Archive for the ‘On Being Agile’ Category

The following post was originally published by the Cutter Consortium as an e-mail advisor for the Data Insight and Social BI practice  in December, 2011. Hence, the reference to the holiday season. That publication can be found here.

In honor of the holiday season, this month’s topic is focused on an all-too-familiar problem: the common hangover. No, I’m not speaking of an “adult beverage” hangover, although if I find a cure for that I’ll be sure to share it with you. The type of hangover I’m speaking of is the routine failure of your agile delivery team to complete the user stories it commits to during sprint planning.

I’m surprised at what a common occurrence this is for many agile analytics teams. Here are a few example scenarios:

1. The team completes development but testing hangs over into the next sprint.
2. The team completes the data integration elements of a story, but the demonstrable corresponding BI features hang over to the next sprint.
3. The story is too big to be completed in a single sprint, so the team just allows it to hang over into the next sprint.

There are other examples, but you get the idea. A hangover is not the same as a BI feature that is technically done, but the customer review calls for further modification or refinement (it isn’t “Done! done!”). A hangover is simply a failure to have the completed story ready for customer review at the end of the sprint. Continue reading “Curing the Common Hangover” »

Agile leadership is sometimes portrayed as, “Buy pizza and get out of the way.” Or, “Empowering teams to be more self-organizing and self-managing.” Neither of these descriptions is particularly accurate. Agile leaders have a uniquely challenging role. In fact, in many ways command and control, “my way or the highway” leadership is much simpler. The manager gives direction and the minions follow it. However, effective agile leadership results in much higher performance, greater innovation, and exciting new ideas.

One of the many things that agile leaders do is motivate teams. Dan Pink is the author of the recent best seller, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. You may have seen Dan Pink’s “Motivation” presentation on Ted. This video went viral a couple of months ago. But, even more compelling is this artistic animation of Dan’s earlier talk. Give it a look, it’s well worth 10 minutes of your time.

In June, 2010 The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) published my article entitled “Being” Agile vs. “Doing” Agile as part of their “This Week in BI” series. Although I wrote the article for the Agile BI community, the concepts apply to any agile development organization. Please give it a read and let me know what you think.

—— Continue reading ““Being” Agile vs. “Doing” Agile” »

I occasionally get asked to describe agile project failures and struggles. I haven’t formally studied root causes of failure but have worked with enough struggling agile teams to gain a qualitative sense of these causes. Agile struggles are commonly caused by non-agile behaviors masked behind agile trappings and terminology. Failure to collaborate is a common problem. People tend to revert to the asynchronous communication (e-mail and written documents); and “throw-it-over-the-wall” habits with which they’ve grown familiar. Continue reading “On Community, Customers, and Collaboration” »

In 2006 NBC launched a television series in the U.S.A. called Studio 60, a comedy/drama about the production of a weekly live variety show ala Saturday Night Live. The series gave viewers a behind the scenes look at the intensity with which each new weekly variety show is planned and executed. Unlike typical weekly TV shows, each episode of a live variety show is planned in a “just in time” fashion. The content must be adapted to current events, the decisions of producers must be responded to immediately, and the cast and crew must be highly adaptable to change. No matter what happens during the week, the show must be completely planned and ready to air at a fixed time. And it must be good enough every week to keep viewer ratings very high or risk cancellation. Imagine the pressure!

Continue reading “Agility Night Live” »

I’ve been reflecting a bit on my Cutter 2010 prediction – “Although Agile adoptions will proliferate, we will see an increase Agile project failures due to misunderstanding, misapplication, and misguided attempts to follow an ‘agile recipe’.” It feels a little pessimistic to me so I wanted to elaborate further and hopefully give readers some ideas about how to avoid experiencing an agile failure. As an agile consultant I get to work with a lot of different companies in various stages of agile transformation; with varying corporate cultures; and experiencing varying challenges and successes. Through these experiences success patterns and anti-patterns emerge. Continue reading “Adapting is Key” »