Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

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…

A Look Back

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You know, it’s funny. I feel the need to preface every post I make on this blog with something along the lines of “sorry it has been so long since I posted, but [reasons],” which is a silly thing because at this point I’m fairly certain most people I know have even forgotten I had a blog. It’s also kind of amusing to me that the first post I’ve decided to write in 10 months is a “year in review” post, considering the fact that I have historically scoffed at those kind of posts. I also, however, tend to mock the practice of making resolutions in the new year, but in the last few weeks Lisa and I have not only set an ambitious budget for the year but she took the time to plan out an entire month of meals for us in January and I’m really going to try and get back to running with the Couch 2 5k program…soooo…I guess I’m just a big hypocrite.

I do have a strange compulsion to write these kind of things every year. This is most likely due to the fact that it’s a long-standing family tradition on my Mothers side to include a “year in review” letter in Christmas cards. My Grandmother did it every year, and for a long time both my Mother and Uncle Ed did so. I picked it up for several years once I was out on my own and had my own family, but these days the only person who is still carrying the annual Christmas letter torch is Uncle Ed. And I think that’s…OK. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about traditions, and about how we spend so much time and energy focused on things of the past and holding them up as some sort of sacred rituals that must never, ever be changed or altered or examined because doing so is an insult to our ancestors, and Christmas traditions are high on the list of “why do we do it this way” for me. I mean, as a Floridian, I’ve never, ever celebrated a “white Christmas.” I’ve never seen snow. I cannot recall the last time I celebrated Christmas without the air conditioner running. If you know me at all, you know there’s not a single religious motivation for me to celebrate Christmas (and, to be honest, the Christian reasons are flimsy at best). I guess I just feel like so much of what we do around Christmas is focused around obligation. If you want to see your family and friends, why do you have to wait until Christmas to do it? If you want to give someone a gift, why not just give it to them?

If you want to write a letter or blog post talking about the things going on in your life, why not just write it?

And thus, we come back to me pointing out my own hypocrisy. So it goes. I suppose the upside of the whole Christmas thing is that it kind of forces you to take a step back and do some of the things that you’ve just been “too busy” to do throughout the rest of the year.

So. 2018. I could, of course, talk about how much of a dumpster fire the year was. Because it was. It seems like the world is on fire and we live every day with some sort of low level tension wondering what new kind of atrocity we’re going to have to learn how to live with. I’m not going to focus on that here, though. Yeah, some things sucked. Some things sucked a lot. But there was a lot of good out there, too. At least, there was for me. Obviously I cannot speak for everyone, but in my personal life I’ve got a lot of positive to look back on.

Let’s start with the fact that in 2018 I commemorated five years of marriage with Lisa. I originally wrote “celebrated” there, but the fact is that I celebrate being married to her every day. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a positive impact she has made on my life, and how thankful I am that I have her love and companionship. Her support, her feedback, and her encouragement have pushed me to new highs professionally. Her willingness to spend the time and effort making sure that the majority of our meals are healthy and made with real ingredients has been a key factor in the fact that I’m back down to a weight that I have not seen since my initial success with Weight Watchers back in the 90’s. When I display behaviors that are problematic she checks me and helps me to unpack another layer of toxic mental baggage that I’m carrying around as part of my middle-aged white cis male identity. I believe that I compliment her in similar ways, and together we’ve just worked towards become better people and a better couple.

Ultimately, it’s just fun to be her husband.

In May of this year, I took the stage at the University of Maryland University College Adelphi campus to receive my last, and final, college degree. I’m really glad I decided to do so. The degree itself was conferred in December of last year, but I wanted to actually celebrate the occasion for a change (I did not walk for my Bachelors Degree or my first Masters Degree). Lisa, my Mother, and my son Alexander went with me to Maryland where we spent several days in a fantastic AirBNB, did some sightseeing, and went to the ceremony. It was truly one of the best vacations I have ever taken, and I am so thankful to have had them there with me and cheering me on.

After taking a break from acting to focus on finishing my MBA, I was back on stage in June with the Jobsite Theater in a production of Dancing at Lughnasa. It was a great way to get back in the game. Michael (my character in the show) was a delight to bring to life, and by the end of the run the whole cast and crew truly did feel like a family (not something that always happens by a long shot). The show was well reviewed, audiences were very appreciative, and just overall it was a wonderful experience. Jobsite celebrated 20 years of existence as a company this year, and I’ve been part of the ensemble for 19 of those years. I’ve watched the company grow, and go through the requisite growing pains. I’ve watched actors develop their skills and watched new companies spring up around the Tampa Bay area. I’m currently rehearsing a production of Othello with the company, and I have the privilege of working with a new crop of young actors who will be part of the next generation around here, and I’m thankful for the fact that I’ve been part of building a company that is getting closer and closer to being able to pay them a living wage so they can really focus on making great theater and not worry about how they are going to feed themselves in the process.

While it passed with little to no ceremony, I was promoted to Enterprise Agile Coach at my job earlier this year. The promotion came with no new real responsibilities, and I won’t see any significant financial benefit until early in 2020, but the promotion meant a lot to me regardless. It showed that the credit union valued what it is I’m bringing to the table every day, and that they have faith in the fact that I’m going to be able to help them achieve their long-term goals. It’s kind of daunting and, at times, exhausting work. But when I see the positive impact of what I’m doing it’s very, very rewarding. As of 2018 I have been with the organization for 15 years. I love what I do, I respect the people I work with, and I truly believe that as a large enterprise in a capitalistic society we truly focus on offering the best products and services we can to our members without operating in a manner that is financially irresponsible. Our company regularly places on lists of great places to work because, simply, it is. Needless to say, my job satisfaction is high.

While we continue to be quite hermetic in terms of socialization, we have made conscious efforts to spend more time with friends this year, having game nights, going to movies, or simply hanging out. We even took our first vacation (outside of group outings like Goth Cruise or Dragon Con) with one of the couples we hang out with in November of this year, and it was great. We got to go on their first cruise with them, and I’m fairly certain we were able to infect them with the cruising bug.

Speaking of cruising, we crossed the line into Diamond Crown and Anchor Society status with Royal Caribbean this year. This means we have spent 80 nights cruising together in the last 5 years. I mention this not to brag, but just as one other data point in things I am thankful for in my life. We have the ability to take actual vacations, and cruising is something that makes us both very happy. It’s the perfect way to just “get away” and not worry about scheduling, where we are going to eat, what we are going to do, or…really, anything. As I’ve said on multiple occasions, I know a lot of people scoff at the idea of cruising, but for us it simply works.

I suppose I would be remiss in writing a letter like this if I didn’t talk more about Alexander, but like my marriage to Lisa having him in my life is just something that brings me joy on a daily basis. We don’t talk every day, and that doesn’t bother me. I was speaking to a friend last night and I said that one of my primary goals in raising him was making sure he was able to be independent, and with that independence comes a certain level of distance at times. Still, he takes the time to occasionally send me a text just to say he loves me, and he makes an effort to try and see us as often as he can. He’s currently in school and working at a fairly high-end steak and sushi place, and he has plans to move back out on his own again within the next few months (he’s currently living with his mother). I’m just very proud of him and the adult he has matured in to.

Home ownership kind of sucked this year, but in the spirit of looking at the bright side I’m happy to report that we do not have a sinkhole in our back yard. After extensive testing from two different engineering companies the source of our erosion and accelerated settling was determined to be a broken sewer line. Unfortunately, that break was within our property line and, as a result, our financial responsibility. Between that and the need to upgrade our electrical system this year we spent a considerable amount of un-budgeted money on home repairs.

I’m going to go ahead and wrap this up now. I’ve got Hoppin’ John to make, a brisket to smoke, and other assorted prep to take care of before we spend the evening safe at home celebrating an arbitrary measurement of time that is ultimately meaningless (see how I brought it back to celebrating traditions???). I hope you’re able to look back on the last year with fondness as I can, and I hope your 2019 is even better.

The Past Is The Past

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

– George Santayana

The first time I heard this quote was in the early 1990’s. Jello Biafra chanted it three times, like a self-affirming mantra of sorts, during a spoken word show at the Ritz Theater in Ybor City. That show was truly life changing for me in many ways. It happened during the first Gulf War, and as a result of what was said there I resolved to myself that I would never be compelled to take another human life unless it was in self-defense (I claimed for years that I had “registered” as a conscientious objector, but that was untrue. I knew what was required to do so, but never actually went through the steps to make it official). I tore up my draft card during that show, and left the scattered pieces on the floor of the venue. I became more interested in politics, and in particular the people who pointing out just how ridiculous some of the things that went on in the world were. After this performance I expanded my reading to include more than just fantasy and science fiction books, and eventually found myself immersed in the words of people like Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, and Henry Rollins.

It was a hell of a night.

Now it’s about 25 years later. Jerry Brown, the vile enemy of the Dead Kennedy’s song California Uber Alles is now a darling of the Democratic Party.  Jello Biafra is still around and trying to change the world, but these days he looks more like someone’s Dad than a dominant figure in the punk music scene. We long for the days when we thought George W. Bush was the Worst. President. Ever. We carry the wealth of human knowledge around in our pockets and we use it to look at pictures of cats. Then there is me. I’ve worked for 15 years with the same company, working my way up through a non-profit corporate chain to a significant advisory position to the leadership group. I have tattoos, and I still have some “crazy” notions like “killing other people is generally a really bad idea”, but I’m definitely not the same person I was when I was so enamored by the words of Mr. Biafra back in the 90’s, and some of the things that stuck with me that night don’t hold up quite so well in my current way of thinking.

Particularly the admonitions about remembering the past.

Now, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t look to the past in order to recognize patterns that recur in human history. Heck, our current administration is pretty much a text book example of why we should always keep an eye out for another totalitarian government. I’m also not suggesting that experiences in our own personal lives shouldn’t shape our decisions today. They shouldn’t dictate them by any means, but one of the whole points in life is learning from our mistakes.

No, I’m talking – probably unsurprisingly – about living in the past when it comes to your current business decisions.

During a recent meeting amongst some of our mid-level managers, the issue of the lack of project documentation came up. “Back before we made this switch to Agile,” the commentator opined, “we knew exactly what we were getting out of a project because it was in the requirements document. We could go back to that document to make sure we got everything we asked for. And all of those documents were stored on the PMO site, so we could go back and look for them years later so that we could refresh ourselves on why we made the decisions we did in the past.”

I did my best not to run screaming from the room like I’m always tempted to do when someone bemoans the “good old days” of Waterfall development. I took a deep breath and talked to the individual about the values present in the Agile Manifesto, particularly the notion of “Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation.” I talked about the fact that those requirements docs were a double-edged sword, and that they could easily be used against the stakeholder (the nefarious “scope creep” accusations). I emphasized how the stakeholder should be in constant contact with their product owner while a delivery team was working on their product, and how they should be working with the team daily. I extolled the benefits of the Sprint Review and how that feedback loop could prevent the delivery team from wasting time by going too far down a path that is dictated by a rigid requirements document. I said all the things a good Agile Coach should say.

What I didn’t do was express my utter and complete horror at the notion of keeping an archive of documents about past projects.

This is one of the areas where I’m really big on the values from the manifesto. “Working Software over comprehensive documentation.” I get that the manifesto isn’t saying that you shouldn’t document, but for me personally documentation is a monumental waste of time – especially if you’re talking about an environment where everyone is working for the same company. Spending effort creating documents that MIGHT be used by a small group of people is really something I personally take issue with, especially in the world of software development where I’m a proponent and practitioner of self-documenting code.

But more importantly, this is an area in which I feel like it’s important to leave the decisions of the past behind you. My mentor frequently states that “an idea that is good enough will come back in time.” He mentions this in regards to regularly cleaning out the backlog by removing items that have sat around for a while with no action. I look at old documents with a similar eye. Do we really need to spend time going over documents that are years old? Do we need to re-hash old arguments? Do we need to try and remember what the market conditions were at the time that led us to our decisions? Do the rules and regulations that led us to past decisions even exist any more? Have they changed? How much time do we waste digging through archives, planning meetings, and generally getting nothing done when we could turn our ideas over to teams who can produce working solutions?

If your organization is trying to promote a culture where teams can “fail fast,” but you’re still overly concerned with trying to prevent the mistakes of the past, you’re destined to, well, fail. Give your teams the safety to run with ideas, try some small experiments, and learn on their own without burdening them with decisions that are, most likely, irrelevant today. Let them learn on their own. More importantly, open yourself to the possibility that they are going to come up with solutions that are completely different than the ones your organization thought of in the past. Considering how quickly the market is changing these days, that’s much more likely than you might think.

 

Guns and the Constitution. Because of course.

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I am not a Constitutional scholar. I am not a lawyer. I haven’t spent years of my life dedicated to the understanding of the ways our system of laws work. I’m just a guy who, in all honesty, had his interest in the Founding Fathers sparked because of Hamilton: An American Musical. Over the course of the last year I’ve read Ron Chernow’s books on Hamilton and Washington. I’ve read the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and all the Amendments. I’ve read the Federalist papers.

At this moment, as we’re looking at another series of school shootings in our country, I’m particularly thinking about how everything I’ve read in the last year squares up with what our current situation is in this country.

Hamilton was opposed to a Bill of Rights for the Constitution, simply due to the fact that he was concerned it would set a precedent that would expand the powers of the Federal Government beyond what the Constitution intended. His reasoning was that, by declaring that the Government specifically could NOT pass legislation removing certain rights, the implication was that the Government HAD the power to pass laws not expressly forbidden by the amendments. The Government had, for example, no right to restrict the freedom of the press in the original document. It was, therefore, unnecessary for there to be an Amendment specifically stating that they could not do it. Fast Forward to now, and in order to prevent the Federal Government from passing a law restricting flag burning, for example, and you are forced to classify Flag Burning as “speech.”

Now take this data and turn it to guns. Here you have the opposite problem. Because the Bill of Rights specifically protects the right of the people to “keep and bear arms”, the Federal AND State Governments have found themselves in a situation where any attempt to pass reasonable gun legislation becomes a “Constitutional Crisis.” The truly amusing thing about all of this is that some people view the Second Amendment as proof the the Founders wanted everyone armed, when that is far from true. At the time the Constitution passed, all thirteen states had some sort of gun legislation in their Constitutions. Hamilton was terrified by the prospect of armed mobs. In many states, in order to own a gun you had to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.

And while I know this argument has been made, unsuccessfully, thousands of times…What the Founding Fathers viewed as “arms” back in the 1700’s and the weapons we have available to us today are so radically different as to be virtually unrecognizable in the same context. According to a completely random internet forum I just found using Google, a highly-skilled re-enactor can fire a flintlock rifle six times in one minute…while standing completely still…

Those are the “arms” the Second Amendment was written about.

Keep and bear those all you want, folks. That’s not at all what I’m worried about these days.

I don’t really have any sort of major point in writing this, or a solution, or…really anything. I’m numb, and I keep seeing people say that the solution is MORE guns and MORE metal detectors and MORE walls and fences and borders…and I just keep thinking…This is not the world we should want to live in. We shouldn’t need to be locked in amber to feel safe. I don’t want schools to be fortresses.

I want there to be less guns.

Much less.

Like…none.

But instead I’m thinking that I need to buy one.

So. There it is.