How we combined virtual coaching and local coaching to kickstart a multi-continent, round the clock team of teams

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Multi-continent teams caught in a spiral of ever-growing support effort

• 4 teams across South East Asia and South America answering IT backend demand from various business lines 24/7

• A no barrier policy for answering demands led to excellent support ratings but increasingly harder to sustain as demand grows

• IT teams needs to step up as a force of innovation as a technological disruption is foreseen to hit the business within 5 years

• Agile practices are to be experimented

• To make space for a product strategy balancing between support and value-adding development

• To increase team development efficiency

•The teammates have never worked in Agile nor been trained

• 12H time zone difference renders every synchronisation a challenge

Our approach – coach the teams as a SAFe Agile Release Train led by a virtual Program team

• Worked with a pair coach based in South America

1. Onboard teams in Agile at each location with intense 2 weeks coaching

• Agile training & Agile Roles coaching

• Team coaching (values, vision, roles)

• Fast paced Agile iterations for accelerated learning

• Alternate trainings as needed through coachings for maximum learnin

2. Adapt Program rituals and artefacts to realities of across-the-globe communications: time zones, culture, alignment

• define synchronisation points in a minimalistic manner

• define protocols and artefacts templates to help team align on wordings

• Experiment about effective coaches synchronisation

3. Virtually coach a distributed SAFe Program team across 3 continents

• Online team training and coaching

• Remote meeting facilitation experiments

• Relayed with face to face coaching at each location

• In coordination with US Agile supervision entity

After early struggles on team synchronisation, the teams rose to a force of innovation for the organisation within 3 months

• Teams fully autonomous in Agile, building their own custom practices after 3 month

• Program Team found its footing and took the lead of its own SAFe experiment within 3 weeks

• New profiles have emerged as Product Owner with a fresh sense of leadership

• Team has started challenging and proposing business users to help them better

• Learnings have help reshaped coaching approach for upcoming Agile Program transformation on other business branches

• Product Owners and Program Team have become valued mentors for other programs

Make my Facebook wall great again! by applying technical debt principles

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18 month ago my facebook was a mess. I disliked it, most posts were from people I had no recall, and too many times the posts were troll, people whining about the world, if not purely xenophobe. Every 5 minutes there was 30 new posts, so I couldn’t catch up with anything.

As thousands of friends were stacked from my past involvement in Rotaract (a worldwide humanitarian organization related to Rotary) a big spring clean up was just too big to be done at once -been there, failed several times. When browsing my contact list it’s hard to find who’s been posting what. Some I didn’t recall and some I’m happy to keep as “maybe” contacts when I recall them. Reviewing each FB friend takes 30s to 1minute… I’m set for dozens of hours.

I was about to give up Facebook at all (I barely checked it every 3 month already), until I decided to go backpacking for a few months in South Asia.

Then I had to use FB again. Many travelers use it as a go-to communication platform, it’s a cheap and easy way to send news to family and friends. Then there’s the ton of pictures you want saved on the cloud before your phone get wasted in sea water (been there). I had to.

Quick filter with a split-second rule

As a last resort I went for another approach : to forget the past, then to focus on practical issues only as they appear. As for Facebook it came down to one simple rule :

if I strongly dislike your post, I unfollow you.

Literally 1 second.

In less than 2 days, a Pareto law of annoyance was revealed before my eyes : 80% of the annoying posts are generated by 20% of your Facebook contacts. Actually more like 90%/10%.

Suddenly my wall became a place I had pleasure to go to again.

Unexpected discoveries

Originally I learned that approach in dealing with technical debt in software development : you give up solving the whole mess proactively and just start reacting to bugs as they are discovered or rediscovered. Here I had a  few more learnings.

1) I realised what I was looking for along the way

  • the positive and appreciative people
  • the proactive and socially progressists
  • sharp humour
  • Internet / music curation of my liking
  • news of people I care about
  • news of parts of the world they care about

Those who annoyed me were

  • the ones whining about anything
  • the pessimistics and cynics turning anything negatively
  • the lecturers (“Do a detox diet coz you suck at eating, all right?”)
  • the Facebook frenzies (one post every 10 minutes)
  • the boring (“hey my bus is late”)

2) My biggest assumption about the need of a spring cleanup appears wrong

my forgotten friends are mostly silent. Some become active sometimes and are actually nice contributors to my wall.

3) Friends can be a very efficient source of world and local news

This comes with a clear filtering bias but this bias is more obvious to spot than bias in conventional media (or my own choice of news media)

Not fun conclusion : in the wake of the Paris attack 3 month later I was away in Hong Kong. My Facebook became my primary point of communication and news. I’m glad I had this place to be surrounded by these good people and read their fine words.

Avoiding confusion about what iterations means

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In agile, we call Iteration a fixed time period. In Scrum (one of the agile methods), an iteration is called a Sprint. By that we mean a fixed cadence of work.

I witnessed several trainings struggling on the same topic, trainers and attenders alike. I heard many people I coached mixing notions right out of a Scrum training.

So let’s see if we can spell out this confusion for the future.

Overusing the Sprint / Iteration words

Many times I hear the word sprint used for “a fragment of the product” or “an amount of work to do”. I guess it’s originally a shortcut from “fragment of product done in the time of a Sprint”, or “amount of work planned for the time of the next Sprint”.

However, for someone not used to agile, it’s confusing. Trainer said it’s a fixed time period. Then trainer seems to say it’s an amount of work. There’s something that magically make an amount of work fit in a fixed time frame. Coz for someone discovering agile it’s painted with mystery.

In a recent training our attenders where from waterfall world (where you plan according to effort), and started ask questions mixing notions of effort and time. The other trainer and I have been paddling for 20 minutes not knowing why our trainees kept mixing notions despite our explanations… until I realized we abused the meaning of iteration. So much for clarity.

The trainees didn’t see that in Agile we are now planning in term of time box, giving a pace of work where the amount of result is variable. In their previous world you start planning from effort that will span in phases of variable durations.

Classic check that you failed to lead to cadence thinking

If you don’t sort this early, later on the project they will be surprised when through the course of a sprint (again, a fixed time cadence) throughput don’t go as planned. They weren’t prepared for that since they weren’t driven away from there previous “effort” frame of reference. Again, they’re confused.

Usually I let it go since after a few sprint they will get it, but in the meantime they struggle and they are unable to explain it to other project partners and stakeholders that are not used to agile projects.

Well, they get it… actually I’ve seen Product Owners and even Scrum Masters still mixing notions after a year. I also saw agile veteran projects, year longed, intoxified by the notion of planned throughput.

A few classic tense to avoid

Guess what ? I saw coach and trainers also not being able to precisely sort the notion. (yes, me angry here)

Here’s a few quotes I heard from trainers that led trainees into mixing the two notions

  • “you did all the Sprint”, “you didn’t do all your Sprint”. Of course they did. How could you fail or succeed 2 weeks?

    Instead, you can say you achieved in the course of the spring less than you predicted, or more.

  • “let’s plan your releases into iterations”. You just can’t decide that.

    Instead, you can say (after the project has acquired its rhythm), “let’s try to predict what will be done at each iteration”.

  • “we will report the sprint on the next sprint”. Again, it may be just that you are shortcutting words, but for those discovering agile, it’s confusing. Instead you can say “During the next sprint we will work on the user stories that aren’t Done”

Avoiding the big trap of the initial project -planning-

After starting to spot the confusion, I realized it came mostly during the first initial roadmap creation, and can be avoided there.

Today I pay great attention to not use the notion of time when doing the first story map and roadmap definition (inventorying the project features scope and setting it into successive interesting releases).

By extension I don’t use the word iteration or sprint either.

I carefully choose my words since it may be that my coachees has been misled during a previous training (more on that later).

So far, it works, I have very little questions that mixes the nations. So the confusion went from me.

Practically :

when I do a roadmap, I ask the product owner to prioritize items typically by one of these two strategies :

  • “Buy a feature” exercise

    “If you could have 3 of these features in short term (or Epic, or macro-story whichever terminology you use), which one would you like to see done and working ? Then which ones would you pick next ? etc”. See ? Sequence thinking, but no notion of time.

  • Dichotomic prioritization

    “here’s a line, this is your mid-project. What would you see first ? What would you see next ?” (you can also use “must have / should have / why not, or any criteria to make prioritization happen)

    Then I draw another line in the middle of the first and second quadrant. (interesting variant : I draw 4 lines and ask for 4 releases directly ; let’s not digress)

    At this time, I never introduced the notion of When things are going to get done. Only what should comes first.

The notion of time will only be introduced on a next estimates workshop. Then I will follow the advice of J.Rothman and only use the words predictions.

Erm, Scrum industry, wtf ?

You mind if I end with a rant ? Gotta unload my heart. It was my first impulsion into writing this.

Scrum industry, you’re a powerful machine, you help popularizing agile and raise new generations of Agile Trainers and coach by the hundreds. But when you fuck up such detail we coach in the field have a hard time cleaning up the mess.

And no, don’t look away, the mistake can’t be made in flow-style Agile (Kanban and such) since we just speak about cadence and don’t even talk about iterations planning. I spotted that constantly will people coming out from various Scrum trainings.

So to my beloved pairs teaching Scrum : can you check that the confusion of iteration = time is not engraved in your training slide ? Thank you very much

Bisous bisous

Encouraging team’s freedom : how much is enough ?

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When talking with directors about how to enable collective intelligence and co-responsability in their teams, they usually find me too strict regarding their own behavior.
« Yes, last week I’ve been keeping someone’s action on hold -it was over a detail, but I didn’t understood her decision, you know. And the next day I stepped in and took direct control of à team’s action plan, telling people what to do.
But what’s the deal, that’s just two times, right ? On average, I let them go on their own if it’s good for the business. They know I expect them to decide and act without waiting for validation on details, right ? »

My point is : no, they probably don’t.

To explain why, I’ll use a reverse example.

Reverse proposition: dictatorship

Imagine a dictator of a 150 people village. How many people does he have to punish to remove any attempt of free-thinking and free initiative ?
My bet : 2 are enough.
It’s not about controlling all of the free-thinking leaders, it’s about making an example, telling a message. Once people got the message, they’ll stay away from displeasing you. The first punishment makes an example, the second one set a pattern. Then the word spread. Self-restraining behavior will soon appear.

Now let’s say the dictator changes his mind.
How many people does he need to reward to remove the former message, to say « good you take that initiative on your own. It helps ! » ? 10, 20 rewards at least, right ? While restraining from any censorship

Back in our management situation.
Control messages are far more powerful because they’re calling our inner surviving sense. « Don’t get into bad situation » comes before « Thrive in your life ». No balance is possible because these are not competing on the same level : safety wins.

You’re the boss, boss

As a CTO/CEO, you have a lot of power and influence on the people that works for you, probably more than you think.
So when you’re a manager, a CTO, a CEO, and you forget yourself 1 or 2 times per week by being over-controlling, censoring someone who takes an initiative you didn’t understood (in other words : you freaked out), you don’t get an « average » message at the end of the week. You drawn a powerful pattern that you’ll have a hard time to remove.
That’s why, even if I’m being tolerant as a coach, I stay relentless about the behavior required to set a proper messages.

Now, if you’re asking yourself « Am I doing enough to get my teams confident about their freedom to think and act by themselves ? », I would use two reverse questions instead :
1) how many censoring actions are needed to kill people’s investment in your project ?
2) how far are you from that number ?

Meet in circle for circularity

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Your coworker, what a jerk, right, interrupting people like that ? You can’t event figure how to raise a word in these damned monthly meeting. So when it’s your turn, you use it as much as you can. And… you keep it a bit too much, maybe. Think about a vicious circle, right ?

There’s a basic trick to prevent people -yourself included- from interrupting each others during meetings : have the chairs set in a close circle, 2 or 3 meters wide.

We’re all bullying from time to time, let’s be honest. But when you can see everyone at once, feel them close, you know who’s talking and who’s about to. There’s also a pressure to take others in count before bullying around. So consider this trick a good way to stop yourself from being harsh. Suggest it to your coworkers for yourself.

I see a few cases when this no-brainer of meeting facilitation is forgotten

Presentation followed by a question / answers session

After a coworker ended her classy powerpoint, ask 30 seconds before the talking to move the chairs as to have everyone in circle, in each other’s sight. Yes, in conferences too, as much as you can, have people move their chairs or themselves before the Q/A.

Tables are set in U shape

or anything too large, dismantle them form each other. Have people sitting closer, 2 or 3m max. If you like, remove the table, best trick ever for honest conversation.

When there’s this big one-piece of un-removable presidential table

I’ve seen that. A large table set up as a triangle, proudly riveted to the ground. It set people apart in 3 factions at every meeting, 5 meters away, with people at the corners feeling unengaged, and people in the middle of the sides feeling exposed.
Well, get rid of that table. It deserves all you can. Talk to the boss. There’s important things running in this meeting room, right ? otherwise nobody would have put such a proud piece of furniture there. Get. Rid. Of. It. Replace it with simple tables on wheels so you can easily rearrange the room whenever you want.

You’ll thank me.

… now, I do know it may take some months. Until then, try to set up a circle of chairs beside the table. You’ll prove how much more efficient and healthy meetings are. Now, go get the chainsaw.