Agile Learning Labs

Is Agile a Culture?

Is Agile a culture or a process?

That's the question Jeff Patton is asking on AgileProductDesign.com. It's a question I've also been thinking about, ever since Chris and I shared a deep dish pizza at Patxi's in Palo Alto last week with Pat Reed, supreme mistress of the IT universe at the Gap.

What Pat has accomplished in terms of furthering agile adoption, and the thinking she's put into the hows and whys, is fairly stunning. She has a psych degree, too, which inclines her to always circle back to the human side of why we do the things we do--and she said, in effect, that the biggest stumbling block of all wasn't the teaching (or even the accounting) but enculturation--the transition to an agile culture.

In his post, Patton goes on to say that on one level "culture is process," and uses the example of what it means culturally to be an American--work hard, go to college, get a good job, have 2.5 kids, etc. Our culture, he says, is comprised of these processes,  which we then adopt or rebel against. The point, he says, isn't that we do all of these things, but that as members of the culture that holds them as values, we always return to measure ourselves against them.

Here is where it gets interesting for those of us who teach agile:

We must teach process, but if we try to teach this stuff as pure process--put tab a in slot b--we might get perfect adoption in the short term, but in the long run, once people revert to their human state, this system will break down. I hear a lot of "one true way-ism" around agile, statements like, "Well, if you're not doing XYZ, then it isn't agile, period!" But how useful is this? Is agile an object, a commodity to be refined to a state of purity in order to "burn clean," or is it a culture, in which we hope to live our professional lives with room to grow, fail and define ourselves, for ourselves?

In agile, we have a manifesto, some best practices, a few schools of thought, and even, as Patton adds, some myths and heroes. But if it is to be inhabitable as a culture, then it is vital that we use it as a framework to measure, test and strengthen ourselves against, rather than as a set of acceptance tests to pass.

To use an analogy: as human beings, we absorb much of our culture from our parents. And we accomplish this in any number of ways: by immitating them, honoring them, emulating them, and by rebelling, rejecting and defining ourselves against them. We draw strength from their guidance, and we strengthen ourselves by resisting them. Agile needs to be robust enough that we can treat it this way without breaking it.

In short, we aren't the parents here, but the children: we don't need to adopt agile; agile needs to adopt us. Only then will it be a true culture.

Dear XP

I'm very enthusiastic about agile software development. I have a special place in my heart for eXtreme Programming (XP), which was where I started with agile. That said, I don't have anything on these guys.

The XP video reminded me of this B of A video from a while back. The difference is that XP folks seem to be having a really good time, and the B of A folks... well, I'll just say that I know which party I want to be invited to.

Pay for Performance Hard to Get Right

I found this interesting article on the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge site. It examines 13 pay-for-performance programs that various groups in HP tried and dropped. There are lessons to be learned from these experiences.

What gets incented gets done, at the expense of the rest of the stuff. Think about the side effects of any incentive program. Giving extra pay for outstanding individual accomplishments is not going to encourage teamwork, for example.

Manage expectations; better to start with goals that are too high than too low. If management finds that fewer people than expected are able to perform up to the incented level, it is a simple matter to adjust the level down a bit next cycle. If, however, more people than expected make it the first cycle, they are likely to cry 'Foul!' when management adjusts the levels up next time.

Creativity and learning are tough to incent with a pay-for-performance program. Such programs tend to reward 'success' and results, not experimentation, trial and error.

I agree that these programs can be hard to get right, and are costly when they are done wrong. In management, as in engineering, it is often the hardest things that are most valuable. Pay-for-performance is a tool. It is management's job to decide if it is the right tool.

My First Week at Geekaplex: Integrating a New Hire

My friend Peter started working at EvilEmpireSoft on the same Monday that I started at Geekaplex. That Friday, over beers, he told me that he had spent most of his first week waiting for his laptop to show up. When it finally showed up, it had an outdated version of the development environment installed which couldn't compile the code he was supposed to be working on. On top of that, Outlook was misconfigured and wouldn't even think about connecting to the mail server. He spent an afternoon figuring out the configuration only to discover that his email account hadn't been activated yet! "It's as if they were surprised when I showed up for work on Monday. Maybe they forgot that they hired me? I spent the first morning waiting in HR until someone was available to give me paperwork to fill out. After that," he went on, "I spent the afternoon wandering around looking for an empty cube to claim."

I felt bad for Peter, and I was almost embarrassed at how different my first week had gone. My office was just down the hall from my boss's. There was no mistaking that it was mine, as my name was on the plaque next to the door. Inside, I found a shinny new ThinkPad with a docking station and a pair of flat-screen monitors. The drawers in the desk were filled with new pens, pencils, paper, a stapler, and even a box of freshly printed business cards. My boss sat down with me and walked me through my first week, pointing out the various meetings and training sessions that were already on my calendar. There was even a welcome email from the president of the company waiting in my in-box.

"Wow!" Said Peter, "You're like a VIP over there! I feel like most folks don't know I exist, and if they do, they are just hoping that I won't bother them. It really sucks. EvilEmpireSoft seemed so cool and together when I interviewed, but now I'm wondering how they get anything done. They aren't the elite, well-oiled organization that I imagined them to be. I feel like I made a big mistake accepting their offer."

What a big difference attention to detail and a little preparation made. By simply taking the time to provision my office, my boss sent me a strong positive message about the company, and how much they valued me. Additionally, by making sure that I had all the tools I needed to be productive, they let me know that they expected me to be productive. I felt like Geekaplex had it together, and that they would expect me to have it together as well. I felt welcomed and challenged.

Voted Off the Vegetable Island!

While walking this morning, I listened to the HBR Ideacast #35, What it Means to Work Here. In it they mention a hiring practice used by Whole Foods, that I really like. New hires are on probation for the first 4 weeks. At the end of that time, their coworkers vote to keep them or let them go.