Lunedi

There’s my future, lying ahead as usual. Self-imposed expectations. Wishes, aspirations, ideas that immediately become obligations. Excellence, or rather sheer perfection are in the air. Rapid execution, instant results and compulsive voraciousness are the name of the game. My analytical potential is almighty. Nothing can step between me and my flawless plans.

I am taking a shower and my mind takes off. Or rather keeps flying insanely, soaring and plummeting between potential scenarios. Reality changes. People just don’t behave the way I expected. New information pours into my bewildered brain like a torrent of actuality. My elaborate and convoluted plan fails every single time I confront it with real life. It simply and horribly fails.

There goes the book whose introduction I was supposed to write yesterday. I feel guilty, disappointed with myself, drained of all energy by pointless recrimination. Intellectual omnipotence struck again. Life is just too complex to try and seize.

Illusion of control always blows like a traumatic bubble on our face when confronted with even the most delicate breeze. And yet we keep falling under its sensual spell. Trying is for the weak, we speculate. Trying implies things might eventually go wrong. Trying implies we can’t predict. And that plain truth stabs our rational view of the world. Of the wild, unbearably intricate world we happen to live in.

Apparently impenetrable ventures make us feel so impotent that we react by negating the facts we happen to have in front of our eyes; by considering them trivial enough to clutch, clench and steer. Until one day, that day, we realize just how ignorant we are about the intricacies of the project we are about to undertake. That is the moment, the exact moment, in which we embrace humble attempting.

Choosing to experiment implies we stand unassumingly in front of a complex problem. Imagine Copernicus devising a whole new way of seeing the universe by merely sitting inside a library for hours, days and decades, until one day he finally understands the whole system. The victory of logic, an intellectual epiphany. Everything is inside his head now, conclusions are obvious. All there is to do now is simply write on paper what his mind concluded after years of pure reasoning.

A laughable picture indeed. His life, his discoveries, his theories came about after years and years of combining observation with theorization and deduction. Think about it four times before attempting to write all those use cases and Gantt charts. Plan, do, check, act. You heard about it, now go do it. Empiricism. It’s not that hard.

After having ran with Toby Mayer a most beautiful workshop called Improv skills for software developers, it’s time to pick up the book again. I love Augusto Boal’s work on power and oppression. And here comes the first quote of today’s reading aloud:

The privileged are often blind to their privileges

True for power, true for money.

If the status gap gets too big, people do not believe that leaders can empathize with them, so they do not feel safe.

Not much more to quote sadly. The set of games introduced in the book is too verbal for me. Besides, I’d learned them from somewhere else.

See you at my next book!

I feel deep in my heart that drama skills are a perfect fit when trying to teach agile methods. I find it so obvious that I just can’t explain it. I just picked up Training to Imagine, by Kat Koppett from the pile of drama-related books at home and started reading. Let’s go aloud then!

[Agile?] people are starved for the kinds of interactions that improvisers take for granted. We get to express ourselves creatively, play together, have our ideas honored and our failures not only forgiven, but celebrated.

Wow, I like this. Improv not only brings about joy and creativity (which are always welcome), but also (and most important) collaboration, yes..andness and, someone praise Kat Koppett, celebration of failure! And this is just the introduction of the book. Mmmm, perhaps it ends up being like movie trailers: they show the best, you buy, and there’s few more chewy beef down the road. Let’s keep reading then. Ah, here’s a nice phrase:

The script is constantly being reinvented. The opportunities to plan deeply before acting are becoming fewer, shorter, and less reliable.

Interesting. Not that a regular play can be deeply planned either, but improv is, per se, more…err…improvised. Let’s go on.

In improv any idea is better than no idea

Ultimately saying “yes” is the foundation of all relationships

Say “yes, and…”: Accept offers and add to them

Spontaneity is a way of saying “yes” to yourself

We can come with all sorts of reasons to say “no”

Saying “no” (blocking) is a well-developed habit

Motivate through acceptance

And “offer” can be anything [..] Before an offer can be accepted, it must be recognized

80 percent of what wee experience as true, we make up

Our ability to receive complete and accurate information can be enhanced through practice

Increasing listening and awareness skills, is less about sensing more things, and more about sensing things more consciously [..] What the best improvisers are able to do is widen their circle of consciousness to include more information

There are three things that we can listen for when we listen: facts, feelings and intentions [..] facts are the simplest to perceive [..] unless the emotional content is addressed, all the data in the world will not result in clear commmunication [..] Understanding the point of a message qualifies as the most important aspect of listening

So far so good. Time to put the book down, digest ideas and cook dinner. I’ll keep reading later.

Reading can both open and close your mind. In that respect, The Answer to How is Yes, promotes breadth over depth when building a personal library. What to do then? Pages and pages and tomes and tomes have been written about Computer Science and Scrum. That is to say on my degree and what my current occupation revolves around. Yet I believe (and so does Mr. Block) that reading even more on these two subjects will do nothing but narrow my view of the world. I am no expert in CMMI or the PMBOK. I’m no expert in scaling and distributing Scrum. And that’s OK with me. My belief is that I can become a worthier knowledge worker if I focus my reading somewhere else, relate this something else to Scrum et al, and eventually become a more unprejudiced me in the process.

I’ve read, loved and learned from gems such as Artful Making, Free Play, Slack, The Reengeneering Alternative, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Montessori – the Science behind the Genius, and Open Space Technology. Most of these recommendations were bestowed on me by my great friend and mentor Toby Mayer. I treasure each on of them in my mind and heart. And yet I feel, especially as I embark on new readings, that a piece of my spiritual puzzle is missing. Perhaps it is the fact that my brain, shame on me, is not almighty. I forget things. Not that many, but yet I do. But then there’s the more distressing sense of selfish intellectual seclusion, so common these days. I can read, and smile while I read. And I want to share those smiles with the world.

So now, whenever I read a paragraph or chapter or book that strikes me as relevant to the art of loving Mondays, I will simply speak out. No, I will not review books. Or maybe I will, but simple by narrating, relating, digressing and highlighting. Paragraphs, chapters and books will randomly be read aloud. I sincerely hope you enjoy the experience. I’m pretty sure I will.

Error. I hate it. It is cruel because it proves I am not perfect. It is baffling because it makes it obvious that I am not unparalleled. Previous triumphs forge expectations. No one expects me to fail. Then I succeed again and the sword of Damocles sharpens. One more time.

Until one day I fail to fulfill soaring demands for perfection. Maybe I miscalculate the details of a plan. Perhaps I am asked a question for which I have no precise answer. Perchance I read disappointment on a colleague’s expression. Or I simply realize I have just arrived in Mumbai having left my credit card at home.

At that point the guillotine raises slowly. Retribution is around the corner. Cold fear runs over my spine. There is simply no place to hide from guilt. Repentance is useless. I am and will ever be asinine. Time for the usual scheme: I conceal the mistake, like I did when I was an infant. Pretend nothing has happened, as the stench of sin begins to surface.

And yet someone might find out about the error. Life goes on, but with increased angst. And thus a crippling vicious circle perpetuates. Terror of failure spirals, making it harder to act freely. Excellence and creativity plummet. Pleasure and verve die out. Degrees of freedom to act plunge. A gloomy and yet recurrent tale for many a knowledge worker.

You are a knowledge worker because your métier involves solving convoluted problems. This means your craft entails creativity, deduction and interpretation. Software applications, marketing plans and financial planning are immensely complex endeavours. Punishing imperfect incarnations of such tools is not just naive, but also cruelly hypocritical. Lacerate your soul for your lack of perfection and learn to survive in a world of penance.

Somehow there must be a way out of this tail biting. Stop. Breath. Think for a moment. Meditate on how others do their creative jobs. Ponder over the way in which a theatre play is created. Picture a Romeo and Juliet production. Rehearsals will begin in a week. Romeo has been brushing his teeth trying to portray Romeo. Juliet has taken showers the way Juliet would do it. And now it is time for the whole ensemble to get together and do the first improvisation. “Romeo meets Juliet at the bus stop.” The scene lasts for a couple of minutes. And just like all opening rehearsals for the past two and a half millennia this one goes wrong. Neither the play director nor the actors like the performance. Romeo was not romantic enough when talking to Juliet. Juliet’s movements around the stage were somehow graceless. There was no clear bond between the actors. And yet they celebrate failure. Because erring is the only way to reach a creative result, they have just taken the first step towards a marvelous play.

Error enables us to simplify a seemingly impenetrable challenge. The universe of potential solutions is axed when failure occurs. And something deeper occurs: a sliver of the final outcome is born. Maybe the way Romeo walked during the improvisation was captivating. Perhaps Juliet’s tone of voice was as sultry as expected from her. The resulting characters will have these traits. The staged play is now nearer. Out of failed interpretation comes not just learning, but also a piece of the resulting product. Celebrate error: it’s your only way out of sheer chaos.

I used to take yoga lessons. The routine was almost the same every class. I loved the way my whole body felt after following it, so I decided to go over it every morning. After some months I managed to easily bend and reach the floor with my hands without feeling miserable. I was more than satisfied with my flexibility and strength. So I relaxed. Relaxing meant skipping yoga routines.

Exercising every morning effectively took time and that precious time could be used for more productive goals, such as watching TV, spending more time in bed or reading the newspaper. Skipping lead to suppressing, and suppression led to forgetting.

Yesterday I woke up with horrendous back pain. Yoga sounded like an interesting alternative. Thus I started my routine and I could hardly reach my ankles with my hands. There’s no such thing as perennial fitness. You only remains in shape if you exercise. If you don’t, you simple weaken you condition.

Curiously enough the same happens to process. If you don’t work on it regularly (say doing retrospectives quite often), process loses effectiveness. Teams think that by skipping retrospectives process will remain as good as it is today. Desirable, but just not true. Exercise your process by doing retrospectives and productivity will remain constant or even get better with time. Skip them and productivity muscles will silently stiffen. Forget about them and the team will one day be unable to get up from bed.

So I decided to read about Lean and grabbed a copy of Lean Software
Development, by the Poppendiecks. I’d heard so many times about Value
Streaming Mapping that I reckoned it must be good stuff. And so I read
about it. There goes quite brief a summary:

• Analyze your current software development process
• Write it down in a linear/sequential way, considering the average duration of each step
• For each step, decide the ratio of wasteful to productive time
• Productive: adds value to the customer – Wasteful: it does not

I don’t like it. At all. It simply feels awkward, at least
for a Scrum team. Or simply unrealistic. How can a Scrum team write
down their current development process on a piece of paper? It just doesn’t make sense. Scrum is about empirically designing product and process.

Yes, process must be optimized. Yes, it’s fine to try and find waste,
so that you can eliminate it. Yes, you can write down what you did ,
especially if writing it down helps you find useless steps. But it is
simply nonsense to ask a Scrum team to describe the process they
follow every time they develop software. The whole point of this thing
game we play is that we will adapt our process on the go.

Value stream mapping sounds cool for factories, but not so cool for consulting. Perhaps it is useful for software factories. Or perhaps software factories is yet another oxymoron.

I just called an airline call center to make a short little question on their mileage program. I decided to talk to a person, not a machine. Same result, or worse. I had to answer more than 10 personal questions in order to prove I was myself. After the first five, irritation materialized. I tried to make clear I only needed to make a simple, impersonal question. “Don’t worry Sir, it’s just a procedure”.

Procedures dehumanize activities. Their main goal is to deprive work of any traces of compassion, doubt or rage. Objectivity gets rid of people in order to install clear rules. They are neither good nor bad per se: they are just inert devices put into place by people who decided to deprive a given activity of human spice. They become positive or negative devices when analized in a context. And what is interesting is that, the simpler the context, the more fruitful the use of procedures. Having people produce batches of equally designed hamburguers, with similar raw materials and equivalent physical environments clearly benefits from having a well-defined methodology. Taking a script written hundreds of years ago and putting up a play with dozens of actors that manages to awe spectators usually does not.

You are reading this because you judged your current way of working as fruitless. You are either taking too long to provide a service, building the wrong product, hating to go to the office on Mondays, or maybe all of them together. Put your laptop aside for a second, try and grasp a tiny little piece of blue sky with your sight and think of the procedures that run your work. Think of how many times you fell that the procedure asked you to do things that had no meaningful goal. Remember how many times you knew you could do better. And most important, reflect for a moment on the times you felt relieved because you followed the procedure without caring for the real use of your actions.

Scrum is not a procedure. Scrum should not lead you to have a procedure. Scrum will not get rid of your current procedures, but it will rather help you see just how pointless and expensive they are. You decide to throw them away. You yourself.

Before embarking on a journey, it’s always wise to reflect on whether you want to depart from where you are right now…or not. If your job is easy, obvious and repetitive you don’t need Scrum. If your current way of working is effective, don’t change. If you feel at ease with your colleagues and your current structure, just stay where you are.

Fortune favors the bold, but boldness has a price. The journey of a hero is usually painful and unthanked. You firmly walk towards the darkness that lies beyond your zone of comfort, or you just don’t. Change is bitter. Inertia sounds sweeter. Shame it is usually the precursor to death.

How is a judge to decide on a case? Written law is general, abstract, concrete but not comprehensive. Particular cases, context, subjective issues are not considered in the text. Why is it not trivial to be a judge or a jury member? Because they have to interpret the law. And what have they used for centuries now to support their interpretation? Cases and spirit. Examples and intuition. Both ends meet. And what about Scrum?

Scrum is simple and hard. Why so? Because the definition is clear and concise, but in order to use that definition we need to interpret it depending on the context. We clearly got the equivalent to case law: case studies and good practices have served us well for years now. Examples let us map, consider deltas and readjust for our context. But spirit has somehow been absent. Or at least it has not had the prominent and explicit role I dare say it deserves. But can spirit be portrayed?

Let’s try and sketch it at least. Maybe spirit is like good code: you can’t define it, but you can definitely cry out loud that some piece of code is horrid. What do you think about this list? I promise I will detail its members in upcoming posts:

• Trust
• Self-organization
• Empiricism
• Pragmatism
• Idealism/Kaizen
• Discipline
• Rythm
• Constructive Feedback
• Simplicity
• Technical Excellence
• Ludic spirit
• Commitment
• Responsibility
• Focus
• Humbleness
• Balance