synerzip agile2015 highlights & take aways
TRANSCRIPT
Top 10 Takeaways Vinayak Joglekar, CTO
@vinayakjHemant Elhence, CEO
@HemantElhence
http://synerzip.com
Conference Overview• August 3-7, in Washington, D.C.• Approx 2200 participants from 40 countries, 17 tracks, w/
approx 300 sessions, plus Open Jam sessions and Lightening Talks of 5min each
• Inspiring Keynotes– Luke Hohmann: Awesome Superproblems– Jessie Shternshus: Individuals, Interactions and Improvisation– Jim Tamm: Want Better Collaboration? Don’t be so Defensive
• 5th year of 1-day Executive Forum, with invited senior executives, ~125
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17 Tracks • Agile Bootcamp• Coaching and Mentoring• Collaboration, Culture &
Teams• Development Practices &
Craftsmanship• DevOps• Enterprise Agile• Experience Reports• Leadership• Learning
• Lightening Talks• Project, Program and
Portfolio Management• Research• Stalwarts• Testing & Quality• User Experience• Working with Customers• Government (New)
Confidential – August 2015
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Synerzip’s Top “10” Takeaways
Note: 40+ sessions were attended by Hemant Elhence and Vinayak Joglekar. Where possible,
the presenter’s name and other reference are listed.
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Top 10 (14) Topics1. VJ: Red Zone/Green Zone2. HE: Scaling Agile/SAFe3. VJ: Lean Experiments-
Pitfalls4. HE: DevOps+Culture5. VJ: No Management!6. HE: #NoEstimates7. VJ: Remote UX Design8. HE: Team Dependencies
9. VJ: Pareto’s Law for Good Code
10. HE: State of Agile Practice11. VJ: Lean Hiring!12. HE: Interesting Soundbites13. VJ: Docker for DevOps14. VJ: Interesting Soundbites
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1. Red Zone/Green ZoneRed Zone
● Low Trust-High Blame● Threats and Fear● Guardedness● Hostility● Withholding Energy● Risk Avoidance● Attitude of Entitlement● Cynicism and Suspicion● Work is Painful● External Motivation
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Green Zone● High Trust Low Blame● Mutual Support● Dialogue & Shared Vision● Honesty & Openness● Co-operation● Risk Taking● Sense of Contribution● Sincerity and Optimism● Work is Pleasurable● Internal Motivation
Green Zone cos- Net Income +755%, Stock Price +822%, Revenue +516%, Workforce +246%
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Radical Collaboration• “Want Better Collaboartion? Don’t be Defensive” – Keynote
by Jim Tamm• http://www.radicalcollaboration.com/• The RED ZONE – GREEN ZONE concept is a way of
describing the culture of an organization. – The RED ZONE is a more adversarial, conflicted and un-
collaborative environment. – The GREEN ZONE is a more collaborative, supportive
environment. • We rarely see an organization that is pure RED ZONE or
pure GREEN ZONE; most are a unique combination of both, to varying degrees.
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Green Zone ImpactKotter and Heskett's landmark study Corporate Culture and Performance documented results for 207 large U.S. companies in 22 different industries over an eleven-year period. Kotter and Heskett reported following performance difference.
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Overcoming Defensiveness• James Tamm in his keynote address said that
defensiveness (AKA CYA) is the worst block in the way of collaborative culture.
• Defensiveness doesn’t protect us from other people - It defends us from fears we don’t want to feel.
• He proposed a 3 step process – Start noticing if you are in red zone or green zone– Look for early warning signs– Practice your defensiveness action plan
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2. State of Scaling/SAFe• In spite of some criticism SAFe seems to most
widely adopted– Visual framework– Accommodates large enterprise need for Portfolio,
Program, and Team levels• Main frameworks
– Jeff Sutherland’s Scrum at Scale/Scrum of Scrum– Craig Larman’s Large Scale Scrum (LeSS)– Scott Ambler’s Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)– Dean Leffingwell’s SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)
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Scaling Agile
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From VersionOne’s 9th Annual State of Agile Survey of Agile 2015
http://synerzip.comConfidential – August 2015
From http://scaledagileframework.com/
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3. Lean Experiments - Pitfalls● Startups jump stages problem>solution>
market validation: “Good idea! Let’s test launch in 2 months.”
● Unidentified Assumptions: “Now users can … will they?”
● Unfalsifiable hypothesis - not having any success criteria: “Lets observe.”
● Metrics that are not actionable.● Wrong metrics - Measuring # of video
uploads vs playbacks.
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Good idea, Lets launch it ASAP!
Startups start validating the product without validating if their customers even have the problem the product is supposed to solve.
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4. DevOps + Culture• The core requirements for successful Agile
transformation is – DevOps, i.e. CI & CD– Org culture + Agile mindset
• The essence of Agile is– Inspect & Adapt– All practices are optional– Being Agile vs. Doing Agile
• Org culture drives org performance– Org culture follows org structure– “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”
• Separate DevOps session in Exec ForumConfidential – August 2015
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Culture = Org Anchor
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http://agilitrix.com/culture/
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5. No Management!● No managers - self organizing teams with
many leaders. ● Only 13% of employees are engaged as
per Gallup.● Problem with hierarchy – decision-making
power is concentrated. 80% people need permission to do what is good for the Co.
● Consensus drive decision-making is extremely emotional -> indecisiveness.
● At LL anyone can make a decision provided they consult experts & all affected people.
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5. No Management!● At Lunar logic people started making
decisions that they had never done before.● Information transparency & freedom to fail.● LL has transparent salaries which forced
them to have fairness.● Control feels good - it’s hard to let go - but
it’s an illusion.● Lack of autonomy -> lack of engagement,
empowerment and leadership.● Cultural pockets - 10-20% people left LL.
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6. #NoEstimates• http://zuill.us/WoodyZuill/beyond-estimates/• Alive and well, but still being evangelized• Statoil case study of Beyond Budgeting• For estimation, use neither story points nor hours, just
count the stories– Management and teams often misuse SPs– Velocity in SPs is also abused
• All estimates are just guesses anyway, so might as well just use statistical techniques
• “Cone of uncertainty is bogus” – check out https://leanpub.com/leprechauns
• Better Requirements Better Estimates
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#NoEstimate Rebuttal• For more balanced viewpoint see
Steve McConnell’s rebuttal video– Author of Software Estimation book– Proposes
• #KnowWhenToEstimate• #AskTheBusiness
• Also see Ron Jeffries discussion on this topic
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7. Remote UX Design● Teleplaying “Speedboat” & “Buy a feature”
○ Brutally honest/necessary conversations○ Sense of bonding & breaking of barriers
● Multitasking/Distractions - ask questions/be unpredictable/encourage banter/guest
● Over-communication gets tuned out; share protos/documents actively by walking thru
● UX designer should act like facilitator allow others to take Keyboard/Mouse control
● Listen to listen, don’t listen to respond
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Six Ways to Bridge the Distance
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Graphics presented by Mary Brodie
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8. Team Dependencies• Entangled: Solving the Hairy Problem of Team
Dependencies by Troy Magennis• Balancing # of teams vs. size of each team• Be aware of the impact of dependencies
– A single dependency reduce order options 50%, < 1% with 4– Every dependency removed doubles your chance of on-time delivery
• Don’t be afraid to have teams of up to 15 people– If it avoids even a single dependency– Otherwise, 7 +/- 2 is still a good rule of thumb for optimal team size
• Visualize your dependencies – co-locate/merge teams based on that
• Manage your team skill balance to avoid constraints, but keep new hires on a team to less than 30%
• Get cookies aligned between teams and dependentsConfidential – August 2015
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From Troy Magennis’ Agile2015 Presentation – “Entangled: Solving the Hairy Problem of Team Dependencies”
http://synerzip.comConfidential – August 2015
From Troy Magennis’ Agile2015 Presentation – “Entangled: Solving the Hairy Problem of Team Dependencies”
http://synerzip.com
9. Pareto’s Law for Good Code● Encapsulate anything that is going to vary.
Separate use from construction.● Write code for testability. Well defined
responsibilities having well defined interfaces.● Software entities should be open for extension but
closed for modification.● Favour aggregation over inheritance.● Comments that tell what the code is doing implies
that the code isn’t self-documenting.● Programming by intention - pretend that you have
the methods/interfaces needed.
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Good CodeFind what varies and
encapsulate itFavor Aggregation over
inheritance
Relationship between any entity A and any other entity B in a system should be limited such that A uses B or A makes B - never both
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10. State of Agile Practice• Here are highlights from 9th Annual State of
Agile Survey conducted in Jul-Oct 2014• Sponsored by VersionOne, conducted by
Analysis.Net Research, an independent survey consultancy
• 3,925 responses across industries in global software development community
Confidential – August 2015
From VersionOne’s 9th Annual State of Agile Survey of Agile 2015
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Only 5% Traditional/Non-Agile
Confidential – August 2015
From VersionOne’s 9th Annual State of Agile Survey of Agile 2015
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Agile Maturity
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From VersionOne’s 9th Annual State of Agile Survey of Agile 2015
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Reasons for Agile
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From VersionOne’s 9th Annual State of Agile Survey of Agile 2015
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Distributed Agile
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From VersionOne’s 9th Annual State of Agile Survey of Agile 2015
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11. Lean Hiring!● Auditioning should be relevant. If you pair on the
job, you should pair in the interview.● Filtering on tools/technology is irrelevant - new
tools/technology can always be learned.● Look for behaviors not practices.● Screen resumes in a group and classify in
Yes/No/Maybe - discuss conflicting cases.● Ask open-ended questions - “Tell me about a time
when...”, “What would you do if...”● Test adaptability. “When were you surprised?”● Cultural misfits result in frustration.
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Lean Hiring (Cont’d)
\
Take Feedback
Top 3 resumes
Inspect & Adapt Applied to hiring
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12. Interesting Soundbites - HE• Don’t break scrum teams at time-zone/geography
boundary – “you do scrum where you can do scrum”• Companies doing DevOps are 50% more productive• “Individual performance management is still a $64B
question” – Jim Benson • “Software shapes business, so the shape of your software
matters” – Michael Feathers• There is carrying costs of (dead) code, so teams should
have planned obsolescence of code/features• “There is no correlation between effort and value in
knowledge work. Your management practices need to acknowledge that.” @KevinTrethewey
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12. Soundbites (Cont’d)• “People are always awesome, in all ways and always.
Address the system.” - Daniel Roux (SPINE Model)• Problem w/ middle management - “We are naturally
collaborative individuals, but punitive managers” – Jim Benson
• Technical Debt– Resist the urge to quantify technical debt– Technical debt should not be incurred by doing some thing quick &
dirty (to go fast)– To go fast, reduce the feature scope
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13. Docker for DevOps● Docker is a container having a slice of
kernel vs. full OS virtualization● Docker eases coordination between Dev,
QA and DevOps● Offers.com halved their AWS spend but did
face some issues while scaling● It’s still early for DevOps automation
needed to use Docker in production ● Scaling up is easy, knowing when to scale
down is tough
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14. Interesting Soundbites - VJ● “Stop using user stories - start using hypotheses”
- Tobias Mayer● “If you adopt only one agile practice, let it be
retrospectives, the rest will follow” - Woody Zuill● People will forget what you said or did but will
never forget how you made them feel● “Look good by making others look good. Make
your team look bad and you’ll start looking bad” -Jessie Shternshus
● “Planned work fills capacity leaving no room for unplanned work” - George Dinwiddie
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What is Org Culture?• Organizational habits = core of the culture
– Culture is how organizations “do things”– Culture is consistent, observable patterns of behavior in
organizations• Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals
which serve as “glue” to integrate the members of the organization
• The cultures of organization are never monolithic– Variations across functions, e.g. finance vs. mktng– Across business units, e.g. Pharma BU vs. Consumer BU
• Cultures are dynamic. They shift, incrementally and constantly, in response to external & internal changes
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