Steve Neiderhauser

One Benefit of Story Points

On Scrum projects I've had people come up to me and say, "I have no idea what's happening on a project unless I can see hours."  My response to that is you can't tell how the team is performing with hours.  Is the team more productive when they work 60 hours a week?  30 hours a week?

Story points (relative estimate of effort) show you the improvement of the team… Story points show the velocity and how much a team completed in a sprint.

Here's a story point chart of a team I coached. By using Scrum and Extreme Programming, the team increased its velocity by 391%.

 

Successful Habits of Writers

The skills needed to write software and novels are similar in many ways. Lately I've seen software developers quoting "The Elements of Style" as a guide for creating software.

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words…"

At a software conference, I heard one developer ask for guidance.  "How do you complete software on time? I work 12 hours a day... I answer email. I read blogs. I update my Facebook status."

As laughter filled the room, the speaker, David Heinemeier Hansson, playfully said, "You may want to turn email off."  He went on to explain how he created Ruby on Rails while attending school… He worked on Rails for only a couple hours a day.  A couple of highly focused hours.

Author Jessica Brody provides three tips to help you write. I like her ticking time bomb tip.  She had an old laptop that had only three hours of battery life. Jessica would start to write and when the battery stopped so did her writing.  A clever way to train her mind to be productive.

Swiss Army Knife

An analysis of IT jobs shows that companies are less willing to pay a premium for specialists.  Companies are searching for people who have business skills, multiple talents... a balanced professional who can make projects happen.

To quote David Foote, "They're looking for walking Swiss Army Knives."

The emergance of Agile as a development approach may have something to do with this shift in thinking.  Agile teams are composed of people with cross-functional skills, allowing the team to deliver working software every two weeks.

Are User Stories like Movies

Several months ago I heard an Agile consultant lecture that User Stories are like the stories we see in movies because there's three parts to a user story — Beginning, middle, end.

That's like saying a Rueben sandwich tastes great because it has three parts.  The first bite, the last bite, and all the bites in the middle.  In fact, story expert James Bonnet writes about the limits of the three act structure.

Here's two ways User Stories are like stories.

• They both revolve around problems. The problem in a movie has to be big enough to capture our attention.
• A good movie invokes surprise, delight,curiosity. The screenwriter avoids spelling out every detail, making us active participants in the movie.  User Stories are like that too.

Product Owners should write User Stories in a way that elicits a conversation with developers.  No need to describe every detail of a requirement.  The conversation assures developers actively participate in the design.

So the conversation concept produces some of the same benefits that screenwriters create by using implied dialogue techniques.

NoNo the Penguin

If you discovered an entertaining method to learn the ways of a change agent would you jump on it. Because our world is moving faster and faster with each passing day, your answer should probably be "Yes, I want to master the art of change."

Lucky for you, John Kotter has written a story called Our Iceberg Is Melting. Its about a colony of penguins who learn their iceberg is no longer a safe place to live. How does this melting-iceberg-cute-penguin story help you?

Well, story is like a central IV to your brain.  Story delivers insights that help you navigate this ambiguous world. Professor Kotter deftly uses story techniques to capture your imagination and inspire you.

Let's consider one of the characters — NoNo the penguin.

How did NoNo get his name.  One theory suggested his first words as a baby were not "Ma" or "Pa," but "No, No."  This perturbing penguin objected to every idea Fred (hero of the story who wants to save penguin colony from melting iceberg) came up with to solve the melting iceberg problem.

I told a coworker about NoNo the penguin. He replied, "Yes, we had a NoNo at the last place I worked.  That guy hated new ideas."  I bet you've endured more than one NoNo during your career.  In the IceBerg story, NoNo is an archetype.  Story consultant, James Bonnet calls this the holdfast or threshold guardian archetype.

If you're unable to overcome the resistance created by a holdfast, you may not be up to the challenge or ready to receive the benefits of change.

Show, Don't Tell

For a change effort to succeed, you'll need to do more showing than telling. Here again, John Kotter's story delivers.  Instead of lecturing that demonstrations are more effective than a briefcase of facts, Kotter creates a scene for Fred, showing the future of the iceberg.  To prove the melting ice could fracture into thousands of ice chunks, Fred fills a bottle with water and leaves it out overnight.

At dawn's first light, Fred retrieves the bottle and displays it for doubting penguins to see.  Shock rocks the penguins. The bottle is broken and fractured.  This could be the fate of the iceberg, and the penguins. So they take steps to act.

The hidden message? Instead of reading facts, get your audience to see, feel, act.

Our Iceberg is Melting shows Kotter's 8-step process for leading change. The story provides a context for rapidly learning the 8 steps.  You may want to share the story with a small team, and then provide the story to the entire group that must change.

Stories like Our Iceberg is Melting will help your teams develop ambidextroius skills, allowing them to switch between a story that motivates and the details needed to implement change.

Scrum Lectures from Zurich

Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber gave this Scrum presentation to an audience in Zurich.

Here are some key points.

• Goal of Scrum is to get 5 to 10 times productivity increase.  At 10 times productivity, your team is in hyper-productive state.
• Getting software done and tested at feature level so the end user can evaluate, will double performance.
• When product backlog is in ready state, that will double productivity again.
• Scrum is a disruptive technology... When you do it well you will put your competition out of business.

Adaptive Enterprise

Creating a company that's flexible and has the ability to adapt will help you get inside your competitor's business cycle. These companies sense needs of customers and respond to changes. I've create a diagram that shows some of the areas where flexibility is key.

If your company creates products, building options into products from the ground up enhances your ability to delight customers.  In fact, options in flexibility can be used in almost any product, from making malteds to making movies.

How do movie moguls use options?  Producers may have two different endings for a movie.  Instead of making an early decision and selecting one ending and playing it in theaters across America, they play the two movies in only two theaters, a different ending in each.  After the movie they interview patrons and discover what movie customers like best.

Producers learn from feedback.  Perhaps they adjust the ending or go with the one customers love.

Kanban

I often use a Kanban approach to help teams deliver services or zap software bugs.

I've created a short presentation showing a few Kanban benefits.

Be Curious − Poke the Box

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The man in a hurry, pictured above, is an archetype.  According to Seth Godin the man in a hurry is you, the excited, opportunist who realizes that the key to success is forward motion.

Poke the Box is a book that inspires you to start things − Projects, books, new software products.  Instead of waiting for a boss to promote you or pick you, reject the tyranny of the system, pick yourself.  Start projects, and start projects often.

When you are the person who starts things, the market will reward the genius in you, the innovator in you.  True opportunities rest with your curiosity.  If an idea keeps popping into your head, and the idea is magnified by chance encounters and events, be curious and follow the creative breadcrumbs.  See where it takes you.  Artists have written many songs and movies because they pursed that mysterious lady, intuition.

Want to work on projects that matter?  Pick up Seth’s book and let him show you how to start, how to ship it.  Shipping it is the ultimate forward motion.

The act of initiating projects is transformative.  Remember, forward motion is a defensible business asset, so be bold and transform your business and markets.

Confluence Wiki

Being part of a team that persuaded a company to start using a Confluence Wiki, I was delighted to see how effortless it was for people to start using Confluence  − Almost zero training.

Agents of change understand that easy to use means easy to change behaviors.