Posts Tagged ‘waterfall’

A Culture of Heroism

Agile & Lean, Coping and Communicating, Musings | Posted by Doc
Feb 11 2010

A while back, I wrote about A Culture of Blame. As I’ve traveled around the US and to other countries, I’ve seen more and more evidence of this, which keeps me thinking. I’m always looking for patterns of , and simple ways to describe them.

When talking about teams as compared to teams, one of the things that has become apparent is that is also a of Heroism. In fact, in many ways, much of Western culture is about heroism. We laud the star athlete, the exceptional business person, the standout author, and so on. In many cases, it seems to be recognition and acclaim for the individual over the group, or at least the individual separate from the group.

Agile teams foster a culture of collaboration and cooperation. That’s not to say that there’s not room for individual excellence, effort, and achievement. I would say that high performant teams tend to focus on the success of the team over the individual. Is Agile more socialist, while Waterfall is more capitalist? I’m not sure, but it seems that way.

Regardless, there are a number of side effects of a Culture of Heroism:

  • Ego-driven achievement
  • Unhealthy competition (although sometimes it’s quite healthy)
  • Rewards that – in recognizing the individual – discourage the others on the team
  • A focus on the individual rather than the group goals

This is an interesting thing for me, because I’m highly competitive, and am happy to have individual recognition. On the other hand, I believe strongly in subordinating my ego to the purposes and goals of the team, and that the success of the team is what’s important*. Since my ego still wins out at times, I recognize that this is not just a struggle for me, but for others as well.

We’re raised in a culture of individualism and heroism, then we are invited into the Agile fold, and asked to shift our focus and our energy from ourselves to our teams.

I’ll continue to explore this as I get the opportunity to work with more teams. I will say that I’ve seen the culture of heroism everywhere I’ve gone, in one form or another, and believe firmly that the change to a culture of collaboration must come from the leadership as well as the team.

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The Anchor

Agile & Lean | Posted by Doc
Nov 14 2009

In software development, we talk about learning from the past in order to improve the future. As I spend time with clients, whether doing coaching or , I find them burdened by the past.

The Anchor.

“That’s the way we’ve always done things.”

Resistance to change for the sake of resistance.

Those of us who have had opportunity to work on and with Agile teams have seen what a difference that shift in principles, practices, and thought makes.  It makes a difference in the pleasure and pride that team members find in what they do. It makes a difference in the quality of the product they create.  It makes a difference in the overall competence of the team, both as individuals and as an entity.

, on the other hand, has led to unhappy team members and failed projects.  Demonstrably.  In one report, the Standish Group found that only 34% of software projects were unqualified successes. While it says that the percentage was up to 34%, I still find that to be a discouraging statistic.  What’s encouraging is this:

Asked for the chief reasons project success rates have improved, Standish Chairman Jim Johnson says, “The primary reason is the projects have gotten a lot smaller. Doing projects with iterative processing as opposed to the waterfall method, which called for all project requirements to be defined up front, is a major step forward.”

So here we have an approach, along with a set of practices, that has been shown not to work for years, even decades, and yet managers or organizations hang onto it like it’s a life preserver, when in fact, it’s an anchor.

Drop your anchors. What is so frightening about not buying into the fallacy that you can know everything up front, plan everything up front, budget everything up front…?  Well, it goes on and on.

Of course you need to be able to plan and budget. But I don’t buy into the idea that anyone believes that those numbers are real or accurate. Rather, it’s “the way we do things” and they are resistant to change and the unknown.

Cast off your anchors! Learn from the mistakes we’ve been making for 50 years and find better ways to do things.  Let’s deliver better software with fewer defects that meets the needs of the customers/users, delivers more value, and does so when it says it will.

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