For the Agile or not so Agile self?

Hello all,

In an attempt to cover some of my more interesting sessions and take-away, this next post will be about the Personal Agility Canvas. This presentation by Dave Prior introduced an introspection tool that helps build your awareness about your personal journey into Agility. His premise is about how he came from a very “conventional” background of project management and when came time to move towards more lean/Agile practices, he sometimes felt inadequate, second guessing himself, wondering if he was “good enough”. This Personal Agility Canvas is very much a learning tool as much as it is a way to reflect on the actions taken by you into growing your knowledge and expertise in this vast field.

As an exploratory measure, you must first identify certain areas using what Dave suggests are the five (5) measures Tao, Climate, Ground, Leadership and Discipline from Sun Tzu*.

“Those who understand them will triumph. Those who do not understand them will be defeated”

R.L. Wing “The Art of Strategy”

The canvas below is to be used for your organization where you work (green canvas). Taking note of every section to understand how your environment may affect your ability to be “Agile”. Each section gets you to reflect on how you behave in the environment and what you put into your surroundings. Once you have explored your environmental “settings”, you can observe the five measures on a personal level (red canvas).

   

The following picture represents the Canvas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note*: This is inspired from the very useful tool, the Lean Canvas available here and combined with the wisdom of “Art of War”.

The Personal Agility Canvas below takes you through a series of steps to self-reflect on the aspects that make you or holds you back from being your most “Agile”.  The exercise gets you to set concrete Agility goals for yourself. During Dave’s presentation, he explains that he has had more success in filling the canvas in a certain order, yet I would encourage you to find your own way and experiment to find what works best for you.  This tool is very useful and may be a great way to bring transparency or clarity to some of your objectives that you have set for yourself. Exchanging this canvas with others is also a very smart idea, as Dave puts it, you will have to “Embrace the guilt” when the person you have shared it with will ask for an update. Lastly, this tool is not reserved for newbies, experienced individuals will find great use to pursue their knowledge goals and push themselves outside their comfort zones.

Let us explore each section.

• The Mark Inside: What can you identify that prevents you from moving forward towards your Goal of Agility that resides within yourself. Procrastination, Discipline, Excuses are all good examples.
• Value Proposition: I like to call this area, in reference to “The Compound Effect” your “Why Power”. Why are you taking these steps to become Agile? What will you gain?
• Strengths: What can you rely on to achieve your goals? Your foundation on which you will grow your new Agility.
• Interactions with Others: What behaviour prevails when interacting with others? How is this Agile? How do those behaviours map to Agility principles and values?
• Environment: What artifacts or changes to your environment could benefit to be introduced for you to reach your goals? Information radiators, working areas and tooling are good examples.
• Desired Changes: List of known changes that will lead you towards the goal.
• Fears/Concerns: Items you have identified that will “get in the way” for you to move forward. These items can be internal or external to you.
• Goals: Short list of items that you what to achieve (before doing this whole process again). Setting a cadence definitely helps and having a “sponsor” helps also.
• Actions Needed: Steps required to get you going to achieve your “list of goals” on your canvas. These might be immediate or elements that will have to be scheduled at a later date.

 I have to admit that this tool got my thinking, especially the “five measures” and dig deep to find my motivations to keep growing in this great work discipline.

Thank you for reading and hope this will be a useful tool for all of you. Feel free to get in contact with Dave and give feedback to make this even better.

Cheers PS

Reference: Dave Prior, Big Visible dprior@bigvisible.com

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Agile2014 – Sensible and structured approach to Meetings

Hello all,

My first post of a series that features the experiences we shared from Agile2014.

I attended a session on improving the way to have “meetings”. We define meeting in the following way; noun: meeting; “an assembly of people, especially the members of a society or committee, for discussion or entertainment.”

Let us extend that view and include our activities such as Planning, Retrospectives and any other type of activities that we engage in as a Team. The premise to the session is that a good portion of us attend very poor and useless meetings, Why is that? The answer would lie in little attention to the moments “before” and “after” our meetings. We tend to focus on the phase “during” and lose many opportunities to capitalize on what we are trying to achieve way before we set foot in the meeting room.

The following picture represents what Dana Wright coins the START Model;

 

 

 

 

 

This model is to be used by the very people that plan meetings (activities) and by using the “canvas” you can create a structure to make the most out of it. We will explore each zone and talk about its purpose.

1. Before
   1. Anticipating: Like any event or activity, we want our meeting to create a sense of excitement or at the very least, that the participants will be looking forward to attending. This box should then contain any item that would help to create a sense of anticipation.
   2. Entering: This area of the canvas should contain all that contribute to making our meeting great when entering the room. For example, having water, printed workbooks and projector ready when people enter our meeting space.
   3. Know, Feel, Think: The bottom three boxes are meant to hold any information we might know or assume about our attendees. Knowing for example that the nature of the meeting is “sensitive” and that the participants will feel “stressed”. They might think about “impact on their job”, “value of meeting”, etc.
2. During
   1. Engaging Around: In this section, we want to focus on the artifacts or objects that people attending our meeting should engage around. This could be a whiteboard, projected presentation, etc.
   2. Engaging In: Thinking about how, as a group, we come together around the topic of our meeting is important. Many times we lose track of the topic and go down a different path. Nailing down the scope of our subject is essential to prevent waste.
   3. Connecting With: This box is the “people” aspect of the meeting and making sure that we connect with the attendees. Some of our participants might have specific circumstances or situation and we might want to take special note of these.
   4. Say: Here, we want to write down what we would like people to “say” about their time spent in our meeting. What they will exchange with other people.
3. After
   1. Leaving: This area should contain any information that we must ensure people take with them upon leaving our activity. This could be handouts or information.
   2. Extending: This particular zone concerns “homework” or actions that we need to take to further our activity after it has ended. We often forget that the lives of our meetings are not necessarily for the schedule duration and some degree to thought should be put in creating space or elements to keep the activity relevant (“fresh”).
   3. Know, Feel, Think: These three boxes serve the same purpose as the ones in the “Before” section, except that now we are focusing on what people know upon leaving our activity, how they felt about their time together and the thoughts they might have once they set foot outside the meeting room.

Conclusion, I believe this model can bring great structure and focus to any potential meeting or activity. To be effective, this model must be used iteratively to introduce new measures and elements into your meetings. Forcing yourself to plan thoughtfully and thinking about specific areas or moments are good ways to “spice up” meetings, which have lost their appeal. Give it a try and please give us some feedback. Ultimately, the purpose of putting the effort of taking a closer look at our meeting is too avoid the following:

Cheers all. Have fun with it. 🙂

Reference: Dana Wright http://startmeetinglikethis.com/