Think you’re a Good Collaborator? Check out our Top 10 Collaboration Killers

(This is a follow-up to my post in July 2019:  Bias is the Kryptonite to Collaboration.)

Collaboration. It’s one of the tenets of the new Heart of Agile and central to all agile practices today.  Effective collaboration increases communication, encourages creativity, lowers rework, improves morale and delivers better products. Many of us consider ourselves pretty good at communication and collaboration, yet I’ve discovered some silent habits we have that kill collaboration in its tracks.  This post is a Top 10 Checklist for professionals in all industries that tests whether you harbor some of these silent collaboration killers.

We already know how…

As humans, we instinctively know how to collaborate – we do it all day, every day in our personal lives as we interact with friends, family, acquaintances and even strangers. When we throw Super Bowl parties or have friends over for dinner, collaboration is second nature and flows easily in the kitchen.  As adults, we’re practiced communicators, we know how to act in public and nurture our private relationships. We’re typically good at cooperation, communication, emotional intelligence and critical thinking with our partners, friends, family and, even strangers.  (While this is not a given across all of society, I’m assuming that if you’re reading this post, it’s true for you.)

To me, it seems ironic that these same collaboration skills seem to atrophy once we cross the thresholds of our work.

Millions are spent on Corporate Training

Case in point — Corporate America spends millions of dollars every year training professionals on how to better collaborate and communicate, yet recent studies (2019) show workplace morale at all-time lows: One study cites a whopping 75% of US workers are unhappy, a second shows 80% of professionals reporting career blockage due to emotional issues at work.

The Connection!

I believe that there is a direct connection between the lack of collaboration skills at work and the levels of workplace dissatisfaction — and it stems from an unconscious lack of respect and love for our co-workers.  I’ve seen silent collaboration killers in every board room and war room, and I profess that if we acted at home as we do at work, we’d all be unattached with few friends.

The following checklist is a Top 10 list of (silent and not-so-silent) Collaboration Killers that sabotage our projects.  Maybe you’ll recognize one or two (or more) and see yourself in the mix.  The good news is that these are easy to overcome with recognition and practice! Which of these are most dominant in your workplace?

(Note that a description of each follows the checklist.)

Top 10 Collaboration Killers – CHECKLIST

1. The Eye Roll / Heavy Sigh.
2. The Emperor Wears No Clothes.
3. Shoot the Messenger.
4. Dunce Capping.
5. The Shut Down.
6. Sarcasm (passed off as irony or wit.)
7. Confirmation Bias.
8. Okay Boomer, Okay Millennial.
9. The Charlie Brown Teacher.
10. Selective Blindness (or selective hearing.)

 Top 10 Collaboration Killers

1. The Eye Roll / Heavy Sigh. We’ve all seen this in action – it is one of the quickest ways to show bias and disapproval to an entire room without saying a word. (So ingrained is this habit in our culture that even small children mimic and master it.) The Heavy Sigh is often used together with the Eye Roll to provide emphasis of the disdain. The impact of this killer increases when used by management.
2. The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Many of you can recall the fable of the emperor who was fooled into thinking he was wearing the finest suit in public (as convinced by his expert tailors) and paraded through the village naked, before someone finally exposed the truth. Today’s the term is used as slang on Urban Dictionary: “The Emperor Wears No Clothes… is often used in political and social contexts for any obvious truth denied by the majority <sic, management> despite the evidence of their eyes, especially when proclaimed… When people say “The emperor wears no clothes”, they mean that other people need to stop being *** kissers to a political leader and see things for what they truly are instead of denying the truth of the situation.  It takes a person with guts to speak the truth and blast through the bs and lies.”  It must be safe for staff to raise issues and challenge the “truth” for collaboration to live.
3. Shoot the Messenger.  We’ve all witnessed this when someone delivers factual (aka honest) information and is chided with “No, no, no! That’s not true… don’t you tell me that… !”  This is a verbal killer that stops collaboration (and truthful information) in its tracks.  Banish this habit.
4. Dunce Capping. We can laugh at movies where a comedic movie depicts a dunce cap, but the impact on the “dunce” is profound.  Today, the public ridicule killer is equally harmful.  The danger is that the practice is often innocuous:  someone asks a question that the recipient judges as being obvious and the response kills collaboration:  “Did you seriously just ask me that question? Wow!  Go back to your desk and figure it out, what a stupid question…” I stand firm in my belief that 99% of questions raised in groups are not obvious (no one likes to be shamed for a lack of knowledge.)
5. The Shut Down. Agile teams talk about the value of “early failures” but in reality, this is anything but the truth. Delivery time pressure still trumps late corrections when defects are discovered close to production.  The Shut Down involves chiding such as “That’s an enhancement. You know we don’t have the time for that today – we’ll work on it later (post-delivery.)  Even scrum masters are humans who want to avoid the wrath of management when delivery is late.
6. Sarcasm (passed off as irony or wit.) We’ve all seen sarcasm at work – someone spouts a sarcastic remark to what could have become a valid idea. When the target reacts in astonishment, they are chided for being too sensitive because they can’t take a joke. Leadership expert Brene Brown takes sarcasm to its roots (the Greek word means to “tear flesh,” and is a cruel form of indirect communication.  Consider curbing your sarcasm at work if you want to increase collaboration.
7. Confirmation Bias. This is a BIG one because we’re all guilty of it without even realizing it(in and out of work) but it becomes especially damaging when we aren’t aware of it at work. Without even thinking, we can dismiss valuable contributions if they come from someone we’ve already judged we don’t respect. A silent collaboration killer.
8. Okay boomer, okay millennial… Cultural bias. Similar to #7 but based on our opinion (or ignorance) of anyone different from us (from another country, culture, generation, religion, financial status, etc.) we summarily dismiss valid input because we can’t see past the face that delivers it. We hear the words or ideas, then quickly dismiss them because they are spoken/written by someone older, less intelligent, poorer, less educated or simply “different” from us.  Collaboration squashed.
9. The Charlie Brown Teacher. If you’ve ever watched a Charlie Brown cartoon, you’ll recognize this from as the teacher of character Peppermint Patty (who she refers to as “Sir”.) The words spoken are completely tuned out and whatever is said is unintelligible.  This is related to the Biases, but rather than listening and dismissing ideas based on the source, we dismiss the words entirely before even hearing them.
10. Selective Blindness (or selective hearing.) Related to #9, this practice is the subject of the running joke of longtime married couples where one partner doesn’t hear (or see) when the other speaks.  In workplaces, this practice can also develop where certain people are rendered invisible (worse than bias) and their contribution is not seen or heard.  At my own family gatherings, I witnessed this in terms of sexism on the part of my father.  We’d be having a nice dinner with a large family group of 10 or more and the conversation was flowing.  At some point, I’d say something and my father would not respond at all.  Then my now ex-husband would restate the exact same words as his own and my father would instantly “wake up” and say how great the comment was.  Regardless of my response (“I just stated that”) both my ex and my father continued the practice until I finally stopped contributing anything when family dinners arose. Selective Blindness kills collaboration.

How many of these silent killers lurk in the hallways or boardrooms in your company?  How many are part of your own repertoire of workplace habits?

Would you help me by joining in on a discussion?

Webinar: Executive Overview of Functional Size Measurement (Function Points): Part 1 The Basics (free!)

What do you think?  Comments?

Heart of Agile holds Promise as a Silver Bullet

Have you heard about Dr Alistair Cockburn’s Heart of Agile concept? In Alistair’s words, it’s a radical simplification of Agile into four fundamental words: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect and Improve. As one of the original cast of the Agile Manifesto, Alistair has a wealth of knowledge and insight about all things agile, and I was thrilled to learn about the human-centric ideas in this new Heart of Agile concept.

While the premise of Agile condensed into four words, might, at first glance, appear too simple for some (as an engineer, I know we value complexity) or too unsophisticated (marketers seek innovative words) or even too basic for seasoned agilists (Scrum touts over 100 key learnings), when you peel the onion that is the Heart of Agile, at its core is the essence (the heart) of bringing humanity to work. It means embracing the essential soft skills (social awareness, emotional intelligence, empathy, acceptance, communication, diversity, active listening) that we already use for success in everyday life outside of work. It’s simple and yet complex at the same time.

And, it just might hold promise in the pursuit of the proverbial management “silver bullet.”

To me, the Heart of Agile is really about getting back to the basics of how we should be behaving at work, not how we were taught to behave when we’re in a corporate environment. I like that.

Lately, when Alistair talks about the personality of those who espouse the Heart of Agile, I think about a Corporate Personality – one where acceptance and community are the norm, where innovation and creativity are truly valued. Contrast that with the dominant “command and control” personality prevalent in so many companies, including agile companies, today.

The Agile Manifesto promoted “people over process” and “working <products> over documentation” yet the strict adherence to Scrum and other policies and procedures today, seems to defy those very tenets. Agile was supposed to be about a better way of people working with people to build better solutions, together. (Certainly, this has been happening, but…)

Consider recent statistics citing a whopping 70% of Americans who are unhappy at work, and (in a separate study) 80% of workers saying emotional-based issues block their career advancement. Now, combine that with the looming STEM worker crisis (a deficit of 3.7 million skilled workers by the year 2030), the exorbitant cost of replacing skilled talent, and a burgeoning millennial workforce that values quality of life over “working for the man”, and the Heart of Agile becomes a “no-brainer.”

I believe that companies that invest in (and value) soft skills today will grow a workforce tomorrow where people are treated with dignity and respect, and reap the benefits of higher profits. When millennials dominate the workplace (by 2030 there will be more millennial-aged workers than had any prior generation) – gone will be the “Stepford Wife” corporations with rote protocols and robotic adherence to procedures.

Successful companies of tomorrow will value soft skills more than technical prowess. The tide is already turning in high tech corporations where HR executives emphasize personality (people) skills over technical skills. “It’s easier to teach technical skills, to people, than soft skills to techies,” is a frequent refrain. Welcome to the Heart of Agile.

Today, I’m proud to say I’m part of an undercurrent of technical professionals worldwide who are part of the growing Heart of Agile community. The concepts we discuss (including emotional intelligence, feedback, Scrum, living agile, culture of listening, overcoming barriers to collaboration, Shu Ha Ri and Kokoro, honesty, trust, self-acceptance, measurement, diversity, appreciation, and others), are refreshingly technology-agnostic and human-centric. And, the concepts merge well with what I’ve taught in my classes for years – communication and humanity is the key to measurement, technology, project management and … work.

Want to know more? The Heart of Agile has a webpage http://www.heartofagile.com, a YouTube channel, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, and an emerging network of MeetUp groups worldwide (Tampa and Boulder USA, Argentina, Chile and others in South America, Australia, Scotland, Belgium, France, Austria, Serbia and others.)

Join us and be a part of this positive, optimistic, human-centric Heart of Agile community!

To your success! Carol

Bias: It’s like Kryptonite to Collaboration

Collaborate: the concept is so ingrained with agile development that it’s one of the four components of Alistair Cockburn’s simplified Heart of Agile approach (along with Deliver, Reflect and Improve.)  Yet, collaboration has an “achilles heel”, a Kryptonite of sorts, that no one really talks about:  Bias.

Before we get into the roots of Bias and its effects, let’s explore what’s at the core of Collaboration.

Collaboration

To collaborate (according to Google Dictionary) is to

cooperate, join (up), join forces, team up, get together, come together, band together, work together, work jointly, participate, unite, combine, merge, link, ally, associate, amalgamate, integrate, form an alliance, pool resources, club together,  fraternize, conspire, collude, cooperate, consort, sympathize…

Collaboration relies on a combination of team skills: listening, communicating, connecting, cooperating, observing, and setting aside personal agendas and opinion.

Bias is like Kryptonite to Collaboration

Bias creeps in innocuously while we’re truly practicing our good communication skills; it can coat our words and can jade our thought process without us even being aware of it.  At best, bias skews our creativity, at worst, it kills trust and collaboration.

While we may not perceive bias in ourselves or others (“after all, we’re open and honest professionals doing our best”) – it’s there.

The good news is that Bias is like the iceberg below the surface that we didn’t know was there, and once we’re aware its there, we can dismantle its effects.

Through conscious practice and exercises, our awareness of our own biases can increase and we can override its effects.

Types of Bias

Bias comes in a variety of flavors and styles – and, we all have it in one way or another. The first step to overcoming bias is to recognize and acknowledge it in ourselves.

What kind of bias(es) do you hold?  I’ve condensed the list of bias types (from data analytics and psychology sites) and added examples for agile projects:

1. Confirmation Bias – We skew our observation of an event, concept, person in a way that confirms our already held belief.  A pattern of highlighting news that agrees with the agenda of the left or right, and ignoring the other side.
   Example:  Changes are needed to a delivered report because legislation changed (fact), and we think “Typical of the users always changing their minds” (confirms our belief.)
2. Attribution Bias – We attribute an action to someone based on their personality (flaws) rather than the situation.
   Example:  The project is delayed because testing isn’t finished.  We think:  “the tester doesn’t know what they are doing” (attributing it to a personality flaw) rather than looking at the situation of tester work overload.
3. Commitment Bias – Continuing to invest in a derailed project because of the sunk costs already committed (time/effort/money.)
   Example: We think: How can we bail on this project after we’ve already spent a year and $500K on it?
4. Labeling Bias – We (un)consciously describe or label a person/group in a way that influences how we think about them.
   Example:  We think marketing (people) have no clue about technology (so why ask them for input)?
5. Spin Bias – We accept only one interpretation (ours) of an event or policy to the exclusion of the other.
   Example:  We spin the news (especially when there is a gap):  China banned cryptocurrencies, so it must be because of… (nefarious financial dealings…)
6. Spurious Correlation Bias – We believe causality (without checking) between two potentially (un)related events or circumstances.
   Example:  Gas prices always go up before a long weekend.
7. Omission Bias – Leaving out important information/people (certain facts or details) on a project because we don’t see its relevance.
   Example:  We didn’t think of including IT folks in a renovation project meetings (we omitted the importance of moving the network…)
8. Not like Me Bias – Dismissing information or ideas because of the source or group generating it.
   Example:  We think that new hires have no idea about how our company works (when their input may be fresh and show us new ways to work.)

When we allow these unconscious biases to influence how we send or receive information, we stymie true collaboration.

What biases do you see in yourself and your workplace?  When I, personally realize I have a particular bias, I make a conscious effort to pause before responding.  When I’m prone to say something that would block collaboration (words like “we can’t do that…” or even the seemingly innocent thought in my head like “what on earth?” I try to stop and ask myself why I would think that.  Pausing to reflect and see the part that my unconscious bias plays, really helps me to collaborate better.  Might it work for you?

Would you Play Along?

Over the coming weeks, please join me in a new blog series called “The 5% Social Experiment” where I’ll post some easy social experiments to identify and overcome workplace bias.

Can I count on you to play along?

Carol

Chicken and Egg and Agile: What comes first Hard or Soft skills?

How would YOU answer this question?

Stereotypically people answer based on their experience and expertise:  

• technical pros choose hard skills first (programming, math, logistics, complex problem solving,) because they involve complexity and are quantifiable. Soft skills are seen as qualitative (less value) and simpler (aka “fluff”) and easier to learn on the job;    
• business people choose soft skills first (communication, emotional intelligence, listening, time management, collaboration) because it can be impossible to work with people who lack them. Technical skills, they reason, are easier to learn. 

Ultimately, we need a combination.  The most successful agile teams possess a combination of both skills: clear communication, understanding, empathy, time management, collaboration AND technical competency.

Oft cited research states that 85% of job success comes from having well-developed soft skills (people skills) and 15% is a result of technical skills and knowledge.  Software development used to be an anomaly to this, but no more.

A Look at SD History 

A mere 30 years ago, engineers and computer scientists owned software development: programming was a specialized skill that afforded coders both job security and relative seclusion.  In the beginning, before SDLC (software development life cycle) methodologies, users wrote out bits of requirements and passed them over (“the wall”) to programmers who turned them into computer programs using “code and fix.”  Interactions between the business and IT (information technology) were isolated, formal, and controlled. 

I remember colleagues 25 years ago lamenting that “software development would be so much easier if we didn’t have to deal with users.”

Fast forward to today’s agile environment where communication, collaboration and frequent software deployment are norms.  Co-located open space team areas replace rows of stoic IBM coders working in isolation and according to a recent Career Builder study: 77% of employers now believe that soft skills are equally as important as “hard” or “technical” skills in the work environment. 

Yet… technical professionals go into their professions for the same reasons they always did: to solve complex problems based on math and science.

The Value of Soft Skills

Reading stories of agile transformation success leads one to think that every workplace is like Google:  teams of co-workers celebrating each other’s differences, playing games at work, seeking to maximize their collaboration – the perfect combination of soft and hard skills. 

In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring hypothesis by analyzing 15 years’ worth of hiring, firing, and promotion data.

This project led to the surprising discovery that hard skills come in last among the top seven qualities of Google’s top employees.

“The top 7 characteristics of a successful Google employee are in fact:

1. Being a good coach
2. Communicating and listening well
3. Possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view)
4. Having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues
5. Being a good critical thinker and problem solver
6. Being able to make connections across complex ideas
7. STEM expertise

If nearly all of the top characteristics of success at Google are soft skills, then there is a strong argument for investment in those skills being not just a sound investment, but a vital one.”  https://insights.learnlight.com/en/articles/measure-roi-of-soft-skills/

Can soft skills be learned?

The jury is out on this – some say yes (emotional intelligence, awareness, communications classes) while others profess that soft skills are personality based.  

What is YOUR experience – do you think soft skills can be learned? 

Have we reached the Shangri-la in software development with agile?  

How would you answer this post: What comes first in agile – soft skills or hard skills?

Thank you in advance for your comments.

Carol

3C’s of Measurement Success – Create, Confirm, Convince

I recently recorded the remote meet-up presentation I did for Ryerson College (Toronto, Canada) called 3C’s of (FSM- Functional Size Measurement) Success – Create, Confirm, Convince.  The focus of the presentation was about how to position software measurement for success with management – especially in the context of agile software development.

Soapbox – Ryerson College Meet-up 3Cs of Measurement Success: Create, Confirm, Convince — Nov 2018

Thoughts, comments?  How do you measure today?

Carol

What is this Thing – the Heart of Agile – all about?

If you’re an agilist (my word for those who embrace agile concepts to do great work) – you’ll be interested to hear about the Heart of Agile directly from the mouth of its founder Dr Alistair Cockburn.

Join me TOMORROW (Thursday Oct 4, 2018) at 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time as I interview Dr Cockburn in St Petersburg, FL about the new Heart of Agile and where it fits into the landscape of Agile Software Development.

Here’s the link (recording will be posted later if you cannot access Facebook!)

https://www.facebook.com/events/364530300951242/

p.s. Here’s the link to the website under development:  https://heartofagile.com/

Join me!

Carol

The Death of Brainstorming? Say it isn’t so…

I love the articles in the New Yorker, and the following one caught my eye because of the Brainstorming topic. In leadership courses, I’ve espoused the value of brainstorming when done right (without judgement and analysis) – and I’ve seen positive results.  Could it be that the creative process might actually work better when criticism is allowed to fly?

Say it isn’t so…

When I teach brainstorming techniques, I always find it interesting that the creative (right brain dominant) thinkers in the group really love and contribute more during the “Brainstorming” free flow of ideas phase (before analysis sets in), while the linear, engineering style (left brain dominant) thinkers in the group can’t wait for the second phase where the ideas are analyzed and critiqued.  Divergent thinking followed by convergence of ideas.  Made perfect sense to me and the students demonstrated how safe each group felt – depending on which side of the brain dominated their idea flow.

So now, it appears that the “Steve Jobs” style of criticism before acceptance, domineering boss-like, judgment first ways of working have merit, or do they?  Read the article then read on and comment (please!)

Here’s the link to “Groupthink” if you cannot reach it above.

I’m conflicted…

about this latest “research” and given my international experiences in presenting in over 30 countries to technical audiences, I have to say that Information Technology and software development are as much about the people and psychology (trust and communication) as they are about technology and engineering problems.

I’ve seen success with collaborative approaches like Kanban, agile, Rational (Use Cases) – which I believe succeed because we bring disparate viewpoints of the customers and suppliers together and address various learning styles (visual, audio and kinesthetic) to gain the highest levels of understanding.  Brainstorming is one such technique whereby the most dominant (i.e., typically the most critical of all ideas except his/her own) no longer gets to direct the problem solving.

What’s BEEN your experience?

I look forward to your comments – do you agree with these findings? – and to further research… and to hopefully announcing that Brainstorming is NOT dead, in fact, it just needed a wake-up call to re-energize the benefits for a new iPad generation!

Technology at the Speed of Sound… Catch up at Light Speed at LSSC11!

I have to admit that I have not programmed a computer for many years and I have no idea how to write Visual Basic or Java or dot net.  (Yes, I have done raw html and could still manage in SAS if I had to!)

And I can also admit that the proliferation of models and methods from Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Six Sigma, Xtreme Programming, CMMI(R) (Capability Maturity Model), to manifesto driven systems development,  has me daunted.

Which ones are interchangeable, which are compatible, which are contradictory, and (OMG) where should one start to learn how to avoid the pitfalls?

It’s all a matter of diving in to each and learning the ins-and-outs and best practices — except I know that there are as many opinions about best practices as there are models.

Okay, I can already hear you saying:  “Carol, as a software measurement/Function Point Analysis and PMP (Project Management Professional), you probably don’t need to know much about any of these” — except that I do!

My clients will ask me about these and other emerging topics – and expect that I know the best course of action they should take with Lean/ Kanban/ Agile methods for their company.  And I simply do not have spare time to read all the books, experiment, fail, try again, and then decipher what is hype and what is real in this space!

So what is a sane, intelligent, forward thinking IT professional like me to do when faced with an overwhelming mountain of information like this so I can properly advise my clients?

The answer is: ATTEND the Lean Software & Systems Conference 2011 (#LSSC11)!

There is no other conference in the same timeframe that offers more than this growing conference!

Being held 3-6 May, 2011 at the Hyatt Long Beach in Southern California, this annual conference boasts over 90 speakers over a 3 day period on topics ranging from:

• Lean, Kanban, and Agile,
• Capability Maturity Model Integration (featuring the CEO and senior specialist experts from the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University),
• Advancements in Estimation Approaches (featuring Barry Boehm of COCOMO 2 and University of Southern California fame!)
• Risk (featuring risk expert Robert Charette),
• Tools (Kanban, Agile, Lean, Gaming, and more!),
• Visualization,
• Top 4 Systems Approaches today,
• Lean management,
• and more!

See the full program at http://lssc11.leanssc.org

All given by practitioners and experts for practitioners!  And the majority of presenters have real world, hands-on experience in the trenches with Kanban, Lean, Agile and Scrum and lived to tell about it!

Why not catch up to technology racing at the speed of sound by accelerating your learning Light Speed with LSSC?

There is no similar conference offering the breadth or depth of topics, experience sharing, or real case study results in the Kanban and Lean software development space.

And the May 5, 2011 Brickell Key awards for excellence in the advancement of Lean in software development will recognize some outstanding nominees working in the area – some of which are professionals just like you!

I know that I will catch up on these major topics and more – in record time – by attending LSSC11.  If you are an IT professional, don’t you owe it to yourself to check it out?

Read about the Program and the Speakers at LSSC11 and register today!

Wishing you an eventful and productive week and I hope to see you in Long Beach on May 3, 2011!

Regards,
Carol

Whose job is IT anyways?

The title was a purposeful play on the acronym “IT” (information technology) because there is often no one person who takes responsibility for failed IT projects. In addition, it is not as if there are not project failures everywhere.

Notwithstanding one of my least favorite (but often quoted) research studies, the Chaos Report cites that about one-third of projects are successful when it comes to IT.  What gets in the way of project success?  Lots of circumstances and lots of people!

When a software intensive project fails, there is no lack of finger-pointing and blame sharing – yet seldom do teams stand up and confess that the failure (over budget and behind schedule and failing to meet user needs) was due to a combination of over and under factors, along with fears:

• overzealous and premature announcements (giving a date and budget before the project is defined);
• over optimistic estimates of how quickly the software could be built;
• under estimation of the subject complexity;
• assumptions that the requirements were as solid as the customer professed;
• under estimation of the overall scope;
• under estimation of how much testing will be needed;
• under estimation of how much time it takes to do a good job;
• under estimation of the learning curve;
• under estimation of the complexity of the solution;
• under estimation of the impact of interruptions and delays;
• over anticipation of user participation;
• over optimism about the availability of needed resources;
• over optimism about hardware and software working together;
• over optimism about how many things one can do at once;
• risk ignorance (“let’s not talk about risk on this project, it could kill it”);
• over optimism of teamwork (double the team size doesn’t half the duration);
• fear of speaking up;
• fear of canceling a project (even if it is the right thing to do);
• fear of pointing out errors;
• fear of being seen as making mistakes;
• fear of not being a “team player”;
• fear of not knowing (what you think you should);
• fear of not delivering fast enough;
• fear of being labeled unproductive;
• fear of being caught for being over or under optimistic.

Therefore, I ask you, on a software intensive IT project, whose job is it to point out when there are requirements errors, or something is taking longer than it should, or it is costing more than anticipated. In traditional waterfall development because there’s so much work put into the planning and documenting of requirements, pointing out errors are  either no one’s job or the team’s (collective) job which really relates to no one’s job.

Often it is easier (and results in less conflict) to not say anything when the scope or schedule or budge go awry on a software project. Yet it is this very behavior that results in so much rework and so many failed projects.

Agile and Kanban projects are different

Several of the advantages to using Kanban and Lean and Agile approaches to software and systems development is that the methods address the very items outlined above.  Building better software iteratively becomes every developer’s job rather than no one’s:

• Fear of pointing out errors is removed because the time that goes into a scrum is days and weeks not months (so participants don’t get defensive about change);
• Over and under optimism remains but is concentrated on smaller and less costly components of work (i.e. days instead of months or years);
• Risk is not avoided or ignored because we are no longer dealing with elongated and protracted development cycles (spanning seasons);
• Assumptions come out with better and more frequent discussions;
• Over optimism about how many things one can do at once is removed because Kanban limits the amount of work-in-progress;
• Under estimation of the impact of interruptions and delays is minimized because such factors are addressed in Kanban;
• Over anticipation of user participation is managed through direct user involvement.

What do you think?  Join us at the Lean Software and Systems Consortium conference LSSC11 from May 3-6, 2011 as participants and speakers address the best ways of advancing software and systems methods including Lean, Kanban, Agile and other exciting new ways to deliver high quality software more efficiently and effectively.

These newer approaches make it easier for everyone in IT to make it their job to build better software.

Wishing you a productive week!

Carol
@caroldekkers (twitter)