Troubleshooting Agile

Squirrel describes how deals with overly vague strategy descriptions: tune them until they’re specific enough that someone could disagree with them. He and Jeffrey discuss how this applies beyond strategy, the value of asking probing questions, and the productive conflict that can arise from getting past the "motherhood and apple pie" answers. SHOW LINKS: - Podcast episode, Adversarial Analysis: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/scoring-briefing-and-back-briefing - Agile Conversations: https://agileconversations.com

Squirrel describes how he tells clients to handle overly specific, too-coherent directions: consider what an adversary would do to comply with the direction and still get bad results. He and Jeffrey discuss illustrative examples and applications from military history, economics, and pizza delivery. SHOW LINKS: - Little Bobby Drop Tables: https://xkcd.com/327/ - Goodhart’s Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law - Pizza Arbitrage: https://www.readmargins.com/p/doordash-and-pizza-arbitrage - Art of Action, Briefing and Back-briefing: https://www.stephenbungay.com/Books.ink - Podcast episode, Briefing and Back-Briefing: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/briefing-and-back-briefing - Podcast episode, Scoring Your Briefing and Back-Briefing: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/scoring-briefing-and-back-briefing --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love

A client challenges Squirrel on his directive style when coaching, wondering whether this clashes with his espoused belief in joint design and inquiry. Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on the crucial differences between being asked for advice and help, and manipulating the situation and information flow to "win" an argument. These considerations turn out to be relevant to product and technical decisions too! SHOW LINKS: - Unilateral control & mutual learning values: https://infed.org/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and - Coaching Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/The_Coaching_Kata.html --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey trade stories about leaders who live in fear of key software developers leaving, and therefore avoid honest feedback and effective reprimands. The ironic result is that this "skilled incompetence" leads to exactly what they're trying to avoid: the best engineers do leave because of the negative and secretive culture. The way out, of course, is the Accountability Conversation. SHOW LINKS: - Tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1559121793830379521 - Squirrel Squadron: https://squirrelsquadron.com - One Minute Manager: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Minute_Manager - Unilateral control values: https://infed.org/chris-argyris-theories-of-action-double-loop-learning-and-organizational-learning/#_Model_I_and - Accountability Conversation episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/accountability-leaders-are-accountable-too --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you

Responding to a listener's question, Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on the difference between a product owner and a process owner, and how IT projects differ from building products for external users. Unsurprisingly, methods for delivering value and saying no feature prominently! SHOW LINKS: - Project to Product: https://itrevolution.com/book/project-to-product/ - Mik Kersten interview: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/project-to-product-with-mik-kersten - Reengineering the Corporation: https://bookshop.org/books/reengineering-the-corporation-a-manifesto-for-business-revolution/9780060559533 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

We look at why "prop trading" companies like Jane Street have phenomenally profitable technology operations, and how we can learn from them and improve, even in organisations where IT is a "cost centre". SHOW LINKS: - Jane Street article: https://www.thediff.co/p/jane-street - DevOps Enterprise Summit: https://events.itrevolution.com/virtual/ - Spike and Stabilise: https://dzone.com/articles/patterns-effective-delivery-%E2%80%93 - Previous episode on ROI: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/troubleshooting-agile/id1327456890?i=1000574885063 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey look at two ways to "thin" features to achieve a better return on investment, for both customer features and productivity improvements. SHOW LINKS: - Squirrel’s tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1554153810876157953 - Feature thinning: http://www.agilekiwi.com/other/agile/feature-thinning/ - Poppendieck lean book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/194338.Lean_Software_Development --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: OKRs, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: Retrospectives, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: Walking the board, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: Elephant carpaccio, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Summer Shorts and Learning Loops: Weekly planning, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Taking iterative development to heart, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss a learning loop topic, Basic daily learning loop, in five minutes or fewer. Take just a few minutes with us to improve your team's learning and speed! --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey trade stories about tech organisations who are effectively improving incrementally -- and examples of those who are just doing and not learning. Rother's Coaching Kata and Torres's Opportunity Solution Tree prove helpful in illustrating how to shift to this mindset. SHOW LINKS: - What is kaizen? : https://www.kaizen.com/what-is-kaizen - Plan-Do-Check-Act: https://deming.org/explore/pdsa/ - Opportunity Solution Tree: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/opportunity-solution-tree/ - The Toyota Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/Homepage.html - Coaching Kata: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrother/The_Coaching_Kata.html --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

“We may disagree but that doesn’t mean we’re going to have another meeting”. Jeffrey and Squirrel discuss what happens when you run out of difficult conversations and consensus isn't going to happen--and what to do next. SHOW LINKS: - Advice process: https://reinventingorganizationswiki.com/en/theory/decision-making/ --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Jeffrey and Squirrel reflect on a tweet from Ken Kocienda about what worked for Apple in designing the iPhone, what they think is missing from this advice, and what it tells us about improving our own delivery. SHOW LINKS: - Ken Kocienda’s tweet https://twitter.com/kocienda/status/1526564985995857921 - Creative Selection: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37638098-creative-selection --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey are both seeing faster results from coaching clients through the amazing technique of just asking them to go faster -- and explaining the reason. They explain why and how this works and how you can put it into practice too. SHOW LINKS: - Toyota Kata: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Kata - Near enemy: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/07/change-your-life-near-enemies-buddhism --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel advocates the radical view that data consistency is a shibboleth and an inadequate excuse. He and Jeffrey explore this position and wonder why companies are so obsessed with having a single source of truth. SHOW LINKS: - The Cuckoos’ Egg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) - Squirrel's sources of truth tweet: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1525435952503693315 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Jeffrey describes a new idea from Marquet, the division between "red work" (execution) and "blue work" (thinking and planning). He and Squirrel discuss how to balance these methods in agile teams, and when an imbalance might be useful. SHOW LINKS: - Leadership is Language: https://davidmarquet.com/leadership-is-language-book/ - Inno-Versity Presents: "Greatness" by David Marquet : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q - In Praise of Taylorism episode: https://agileconversations.com/blog/in-praise-of-taylor/ - Cynefin framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel notices a pattern among his coaching clients: some prefer to work themselves and their teams much harder, rather than questioning a requirement or discussing trust issues. He and Jeffrey describe ways you can detect and overcome this habit or "twitch". SHOW LINKS: - Agile Conversations Dojo: https://www.meetup.com/Agile-Conversations-Dojo/ - Agile Conversations Book: https://agileconversations.com/agile-conversation-book/ --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com