The virtues (or otherwise) of feedback

Agile methodologies are successful because they are empirical, incremental and iterative; every action is examined and feedback is generated such that improvement is attained by taking small refining steps. Running scrum with XP generates feedback (TDD, pairing) as often as every few minutes!

It is abundantly clear to me why this results in great software better aligned with the customer's needs. However, in a recent conversation on the merits of frequent (structured) feedback I decided to play the devil's advocate and asked if it weren't possible that frequent feedback might sometimes in fact stymie some of the very best minds. This suggestion was met with appropriate derision (yes, it was a conversation among 'the converted').

I wasn't to be put off that easily however, what about Van Gogh I asked? He never sold a single a painting while he was alive, and when he paired with Gauguin it ended in tears. If Van Gogh had heeded the feedback he received on the fruits of his artistic endeavours he would have given up long before he got to Arles and the world would have been a poorer place for it. Art is not science was the rejoinder. There is a science to art though, and an art to science.

What about music then, it's still art but art with an explicitly mathematical character, how do great musicians deal with feedback? Beethoven was stone deaf by the time he wrote his majestic 9^th symphony, a symphony which to this day sets the standard for all other symphonies. When Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps was first performed some ninety years later there was a riot! The composer (and the choreographer, who was also a touch too modern for the tastes of Paris' beau monde) were nearly run out of town. The press was almost unanimous in its condemnation of this newfangled noise and the weird dancing that went with it. These days, Sacre du Printemps is regarded as one of the masterpieces of twentieth century music. As for Schoenberg...

I wasn't convincing however, art was far too subjective (we hadn't even touched on literature yet), and that's exactly why creative geeks get into software; a bit is either on or off. Feedback is always good. And Schoenberg really is unadulterated noise!

However, new research would seem to indicate that I may not have been entirely misguided in my playful challenging of the virtues of feedback. Creative ideas tend to generate resistance, even among people explicitly seeking innovative breakthroughs, and regardless of objective evidence supporting the new idea!

So, when is negative feedback a sign that you need to change your ways and when is it a sign that you are most definitely on the right track? There is no simple answer to that question. As a rule I would err on the side of responding to feedback at face value but try and allow for the occasions when feedback says one thing but means another. In fact, this is a specific instance of a generic problem with all process guidelines, and a topic of hot debate in the scrum community;

• When does a product owner challenging a team become a manager pressuring the team?
• When does guarding the process become procedural nit-picking?
• When does positive conflict become damaging mudslinging?
• When does the avant garde represent the emperor’s new clothes?
• Etc.

In all cases the answer is (a sometimes seriously unsatisfying), “it depends”. And that is the art to this science of software development.

Fixing to get flexible

When adopting scrum, one of the more subtly difficult issues that can arise, derives from the varying expectations generated by the word agile. Customers who are used to long lead times and cumbersome procedures are delighted at the prospect of 'going agile' – they will get to call the shots and there will be no penalty for change. This lightweight interpretation of agile, inspired by a craving for flexibility, can cause problems when customers decide mid-sprint that they need something new, tomorrow.

When faced with the situation outlined above, the scrum master will of course state that the customer needs to talk to the PO and that, in all likelihood, (some portion of) the new functionality will be delivered no earlier than at the end of the next sprint (which could be up to 4 weeks hence!). The customer's response will often range from disappointment to disillusion; what's so agile about that?

Or, what to do as freshly minted scrum master when the sprint ends and the last story or two (!) on the sprint backlog are not done? The freshly minted PO, who is also still learning, and his customer base are pushing hard for an extension to the sprint – surely adding a day or two to the sprint is better than delaying delivery of the story in question for (at least) another whole sprint; where is the agility in (such) strict time-boxing?

Management might also react negatively when it transpires that agility does not involve people hopping nimbly from one team to the other as the (perceived) need arises. How to ensure efficient use of resources; what's so agile about all this rigidity?

So, how should a scrum master explain to his or her environment that a measure of intransigence is in fact conducive to flexibility?

They might point out that four weeks is still significantly shorter than 12 or 26 weeks but I wouldn't recommend it.

They could delve into the theory of complex adaptive systems and explain how scrum is an astutely chosen set of boundaries (constraints; time-boxes, rules etc) imposed on the behaviour of a complex adaptive system (team) catalysed by the probe of certain types of information (user stories, feedback).

Or they could point out that scrum's basic measure of progress and unit of prediction, velocity, requires fixed sprint length and fixed team composition to have any meaning.

Otherwise they might pontificate on the magic of cadence and appeal to their listeners' sense of (universal) rhythm. Or they could point out that if the team does not have to constantly busy itself with a fluid agenda that they can concentrate on what really matters; delivering working software that the customer actually wants with astonishing regularity.

For the PO, whose time is also usually at a premium, stable sprint configuration means that he or she knows months in advance what possible delivery dates are, but also when they need to be in the office as planning meetings, grooming sessions and reviews take place in the same locale, at the same time & for the same duration and on the same day of the week, sprint in, sprint out.

If all else fails, a story might help; it is often said that Einstein's wardrobe was filled with identical suits because he felt that (mental) energy expended on deciding what to wear was energy wasted. As with much of the myth of Einstein it is difficult to establish the veracity of this anecdote but recent research indicates that decision fatigue is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Developers, scrum masters, POs, line managers and customers will surely all agree that a team's (decision) energy quotient is far better spent on coding questions than on deliberations as to the best time for this week's grooming session.

What scrum is (not) – a meme

Although it's difficult to test or otherwise corroborate in any way, I have the feeling that 'the agile community' has been trending negatively over the last couple of weeks. At the very least there has been much to-do in my personal infosphere on the evils of agile (aficionados). The debate as to what agile, and specifically scrum, is seems to have been revived via a couple of slightly bad tempered posts by Ken Schwaber. Even well-loved fixtures of scrum lore like the chicken and the pig are coming under fire.

A framework that has inspect&adapt as one of its central tenets should obviously itself be under constant review, but what surprises me about some of the negative utterances I have come across recently is the vehemence with which they are delivered. Onediatribe in particular caught my attention, not only because (in a discussion of scrum) it ranged – in a series of three articles - over politics, (social) history and religion (subjects close to my heart), but most especially because of its toxicity. This guy really has a bee in his bonnet. His central metaphor, of priests and followers, is not without its worth though, and the unthinking uncomprehending dogmatists that seemed to have riled him so are definitely not a figment of his imagination – I have met them too. As for the parasitic consultants; I don't doubt they're out there either.

However.

Lambasting scrum as a religion, when it is explicitly constructed on empiricism, is a bit like creationists claiming that the theory of evolution is just one more belief system.

One of the issues that came up in discussions engendered by said article (also re-posted to LinkedIn) was the Scrum Alliance and its certification (specifically the Certified Scrum Master). I do not want to get into a discussion on the Scrum Alliance but I will defend the CSM, at least as delivered by Jeff Sutherland; not that everybody who attends the course comes away a good scrum practitioner but then again not everybody with a university degree in computer science is a good programmer.

Two days is enough time to get through the basics of scrum, scrum is simple and incomplete; that's the beauty of it. More importantly, Sutherland starts by introducing scrum as, above all else, a frame of mind; the way. He then goes on to explain shu ha ri and states that although it is good to follow the rules to the letter initially, gaining understanding is the goal and that once that goal has been attained the rules can be left for what they are; useful guidelines. He also explicitly includes XP and Lean as means to maximising the efficacy of scrum. Scrum as taught by Sutherland is therefore anything but an exclusive collection of dogma and rites. 

Further; the belief that agile development equates to no documentation, no planning and no commitments abounds. I have met teams that claimed to be running scrum when sprints were not fixed-length, team composition was wildly variable, random managers could change the 'sprint backlog' whenever it suited them, and most importantly, delivery of working software was haphazard at best. I have known team leads and scrum masters who 'itched' at the idea that 'their' charges were not all fully allocated – that their team was thus inefficient – and therefore assumed responsibility for sprint planning. With so much confusion out there some attempt at certification is absolutely necessary. If someone is a CSM then you know at least that they have been exposed to a version of scrum that will work if applied as learned.

But the CSM is not enough, Sutherland & Schwaber on the topic: certifications do not guarantee excellence

That is to say; scrum is a meme. And just as with the its physical cousin the gene, it is as good as impossible to make a perfect copy of a meme. Everybody who has ever learned anything about scrum has their very own unique scrum meme, some of which will be instantly recognisable as incomplete or otherwise faulty, some of which will be more difficult to assess, unless you test them. In that regard, it could be a good idea to view certification as a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for recognising the owner of a good scrum meme. An agile hiring process could be even more useful – new scrum masters are hired initially on a one or two month contract, their performance (basic understanding, facilitation & communication skills, removal of impediments) can then be tested over a small number of sprints whereupon the team can decide whether the new scrum master is the scrum master they have been looking for.

I sincerely hope that the agile community succeeds in keeping its conflicts positive.

Agile contracting (testing, testing, testing)

As you may have noticed dear reader, I have been less regular of late. Holidays can do that to a body. Holidays or writer's block!

Recently I have embarked on a journey of discovery in the world of (automated) testing. A wonderful world it is too. I've subscribed to magazines, and read my Crispin & Gregory, I've discovered James Bach and Cem Kaner and Ward Cunningham, I've learned about Dan North's BDD and Liz Keogh, and that people can be test-obsessed. I've even joined a tester's social network. My appetite has been whetted and I'm keen to find out about specification by example.

Along the way, I've also been getting down and dirty with Java JDKs, Eclipse this and Eclipse that, Subversion and Maven and Sonar and Hudson, Java script, GWT, Flex, and Selenium. Hopefully I can add Fitnesse to that list shortly too. And then there's test theory; model testing, domain testing, permutations & combinations, set theory and so on... I, most recently and for many years now a project manager, am decidedly uncomfortable!

I thought all this would at least yield a couple of good blog posts (continuous improvement?). Fat chance. To-date at any rate.

In other news - our first assignment to coach a transition was confirmed today. Wouter and I are completely new to the acquisition side of things but we thought agile and guess what; it works for contracting too!

Agile contracting

We sat down together to explore possibilities	–	we didn't send Sales to see Purchasing
We ran one of our workshops on-site	–	we didn't pitch
We investigated opportunities for mutual benefit	–	we didn't negotiate terms up-front
We agreed on a framework for co-operation	–	we didn't write statements of work

    -o-

The actual contract to come out of all of this will incorporate change-for-free & money-for-nothing type clauses. 

I'm sure I will be back to my usual prolix self the next time we meet!