Stuck in an overlong Agile stand up? Try the two hands rule
When working with Agile teams the daily stand up meeting provides a heart beat to the day and an opportunity for team members to share information. Stand up meetings work best when they are short and balance the inputs across all the people in the team. A common problem is stand ups that start running too long.
When two hands are raised then it's a signal to move the stand up meeting on
The Two Hands Rule
Sometimes the conversations at stand up can get too detailed or go on too long. For these situations we’ve introduced the “two hands” rule; if anyone thinks the current conversation has gone off topic, or is no longer effective, then they raise a hand. Once a second person raises a hand then that’s a sign to stop the conversation and continue with the rest of the stand up. Those speaking can continue the conversation after the stand up has finished.
This approach makes it easy for people to share their view on the effectiveness of the conversation in a way that reduces the risk of causing offence. It also provides a way for the team to detect and correct its own behaviour.
I introduced this idea recently to a team who agreed to give it a try. In a stand up a few days later I was talking with a team member and didn’t realise that our conversation had got too detailed and gone on too long. I missed seeing that two other team members had put their hands up. It wasn’t until one of them spoke up that I noticed! This is one of the characteristics of difficult conversations; we often become blind to signs, easily spotted by others, that the conversation has become ineffective. By agreeing with the team to use the “two hands” rule they helped me detect when they thought I’d become ineffective.
The technique can have some downsides though. It can feel direct or confrontational, especially when people first experience it. It’s important to discuss any issues after the stand up and consider reviewing the practice in a retrospective.
I’d like to hear your thoughts. Have you had stand up meetings that have taken too long? What approaches have you used? If you’ve tried something like the “two hands” rule, how did it go?
Overcoming three mental blocks to listening in difficult conversations
If you listen to most conversations you’ll hear remarkably few questions. When a conversation becomes difficult then we drop all questions; we spend most of our time telling others how we see the world. Here are three mental blocks that stop us from listening and ways to overcome them.
Block #1: “If I listen and understand you, you’ll assume that I agree with you”
Difficult conversations often come down to a sense of us trying to win, or at least not lose against the other person. A common fear is that if we spend time listening and understanding the other’s point of view and not defending our view, then they may think we agree with them.
A similar fear is that if we spend our mental energy focussed on their view we may forget our own view or forget our “killer points”.
A useful reframe is to realise that listening and understanding another’s view doesn’t mean that you have to agree. If you’re worried about forgetting your points, then say something like:
“I want to spend some time listening to how you’re seeing this situation so that I can better understand your point. Even after doing this I may still see things from my point of view, but I want to start by understanding yours”
Block #2: “It’ll be quicker if I just tell you what’s so obviously true (to me)”
When we’re convinced of our own view, or feeling under time pressure, it can seem easier just to tell others our view of the situation, because we think that it will take less time. Just telling others how we see things it actually increases the chances of the conversation taking longer.
When our focus is on telling it’s more likely we’ll start to cut other people off or use strong language to push our points. This increases the chances that the other people will feel pressured, misunderstood or insulted. Others will often respond defensively, either by expressing their point of view back at us, or by going quiet and pretending to agree. These defensive actions mean that conversations take longer as sources or disagreement are not uncovered or discussed.
You can’t demand that someone else listens and understands you. Our ability to stay in conversations with others depends on them perceiving that we are willing to meet their needs. Listening and understanding others means that they’re more likely to listen to us.
Block #3: “It’s critical that we overcome this major disagreement”
When we feel threatened in a difficult conversation we amplify small differences in views or approach into big problems. We often miss that the “major disagreement” is actually a minor disagreement.
Being able to step back and get curious about how another person sees the world means that we get a chance to more accurately understand the situation and avoid ‘making a mountain out of a mole hill’.
My earlier post “Good question: how one good question can unblock a stuck conversation” shows an example.
Summary
Learning to ask questions about other’s views and listen is important in having more effective conversations. Hopefully understanding and challenging the mental blocks that stop us from listening in difficult conversations will help you stay in a more productive frame of mind when practising these skills.
Can you relate to these mental blocks? I’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences in the comments.
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers consistently deliver the right software solutions. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation.
Image Credit: Image Credit: Pasma, on Flickr
The Art of Handling Elephants in the Room
When we spot and elephant in the room, or an undiscussable topic that isn’t being addressed, it is tempting to tackle it head on. However, just naming the elephant or telling people that they’re not discussing an undiscussable topic is rarely a productive approach.
Having spotted an elephant in the
room it is tempting to shout about it
Here’s a scenario from a team’s retrospective meeting:
The team had talked about a problem and had decided to hold a workshop to focus on that issue. Kelly, the external consultant, saw a problem that no one was mentioning.
“I think there’s an elephant in the room here!” declared Kelly
“Really?”
“Yes, there’s a proposal to have a workshop, but no one has mentioned that last time we ran a workshop no one turned up! This seems like an undiscussable topic!” said Kelly
There was general agreement that people hadn’t shown up for the last workshop. After some discussion the team decided “let’s not have a workshop then” and the meeting ended.
I think Kelly’s intention was honourable – how can I get the group to start discussing things to better understand the cause of problems and ways to avoid them in future.
However, in this scenario, Kelly didn’t get what she wanted – rather than get to the cause of their problems in the past, they just decided to bypass these issues and cancel the workshop.
Unfortunately I think Kelly’s behaviour may have contributed to the results she got including the unintended consequences, such as possibly reducing the chance that the team would feel comfortable talking about ‘undiscussable’ topics in future.
Problems with the approach
There are several possible problems I see with Kelly’s approach.
Unclear intent. Kelly raises the issue of the groups not mentioning that no-one attended the previous workshop, but she doesn’t state what her intention for mentioning it was. If you are not explicit about your intention for saying something then people will automatically invent their own reason, which may not have been what you wanted.
Negative assumptions about others’ motives without providing evidence. When Kelly makes the claim that there’s an “elephant in the room” it could be interpreted as her saying that the group were all aware that no one turned up to the previous workshop and that they were all deliberately not mentioning it.
Kelly doesn’t provide any evidence that others are all aware of the issue, or that they have made a deliberate decision to avoid discussing the issue. Kelly’s claim is high on the ladder of inference.
Making an assumption about someone else’s motive, such as thinking “this group is deliberately not talking about a problem they know to exist” is an example of an attribution. Making negative attributions like this without providing evidence can mean that people feel confused or unjustly accused. Once people feel accused then it increases the chance they will respond defensively or withdraw from the conversation.
No curiosity about how others see the situation. Kelly states her view to the group but doesn’t ask whether they see things the same way or see it differently. I’d assume that Kelly was acting as if her view was obvious to others. Since Kelly asked no questions about how others see the situation and expressed her view in a definite way, it reduces the chance that others will offer their view or that Kelly would find out if others saw the situation differently.
Changing the focus from conversation’s content to it’s style is challenging. Moving from talking about the topic of a conversation (“we should have a workshop”) to talking about the style of the conversation (“we’re not discussing the undiscussable”) is a high-impact change of direction. “Going meta” like this is often worthwhile but takes skill, time and energy. To justify the investment it is better to wait until you have solid evidence of a pattern of this type of behaviour. If it’s just a single instance it more effective to keep talking about the content (“how can we make sure people turn up to this next workshop?”) rather than the communication pattern (“we’re not discussing the undiscussable”)
A more effective approach
A more effective approach may have been as follows, with annotations in brackets on what I’m trying to model:
I’d like to check a concern I have about how we are discussing the plan to hold a workshop [share your intent] and see what other’s views are. My recollection was that the last time we planned a workshop no one showed up. I was speaking to Bob and Jane about this yesterday [share your evidence]. Do you remember the last workshop the same way or differently? [be curious about others’ views]
If there was agreement around the fact no-one showed up to the last workshop I’d continue:
This is making me wonder if we are avoiding talking about what happened around the last workshop [state your reasoning]. I would like to talk briefly about what happened so we can avoid the same problems happening with this workshop [state your intent]. In terms of the last workshop, would anyone be willing to share what caused them not to attend? [inquire into others views]
Let me know your view in the comments.
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers consistently deliver the right software solutions. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation.
Image Credit: David Blackwell on Flickr
5 signs your conversation is about to turn toxic
Difficult conversations are often unplanned and sneak up on us. Spotting the signs that your conversation is about to turn toxic gives you a chance to stop your automatic reactions so you can change course, even in the heat of the moment.
Here are five sure-fire ways of spotting that a conversation is turning toxic.
Build your awareness of the signs you’re about to move into conversational ‘silence’ or ‘violence’
1. Your body starts to give you signals
When you’re about to get “hooked” into an unproductive conversation there are obvious changes in your body.
You’re suddenly leaning forward, making strong hand gestures, speaking faster with a strained tone of voice. Your stomach starts to clench up. You start to interrupt and cut other people off.
I’ve discovered my shoulders act like a conversational thermometer, rising higher as the tension increases!
Learning to spot these signs has helped me recognise when the conversation could start to become unproductive.
2. You are certain you’re right
Feeling certain can feel powerful. Being right is important. Tragically it’s times when we feel most certain that we are most at risk of being wrong.
Around topics that are important to us, we often use defective reasoning strategies. One approach is to reason based on how we feel. Since I feel certain that I am right, what I believe is correct!
Rather than being clear about our reasoning and the evidence we have for our views, we simply “ask ourselves” – “Are my intentions good? Do I feel like I’m right?” – without realising that even ‘evil’ people are likely to think they have good intentions.
3. You’re stuck in a repetitious point-counterpoint discussion
When the conversation feels like it’s going around in circles it’s a good sign that you or others have been emotionally triggered. In a group situation you’ll often notice that only a couple of people are speaking and they are just taking turns telling the other person their point of view.
You may notice that you’re acting like an Obnoxious Foreign Tourist – if you weren’t understood the first time, just say it again, but this time louder and with more force!
When you spot yourself about to state same points again, you are probably in this situation. Often a simple change of strategy, such asking a question can break the conversational arm wrestle.
4. You’re in a heroic struggle for truth or justice
When discussing topics close to strongly held belief or values, the focus of the conversation can become a battle for your “truth” or “justice”.
Particularly when we learn new ways or looking at the world (Agile, Lean or Systems Thinking) or new behaviours (pair programming, test driven development) it is often difficult to accept that others do not share our beliefs.
While intending to be helpful and avoid bad outcomes, we often become stuck in our own world view and lose our curiosity in how others see the world. The outcome is that we can come across as religious zealots and end up embarking on conversational “crusades” to protect our sense of truth or justice.
5. You focus on how the other person is causing the problem by being mad or bad
In difficult conversations you can start to focus on how the other person is the source of the difficulty. You may start assuming nasty motives or stupidity to others who don’t share your views – “is this person incompetent or just plain dumb?”.
You can become blind to your own options in a conversation by thinking that they have control over your behaviour or your feelings – “they’re backing me into a corner!” or “they’re making me feel guilty!”.
Noticing that you’re starting to think like this gives you an opportunity to shift perspectives to test if there are joint contributions to the problem and test if the discussion can shift from a win/lose fight to one of mutual help.
Awareness is the first step …
Spotting signs that we are about to get hooked into a toxic conversation is an important skill that allows us to stop and make more productive choices about remaining in the conversation.
When you feel yourself about to hooked it is a good time to stop and get curious. What might the other person be seeing that you’re missing? See if you can solve the puzzle of how their beliefs and interests lead them to see things differently.
What other signs do you look for? Let me know your views in the comments.
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers consistently deliver the right software solutions. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation.
Image Credit: Not getting Involved by TarikB, on Flickr
Management Improvement Carnival #140
I’m hosting this edition of Jon Hunter’s Curious Cat Management Improvement Carnival. It’s been published three times a month since 2006. Here’s my round-up of interesting management-related posts from the last month with a focus on the psychology of change and software development philosophies.
Change Artist Challenge #7: Being Fully Absent by Gerald Weinberg
For managers who want to create systems that allow people to do great work, one solid test is to see if the systems works without you there:
Your challenge is to take a week away from work, and when you get back, notice what changed without you being there. … Do you think you can’t do this? Then you have a different assignment … “If you’re going on a week-long vacation and feel the project cannot do without you, then take a two-week vacation.”
Forecasting misunderstood by David M. Kasprzak
David writes well about understanding the purpose of forecasting and reporting to avoid counter-productive fire-fighting management behaviour:
Forecasting has to do with long-term vision and strategy, measurement, and learning. Focusing on reporting without planning leads to delayed information and chronic “hot buttons” that require immediate attention.
When this occurs, the PDCA cycle is simply broken. The end result is a system where the people in the organization are in a constant state of “Do!” and “Act!” without any sense of why they are doing anything, or if their efforts have actually caused an improvement.
Matt Damon does it again by Ben Decker
One of the challenges for managers is how to present their views in a persuasive way. Ben Decker analyses the techniques Matt Damon used in a recent presentation to a rally against standardised test-score based funding for schools:
[Damon uses a story -] he weaves the point of his speech around his experiences in public schools. This personalizes the message, gives him credibility, and is memorable. When listing out all the growth he experienced in school, he brought it back to the point by saying, “None of these qualities that have made me who I am can be tested.”
This links in my mind with W. Edwards Deming’s statement that “the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable …, but successful managers must nevertheless take account of them”
Is Thinking Allowed? by Tobias Fors
Continuing the theme of managers focussing on what is easy to see, and not what is important, Tobias writes about a manager challenging him for not typing (even though typing is not the bottleneck):
When we sit and think, it looks like we’re doing nothing. This makes it hard to think in many organizations.
Doing is what it takes to change the world, but if we don’t think a little first, how can we know if we’re about to change it for the better or the worse?
Leadership Coaching Tip: A Process for Change by Barbara Alexander
Starting with a reference to Deming’s famous quote “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory”, Barbara writes a summary of the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey including their focus on uncovering the competing commitments and underlying assumptions which keep us “immune from change”:
One example from Immunity To Change that many of us may relate to is the leader whose goal is to be more receptive to new ideas. As you might imagine the behaviors he’s doing instead of his goal include talking too much, not asking open-ended questions and using a curt tone when an employee makes a suggestion. His hidden competing commitments? You guessed it . . . to have things done his way and to maintain his sense of self as a super problem solver
Why progress matters: 6 questions for Harvard’s Teresa Amabile by Daniel H. Pink
Dan Pink reports on research behind “The Progress Principle” (affiliate link) which finds that “people’s ‘inner work lives’ matter profoundly to their performance – and what motivates people the most day-to-day is making progress on meaningful work”. The research showed that support for making progress is more potent than other motivators (incentives, recognition, clear goals, interpersonal support) although surveys have found that it isn’t rated highly by most managers.
Why Is Failure Key to Lean Success? by Michael Balle
In contrast to the support for making progress, Michael Balle defends Lean Sensei’s who leave teams feeling let down by focussing on more on what was not achieved than celebrating what was. Balle talks about improvements made without challenging underlying assumptions (similar to single-loop learning) represent “pretending to learning” and not “real learning (acknowledging and understanding why we were wrong about something)” (similar to double-loop learning). I’m hopeful that a “sensei” could learn to act in ways that could help teams meet the desired higher-order learning without having the potentially de-motivating impact described.
Agile Vs. Lean Startup by Joshua Kerievsky
Whilst the “X vs Y” style is unnecessarily combative, Joshua has done an interesting job contrasting the different practices and approaches between Agile Software Development and the Lean Startup approach (which uses Agile Software Development approaches to “build things right” alongside the Customer Development process focussed on finding what the “right thing to build” is).
Effective decision making: avoid confusing discussions with decisions
A key to effective decision-making is to avoid confusing discussions with decisions. Discussions are important for ensuring that the widest range of information is available to make a decision, but treating a discussion as a decision is likely to lead to confusion, frustration and ineffective actions.
Open discussions are important, but they’re not the same as making a decision
Open discussions are important because they allow everyone to understand the problem, the possible approaches and the concrete proposals for moving forward.
A pattern I’ve seen with teams that struggle to make effective decision is assuming that just because a difficult topic has been discussed there is a shared understanding of what has been decided and a commitment to act consistently with the decision.
Often these assumptions are not stated explicitly, leading to statements like “we decided a lot of things in that meeting” when in fact there weren’t any decisions. This can be followed up later by frustration over “how come we are discussing this again? I thought we decided on this in a previous meeting!”
It is important to be explicit about any decisions made during a meeting. One approach is to highlight them visually, which I’ve used when using a simple kanban approach to meetings.
Some basic characteristics of effective decision making include:
- Being clear about the process used to make the decision
- Allowing people to raise any concerns or interests
- Explicitly stating what the decision is
Have you been in situations where you or someone else has confused discussions from decision making? Tell me about your experiences in the comments.
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers consistently deliver the right software solutions. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation.
Image Credit: CiscoANZ on Flickr
Good question: how to unblock stuck conversations
When discussions become stuck in a ‘death-spiral’ of point-counterpoint views it’s useful to have some techniques to unblock the discussion. One great technique is to shift the focus from telling people about your views and start asking questions to understand theirs.
I was in a bid planning meeting at a large consultancy when the discussion started to enter a conversational death spiral. Manager A believed that there should be a project manager involved in the project whilst Manager B disagreed. The conversation shifted from a discussion to a disagreement – the difference in views hooked the participants into a verbal arm wrestle over who was right.
I realised that neither manager was asking any questions of the other. It was all “let me tell you again why I’m right”.
It was as if each person thought the other person was just failing to see what was obvious to them, so each was using an ineffective strategy of repeating their view again this time stronger and louder.
I fought back my impulse to ‘take sides’ and focus on what one side was missing. Instead I decided to ask a question to move the conversation forward:
Me: “[To Manager A] If we agreed to go with the idea of a project manager, could you say what that would look like to you? How much budget do you think would be needed?”
Manager A: “I think we’d need to use 5% of the budget”
Me: “[To Manager B] How does that sound to you? What issues would you see if 5% of the budget was used?”
Manager B: “I’d assumed it was more than that. If that’s all it would take then that works for me”
One well-placed question changed the nature of the discussion. The reduction in tension in the room was obvious.
My question was designed to take the other person “down their ladder [of inference]” and produce more specific observable data. By doing so it uncovered some assumptions about what exactly was involved.
Have you found switching from backing one side to asking questions about the other side’s ideas has helped unblock conversations? Share your views in the comments.
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers consistently deliver the right software solutions. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation.
Image Credit: newneonunion on flickr
Ineffective pushback to a pushy manager?
How do you deal with a manager who believes that a software development team needs to go faster and should be pushed? I want to review some of the responses to my earlier blog and test the idea that they would create a productive conversation that would lead to effective outcomes.
How does our advice look if others reflect it back to us?
What were the responses?
I got responses from the the earlier post’s comments, twitter and the DZone Agile centre that were mostly from the team’s perspective.
I believe that the responses were intended to be helpful to someone in the manager’s position and raise some important issues. I’ve seen the results of teams accepting a request to “push harder” and in the majority of cases these have been ineffective, demoralising and created more problems down the track. My intent with the earlier post was to encourage a manager with these views to find a way to discuss differences in views in public in order to jointly design productive ways forward.
When handling issues that generate strong points of view it’s important to focus on not just ‘what is right’ but ‘how can I communicate this effectively?’
I’ve summarised some of the responses under headings from the three assumption level ‘rungs’ of the ladder of inference
Explanations:
- Thinking that pushing a team to go faster is a dysfunctional view and implies little intention to help
- The causes of poor performance are a management issue
- It’s probably not a speed of development issue, usually it’s about prioritisation and communications
Evaluations:
- There are too many assumptions in the question “how can I push the team to go faster?”
- Just going faster is the wrong goal
- Going faster or pushing wont help you reach your goal
Predictions / Proposals for Action
- Pushing has never worked and will never work
- Talk about it differently – say “pulling or enabling” to remind you that it’s about you helping remove impediments
- Focus on removing obstacles not “pushing people”
- The first step is for you to ask the team what you as a manager can change or what you can do to help.
- Ask yourself “is it a pattern that I keep having to push teams to go faster?” If lots of projects require a push then it’s not the team that’s the problem, it’s your planning!
Unjust high-level negative assumptions?
Looking at the comments from a manager’s point of view, they come across as high-level assumptions that are often negative towards the manager.
My assumption is that the responses were in reaction to the perceived unjust negative evaluation implied by a manager even considering “how could I push a team to go faster?” (the headline of the earlier post).
This highlights the importance of a manager with these views clarifying what’s behind them, and sharing them with specific concrete examples, to avoid creating defensiveness in the responses and becoming stuck in a point-counter-point argument.
It intrigues me that some of the responses may have created the same impact for a manager that they felt manager’s views had on them.
What would a manager think if told these views?
I realise that many of the responses were not intended to be directly said to the manager, but if they were I believe it would create defensiveness in the manager.
I doubt that the manager would feel listened to or understood.
The views were mainly stated in strong, rather than tentative terms. There was no mention of asking for more detailed observable data from the manager or any inquiries into what was behind the manager’s view.
How would people would avoid these negative views “leaking out” into the conversation through body language or tone of voice? As a manager (share your views in the comments) I could imagine thinking:
“These responses show people reacting defensively before they’ve listened or understood my view. They are telling me I’m wrong to think this way and I should start by asking how I could be different. It just shows that you can’t talk to a team about these issues”
Skilled unawareness and skilled incompetence?
Some comments advised the manager to take the team’s perspective and ask the team what they might be unintentionally doing to hinder the team and how they as a manager could help. This is useful as other people have a great ability to spot gaps or inconsistencies in our behaviour. Learning how to honestly ask for help from others is a worthwhile practice.
Yet, there was limited evidence in the responses of following that advice and thinking things through from the manager’s perspective and asking how they might be unintentionally contributing or how they could help.
This is an example where people, acting with good intentions, may be skilfully unaware of the fact they’re not following their own advice to others. This relates to the skilled incompetence demonstrated at a recent Agile workshop
I’d welcome your views in the comments. How productive do you think the responses would be if communicated to a manager? If you wanted to respond more productively to a manager who thought it was necessary to push the team what would you say or do?
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers consistently deliver the right software solutions. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation.
Image Credit: Steve-h on flickr
How can I push the software development team to go faster?
A common challenge I’ve heard from Development Managers or Product Owners is “how do I push my software development team to go faster?” Here are ideas on how to approach this topic and have more productive conversations.
Understand your own mind
Start by clarifying your own mind, particularly your intention and motive for trying to get the team to go faster. If there increasing external pressures on the project, or it’s becoming clear that it wont be possible to get everything you hoped for by the due date then these are worth clarifying and sharing with the team.
Take the time to understand where you’re coming from and why.
This step may seem obvious, but it’s worth slowing this down and even talking it through with a mentor or trusted peer and asking them to play devils advocate and try to see things from the team’s perspective. It’s much better to get clear on your own intentions and motives than to mop up from an argument later.
Focussing on “fast” may have unintended impacts on quality
As the old saying goes, “be careful what you wish for” because you may get it, but at the expense of other goals. Sometimes to go faster you may need to use indirect or oblique strategies, such as removing the causes of bad quality or delays.
Seek to understand the situation by looking for evidence
If you think that the team is going slower than it could be, then get clear on the evidence you’ve seen or heard that leads you to this view. If you tell a team “I think you can push a bit harder and work faster” but can’t use specific examples that they recognise and understand then it’s likely they’ll feel unjustly accused. See my post on handling a team member who talks ‘too much‘ for an example of using directly observable data.
If you can’t be specific about why you think the team could be going faster, then be open and say so – “this is just a hunch” – You could ask the team to help look for evidence, by asking “If you were performing under or over-capacity, what would we look for as evidence?”
Talk to the team, sharing interests and concerns
Talk to the team about why you want to help them get more done. Share your intent for bringing it up. Start by sharing what you’ve seen or heard. Ask them what their view is of the evidence you’ve got? Do they see it the same or different? If they see it differently then get curious and ask them what they see that leads them to their view.
Sometimes the conversation can get bogged down under an escalating game of “no, your approach is bad for this reason, we should do my approach”. One way to avoid this conversational log-jam is to focus on the interests behind the positions, or more simply, ask them what they like about the solution they’ve proposed.
I’ve found the best way of encouraging more productive conversations is to learn and model these more effective approaches yourself.
Jointly design ways to tests disagreements and move forward
If there’s a strong disagreement between you and team about the level of productivity, then focus on jointly designing ways that you could move forward. Think about what data would persuade you from your point of view and ask the same of the team. Use work that is about to begin and come up with a way of collecting data that would make future conversations clearer.
This is a topic I may come back to in future and look at it from the team’s perspective.
Image Credit: gentlemanhog, on Flickr
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers create more effective business results. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation and how I could help.
Removing the bubbles: solving bottlenecks in software product development
A challenge with software product development is visualising the work so that you can spot where there are delays in the process of converting ideas from “concept to cash”. This post shows how a cumulative flow diagram helped identify a pattern of queues over time. Removing these queues had many benefits such as fewer errors, increased team communication and improved team capacity.
Make the work visible
The first task is making the work visible. In knowledge work, such as software development, it is difficult to see the work being done, which is why a visualisation approach such as kanban can be so useful. Here’s a view of a kanban board from an earlier client team:
The kanban board is useful for a “moment in time” view, but it’s not possible to easily see patterns that might develop over time. Looking at the kanban board on a particular day doesn’t make it easy to answer questions like these:
- How long have these work items been waiting in this column (stage)?
- How long does it usually take for work items in this stage of the process to complete?”
- How often do we see queues in this step? How long do they last for?
- Are these queues a special event or do they happen regularly (touching on the difference between common and special cause I’ve mention in an earlier blog)
To find these answers and look more clearly for patterns over time we built a cumulative flow diagram (CFD, also called a ‘finger chart’) by counting the number of post-it notes in each stage (column) in the team’s process after each daily stand-up. Unlike my earlier post on using three forks and a hand-drawn chart to help a team improve in this case we used an Excel spread sheet.
Visualise the work over time to better understand queues (‘bubbles’)
The cumulative flow diagram for this team helped make visible that there were consistent queues of work in the functional testing and acceptance testing processes over time. These queues are visible as “bubbles” that develop in the cumulative flow diagram. See the highlighted in orange and red stages below (click the image for a larger version).
Do the detective work necessary to understand what causes the queues (‘bubbles’)
Around two-thirds of the way through the above chart (which covered about 36 weeks) we decided to focus on studying what was causing the queues to develop in functional and acceptance testing.
The functional testing involved someone other than the person who developed the functionality (user story) validating that it worked functionally (there were no obvious errors). Once functional testing was complete then the acceptance testing stage was performed by a business analyst or the product manager.
The team were releasing to production every second Wednesday. On the middle Wednesday the person who did the functional testing switched to doing the integration testing (ensuring the features which were created as a package to go to production worked individually and combined, as well as running a set of manual regression test scripts to make sure that the new functionality hadn’t had any impact on the rest of the website). During the week spent on Integration testing, no functional testing was done, which we believed was the cause of the queues or orange bubbles on the chart.
Creating a new policy to reduce the queues (‘bubbles’)
We sat down with the person who performed the Functional and Integration Testing and mapped out the schedule of their work across the fortnight between releases (see the hand-drawn diagram we came up with below).
We also mapped out a new “policy” that described what the person doing testing did for for the week spent integration testing:
While performing the Integration Testing in the week before the release, if there are any work items in the Functional Testing column, spend up to an hour each day doing them.
We experimented with the new policy for the last third of the cumulative flow chart. The cumulative flow diagram showed that the queue (bubble) in the Functional Testing (orange) step virtually disappeared, as did the queue in the Acceptance Testing (red) stage. The CFD not only highlighted the initial problem, but it also validated the experimental change we made in policy resulted in an improvement (it allowed us to answer the critical question – “did the change we made to our process result in an improvement?”)
It’s the system!
This example demonstrates how changing the way the work is structured can produce improvements without having to change the work that team members were doing. This example shows that the queues caused by the way the work was structured (e.g. the system we had designed) and not the work of the team members. It speaks to Deming’s ‘provocation’ that “95% of the variation [in how long the work takes] is due to the system and not the individuals”.
Benefits
There were many benefits to the changes that we made above:
- Removing the queue in functional testing meant that if a problem was found then the developer got faster feedback. Getting feedback faster reduced the time it took a developer to “get their head back into the issue” and fix the problems. It also improved the communication between members of the team – the developers were more likely to speak to the person who did test at stand-up about the work that was coming because they knew it would be tested quickly, rather than potentially sitting in a queue waiting for a week.
- By reducing the bottleneck in Functional Testing also reduced the same bottleneck in Acceptance Testing.
- The reduced “thrashing” from having issues discovered close to the release date meant the team’s capacity to do work increased.
- As there were fewer queues it reduced the pressure on team members, helping them feel less rushed which improved the quality of life for the team, reduced “rushing” leading to better quality and team morale.
Hi, I’m Benjamin. I hope that you enjoyed the post. I’m a consultant and coach who helps IT teams and their managers create more effective business results. You can find out more about me and my services. Contact me for a conversation about your situation and how I could help.
