Karl Scotland – Using Agile to Deliver Value
A New Lean And Agile Picture
David Harvey posted a brilliant piece on his blog entitled “The Scrum Picture is Wrong”. I highly recommend reading it. His ideas and suggestions for an alternative Scrum picture got me thinking about how to visualise Lean and Agile software development in a process or label agnostic way. David’s picture looked like a figure of eight, and there seemed to be 2 inputs (a vision and reality), and 2 outputs (the product and the team). A quick google found me what I was looking for here – a figure of eight with a bar across the top and bottom. “A time sign that according to Diderot’s Encyclopedia meant hour for the chemists in eighteenth century France”. That seems quite appropriate. An hour would be quite a good interval for a feedback loop 
This is what I came up with. A vision and reality come together to produce a product and a team through process and improvement (and process improvement)
Now I just need to find a good label to stick on it…
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about 10 months ago
Looks so minimally cool, almost Bauhaus.
But where’s the people? (isn’t that what David’s piece was about?) And still the dysfunctional local optimum of “Team” already? ;}
about 10 months ago
I like the convincing simplicity of your drawing (easy to remember
).
Only change request: Have “reality” replaced by “people”, so it’s people with a (shared) vision will become a team and deliver a product.
What do you think?
about 10 months ago
Not sure process and improvement are the right things for inside the loops.
They feel like they should be activity type statements – perhaps Develop Product and Develop Potential.
The things at the end of the loops are outcome things – Product Increment and Capability Improvement.
The inputs should be Vision and Team/People.
Love the simplicity of this.
about 10 months ago
I agree with other Kerstin that people would be a better second input. I really like this model as it shows that by adding process and improvement to vision and (if changed) people then you get a product and a team. After all, what is Scrum about if not people?
about 10 months ago
Very nice!
What about “deliver” and “reflect” as inside-circle titles?
Can I use it in my talks?
about 10 months ago
I certainly like that the defacto Cohn picture is being discussed. I also love the fact that new ideas that are being discussed. However (you knew this was coming), I think that the simplicity of either the Cohn picture or the new figure 8 picture will be difficult to be both complete and simple. That means I believe this discussion needs to go on some more and we are going to see many more iterations of the new picture.
My first reaction, was the top ring resonated with me. The bottom ring didn’t. Before reading any of the comments my first reaction was to suggest that the labels on the bottom be “Reality, Team, Improvement”. I’m still thinking that is not bad, but would like the word people in there, as suggested by some of the comments. So perhaps “People, Team, Improvement”. I like team in the middle since “stuff” should revolve around the team.
Anyhow, my 2 cents (pence?) in a discussion that I think will continue for a while.
about 10 months ago
I wasn’t totally happy with Reality, so maybe People is the better 2nd input, which also addresses Bob’s comment.
I’d also consider replacing Team with Capability to make it more general.
about 10 months ago
I like Karl’s modification. As a blast from the past, this looks a good deal like the Quality Improvement Paradigm (QIP) that Vic Basili and company came up with during the 25-year NASA Software Engineering Lab experience (one reference is: http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514265084/html/x287.html). Vic envisioned developing and using various models to support the improvement and this was before the lean/agile movement began in software. But the figure 8 and the interaction between the various pieces is still there.
about 10 months ago
Hi Johannes,
Sure, feel free to use and adapt this as you like. Feel free to link back to this blog aswell
Karl
about 10 months ago
Nice, Karl – I like the graphic simplicity (and what’s more, it works better as a tattoo than the Scrum Diagram). +1 for Glenn’s People-Team-Improvement (though “improvement” is a little weak, how about People-Team-Capability?).