Reflecting on Agile - Part 1 of 5

Is it me or has this Agile thing become way too complicated? It seems there's more and more to learn and the learning never stops! Maybe that's the way this is supposed to work? It's kind of like living life itself, just when you think you have the hang of breathing you realize... oh - wait - what?... there's this walking thing... and then talking thing... and before you know it, you are on this never ending journey of uncovering surprises as life throws all it has at you! >.<

So this past year I've been at Northwestern University working diligently on a Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) degree. Why John are you bringing this up? What does it have to do with the picture of someone rock climbing? Don't you worry you, all will be explained in good time... maybe...

This week I have a homework assignment for my Agile IT Leadership class. Options were to do this as "written essay/blog post, sketch note, narrative audio, slide deck, or some other expressive medium." So here I am, gonna reflect on agile and tell ya what I think through LinkedIn. There are I think 5 of these assignments, and if there isn't I'm going to have to do some editing... regardless, look forward to more. Also, hopefully less intro explaining what I'm doing. So here we go...

It seems the only constant in my life, be it professional or personal is change. Never ending continual constant change... I feel part of growing up is dealing with the challenge of continual change. I've had to adapt, cope, learn, and become resourceful. In this way I've made it my art to incrementally improve, and this was just to be able to survive in life. This art of trying to master life is what I see as an embodiment of what Agile is attempting to express. It's not about a better way to do work, but it's about growing with others and figuring out how to get through challenges, and then along the way work is done.

So enough of all this philosophical babbling. Here’s some key things about Agile that is worth mentioning for this week.

1) Really large things take really large teams, most everything I’ve helped build of great complexity was with other people. And still, I don’t think I’ve made anything real impressive alone. To build large things you start small and then grow over time. There is a sense that you have to also start by thinking about the whole system. I disagree but also see where small things become big over time. Don’t start by figuring out ways to boil the ocean. Don’t do it! The fish and dolphins will hate you. Start with a fishbowl and go from there.

2) I laughed this week when a coworker told me he was at a wedding and they were using summer as a verb. Similarly, when I read about the practice of kaizen (improvement, inspect and grasp the situation and then adapt improvements) and kanban (the visual board scheduling queuing system). I wonder if there is a funny here as well. People who speak Japanese comment that there is a redundancy when people say Kanban board because the translation of Kanban is board, so board board is what people are saying. Regardless, later I’ll talk more about what I think about all these queues.

3) I also respect Toyota and what they decided to do when people were displaced after improvement changes. I was once told that wisdom comes from many experiences, and many experiences lead to skills and better intuition. If these people work themselves out of their jobs to improve a company, they should be kept and honored. It makes no sense to penalize people for this kind of change, it will inhibit change.

4) Causal loop diagrams, you would think I would have done more of these kinds of diagrams, but oddly I really haven’t. I think I’ve been drawing many kinds of diagrams and even learned UML (what a waste of my life energies). I have a sense that generally drawing is a good visual thing to do while communicating and telling stories. Yet, having all these kinds of lines or types of boxes and rules just don’t add as much value as the explanation or story. The time to sit and talk with people face to face is more valuable. Building relationships is key to most successes in getting things done. Do you remember drawing things as a child and how fun that was? I remember doing this with my daughter while eating dinner at restaurants. We would draw monsters and laugh while eating dinner. What’s wrong with us as we get older, we sucked the life and fun out of drawing. For those who are curious, here is a link to our group project, looks fun doesn't it? - Miro is a neat little tool

5) TOC - Theory of Constraints - read about it in The Goal, read about it in The Phoenix Project, but when you see it happening and you have your own stories you wonder why but also understand why these are better told as fiction. Because the truth is so traumatizing living IT it seems terrifying to go to work some days. Hard to believe some things like my phone even work as well as it does.

6) Stop and fixing problems, makes a lot of sense. The only problem is people are too busy to stop. I think the thing to handle is figuring out how to stop. Usually, when things go so awry things do stop, but when this happens I’ve seen most often than not that things get canceled instead of continued. Alternatively, I’ve also seen things that have been called failures and successes. Also, even though there is a high percentage of project plans that never go to plan, there are many that do eventually finish (successful or not) and past their planned end date. Figure out ways to stop is the key when it seems people are always sprinting. If you’re a runner you know how tiring sprinting is, so why are people doing this for so long? Makes no sense to me if you can’t take breaks to rest.

7) Spreading knowledge is important. It’s just like that saying about money and what will you do with it when you die? Figure out ways to actively do this, even if you reinvent the rules in the ways you do this.

8) Increment and iterate to make improvements. Okay, so here is where the rock climbing comes into play. See that person climbing, was her first time and she was afraid (excited) the whole time. One hold to the next and eventually made it to the top. If you zoom in you can see she is flashing the peace sign down. She once told me when I made this gesture I was out of fashion... dunno seems in fashion again to me! >.<

Anyways, this is it for now. I have more detailed stuff hopefully for next week. This is just to get warmed up.

Peace out, John Kuk