Anderson Lessons in Agile Management

On the Road to Kanban
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9853051-4-7
Verlag: David J. Anderson and Associates, Inc
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 408 Seiten

David J. Anderson describes this collection as 'The Missing Link in the Evolution of Kanban.' Anderson developed the Kanban Method over years spent managing and coaching Agile development teams, at companies such as Sprint, Motorola and Microsoft, by integrating Lean thinking with Agile principles and practices. This compendium of anecdotes and epiphanies tells a very personal story as he shares his journey on the road to Kanban - now a popular method for improving predictability while managing change and risk in organizations worldwide. This collection of over 150 articles compiled from the Agile Management blog and several other sources represents 12 years of invaluable insights by David J. Anderson in managing software development from 1999 through to 2011. Each article has been carefully selected and grouped into one of 16 chapters on topics such as Leadership, Management, Peter Drucker, Theory of Constraints and Eli Goldratt, W. Edwards Deming, Human Resource Departments and Policies, Agile, Lean and Leading Change Initiatives. Each chapter is introduced with contemporary commentary explaining its relevance and contribution to both Agile and Kanban. This book might have been titled, 'The Very Best of Agile Management Blog' but that would do it an injustice. Each article has been lovingly reworked from the original to provide a coherent flowing story that introduces both the need for Kanban and how it emerged as a leading method for improving agility in knowledge work organizations. Many articles are enhanced with new observations and reflection on how the Agile community has progressed since original publication. In total there are around 20,000 words of current insights explaining why Kanban is necessary and what makes it an important innovation in the development of Agile methods.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Anderson, David J

Leseproben

On Leadership
KANBAN REVEALS SYSTEMIC ISSUES AND CREATES THE OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE. THIS CAN BE SCARY, ESPECIALLY IN AN ORGANIZATION THAT HAS BEEN RESISTANT TO CHANGE. THERE IS A DESIRE FOR PERMISSION. AN ACT OF LEADERSHIP CAN BE THE SPARK THAT IGNITES THE NEEDED CHANGE. It is usually a manager or a team lead who first embraces change by signaling that a specific change is needed and that it can safely happen. Leadership can start a cycle of improvement that can lead to a major cultural shift. Leadership also reflects values. We see it in the decisions managers make and in how the workers are treated. Lean encourages us to take a systemic approach to performing work and to view workers both as a part of the system and as stakeholders in its effective operation. The goal is to finish the work—and the system should support that goal in a healthy and balanced way. It is an imbalanced system that drives the workers harder and harder. Strong leaders must make bold, risky moves that might be unpopular but ultimately are necessary for success. We can judge a decision retrospectively by looking at the outcome, but also by the congruence of the decision with the values of the organization and the integrity of the individual. The Agile movement itself has produced a number of leaders who shake things up—some for good, others not so much. One of the founders of the Agile movement, Jim Highsmith’s first book was called Adaptive Software Development (Dorset House, 1999). Its core idea, “inspect and adapt,” became a core value of the Agile community. Kanban has taken this idea further by suggesting that we make guided changes based on an understanding of workflow models. We experiment with small changes, keep them if they work, and discard them if they don’t. We call this an evolutionary approach to change. But evolutionary changes need a catalyst to get them started. It all begins with an act of leadership. New Rules for Old Geeks Friday, January 19, 2007 The challenge for us as managers is to give [the profession of] management a good name by putting in place Lean processes that facilitate rather than hinder, that deliver both productivity and work–life balance, that lead to great code and healthy coders, and that continue to delight customers without all-night code merges and death-march schedules. THIS WINTER I’M CELEBRATING 25 YEARS IN THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY. I’M ALSO facing the arrival of a mid-life crisis as my fortieth birthday approaches this spring. Yes, it is 25 years since a group of 14 year old schoolboys (the linked article dates from 19854) launched an advertising campaign in the classified ads in the back of Sinclair User magazine advertising games for the Sinclair ZX81. In exchange for a check in the princely amount of £3.50 we would mail you a set of listings of games written in BASIC. You had to type them in to your computer in order to play! :-O Back in those days motivating geeks to write great software was easy—you just fed them pizza and cola and let them work all hours of the night and you didn’t worry about all that homework that wasn’t being done. The conventional management wisdom is that the software industry is different. Software programming geeks are different. Motivating them is different. You don’t manage them. You herd them. The idea goes like this: You hire smart people, usually as young as possible and with as little social life or social skills as possible, stick them in an open-plan office, let them decorate their cubes any way they like, bring toys in to the office, provide a ping-pong table, a foosball table, a fully stocked kitchen, free juice, and a budget to order in food after hours, and then just leave them alone. The result will be fantastic innovation and don’t worry about the quality, the bugs can always be fixed in a future version. This wisdom has prevailed ever since, and here on the west coast of the USA it’s a formula that has made many executives and venture capitalists rich, so they would see little reason to change a winning formula. But have you noticed anything recently? Perhaps when you are sitting in a meeting providing status on your latest project? Grey hair maybe? Balding heads? Bifocals? As a manager are you noticing that staff need a lot more time out of the office for medical appointments and other real life events? engagement? marriage? birth of child? death of parent? illness? injury? kids stuck home on a snow day? When you’re recruiting, have you noticed how carefully the applicants read the benefits package literature and negotiate for flexible spending plans and childcare facilities, and how disinterested they have become in the location of the ping-pong table? Have you been asked whether prostate screening is covered under the medical plan? The ’80s young-gun geeks are still here. They are still producing great software. They still love their jobs and love the profession. They take a pride in what they produce. BUT … They have kids to get home to. If a project runs into trouble, they’ll still pull an all-nighter and brag that they’ve still got what it takes as they feel a proud burst of nostalgia for the old days, but three days later they’ll be out sick struck down by the latest flu variant and you’ll lose a week of productivity as a result. The industry is aging! We need new management rules for old geeks (like me). These rules mean establishing processes to ensure a good work–life balance. Old geeks want their capability to produce balanced against the demand from the business. They won’t be death marched. They already regret missing out on their 20s. The gallus5 geek of yesteryear who talked disdainfully of process, carried his compiler in a holster slung low from his hips, and treated management as the pointy-haired boss to be ridiculed, now sees process as his friend and his boss as the facilitator of balancing professional success against the demands of real life. The challenge for us managers is to give management a good name by putting in place lean processes that facilitate rather than hinder, that deliver productivity and work–life balance, that lead to great code and healthy coders, and that continue to delight customers without the all-night code merges and death-march schedules. Old geeks need new rules. Old geeks are great software engineers; they still have a lot to offer. The successful organizations of today will learn how to provide a well managed environment that delivers on the needs and wants of the middle-aged, graying developer population. The others will continue to play by the old rules and will suffer continual churn and turnover as they burn out an increasingly intolerant workforce. Prairie Chickens Wednesday, March 10, 2004 “Because failure was punished and success could be achieved by sitting back and watching the money pour in, the executives who made it to the top were those who avoided mistakes, not those who made bold moves.” —Bob Lewis I’VE BEEN GIVING SOME DEEP THOUGHT TO THE CONGRUENCE OF OUR IMMEDIATE goals and alignment with shareholders interests. To help understand the problem, I would like to introduce you to the prairie chicken. This is not my work but that of Bob Lewis who writes the Survival Guide column for InfoWorld. Bob’s 1999 book, IS Survival Guide: Changing CIO from “Career is Over” to “Change is Outstanding” (Pearson Sams Publishing, 1999) is one of the best books on management—not just for software development but for any manager in an internal IT department. The following is an excerpt from page 15, which I quote in full. Prairie Chickens and Old-School Executives Modern American business executives are expected to visualize, promote, and lead change. This is profoundly different than the experience of American business even twenty years ago, when executives had a lot in common with the male prairie chicken. Let me explain. Prairie Chickens are less elaborate cousins of the peacock, living in places like the plains of western Minnesota and the Dakotas. Every spring in the hour or so around dawn, male prairie chickens congregate in areas about the size of an average lawn called “leks,” claim personal territories, and do the prairie chicken dance. It’s an amazing sight. The central territory is the smallest—about three feet across. Further from the center territories get bigger but less desirable, as least as defined by female prairie chickens, which wander through the lek choosing which males will be allowed to fertilize their eggs. Proof: The central male gets about 90% of the matings. For as many years as biologists were aware of the prairie chicken dance, they assumed the central male was the toughest, nastiest bird for miles around. At least, they did until a graduate buddy of mine named Henry MacDermott looked into the matter. Henry discovered something completely unexpected. Male prairie chickens don’t fight hard to carve out their territories, defending them against all comers. As the years pass, males sort of drift to the middle. There’s some competition, but for the most part the males who survive long enough—those that don’t die of disease or being eaten by foxes—end up near the middle. When I left graduate school to enter the world of business in 1980, I often found myself wondering how some of the executives I encountered managed to get to their positions of influence and authority. Most of them treated...