From a presentation I gave at Agile on the Beach 2012.

1. Agile Teams
Value Focused, Values Driven
Schalk W. Cronjé
ysb33r @ gmail.com
@ysb33r
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

2. "The revolution has eaten its children
I see the river of dreams run dry."
- Johnny Clegg : In My African Dream
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

3. Scott's Model
interpret
Societal Institutions innovate
invent, error
negotiate
diffuse,
impose
Organisational Fields
invent,
negotiate
diffuse,
impose
Organisations invent,
sanction negotiate
behaviour
diffuse,
impose
Actors
Limitations of cognitive / social rationality (groups/individuals)
Selective perception
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

4. Marshall Model
http://flowchainsensei.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/rightshiftingscene1_0792.jpg
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

5. Marshall Model
-----------
thrive ----
ile teams
----- ------- Ag
/
isolation
Agile teams in
ress
under du
http://flowchainsensei.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/rightshiftingscene1_0792.jpg
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

6. Signature Skills
● Three parts
– Preferred Task
– Preferred Cognitive Approach
– Preferred Technology
● This may affect how/what you measure!
● Combat with
– Appropriate team composition
– Reviews / quality measures
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

7. Agile Teams Understand That Fundamentally:
● Increased revenue
● Reduction in costs
● Faster response times
● Less rework
Agile is the continuous delivering of value
to stakeholders
● Customers
● Users
● Developers & Testers
● Governments & Legislators
● Societal Institutions
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

8. Consistency
● Mintzberg: Strategy as a pattern of consistent
behaviour of time
– NOT exact behaviour
● Chaotic systems show consistent behaviour
– NOT repeating behaviour
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

9. Agile Teams Understand Accuracy:
Accuracy is to precision
as
engineering is to mathematics
Be accurate enough
to get there, but no more accurate
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

10. Agile Teams Take An:
Economic View
● It helps to quantify the effects of multiple interacting
variables
● It helps us to understand that the customer is not the only
judge of value
● By using an economic framework it can allow us to
maximise value, including
– cycle time
– product cost
– development expense
● It helps to communicate with non-technical decision
makers
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

11. Therefore In Agile Teams, Delivery Is Based On:
Business Value Increments
● Focus is on value
● Only “done” when the increment is delivered
end-to-end
● No burning down of tasks ! (false economy)
● Each increment must have at least one metric
of the value it will deliver
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

12. "A pilot who sees from afar
will not make his boat a wreck."
- Amen-em-apt
(Egyptian philosopher, ~700BC)
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

13. Therefore Agile Teams:
Visualise
● Honesty!
● Makes it transparent to everyone that is going
on
● Visual cue for bottlenecks
● Manual board and easy-to-use online system
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

14. Agile Teams Also:
Measure Cycle Time
● Measure average time in system of each BVI
● Less time is spent on estimating future delivery times
● Better predictability
● Historic data automatically takes into account any
disruptions such as
– Operational issues
– Days off sick
AvgTimeInSystem x NoOfBVIs
Time = ---------------------------------
Concurrency
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

15. Historic Data vs Estimation
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

16. "Do the difficult whilst it is easy"
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
(~ 512 BC)
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

17. Therefore Agile Teams Will:
Combat “tyranny of the urgent”
● Investment in value-adding activities
– Test-driven development
– Continuous integration
– Continuous deployment
● Unobtrusive process data capturing
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

18. "Two are better than one; because they have a
good reward for their labour.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but
woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he
hath not another to help him up."
- Eclesiastes 4:9-10; KJV Translation
(Origins ~ 971-931 BC)
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

19. Therefore Agile Teams Work As:
Groups
● Pairing up / Teaming up with different skills to
work on same feature
– Feature teams are not a new concept
– Reduces mind-set trap, creative abrasion
● Could be perceived to have higher person
cost per feature
– Instead of distributing the person cost over
multiple queues, the cost is combined into a
single queue
– Can actually lead to reduced cycle time.
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

20. Core Rigidities
● Limited problem-solving
● Inability to innovate with new methods/tools
● Limited experimentation
● Screening out external knowledge
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

21. Core Capabilities
EXTERNAL
Absorbing technical
knowledge from the outside
PRESENT FUTURE
Shared-problem solving Experimenting and prototyping
Implementing new technical
processes and tools
INTERNAL
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

22. "The measure of difference between the two
in terms of true pleasure is that the
philosopher king lives seven hundred and
twenty-nine times more pleasantly than the
tyrant king"
- Plato: The Republic
(~ 380 BC)
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

23. Agile Teams Prefer:
Servant - Leadership
● Leadership over management
● Managers add value, not interruptions
● Egalitarian team work
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé

24. Thank you
AOTB 2012 © Schalk W. Cronjé