This week, I had the pleasure of speaking at Agile Manchester again. I’m very fond of the Agile in the City series of conferences. I’ve been to many as a participant, reserve speaker, and speaker, and I always have a blast (if only because there’s a giant puzzle to do). Here are some things I learned.
From Dave Snowden:
To build resilience in a system:
Keep your field notes well and use those instead of specifically written reports
Document as you go in your Product Backlog Items
Parse team chats to notice the weak signals
Real time data hides less information than curated reports
Consider what leading indicators you can easily generate daily
Informal relationships have far better information flow than formal ones
Aim for everyone in your organisation to be connected informally
Three degrees of separation at most is best
Knowing someone who knows the boss eases communication
Simulate and prepare in advance
Attempting to solve potential problems ahead of time reduces the impact of shock
Manage people like you would manage teenagers
Create an environment that drives the behaviours you want and discourages others
Be explicit about your expectations
Map knowledge at the best level of granularity for innovation
Consider who the information is going to be consumed by and why
XP drove the creation of the Agile Manifesto, yet we’ve forgotten that agile should be about developing software (and software developers).
From Holly Donohue:
Don’t use discovery to prove people wrong; it annoys them and will put them off using it altogether.
Start a transformation by adding practices to improve the things you’re already doing.
Frame your communication of what you’re doing in the context the reader’s context.
From Sathpal Singh:
Use the Five Bold Steps vision canvas.
Tell the ongoing story of your journey to take people along with you.
We shouldn’t fear our user’s responses to our work.
From Emily Webber:
Principles for sharing information:
Go to where the people are
Little and often
Repeat, repeat, repeat
We need to maintain and reinforce team memory:
Active memory
The story that’s being told to others in near real-time
Information that needs to be:
readily available to inform their work
in the flow of their day
Create behaviour drivers to encourage people to look at things
Transactive memory
The knowledge that the system holds, and the interconnections of knowing who knows what needs to be known
Use tools like capability combs and team manuals to understand the individuals
Long term memory
Create project stories and team timelines to reflect upon and communicate the journey that’s been taken
Questions for reflection:
Does organisational messaging help align everyone?
Are communications discoverable and appropriate?
Is joining up across teams and silos encouraged and celebrated?
Do teams put ideas and work out into the open?
Does the organisation encourage and celebrate opportunities for serendipity?
Create opportunities for serendipity
Random coffee
Find ways to connect that aren’t a zoom call
Share a photo that captures your weekend
Good morning gif
Share coffee breaks virtually. (Commonsality)
From Michael Lloyd:
There are six killers of organisational change:
Low trust
Lack of buy in
Habituation
No direction
Change fatigue
Insufficient evidence of success
(Dysfunction Mapping is cool, go look it up if you haven’t come across it yet.)
Thanks to everyone who came and said hello and spent some time with me. It’s always lovely meeting people in real life and getting to know them, and the main reason I go to conferences.