Tag Archives: motivations

Agile Dialogs Recap

This will be a short recap of the Agile Dialogs unconference held yesterday.  We discussed ways of predicting value production with and without estimates.  Over the next few days I’ll blog more of what we uncovered, but this will be a simple post on how the unconference was approached.

We had a good mix of people that were passionate, though no one was at I’d say fully at each end of the spectrum. The big takeaway was that both sides are right in many ways and wrong in many ways.  The idea of not using estimates of time, money, and/or story points can be done and is highly context dependent. As with any approach it may nor may not work in your context; it depends, or YMMV.  The best you can do is try it as an experiment and see whether it works for you.

What we did at Agile Dialogs was –

  • register with one side or another along a continuum (how strong we felt on the issue),
  • post the types of things we estimate,
  • tell our stories of both our successes and failures on both sides – with and without estimates
  • explore our objectives for either using or not using objectives and the techniques we use for each side
  • Explore the assumptions used when using estimates
  • Explore the assumptions used when not using estimates
  • Explore what each side could learn from the other
  • Posted and voted on what could possibly be the next thorny topic we tackle
  • and retrospect on how the Agile Dialogs unconference could be better

Here’s a few teasers of some of the discoveries… I’ll go more in depth on what was discussed in future posts as well as post some proceedings on the Agile Dialogs site.

  • When management or customers are asking for estimates, it is more important to understand their need for it; then more valuable alternatives to fulfill that need may be explored. Estimates may prove best for fulfilling that need though, so don’t force fit an alternative technique.
  • Estimation has become a scapegoat for other dysfunctions within the works system. Removing estimation won’t fix these dysfunctions, but it may help uncover them.  Whether at the end of the day, you remain with or without estimation, if these more fundamental dysfunctions can be fixed, then the work climate will improve.
  • Estimation always exists, but when pursuing a noestimates approach, the nature of the estimation actually changes from cost, time, and/or complexity to value (which is not based on those in most environments).
  • Focusing on understanding time and money estimates tends to introduce longer feedback loops for actual learning. If it is possible (and that is an IF), then removing them can eliminate waste in the work system to that learning.
  • Measurement is important in both approaches; when doing estimates we sometimes get lulled into a false sense of security that good measurement exists, when often it doesn’t.
  • Humans suck at estimation except on conceptually obvious items (obvious equating to the obvious domain in the Cynefin framework); mathematical models (particularly when the underlying assumptions on those models are validated by the team doing the work) can really help produce accurate results in the complicated domain.  The complex domain can be assisted greatly by these mathematical models, but the loop through is validating a hypothesis.
  • Another way to test a hypothesis is to set time or cost box and see if the solution at the end of the box is on track decide whether to spend more, accept as-is, or abandon; think Lean Start-up approach.

I have set-up The #AgileDialogs Daily that curates information from both sides of this thorny topic; other thorny topics will get added as a discussion on them emerges.

Calculating Joy and Fulfillment

At the Path to Agility, several of us got together and had an open discussion about what possible relationships Happiness, Joy, Purpose, and Passion had.  In attendance was Ryan Ripley, Faye Thompson, Joe Astolfi, Jeremy Willets, and Kevin Goff.  Others dropped in from time to time as well and provided some input.  Ryan kickstarted it with a premise that focusing on pursing solely creating a happy team(s) destroy longterm joy and fulfillment.  The discussions were contained in the photo of all the stickies (semi-organized into various areas):

image1

We discussed many different things, and I’ll mostly focus on my take aways and contributions.  We’re still discussing this (primarily via twitter currently), so it’s an ever evolving concept and I am not sure we’re all in agreement yet.

Happiness was felt to be a short term thing, while Joy yielded a long term gratification. I started my (useful) input showing how happiness of a team over time can be captured via a Niko-Niko calendar and that this is useful in understanding whether a team is working well together.  Ryan still said that a happy team may not be joyous, but we did at one point all seem to agree that at some point if a team had little to no happiness occurring, then it was unlikely they would feel joy.  This got me to drawing a stacked area chart; the x-axis is time and the y-axis is the amount of joy felt by the team.  The areas that add up to this happiness (which is more volatile), passion (mildly volatile), and purpose (little volatility).

I wish we had spent more time coming to some form of agreement on Passion and what it means; I defined Passion as the collective sum of the motivations I have.  I really like the CHAMPFROGS set that Jurgen Appelo has created.  I think some of the inconsistencies showing up in our Twitter convos deals with each of us having a different mental model around passion.  These passions can change some over time.

Alignment on a purpose is also very important and alignment of this purpose with my longterm passion is also very important. It’s this latter part that gives me motivation to pursue it, yet if it is a continuous unhappy environment then I will also find it difficult to stay focused. We ultimately settled into this equation, which I wrote onto the whiteboard under the advertisement for our session:

Joy_equation

This equation states that Joy is a function of the Length of Happiness I feel multiplied in the pursuit of Purpose in addition to the Passion I bring to it.  Thus if I have little time I spend feeling happy as I pursue a purpose, then I will not feel longterm Joy.  Likewise, if I have no purpose, I also get no Joy either; this because Joy is the feeling of Fulfillment we get (Joy = Fulfillment).  Lastly, it needs to be aligned with passion as if my passion would rather pursue something else, then I likewise will have little Joy.  If we bump this from an I to a We for a team or organization, it means getting alignment on purpose and passion while having a supportive environment which increases happiness.

The important aspect to me though is the role of leadership in this; when exercising leadership, our job is to discover people’s passions, help them see how they align with a collective purpose.  It also means that I want to create this supportive environment, but not pursue short term hygenic treatments to make people happy, they need to be factors that create longterm possibilities for team members to be happy.  An example of a longer term factor would be one of safety as one would find in Anzeneering. To create Joy, leaders (which in a self-organizing team can actually be any team member)  is the application of the Antimatter Principle to attend to people’s needs.

Addition (that I forgot to mention, but it was discussed and is very relevant), Tobias Mayer has an excellent post that if you attempt to encode someone’s values, you kill that person’s spirit.  This can be true even what is being imposed is happiness; this will not create longterm Joy.