What’s This Agile Dialogs Thing Anyway?

If you haven’t caught it, I’m running an unconference called Agile Dialogs; you can find out more about it at http://agiledialogs.org.

So why would I want to take on thorny topics, ones that seem to bring out flamewars? Because the lack of listening to each side as we argue from each other’s sidelines seems an inane way of advancing our craft.  If we want organizations to advance their thinking, we in the community need to advance ours and listen to those with differing opinions. It doesn’t mean we need to agree, but we do need to listen, truly listen to what the other side is saying.  When we decide to challenge the other side, we need to do it in a manner that isn’t trying to cole them into accepting we are right, but to have them think through why they are taking the position they have chosen. We may reaffirm it, but in the process, we will have had them rethink underlying assumptions.

Dialog is about understanding and elevating assumptions so we can find answers to our questions and perhaps a new better way forward.  I know I am a believer in good estimates when they make sense and when they don’t not even bothering with them. But perhaps when I thought they weren’t useful, there was a better way to have made them useful.  I certainly welcome learning that in a manner that doesn’t start out with – hey bud you are wrong. That closes down dialog as that is about winning an argument. Save the arguments for a debate, let’s find out what makes each side tick and see what we can learn.

I hope you will join me!

Demonstrating the INVEST Criteria

potters_gold-2

I’ve been doing some rather “loftier” types of post, let’s return to something a bit more fundamental to (software) product development, user stories and in particular the INVEST acronym as developed by Bill Wake (see INVEST in Good Stories, and SMART Tasks). I was helping a coworker with some good examples of stories to showcase the INVEST criteria and felt this may be a useful post for people.

Let’s start with two formats User Stories may be expressed, we’ll stick with latter:

Who-What-Why

Or more commonly as

As a (role or persona)

I want to (perform some business function)

So that I can (get some business value/rationale)

Usually breakdowns in good user stories fail to articulate one or more of the INVEST criteria. Let’s look at each separately along with some examples.

I = Independent

We want stories to be independent; an independent story should be small vertical slice through most, if not all, of the software stack (UI, business logic, data persistence, etc.). Let’s start with a counter example to help demonstrate this.

As a decision-maker,

I want the data selection table menu to show the latest option results

So that I can determine which one to analyze.

Sounds OK right? Not really, the menu is a UI item. Where is this data going to come from, presumably a database, file, or API. It may get processed in a middle tier to do some filtering or sorting. The UI layer where the menu resides is only one layer; this story would be dependent on other stories in other layers to be able to be implementable. Usually any story that goes into the ‘how’, becomes less independent. Let’s rewrite it to –

As a decision-maker,

I want to view the latest option results

So that I can determine which one to analyze.

Besides appearing simpler, this doesn’t specify the menu, leaving the development team needing to do all the tasks to implement the results. Tasks could be querying the table, apply filter algorithm for outliers, sort from highest to lowest, display as a menu. It also doesn’t lock the team into the how – if the result could also come from an API or web service they can present those as an options to the product owner for selection; same with the menu, perhaps a table would be better.

N = Negotiable

Negotiable means the product owner and development team can make trade-offs on the priority of the story and/or acceptance criteria. Again let’s start with a counter example.

As a survey reviewer

I want to compare multiple respondent data sets

So that I can see if a correlation may exist.

What data sets? What data of the data sets? How is the product owner supposed to negotiate on this? Let’s add some detail –

As a survey reviewer

I want to compare age bracket data to geographic region

So that I can see if particular geographic regions contain particular high levels of a particular age group.

This is more negotiable; why? Suppose there was a second story –

As a survey reviewer

I want to compare income bracket data to geographic region

So that I can see if particular geographic regions contain particular high levels of a particular income.

Now the product owner can negotiate on which one is more important? They could also dig into acceptance criteria and talk about the ages or incomes that make up those brackets or what level of granularity they need to do for the regions. Often non-negotiable stories, ones that seem that MUST be done and can’t be ranked against others that MUST be done also are an indicator they are too big; they encompass too much.

V = Valuable

Another counter example will illustrate a story that doesn’t articulate value…

As a decision-maker,

I want to view the latest results

So that I can see them in order.

Why do I want to see them in order? (It’s presumed the order desired would be acceptance criteria. Better to specify the why, this also usually indicates why not only is the function needed, but why the particular acceptance criteria was chosen. Here is our refined story again –

As a decision-maker,

I want to view the latest results

So that I can determine which one to analyze.

Now we know why we need to do it.

E= Estimable

We don’t care so much about the estimate, which is one reason we use relative estimation based on complexity over trying to nail down an estimate in effort/length of time (hours for either). We care that some amount of certainty in the complexity can be articulated; this gives us a gauge that it is understood well enough to start. The higher the estimate, the less certainty, meaning it is more complex. At some point, this may require splitting into 2 or more stories to reduce complexity.

As a investor,

I want the latest analysis

So that I can decide what to do.

What do we mean by latest analysis? How do we estimate that? And that value statement doesn’t help; what decision are we trying to make – the business function – and why do I want to make it – the why. Here’s a story that may be estimable (providing acceptance criteria can be drawn from this)

As a investor,

I want the latest ROI graph with my minimum threshold shown

So that I can decide whether to continue making this investment.

OK, we want a graph, which we know must draw on data; if the raw data needs to go through calculations, we will need to do that. This threshold, is it entered or stored somewhere? Looks like well need tests to ensure the calculations are done properly. If we need to ensure web accessibility for people with sight disabilities, we may need a textual equivalent. Regardless, even with this uncertainty, being able to see most of the tasks and thinking on their complexity will give me the ability to estimate. Many have found that the estimate becomes pointless once the team actually has confidence they can complete it along with other stories in an iteration; remember this is mostly to describe common understanding. This may take months or even years to get to that point though.

S = Sized properly

Hand-in-hand with estimable, is sizing. If the story is large, really complex, then we need to think about splitting it into smaller independent stories. A good example of a story that is probably too large is the first story that dealt with a survey reviewer. The stories that follow it describing the data sets to compare are smaller and clearer and probably could be successfully implemented within an iteration. Who knows if the first one could? Also, if I couldn’t I get no partial credit for getting some of it done. If I get any small story done, then I can take credit for it.

And lastly, T = Testable

Testable stories are determined by their acceptance criteria. Let’s go to our first good story and fill in some acceptance criteria to see this clearly.

As a decision-maker,

I want to view the latest option results

So that I can determine which one to analyze.

When we turn the card over, we find the…

Acceptance Criteria:

  • Display options as menu choices
  • Display options in descending order from highest to lowest
  • Display results below my threshold in red and bold these
  • Don’t display negative results
  • Option results are calculated by the uncertainty index to the simulation result
  • Return the results in 0.3 of a second

These are easily testable, manually or in an automated fashion. (NOTE: there is a more sophisticated method called Given-When-Then from Specifications by Example by Gojko Adzic that allow these tests to be more easily automated in tools such as Cucumber.)

Using Dollars as a Constraint on a Project

I’ve been planning to write this for awhile, and this seemed to me more important to post after seeing an update from a Kickstarter campaign I am backing.

So I backed a board game, I was particularly interested in that it i intended to be small so I can take it with me almost anywhere I go.  What was amazing to me was how they calculated what they needed for funding.

Before I dive into that, I’ve backed quite a few boardgames on Kickstarter (along with music albums, music gear, and camping gear…) Most Kickstarter projects go in with varying degrees of estimations; one nice thing Kickstarter does is if you don’t reach your funding goal you don’t owe to make anything and the backers keep their money.  If you get funded, your estimates hopefully allow you to produce the game and have at least a small measure of profit. Most projects offer stretch goals that when they are reached, component upgrades and such kick in – these usually have a change in your estimate.

The gentleman that developed Carrier Commander, decided on a price point he wanted to be able to sell the game ($3 as it is a nanogame; I love small games to take with me when I travel). From there he reversed everything into size and weight by calculation based on what would be possible should he hit his stretch goals.

On the campaign page, he reveals the cost breakdown including the “Uh-Oh” zone which is the profit area…

To read up on how he calculated his way into the $3 price point without estimating, see this update:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078944858/star-patrol-carrier-commander-3-sci-fi-strategy-na/posts/1348731?ref=dash

Should all Kickstarters work this way?  Probably not…  The larger the game, the more the calculations would become overly cumbersome, particular as stretch goals needed to be calculated, so using estimation and factoring in reserve to cover the uncertainty would probably suffice.  In his instance, his upgrades were in cardboard only, so this made it much easier.

So how would this relate to software development? As I wrote in my post “When I Have Skipped Estimates”, one could use a team size as a constraint and then measure throughout.  Once the constraining bottleneck is understood and all worthwhile options for increasing throughput there have been exhausted, you could increase capacity.  This really works well for software maintenance.

One could also use something akin to what this gentleman did for his Kickstarter game; establish a fair market value for the cost of what you are building (i.e. how much is someone willing to pay to have something by a particular point in time).  Once you have this you have both time and budget constraint and now you can see how much that would pay for in terms of people and other infrastructural resource one may need; i.e. what is the capacity it can purchase?  Let’s say we got enough money that it would pay for 7 people for 6 months (+ servers, desktops, software licenses, etc). We can then execute and develop based on that.

One may ask at this point, how do you know if you will make what is needed? You actually don’t. What you do know is that this is what the person or people that set the constraint said would be what they are willing to pay. Like a venture capitalist, they have in their mind, I am willing to risk this amount of money to see if I can get what I want.  Yep, no guarantee. But then, an estimate doesn’t produce one either.

Should you do this under all cases? Absolutely not. In fact, I would say estimation is needed more often than not when deciding to fund a project (or program). And for those cases, we as an industry need to improve in estimation. However, there are cases,where estimation doesn’t necessarily help us. The more novel the project (and thus its approach), the greater the uncertainty and at some point it may be best to establish a cost (and perhaps schedule) constraint and see what you get at the end of that.  Got something valuable? Perhaps continue forward (and perhaps now introduce estimation); what you got isn’t valuable? Then you can use the knowledge you gained to decide to continue or not (and perhaps add in estimation or not).  You can use the knowledge you have to make a decision.

At least those are the cases I have for when I would go a #noestimates route… What are yours?

I’m interested in exploring each side; if this interests you, I hope you will consider joining me at the first Agile Dialogs unconference I am putting together.

Agile Coach Camp US – Neat Learnings

I attended several sessions at Agile Coach Camp; I was really impressed by the topics proposed this year. I went to some on Business/Organizational Agility, improving feedback/listening skills, one on creating Joy at work, and several related to using games to teach various Agile concepts. I’ll have to admit, I got lighter on the subject matter as the Camp wore on… Anyone that knows me usually knows I have no fear in proposing 2-3 topics.  This year I proposed none.  I was a bit too dain bread to host one given all the distractions and effort that went into running the Camp itself.

Before I jump into my key learnings/highlights, I was very glad to see one of the emerging themes be one of invitation over imposition. So many organizations are now jumping onto the Agile bandwagon and imposing Agile from above as opposed to helping it emerge; and then we wonder why there is resistance! I also really liked that there was good discussion on various technical topics as well; I often feel these get forgotten.  It’s important for us as a coaching community to understood how we can help organizations adopt things that matter and for software development they ummm… seem… to be technical in nature.

So my highlights; I would be remiss if I did not say one highlight was our extremely energetic facilitator Trica Chirumbole.  I think she brought a great energy to the Camp form opening to closing circles.

I was glad that my first session was one that Ryan Ripley ran to clear up some of the misperceptions people have about why an organization should adopt Agile. We seemed to come up with some great clarifying points to help our organizations or clients understand what to expect as an end result as well as various interim improvements to expect along their journey. Here were some of the key take aways:

  • a focus on improving organizational adaptability/responsiveness
  • use of data to make decisions, but not without regard of what the organization’s people will be undertaking
  • more transparency into organizational performance; risks more visible so better decisions can be made
  • better trust within the organization
  • containing failure and learning from it
  • improved employee engagement and retention

The title of the session was it’s NOT about being Better, Faster, Cheaper; though we rearranged it to mean this by stating: Better = more predictability and customer-focus, Faster = is time to market, not just meeting a schedule, and Cheaper = a focus on producing more value, but not reducing costs.  The hard part we found for measuring organizational performance on these is few organizations have a baseline measurement for any of them; in fact we came up with the hashtag #nobaseline to tweet about these instances. Reminding me I could use that with my current client 🙂

Ryan later ran a follow-in discussion from a session we had in the Open Jam session of Path to Agility in Columbus on creating Joy at work.  It was a complementary session to the earlier session as it focused on the human aspects of making those aspects happen. Since we had a new crowd, we really spent a third of the session kind of bringing them up to speed on our thoughts (at least it felt that way). I have an earlier post to help you. Once there though, we explored why Joy was more important than happiness though several people still thought they were synynomous.  Quite a bit of the conversation focused on how NOT imposing choices on people (what Daniel Pink would refer to as Autonomy) is key to this.  Some other also had it relating towards accomplishment (there’s Mastery) towards a purpose. I mentioned that I like Jurgen Appelo’s CHAMPFROGS; it feels more complete.  Since then, after reading Frédéric Laloux’s book, Reinventing Organizations, I might also say Joy is the integral of Wholeness from time = 0 to the present.  I still also stand by our earlier equation as well from Path to Agility.

I’m going to go quick over some of the rest as I feel I have been rambling a bit; I went to a games session hosted by Declan Whelan and George Dinwiddie on games they had come across or developed.  Declan presented Tom Grant’s tech debt game; everyone played it different and got results that demonstrated WHY we should make investments into things like automated testing and continuous integration. George showcased a game that he has been slowly evolving to show how refactoring works – it more demonstrated how software is malleable and we should treat it as such.  This is of course on its own very valuable.

I attended two other sessions I want to highlight, also both ‘games’-oriented: Mark Sheffield held sort of a games round-up.  I learned several new games to research and variants of games that would prove useful for helping teams and managers understand things better.  Andrew Annett ran a session on the Empathy Toy, which is all about common cognitive empathy (aka developing shared mental models).  This toy is fantastic, every coach should have to play this – you are always trying to find ways to bridge the gap in understanding.  My cohort Ken Furlong and i are already developing new ways to use it.

We had 2 happy hours before and during Camp as well as some food shared in various locations – it was awesome catching up with Diana Larsen, Daniel Mezick, Aaron and Brian Kopel, Jeremy Willets, Kevin Goff, faye Thompson, Declan Whelan, Tim Ottinger, and Ellen Grove at length (during Agile2015, I also had the chance to spend some time with my friends Woody Zuill, Pawel Brodzinski, and Chuck Suscheck at length too).

When I’ve Skipped the Estimates…

spiral_clockWhile the debate carries on whether one must have estimates or not, I thought I’d provide a viewpoint of when I found them no longer needed.

However, before go there, let’s start off with a bit of a story about when estimates were not useful, but required, so I took the *EASIEST* path out.

Let’s go back to 2008; I was just hired on as a software development Branch Chief in USDA and asked to prepare the budget for the next fiscal year.  Of course, the first thing I did was poll around on what upcoming work there was. No one knew except that the same amount of maintenance as was last year. That was easy, apply an inflation factor on what we had this year, add a management reserve, and we’re done.

Now onto the harder problem: what about the unknown new projects looming.  dollar_tunnelSo I investigated how these normally got funded; any estimate done is simply reported up the chain (as requested Development monies), but the funds are actually provided by the programs that need the work done for them. These are used as a projection for  the branch and nothing more. Any work really done goes through its own process of requesting and then actual money is provided.

So I asked, how many projects did we do the year prior and how much did they cost? And the year prior? And the prior to that? 4 projects, 4 projects, and 6 projects were the answers. (I won’t go into the money numbers, but I’ll note this branch did not develop super huge applications, but small to medium sized applications with some complexity – a GIS app, an analytical app, several tracking type apps, a loan package development application, that may give you the picture.)  I didn’t need to know the number of apps for  the reporting, but I used that number to calculate the average cost per app we developed, projected into 2009 dollars; adding a standard deviation game me some more certainty, then a 15% management reserve.  Once I had those numbers, the process was literally a half hour to run through the math a couple of times to ensure I was on target.

My project managers could not believe I was going to use that number; they always went around to each potential customer and asked them to conjecture on applications or upgrades they wanted. Most never got funded and something else came up and got funded, so why spend time estimating what never happened.

This was a very low precision estimate, but got me in a reasonable and justifiable target number. (If the system allowed for ranges, I would have provided those, but alas it didn’t.)

I’m guessing you are wondering how ‘correct’ I was with that… We had 5 projects and it was fairly close to the average.  The next year we did the same thing, but it was off – much higher as the Recovery Act kicked into high gear, but as I pointed out before, it didn’t matter.

OK, that was budgets built using the least painful method of estimates possible.  (Sometime in the future, ping me on how I executed on real work within the branch… The spoiler hint is I limited the WIP of projects going on at any one time, so that I could keep my team close to constant size, the increase meant I experienced a contractor headcount increase by about 2 people.

So now onto some maintenance estimation I did away with…

When I took over running the maintenance team at Office of Pesticide Programs, every Software Change Request (SCR) came in went into a queue where it was examined in a meeting and the contractor told to go estimate it.  When the contractor came back with their estimate, usually a week later, the work was approved.  They estimated in time and they could then quote the money as they figured out who was going to do the work and then they could apply their labor rate. This singular meeting was at least an hour long every week and consisted of telling the contractor go estimate the amount of work to do and report out on estimates made.  This never went anywhere; no one did anything with these estimates. We never said no to the SCRs for the legacy systems we maintained, mostly because no one worked with the business well enough to know whether it should happen or not. On top of that, there were 20 some legacy apps with at least that many stakeholders to try and satisfy. Perhaps at some point, this estimation process was used to say no, but with the mostly low complexity work coming in, there was no drive to say no.

We set budgets based on annual contractor headcount. Perhaps at some point this estimation exercise was used for this, but it wasn’t any longer.

So I did a couple of things, I killed the meeting. I put the onus on the government application maintenance staff to work with the business to prioritize the work in their viewpoint. I set-up a rule set for taking these priorities, along with a quick technical assessment (that set severity) and the date in, to establish a prioritization across all apps.  I got these stakeholders to agree to this scheme so I didn’t have to fight with each app. We still never said no, we just prioritized the work not started constantly.

And I eliminated the estimates.  I decided on contractor staff based on how much work I could get through; I concentrated on further process improvements before I thought of increasing headcount. (You can read about the Kanban system that was set-up on GovLoop if you so desire.)

To go full circle to where once again I found an estimate helpful in this environment was a potential regulatory change was going to require a rather large piece of work to our legacy PowerBuilder app. I was asked how long it would take; the upper management was interested in ensuring that we had enough lead time to get it done. Not having it done, had a financial impact on the Agency.

Since I had a Kanban system implemented in Trac, I filtered out that legacy’s enhancements to similar ones and calculated the average and two standard deviations.  I gave them that range with stating the high number had 95% confidence we’d fit within it. They deeply appreciated the accuracy and precision in this case. This is a form of estimation of course, but the real point is day-to day, we never estimated; there was zero value in it.  We did capture actual data though using our system, which made predictability possible just as I mentioned above.

Hopefully this will help others at least understand one context where estimations weren’t needed and also where low fidelity estimates were good enough to establish a reasonable estimate. I consider myself a no estimates guy, only because I look at the assumptions of why I need to estimate and if I don’t and can derive a more suitable answer in some manner, I’ll probably use that.  It’s all a matter of context.

Yin and Yang in Change Management: Appreciative Inquiry and the Power of Habit

yin-yangThere are many change management approaches out there. Most focus on weaknesses you need to change; several others out there focus more on things to keep the same and build upon. Most change agents then further target using one approach or another, perhaps based on context, or perhaps as a ‘goto’ tool (you know what they say about goto statements – don’t use them!).

My preference is to balance between these approaches, two I have found really useful are Appreciative Inquiry and the Power of Habit.

I have always tried to help people and organizations find their strengths and build on those. This is the basis of Appreciative Inquiry, something I learned by reading the Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry.  I’m looking forward to reading more on this to be honest as I think it is undervalued as an approach (I almost said under-appreciated…). Being able to identify, really help others identify, the core strengths they have and harness those for the changes they want to see is really powerful.

Here’s an example of how you might use Appreciative Inquiry; have the leadership of an organization (preferably with a sprinkling of lower down in the totem pole) create a KrisMap of where they want to be, personifying what the future organization will become. Then have the people identify the strengths they can leverage towards the resulting characteristics and build action plans to achieve these.  Very powerful, and quite motivating since you are using core strengths.

Screen Shot 2015-07-12 at 10.02.34 PMYet only applying strengths does not help you eliminate weaknesses.  When talking about change such as what may occur in an Agile Transformation, another approach to look at is the Power of Habit. When habits work against where the organization’s people want to be, then one needs to look at changing the habit to a new one, while keeping the reward the same.

The Habit Loop can be defined as what cues a decision that needs to be made and once similar decisions are made repeatedly following the same formula that provide some form of benefit or pain avoidance (reward), then this will be the preferred decision routine; a craving gets established.  This is regardless of whether we’re talking individual, organizational, or societal. Keeping the reward the same, while changing the habit allows new habits to become more positively reinforced.  This can take some work and I always recommend breaking down the habit into a causal loop showing all the steps being taken.  This helps in identifying leverage points that you can use (strengths in Appreciative Inquiry speak) and possible side loops that could railroad the change; essentially risks to mitigate.

Lastly, remember introducing change, regardless of approach, can be overwhelming. Limit the number of changes you are introducing at any particular point in time.  This gives you a chance to better sense the effect the changes are making and respond accordingly.

For more information, see the latest version of my Taking Flight presentation.

Using a Business Canvas in a Government Environment

At least some of you know I worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP).  At one point I and a colleague created a Business Canvas for our office; this concept comes from Alex Osterwalder’s book, Business Model Generation.  Below is what I can remember of our canvas (we did this about 5 years ago and I did not take it with me, so this was reproduced from memory; it’s mostly correct).

OPP_Biz_Canvas

These high level items allowed us to identify quite a few useful things. I’m not going to go through every box at the moment, but what we found we could do with this was identify weak spots (our IT contractor at the time was a weakness for us) and the primary activities to leverage to create our value propositions.  We did some postulating on new possible customer segments and thought specifically targeting farmers (one of the largest users of pesticides) may be a good thing to call out.

We then did an analysis on various trends. One trend stuck out; while we were a monopoly, we still were subject to market forces. The economy at the time had been in recession for a couple of years, a pretty severe one at that.  PRIA registrant fees funded much of our work. If the economy is tanking, less pesticides will be purchased (farmers in particular will try and get with less to lower costs). This in turn normally lowers the amount companies will invest in R&D. Without R&D, less new pesticides will be rolling out for registration, meaning less funds and work for OPP. There isn’t anything magic here, but the canvas had us postulating on it.  We went to talk with our IT Director as we wanted to find a way of testing this hypothesis as it would have a severe impact on the work we do; he showed little interest.

Later that year, the Office Director for OPP announced we were going to have the least number of registrations on record since the Office was founded. I can only envision had we tested our hypothesis we would have had a leading indicator as opposed to the lagging indicator of watching the number of registrations trend significantly lower than expected.

Most Government organizations have only appropriation.  Even so, thinking in terms of the value propositions being delivered to customer segments and the activities and partners needed to do this can be really advantageous.

Agile Dialogs – Why We Need It

Agile_Dialog_Logo-2Recently I have noticed conversations in the Agile Community getting increasingly hostile.  Whether it be about scaling, self-organization, estimation, or a variety of other topics, there seems to be some reason one side or the other has to be ‘right’. I’ve personally been in the crossfire and not once was there any inquiry about why I had my opinion, only some circumspect attribution as to my opinion being off the mark.

Perhaps it was… Perhaps not… Who is the judge?

So something I and a colleague (@Ryan Ripley) have decided to try is put together is an unconference to bring together people to discuss these thorny conversations. And by discussion, I mean dialog, not debate.  In other words, the point is not to prove someone wrong or right, but rather understand there position and whether it is valid for your context.  Using a philosophy espoused by Peter Senge, we need to expose and elevate our assumptions so that we can find what works and doesn’t between the positions. We call this Agile Dialogs and have set-up a website (rudimentary at the moment).  Our first dialog will be about how to predict value with or without estimates. If you have an opinion for against or somewhere in the middle, we hope you will join us. You can find out more info at the Agile Dialogs website; please consider taking the short survey at the end and of course joining us on November 13th at the Navy League Building in Arlington, VA..

T-Shaped/H-Shaped Contracting Officers

Recently the US Digital Services and Office of Federal Procurement Policy issued an OMB Challenge; in it they discuss how contracting officers need to be more knowledgeable in digital services procurements. (Digital Services seems to be the new 18F-ish buzzword for user-centric software development, though they also reference cloud-based services…)

In this challenge, they mention creating depth of knowledge in digital services procurement, however they also suggest a desire to increase their business savviness, though they don’t express exactly what is meant.

T-shaped people have both depth and breadth of expertiseThis prompts me to simply point out that contracting officers and specialists (as well as any acquisition-related professional) are needed to aspire to become generalizing specialists or T-shaped people.  What do I mean by this?  For a contracting officer, this means becoming not only steeped in contracting services, but knowing enough about information technology to understand what may or may not apply to procurements. I’d also suggest getting more knowledgeable in their department’s or agency’s mission and understanding their needs earlier on is what will also aid them in becoming better at digital services procurements.

The challenge wants a CORE-Plus curriculum; IMHO this indicates that the government is interested in beginning to create contracting officers that have more breadth.  This helps attune their contributions to become more valuable as their knowledge increases to better align with the services being procured.  In some ways the desire to have contracting officers undergo a CORE-Plus certification, means they will be more like H-shaped people with some deper knowledge of digital services technologies as well.

Contracting, particularly in the government, is a complex undertaking.  As someone who maintained several DAWIA (Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act) certifications myself, I can attest to how valuable it is for personnel to have a broader understanding for what they are acquiring and how it fits into the needs of the organization that will utilize it.

For an excellent general write-up on what T-shaped people are, drop by Darren Negraeff’s post The Importance of T-Shaped Individuals.  It contains links to further reading and is also where the T-shaped image above comes from…

A Short Essay on Using Models – Why Should You Use Them & Why You Should Create Some

EA-7L_Corsair_Line_Drawing I use many models in my thinking, whether they are mine or someone else’s, yet I don’t think of myself as a theorist. I thought it may be helpful to some on why models are so valuable to a pragmatist. Another word for model is framework…

“essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful”

– George E.P. Box

This quote is the first thing to remember when you begin using any model; you need to remember that at some point a model will break down and no longer support what you were using it for…  Like a lean start-up idea, create and use models passionately, but stop using them the moment evidence points that they are no longer helpful.  (he nice thing about a model though is that generally this means you have crossed an edge-case where the model doesn’t work any longer, but may still be useful in the long run.  If the model consistently doesn’t work, then perhaps the model has some invalid assumptions.  Exploring these assumptions then may help you refine the model into something that once again works or to find or develop a model that does work under the broader circumstances.

This brings me to the next point – ALWAYS realize models have a set of assumptions.  Explore how the model works under these assumptions.  This helps you understand when the model may be useful and when it may not. With that, why do you need them if you are simply someone (particularly a coach or manager) who needs to help people get things done?

Models help you understand systems; they may not provide a means to achieve an answer, but may simply may provide a means for organizing your thoughts.  The Cynefin model by David Snowden is one of these latter ones – it can help you understand the problem space you are exploring for decision-making. Finding models that can represent systems or at least significant and important portions of a system is mostly useful for helping you organize your thoughts.  The act of thinking through when and how these apply including valid and invalid assumptions about variables, algorithms, or organization (for more pictorial models) really helps you determine on which things to pay attention.  Even if you find the model doesn’t work, the amount of thinking you went through will serve you well.

And I invite you, particularly when you don’t find a model that seems to represent what you need, to try and think through creating one.  Don’t worry about it being perfect, you can always adapt the model after inspecting how it works.  Again, you are using this to organize your thoughts.  Creating a model could be as simple as combining models; Jurgen Appelo’s CHAMPFROGS model about motivation does this.  It appears Jurgen saw gaps, overlaps, and some inconsistencies in representation and blended a new model to make it more clear to him.

It’s also extremely useful to find where different models connect in explaining the same observations (data) differently.  This helps you understand where options may be found and where the thinking on these has many dimensions, which again exposes assumptions about the models.

Going back to the usefulness, one huge benefit for applying or creating a model is stepping back from tactical thinking to a more strategic layer.  This helps in prioritizing based on importance over simple urgency.

People serving as coaches and managers are there to help the people improve the system, you can do this best when you have your own thoughts organized. Models can be an essential tool in selecting and organizing the particular tools and techniques needed to apply.