Jun
06

Conf Agile France 2011: Résolution des Conflits

Résoudre les conflits sans compromis

La semaine passée j’ai présenté comment résoudre les conflits avec le “Diagramme de Résolution des Conflits” à la Conférence Agile Paris. La présentation est disponible ci-dessous. Plus d’informations sont disponibles sur le site Agile Coach.

A la fin de la présentation il y a deux questions pour voir si vous avez compris la leçon:

  1. Est-ce qu’il est possible de former un gouvernement belge avec cet outil? Si oui, pourquoi? Si non, pourquoi pas?
  2. Est-ce que vous pouvez résoudre ce conflit récurrent entre Product Manager et Développeurs:
    • Le Product Manager a besoin d’estimations et de planning très détaillé et fiable pour publier une roadmap qui dit quand quel fonctionnalité sera livrée quand ET livrer ces fonctionnalités comme promis
    • Les clients, qui souvent sont des grandes entreprises avec plusieures filiales dans les monde et beaucoup d’utilisateurs, ont besoin de cette roadmap pour planifier quand ils vont implémenter une nouvelle version
    • Les Développeurs sont “passés au Kanban”: ils ont arrêté de faire des estimations ou des plans. Cela prenait beaucoup de temps et ce n’était jamais correct.
    • Les Développeurs “éliminent le gachis” parce qu’ils doivent aller de plus en plus vite pour satisfaire les requêtes d’un nombre de clients qui toujours croissant.
    • Tout le monde veut livrer les fonctionnalités au client au moment où les clients attendent ces fonctionnalités.

Vos réponses et questions dans les commentaires…

D’abord essayez de clarifier le conflit.

Puis, découvrez les suppositions derrière chaque étape du raisonnement.

Translation

I presented an interactive tutorial on how to apply the “Conflict Resolution Diagram” at the French Agile conference in Paris. You can see the English version of the presentation at the Agile Coach site.

At the end of the French version of the presentation there are two tests to see if participants understood the tool:

  1. Can you use this tool to form a Belgian Governement. If yes, why? If not, why not?
  2. Can you resolve this common conflict between Product Manager and Developers:
    • The Product Manager needs detailed estimates and accurate planning because she has to create a long-term roadmap which spells out which features will be delivered when AND deliver those features when promised to keep customers’ trust
    • Customers, who are typically large multi-site companies with many users of the product, need the roadmap because they need to plan when they will roll out which version throughout the enterprise
    • Developers have “gone Kanban” and have stopped estimating and planning because the estimates took too much time and were incorrect anyway
    • Developers stopped estimating and planning to decrease waste so that they can keep up with the increased demand for features from the increasing user base
    • The whole company wants to deliver the features customers ask for when customers expect them.

Answers on a postcard or a comment…

First, try to clarify the conflict.

Then try to find the assumptions behind each step of the reasoning.

Sep
26

Lean Product Development at Lean & Kanban Belgium 2010

Parallel evolution

Last Thursday and Friday I participated in the Lean and Kanban Belgium 2010 conference. I was scheduled to present a session on Friday morning, so I could go to many sessions on Thursday.

Every session that I attended on Thursday said many things I wanted to say:

  • Sandrine Olivencia talked about challenging the team for continuous improvement
  • Dave Nicolette talked about the dysfunctions around budgeting and the need for IT to integrate, not align, with the value stream
  • Anthony Marcano and Andy Palmer explained how analysis can be implemented as a pull system
  • Ryan Shriver essentially said all I wanted to say about finding the real goals of our users and quantifying their needs
  • John Seddon told tales about really understanding value demand and taking a systems thinking approach to the design of work in his usual, inimitable style

What was left to say? At the end of the day I could scrap about 3/4 of my talk. The good news is that many people are independently reporting that these techniques and approaches work. And they can show results.

In the end, there was more than enough to fill an hour. After the presentation several people asked questions and discussed what I presented.

p.s. I followed Dave Nicolette‘s advice to grow a profitable consultancy: coin a new acronym. I give you “IDD”. You’ll have to watch the presentation to know what it means. And you’ll have to pay me big bucks to come implement it in your organisation :-)

Aug
29

Agile 2010 session materials online

I co-presented three sessions at Agile 2010. The materials for these sessions are now available:

I hope you enjoyed the session or get some useful ideas from the session materials. Let us know how you’ve applied these tools.

Jun
09

Lean & Kanban Europe 2010

I’ll present “Lean out your product backlog with lean product development and business analysis techniques” at the Lean & Kanban Europe 2010 conference.

The session will show how using business analysis and kanban techniques we can create a flow from business goals to implementable user stories with acceptance test, focus on value-delivering capabilities and involve the whole team in product development.


Lean & Kanban 2010 Europe Speaker

Jun
08

Université du SI 2010

I’ll co-present a session with Christophe Thibaut about the “A3 process” at the Université du SI conference on July 1-2 in Paris.

The “A3 report” is a standardized report format used within Toyota and other companies to make proposals and report. The standardized and constrained format helps the writer and readers to come to the point quickly, concentrate on the essentials and get the important information without wasting time.

However, when applying this technique we often only implement the superficial elements, the fact that the documents are limited in size and have a standardized format. Sometimes, the exact format of the Toyota reports is copied. And then we’re disappointed because this “cargo cult” application only delivers limited benefits.

In this session we’ll look at and let participants experiment with the social aspects of the A3 report:

  • How we define the standardized format to support our goals
  • How leaders and managers use A3 report writing by their team members are structured one-to-one coaching
  • How to build in iteration and feedback from peers to improve the proposals
  • How to use the review process as a consensus building tool
  • How to present reports in such a way that they’re heard, understood and accepted

Come and play with us if you want to learn more about this powerful continuous improvement and learning tool.

If you want to know more…