Martin Hinshelwood

There is no such thing as an Agile Transformation, Digital Transformation, DevOps Transformation, or any of the Whatever Transformation that you can think of or have been sold. You can’t buy agility, and you certainly can’t install it. There is no end state, no optimal outcome, No best practices. We are no longer factory workers.

In our Professional Agile Leadership training, we talk about changing your organisations hiring practices to hire more of the right sort of people to create the company that you want, not the company that you have. Hire the right people also implies that you will have to, within your cultural constraints, de-hire the wrong people. Early Luddites destroying machines during the industrial revolution Luddite “a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.” “a small-minded Luddite resisting progress” · “I’m not a Luddite, after all I work with the internet for my job” One of the reasons that your organisation is the way that it is, and that it is so hard to change, is its culture. The culture of an organisation is just a reflection of people that make up the organisation and the way that they do things. As you transition from the traditional tayloristic model of departments and hierarchy to an empirical model of cross-functional delivery teams that suits the modern world of business you need to make sure that you have the right people or you will encounter friction at every turn. You may even find that some folks try to actively undermine the change. “To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in a field of shit.” ― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh These are the Luddites! Luddites are an anchor to your nimbleness As you move down your chosen agile evolutionary path there are many common changes that you will make, but there is a reason I use the phrase Evolution and not Transformation. An agile business is one that can adapt to changing circumstances effectively, quickly, and without panic, as the world changed around them. What changed at Microsoft as of 2017 Microsoft is the poster-child of what can be accomplished with the judicious application of leadership. With the servent-leadership and strategic vision of Satya Nadella, it has evolved from a traditional organisational model 10 years ago (2010) towards independent delivery teams of today. “Every person, organization, and even society reaches a point at which they owe it to themselves to hit refresh—to reenergize, renew, reframe, and rethink their purpose.” ― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh If you go into Microsoft today and ask them what has changed since they were a traditional organisation, they will say “everything”! The list above is a point-in-time snapshot taken in 2017 from their evolution. Most things on that list have changed since then. The world operates at a much higher frequency than it ever did before and a lack of learning, innovation, and evolution of our processes, practices, and tools is the realm of the Luddite. Luddites have no place in the modern organisation #daretochange. Don’t be a Luddite!

The Siren song of SAFe

In light of the new normal and the last 20 years of technological progress, we need to re-define co-location as we no longer need to be in the same room as each other to get the 80% of communication that is non-verbal. If we are participating in an online event, we should try our best to keep our cameras on so that we can all read those non-verbal queues. 49 People in Microsoft Teams TLDR; If you are participating in an online event you should be transparent and commit to being open & respectful by having your camera on and engaging the topics and outcomes at hand as best as you are able. While we show commitment to our fellow participants by keeping our camera on, we should in turn respect a participants need to sometimes turn their camera off. Just as you would not take a phone call in a meeting and disrupt everyone, the same social conventions for meetings should be respected. Let folks know in the chat, turn your camera and mic off, return when you can focus again. If you are unable to use the camera due to bandwidth it may be better to attend an in-person event. Note: Rules are for the guidance of wise people and the obedience of fools. Co-location defined The idea behind co-location is that with 80% of communication being non-verbal we need to be able to be in the same room, space, to be able to read each others body language and facial expressions. Physical Team Room Have you ever been able to tell exactly what the car in front of you will do next when you are driving? When I was a teenager I was in the car with my grandfather and he said: “You need to keep your eyes on all of the cars so that you know what they are going to do”. I scoffed at that idea, but then he said: “See that car, it’s going to change lane”. I scoffed again, but then looked on in incredulous wonder as the car moved. I could not understand how my grandfather knew, but now that I am a drive I do the same all of the time. -Jessica Baez Calderin, Strategic Director, naked Agility with Martin Hinshelwood When we are driving we have a learned understanding of driver intent that is built over years of driving experience so that we know when the car in front is going to change lane even before the signal, and especially when they don’t. Car visual indications We look for micro-changes in the driver’s seated position, the road position of their car, and the other cars around them. Maybe we also get some official and standard notifications thorough the brake lights and indicators; if they work. You unconsciously take no account the apparent age of the driver and the age and condition of the car. We process all of this together and as an individual driver, we partake in an intricate non-verbal dance of lane, signals, and speed that take us safely to our destination. Another example is my wife’s family is in Cancun, Mexico City, and Puerto Rico, as well as elsewhere. Every Sunday they have a family video-conference with between 20 and 35 people participating all with video and chatting away. Technology is awesome. This is like a physical team room, except we can also add the other 20% with verbal-communication as we engage in our activities. Awesome! Right. Well, it would be if many agile practitioners were not suffering from cognitive bias and stuck in the thinking that co-location means in-person. Yes, the Irony is not lost on me! This definition of co-location is over 20 years old and technology has changed a lot in that time. Co-location re-defined Its been 25 (1995) years since the first Scrum project and the average internet speed was 56kbps! Here is a list of the important dates since then and the average internet speed in brackets: 1995 – First Scrum project (56kbps) 2000 – First video Conferencing (280kbps) 2001 – Agile manifesto signed (280kbps) 2005 – First HD video (980kbps) 2020 – COVID (26Mbps) Today I, along with most folks in the technology industry, have internet speed in excess of 200Mbs. Today it is generally no problem to have both kids on Netflix/Xbox, and both parents in full HD video conferencing at the same time. What a world we live in. While we need to re-define co-located for the general usage of the word I have always used the following: Co-Location: Co-location is a complimentary agile practice where all members of the same Scrum Team work daily in the same room, within visual sight of each other. –Martin Hinshelwood: What is your perspective on collocation? This definition encompasses both in-person and virtual events as long as we can see everyone. We need to see folks express and posture to in order to gain a greater degree of transparency over what they are thinking, how they are absorbing the information and how we need to adapt the material to increase understanding. How do you expect the facilitator to understand what you as a participant get or don’t without being able to see you? 9 people in the same room who can all see each other in Microsoft Teams For 2020 I would like to update my own definition of co-location to be more inclusive of the virtual world that is part of the new normal. Co-Location: Every member of the team can see every other member of the team’s posture and expression. -Martin Hinshelwood, 2020 Participation requires Presence For any online event you should be just as present as you would be in-person, and to do that you should have your camera on as much as possible. This provides feedback for both other participants and the speaker. Online Event with only the presenter with Camera Do you believe that this group is focused? How would you know? As a participant do you feel empowered to call upon ML? Will they reply? Are they even there? These are all questions that can be easily answered by enabling the visual presence that is your camera. If you are uncomfortable with your camera then there are options available. I have used FaceRig which gives at least some of the 80% that is non-verbal while hiding your bad hair. £6 for FaceRig used to hide my home and bad hair If you are going to be participating in an organized event that will be held online then you should consider being somewhere with good bandwidth, with a usable background. Presence can also be fun! Conclusion With the advancement in video-conferencing, camera quality, and internet speed over the last 20 years since agility became a named thing, there is very little excuse for not having video-enabled, and to participate with your team, or any other group. Having your camera on enables as much as 80% more knowledge transfer between you and the other participants. Having it off inhibits high bandwidth communication. So if you are participating in a video-conference: Be respectful, and open with other participants, and use your camera. Give the event your full focus and commitment and pay attention or leave. Have the courage to participate and speak up. All of this together will create the transparency required by your host and co-participants to see your participation, how you are reacting, and modify the event to make it better. If you don’t want or can’t have your camera on it would be better for you and the facilitator that you attend an in an in-person event.

As more and more organisations move towards a higher degree of agility, they inevitably also move towards DevOps practices like Continuous Delivery to facilitate shortening the feedback loops. Firms today experience a much higher velocity of business change. Market opportunities appear or dissolve in months or weeks instead of years. Diego Lo Giudice and Dave West, Forrester February 2011 Transforming Application Delivery Shortening the feedback loop is imperative to remaining competitive in this new world of customer-centric realities and that in turn requires a radical shift in practices. This shift towards getting things in front of your customers as quickly as possible to find out if you are even doing the right thing means that we are no longer deploying our products every 2 years. We are doing it every day. Microsoft, for example, has gone from one or two major releases a year to over a hundred-sixty-thousand deployment a day. Thats more than the number of engineers that they have. The same practices that worked before will not work today. We need to be faster, better, and more secure than ever before. Everything must be done within the sprint loop and all responsibility needs to lie with those doing the work. “In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. ” -Charles Darwin In order to sustain this new way we must be able to maintian the resonsabilities of high quality with the operational needs of the busienss while continiously delivering awesome features that delight our customers. The Combined Engineering model adopted by the Azure DevOps Product Team at Microsoft is an example of how one group of about 650 engineers in 3 main locations around the world has evolved to be able to cope with these new realities. The following presentation represents mearly a point in time of their evolution that may serve to give you some ideas of where to start, and maybe an intial goal to achieve. This infortmation reflects this teams structure and thought in 2018 and they have continued to evolve since this content was created. {"preview_thumbnail":"/s3/files/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/5bgcpPqcGlw.jpg?itok=nOspYkgU","video_url":"https://youtu.be/5bgcpPqcGlw","settings":{"responsive":1,"width":"854","height":"480","autoplay":0},"settings_summary":["Embedded Video (Responsive)."]} Presentation: https://nkdagility.net/3edOLPi

Many organisations don't really want to change how they do business and believe that they can continue in the way they always have while still getting better at delivering software. They are wrong! While there are organisations that are successfully scaling out there, they are exceedingly rare. What are the commonalities between these organisations and how have they managed to get past the illusion of scaled agile to the values and principles that are allowing them to leave their competitors in the dust? To go big, you must go small! {"preview_thumbnail":"/s3/files/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/i_DglXgaePM.jpg?itok=TkyaLx9p","video_url":"https://youtu.be/i_DglXgaePM","settings":{"responsive":1,"width":"854","height":"480","autoplay":0},"settings_summary":["Embedded Video (Responsive)."]} Presentation: https://nkdagility.net/2CdA7cN The Future of Work in Scotland Since lockdown and going virtual The Future of Work in Scotland has gained members from many countries around the world due to there fantastic speakers and amazing organisation. Check out some of their incredible events from some of the most prominent agile and devops speakers in the world. Join: https://www.meetup.com/the-future-of-work-in-Scotland/ Upcomming Events: https://www.meetup.com/the-future-of-work-in-Scotland/events/

Like most tools, if you want to run successful training in Microsoft Teams you need to do some homework and some configuration before your class.

With the new normal, I have been delivering all of my Professional Scrum classes and consulting online. I have tried many tools from Zoom and Webex to Miro and Word. The combination that I have found gives the most security, flexibility, and features are Microsoft Teams with Mural. Both Virtual and In-Person Classrooms I have delivered six training events in Team with Mural and 3 in Zoom with Mural. Something that I, and the other trainers that I work with, have found is that to grease the facilitation wheels it is a good idea to make sure that the start of the class is not the first time the students have seen the technology within which you are running the course. To that end, I always now run a Tech Check the week before the class. This services several purposes: Connection Issues – If you have 20 students, you can lose a lot of time to these issues and frustrate the other students. General familiarisation – It surprising up much time is lost to fumbling on the first day when students can find the most basic of options. Setting expectations – We can use a little bit of time to set the expectations that we, as trainers have of the students—pre-Reading, Engagement, & participation. I recently live-streamed and example Tech Check that I use to give students the information that they need to have an excellent class, it’s a little out of date as I have made my processes much slicker since then, but its an example. I’ll do another one soon 🙂 make sure that you subscribe on http://nakedagility.tv for an updated one. I always add this to my event invitations, but I prefer the live tech-check. A Professional Scrum Classroom In our Professional Scrum training, we want to create a safe space for individuals to collaborate, discuss and disagree. This needs to be a safe place for the team to fail as well as to explore the ideas that we are trying to teach. NOTE: My good friend Russell pointed out that the phrase “safe place” has been co-opted by those that want to promote another agenda. By Safe Space, I am talking about fostering and not shutting down the conversation. Individuals feeling that they cant express themselves in collaborative dissent is a toxic environment for team success. I would add that a safe space should be free of Zoombombing and other unwanted activity. A Safe Space in Microsoft Teams & Mural In order to create that safe space, I create a new Team in Microsoft Teams for each class that I am running. This allows me to have Scheduled Meetings, Announcements, Storage, and Chat that is all secured to the participants of the class. Microsoft Teams can be used to amplify the Scrum Values: Focus – In the Team for this class there are no other distractions. There is Focus on the task at hand which is learning. For real work, I would expect each Product Team to have a Team in Teams with each Scrum Team having their own Channel. Openness – Within the Team, in Microsoft Teams, we have visibility across all of the Channels (self-organizing groups). We can all see the murals and we share our experiences in the different exercises. Commitment – Teams facilitates the students taking accountability for their own time and attention. It allows them to use the breakout rooms or not, return or not. Respect – Teams, but not using technology to tell people what to do created respect for the trainer, and our fellow students. The Scrum Values In Professional Scrum Training, it is imperative that we heighten the Scrum Values, and to do that, we need to foster Self-Organising Teams. Self-Organising Teams Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team. Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team. The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity. –ScrumGuides.org Scrum thrives on self-organising teams and our job as facilitators of a professional Scrum class is to make sure that our students have the environment, skills, and tools that they need to be able to self-organise. That statement for me precludes any sort of coddling by the trainer and using a tool that pushes the students into breakout rooms and forces them back after the timebox is the antithesis of the values that we represent. Traditional vs Agile Self-Organising in Microsoft Teams While Teams at the moment does not have breakout rooms, Breakout Room functionality is coming in July for all accounts. I feel that the current features are perfect for professional scrum training, and I don’t plan on using the new functionality unless it continues to facilitate self-organisation. Creating a meeting in Microsfot Teams Every student can start a Meeting with the “Meet Now” button, and you can have multiple meetings ongoing in the same Channel, although that might be confusing. They can call it whatever they want, and invite anyone from the team that they want. This facilitates both Self-forming teams and the ability for students to create their breakout rooms. Creating a Channel in MS Teams I prefer to have students create a Channel for each of the Teams that they formed and they create their meetings within that Channel. They then get a sandbox that is just for them that allows them to have: Communications – They can create a Teams meeting with “Meet now” or use any of the other video integrations. While I show them the “Meet Now” option in the Tech Check I don’t force them down that route. They could just as easily use Zoom, WebEx, or GoToMeeting as their video conferencing tool. All of those are available as apps, and I allow students to use whatever they want. Pragmatically students have always used the “Meet Now” option as it is the easiest to find and use. Regardless there would be a handy placeholder in the Chat that shows the chosen technology and instructions for connecting. Files – While you can add Box, DropBox, Google Files, or any other platform files as a Tab out-of-the-box Teams uses OneDrive and gives you significant storage just for this team. You can add a tab for any of the known platforms. Tabs – You can add many different types of tabs to help students out, you can see above that I add at least the link to Mural, Scrum Guide, and the Scrum Open. Below you can see a list of a few of the available apps. There are tabs, bots, and integrations. To create Self-Organising teams, we need to develop Bounded Environments for change. Bounded environments “A vast untapped human potential is lost as a result of treating people as followers.” ― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders For self-organisation to thrive within agile teams, we need to create bounded environments for action, rather than tell people what to do. A bounded climate is a critical difference from traditional tayloristic practices and as part of exploring that we need to demonstrate how it works within our classes. Instead of telling people what to do, we give them a Goal, some constraints, and some questions to answer, and we accept that there are many right answers. Example Exercise Format from Professional Scrum Master If we continuously manage the student’s breakout exercises for them, they will never learn the value of the timebox nor how to manage that timebox themselves. When we instead create a bounded environment and let them get on with it, this is where the magic happens. This is what we have always done for in-person classes, and it can be even more powerful for virtual as, just in the real world of work, there is no indication of the end of the timebox for participants. In one of the classes, we had a group forget to come back from a 5-minute timebox, and they kept talking for another 10 minutes. When they eventually realised and came back to the main room, they realised their mistake and were very sheepish. For the rest of the class, they actively managed their timebox and were never late again. That is the sort of learning and resultant modification of our own behaviours that we want to encourage. In an in-person class, we provide tools; Whiteboard/easel, Pens, Postits, Card, etc. We then provide a goal, and constraints, with some questions and let students find their own way. Bounded Environments using Mural While Microsoft Teams allows users to self-organize around about breakouts and conversations, we need some way to simulate the effect of giving students in-person a set of tools and a bounded environment. In the virtual world, we need to facilitate the same interaction to promote communication and learning. Mural for Bounded Environments Mural gives a canvas surface of any size that you need, and then allows us as trainers to create fixed bounded environments to run exercises where students can work within those areas as they see fit. Example Exercise The sample above is the output of a 5-minute working agreement exercise with about 20 people. We just asked for folks to spend 5 minutes, but you could facilitate with more rigour by doing multiple rounds with clustering, and dot voting to find essential ideas. It’s up to the trainer and the amount of bounded environment that you want to use. Answering Some Commonly Raised Issues Do I require an Account to join a Meeting in Teams? NO. To join a meeting, your students do not need to authenticate and can join anonymously, just like Zoom. However, Anonymous users do not get to see Channels, Teams, Files, or Apps. They only get to participate in a meeting. I use this as a backup link for students that are having difficulty so that they can always join, and then I sort out whatever issue with them in the first break or activity. Do I require a Microsoft Account to Authenticate? NO. Previously there was some resistance from the trainer community for Microsoft Teams that mostly revolved around authentication. In the past, someone entering a Team (not a meeting) has to authenticate with either a Microsoft Account or an Azure AD account. If they did not have one, they had to create a Microsoft Account from their invited email. This is no longer the case; as well as adding Google identity federation, Microsoft has also added One-Time passcode authentication for signing in. When you try to sign-in to a Team with an email that is not Azure AD, MSA, or Google, then you are emailed a code to enter without one. Simple, Secure, and alleviates that need to create a Microsoft Account. Do I need to wait 48h when setting up Teams? For now, yes. When you first set up your Azure AD and your Office 365 account it has Guests (how students join) disabled by default. This is for your security and safety. When you enable Guest access, it can take up to 48h for it to be active. This is a COVID load issue and was not present before. In any case, I do not recommend trying to set up Teams for Scrum Training the day before your class. There is some amount of work in getting all of the things lined up so that it is a smooth and seamless experience for your students. Take your time, and send me an email if you need help! Once it is set up, it rocks. Conclusion: Microsoft Teams & Mural I firmly believe that Microsoft Teams, or another similar platform, provides the highest level of interaction and allows for self-organisation that may other platforms do not. With the ability to provide many different services on the same platform and have students maintain that access over time, I think it wins out over one-time single-shot platforms like Zoom or Webex. In addition, I have a Scrum Community Team that gives all of my students access to each other as well as some extra goodies. This collaboration and access is the icing on the cake. I have seen other trainers do the same with Slack as an after-class collaboration, but I have not heard of anyone using it to facilitate a class, although I am sure it is possible. This post first appeared as Delivering Live Virtual Classes in Microsoft Teams and Mural on naked Agility with Martin Hinshelwood.

With the change in business model in the current crisis, many training organizations have had to do the unthinkable and move to Live Virtual training options. Existing wisdom was that training online, just as running teams virtually would be a disaster and reduce the student's experience. We were Wrong! In-person pass rates are slightly lower 6% looking only at students from 2020. Scrum.org Assessment Result When Scrum and Agile were first conceptualized the idea of colocation meant that we had to have everyone in the same place in order to get that extra 80% of communication that is non-verbal. Live Virtual Co-located Professional Scrum Foundations class However today this limitation does not exist for much of the world. With modern and secure video conferencing systems like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, & Webex we can create an almost perfect approximation of co-location while being distributed. Timezone becomes the inhibitor rather than physical presence. I, along with almost all of my collogues at Scrum.org, have been running all of our classes as Live Virtual Classrooms using a verity of technologies and we have found that the experience for students is as good as, if not better than an in-person class. The trick is that we judiciously use breakout rooms and structured exercises with only a small amount of lecture to facilitate the greatest amount of learning. I for one have found that it is much easier to create interactive experiences in the virtual world, and have found that participation is just as high as in in-person classes. In a physical room, it is hard to get 20 people to participate in a big-wall exercise without jostling, crowding, and taking turns. In the virtual space, we can make the wall as big as we like. The New World of Virtual Delivery Wow, it is now so much easier to run a class. I don't have to worry about flying, hotels, and transport, and neither do my students. It is better for the environment and its better for our sanity and family life. While it will take a little time for folks to spin up their home office this seems to be the new normal. I'm not sure many folks want to go back to many hours of commuting, and seasonal sickness, among other issues. I think this especially makes sense for the world of product delivery. Why go to the same place just to all work at a desk, in a cube, while all participating in the virtual world of our computer. Welcome the New Normal I am sure that an extrovert might have a different opinion initially, however, once we are out of lockdown and able to socialize in-person again I am sure that they can find their fix. For those of us in the knowledge industry, this is a new era. Embrace it, adapt to it, or it may just leave you behind!

Something very close to my heart is helping folks understand the origin of the practices that are commonly used in management today. I feel that only with an understanding of history can we figure out how to change the future. I often talk about this in my classes and help folks see why things are the way that they are in many organisations. We are still using workplace practices developed during the industrial revolution to manage factory workers and the mechanisation of those workers. When we had to build at scale but did not have the technology to build robots, it was down to humans to do this monotonous, repetitive work; Think factory floor or typing pool. These practices, envisioned by Frederic Winston Taylor to control workers, are the Tyranny of Taylorism that we battle every day in our working environments. While 81% of all development shops say that they are adopting agile, the reality is far from it; only 22% do short iterations, 16% have ordered backlogs, & 13% do retrospectives! They still lack feedback loops. Feedback loops were not significant when our current management practices were developed. We had defigned work, we understood it very well, and we were optimising a production line. Those days are gone now! {"preview_thumbnail":"/drupal/s3fs-public/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview/public/video_thumbnails/FZeT8O5Ucwg.jpg?itok=gs_f-m5y","video_url":"https://youtu.be/FZeT8O5Ucwg","settings":{"responsive":1,"width":"854","height":"480","autoplay":0},"settings_summary":["Embedded Video (Responsive)."]} View Presentation: https://nkdagility.net/30MVagF DIB Guide: Detecting Agile BS: https://nkdagility.net/DOD-Detecting​