• Management is primarily about people and their relationships, not about departments and their profits
• management 3.0 = complexity
• need to replace hierarchies with networks
• agile software development is the best way to develop software
  • old style management is the biggest obstacle
• managers must learn how social systems work

complexity is one of the most important concepts in the 21th century

• those who know all about one level of a hierarchical system may be unqualified to deal with higher or lower levels because those other levels require different knowledge
• applying linear thinking to complex system can create big mistakes

Innovation

• innovation is key to survive for many organisations - crucial elements for innovation are
  • knowledge - to be productive
  • creativity - to produce original and useful results
  • motivation - to do something worth doing it
  • diversity - adds robustness and flexibility to an organisation
  • personality - result of people embracing a number of basic virtues
• the orga must focus on actionable items out of ideas to really get innovation implemented
• a team consumes information and produces innovation (means - it also need the information)

agile fundaments

• people
  • are unique individuals
  • required to self organize
  • are trusted
• functionality
  • direct customer involvement
  • simplicity as key for the design of each feature
• quality
  • focus on it is crucial
  • technological excellence is needed
  • tdd, code reviews, definition of done, iterative development, refactoring, emergent design (do it when needed)
• tools
  • for daily builds, ci, automated testing
  • to avoid boring tasks and concentrate on innovative tasks
• time
  • sprints - to produce valuable results in a short time frame
• value
  • fast respond to change (through fast feedback cycles)
  • detect the need in moment
• process
  • daily face to face communication
  • continuous improvement
• conflict
  • conflicts as natural aspect of complex systems
  • force improvement

complexity

• difference between complexity and complication
  • e.g. a clock is complicated but not hard to to understand
  • a group of 3 people is not complicated but complex in it’s behaviour

body of knowledge of systems

• system theory
  • a team can construct itself, can define its identity, needs to interact with its environment and importance of interaction between team members
  • most phenomena can be viewed as webs of relationships among elements
• cybernetics
  • study of systems that have goal and interact with their environment through feedback mechanisms
  • understand the process in regulatory systems - that include iterations of acting (with effect on the environment), sensing (check response of environment), evaluating (compare current state with the goal)
  • a team is a goal oriented system that regulated itself using various feedback cycles
• dynamical system theory
  • systems have states - some are stable others not
  • not longer changing states or states where systems tends too are attractors
  • helps to explain why some projects are stable and why sometimes an organization reverts back to its original behaviour
• game theory
  • multiple systems compete for the same resources and systems may develop competing strategies
  • helps to explain the bevaviour of people in teams and of teams in organizations
• evolutionary theory
  • teams, product and projects evolve while adapting to their changing environment
  • helps to understand growth, survival and adoptions of systems over time
• chaos theory
  • even smallest changes can have tremendous consequences at a later time
  • behaviour of complex systems is often unpredictable
  • consequences for estimation, planning and control
• dimension of a complex system
  • simple or complicated
  • ordered, complex, chaotic

energize people

• creative phase
  • preconventional creativity
    • children <7 years
    • creative without knowing constraints
  • conventional creativity
    • children <11 years
    • creative with knowing constraints and domination of constraints
  • postconventional creativity

    • 11 years

    • knowing constraints but produce new things that use the constrains
• problem with knowledge - it constrains peoples few of the world
• you need to push people to the postconvetional creativity (orga often stuck in conventional creativity)
• give challenges - e.g expose them to environments that stimulate reflection and inspiration
• environment should be creative too - its the managers task to do this
  • safety
    • freedom to take risks and ask questions
    • acknowledgment that failures are OK
    • with safety you’re more inclined to express ideas
  • play
    • play games (turn activities into little games, play games during lunch break)
  • variation
    • routine work kill creativity
  • make sure there is always sufficient variation
  • visibility
    • show creativity results
  • edge
    • try to get edge experiences (bungee jumping,…)
    • make real challenges a little scary
• creativity is based on intrinsic motivation
  • care about orga survival
  • care about innovation
  • care about creativity
  • care about intrinsic motivation
• motivators
  • challenging work
  • achievement
  • personal growth
  • recognition
  • responsibilities,…
• hygiene factors (if not present they cause damage)
  • job security
  • salary
  • status
  • working conditions
  • policies
  • fringe benefits,…
• intrinsic needs
  • competence - the person must be capable in coping with the environment
  • autonomy - autonomous choice of action
  • relatedness - care for and be related to others, be involved in social world

10 desires of team members {#10-desires-of-team-members}

• make people feel competent - challenging but within their grasp
• feel accepted - make compliments on achievements
• curiosity (Neugier) must be addressed
• satisfying their honor
• idealism - contribution to make the world a better place
• independence - different from other people with own tasks and responsibilities
• order - some company rules and policies
• power - listen to what they have to say and arrange possibilities to do so
• social contacts - create environment to emerge ~
• status - let them see their status in the organization

ASK what can I do to help you do your best work?

• acknowledges that person is capable of doing her best
• person evaluates her own performance
• initiates discussion about further improvements

Create motivational balance sheets

• list points that could influence motivation and say if it motivates or demotivated - make the final balance of all points

creative techniques

• processes
  • creative problem solving, productive thinking model, synetics
• problem definition
  • who, why, what, where, when, how
  • divide into chunks
• idea generation
  • brainstorming, talking pictures
• idea selection
  • anonymous voting, consensus mapping, sticking dots

incentives

• the pushing of individuals in a complex system leads to side effects that cannot be forseen

diversity

• watch for every team member what connections it creates in the organizations network - to extends the common network
  • search for new people that extends or strengthen that network
  • use it in the recruiting talks - scan for behaviour to build networks

personality

• do personal assessments for each team member ask, present your own results and let them share if they want
  • test - Big five factors of personality or sixteen personality factor questionnaire
• do it yourself team values kit - to create own set of team values s.92
  • define also your personal values - and use not a different value set to your team (except you have all the team values already)
• remove open door policy (implies, that there are bigger differences) - better have a no door policy

self organization

• self organization is the default (in nature)
  • makes no distinction between good or bad – command and control pattern was invented
• emergence - a property in a system that cannot be traced back to its individual parts is an emergent property
  • supervenience - property does not longer exist, if you remove the individual parts
  • not an aggregate - e.g. fluidity of water is not only through the addition of water molecules
  • downward causality - influences the individual parts - e.g. culture influences its group members
  • physics - chemistry - biology - psychology - economics
    • each level has emergent properties
    • you can’t explain problems by only picking one part of a system
  • collective decision making without central planning
  • system (team) can be more than the sum of its parts
  • emergent behaviour of a team cannot be predicted when you put a team together
• self selection - team that selects it’s own team members - its an emerging team (no manager was not defined by the manager)
• self direction - no management from outside is directing (some friends playing football)
• darkness principle - each team member has only an incomplete mental model of the whole projects
  • thats why you need to plan and decide together
  • self organized teams increase control (because the darkness principle is also applied to managers)
  • software development = micromanagement by the team
  • delegation of control is the best way to keep projects manageable - Conant-Ashby Theorem - Every good regulator of a system must have a model of that system
    • you push decisions and responsibilities down to a level where someone has information that is smaller in size and more accurate
    • most of the decisions should be made in the subsystems
• distributed control is better (nature did it - brain, digestive nerv system, immune system)
  • a single controlling authority makes a system neither robust nor resilient
• empowerment
  • core responsibility of a manager
  • reason - improve manageability and also motivation
  • people must be empowered to make their own decisions based on their (better) information - whether they like it or not
  • don’t create motivational dept
    • don’t be bossy - people don’t want to be told what to do - they want to be asked
  • wear a wizard’s hat
    • the wise wizards never do the real work - they help the heros to succeed
  • is more than just delegation
    • includes support of risk taking, personal growth and cultural change
    • also acknowledges how powerful people already are
  • improves worker satisfaction and quality of life
  • improves productivity and quality of service
  • does not diminish your own status - it’s more likely to increase it
    • you make your team (and therewith yourself) better if you empower it
  • investment (takes a while to pay the interest rate) in social capital
  • choose the right maturity level - low, moderate, high
  • pick right authority level - Tell, Sell, Consult, Agree, Advise, Inquire, Delegate
    • tell - make decision and announce it
    • sell - make decision and attempt to gain commitment
    • consult - invite and weight input before making a decision
    • agree - invite workers and join a discussion to reach consensus in a group - your voice is equal to others
    • advise - attempt to influence workers by telling them our opinion - they decide
    • inquire - let them decide first - ask them to convince you afterwards
    • delegate - leave decision entirely up to the team
  • gradually build up empowerment - by giving more and more challenging tasks
  • number of persons to involve for each task?
    • depends on risk - a group can reduce the risk
    • options (depends on the situation):
      • one specific person with another (higher) level
      • express the requirement that must agree
      • allow people on the same level to act on their own
      • team needs to assign someone to do something
  • use delegation checklist (page 132) - all questions should be answered with yes - if not - make the team aware of it
    • is the risk factor of delegating this work adequately addressed
    • do the people have the right empowerment skills and discipline
    • have you considered and selected the right level of authority
    • have you considered the question of delegating to individuals or to teams
    • is what you’re delegating a discrete chunk of work
    • do the people have the skills to do this particular kind of work
    • do the people have the right format for the work products to use
    • do the people have the tools necessary to be useful
    • do the people know what the results should look like
    • did you set the boundary conditions for the work (e.g. budget, time, resources)
    • do the people know when the work is due
    • do the people know what progress looks like
    • do the people know how often to report to you on progress
    • is someone available to coach or mentor the people in case they need help
  • if you want something done - practice your patience (never do it yourself)
    • what did I do wrong - use the checklist to analyze this too
    • address the intrinsic desires
    • make sure that the environment is supportive (and work on it if its not the case)
• trust
  • trust your team
    • let them solve problems in the team
    • make it clear who is responsible
  • earn trust from people
    • do what you say, do what you’re committed to
    • behaviour must be predictably pleasant
  • help people trust each other
    • communication and commitment
    • respect them - give them the environment to try - others built also trust on their skills
  • trust yourself
    • you can only trust others if you trust yourself
  • respect
    • know what people think about you - ask for feedback
    • what is it that I should stop doing
    • what is it that I should start doing
    • what is it that I should continue doing
  • and give feedback
    • be somehow in the topic (at least at an high level)
• organization structure
  • ordered
    • no creativity and innovation
    • no empowerment
    • bureaucracy - behaviour is regular and predictable
  • complex
    • employees often don’t empower themselves - they are empowered by managers
  • chaos
    • self empowerment - not structured and predictable

who or what is tuning the rules in an organization

• misconception is that managers do it
• managers are not responsible for self orga
• its the managers job to make sure that the people can create their own rules together
• one responsibility is the development of a self organizing system
• alignment of constraints - and protection of the system
  • protect people and shared resources - make sure they’re treated fairly
• self- orga needs a boundary around it
• make sure that what emerges has value to you and the environment
• you don’t manage the people - you manage the system
• define the direction of the self-organizing system
• short - tasks
  • develop the system, protect the system, direct the system

leader

• a complex system does not need a single leader - needs more leaders by topic
• a cross-functional team functions better when it has multiple leaders - each with own area(s) of interest
• rulers - law making. enforcement and sanctioning
• football - leaders are the teams best players - rulers are the referees
• managers are leaders and rulers
  • do also governance(administrative leadership) - like hire/fire
  • what projects to work on, how much they are going to earn, what clothes to wear
• leader - agree, advise, inquire
• ruler - tell, sell, consult

purpose and goals

• every living system has an intrinsic purpose (comes naturally to a system)
• every living system can have an extrinsic purpose - assigned to it by an owner
• every living system can have an autonomous purpose - assumed by itself
• the goal of the team is not a result of the goals of its team members but of the interaction between the team members
• shareholder value is NOT the goal of an organization (its the goal of the shareholder)
  • an organization has many stakeholders - each with their own goals
• friedman - was not aware of the complex system - when he said shareholder value is the only goal of an organization
  • shareholder value is an outcome - not a strategy
• what’s the purpose of a software team?
  • intrinsic - product software
  • extrinsic - (defined to have the boundary and allow self orga to take place in the right direction) - needs to be defined by the manager

how to align constraints

• goal - only an extrinsic or autonomous purpose; if intrinsic use better - meaning
• the team should have/get a shared goal - examples:
  • next year we’re going to win the Best Product award for our industry
• checklist for agile goals - pick some of them that you find important to the current situation:
  • specific and understandable that people know what it means
  • simple and concise that it fits on a small sticky note
  • manageable and measurable that success can be determined
  • memorable and reproducible that it can be communicated to others easily
  • attainable and realistic to have a chance to achieve it
  • ambitious and stimulating so that it isn’t too easy to achiv
  • actionable and assignable to turn it into specific actions
  • agreed upon and committable that people feel responsible for it
  • relevant and useful that people care about it
  • time-bound and time-specific that people know when to do it
  • tangible and real to see the effects of achieving it
  • excitable and igniting that people are motivated to do their best
  • inspiring and visionary to see the bigger picture
  • value-based and fundamental that it builds on company values, team values or personal values
  • revisitable and assessable to reassess its applicability later

Goals

goal don’ts {#goal-don’ts}

• not created to intimidate people and threaten them (with loss of their jobs)
• not defined merely to impress shareholders or people watching the orga from the sideline
• should not favour short term wins over long term losses
• should not distract people from a desired outcome by focusing only on the action plan
• not too many goals

agile goals (in difference to old goals)

• higher purpose - transcends goals of all individuals (not only CEO or shareholders)
• goal depends on its context
• should not be connected to rewards or incentives - should address intrinsic desires (as learned from Drive - extrinsic motivation often destroy creativity)
• should give employees a sense of direction

communicate your goal

• you raise the pressure and make it transparent

ASK - Do you still know what your goal is? How is this action going to help us in achieving our goal?

vision statement

• created for business, projects and products
• outward facing
• deals with place the system has in the world and the change it will bring to its environment
• is about the desired end state
• paint picture about delighted users, market domination, world peace

mission statement

• used for groups and teams
• inward facing
• steering the internal dynamics of a system
• is about the way to get to an end state
• talk about technical excellence, innovative achievements, defeating the competition

allow team to have an autonomous goal

• you need to map other goals with it
• other goals should not overrule the team autonomous goal
• team must find it on their own - never tell them to create their own goal

use boundary list of authority

• table with key decision area, how (authority level- see above), whe (team/individual)
• avoids that people run into hidden electrical fences - helps to keep them motivated and productive
• set authority level to lowest possible level

protect people

• self organizing system must not be fair (see kids group)
• manager promotes self organization but also needs to protect people
• ask - Who are your friends there to get a feeling if the member is integrated

manage shared resources

• otherwise it leads to the tragedy of the commons - work the four ingredients:
  • institutions
    • work on building trusting relationships between competing systems - to increase acceptance of common rules
  • information
    • that increases the understanding of the physical and social environment - reduce uncertainty
  • identity
    • increase one’s sense of community and reduce competition
  • incentives
    • reward responsible use, punish overuse

quality

• you need to put the right and clear constraints in place to enforce quality

social contract for orga

• freedom to voice your opinion
• professional development
• nondiscrimination
• help

team - rules

• agree on the team’s direction; don’t go at it yourself (alignment)
• don’t collide with team members and prevent problems (separation)
• work together with the team; don’t single yourself out (cohesion)

some agile manager principles

• culture - no matter what other methods you apply to achieve competence in a social system - in the end it all depends on whether people actually care
• instructors - teach people how to do their jobs properly - again, and again and again
• drivers license - require that people are properly tested before allowing them to participate in (challenging) projects
• traffic signs - decrease the chance of problems in your teams by using smart and proactive tools, checklists, alerts, notifications
• traffic police - have a process manager walking around whose job it is to make samples of the results in your projects and check whether the quality output is produced
• car horn - make sure your team members have guts to tell each other how to improve their daily work
• government - management will need to clean up the mess

feedback loops

• positive feedback loops - effect increases itself
  • you need to recognize feedback loops - enables to understand why an orga can get stuck in a certain kind of behaviour
• negative feedback loops - system counteracts by slowing down the change
  • when an organization grows, the amount of overhead increases with the square of its size, whereas the horsepower of the orga grows only linearly
• can bring stability to a system
• intentional feedback loops in a short cycle are often better than in long cycles

Competence - discipline * skill {#competence-discipline-*-skill}

• discipline
  • importance of discipline is evident
  • skipping discipline makes you go slower (you produce technical dept)
  • maturity levels
    • oblivious (vergesslich) - we even don’t know that we perform a process
    • variable - we do whatever we feel
    • routine - follow our routines (except when panic)
    • steering - choose among routines
    • anticipating - establish routines based on past experience
    • congruent - everyone is involved in improving everything all the time
• skill
  • novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert
  • skill differs from discipline and must be developed separately
• create a skill - discipline matrix
  • maturity can be measured with those two dimensions
  • managers must take care of both dimensions
• rules
  • behaviour of a team is guided by rules
  • each team member maintains his own set of rules
  • avoid senseless synch of rules - give them freedom - it motivates
  • competing rules in a team can strengthen the whole
  • good rules are adopted by all team members
• subsidiarity - organizing principle that things should be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority
  • responsibility of individual worker unless he cannot perform its tasks effectively - then establish the rule on the next higher level
    • e.g. follow your own rules of writing unit tests unless the team can prove that its more effective to establish centralized rules
  • people can make rules on their own - they don’t need managers for that
  • please explain me why your higher level rules are more effective than my individual rules
• avoid precautionary principle - when something might go wrong make a new law to prevent it from happening
• you achieve the best results if your create your own rules on the spot - approriate for the situation of the day
  • the best way to implement agile processes is to do it your own way (wailgum 2007??)
• memeplex - collection of interdependent memes (pair programming, refactoring, iterative development)
  • e.g. Christman, Scrum, agile software development
  • practices in a memeplex tend to reinforce each other (positive and negative feedback loops!)
  • is much stronger than the individual memes
  • help to copy it as a bundle between peoples minds
    • it can be easier to get people adopt multiple ideas, concepts and practices simultaneously
    • not all ideas, concepts and practices need to be beneficial - the bad ideas still could help to copy the good ideas
    • the removal of individual memes may weaken or destroy the strength of the memeplex
    • multiple competing memeplexes may reinforce each other (e.g. XP, Scrum, Kanban - draw intention the agile brands in general)
    • memes can appear in different memeplexes
• broken window theory (signs of disordery and petty behavior trigger more disorderly and criminal behaviour - causing the behavior to spread)
  • behaviour = function of person and his environment – people tend to adapt their behaviour to the environment they live in
  • bad behavior is likely to lead to more bad behaviour
  • big problems often start small
  • if a problem is too big to handle - target another related but smaller problem

How to develop competence?

• maturity models are too narrowly focused on processes
  • an orgas capability of learning and processes is measured but not the capability of being innovative and adaptive in a complex environment
  • applying one rank to an entire orga is useless - there are many different topics to consider in complex systems - and every part needs a ranking
    • instead classify specific activities performed by specific people

approaches to competence development (should begin with the first approach - and the followers are fallbacks) - competency stack:

• self
  • self discipline and self development - refer to one’s own initiative
  • its part of the behaviour I have adopted myself and that I intend to stick to
• coach
  • training a person to develop specific skills and behaviours
• tests
  • some authority verified that a person has the necessary skills and behaviour
• tools
  • signs and signals to steer people’s behaviour
• peers
  • influence by a group to encourage a person to change her behaviour
• supervisors
  • making sure - on behalf of an orgas managment that people are doing their jobs
• manager
  • its about setting good examples and about ruling and judging in some cases

sub-optimization principle

• if each subsystem, regarded separately, is made to operate with maximum efficiency, the system as a whole will not operate with utmost efficiency
• conclusion: always optimize the whole
  • what you measure and constrain has to cover everything
  • global metrics over local metrics
    • metric of individual performance should be combined with metrics on team leam level should be combined with metrics on business unit …

7 measurable dimensions of software development {#7-measurable-dimensions-of-software-development}

• functionality (story points completed)
• quality (problems reported)
• tools (costs per month)
• people (impediments reported by team members)
• time (days remaining until live release)
• process (checklists completed)
• value (increase in users per minute)

performance metrics

• distinguish skill from discipline
  • helps skilled people to think about discipline and vice versa
  • discipline: task-board is up to date skill: few bugs reported, no build failures, customer demos always accepted

Books

• peopleware
• first break all the rules
• the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership

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