Raising and lowering the bar

Julian Simpson and Annie Vella cohosted a session.

Ward's wiki was mentioned as an early place where raising the bar was widely discussed. https://wiki.c2.com/

Brain Marick was mentioned. The Forgotten Values of Agile. http://www.exampler.com/ease-and-joy.html http://www.exampler.com/discipline-and-skill.html

"People deserve to work on projects so good that they brag about them at cocktail parties."

Deming, The Red Bead Experiment https://deming.org/explore/red-bead-experiment/

The system is setup for the employees to fail. Similar to some of our workplaces where the systems and tools aren't setup for success from the outset.

An example of a support person who had too "high" a customer satisfaction rating. The person was told to do more actions per hour, and sacrifice the customer's satisfaction.

Jurgen Appelo's book, see book: https://www.amazon.com/Management-3-0-Developers-Developing-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321712471

People get introduced to Blameless Post Mortem

Julian mentioned that Jason Yip wrote about CI being the "loom," which is in reference to Toyota stopping the line.

The book Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain by Philip Crosby was mentioned. https://www.amazon.com.au/Quality-Free-Art-Making-Certain/dp/0070145121

Another book mentioned: Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore

• Early adopters are motivated to change because "it would be better"
• Early majority are motivated because "they don't want to be left behind"
• Late majority "because it is the standard".
• Laggards won't change

Jeffrey Fredrick mentioned spin selling.

Get the customer to explain the real problem. For example, they might say, "We have bugs." Tell them, "Yeah, but everyone has bugs." Eventually, they will tell you what their real issue is.

Dark incentives. People are incentivized, but their reasons are dark.

Another book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Cognitive biases drive most people. For example, when you are driving, everyone else is driving the wrong speed.

In the early days of Agile, they used to say, "Change your organization, or change your organization."

Are people in big organizations really "Rational Actors". Yes, but you have to understand their rationale.

An example was discussed where a CEO wanted to hire 100 people, but the hiring manager was being too picky. The CEO wanted a number on a spreadsheet to get more funding, and the hiring manager wanted to build a great team.

As a software executive, like a CTO or VP of Engineering, "you want the CEO to believe that you are on their team." It's the first time you are not in the same line of work as your manager.

Long-running feature branches were an example of lowering the bar. Not writing unit tests alongside code was an example of lowering the bar.

A measure (metric) is meant to be a proxy for something. Go back to what the measure is really about. For example, hiring 100 developers is a measure. But take that back to, "we need to demonstrate the ability to scale the organization". Which then gives you the ability to discuss other approaches.

We were given a task, not a problem. The engineers failed to see the problem they were trying to solve.

ThoughtWorks' approach of "attitude over aptitude".

Another book Toyota Kata, by Mike Rother

Some aha moments:

• To be a team, you have to share a problem.
• If you are willing to hire your friends into the company, then it's probably a good company.
• Remember to look through the lens of the person you are pitching to.
• Linked the session to Brian Marick's post.