Posts Tagged ‘Executive Coaching’
Agile Enterprise Forum 2011
Charles Handy, Chris Potts, Don Reinertsen, John Seddon and I are the featured speakers in the Agile Enterprise Forum 2011. The Forum will be held on March 10, 2011 in the Chandos House at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. Attendance is limited to 30 CIOs.
The theme for the forum is Agility for Complex Organizations. The overarching message is nicely captured in the following summary by James Yoxall:
There are two strands of interest for a CIO: strategy and delivery. The Agile/Lean message can be summarised as “merging” the two, so that delivery can start before strategy is complete, and delivery informs strategy through feedback loops. This leads to a faster/earlier delivery and a better end result.
My own workshop – Agile Governance: Tying Delivery to Value – builds on this message by describing a specific strategic initiative which is not achievable without the use of advanced delivery techniques. Here is the abstract for my workshop:
This workshop will explore mechanisms for unlocking the full potential of existing software through the combination of Agile/Lean methods with technical debt techniques. These mechanisms apply to complex organisations that rely on in-house development teams as well as to third party delivery partners. Israel’s approach emphasizes the need to continuously monitor and mitigate the decay of software that more often than not had been developed over many years. Most importantly, it shows how well-governed software can become the enabler for unleashing the synergistic power of cloud, mobile and social.
You can think of the workshop as linking past, present and future. The “sins” of the past require technical debt reduction initiatives today. These initiatives utilize the classical Agile/Lean techniques of continuous measurement and tight feedback loops. Without such initiative, the value of existing software cannot be unlocked in the future. In particular, competing in the hyper-segmented markets that cloud, mobile and social generate will be next to impossible for legacy software that has not been modernized.
Beyond Devops
Based on feedback from participants in my Agile 2010 workshop “How We Do Things Around Here In Order To Succeed,” I am planning to offer the workshop as a one-day seminar. A tentative agenda for the seminar is as follows:
- Introduction to Cultural Framework
- Exercise #1: Determine Your Culture
- Exercise #2: Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Culture
- Change Behavior, Not Culture
- When Cultures Meet
- Exercise #3: Conflicts in Devops
- The Agile Flywheel
- Exercise #4: Using Technical Debt as a Boundary Object
- Bringing Individuals and Organizations Together
- Exercise #5: It is About Sharing the Process, Not Just Sharing the Information
- Exercise #6: From success in devops to end-to-end success
Until I publish a full-fledged outline for the seminar, here is the central theme:
Beyond Devops
Inter-departmental flow in a corporate setting is often envisioned as the inner workings of a swiss watch. Wheels turn other wheels in a precise manner. Not only is effectiveness maintained, it is maintained in an efficient manner.
Problem is, many individuals and most departments hold distorted views of the departments they interact with. Reasonable distortions can be mitigated as long as the operational balance between departments is maintained. Once the operational balance is broken the “swiss watch” stops to function as the inter-departmental distortions block any attempt to restore the balance.
The most effective way to get dev and ops on a path of collaboration is for the two departments to jointly construct a boundary object. As dev and ops are joined in the hip through the code, and even more so through its quality, technical debt is well suited to serve as the core of a boundary object around which the two department share meaning while retaining operational autonomy.
Similar boundary objects can be constructed between dev and other departments – customer support, professional services, marketing, sales and finance. When conceived and implemented in a manner that links numerous boundary objects together, Agile success in dev can be extended to both upstream and downstream functions.
A Recipe for Handling Cultural Conflicts in Devops and Beyond
My Agile 2010 workshop “How We Do Things Around Here In Order To Succeed” will weave together four trends that I am witnessing in my practice:
- The ascendance of Agile portfolio management in a world characterized by loosely coupled processes
- Devops dynamics are becoming more and more characteristic of end-to-end Agile/Kanban patterns
- Viral spread of technical debt metrics in software governance
- Increasing use of boundary objects in the enterprise context
The workshop is structured around three case studies/exercises that will take about two-thirds of the allotted time (the morning of August 9). The other third provides the theory and tools to be used in the three workshop exercises and (hopefully) in many future engagements participants in the workshop will carry out. Deep technical knowledge is not required – the workshop targets any Agile practitioner who has conceptual grasp of culture, software development, IT operations and portfolio management.
The #1 takeaway from the presentation is the details you need to know about creation and capture of lasting value through end-to-end Agile initiatives.
Here is the workshop agenda (still subject to some minor tweaking):
- Introduction to Cultural Framework
- Exercise #1: Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Culture
- Change Behavior, Not Culture
- When Organizations Clash
- Exercise #2: Conflicts in Devops
- The Agile Flywheel
- Exercise #3: Using Technical Debt as a Boundary Object in Devops
- Bringing Organizations Together Through Enlightened Governance Loops
I look forward to meeting you in the workshop and learning from your experiences and insights!
Israel
The Things They Say
Here is a compilation of summaries of Amazon reviews on the Kindle edition of The Concise Executive Guide to Agile:
If you are such a decision maker, and like most are hard-pressed for time, then you must read this book. Dr. Gat cuts right to the chase and gives pearls of wisdom – that come from having “done it himself” when it comes to the daunting task of TRANSFORMING an organization into successfully applying Agile methods. If you’re a team leader and you need executive support and buy-in, then buy this book for the key people whom you value the most. Give it to them as a gift. They will thank you for it!
“The Concise Executive Guide to Agile” by Israel Gat is a must-read for enthusiasts of agile methods at all levels of the organization. Israel has well over 30 years of industry experience, has his PhD in Computer Science, and has helped manage an agile rollout involving 1,000 software developers. While there are many technical and managerial treatises on agile methods emerging in increasing frequency all of the time, Israel’s new guide is meant to explain the essence of agile methods to R&D, Marketing, Sales, Program Management, Professional Services, Customer Support, Finance, or IT folks.
Dr. Gat goes beyond the traditional software development process literature and broadens the case for the Agile organization, with effectiveness, efficiency, and integrity – much like the Agile development process described by Israel.
A must read for any organization leader dependant on software whether it be for software for internal operations or software features built for customer sales. Israel’s breadth and depth of both knowledge and experience shine through as he provides practical advice to help you understand what Agile can and can not do for your organization.
For me, this book provided something unique, which is a look into the way high level executives think about Agile.
This book rapidly cuts through the layers of confusion surrounding Agile development and focuses on what you “NEED” to know. Dr. Gat’s vast experience shines through as he elegantly simplifies the process.
Israel’s experience and wisdom in transforming a software development culture in a very large multi-site virtual team environment is well captured… Israel has done a great job in transforming his experience into a guide. That is the beauty of the book.
This is the “must-read” book if you’re an executive charged with Agile transformation, product development, or business strategy. The insights from Gat cover all three. Most companies talk a good Agile game. If you want results, however, please pay heed to the advice in this book.
The book will help you to flexibly navigate the hurdles inherent in selling and succeeding with Agile in your business: i.e. existing methodologies, outsourcing, diverse geographies, resistance to change, and the rest. They are all explained here by someone who has apparently already successfully fought the battles. A great read!
He has been there, and this book shares the unique insights of a senior manager who guided a large organization through the change process. If you are in this seat in your organization then this book is for you.
Israel distills his broad experience and many years of wisdom rolling out Agile into a succinct overview that is deep in knowledge, but accessible.
I’ve been a fan of Israel’s “The Agile Executive” blog for some time and had high hopes for this book… and the book didn’t disappoint!
While I was looking for answers; what I found instead was much more interesting. Israel was able to collect all the wisdom of doing large scale agile rollouts into one document, highlighting the geographic features along the way. That is a lot harder to do than simply proclaiming one correct path, and, speaking from experience, more helpful to the reader than they know.
You can read the full reviews here.
First IEEE Computer Society Guidebook on Kindle
A Kindle edition of The Concise Executive Guide to Agile is available now through Amazon. It is the first IEEE Computer Society guidebook designed for and issued on an electronic reader. My sentiments about being the IEEE pilot project for Kindle are expressed in the following quote from yesterday’s press release:
“How appropriate it is that a book on Agile software methods was chosen as the pilot Kindle project by the prestigious IEEE Computer Society,” said Israel Gat. “The reach and richness of Kindle make it an ideal vehicle for effectively disseminating the Agile message to audiences that so far have not been touched by it.”
I am indebted to Kate Guillemette and Linda Shafer who made this IEEE pilot project happen.
Velocity 2010 – Where Have All The Business Executives Gone?
By now I have “touched” and been touched by dozens and dozens of participants in the O’Reilly Velocity conference. I did not meet any business executive (other than various CEOs/CMOs who pitched their companies from the podium).
No doubt, the O’Reilly Velocity conferences (this is the third one) are geek events. Having said that, IMHO these conferences are extremely important to the business executive. If you don’t attend you miss up on four value propositions:
- Getting a sense of what the future in web operation holds.
- Grasping what forthcoming advances in web operations mean to your business design. See for example my post Ops Driven Dev from earlier today.
- Understanding the needs of a growing demographic sector that your business might not be able to access today.
- Getting to know the kind of developers and sysadmins that probably work in the trenches of your company.
You owe it to yourself to consider attending Velocity 2011 if terms like “sysadmin 2.0”, “darkmode” and “devops” and do not resonate with you. I can’t give you “your money back” guarantee if you are not satisfied with the conference, but I will gladly pick the bar tab when we meet there.
Technical Debt at Cutter
No, this post is not about technical debt we identified in the software systems used by the Cutter Consortium to drive numerous publications, events and engagements. Rather, it is about various activities carried out at Cutter to enhance the state of the art and make the know-how available to a broad spectrum of IT professionals who can use technical debt engagements to pursue technical and business opportunities.
The recently announced Cutter Technical Debt Assessment and Valuation service is quite unique IMHO:
- It is rooted in Agile principles and theory but applicable to any software method.
- It combines the passion, empowerment and collaboration of Agile with the rigor of quantified performance measures, process control techniques and strategic portfolio management.
- It is focused on enlightened governance through three simple metrics: net present value, cost and technical debt.
Here are some details on our current technical debt activities:
- John Heintz joined the Cutter Consortium and will be devoting a significant part of his time to technical debt work. I was privileged and honored to collaborate with colleagues Ken Collier, Jonathon Golden and Chris Sterling in various technical debt engagements. I can’t wait to work with them, John and other Cutter consultants on forthcoming engagements.
- John and I will be jointly presenting on the subject Toxic Code in the Agile Roots conference next week. In this presentation we will demonstrate how the hard lesson learned during the sub-prime loans crisis apply to software development. For example, we will be discussing development on margin…
- My Executive Report entitled Revolution in Software: Using Technical Debt Techniques to Govern the Software Development Process will be sent to Cutter clients in the late June/early July time-frame. I don’t think I had ever worked so hard on a paper. The best part is it was labor of love….
- The main exercise in my Agile 2010 workshop How We Do Things Around Here in Order to Succeed is about applying Agile governance through technical debt techniques across organizations and cultures. Expect a lot of fun in this exercise no matter what your corporate culture might be – Control, Competence, Cultivation or Collaboration.
- John and I will be doing a Cutter webinar on Reining in Technical Debt on Thursday, August 19 at 12 noon EDT. Click here for details.
- A Cutter IT Journal (CITJ) on the subject of technical debt will be published in the September-October time-frame. I am the guest editor for this issue of the CITJ. We have nine great contributors who will examine technical debt from just about every possible perspective. I doubt that we have the ‘real estate’ for additional contributions, but do drop me a note if you have intriguing ideas about technical debt. I will do my best to incorporate your thoughts with proper attribution in my editorial preamble for this issue of the CITJ.
- Jim Highsmith and I will jointly deliver a seminar entitled Technical Debt Assessment: The Science of Software Development Governance in the forthcoming Cutter Summit. This is really a wonderful ‘closing of the loop’ for me: my interest in technical debt was triggered by Jim’s presentation How to Be an Agile Leader in the Agile 2006 conference.
Standing back to reflect on where we are with respect to technical debt at Cutter, I see a lot of things coming nicely together: Agile, technical debt, governance, risk management, devops, etc. I am not certain where the confluence of all these threads, and possibly others, might lead us. However, I already enjoy the adrenaline rush this confluence evokes in me…
How Many Metrics do You Need to Effectively Govern the Software Process?
A Simple Metrics-Driven Software Governance Framework Based on Jim Highsmith’s Agile Triangle Framework
In my recent Cutter Blog post entitled Three Governance Metrics I recommended using just three metrics:
- Value
- Cost
- Technical debt
The heart pf this recommendation is that all three can be expressed in dollar terms as depicted in the figure above. An apples-to-apples comparison is made through the common denominator – $$. For example, something is likely to be either technically, methodically or governance-wise wrong if the technical debt figure exceeds the cost figure for a prolonged period of time. One can actually characterize such a situation as accruing debt faster than building equity.
I am often asked about adding metrics to this simple governance framework. For example, should not productivity be included in the framework?
‘Less is more’ is my usual response to such questions. IMHO value, cost and technical debt address the most important high level governance considerations:
- Value –> Why are we doing the project?
- Cost –> Can we afford the project?
- Technical debt –> Is the execution risk acceptable?
Please pay special attention to the unit of measure of any metric you might add to this simple governance framework. As long as the metric is a dollar-based metric, the cohesion of the governance framework can be maintained. However, metrics which are not expressed in dollars will probably superimpose other frameworks on top of the simple governance framework. For example, you introduce a programming framework if you add a productivity metric which is measured in function points per man month. Sponsors who govern using value, cost, technical debt and productivity will need to mentally alternate between the simple governance framework and the programming framework whenever they try to combine the productivity metric with any of the other three metrics.
The Concise Executive Guide to Agile
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The IEEE Computer Society Press published today a ReadyNote[1] that I authored entitled The Concise Executive Guide to Agile. It is available through the IEEE Computer Society Store. A Kindle version will be published in June.
I had two main objectives in writing the guide:
- Provide the know-how for approaching Agile in a concise manner that requires minimal investment of time and effort by the reader. The ReadyNote does so by summarizing most Agile topics in a page or two. Detailed coverage of a topic is left for follow-on reading in the selected references that accompany each topic and in the Further Reading appendix.
- Be accessible to any executive — R&D, Marketing, Sales, Program Management, Professional Services, Customer Support, Finance, or IT. The only assumption I make is that the reader has a conceptual grasp of software and software engineering as well as an interest in learning about Agile. No deep knowledge, let alone technical knowledge, about software engineering is required for comprehending the guide.
There is no fluff in the guide. Every paragraph has been written to satisfy the “And therefore what?!” criterion. It is my intent to drive a point home and make it clear to the reader what he/she could do with the information in as few words as possible.
A simple acid test for the guide is your successful assimilation of it in entirety during a flight in the continental US. Something has not quite worked if you need to fly all the way from the US to Europe or vice versa in order to comprehend the guide…
I would like to express my sincere thanks to Michael Cote, Michael Mah, Hubert Smits and to the fourth reviewer (whose identity I don’t know) for their many helpful insights and suggestions. I am also deeply indebted to Linda Shafer and Kate Guillemette of the IEEE Computer Society who got me to write the guide and supported the writing and editing process along the way.
Enjoy reading!
Footnotes:
- “ReadyNotes are short e-books that are tightly focused on specific topics” [IEEE Computer Society Press].
Preface from The Concise Executive Guide to Agile
The good folks at the IEEE Computer Society are just about ready to publish my e-book The Concise Executive Guide to Agile. It will be available for purchase in the Computer Society store in May. A Kindle version will follow in June.
Here is the preface from the guide:
Preface: Connecting the Agile Dots
“The closer one listens to it, the more distantly one hears it.”[1] These insightful words about Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony apply equally well to the art of Agile software methods. The nuts and bolts of Agile methods are not likely to be very relevant to the executive. Instead, he or she needs to stand back and focus on the mindset, values, and principles that make Agile methods so powerful, and on harnessing their power to create business value.
It is the objective of this guide to provide the know-how for approaching Agile in a concise manner that requires minimal investment of time and effort by the reader. It does so by summarizing most Agile topics in a page or two with minimal use of geek jargon. Detailed coverage of a topic is left for follow-on reading in the selected references that accompany each topic and in the Further Reading appendix.
The guide targets executives as the primary audience. It gives them the principles they need to comprehend and apply in order to become effective with an Agile initiative. These executives are not necessarily software engineering experts. They come from any function that Agile affects — R&D, Marketing, Sales, Program Management, Professional Services, Customer Support, Finance, or IT. Nor are the executives restricted to companies whose business is software; they are as likely to reside in companies that embed software in their products or utilize software in implementing business initiatives. Nowadays one can hardly think of a company that would not be included in at least one of these three categories.
Four broad topics are covered in The Concise Executive Guide to Agile: rationale for Agile, implementing it, fitting it into your company, and scaling it to the enterprise level. The rationale explains why Agile is so appropriate for our time, summarizes the state of the art in Agile, and sets realistic expectations with respect to its business value. Implementing addresses critical “real life” issues such as risk assessment and mitigation, off-shoring and outsourcing, governance, and sustainability of the Agile initiative. Fitting connects Agile to the hard realities of introducing a new software method into an environment in which various processes already exist — multiple software methods as well as planning and budgeting processes. Scaling is primarily about the numerous benefits to be attained through end-to-end implementation, such as enabling new business designs that fully utilize the power of Agile.
In the course of covering these four topics, the guide puts special emphasis on the operational, financial, and business benefits of Agile methods. The overarching message is clear and simple: Agile is the most productive technology your business is not using.
[1] Giuseppe Sinopoli. “Dream and Memory in Schubert’s ‘Unfinished.’” Program Notes to his recording of the symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon 410 862-2, 1984.
The Agile Executive 