I can’t believe it’s been almost a full week since coming back from Agile 2009 in Chicago. It was a delightfully exhuasting experience, featuring a relentless pace of amazing people and compelling sessions. After catching up on email and checking in with my clients, I finally have a few moments to share with you all the highlights. I came to the conference for 2 key reasons: (1) to learn how to be a better management coach and trainer and (2) to promote the launch of PMI’s Agile community. Today, I’ll talk about the former, and then post about the PMI stuff tomorrow.
“The Agile Playground”
The first session I went to on Monday morning was hosted by Scrum Trainer Tobias Mayer. After noticing his assigned conference room was a bit “oppressive”, he moved the session outdoors, where the weather was fantastic and the space was larger. He then walked us through several interactive exercises to illustrate human dynamics. My favorite was “power in the center”. He asked an individual to stand in the center as the sole holder of power, and then encourage the someone to enter the scene and take his power away. Eventually, there were pats on the back, arms on shoulders, and such. Subtle human dynamics had shifted the center of power and attention away from an individual to a team. In the scene below, he had a team enter the center, and then invited someone to take power away from the team. Lyssa Adkins then entered in and tried to physically break the team’s bond, but was unable to do so, and instead incurred a lot of tension on herself.
Double Session
Later in the afternoon, I went back to the Coaching track to enjoy 2 back-to-back talks. Elizabeth Keogh showed covered “Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback”. Her key nugget was that feedback is given to encourage improvement AND strengthen confidence. We’re all familiar with the first, but it was interesting to hear the point that glowing praise can indeed be effective in helping people grow.
Next up was “10 Temptations of an Agile Coach” by Stevie Borne. This was good stuff. Some of the key temptations were:
- Mastery – you have all the answers and you offer them freely thus preventing the team from learning how to chart their own destiny.
- Changeful – introducing something new at each iteration, thus preventing the team from finding a true rhythm.
- Love – unwilling to be bad cop or take negative feedback, thus preventing the team from breaking through a deeply embedded bad habit.
Stevie also had a great suggestion for Agile champions to seek out a coaching mentor. I have several people I rely on for advice, but I certainly could be more intentional about my mentoring relationships. You can download the slides here.
On Tuesday, I shared my presentation on Marriott’s Agile Turnaround. The turnout was average, but the talk felt really good.
“The Dude” as the Ultimate Team Coach
Wednesday morning, I participated in a half-day session “Coaching and Producing Value” by David Hussman. Dave joked that he gets compared to “The Dude” from Big Lebowski and the turtle from Finding Nemo, but whatever the vibe he conveys, this was the session that made the conference for me.
CHECK OUT DAVE'S OTHER PRESENTATIONS
Dave’s key nuggets included:
- “The term ‘ScrumButt’ is pejorative to high-performing teams that have tailored their process away from doctrinal Scrum.”
- “Boredom equals statis. Keep things fresh and lively. Ask the new guy what wierd he observes the team doing, or have a national act like a pirate day at your standup”
- “Questions like ‘are we Agile’ are a smell that you’re changing too much too fast”
- “Ask the team ‘What is the LEAST amount of change we can inject to get the MOST productivity QUICKLY?’”
- “Focus on the ‘why’ of improvement, not the ‘how’
- “Strive for ‘controlled failure’. Google tells its employees if you’re not failing 1 out of 5 times, you’re not trying hard enough”
This is the one session I believe will have the greatest impact on my day-to-day work. Many thanks to Dave.
…but that’s only half the story. Tomorrow, I’ll post about all the PMI activities that happened at the conference, including some provacative statements by Agile co-founders Jim Highsmith and Alistair Cockburn.
