Karl Scotland – Using Agile to Deliver Value
Archive for March, 2010
Facilitating A Kanban Konversation
Mar 24th
As I mentioned in my Scrum Gathering Musings, I came up with a twist on the Goldfish Bowl format which I used during the Kanban Exploration Deep Dive. Here are some more details.
The Goldfish Bowl format works really well for facilitating a focussed discussion with a large number of people. It keeps the active voices to a manageable number, while being open for anyone to join in if they have something to add. Apart from providing a solution to my challenge – keeping a spirited debate under control – it also seemed appropriate that the limited number of chairs provided a means of limiting “Voices In Conversation”.
However, there was one thing about the Goldfish Bowl which didn’t seem appropriate. With a Goldfish Bowl, when someone wants to join the discussion, they fill an empty chair as part of the conversation, and force someone to leave to free up a seat again. That seemed to be like “pushing” in to the discussion. What it no-one wants to leave? So instead, I moved the empty chair out of the discussion, and made it a Queue. If someone had something to contribute, they could fill the “Waiting to Talk” seat, which would be a signal to the “In Conversation” people that one of them should leave when ready. I was pleased to find that this change worked really well. Rather than the discussions being interrupted when people moved around as they figured out who would leave, the conversations flowed smoothly as people moved in and out naturally. Initially the “Waiting” person had to wait some time, but once we got used to the system, this seemed to be less of a problem.
These are the instructions I used:
- 4 “In Conversation” seats and 1 “Waiting to Talk” seat
- Only “In Conversation” people may speak
- If you want to join the conversation, fill the “Waiting to Talk” seat (if it’s empty)
- When someone “In Conversation” leaves, that is a signal to move from “Waiting to Talk” to be “In Conversation”
I wondered whether we would evolve the system, by increasing or decreasing the number of seats in each state, but that didn’t happen. Its something I’ll look out for in the future. I’d also love to hear if anyone uses this format, or has already done something similar.
Did I Mention The LeanSSC?
Mar 19th
I’ve just posted an entry on the LeanSSC blog, introducing myself, and talking about my involvement with the group. Its the first of what I hope will be a series of posts introducing a number of the founder members of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium. The goal is to create some more visibility and transparency of who the LeanSSC is and what we are trying to achieve. In addition we have created a public Yahoo! Group where we hope that we can more openly discuss the ideas advocated by the LeanSSC.
While I’m talking about the LeanSSC, I should highlight that if you’re thinking of going to the Atlanta conference and haven’t booked yet, the price gores up again in April. Book now while you can at $995. And if you’re not thinking of going, why not?!? The program looks excellent, and having just begun piecing together my talk, I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll be bringing together some ideas on visual management kanban board techniques which I’m calling the Kanban Multiverse.
An added benefit of coming to t he conference is that the Technical Advisory Board is also meeting at the same venue on April 20th (Tuesday) and is open to all conference attendees. To attend all you need to do is to show up a day earlier, and to register for the conference and collect your badge on Tuesday. The registration desk volunteers will direct you to the room for the TAB meeting.
I hope to see you there!
http://atlanta2010.leanssc.org/
Scrum Gathering Musings
Mar 17th
I came away from the Scrum Gathering last week feeling surprisingly positive about the future of the Scrum Alliance. All in all it was a very enjoyable conference, and my overall impression was of a community which is more open and inclusive than I have perceived it to be for a long time. Talking to Tobias Mayer at the end he put it quite nicely – the Scrum Alliance is about transforming the world of work, and not about defining Scrum.
My Kanban Deep Dive seemed to be well received. I had a great group who were very engaged and willing to enter into the spirit of lively debate, including Jean Tabaka, Lasse Koskela and Jurgen Appelo. My goal was not to “teach” Kanban, but to explore some of the key elements, and how they compare to Scrum. After some inspection and adaptation, the discussions centred around “how will these ideas change the way I work?” It was interesting to hear some diverse opinions and discover how people would take away what we covered. I also came up with a new format inspired by Kanban – the Kanban Konversation – a pull-based variation of the Goldfish Bowl. I’ve blog about this separately.
Other sessions I went to included a couple on Lean Thinking and Scrum, including a great summary of Statistical Control Charts by Mark Strange – something I never thought I would see discussed openly within the Scrum Community! Mike Cottmeyer also hosted a useful OpenSpace session on Scaling Agile in which we explored his ideas about using a Kanban approach to co-ordinate Agile Enterprises.
The OpenSpace itself was hosted by Harrison Owen, creator of the format, and it was insightful to hear him talk about its origins, and how he typically uses it. I liked the more fluid way of creating the market place. Proposers were limited to stating the problem they wanted to discuss, and their name – no rambling descriptions or explanations. The market place itself was had no explicit schedule – proposers just added a post-it with a time and location to their problem. The schedule seemed to self-organise into more of a structure later on. One thought I had was that OpenSpace as used by the Agile community may itself be overkill for how we use it. I’ve never been to an Agile OpenSpace in which we needed to solve a specific problem by yesterday. Rather they are forum for open conversations on a variety of topics relevant to the conference and community. Much like the conversations I generally find mysefl involved in over a beer (or Mohito this time) in the evening. I wonder what would happen if we simple hired a bar for a couple of evening and people came along for a drink and a chat? Oh wait, that’s XTC!
To sum up my thoughts after the Scrum Gathering, it seems to me that the Scrum Community is now seeing itself as part of the picture, and not he whole picture, which can only be a good thing.
