Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

So that’s done…

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I’m gonna be honest here, my friends. Well, I feel like I’m always honest here but that’s besides the point. Anyway…

The last four years have been rough. Living in a country that elected that vile excuse of a human being and everything that went along with it was a challenge. If it had been realistic to do so we would have left, and trust me when I say we had a lot of discussions around it (you might be surprised to learn that there aren’t a lot of countries that are really chomping at the bit to let Americans move there). I watched the new President give his inaugural address, and I realized as I was doing so that it was the first time I’ve willingly watched the President of my country speak since the last inauguration, when I sat there in open mouthed horror as Cheetolini extolled the kind of “virtues” that had not been publicly embraced to that extent in decades.

I’m really looking forward to going back to the President not being part of the daily discussion, and not cringing every time that person speaks.

But in the spirit of unity that President Biden is calling for, here’s a few things I’m going to commit to…

  • I won’t use President Biden’s name as a weapon. We have removed our yard sign, and I won’t be wearing my Biden/Harris mask any more.
  • I won’t begrudge the people who want to say that Biden is not “their” President, but I will not hesitate to remind them that he is the President.
  • I will continue to have open dialogue with people who disagree with me on the way the Government should run, but I reserve the right to continue lambasting Nazis, white supremacists, racists, and others who were emboldened by the 45 administration.
  • I’m also going to continue making fun of anyone who still thinks Q is a reliable source.

Gotta get back to work, but I wanted to get those thoughts out.

Momentum

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Perfection is the enemy of good. That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it? I’d take the time to look it up but that’s kind of antithetical to what I’m writing about today. As is typical for me by now, when the year rolled over I glanced at my neglected network of blogs and committed to do better by them in the coming year. I even created a Trello board called “editorial calendar” that has three lists of topics, and I promised myself I’d write three posts a week.

That was three weeks ago. As you can see, no blog posts as of yet.

I almost opened up my editorial calendar to see what I should have written about in this blog on Monday three weeks ago, but I decided not to. I just wanted to get some words down. Get things moving. Get some momentum.

That would certainly be a nice change after 2020.

Don’t get me wrong. In a lot of ways, if I’m being honest, 2020 was pretty good to me personally. I lost more weight. My wife and I committed to making some serious inroads into our financial future and we have done so. I kept up my walking routine and completed a good number of virtual distance challenges. I’ve remained alcohol-free. I listened to a lot of books and podcasts. My team and I have received many accolades and are held up as being highly influential employees in the organization. I’ve continued to go to therapy every two weeks, and I’ve really learned a lot about myself as a result.

But, of course, 2020 was 2020. Pandemic. 45. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. We’re coming up on a year since the lockdowns began, and all the related factors are of course impacting all of us, and I’m not immune to that. The virus has mutated and that version is making the rounds, so it looks like another extended period of extreme lockdown.

I’m also writing this 10 days before the second anniversary of Christopher’s death, and almost a week after what should have been his 20th birthday. We continue to do our best to heal, to be there for each other, to figure out what life is supposed to even look like now in what we refer to as the “after.” It’s been hard. It will continue to be hard. Most of the people around us probably don’t even think about his suicide when they think about us, and that’s completely normal, but it’s still very much a part of who we are now. Part of who we will always be.

I don’t mean to be maudlin here, and I don’t feel like what I wrote above doesn’t even qualify for that if I’m being honest. It’s not a sad fact. It’s just a fact. It is, as my step-son says, what it is.

So there is a post. I hope there are more to follow. That I keep up the momentum. At this point I have to agree with my Mother, who loves to say that as long as she keeps moving she keeps living. She’s living proof that is true, so all I can do is hope to emulate her.

Facts and Figures

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I was inspired to write today after seeing the post below on the Facebook timeline of a relative of mine. I had to go specifically searching out said post because the relative put me on mute a few years ago after vague posting about me being too negative and hateful to follow any more, but because I actually love this person I do check in every once in a while. I would have posted as a comment there, but I have also been accused of only saying anything to them when they post something political. So it goes. Besides, I just spent a lot of time researching my response and I figured why not post it here where people beyond the cesspool of Facebook might find it.

So here is the content of the original copy/paste post…

I am making this post so it will show back up as a future memory on my timeline: Today is three days after the 2020 election. Gasoline is currently $1.80-2.10 per gallon. Interest rates are 2.65% for a 30 year mortgage. The stock market closed at 27,848, even though we have been fighting COVID for 9 months. Our GDP growth for the 3rd Qtr was 33%. We had the best economy ever until COVID and it is recovering well. We have not had any new wars or conflicts in the last 4 years. North Korea has been under control and has not been testing any missiles. Isis has not been heard from for over 3 years. The housing market is the strongest in over 20 years. Homes have appreciated at an unbelievable rate and sell within hours of going on the market, with multiple offers. I hope our new leadership can build on these things and can keep them going, but if I were a betting person I would bet that the only place we will see these results will be in this post

And here is my response…Sources are linked inline.

Based on data collected between 1993 and today, gasoline prices peaked in July of 2008 at $4.16 per gallon during the height of the economic recession. They bottomed out in January of 2009 at $1.73 per gallon during the first month of the Obama administration. The average price per gallon began to rise as the economy recovered and stayed over $3 a gallon until December of 2014, but it had been steadily dropping since June of that year. The average has fluctuated up and down between $2 and $3 a gallon ever since with a few exceptions, but the lowest it has been since the recession was in March of 2016. Prices have been trending higher since that time but dropped rapidly in 2020 $2.63 a gallon in January to $1.94 in May. This was due largely to the lack of demand because of the worldwide impact of COVID-19. As of November of 2020 the average price per gallon is $2.20.

Mortgage interest rates are historically low right now, but that is not necessarily a good thing. Those rates are based on the Federal Interest rate, which is almost zero at this point. There has been talk of that rate going negative, which in simplest terms means that the government would be paying entities to loan them money. The reason why the rate is so low is because the economic conditions in the country are tenuous at best. As of September of 2020, the unemployment rate was 7.9%, and that didn’t factor in the estimated 5 million people who are not currently looking for work due to the pandemic. This also does not factor in the nearly 2.3 million individuals in our prison system, with 56% of that population being Black or Hispanic. The housing and used car markets are indeed great right now – for people who can afford to take advantage of the fact that interest rates are terrible. Meanwhile, savings, certificate, and money market rates are hardly worth paying attention to. You haven’t even been able to buy paper savings bonds at banks since 2012, and even if you could the rate is just as bad on those as it is for any other type of traditional low-risk investments. The only way to significantly grow your money right now is to invest it in the stock market, which excludes approximately 48% of the population (and heavily favors white households with over $100k in annual income).

The GDP did grow by 33% in the third quarter of 2020. It also dropped by 31.4% in the second quarter and 5% in the first quarter. Before that, GDP has had statistically flat growth for the last 25 years, with the exception of the economic recession in 2008.

The stock market has been growing at a steady pace since the economic recession of 2008 but took a major hit in March of 2020. During the pandemic.

North Korea conducted missile tests in March of 2020, and during a parade in October unveiled what appeared to be an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

ISIS Claimed credit for an attack that killed 4 in Vienna on November 3rd of 2020, and has claimed credit for many attacks over the last three years.

There are several upshots to everything I’ve just written here…

  • The President of the United States, as an individual, as virtually no impact on the overall economy.
  • North Korea is still a threat to the United States. So is ISIS. But, according to the F. B.I., the biggest threat Americans currently face domestically comes in the form of antigovernmental, right-wing groups of white supremacists. These groups were emboldened due to the messages sent by the administration over the last four years, starting during his initial campaign and becoming official during his inauguration in which he took an “America First” stance. The America First party was founded in 1943 and was an isolationist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist movement.
  • Most importantly – It took me maybe an hour to fact check and write my rebuttal to this post, largely because I wanted to make sure I cited credible sources and had my figures right. I did not know many of the statistics above until I started my research. I didn’t know about recent North Korea or ISIS activity. Because I work in finance I was aware of the trends in the economy but I did not know any actual numbers. One of the amazing things about living in modern times is that we literally have the sum of all human knowledge to us available at our fingertips. Far too many of us do not use it. Read more. Research more. Find your own answers and do not let memes, headlines, and pundits dictate how you think. And whatever you do, stay the hell away from YouTube videos.

Free Training Friday (May 22nd, 2020)

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It occurred to me while writing my last post that there are potentially a lot of organizations who, like ours, are looking for ways to be Leaner because of the worldwide impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic. Conferences are being canceled, budgets are being slashed, and many of the traditional methods that Agile practitioners use to earn PDU’s or SEU’s are suddenly unavailable or too expensive. I like to think I stay fairly well tied into the Agile community, and I’m a bit of a social media addict, so I tend to see a lot of great stuff come across my feeds throughout the week. I thought, perhaps, there might be some value in me saving and sharing those things out to the world.

So here you go…the first in a weekly series I am going to call Free Training Friday. Because I am original like that.

Events

AgileThought Virtual Forum – Effective Backlog Refinement for Remote Teams

Date: Thursday, May 28th

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Description: Backlog refinement is about adding details to the product backlog. Refinement, on the other hand, is something that the Scrum team does. Unlike the Sprint planning, the Daily Scrum and other events, the Scrum Guide does not prescribe exactly how refinement is to be completed, so the “how” is up to you.

Virtual Scrum Masters Guild – Agile Outside of IT Panel Discussion

Date: Wednesday, June 3rd

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Description: The Agile Manifesto was written by a group of software developers in 2001 and has been heavily rooted in Software and Information Technology from the very beginning. That trend has been shifting, and many companies outside of the software development world (or departments within larger companies that are outside of Information Technology) have embraced Agile values and principles. Join us for a moderated panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities involved in adopting Agile outside of the Information Technology domain.

Practice Does Not Make Perfect: Why Agile Transformations Fail (Gil Broza)

Date: Wednesday, May 27th

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Description: These days, almost every organization is showing interest in Agile. We seem to have all the ingredients for effective transformations: well-known practices, detailed processes, ever-improving tools, extensive literature, myriad certifications, and many consultants. How is it, then, that so few organizations are truly agile? Gil Broza, author of “The Agile Mindset” and “The Human Side of Agile”, thinks that one particular ingredient has been overlooked in the mad rush to adopt Agile. In this session, he leads us on an exploration of that ingredient and its place in an Agile transformation.

Podcasts/Videos

Agile Coaches Corner: Trainer Talk – Why Does Scrum Have So Many Meetings? (With Sam Falco)

Format: Audio

Duration: 4:24

Description: In this episode of Trainer Talk – the supplemental series to the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast – Sam Falco, a Professional Scrum Trainer, addresses the complaint: “I don’t like Scrum because there are too many meetings.” At first glance, that seems like an odd thing to say because there are only four meetings, so let’s dive into this topic.

Relative Sizing by Clearly Agile’s Fred Mastropasqua

Format: Video

Duration: 9:20

Description: Fred Mastropasqua shares his insights on how to use relative sizing for your Agile and Scrum projects.

Follow Friday

Picard management tip: If you’re on red alert every day, then red alert means nothing.— Picard Tips (@PicardTips) May 21, 2020

I know it seems silly to link to a comedy account, but I get a lot of value out of this feed. This tweet resonated highly with me. I say something similar at work constantly (“If everything is a priority, you have no priorities”).

Getting Started With Agile

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Before I go into my list of suggestions, I want to take a moment and briefly touch on one of the things I am most passionate about in terms of Agile.

Agile is a set of values and principles that were written by a group of software developers back in 2001. It is not a framework. It is not a process. There are frameworks and processes that people who are interested in increasing business agility can use but following any one particular “path” is not being Agile. It is doing Agile.

If you ever hear that you have to…well, I was going to create a list of things of things here, but basically if anyone tells you that you “have” to do something in order to “be” Agile that is a big red flag and you should be wary. Always go back to the manifesto. It is short and sweet and should be posted up somewhere you can reference it often. This is a great little PDF that I use. While I am talking about the manifesto, there is a version that was created specifically around Marketing teams. You can find it here. There is also something out there called Modern Agile that is a more streamlined and focused version of the original manifesto. What you will find across the board, though, is that all these various documents focus on values and principles. Not “doing stand ups.”

With all that out of the way, here are some things you can do to learn a little more about the “other stuff.”

Agile Values

  • The Age of Agile by Stephen Denning is currently at the top of my recommendation list. It is all about the pursuit of true agility, and hardly mentions any sort of frameworks or specific methodologies at all. In fact, Denning points out that most companies that are well known as being Agile companies made up their own processes and got copied. While I am talking about Denning, the article he wrote for Forbes about “fake” Agile is well worth the read as well. The book is a little slow to start but it gets better as you read.
  • Turn the Ship Around and Leadership is Language by David Marquet. I first saw Marquet speak at the Global Scrum Gathering back in 2016, where he gave a presentation based on his first book. Again, nothing in these books specifically about any sort of framework but a whole lot about what real business agility should look like.
  • Team of Teams, by General Stanley McChrystal. This is one of the first books I was exposed to once I jumped into the overall Agile community, and it is a remarkably interesting and informative read.

Scrum

  • Read the Scrum guide. No, seriously. It is free and should take you ten or fifteen minutes at most. This is the most important thing you can do in terms of learning Scrum, and anything else you consume that is related to Scrum should be compared back to the guide and scrutinized accordingly. There is a whole bunch of “stuff” out there that people think is part of Scrum that is not (user stories, for example, are not mentioned in the Scrum guide. Nor is sizing or the Fibonacci sequence).
  • If you are a visual person, this is a great video I use when introducing teams to Scrum and unless you are filling the role of Scrum Master or Product Owner it is really all you need to know to be part of a Scrum team. Keep in mind what I said in the bullet point above, though. There are things in this video that are not part of Scrum and not “required” practices.
  • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time is a book by one of the co-creators of Scrum and a remarkably interesting study into the framework. Sutherland gets a lot of criticism over his ego in this book, and he does very much put forward that Scrum can be applied anywhere, and you are dumb if you do not use it. I think it can be used much more broadly than people think, but I am not entirely convinced it is a solution for every problem. The book has many interesting case studies with teams using Scrum outside of software development, though, and it also talks about ways to “sell” the framework from the perspective of ROI.
  • Essential Scrum is a book by Kenneth S. Rubin that we read as an organization early on in our transformation and has a lot of good “deep” value for those who want to learn more beyond the basics that are presented in the Scrum guide. I must repeat the same caveat that I did earlier, though. This is not a bible. This is not the Scrum guide. There are processes and tools listed in this book that are not “required” parts of Scrum that subsequently can, and should, be tossed out if they are not working for a team or organization. I harp on this point because one of my constant frustrations over the years as an Agile coach is running up against individuals who insist that certain practices must be followed that are 100% not part of the Scrum guide (I also happen to believe that any team that has been using Scrum, and doing it well, will eventually evolve to a point when certain practices found in the Scrum guide are no longer necessary either. Bottom line is that if you are following the same practices that worked two years ago and literally nothing has changed I question whether or not you are actually learning or trying to get better at what you do).

Kanban

  • This book by David J. Anderson is dry as hell and boring but It is pretty much “the” book about Kanban. I really cannot say much more about it. It is included here because it is a good source, but you will never hear me say I enjoyed reading it.
  • A book I did enjoy, however, that really talks about some of the reasons why flow is important, is The Phoenix Project. This book is basically a modern version of The Goal, which was a fable about flow and the theory of constraints in the manufacturing world. The Phoenix Project translates those lessons over to the DevOps world. For a book about management principles it is not only very educational, but an entertaining read as well.

Agile at Scale

So this is kind of touchy subject, because if you think people try to put constraints around Agility on teams, wait until you run across an organization that has had success and now they want it to spread across the enterprise. This is where things tend to get very “command and control” and quick. If you were to ask me where an organization should start, I would suggest Scrum@Scale. Like Scrum, the Scrum@Scale guide is simple, short, and free. You can read it quickly and if you are familiar with Scrum the concepts are not radically different from what you already know. Another major player in the field is SAFe. I loathe SAFe. Just looking at the SAFe diagram gives me a headache. There are some good things buried in the overly complicated mess that is the framework, though, and if you are talking about scaled agile you should at least be familiar with it.

I mean look at this hot mess. Seriously.

Certifications

Certifications seem to be a necessary evil if you are looking for a job in the Agile world, but there are a whole bunch of people out there who hold certifications that are no more Agile than the ninety year old tortoise that I wished lived in my back yard. If you are looking to be as economical as possible the certifications offered through Scrum.org can be taken without having to attend an expensive class and are generally acceptable for most jobs descriptions. If you want to take a class to prepare for any of their certifications, AgileThought has some great folks on their staff. I have not taken any of their official classes, but I am confident enough in the team there to assume they would be great. The other big name in the certification world is the Scrum Alliance, but all of their certifications require expensive classroom work unless you are working with an organization that has a Certified Team Coach on staff. If you decide to go that route, I am a huge fan of the team over at Braintrust. All but one of my certification classes were taught by the team there, and I have learned a lot from (and enjoyed) every one of them.

One quick tip about certifications and classes – Most of these classes have rarely, if ever, been offered virtually prior to this year. There has always been a belief that, as stated in the manifesto, the most value for classes like this came from face-to-face interaction. Many of these companies have had to pivot quickly to try and keep their training income flowing. I mention this primarily because I feel like it is a great time to negotiate training costs. Now do not get me wrong, I suggested the companies above because I think they are solid folks and I want to see them get paid, but certifications are not cheap. I think this is a great time for them to fill some seats for folks who might have smaller budgets or be paying for classes on their own, so ask for it. The worst they can say is no, right?

Networking

Florida has a huge and highly active Agile community, and there are so many free events happening every month that those of us involved in putting them on must coordinate to make sure we are not stepping on each other. Join the Tampa Bay Agile Meetup Group and start attending some of the local meetups. Obviously right now they are all virtual, but we have more events happening now than we were when we were face-to-face. It has been a little quiet lately, but there is also a great Florida Agile community accessible through Slack. Twitter and LinkedIn are also great places to learn more about Agile, but as I write that I realize I have no easy way to share the folks I get value out of in either place. I suppose it is time for me to create some lists.

Other Resources

  • Coaching Agile Journeys is a Florida based community of Agile practitioners who put on several virtual events a month, mostly during daytime hours.
  • AgileThought has been hosting weekly free virtual events. You can keep an eye out for upcoming ones on their event page.
  • Their events are listed though the Tampa Bay Agile meetup group, but I want to specifically point out the Tampa Bay Women in Agile group. This is the local chapter of a worldwide organization that is part of the Agile Alliance, and I am a huge supporter of their cause.

In Conclusion

The more I look at this document, the more I want to add to it. Which is, at its core, directly counter to trying to deliver the Most Viable Product to my customers. Ultimately, I hope you find at least one thing in here that you can walk away with that helps you move further along your Agile journey. I am currently working on becoming an IC Agile Coaching Expert, so if you found value here and would be interested in some one-on-one professional coaching so I can practice on people who I do not work with let me know.

I would like to thank Kari Goetz and Michelle Peatee for being the inspirations behind this post. They both reached out to me at the same time, so I initially started putting it together for them. What you just read is the finished product.

AF AF

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I have been Alcohol Free for just over six months.

March 22nd, 2020

Ultimately that’s the upshot of this entire post. If you don’t have any interest in reading about why I decided to do so or what my experience has been like since then feel free to move on. The anniversary passed right as this whole Cronoavirus business kicked into full gear, and I kinda got to feeling like I did when everyone was talking about how 2016 was such a dumpster fire. I mean, it was, but there was some really cool stuff that happened that year in my life and overall I was really happy but I felt like I wasn’t allowed to be. I kinda feel that way about the whole Alcohol Free thing right now. Like, if I mention it I’m going to be seen as bragging or that if I talk about the fact that I’m happy with the results of my six month experiment people are going to be all “but the world is on fire and you’re judging me for drinking my beer so eat a bag of nails.”

So, yeah. Have I mentioned that I have a lot of rejection issues that I need to work out with my therapist?

Anyway, I made the decision to try seeing what my life was like without alcohol last September after I read This Naked Mind by Annie Grace. There was a lot of stuff in that book that really resonated with me. I don’t know if I’d say it was really eye-opening for the most part, but there were definitely some things I hadn’t considered about alcohol and my relationship with it. Really, the biggest takeaway I have from reading that book and the subsequent research that I’ve done is that the entire concept of alcoholism is, frankly, bullshit. There’s no definitive science behind any one individual being more susceptible to being addicted to alcohol than any other (if people tell you there’s an “alcoholic gene” they are wrong…full stop). There are definitely personality traits that make someone more susceptible to alcohol, but those same traits are positive in other aspects of life. Take me, for example. When I decide I want to devote my time to something I’m all in. I don’t do things by half-measures. Sometimes it takes a lot of convincing to get me there, but if I say to myself that “this thing is something I should do” I do it. For me, that has led to a lot of positive in my life. But it also meant that when I decided I liked scotch I drank it neat and I didn’t stop at just one because as long as I was being responsible about it why would I? The problem is that alcohol is, at the end of the day, a dangerous and addictive drug. Combine that fact with a person who has an “all in” personality like mine, and…well.

There isn’t one thing that really made me re-evaluate my relationship with alcohol. I didn’t have a “rock bottom” moment. I didn’t lose my job or get into a car accident or hurt anyone or really anything dramatic like that. I have a list of things that I wrote down that caused me concern, but for the most part I’m keeping that list to myself. Honestly, one of the biggest things that was pulling me up short was my own vanity. I have a skin condition called Rosacea which is horribly acerbated by drinking. At some point in the last few years I ran into someone who I had not seen in a while who asked if I had been doing another show like Night of the Living Dead because my face was so messed up. Another comment that came my way was from a co-worker who asked if I had been in a car accident and hit my head on the windshield.

Yep. I’m vain enough to say that caused me to start thinking about things. I’ve struggled enough with my appearance because of my weight. I wasn’t real keen with there being yet another thing that I needed to be self-conscious about.

After a friend of mine posted about This Naked Mind on Facebook I added it to my Audible wish list and it sat there for a while. He mentioned it again last year and I decided to give it a read. I don’t want to sound hyperbolic by saying that reading it was life-changing, but it’s six months later and my life is definitely changed. My face has cleared up (although I had to get some laser treatments to reverse some of the damage I had done), I’ve lost 20 pounds or so, I’m sleeping better, I’m more focused, I have more money, and I’ve been able to make much more progress in therapy than I had prior to stopping (helps when you’re not imbibing a substance that adds to your anxiety on a daily basis).

I think the thing that really resonated the most with me about the book, and what helped me to so easily go alcohol free at the time, was the notion of spontaneous sobriety. It’s basically the idea that once your brain decides that something has literally no benefits for you whatsoever it’s easy to walk away from it. That happened with my Father, who was a heavy drinker for most of his life. One day he had An Event that caused him to realize that alcohol wasn’t good for him and he pretty much stopped immediately (no big secret on what The Event was…it was work related. He realized that drinking was impacting his professional life. My Dad took a huge amount of pride in his work, and always drew a line between drinking and working. When he realized that line no longer existed he stopped drinking immediately and never, as far as I’m aware, went back to it). For me, it was the simple act of reading This Naked Mind. I finished the book and went “Ah, yes. I see it now.”

And that’s where I am today.

Those who know about my decision have asked me whether or not I’m going to drink again. Only a Sith deals in absolutes, my friends, and I’d be foolish to think that I will never want to have another drink in my life. What I can say with absolute certainty is that when I think I might want a drink I am immediately reminded that alcohol literally brought nothing positive to my life and, in fact, brought quite a bit of negative. And the desire passes. For now.

As it relates to what’s going on the world right now? I’m really glad that stopped drinking when I did because the amount of money I’d be spending on scotch because I was stuck at home and distracting myself with booze would be…a lot. It’s bad enough I’m eating my way though this, but I was also using Intermittent Fasting prior to Stay At Home Fest 2020 so I’ve at least been able to stave off any weight gain so far. I can’t even imagine what my anxiety levels would be like, because they are pretty much off the chain as it is without alcohol being a factor.

Broken Tiles

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It’s St. Patrick’s Day. Eight years ago today I met my wife for the first person at O’Keefe’s in Clearwater. It was one of the best days of my life.

A year ago today we were moving into our temporary home in a downtown St. Petersburg AirBNB while our floors were being done. It was less than two months after the suicide of my step-son, Christopher. They say that you shouldn’t make any major decisions in your life in the first year after losing someone to suicide, but I thought that since Christopher was my step-son I was immune from that. I was going to be able to be the strong one and keep the ship going while my wife grieved. I went into therapy myself a few months after we had the floors done, and I’ve realized in the months since how very wrong I was. I’ve always known that I was a “fixer,” but I didn’t realize how much that my desire to fix things had to do with me. The house I live in has always been a source of great comfort for me. If I can keep it clean, and neat, and organized, and well-maintained…well, the rest of the world could go to hell around me but I’d still have a place to seek comfort. Christopher’s suicide broke us. It broke our sense of peace. It broke our ability to take comfort in each other, and in our house. I realized this morning that my decision to get the floors fixed was an effort on my part to fix the psychological damage in our home. The broken tiles represented us. They were a constant reminder of the fact that we were not at all ok.

If I fixed them…maybe that would change.

It didn’t. The floors are beautiful, and I don’t regret our decision to get them, but our damage was still there when the workers had left and everything was cleaned up and put back into place. It’s still there now. We’re working on it. Both of us. As hard as we can. But it’s still there.

And then…

Today I’m physically in the office for what could be the last time in a very long time, with the world falling down around us as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow. Again, I find myself doing whatever I can to fix a situation that can’t be fixed. What can I buy to prepare ourselves? What can I do to prepare? How can I make what’s going on ok?

I can’t.

I’ve been putting on a brave face for all this, but it’s getting to me. I’m not OK. I’m not going to be OK if it gets a lot worse. I’m not cut out for this kind of thing.

This is the song stuck in my head today. It’s not a good angsty blog post without song lyrics, right?

Until I should die, until I should break
Not a god, not a devil my soul shall take
If I should lie to betray myself
Then I would damn myself, and my soul forsakeI don’t want fifteen minutes want a whole lot more
Don’t want to suffer the fools and the spoils of war
I don’t want fifteen minutes, or a reason why
I want a stainless steel road stretching off to the skyI don’t need sentiment, want, or hate on my mind
No crimes of passion or obsessions in kind
No walls, restraints, or momentary thrill
No blood on my hands, no time to killI want more body, I want more soul
Flip the switch to automatic, I want controlI want control
I want control
I want controlIf I should give in, if I should turn away
Not a god, not a devil my soul could save
I want more body, I want more soul
Flip the switch to automatic, I want controlI want control
I want control
I want controlI want control
I want control
(I want control) I want control

2019? Good Riddance.

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Oatmeal 2019 comic
Image courtesy of Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Oatmeal/status/1212232294364151808

I’ve been noodling around with this post in my head for a few days now. As much as I’ve neglected all of my blogs for years now, I generally seem to be able to churn out at least one “this is how the last 365 days went” posts around the New Year. When I think about what to put down for 2019 though, everything comes up as a blank. Or at the very least, one phrase comes up.

We survived.

I mean, that’s pretty much all I can give you at this point. When Christopher took his life last January, we immediately went into survival mode. Just doing what we could to get through every day, every minute. At times it was all could do just to hang on by our fingernails. Some times we couldn’t even manage that.

While managing my own grief, I’ve done my best to be there for Lisa when she needed me. I haven’t always been successful. In fact, I’d probably be willing to bet that I haven’t been able to help more often than not. If there is anything I’ve learned in the last year it’s that I cannot, no matter how much I try, imagine the grief she is experiencing – and I don’t want to. I won’t even put down in words what the circumstances would need to be in order for me to even start to relate, and it still wouldn’t be the same.

So I try to be there as much as I can. I try not to make it about me when I can’t be. Together we try to figure out what life is supposed to look like now, but we still haven’t really figured that out. I’m not entirely sure we ever will.

When you have to open an annual recap talking about suicide, where do you go from there? Do you talk about the mundane things? The improvements we’ve made to the house? The trips we’ve made to Chicago? Our cruises? Our careers? Health?

It all sounds so trite in comparison. I know it’s not – That what has happened in our lives in the time we now call “The After” matters. I know it won’t always feel this way. But right now? In this moment? When we are only a few days away from what would have been his 19th birthday and a few weeks away from the first horrible anniversary? It’s the only thing that seems to matter.

Time

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CW: Suicide, Death, Cancer

A few weeks ago I realized I was uncharacteristically sad. I couldn’t quite piece out why that was for a few hours, but it eventually hit me. It had been a few days since the 20th anniversary of my fathers death. In what was truly a random coincidence, I was listening to an audio book about the recording of the Johnny Cash album At Folsom, and I very much associate my father with Johnny Cash. One of the reasons why the Cash cover of Hurt hits me so hard is the connection between the music my Dad listened to and the music I listened to, not to mention the fact that the song, as Cash interpreted it, is about his lifelong struggle with addiction. Dad did as well, and it was one of the the major contributors to the cancer that took his life.

He types, as he takes a moment to sip from the glass of Irish Whiskey that sits on the desk in front of him.

1999 was a hell of a year. Dad died, I put a down payment on a house with my share of the inheritance that we got, and a few days after moving in I found out that my wife at the time was hot and heavy for my best friend.

The other day was also the six month anniversary of Christopher taking his life. The two incidents are not related, but I’m just a little preoccupied by milestones at the moment. Sometimes it feels like it happened years ago. Sometimes I can’t believe so much time has gone by. A few months ago I started seeing a therapist to help me sort out my issues as they relate to his death. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a therapist, and as I’ve been working with him I have discovered that there’s a lot of stuff in my past that I really haven’t taken the time to address.

Prime Example: I’ve never given a second thought to the fact that the earliest memory I have is of the night my Father left, and him screaming from the front yard that he would see my Mother and her “fucking kids” in court. Turns out that children who come from households where alcoholism is a thing tend to not remember much about growing up in them. Self-defense thing, I suppose. The more I’ve talked with my counselor about things that happened to me growing up, the more I realize that I had some fairly extraordinary, and traumatic, events that formed who I am today and I’ve never really given myself permission to be a little messed up over that fact. These conversations came up in sessions around the anniversary of Dads passing as well, so that was a factor.

My son, Alexander, is 23 now. He’s the same age I was when he was born. He’s also a few months older than I was when Dad died (I was still 22 back in July of ’99). He seems so young. Back then, I felt so old.

I feel so much older now.

I am, of course, responsible for much of that. I have not been taking care of myself properly, and it’s showing. The irony is that, from a weight perspective, I am and have consistently been at the lowest weight in my entire adult life for a very long time now. But I have not been managing my diabetes properly, and a few weeks ago I had my first major scare from that angle. I lost sensation in my left leg from the knee down. It’s gotten much better, but it still has not fully repaired itself. I worry that the damage may be permanent.

I have a good life. I have a damned good life. I love my wife and my son more than I can possibly express. I have a great job that very often makes me feel like I’m making a positive change in the lives of people around me. I’ve got good friends, and I have been able to satisfy my artistic side through acting professionally for 18 years. When I really stop to think about it I am downright gobsmacked by how good I’ve got it.

But there are occasions when Time just decides to rear its ugly head and rain on my parade.

Is it SAFe?

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When I look at the diagram above, I get an absolute headache. Yes, I’m one of those agilists who sees the Scaled Agile Framework diagram and wants to absolutely claw his eyes out. Nothing in the above screams “Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools” to me, and when I think about the level of bureaucracy needed to support something as bulky as what is seen in this picture I want to run screaming.

So, it might come as a bit of shock to know that I arranged at Leading SAFe 4.0 certification class at our organization last week. I recognize the fact that the structures around SAFe are very comforting to people who are trying to transition from a command and control mindset, and I have been challenged by my mentors to learn more about things that are counter to what I believe. You know, that whole “seek first to understand, then be understood” practice that is part of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People mindset. I’ve previously taken Scrum@Scale training, and (like Scrum) itself it really resounded with me, but several of the members of our transformation team really like the SAFe model. With all of that in mind, I set about to get a better understanding of how SAFe works, and as a result I am, as of yesterday, a certified SAFe Agilist.

That, coupled with all my other certifications and $5.00, gets me the proverbial cup of coffee at Starbucks, and not even a venti one.

While I’m still skeptical about how something this complex would work in our relatively small organization (our back-office staff is somewhere around 150-200 people), I must admit that the framework isn’t all that bad. It’s clear that the creators really did design it with the Agile Manifesto in mind, and throughout the course of our two-day training I saw many things that directly referenced back to it. One of which has been top of mind for me lately.

See, in our organization we’re currently at a state where we have been “doing” Agile for several years now. We’ve got teams outside of IT using it. We have area leaders and executives involved in the process. We’ve got a corporate Agile vision statement, and we’re working closely to align the objectives of the organization with Agile practices. It’s all great stuff, and I’m very proud of the progress we’ve made, but as we bring more and more people into the fold, the question of “how do we know we are successful” keeps cropping up. As the Enterprise Agile Coach, this is a particularly vexing question for me. People look to me to explain to them how we know Agile is “right” for us, and they want objective evidence to back up when I say that it is. This frequently results in questions about what metrics we can use to show success, and I loathe metrics. Well, let me quantify that statement. I think metrics are fine as learning tools. I think metrics can give teams data to use to improve. I’m not so anti-metric that I think the practice of collecting data is worthless, but I do believe that metrics can very, very easily be distorted and become useless. I can’t tell you the number of meetings that I have sat in where a person who was presenting a metric did so by opening with “now keep in mind that…” and proceeding to explain why, exactly, the metric they were sharing was completely inaccurate and shouldn’t really be a factor in judging success (“but it will be better next quarter”). When you’re talking about team metrics? Forget it. Measure a team by number of lines of code completed? They add unnecessary code. Tell a team they should increase their velocity? Suddenly all the user stories that would have been 3’s become 5’s.

This is why, in the manifesto, there is a principle that specifically addresses what “success” looks like in an Agile environment –

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

There it is. Simple. Clean. Straightforward. If your team is consistently putting out quality work, the things you are doing are working.

What does all this have to do with SAFe? One of the things I learned in our class, and one of the things that made me think that maybe SAFe wasn’t quite the monstrosity that I thought it was, is the fact that in the SAFe world the ultimate measure of success is the System Demo.

The one real measure of value, velocity, and progress is the demo of the fully integrated work from all the teams during the prior iteration.

Not velocity.

Not burndowns.

Not ROI, or ROA, or lines of code created, or number of tests passed.

Fully integrated work.

Teams getting things done.

I still take issue with the fact that, in both the SAFe model and Scrum@Scale, there is an insistence that all the teams be doing the work in the same manner (although SAFe did recently concede that some teams could potentially use Kanban instead of Scrum). Frankly, I take issue with a lot of the things that SAFe says you “have” to do to be successful (prescriptive Agile makes me break out in hives), but it gives me hope that they at least acknowledge the fact that no metric in the world shows success better than teams producing quality work.

Agile isn’t a checklist, and your organization will never “be” Agile if all you are focusing on is whether or not you can complete a menu of items and say “yep, we did these things.” Some teams are going to thrive using Scrum. Some will do better with Kanban. Some might just adopt XP practices, or come up with their own way of doing things that works for them. That’s ok. That’s great! The Agile Manifesto doesn’t say anything about following a set of practices. What it says is that, in the end, if the team is delivering value on a regular basis you should get out of their way and let them keep doing it.

Don’t even get me started on how to define “value,” though…