I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve been busy with non-work. That’s the kind of work that takes exhorbinant amounts of time but doesn’t actually move you forward. Its much like pushing on a tree. It’ll make you sweat but the tree won’t move. I believe there was value in some of what I have been doing (sell the concepts) but I did, in the end, regret having taken the valuable time required to prepare the materials requested only to be told I’d not met expectations for commitments that I had to compromise to produce the required deliverables of the non-work. Basically, I wish I’d have found a way to communicate the strategy and need without having to produce a documented report. That report was tossed aside and filed with the last one.

Most who know me know that I am a obsessed agilist. I left a very waterfall organization, in fact, a very disfunctional corporate mess, to join a small, motivated company. At this small company, we are growing carefully into an efficient, small, productive team. We’ve been stabalizing and consolidating existing software and processes so that we can focus on our new and very powerful forward looking projects. We’ve built a core team that is second to none and just scored a third eager developer who promises to add significant energy and growth to our culture. Building a team is probably the most critical piece of a success proposition so I am entirely confident that we will blow the doors off the competition. Unfortunately, I am not presently clear on the best way to communicate the cultural and process requirements of a small, productive software development team. I failed to effectively secure support for what is necessary to reduce overhead and increase velocity and now I have to pull back on the reins in order to satisfy upline support for an agile process.

The simple way to state this is that I have been conceding to demands to follow a traditional business process. My hope was to satify the immediate need so that I could then enjoy the breathing room necessary to tighten the process. Instea, dealines slipped, process dissolved and the documents I begrudginly authored were tossed aside. Now I am on probation for failure to deliver though that is a direct result of having to abandon project direction to accomodate something I am opposed to: heavy documentation. I had changed my screen saver to an image engraved with the phrase, “balance advocacy with enquiry.” The reason is that I felt immensely frustrated at being asked to behave in a manner consistent with failure both in my own experience (having done that) and in company history. I needed to put myself in another’s shoes to try to understand why I was not being consulted for direction rather than being directed and, well, scolded. While I don’t like being treated like a subordinate, I am subordinate, professionally, and that is the hand I have to deal with. Thus, a swallow of Enquiry with each sip of Advocacy.

Where I am left is feeling as though I may have been better with more advocacy. However, I did learn that it is communication and edication that I must deliver. I am accommodating the request to deliver a message of urgency to my team. However, I will not consider over-allocating my team to the point of burn out. A sustainable pace is a requirement of my employment and I will find a way to communicate how this works into the overall picture of a highly efficient and productive team.

First, I must protect my people with clear pictures of resource allocation (story cards placed in priority order on resource scheduling tempaltes). Next, I must manage the outside interuptions to project health (crisis). I feel as though a well organized story-centric iteration schedule presented on paper is a very difficult thing to argue with. I am still at libery to accommodate any requirement thrown at me though I can then demonstrate the impact by moviing a story on the board. This has been a very powerful mechanism for me in the past. If I have to produce one more 80 page document that gets tossed into a filing cabinet, I am going to light it on fire.

The lesson I have learned is that advocacy is important. I was often called the Agile Evangelist at my previous position. My team produced. My product performed. Our goals were met again and again. I have been on failing teams repeatedly and been through project failures more times than I’d even like to recall. It is only after I abandoned, with ferver, the behavior that was not effective that I began to turn the corner. I didn’t count on resistance in my new role. I was hired for my experience and knowledge. That was foolish of me. That would be like pushing on a tree and expecting it to fall. Consultants have it made. They are paid to give their opinion and their opinion is considered to be worth the line item on the invoice. If it doesn’t work, there is someone to blame. With me, I am providing my consult and my expert opinion. But, as an employee, I am there to support my superior in their vision and I am not on an hourly bill rate. I have a great team and an unmatched industry outlook. All I have to do now is get the vision from my head into a format that can be consumed by a non-agilist…. History repeats itself.

It will be a challenge to remember that advocacy of a principle is not war. I feel very much like a football player preparing for the turnover. This isn’t competition, but it is a challenge.

I have a favorite metaphor: Opportunity knocks and your say, “go away! I am too busy trying to get ahead to open that door.” So opportunity obediently goes away.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Agile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.