Systems Thinking aggregator

Johanna Rothman: Podcast Interview Posted

johanna — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:06:55 +0000

A couple of weeks ago (!), Tobias Fors and Magnus Ljadas interviewed me via skype. I have finally finished the editing of the podcast and it’s posted here. It’s also in iTunes, in the Pragmatic Manager podcast feed.

Yes, I need a new microphone. It’s on my list, but not for this week

Johanna Rothman: Starting and Finishing

johanna — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:30:03 +0000

I had coffee with a friend Saturday night. She said, “Our family has a tradition of starting many projects to see what we can stick with. If you don’t start a project, you can’t finish it.”

She’s right. You certainly can’t finish something you don’t start. But the real question for all of is: Should we start this project at all?

My current todo list is way too long. That’s because we took a couple of days off to visit with Mark’s family, and with the Jewish holidays mid-week both last week and this week, I’m “losing” time to family and personal obligations. (No, I don’t really think of it as losing time, just about the actions I choose when.)

In order to get my list of projects down to a manageable number, I’m choosing which projects I need to finish this week, which ones I need to make progress on, and which ones can be postponed starting until next week. Notice that I listed the projects I can finish first in that list.

I hate having partially finished projects, which is why I’m trying to finish a bunch of things this week, even though it’s a short week. I literally get stuck with all the projects on my list if I have too many projects.

Here’s my general mode of working:

Make a list of everything I have to do. Get it out of my head and onto paper. Yes, this is directly from Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.
Look at the list and see when I have to complete what. Make sure I know my interim deliverables.
Lay out the deliverables week by week for a few weeks (not more than 4 weeks total, generally only 2).
For the deliverables owed this week, I do 2 things:
- Ask, “Should I do this project at all?” It’s worth making sure this work is still valuable.
- If yes, finish the deliverable this week. Now, my deliverables may not be done-done-done. I might have to draft an article or something and let it sit for a few days, but it’s a deliverable to me.
Of the deliverables this week, see if there is something I have to finish earlier rather than later. Do those.
Make sure I ask “Should I do this project at all?” for each project left.
Of the rest, do the ones that take the least time (which tends to be the most valuable for me), and get them off my plate. Since I don’t estimate that well, I never know exactly how long things take, but I’m pretty good at relative sizing.
Loop forever.

This is the essence of project portfolio management. I happen to be using it for myself, but it works. If you know that the work is valuable, then it’s a matter of slotting it into your week or weeks. And, if you use inch-pebbles the way I do, it’s easy (well, easier) to keep up with the work.

When my friend says she starts lots of projects and then decides if it’s worth finishing, she’s asking the “Should I do this project at all” question repeatedly. I tend to ask that question before starting, but the key is to keep asking. If you don’t, you are throwing good money after bad, wasting time.

If your projects are hobbies, it may be worth starting a bunch of projects to see what you’re interested in. But if you are making decisions on behalf of the organization, timebox each project. Make sure you know what the deliverables are and see if the team can finish those deliverables in a timebox. Now, your starting and finishing makes sense.

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe: Business Value Game v1.1 on tour

Pascal — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:36:40 +0000

Agile Holland Conference

The Agile Holland group organizes their first one day conference on October 24th in Amsterdam.

Vera and I will present the Business Value Game v1.1, which incorporates the feedback we got from participants at tryouts at Agile 2008, the XP user group meeting, Brain Train and Agile Business Conference.

Scandinavian Agile Conference

Agile Finland organizes the Scandinavian Agile Conference on October 29th in Helsinki.

I will present the Business Value Game with some Finnish coaches at the conference.

XP Days Benelux

The XP Days Benelux conference on November 20th and 21st in Eindhoven also features the Business Value Game, this time presented with Vera and Portia.

<Your company>, <Your usergroup>

Do you want to learn about “Business Value”, prioritising your backlog, portfolio management and all the challenges that salespeople and account managers face daily? Do you want to experience the benefits of working with short iterations and releasing early? Do you want have fun while you learn? Download the Business Value Game, print the cards and organise your own game.

The XP Game by Vera Peeters and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Belgium License.

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe: Where do they come from?

Pascal — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:24:34 +0000

Where do participants to XP Days Benelux come from?

Places are filling up nicely for the upcoming XP Days Benelux on 20-21 November. It looks like we’ll have another sold out conference.

The XP Days started as a local conference, to enable participants to get a taste of Agile without having to travel too far. We always attracted a good mix of local and foreign presenters. Local presenters bring stories that are recognisable to the audience. Foreign presenters bring in new ideas and techniques.

As you can see from the table, three quarters of the presenters are Belgian or Dutch. The other presenters come from 7 countries.

Belgium	24
The Netherlands	19
France	6
Finland	3
Great Britain	2
United States	1
Germany	1
Italy	1
Switzerland	1

The geographical distribution of participants is even more marked: 85% of all participants come from Belgium (45%) or The Netherlands (40%). The other participants come from the seven countries mentioned before, plus Sweden.

But where are the Luxemburgers?

Esther Derby: What trust means for teams

Esther Derby (noreply@blogger.com) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:54:33 +0000

It’s a truism that trust is the foundation of teamwork.

But trust is a big word. What do we really mean when we talk about trust?

First, trust exists within a context. The sort of trust that you need for a productive working relationship is different from the trust you need for a healthy marriage. And it’s certainly different from the trust you need on a ropes course (which is why that sort of team building activity seldom has much effect).

What you need for productive working relationships is trust that says:

I believe you are competent to do the work

I believe that if you have an issue with me, you’ll bring it up directly

with me, not talk behind my back.

I believe will follow through on commitments—or let me know when you need

to renegotiate.

I believe you have good intentions towards me and the team.

And there’s a prerequisite for trust: a person needs to have a capacity for trust.

Marc Evers: Conference season

marc — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:15:31 +0000

It’s conference season again. If you’d like to meet up and have a chat and/or a beer, you can find me at:

CITCON Europe, 3-4 October in Amsterdam; QWAN is sponsoring this event

The Agile Holland Conference, 24 October in Amsterdam; I’m one of the organizers.

The Scandinavian Agile Conference, 28 October in Helsinki (Finland); Willem and I will run our Rightsizing Your Unit Tests workshop.

XP Days Benelux, 20 & 21 November in Veldhoven (The Netherlands); Rob and I will do our Responsibility Driven Design with Mocking presentation.

See you there!

Esther Derby: I lost interest...

Esther Derby (noreply@blogger.com) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:41:07 +0000

...in blogging for a while and took a break.

Anders Vesterberg read Behind Closed Doors and has some nice things to say on his blog.

Simple principles

Rothman’s and Derby’s main tenet is that the principles of good management are not that difficult to understand. They discuss for example one-on-ones, portfolio management, feedback, coaching and delegation. The thing is to consistently and reliably perform these practises week after week.

Not that difficult, but not always easy. Systems drive behavior, and it's not always easy to recognize and counter act the affects when you're in the thick of it.

I'll meet Anders in person in January at PSL in Sweden. His review was an awfully nice electronic introduction :-).

Johanna Rothman: I’m Still An Employee Even if I’m Not Yours

johanna — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:30:43 +0000

When we arrived in Minneapolis, I tried to find an elevator down to baggage claim. (Yes, my knee is not working well enough to take an escalator.) I did find one, but it said “employees only.”

Many people who travel are employees. They are just not your employees. No, I didn’t use the elevator–although I was tempted. (That’s the evil part of me.) But it would have been much more convenient. The elevator I was allowed to use made me walk far out of my way on the arrival floor and then back on the baggage claim floor.

Why is it easy for your employees and not me? Why do you trust your employees and not me? Ok, for airport security, it’s probably the right thing to not trust anyone. But I sure would like to see employees use the same entries and exits I use. I don’t see why I should trust anyone when it comes to airport security.

We see this in software all the time. Have a problem with an application, call the service number, and the nice folks fix you up in no time, but not with a command you can use.

Is software security the same as airport security? (I argue no. In some ways it’s much more scary to entrust your vital information to a software application.) What would you have to do to your application to trust me to do the right thing? Even if I’m not your employee?

Johanna Rothman: Are Loyalty Programs Helping or Hurting Your Product?

johanna — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:15:40 +0000

Mark and I visited his family in the Midwest. We used miles to pay for my ticket.

Aside from spending 50,000 miles (is it possible to get a ticket for 25,000 miles? We haven’t in years), it cost $5 for the ticket, $75 for the “services fees” and $15 to check one bag.

Yes, this is still cheaper than buying a coach ticket, but not by much.

I understand why the airlines are doing this. The real question, is what’s the effect on flyers, especially frequent flyers? Will I still fly with my family someplace I can take them on frequent flyer miles? Maybe not. Not if it’s still going to cost us $400 to get there (4 people, $100 each ticket). If our “free” tickets are no longer free, we will think long and hard about traveling and spending our money someplace.

But the real question is what about my expectations? When I originally earned those miles, the ticket fee was $5. There was no additional service fee. There was no bag-check fee.

This is the problem with “loyalty” programs. If you have to change the expectations of the consumer in the future, how loyal will they stay to you? If you’re a frequent flyer, you have loyalty to some airline. If you, like me, live in a non-hub city, you have loyalty to a number of airlines (not loyal at all, is it?).

Promising a return in the future for a product you buy today is tricky business. If you’re trying to hold onto your customers with a loyaly program (this can be as little as a customer service agreement), watch out if the price of holding onto your customers increases. You could find that your loyalty program is working against you, rather than for you.

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe: Show me the money

Pascal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:27:59 +0000

Playing with business value

This week, Portia and I hosted two runs in London of the “Business Value Game” that Vera and I developed. As usual, we had a lot of fun hosting the session and got good feedback from the participants.

Brain Train

Portia started the Brain Train sessions as a way for friends and colleagues to get together to experiment with new sessions and games. Earlier this year, we presented the “Real Options Space Game” at a Brain Train session in the Royal Festival Hall.

Last Monday we were back in the friendly lobby of Royal Festival Hall. As players started trickling in we grabbed a few tables and chairs to set up the game. Portia and I each coached one team through the six iterations of the game.

Each team used different strategies. For example, one team lost an unhappy customer because they concentrated on the other more lucrative customers, while the other team ensured that each customer stayed happy. In the end, Portia’s team won, even though they lost a customer.

After the game, we held a retrospective to see the good, the bad and the puzzling. The participants learned (or confirmed) some lessons about customer interaction, iteration planning, release planning, communication and teamwork. We’ll publish the results of the retrospective.

Thank you Eamon, Roshni, Jenni, Mark, Ioana, Al, Mohan, Daniel, Dot, Tamas, Eben and Maria for playing and giving feedback.

Agile Business Conference day 1

The next day, I attended the first day of the Agile Business Conference. The highlight of the program was a funny and energetic keynote talk by Rob Thomsett on Agile Project Management.

One of his learnings is that when we borrowed engineering and construction project management models we also inherited their prevailing culture. The relationship between “IT experts” and “Users” (a denigrating term) has always been adversarial.

Agile Project Management is about true collaboration and is based on a set of values:

Open: full participation and ownership by stakeholders.
Trust: team members and stakeholders are professionals who can be trusted to be committed to the project and the organisation.
Honesty: all people impacted or involved have a right to be told the truth; asking for help is a sign of strength.
Courage: Undertaking projects requires courage in many areas like telling the truth and asking for help.
Money: projects consume money. This requires a fiscal and ethical responsibility to be shared by all team members and stakeholders.

Rob concluded with some of concerns (silver bullet syndrome, lack of whole-of-life view, focus only on technical issues, lack of cultural awareness) and drivers (faster delivery, change friendly, more enjoyable, real teams, great values) of further Agile distribution.

In between sessions I talked to some acquaintances and met some new people. Together with Exoftware (thanks Andy!), we invited people to come to the next day’s Business Value Game. By then, we had already updated the game with the feedback from the Brain Train tryout.

Agile Business Conference day 2

After the opening keynote we played another Business Value Game with 13 participants. This time my team won! Again, the players had fun and learned lessons about planning, teamwork and prioritisation. It’s interesting to see how players react to the time pressure of the game:

one of the teams used some extra time to come up with elaborate strategies and tried to make decisions before they had all the information.
one team discarded information because they felt they didn’t have enough time to examine the information.

All teams could have done better and worked faster if they had shared more information in the team and if they had only taken decisions when they needed to. But that’s the subject of another game, the “Real Options Space Game“.

Agile Business Conference - closing

One of the highlights was seeing Ole and Jenni from GoAgile in Denmark again. Thank you for the gift and the great conversations about sessions, presentation techniques and Agile project management. We still owe you an explanation of Real Options. Most of all, thank you for your enthusiasm.

The conference closed with a presentation on the “Responsibility Model” by Christopher Avery. Chris explained the difference between being given accountability and taking responsibility. His model explains how we typically react in the face of problems. Portia has a good writeup of the material. On the way back Portia and I had a lot of fun going through each of the steps in the model in an exaggerated way, because one of the “Keys to Responsibility” is Awareness of how we (re)act.

Come and play!

We got good feedback on the game. Portia, Vera and I are busy working on v2.0 of the Business Value Game.

If you want to play our games, come and see us at the following fine events:

29/10/2008 - Scandinavian Agile Conference - Helsinki - The Business Value Game

20-21/11/2008 - XP Days Benelux - Eindhoven - The Business Value Game and Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

11-12/12/2008 - XP Days London - London - The Real Options Space Game and a new game by Vera. Exciting!

Or you can download our games and play them at home.

Watch this space for the release announcement or come and play with us at one of the upcoming conferences and seminars.

Marc Evers: No such thing as ‘perfect’

marc — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:37:40 +0000

Portia wrote about Perfect is Poison earlier this week:

Perfect doesn’t exist. Perfect is something we aspire to, it’s elusive by design.

Striving for perfection is a trap for many organisations: the organisation becomes more and more adapted to its context, ultimately fitting perfectly (having found the best practices and the optimal way of working). This also removes all variety from the system however, making it less and less adaptable. This leaves the organisation very vulnerable to changes in its context - and its context will definitely change. This a problem in many Routine cultures.

Assuming a stable environment for IT projects is dangerous: projects are in continuous flux and lots of stuff changes. IT projects (agile or not) are complex systems (at least the ones that aspire to make a difference). A project changes its context and is changed by its context.

If you look at it in this way, there’s actually no such thing as perfect. Maybe the organisation can be perfect for a moment, fitting its context, but then the world moves on, stuff changes, and the state of perfection is over.

Maybe we should not even talk about continuous improvement, because that presupposes you’re improving towards some goal. Managing a complex system is instead a continuous balancing act - dancing with the system, while learning more and more along the way.