Urban Gypsy

My colleague Zainab and I will be presenting in the Pecha Kucha sessions at Agile Day 2011 Conference on 27th September, 2011.  Hear our thoughts and experiences with Agile as we share them in a conversation with Jochen Krebs - Founder of Agile NYC in the latest Agile NYC podcast.

Also check out the very impressive lineup of speakers for the conference (Amy Goodman and Linda Rising are key-note speakers).  There are limited seats available, so register soon if you are interested in attending the conference.

Prior to Agile, our Sponsors were in the habit of committing a drop dead production release date and aggressively heightening the sense of urgency by asking the team if the product features are going to get delivered by that time.  When they got introduced to Agile.. they readily adopted the liberty to add/change the stories in the backlog but continued to hold us to the original deadline.  On one such project, my team and I used the Scope Burn Down chart to demonstrate to the sponsors that we are not only completing what was originally in the scope but also completing stories that have been added later on.  It also helped them visualize how much the scope changed at what point in the project.  

Using the Release Burn Down chart we were able to demonstrate that if they removed stories, we could deliver the project sooner.  This enabled the sponsors to take a hard look at the stories and remove the “nice to have” features (so called “bells and whistles” shown below the x-axis).  When they could no longer remove stories, we convinced them to split the delivery into two releases instead of one.  The first release had the features the users would want to see on day 1.  The second release had features that users would not use before the end of the year or early next year.

This is the second installment in the series - Bringing it all together - Philosophy, Agile, Lean and Learning

How does one eat an elephant?

One bite at a time!

In The Art of Learning, Josh recommends breaking down an activity into smaller steps and repeating each of the steps enough number of times to appreciate the nuances and make it second nature.  Once each step is internalized, he practices different permutations of the steps until he has mastered the entire activity.  This is the core discipline one needs as one moves from Apprentice - Journey Man - Master.  A common misunderstanding is that if you know more about something you can move up this ladder.  The truth is that you cannot be a Journey Man until you have practiced the activity enough number of times to have learned the essence of that activity.  As Josh says: We have to be able to do something slowly before we can have any hope of doing it correctly with speed.

When I reflect on my own prior efforts at learning something new, dancing stands out as the one area where I have practiced such tenacity.  I am not a master dancer yet, but I know that certain aspects of dancing have been internalized to the level of a reflex action or response. 

Both Agile and Lean Startups recommend expediting the learning moments by shortening the feedback loop.

In Agile, we practice this by breakdown business requirements into stories small enough that about 5 to 7 of them can be constructed, tested and deployed into production in the smallest possible sprint (one or two week long sprints are recommended).  As the team practices this discipline again & again, it inspects & adapts and gets better at software development.  As a result, its velocity begins to improve.

Lean Startups conduct incremental experiments that follow the Build-Measure-Learn loop to discover valuable truths about a Startup’s present and future business prospects.  In other words, they conduct a series of small, low risk experiments to ascertain that their hypothesis on the next product feature that needs to be built, the price the customer is willing to pay and the customer that they are targeting are actually correct.

Both Agile and Lean Startups practice the principle of Making smaller circles to expedite learning and avoid or reduce waste.

I have often been told by my friends and colleagues that my creative, intellectual and recreational pursuits seem too random and diverse to make any sense.  Some have even suggested that I get tested for ADHD.  I feel fortunate to have friends feel free to speak their minds and are genuinely interested in my growth and well-being.

Recently, I reached a point where my apparent random and diverse pursuits seemed to converge into a set of principles that I feel are the essence of what it takes to excel at anything in the face of the unknown and the uncertain.  Many of these realizations come more from my follies than wisdom.  Nothing I say here is new…but the realization of these principles has moved me enough to share them with you.

There is nothing more certain and unchanging,

than uncertainty and change.

— John Fitzgerald Kennedy

This is more evident now more than ever before.  If you can master the leadership and management of change and uncertainty, you have very high chances of succeeding.  So how does one prepare oneself for uncertainty such that our reaction is not to resist or survive but to thrive in the face of it.

I must thank Dan Hoffman, CEO of M5 Networks for introducing me to The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin.  Having read the book and mentally walking through Josh’s quest to master learning, I am beginning to draw parallels in the disciplines of Learning, Agile methodology and Lean Startups.  I want to thank my tutor Barbara Salloway at the School of Practical Philosophy for teaching me this:

Whoever and whatever is in front of you, is your teacher.

And finally, my friend and colleague Yan, for being an eager listener and for engaging in discussions and debates that provoked these insights.

In the next three posts, I will draw parallels between the four disciplines of Philosophy, Learning, Agile and Lean and how each one of them is essentially a quest for mastering the unknown.  Each post will begin with one of the three principles that Josh outlines in The Art of Learning and then discuss its application to the other three disciplines.  I hope this exercise is as as enjoyable and meaningful for you as it is for me.