Highlights from a successful 2016

The end of a calendar year is always a moment when we look back to gather new energy for the upcoming months: it’s been a great year and agile42 has been chosen as Winners at Red Herring Top 100 Europe 2016 and listed in the TOP 500 Fastest Growing Companies in Germany in the survey prepared by FOCUS magazine!

We worked with fantastic, inspiring and challenging clients but our greatest delight has been the growth of our team to better accommodate projects at all latitudes and the ever changing environment in the Agile world.

Andrea Tomasini, Bent Myllerup and Peter Hundermark have been approved as Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) Educators, new program from Scrum Alliance. Joanne Perold has joined the ranks of CST (Certified Scrum Trainers), while Gregory Keegan and Konrad Pogorzala have been confirmed Certified Team Coaches, first ones in Europe. Gaetano Mazzanti has been approved as Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) and Dave Sharrock has attained SPC4 as SAFe Program Consultant.

In Europe we welcomed as new coaches Noel Viehmeyer, Javier Pérez, Russell Hill and Garbrand van der Molen. In North America Sam Lipson, Lukas Klose, Christopher Trudeau, Atul Khanapure, Marius de Beer, together with Client Relationship Manager Burt Hopkins and Office Team Member Suzanne Daly. Stefano Rago from our sister company Agilo Software has joined the group of trainers for specialized technical classes at selected clients.

And from January 2017 we will add to our South African team Mariet Visser, an experienced coach and a keen observer, always looking for new ways to optimise the system and influence both the people & the process. Read more on our blog.

Looking forward to another great year together!

Officially Hot in Germany

agile42 has again been listed in the TOP 500 Fastest Growing Companies in Germany in years 2012-2015, according to the annual survey prepared by FOCUS magazine in cooperation with Statista, and at number #9 in the specific category of Fastest Growing Consulting Business (this is five places up from last year!)

Cover of Focus special issue
Certificate from Focus special issue

The research company Statista compiled a list of the top 500 companies for FOCUS magazine that have had particularly high revenue growth in the period from 2012 and 2015. This list includes both private and publicly traded companies. The minimal requirement were that the company acted independently and was not a subsidiary of another company. The company had to based in Germany and had a turnover of at least 100.000 Euro in 2011 and 1.8 Million Euro in 2014.

Earlier this year a special issue of the magazine also listed senior coach and agile42 co-founder Andrea Tomasini as one of the best for Leadership Coaches and one of the best Team Development Coaches in Germany.

Owler "Hot in Berlin" 2016Last but not least, agile42 has been named a winner of the 2016 HOT in Berlin Award by online site Owler!
 
Each year, Owler recognizes the top trending companies in cities around the world, with winners chosen based on several different metrics, including number of followers on Owler, insights collected from the community, social media followers, and blog posts over the past year.
 
We are proud to be one of the most popular, top trending companies in Berlin and of the attention we get in Germany and around the world.

You can contact [email protected] for further information.

Mariet Visser joins agile42

Mariet VisserI am very excited to have Mariet Visser as part of our team from next January. I met Mariet in 2012 while working at DSTV. We fast became more than colleagues. I enjoy her considered thinking and experimental problem-solving style.

She has a magic super power where she can get a whole group of people to consider a new angle of thought that they didn’t even realise they were missing, in a way that is quiet and non-threatening. She creates space for people to engage and I have enjoyed bouncing ideas around together to get a new perspective.

Here is a bit more about Mariet in her own words…

I am very passionate about helping teams & organisations grow & succeed in their Agile journey. My passion is directly correlative to working with people, helping them become the best they can be, together as a team, as well as in their own capacity. The agile values & principles are well aligned with my own personal values, which is what has led me to being so dedicated & inspired in this role.

I am a keen observer & I enjoy a good challenge, always looking for new ways to optimise the system, looking at influencing both the people & the process. I am a very experimental & innovative thinker, & particularly enjoy finding previously undiscovered ways to solve old problems.

I gained most of my experience in this role over the past 5 to 6 years, initially taking on the Scrum Master role in 2011, and soon after gaining some exposure in the Product Owner role. Since then, I’ve helped many teams form, storm, norm & with the necessary allowance to fail & learn fast, perform.

In my spare time, I enjoy reading, spending time with my dogs, friends & loved ones, playing a good playstation game & having a good braai of course!

 

Organizational resilience and anti-fragility at QED 2016

In May thanks to our friends from CROZ I participated at QED2016, the jubilee edition of the Quality in Enterprise Development Conference held in Zadar on the beautiful Adriatic coast of Croatia. I presented a new talk, How to grow your organization resilience and anti-fragility, you can find the video here and on YouTube.


Bringing agility to an organizational level requires a set of new skills and practices to emerge. While we have plenty of example on how agility can impact teams performance, by adopting well proven practices, there is still a lot of uncertainty in what to bring to an organizational level. Inspecting and adapting as an organization requires different structures and a more strategic approach, if we want to maximize the learning effect. Chaotic and uncontrolled experimentation and local adaptations can rapidly tear an organization apart.

Focus on value and customers are important to set a common direction, but to roll out a shared strategy we need a solid and coherent cultural context, or the strategy will fail. Explicitly measuring and designing culture is a key enabler towards agility and can provide incredible advantages to an organization development. Understanding how to lead such change and enabling people to participate in creating rapid value, is the one thing that might save your company in the rough waters of today’s market… Are you ready for the challenge?


Scrum Master vs. Project Manager

Project Managers are the lubricant that makes projects run. According to the PMI, the role of the PM is the director of action, the key role responsible for delivery of the project. But how does that role change as agile practices are introduced, and a pool of resources manipulated by PMs becomes a swarm of dedicated agile teams? We’ve often struggled to explain the difference.

As agile coaches we are tempted to give the irresponsible response that agile teams “don’t need project management” or agile companies “don’t do projects”. While true, the answer is uninspired and unhelpful. If we really want to understand the change that agile brings to project delivery, surely we need a better response than the mantra of “no project managers”? This led us to consider a better metaphor for the role of project management vs. scrum masters (or coaches) in the success of product delivery. We chose that of the one-level traffic junction.

Many cities use traffic lights to battle congestion. Traffic flow through many major intersections is managed by a central authority – in the 20th century perhaps a staffed control center, nowadays computers with sophisticated sensors and adaptive algorithms. The trick here is to force half of the traffic to stand still while the other half moves. There is a bit of switching involved, but nearby junctions can be connected so that batches of cars can run on a “green wave” across several blocks.

The traffic circle (or roundabout as it’s known in the UK) represents a more distributed and devolved solution to the same problem. First invented in France as the carrefour à gyration, it requires more space than a cross junction but increases safety and throughput. In a traffic circle, there are no central directions to be followed. Instead drivers need to apply a number of rules to their own local position in the junction. People have the same visibility as everyone else and take responsibility for their own surroundings. When dozens of drivers pay attention and interact in this way, positive results emerge on the global level.

When people start understanding the system, synergy starts to appear between drivers. People come up with things like the zipper merge method, where cars from two lanes alternate into one lane. This works particularly well under congestion, reducing queues and increasing the perception of fairness among the drivers.

Similarly to how a PM is the central authority of a traffic light junction, the ScrumMaster can be seen as the “RoundaboutMaster”. The responsibilities of the role are, roughly, to teach and remind drivers about the rules, to help them improve the roundabout, and to straighten out any delays and deadlocks. The roundabouts pioneer in the UK, Frank Blackmore, would park himself in the middle of a roundabout and support bewildered drivers by shouting instructions through a megaphone. (This presumably makes him the first RoundaboutMaster ever.)

Initially the ScrumMaster would have to spend considerable thought on the physical and artificial constraints placed on the traffic. Luckily ready-made collections of practices — Scrum, XP or Kanban — exist for the drivers. As soon as these are in place — constraints and rules have been deployed — drivers can follow simple rules to make decisions for themselves, and we will find that certain behaviors emerge.

But we can’t choose any random collection of rules. For example, if we decide to give cars entering the roundabout the right of way — as was the case in the UK up to the 1960s — they are likely to block the route for drivers who want to go forward to another exit. And when a deadlock forms, the rule ensures that neighboring parts of the junction also get blocked. Conversely, if cars already in the roundabout are given the right of way — another concept introduced by Frank Blackmore — they can move out and free up space for new cars.

But does this devolved, distributed approach scale? We know that the PM approach scales hierarchically through the Project Management Office (PMO). But even if one Scrum team works fine, how do we manage dozens or hundreds of teams?

In 1972, Swindon in the UK saw the opening of one of the most striking attempts at traffic circles for directing high volumes of traffic through an intersection. The Magic Roundabout, as it become known, was designed by nobody less than our old friend Frank Blackmore, and contains five interconnected traffic circles forming a large reverse circle in the middle. This extreme example of the art of roundabouts has been nominated as one of the scariest junctions in the UK several times. Tourists and visitors are often advised to stay in the outer circle and leave the inner ring to the locals who presumably know what they are doing. (In Swindon, you can purchase T-shirts with the text “I survived the Magic Roundabout”. They are also building a second, slightly smaller magic roundabout.)

Roundabout in Swindon, Wiltshire, Uk.

Roundabout in Swindon, Wiltshire, Uk.

Despite all this, the Magic Roundabout in Swindon is a resounding success regarding throughput as well as safety. Drivers can choose the shortest paths and spend less time inside, which reduces the number of vehicles inside and thereby increases the throughput. Over four decades’ worth of statistics show that drivers are 75% less likely to get injured in this type of roundabout, mostly due to the low speed but also the slanted angle of entry. In fact, the Magic Roundabout seems to be the safest flat traffic junction layout ever invented!

Half a dozen Magic Roundabouts have been built in the UK over the years. Despite the positive evidence most of them have now been rebuilt using different layouts, and no more are being built (except in Swindon, obviously). The Magic Roundabout has simply been killed by public opinion — most people seem to be scared when they have to actually think for themselves. It’s so much easier to disconnect your brain and let somebody else take the responsibility.

And on that note, we would like to end our analogy. What is your organization doing when it comes to managing projects? Are you allowing your fear of local thinking override the need for smooth projects? Let us know in the comments.

Photo “Traffic Light Tree @ Billingsgate London” by Loco Steve
Photo “Roundabout” by born1945

Money Can’t Buy You Agile

The article published in the October issue of MQ – Management und Qualität (Management and Quality) shows that Agile methods cannot be “bought” but you learn your way to them.  The transition to agile methods will not only change the processes in the company, but also the attitude of all participants: teams get more responsibility and the management style changes from “Command & Control” to “Agile Leadership”. To implement these changes successfully and sustainably, we need a targeted, role-based coaching.

Results Pyramid

Presenting at Agile Coaching Amsterdam Meetup

The meetup was hosted by Irdeto in Hoofddorp, who served some excellent food before the meetup started. Javier Perez presented his learnings as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach from the perspective of the Scarf Model.

Javier Perez at Agile Coaching Amsterdam Meetup

Inspired by the presentation from javier, some topics were idenified to be discussed further in smaller breakout groups. There were five topics identified and there were some useful insights in the breakout sessions. Some things worth mentioning during the presentation of the breakout results were:

Management 3.0 – Delegation Board/Poker
https://management30.com/practice/delegation-board/

The poker cards can be used to determine the maturity of the team in regards to some responsibilities. There are seven levels of delegation; Tell, Sell, Consult, Agree, Advise, Inquire and Delegate. The board can visualize these levels for various responsibilities. This can then be used to determine what is needed for the team to move certain responsibilities to the next stage.

Drexlet-Sibbit Team Model
http://www.grove.com/methodology_drexlerSibbetTeamPerformanceModel.php

Some models about team performance were discussed, probably the most well known is the Tuckman Model of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. The Drexlet-Sibbit Model consists of seven stages and is more indepth about the needs for each of the stage, defining what is needed for teams to advance to the next level and what risks are there to fall back to the previous level.

5 dysfunctions of a team – Patrick Lencioni
http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions

Another model based on the book from Patrick Lencioni, written as a novell about a fictitious Management Team. In it Lencioni describes the Maslov pyramid of team performance. otherwise known as the the 5 dysfunctions of a team.

  1. Absence of Trust
  2. Fear of Conflict
  3. Lack of Commitment
  4. Avoidance of Accountability
  5. Inattention to Results

Here the slides of Javier’s presentation.

Meetup: Supporting Large Agile Teams

De Agile Coaching Meetup in Amsterdam was dit keer te gast bij Irdeto in Hoofddorp. Niet alleen stelde Irdeto de ruimte ter beschikking, er was ook een fantastisch verzorgd diner. Javier Perez van agile42 Duitsland presenteerde zijn inzichten als Scrum Master en Agile Coach vanuit het perspectief van het SCARF model.

Javier Perez presenteert bij de Agile Coaching meetup
Javier Perez over het veranderen van het geloofssysteem van mensen bij de Agile Coaching meetup

Na de presentatie werden kleinere groepen gevormd om gerelateerde onderwerpen verder uit te werken, de foto’s en resultaten zijn gedeeld in de Meetup groep.

Een aantal onderwerpen uit de presentatie en breakouts:

3 major trends at Agile Open Holland 2016

People lining up for unconference slots at Agile Open Holland 2016agile42 Nederland visited the Agile Open Holland conference again in 2016. This long running conference is held in the centre of the Netherlands, and many agile practitioners from Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands find their way every year. This year saw another great turn up with a great mix of experienced agile coaches, trainers, agile practitioners and people new or even unfamiliar with agile.

During this conference, these are 3 major trends we observed:

  • Agile in non-IT environments
  • Large, full-organisation agile transitions
  • The rise of agile coaching

Agile in non-IT environments

Quite some attendees of the conference came looking for answers on how to apply agile in the domains neighbouring to IT, such as embedded development, Human Resources and Marketing. Now that agile processes such as Kanban and Scrum are well established in IT, other departments are taking notice. Some of the people were looking for adapter patterns to align their work with IT, while other were looking to adopt agile practices themselves. 

Large, full-organisation agile transitions

Mostly in conversations with other agile coaches it became clear that many of them are involved with full-organisation agile transitions. A couple of things stood out with these transitions:

  • all of the organisations discussed were in traditional industries such as finance, energy and manufacturing
  • initiated by top-level management to deal with long-standing organisational issues
  • most were rolled out big-bang, across the entire organisation
  • most were inspired by the Spotify case study, some by SAFe and oddly none by the LeSS framework

What stands out is that many of these organisations seem to copy the tools, not the principles. It will be interesting to see how they fare on their journey towards agile. Even though there is no one-size-fits-all solution, it is our experience that organisations who take deliberate, incremental steps in adopting agile might seem to start slower but get their faster.

The rise of agile coaching

A lot of Scrum Masters were looking to improve their agile coaching skills. The reason for this seems related to the previous trends: more departments of organisations are looking for assistance in adopting agile, and the maturity of Scrum in many IT departments sees Scrum Masters evolve from trainers/mentors to coaches. If are a ScrumMaster or leader and want to take your coaching skills to the next level, we offer an Advanced Team Coaching Course as part of our Coach the Coach program and Team Coaching Framework.

A darker side of this trend is that the term ‘agile coach’ in some cases simply replaced the term ‘Scrum Master’. This seems to be side effect of organisations that copy the Spotify model instead of understanding it, then making their own journey towards agile.

Collaboration

Scaling Collaboration at Let’s Test South Africa

I am very happy to attend Let’s Test South Africa 2016 and present my workshop, Escape the Curse of the Temple – Scaling Collaboration.

I recently attended the Retrospective Facilitators Gathering in Portugal, where I met up with a bunch of awesome people who love incorporating board games into their coaching. I, for one, love playing to learn something, and most adults are just big kids who love to play at the drop of a hat.

In fact, it is through the experiential nature of play that adults learn abstract concepts or things that previously was difficult to achieve, but in the game space they were able to get some significant ah-ha moments.

This workshop revolves around teaching participants about team collaboration and how to scale that to external stakeholders using an adventure board game as the centerpiece. Teams will be formed and each will have their own board game. There are curses and gems, and the ultimate treasure is the team learning to collaborate to escape the curse of the temple.

There’s adventure and music – the purpose is to show people that either the whole team wins or the whole team loses – there is no winner takes all.

Photo by thinkpublic – http://flic.kr/p/5CT2FH