people issues

´  Power, politics, and stakeholder management

´  Leadership

´  Communication

´  Motivating others to change

´  Support for others to help them manage their personal transitions

´  The change manager’s mode of intervening and the effect this has on the change relationship

Identify a Change Agent

´  An internal change agent is a good fit when (Huffington et al, 1997):

´  There is a need to work longer term with the outcomes of the change.

´  There is an internal driver to use or rely upon internal capacity or capability.

´  Internal knowledge of the system now and into the future is required.

´  Engagement with the wider groupings will be improved.

´  There is a belief that ownership should be internal.

´  Meanwhile, an external change agent can bring a fresh perspective, and ensure an objective point of view.

´  The change agent has the prerequisite knowledge necessary to implement the change, and is usually different from the change catalyst, who was the person responsible for initializing the change.

Role of Agile Coach

´  Often, an Agile Coach will serve in the role of change agent. Their activities balance client-directed and coach-directed goals:

´  Coaching

´  Developing awareness, skills and competencies by applying knowledge and understanding in a work context with a team or organization.

´  Facilitating

´  Leadership engagement activity with a team or organization to aid them in achieving a short-term goal collectively.

´  Mentoring

´  Developing awareness, skills and competencies in an individual – usually pre and post-context rather than in context.

´  Teaching

´  Imparting knowledge and understanding, whether in a formal or informal setting.

Agile Implementation

´  The change effort for implementing agile is exceptionally difficult, because it requires a bottom-up and top-down approach, simultaneously.

´  Begin with Incremental Change

´  Start with a Pilot team, establish Scrum practices, and demonstrate success.

´  Expand program, using the gradualist paradigm, resulting in bottom-up change.

´  Then implement Transformational Change

´  A state of disequilibrium will emerge, due to the incremental, bottom-up change effort; as new practices begin to collide with old, and perhaps oppositional, principles.

´  To embed agile principles, top-down change will be necessary, to achieve realignment.

´  Then return to Transactional Change

´  Stabilize the change, adapt to unintended consequences, and optimize performance.

Change Model

´  Use the 3-Step Change Model (Lewin, 1956), to implement agile:

1.  Unfreezing

´  Driving forces should be emphasized, and restraining forces should be weakened. This will destabilize the current environment, and ready the change. It should prompt people and teams throughout the organization to begin letting go of old behaviors, and seek out new and more effective alternatives.

2.  Moving

´  Driving and restraining forces are adjusted to the point that the organization shifts to a new level. This can be accomplished by modifying attitudes, beliefs, processes, systems and structures.

3.  Refreezing

´  Allows the change to be reviewed, progress measured, and the ongoing effort fine-tuned. In addition, the change is reinforced, and regression can be avoided.

Realignment

´  There are five facets that will likely need altered when transforming to agile, and the subset of frameworks contained therein (Schlitz, 2013):

1.  Execution (skills, practices for individuals and teams)

2.  Delivery (product development and delivery)

3.  Product and Business Model (product management and strategy)

4.  Leadership (management styles, orienting vision and environmental design)

5.  Organization (structures, processes and systems, collective beliefs)

´  Use a “build-measure-learn” feedback loop to transfer the implications of becoming agile into other parts of the organization.

´  Avoid organizational gravity, which occurs in the absence of realignment, thereby reverting the change effort back to the previous state of existence (Cohn, 2010).

´  Use the “underscore and explore” communication channel to gain buy-in.

Execution

´  Skills

´  Feature-based (vertical-slice) development

´  Test-driven development (TDD)

´  Just-in-time (JIT) analysis

´  Practices for Individuals and Teams

´  Cross-functional

´  Collaboration and colocation

´  Self-organizing and self-regulating behavior

´  Collective ownership

´  Continual process improvement

Delivery

´  Product Development

´  Emergent design

´  Dedicated resources

´  Empowered and static teams

´  Customer collaboration

´  Work items completed in prioritized order

´  Defer commitment and make decisions at the last responsible moment

´  Focus on adding direct, rather than indirect, value back into the stream

´  Delivery

´  Frequent releases, with a preference towards shorter timescales (kaizen)

Product and Business Model

´  Product Management

´  Product

´  Anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a want or a need.

´  Service

´  The four characteristics of a service are: intangibility, inseparability, variability, and perishability.

´  Product Line

´  A group of products that are closely related because they function in a similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same types of outlets, or fall within given price ranges.

´  Product Mix

´  An organization with several product lines has a product mix.

Product and Business Model

´  Strategy

´  Create product lines with defined, static teams.

´  Assign new project requests, enhancements, and support to the team for that defined line of business (i.e., product/product line).

´  Avoid treating projects, enhancements, and support as separate entities… the work should be product, not project, focused.

´  Keep development team sizes small (< 9).

´  Avoid large team sizes, which become the antithesis to a flexible, lean approach.

´  Change the structure of vendor contracts to variable scope delivery, using:

´  Time and Materials

´  Capped T & M

´  Incremental Delivery

Leadership

´  Style

´  Servant-leadership Model of Behavior (Greenleaf, 1970):

´  Hire Theory Y types who assume employees are self-motivated, and believe their talents are underused in most organizations (McGregor, 1960).

´  Avoid Theory X types who believe subordinates are inherently opposed to work and require micro-management to complete their tasks.

´  Hire paternalistic, participatory, and democratic decision-makers.

´  Avoid autocratic ones.

´  Hire leaders who believe they serve the team, and will manage up.

´  Avoid managers who believe the team serves them, and will only manage down.

´  Manage by wandering around (MBWA), to stay in tune with efforts, and people.

´  Avoid using status reports as your only window into the work.

Leadership

´  Orienting Vision

´  Establish a Product Vision, roadmap, and lifecycle plan.

´  Manage the program for that product line, and prioritize efforts across the entire portfolio.

´  Establish capacity based on number of product teams, and commit to active work that meets, but does not exceed, that capacity.

´  Avoid fractionalizing team members across multiple efforts.

´  Imbue team members with a sense of purpose.

Leadership

´  Environmental Design

´  Organizational Citizenship (Organ, 1988):

´  Participants should feel as though they are a valued member of the organization, whose concerns and opinions will be taken into consideration.

´  Personal Safety:

´  Participants must feel “safe” to express their opinions, and know that their involvement with the group will not be jeopardized by doing so.

´  Allow people to challenge preconceived notions and thereby elevate the level of discussion through crucial conversations.

´  Organic, versus Mechanistic (Burns, 1959):

´  Use distributed processing to make decisions at the lowest level possible, where they are the most cost effective, and accurate.

Organization

´  Structures

´  Create a space design that is modular, flexible, enables high-bandwidth and osmotic communications, and collapses the feedback loop.

´  Consider embedding teams with their respective business lines.

´  Create an Organizational Structure based on Product Lines, with static teams, and a predominantly flat hierarchy.

´  Avoid technical lead positions, and other roles that remove accountability from the entire team.

´  Redefine roles, taking a cross-functional/generalist approach.

´  Consider creating communities of practice for areas of specialization (such as Business or Quality Analysis).

Organization

´  Processes and Systems

´  People respond to incentives (Levitt, Dubner, 2005):

´  Create an evaluation process that emphasizes team-oriented behaviors, along with individual performance (Katzenbach, Smith, 1993).

´  Consider implementing a 360 degree review process.

´  Avoid using only an individual accountability model.

´  Ensure systems augment, rather than hinder, team performance.

´  Use value-stream mapping to optimize workflow through the system.

´  Limit work-in-progress (WIP).

´  Use a pull system to bring in new work, based on priority.

´  Avoid waste.

Organization

´  Collective Beliefs

´  The three pillars of empirical process control, which should form the foundation of the organizational structure, are (Schwaber, Sutherland, 2013):

´  Visibility

´  Inspection

´  Adaptation

´  The Agile Manifesto and supporting 12 Principles should be understood and followed by all, regardless of which agile framework is being used.

Agile Manifesto

´  Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools

´  Working Software over comprehensive documentation

´  Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation

´  Responding to Change over following a plan

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others to do it. Through this work we have come to value:

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

(Beck, Beedle, Bennekum, Cockburn, Cunningham, Fowler, Grenning, Highsmith, Hunt, Jeffries, Kern, Marick, Martin, Mellow, Schwaber, Sutherland, Thomas, 2001).

12 Principles

´  Responding to Change over following a plan

´  P02: Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

´  P09: Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

´  P12: At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective and then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

12 Principles

´  Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation

´  P01: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

´  P04: Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

´  P08: Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

12 Principles

´  Working Software over comprehensive documentation

´  P03: Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

´  P07: Working software is the primary measure of progress.

´  P10: Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

12 Principles

´  Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools

´  P05: Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

´  P06: The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

´  P11: The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Space Design

´  Team spaces should be altered, using a “caves and commons” approach (Stenbeck, 2013).

´  This should take into consideration The Six S’s (Brand, 1994):

´  Site (location) - Rate of change: extremely low

´  Structure (the foundation and load-bearing elements) - ROC: 30 to 60 years

´  Skin (exterior surfaces) - ROC: 20 years

´  Services (wiring, plumbing, sprinkler system, HVAC) - ROC: 7 to 15 years

´  Space Plan (interior layout) - ROC: every 3 years or so

´  Stuff (furniture) - ROC: daily to monthly

Workspace Quadrants

´  The space design should meet the following needs (Steelcase, 2012): ´  I/Shared

´  Private temporary personal space

´  Open temporary personal space

´  I/Owned ´  Individual workspace

´  Semi-private permanent space

´  We/Shared

´  Private collaboration

´  Open collaboration

´  We/Owned

´  Team workspace

Space = Culture

External

Internal

Brand

Behavior

Culture

Values

�  Transparency �  Collaboration �  Responsiveness �  Adaptation �  Collective Ownership

How to Create a Culture of Innovation

´  Motivation leads to production (Pink, 2010):

´  Use intrinsic motivation principles, since knowledge workers respond to three components: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

´  Avoid extrinsic carrot-and-stick type motivators, which decreases production, and increases the rate of attrition.

´  Job Characteristics Theory (Hackman, Oldham, 1980):

´  Create skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.

´  Avoid stagnation, especially with knowledge workers.

´  The Equity Theory of Motivation (Adams, 1965):

´  Ensure the implementation of fair practices.

´  Avoid inaccurate perceptions of those practices.

The Case for Perpetual Change

´  Environmental conditions will continue to evolve, and thus the focus should be on continual process improvement, rather than towards achieving a singular, static, and complacent state of existence.

´  The teams, and thereby the organization, should be in a state of perpetual adaptation.

´  In what is equally good advice for both people, and organizations; the following quote from Erich Fromm is an excellent reminder about the need to grow, and adapt, in order to remain viable:

“We must be in order to become, and we must become in order to be.”