Agility as Behavior

I speak with people, attend discussions on Agile and Lean and also conduct trainings on Agility with focus on Scrum and Lean Thinking. People are quite enthused and interested for what it brings to those tired brains of Waterfall.


After working for a Project Manager than working for a Customer, after doing the things that Project Manager needs than the project or customer needs, and doing the way the Technical Lead sees rather than how User Sees it - and that to over and over again - one surely is bound to be tired. I mean; I surely would. So my crash course with a quick introduction to Agile Manifesto, with Agile offering so much of freedom and offerings at a little cost of ownership, commitment and discipline, people are very much  enthused about working on the Agile Project.


Most of the trainings goes in understanding Agile, comparing and matching it with Waterfall and dreaming of how will it be to work on an Agile project. But it enters a silent thinking zone when I mention "Agility is NOT a methodology .... It's the Behavior for an Individual and Culture for an Organization".


Hold on ... I understand how you feel .... and thank you for agreeing with me. But for those who are still in doubt, please read on and let me know what you think.


Agility is not about executing the project in iterations, delivering value to customer or owning the work and living the project commitment. It is not about contributing to the Product Backlog or completing the Sprint backlog, neither is it about getting on that 10 minute stand up meeting. Agility is not about delivering As Fast As Possible and definitely not about working with the team and customers. 


However it has more to do with the mindset than the practices. It is that voluntary drive within which will force you to think of Customer and the Value, provide a sense of Pride of Owning the Work and Living the Commitments, the fire to learn and improve by Collaboration and Experimentation, the flexibility to Adapt for Changing Environment, the Self-managing DNA set that continuously Ask A Why in order to find the optimal way (not the best possible one), the Brain Cells that prefers the Human Aspect as opposed to mechanical processes, a Common Sense that would ask you to go-talk-in-person than sending an email or other passive communications.


And all this if is not behavior than what is? An agile individual would always be agile and lean - no matter if that's her professional life or personal.


--------------------------------------------
Now talking about Organizational Cultures, Organizations are made of and run by individuals. Physics states - the material is made of atoms - the Organizational culture is commulitive behavior individuals working in it.


For an organization to be Lean and/or Agile, it is not sufficient to know the Agile Principle or starting initiatives. It is up to the individuals to live up to the Lean Principles. In everything they do and every minute they spend at the work, the individuals should breath and live by principles of eliminating waste, exercising the empowered rights and seeking improvement of work, work place and organization. An organization can not claim to be Lean and its floor is all cluttered with unclaimed printed waste at printer desks or has processes that become bottleneck for employees to complete their work. This is more explicit for a Software Development organization where the PDLC and PMLC processes become mandatory road blocks than facilitating the productivity improvement.


For example, for decades now, Review Processes are considered to be irreplaceable tools for Quality Assurance and Improvement. Like the code review which leads to collection of various metrics data. In the first place, Lean calls Review process as one of the Wastes. Plus, at organizations require reviewers to log defects for A. analysis of defects for defect prevention which is a good practice and B. it is required by organizational process for ISO and other certification compliance. The organization here is fouling the Lean Agility principles to a very great extent.


For an agile individual, both of above cases (A and B) are a little weird and useless. The Review process in this case should be used to improve one's coding practice and proactively avoid defects - like Pair Reviews which expects fixing of defects immediately and logging only the complex defects which can require a little more analysis (more on effective coding practices in some other blog later).


So basically the Organizational Processes - be it PDLC, PMLC or HR, Admin or support processes - should be focused around A. Facilitating and not binding  B. Enable Improving and not evaluating  C. Voluntary and not forced  D. Flexible and not Rigid  E. Evolving and not Defined -- which will lead to a Agile individuals and in turn a Lean Organization. 


And therefore Agility is purely a culture for an organisation adopted from individual behaviors of its employees.

Agility and Me

About 5 years back, I met this new thing called "Agile". New - not because it was fresh from oven and smelling fresh ...but because I was looking at it first time. And 5 years on, looked at it again and again and yet again, now I live it.

However today is the first time I am writing about it. I plan to do so more often as and when I read or understand more of it. So this first blog on Agility dedicated to myself for being an "Agile Individual"

My personal belief is that Agility is not a methodology ... but is the Behavior for an Individual and Culture for an Organization. I would write more on this some other day, but with this self-belief I look at every Agile methodology ... be in Scrum, Kanban, ScrumBan, TDD, ATDD, FDD, SF, Play Ball ... or for that matter XP.

After swimming in SCRUM world for a long time, I am getting acquainted to Poppendieck, and Cockburns and Shalloways and Andersons of Lean and Agile Community. Kanban, ATDD and Lean Agile interest me the most. SCRUM by experience and others by knowledge are far more better, capable and efficient methodologies as opposed to traditional Waterfall. Not to forget, it is Waterfall only that taught us how not to execute the projects ... so not too much criticism about it either.

Anyways, enough for a quick thing and will jump into more details of Agility in next blog ... so keep well till then ... and I promise, wont keep you waiting for long.

Shifting Gears - A Career Shift

Greetings!

I know. Its been more than three months .... yea almost 4 months since I helped my brain think a lil. Well, you know, sometimes you just cant control it. And thatz whatz goin on here these days. The life is shifting gears ... and too very fast. I could hear some strange sounds in the gear box ... but you know ... cant stop and check it right now, and its a little difficult to check your gear box on the run. Anyway, let us see where it all ends.

One second ... flash back ... just to help myself to make it understand a little more clearly.

It's been 10 years I am working in this stupid IT industry .. yea yea I know I said Stupid ... and why not ... afterall tell me ... does this IT really care about anyone else than itself. Dont believe me ... well, it is easy. any IT person ... .does she really have anything to do with the world around her. Be in India or China or Indonesia or Chille or for that matter the land of opportunities USA ... you would find a non-IT person cursing IT for everything ... for the increased cost of living, job loss due to outsourcing or for just living for that matter! So is it not stupid! I mean, forgetting to live a simple and straight life and complicating everyone's life ... wont you call it stupid !! I know, you would.

So 10 years ... I am working in this stupid industry ... and day in and day out ... breaking the same small brain on same thing ... customer satisfaction ... delivery date ... planning ... quality ... resource retention ... resource utilization .... requirement management ... cost control ... scope creep ... come one ... Gimme a break!

Last 3 months have been really crazy. The poor brain is kinna sandwitched between the regular work pressure and excessive thinking. Yea .. excessive thinking about what should I do to take a break from all this ... do I try something new ... do I just take it as it comes ... do I just leave everything and go join hands with dad in the field ... do I plan a career shift. .... and what not! And know what, finally I chose a career shift .... well havent jumped the vagon yet. But yes ... planning ... pretty heavily. Now, a friend of mine just said, "you and planning, go together very well. So well that you are planning something for last 2 years". He is not wrong ... time has been a little tough on me ... everytime I settle on something, it brings another option. It is like the Cheese Cake Factory menu ... you choose something and the next page has something more interesting to present! Ultimately you settle on Chicken Jumbalaya. So where was I ... I am planning a career shift.

Yea. It is a big decision to make ... a career shift would mean every thing new ... new challanges ... new targets ... new policies .... new techniques ... new responsibilities. But know what, that is what so interesting about the Career Shift. It is like learning to walk again ... learning to talk again. Would I be able to manage it ... well, I dont know. But you see, I learned to walk ... talk ... so this should not be any differnet than that. Well, would find a little difficult. Habits wont go so easily ... so I may have to work on it a little hard.

so wish me luck please .... would ya!

Life is strange ... or is it?

Life is strange.... very strange. And human being is stranger. Nothing in life is really sufficient .. ever.... for we humans. No matter how much we get or how much we earn, how much we deserve or how much we really need .... how much we love or how much we are loved .... we always are looking for more ... more today .. more tomorrow ... and more on every opportunity we can wish for.

Life is strange. All we have are 100 years to live ... approx. Every day filled with exact 24 hours ... not an hour less ... neither more ... just 24. Still, not all these days are same. Forget days, no two hours or minutes or even seconds are same. Every moment is like a snow flex ... always differnet than the previous or the next one. And human being is stranger .... knowing that every moment is different, we just hope to live each of it the same way ... happier and happier. Pretty strange, that we never realize it is not meant to be ..... it is meant to be different. That is how Mr God has made it .. but we want it reversed. They say "Man Proposes and God Disposes". But if you really look at it ... God Proposes to live every day, every moment differently and we dispose it to live in same way... told ya ... human's strange.

Life is strange. Though 24 hours in a day, it expects us to act faster ... to get more and more done in limited time ... to utilize every second available ... at times more than 24 hours of the day. .... But human's stranger. We rather relax and enjoy. Waste a little time here and spend a little one there ... and then cry out loud ... from the tip of the mountain ... "I am keeping busy" ... busy doing what .. busy being busy .... busy playing busy .... or just busy. ... pretty strange hmmm.

Life is strange. Full of love on one hand and hell lot of sorrows on the other. ... a bright day with open eyes and a dark scary night with closed ones ... full of hope and energy some day and exhausted and devasted the other ... well ... human's stranger ... don't care for happiness when happy and search for it when in sorrow ... don't work on dreams when its bright, but dream of it in the night ... waste the energy foolishly and feel exhausted wishing relaxation ...

Man this is strange. ... kind of a riddle ... solve it today and will be complex tomorrow ... can you help me ...... please .......!

Is Common sense that common?

"Common Sense", the web definition of this highly abused term says "something that people in common would agree". So as per the definition, it is something quite obvious that any one would be able to guess or perform or react or interpret etc.

However in today’s world of internet (rather shall we say Web2.0) the term common sense seems to be collecting larger space than usual. The world is becoming smaller and smaller, the people of varied cultures and practices around the globe are getting closer and closer and therefore the common-ity of the people is becoming very contextual.

The corporate world calls for global teams to work together, the social networks on internet allow people from n-worlds to get in touch with each other and thus with increasing heads in the group, there hardly is a common thing among the people. And therefore the sense of "common sense" is kind of varying. Rather, the term common sense is becoming more and more perceptional. What I think is common may not be very common for someone, or what you think is common may very be special for you. So the boundaries of common sense are really being defined by what one has experienced, educated or has knowledge about.

In my personal experience, I interact with different teams and I hear it so many times "it is mere a common sense". But the person at the other end is all confused and has no sense of what is so common about it. Take an example. I work with a team of IT professionals. One party expects something and the other doesn’t exactly deliver the expectations. The reason, as you may guess correctly, is the communication gap. The team expects the client to communicate every "small thing" where as client thinks the small thing is a "common sense". What I think? I think the factor that defines the "Common Sense" in this context is not really common. I think the two parties do not have the required common aspect – the experience, the knowledge, the belief, the trust. I think some one need to walk a step down and others need to walk a step up so that the handshake can happen. I think both the parties should communicate and create a common interest so it makes sense to both of them. But you know, who is to tell it to them. Being adults, they should understand it themselves, finally it is just a common sense – reach out and be reachable guys!!

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is a sepcial day. The rising sun would bring fresh new 24 hours to do lots of stuff that I wished to but could not do today. I wished to relax, take some time out of the busy schedule, play with my 4 year old, enjoy time with family and friends, just go to some beach and watch a beautiful sunrise on a mountain top. Today I wished to get lazy and lie down doing nothing. But you see, you can not just finish everything today. And that when you decide to keep something for tomorrow.

I really never could understand this concept of the investment. Investment is something that you save for tomorrow's hard times. But this kind of investment, where you forget to live today, you forget to smile or enjoy the time, could never reach the internal cells of my small tiny brain. I always love to live in today. But for some years now, I find it difficult to follow that practise of living in today, without thinking of tomorrow. The life has become so much routine from morning to sunset and after that, that there is no time to stop and think how can I change it.

But yes, I am determined, committed and everything that goes along with it, to make sure I change it. I will change it for me, for my family, for my four year old and for everyone I care and who care for me. I will live my life today and do what I wish to do now.

Yes, tomorrow is a very special day, it sure is.

First thing first - about me

Hello There.

Greetings!

I know I am kind of late in the blogging word. I had been planning to blog for quite some time now. But I guess it was not to happen to date. Anyway, better late than never and as they say Everything has it's own time, so why rush!!

So dear friends, as some of you may already know me, I am Dinesh Madne, working with a software development company (L&T Infotech) in India for a long time (10 exact years today) as a Senior Manager, and currently placed in USA with one of our clients. During these 10 years, I have worked on numerous projects with teams of varying sizes from 4 to 50 and each project was a learning in itself. Have met plenty of people and have made friends and foes on the way. But the bottom lines remains the same - got to learn something from each project.

Whoever I am today is all because of my associations. I have been very lucky to meet some very good people. I wont name anyone here as it would be injustice to others. But each of my friends have made me in some way or other. However the credit of shaping my professional life goes to one of my coligues Mohan Bharatia. I worked with him on my first project and he told me one very simple sentence (we call it Guru Mantra in our native language) - "One day you are going to be a manager anyway, so why not act like one from today." That was 10 years ago, and since then I have never let that thought go off my mind.

The philosophy of my life is very simple. A. Live with principles (and there is a laundry list of principles :) ) B. Do not let the Value of life let down C. Give your best in everything you do. D. After all your life is nothing without your loved ones, so always make sure you care for them. Done! The four walls of my house called life. And there is no roof so that I can see the sky all the time - rain or shine!

The goal is to be a successful Entrepreneur. It is one of those dream I am sure will come true. The thought has been lingering on my mind for quite some time, and it is only a matter of time when I take that plunge in the corporate world. So let us just wait and watch when exactly firm, based on the simple principle of Customer Satisfaction, emerges as one of the best places to work।

I guess you may be knowing pretty much stuff about me by now. So let us shake hands until we meet again. And as they say in my home country India, Do come by and think as if it is your home!