1. Not Re-Inventing The Wheel Again:
Agile Developers Create Their Own Identity
Mahesh Varadharajan
Agile Evangelist, Ericsson R&D Chennai

2. Introduction – About Myself
Mahesh Varadharajan
•25 years old
•Certified Scrum Master – Scrum Alliance
•Current Role at Ericsson:
• Agile Evangelist @ R&D Chennai
•Scrum Practitioner: 2 years
•Total Industry Experience: 4.4 years
•Association with Ericsson: Since January 2009
www.agiletour.org

3. Summary
• Values, Practices & Principles: Relationship
• Individuals & Interactions
 Extrinsic & Intrinsic Motivation
 Self Organization Practices
 Geographical & Psychological Distances
 Team Leadership Model
 SHU-HA-RI Pattern in Team members
• Software Craftsmanship
 Agile Craftsperson Create their own identity
• Finding your own identity
www.agiletour.org

4. Values, Practices and Principles: Relationship
•Values bring purpose to Practices, Practices are evidence of Values, Practices bring
accountability to Values.
•Bridging the gap between Values and Practices are Principles. Principles are context
specific guidelines.
E.g.
• Practice -> Pair Programming
• Values -> “communication” and “feedback”
• Principle -> driver-navigator principle – dual thinking hats of constructing and
preventing from breaking
www.agiletour.org
Courtesy: Ajay Danait – Vice President – Agile Global Strategies

5. Manifesto for Agile Software Development

6. Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto
Value - Individuals and Interactions
• Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support
they need, and trust them to get the job done.
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes
and adjusts its behavior accordingly (Retrospective)
• Extrinsic & Intrinsic Motivation
• My Survival Cycle Persona – Others define My identity
• My Creative Cycle Persona – I define My identity
• Tune the mind and conscience to be in the Creative Cycle (Intrinsic Motivation)
www.agiletour.org

7. How can we bring Self-Organization in Agile Context?
• Apprenticeship over Classroom Training
– Tacit Knowledge
• Collaboration over Document Handoff
– For Knowledge Management
• Argumentation over Passive Acceptance
– For Logical conclusions
• Constructive Conflict Mining over Artificial Harmony
• Aggregating Team Intelligence over Intelligence of
Individuals
• Psychological distance solvent over Geographical distance
solvent

8. Geographical Distance Solvent
Distributed Teams

9. Psychological Distance Solvent

10. Problem - Team Dysfunction Model
Patrick Lencioni

11. Solution - Team Leadership Model
Team Leadership is a condition of a team
 Reduction of uncertainty
 Comes from clear messages
 Leads to focused actions that cannot easily be
misinterpreted
 Developing channels for continuous feedback
 Uniform effort balance - Sustainable pace
 Having a very high fun factor

12. Shu-Ha-Ri Pattern In Team Members
Followers
– Initial guidance needed to come up to speed
– Show progress after some hand holding
– Need to be mentored to grow into volunteers
Volunteers
– Self inspired
– Take technology and process initiatives
– Come up with ideas that build the team
– Implement innovative concepts
– Lift the team
Mentor
– Servant Leader & Authority used to serve the needs of others
– Genuine compassion for his people & knows the problems as a whole
– Finds the solution to the problem
– Has the skill to carry out the solution
– Develop the next generation of leaders

13. Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship
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14. Developer to Craftsperson
What is Software Craftsmanship?
Software Craftsmanship is about
 Taking responsibility
 Taking pride in work
 “Signing” your work
 Being a continuous learner
 Practicing deliberately
 Writing code
 Having the right attitude
 Contributing to the community
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15. Developer to Craftsperson
How developers acquire skills through formal instruction and practicing?
Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition
 Novice
 Needs to be told exactly what to do. No context to work from.
 Advanced Beginner
 Has more context, but needs rigid guidelines
 Competent
 Questions reasoning behind the tasks and can see consequences
 Proficient
 Still relies on rules, but can separate what’s important
 Expert
 Works mainly on intuition, except when problems occur
 Innovation
 Practical Wisdom
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16. Metamorphosis of an Agile Developer
The Agile Transformation: To Follow Agile -> To Be Agile
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17. THANK YOU
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