As someone who works with teams and individuals on changing how they approach software development, I recently thought back to a model that originally came from the family therapist Virginia Satir. She used the model to illustrate how humans cope with change, and much has been written about it before. A write-up that’s often used in the Agile Software Development community is https://stevenmsmith.com/ar-satir-change-model/

In addition, a very detailed description is published at http://www.satirworkshops.com/workshops/balancing-act/satir-change-model/

Sadly, the images in that article don’t really show up in context, so I decided to re-create them and produce them in somewhat higher resolution – and I will use those re-creations here.

Normally the model is used to talk about how individual people react to change. It starts with a “Late Status Quo”, where our performance in whatever domain is hovering around a certain level:

This phase may last a while:

At some point, a change of some sort happens, a “Foreign Element” shows up. That could be an unusual new idea, a new person joining a team, or a new demand placed upon an employee:

The normal result from the introduction of this Foreign Element is that our our performance gets thrown into chaos:

How long the chaos will last is unknown.

While I’m writing this, the globe we live on is swept up in a pandemic of a viral infection outbreak called Covid-19. The viral infection has essentially caused the psyche of the entire population on earth to plunge into the “Chaos” phase all at once, and all over the planet.

People are naturally afraid of many things in this phase (contracting the invisible virus through non-symptomatic carriers, having to shelter in place at home, losing income, being unable to pay bills, etc.) Many have no way of working while the pandemic persists.

Others work in the “knowledge” domain, and are being instructed to conduct their business from home via the Internet, essentially having to become remote workers overnight. For those people, the foreign element is not only related to fears, but also to having to develop new skills and social “online” practices in a hurry. This exacerbates the feeling of chaos and mixes in a great deal of anxiety.

What is needed to get out of the chaos is a “Transforming idea”, an insight into how the new situation can be tackled, or a new skill that can be learned to make one feel more competent and confident:

Once this Transforming Idea exists, we move into the phase of “Integration and practice”, where our performance still oscillates wildly as we try on the new idea, or build up new skills:

With repetition and repeated practice, we slowly arrive at a “New Status Quo”, where our level of performance is (hopefully) above what it was before, since we are now more capable, and we experience natural oscillation around a new “normal”:

In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the transforming ideas to deal with the global outbreak is “social distancing” (more appropriate would be to call it “physical distancing”), where people avoid physical contact and close proximity to others to prevent transmission of the virus in the population.

Unfortunately that idea triggers additional chaos for those people who are being asked to become remote workers “over night” because they mostly work in intellectual endeavors. They are now asked to learn how to function well in an environment that is mostly unfamiliar to them, where social norms are not fully established, and new habits are difficult to form. This has given rise to many, many tips and articles being published online, laying out a plethora of Transforming Ideas to choose from, inviting people to join free sessions to learn new skills in a hurry, and all kinds of real-world training (and conferences) moving online. All of that is offered with the best of intentions – and without it we’d be much poorer off in terms of having Transforming Ideas available.

But as the Satir change model shows, integration and practice will take time. Enlightened companies and managers will take that into account and help their employees calm the fear and anxiety that is swirling all around. One key component to helping everyone work through the current situation is to realize that it is completely normal for people to react this way, and to reassure them that there is patience and a supportive stance that they can rely upon to calm some of the chaos.

[This is a re-post from LinkedIn]

What does it take to become a guide for Agile teams? My own experience leads me to believe that exposure to a lot of different thinking helps, as well as learning some specific skills. This is an attempt at starting a kind of map or atlas to the world of useful skills for Agile guides. If you’ve seen other guides similar to this, I’d appreciate a comment on this post with pointers to your source.

Tactical

• Technical knowledge and experience (domain-specific)
• Product development and manufacturing trends and theories (Lean, Flow, Kanban, Kaizen, Agile, Scrum)
• Software development frameworks and methodologies (TDD, Crystal, Scrum, FDD, Patterns)

Teams and people

• “Hands-on” experience with teams
• Team formation and dynamics (Tuckman model, Satir change curve)
• People management and engagement (Weinberg, Lichty/Mantle)
• What motivates people (Pink)
• Personality type models (Myers-Briggs, DISC)
• How to launch teams well (Larsen/Nies, III)
• Participatory decision making theory and skills (Kaner)
• Collaboration theory and skills, meeting management (Tabaka)
• Facilitation techniques and skills (Kerth)
• Congruence in interactions (Weinberg)
• Open Space Technology (Owen)

Leadership

• Coaching skills (Adkins)
• Teaching methods and skills (Presentation, workshops, games, simulations)
• Learning modes (Auditory, Visual, Kinesthetic, etc.)
• “Sales” skills (Pink)
• Communication models and skills (Rianoshek/Connelly)
• Non-violent communication theory and skills (Rosenberg)

Thinking and problem solving

• Systems thinking (Deming, Meadows)
• Complexity theory and models (Snowden)
• Human Systems Dynamics (Holladay/Eoyang)

Integration

• Innovation context conditions (Denning)
• Organization models and theory
• Psychology and process of change knowledge (Satir)

Each of the above is of course a deep and wide subject. No one person can ever cover all of them at any significant depth. But maybe that’s not necessary. Maybe just having been exposed to all of the above ideas, if even by reading a single book on each will expand your appreciation for how miraculous it is that people can accomplish work together in difficult situations, under pressure, uncertainty, changing circumstances and unclear focus. Just being aware of all this should help in becoming a good guide for the team you serve.

Agile may be the single idea (perhaps exemplifying “when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” or “an idea is a most dangerous thing, if you only have one”) that you start with, but it will quickly lead you to discover a rich ocean of other “stuff” you can immerse yourself in.

One hard part in this is finding time to dip your toes in. A little weekend reading will do wonders. So will attending free webinars, if you can find them. Also, following the right people on Twitter to point you to summary blog posts, YouTube videos or book reviews. Taking good notes along the way is important. Or re-reading / re-watching to cement what you learned.

The hardest part is to keep all of the above in mind when you’re in the “heat of the moment”. How do you arrive at some “simple rules” for yourself in light of all this complex and rich material? How do you “integrate” all this information into your mode of being and operating?

[This is a re-post from LinkedIn]

Are you seeing pessimism and seeming division in the Agile community? I’m seeing some of that lately, expressed on LinkedIn.

I get that it can be hard to keep a positive attitude in the face of reports that tell us that a lot of Agile journeys seem to not bring the desired results. And I also firmly believe that Agile CAN bring about positive change. I’ve seen it first-hand in the work I’ve done. Of course, there have been times when the prevailing currents have made it difficult, but on the whole, I’ve seen that change IS possible.

I wonder what a sort of declaration of Agile optimism might look like? Maybe something like this:

• I believe that people have the capacity to change – when supported with caring, courage and openness.
• I believe that organizations have the capacity to change – when the people in it spend enough time listening well to each other.
• I believe that Agile values and principles can help with change – when really internalized and lived out.
• I believe that learning from others’ experience is possible – when keeping an open mind and taking a good look at context.

That is, change is possible – and we realize that we need to help each other in making it happen. Do you think about Agile optimistically?

P.S.: If you are interested in reading about what might help and hinder Agile journeys, check out the book Susan DiFabio, George Dinwiddie, Rich Valde, Dan Neumann and I wrote together on that very topic: http://leanpub.com/agilejourneys

[This is a re-post from LinkedIn, just in case LinkedIn goes away some day… ;)]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to give an encore of my Agile 2017 workshop, provocatively titled “The Introverted Facilitator’s Survival Guide”. I presented it at ProMatch, and organization of volunteers partially funded by tax money. ProMatch helps people who are looking for work with learning about the current landscape of job hunting, presenting accomplishments, resume writing, interview skills, and networking. I find it a really valuable support system while I’m looking for my next opportunity.

I think about 16 people attended, which was a nice number considering the target audience: introverts. I won’t dive into the details of the workshop here (check my SlideShare for the digest version with most of the takeaways). It seemed to land well with everyone who participated, and at some point, I think we achieved what I half-jokingly called “quantum entanglement” 🙂

After the workshop I was pretty exhausted, but I chose to attend a meetup with the Silicon Valley ALN (Agile Leadership Network) anyway, and there I got to see a bunch of fellow (current and former) ProMatch folks (hi Andrew, Liz, Roberto and Jennie!) We learned from Bernie Maloney about harnessing the power of collaboration, and while I had done the activity from that session with one of my teams at work in the past, we ran through a variant that illustrated different aspects of what typically happens in real life.

After both of those experiences, I reflected on the day a bit, and posted a short blurb on Twitter about my satisfaction with the workshop I had facilitated, and how it seemed to have made a small difference in a few people’s lives. One person shared with me that they had a bit more appreciation for the strengths that their characteristics offer them. I interpret that as having been able to provide a small boost in self-confidence for someone else. And that felt very satisfying.

It got me to thinking about where we look to find confidence in our skills and capabilities. I think I tend to look at the people who are much further down the path of their personal agile journey than me, and I keep thinking “if only”. But yesterday I thought about whether that’s the right place to look. Maybe it would be better to look at where I am a half-step ahead of someone else and can bring them along with me a little bit. I wonder if in my quest for increasing my own skills and capabilities, I’m too focused on looking in the wrong direction.

Which direction do you tend to look?

This is just to collect a few thoughts I had on June 28, 2013 to make them easier to find and refer to. This tweet started it: https://twitter.com/GeekTieGuy/statuses/350639064703176705

Here is what the next few tweets summarized:

Slack is to your organization as sleep is to your body: time to regenerate and be inspired by dreams and wake with new energy.

What happens when we deprive the body of sleep? We become manic, disoriented. We diminish our capability to be creative, we go insane.

What happens when we deprive the organization of slack? It becomes reactive, haphazard, brittle, overloaded, unable to think.

I recently led a session at Agile Open California with this same title. It was interesting to a few people, and I was sure I’d blogged my expanding tweets, but I apparently hadn’t. Fixed that now…

I thought it would be fun to run the latest Scrum Guide through wordle.net to see what it talks about a lot. I replaced Scrum-specific terms that use two words in the guide to one word terms using CamelCase. Here’s what it looks like:

What do you make of it? I’m glad the word Retrospective shows up in the top 50, even if it is just barely.

Here’s a quick thought for (probably mostly Ha- and Ri-level) practitioners of Agile software development who are thinking about holding retrospectives on a fixed cadence versus going to an on-demand practice.

I like that the weekend comes around every five days. I’d sure feel uncomfortable if it didn’t. I enjoy the comfort of knowing that I’ll get some time with different things to do: play, learn, relax, create, sleep, connect with others. Every once in a while I’ll need a day off outside the weekend to take care of exceptional things. Other times I’ll need more than just a few days, so I’ll take a week or three for a change of scenery and recharge.

Is it so different for teams at work? Just a thought.

I’m not sure if this is an original idea, but I came up with (and used it) today. Normally I’ve had my questions written down in a notebook and gone through them one by one, trying to steer the conversation, which sometimes causes abrupt and somewhat awkward transitions. Today I did this instead:

Write down each question on its own index card. Some questions are fully formed, some just keywords.
Show all of the cards to the person I’m interviewing, saying “Here are the questions and topics I’d like us to talk about. Please play product owner for a minute and prioritize them in an order that works for you, and then we’ll start talking. If you want to ask me clarifying questions while you order, feel free to do so.”

I didn’t know how this was going to work out, so I started by asking “What do you think of this idea for our interview?” I got a really good response.

In order to not take up the whole time with the candidate talking about the cards, I stopped midway through and said “OK. How about your questions for me?” After that we came back to the remaining questions on the table, and finished with another short “Do you have more questions for me?” segment.

I think this was a pretty good way to be transparent about the interviewing process, a good way to let the candidate start forming a narrative and not getting blindsided, and giving the candidate a breath of fresh air from the traditional interviewing format.

These were the questions on my cards:

Agile Journey
Organizational Change
Scaling Agile
Outline a retrospective. How do you keep it fresh?
What is your Agile superpower? [I shared what I consider mine as an example when we got here]
Frameworks you’re not familiar with
Reading. Who influences you? Who do you influence?
Agile method/framework you’re familiar with

As we went along, I sprinkled in more questions, of course, but this was my skeleton.

What do you think? Novel? Useful? Boring? Comments would be much appreciated!