Dan Fish & Gabe Weaver - Lean+Agile DC 2018

Agile didn’t work as your silver bullet?  Not a surprise,
according to Very’s Dan Fish, Product Manager & Agile Coach,
and Gabe Weaver, Chief Product Officer.  Dan and Gabe joined
Bob Payne at Lean+Agile DC 2018 to talk Agile methods, holacracy,
and the hard work required to solve organizational impediments
after adopting Agile.


TRANSCRIPT:


Bob Payne: [00:00:01] Hi I'm your host Bob
Payne, i'm here at Lean+Agile DC. Why don't you guys introduce
yourself since. 


Dan Fish: [00:00:08] Sure. I'm Dan fish I'm a
product manager and agile coach at Very.


Gabe Weaver: [00:00:14] And I'm Gabe Weaver I'm
the chief product officer at Very 


Bob Payne: [00:00:17] Excellent. So you guys are
here talking about why agile might not be the silver bullet
everybody everybody's been making it out to be. And you also do
Holacracy at Very so I'm excited about both of those things. I
like to blow stuff up and I love you know experimenting with self
managing teams and strategies. So those are a couple of things
I'd like to talk about. So what sucks about agile?


Gabe Weaver: [00:00:51] I don't think it's
necessarily that it sucks. I think companies suck.


Dan Fish: [00:00:58] Honestly it's very subtle
,  Gabe.


Gabe Weaver: [00:01:00] Yeah. No but but really
if you look at some of the some of the data that's coming out
stated the agile from today's seventeen's survey is a 4 percent
in the company's report that it's not actually enabling them to
have more market agility to respond to changing market conditions
adapt and really move more quickly in business. So if you start
to like peel back the young into why that is it goes pretty deep
but I think a lot of it goes back to the construct of how we
structure organizations


Dan Fish: [00:01:31] Yeah. And I'd say it's
sometimes too much of a silver bullet or a you know it's like a
salve you can sprinkle and everything will kind of go away. And
the work really comes in after you've put some of these processes
or or roles in place you know where do you go from there and how
do you solve the organizational impediments that are there.
That's the hard work and that's the real I think substance behind
this sort of movement of responding to change and empowerment and
bottom up stuff. How do you how do you actually make that happen
particularly at large organizations that are used to top down
management or centralized decision making and yearly budgets.
Those are the hard problems to solve.


Bob Payne: [00:02:10] Yeah.


Dan Fish: [00:02:11] Rather than just you know
what's you know a sort of a small scope problems that are just
affecting one team. I think we've kind of seen them seeing that
and solve that in a lot of ways that they are not. Not completely
but it's you know how do you change the organization. How do you
change the mindset and the culture and culture gets undervalued a
lot


Bob Payne: [00:02:29] Yeah. So culture gets
undervalued. A lot of talk a lot of talk about culture but not a
lot of work and culture is fundamentally hard work. You know the
old adage that culture eats strategy for lunch so you know if you
want to create an agile environment that the current culture in
the organization is going to resist resist those changes even if
there are changes for the good. So I think the culture gets
absolutely undervalued and the agile practices get overvalued.
I 


Bob Payne: [00:03:12] Absolutely.


Bob Payne: [00:03:14] I mean I get a rash when
people .. I get a lot of rashes.


Dan Fish: [00:03:20] Sounds like a personal
problem.


Bob Payne: [00:03:20] It really is. I should
care less. That would be easier. But you know I see people
talking about you know the scrum rituals and like these are their
meetings they're not rituals there's nothing.


Bob Payne: [00:03:34] You know if if if Taiichi
Ohno came back to life and saw that Toyota was using the same
processes that they that he and Demming came up with. You know 75
years ago he would freak.. He would freak out, he's like you you
do not understand what we were going for there because the
practices and processes are subordinate you know to getting stuff
done creating value for our customers following work flowing
value through the system. I mean the practices are just- they
need to change and evolve then people were they put agile in
here. They codify it make it a little precious little thing and
then they don't change the intake to the three year strategic
plan. One year funding competitors come out with new stuff. Well
we're on the strategic plan will react to that in three years.


Gabe Weaver: [00:04:33] Yeah I don't even ant to
get started on scrum and my disdain for it. But I think what's
really interesting is that most companies treat is a way to gain
efficiency. So but really what it is in the heart of it of where
the Agile Manifesto came from was enabling people to work better
with people in a more efficient and sane way.


Bob Payne: [00:04:56] Right.


Gabe Weaver: [00:04:57] That's more stable
basically but the opposite is happening whereas companies are
valuing processes over people and it's not sustainable and it's
not working.


Bob Payne: [00:05:09] Yeah. So I won't lay it
all out. So I live in that tent so I'm on the inside peeing out
rather than the outside peeing in... So I do a lot of scrum
training but I always start it with. Here's lean.


Gabe Weaver: [00:05:25] Yes.


Bob Payne: [00:05:26] Here's- it is OK to start
with scrum scrum is not the goal. I really put in some slides
recently with Bruce Lee. But. So. So it's discipline. It is
continuous improvement in playing the long game. You can start
there. But once you get disciplines then you can start to
improvise in the system and then at some point when you get
really good the systems fall away right. And ultimately you
should be tying back to lean and lean eats itself. Yeah it never
does it never sleeps it it's the whole goal is to change yeah.


Dan Fish: [00:06:11] One thing I like asking
Scrum teams that have been doing it for a little while is how a
scrum become an impediment. How does how does the framework of
scrum and the rigid roles of scrum become an organizational
impediment for you. I've seen some really strong mature teams
move beyond scrum you know and get into continuous flow and it's
so a beautiful thing because they've kind of taken the best
elements of it the mindsets and the cultures and and the and less
about the rigid rigid ceremonies or you know sort of straight
lines of separation


Bob Payne: [00:06:43] Even the roles of product
owner and development team in the scrum masters the you know the
arbiter between those two opposing powers. Well what if they're
not opposing and they're both working for the same thing you know
like Motley Fool you have these little micro feature teams and
there's a few engineers and business folks and they're just
building value right there. The distinction is getting a go.


Dan Fish: [00:07:16] Yeah the guys at Gilt have
a nice way of saying it which is this was in response to the
Spotify movement from to you know 10 years ago or so.


Bob Payne: [00:07:21] Right. 


Dan Fish:[00:07:22] You know tribes and guilds
just great stuff. Gilt had a nice paper saying we we think that
stuff is cool but you know some of it's an antique pattern you
know in particular separating prioritizing of work and doing the
work right. Right. How do you separate those two things.
Fundamentally it's you know that they really didn't believe in
that I think. I think there's there's truth in that. I also think
though there is you know a personality there is a you know a
right of someone to say yeah I care about the business and where
it's going. Up to a point and I just want to focus on doing a
great job and I think I think I think there's a balance there.


 Bob Payne: [00:07:55] Well everybody has
you know their particular proclivities are specializations and
that's OK. This idea that we should somehow be you know there
should be a level of homogeneity is .. i don't think Generalizing
specialist means that, right? And I don't know that that's
something that it's not some pure beautiful thing you know some
people are going to have a deep interest in the the customer in
the business somebody is going to have a deep interest in
breaking shit and they're going to be really testers and some
people are going to be really interested in building stuff but
when they Windu people can have a rich dialogue and make better
products make better decisions make faster decisions. I think
that's the goal. Scrum can be an enabler. Josh Kerievsky calls it
sort of the training wheels foragile in you know you can't always
ride with the wheels on forever right.


Gabe Weaver: [00:09:00] Yeah. My observation
I've noticed is in our projects even trying to get our clients to
participate in their own product development. They hire us to
build that is how often do business owners or are onsite
customers or whoever the sponsors actually participate in regular
weekly meetings with the team provide ongoing regular feedback
and unlike a predictable cadence and more often than not it
doesn't happen they don't they don't see the value of it and it's
hard to shift that mindset and think beyond anything else. That's
part of the primary reason why scrum why XP why anything will
fail and does fails because there isn't that healthy
participation from the business with the actual team building the
product. Sure that was such a good game because it reminds you of
a George Carlin joke about voting where it's like you know you
don't get to complain about who's elected. If you don't vote
right. Right. And George Carlin's like oh I sat home on Election
Day. You know I don't want any part of this. I'd say one of the
things I've seen over time consistently is that separation
between the sponsor and the team doing the work. I know whether
you know I did product development for years at Very, we're
consulting for for for companies. But the problem is when you
have a sort of proxy product owner right or something better than
the team who doesn't have budget authority doesn't have sort of
that that level and they're the ones though privatizing the
backlog. Also for our ally that separation can be a real a real
killer.


Dan Fish: [00:10:35] And then you lose empathy
right because then the person who has the budgetary
responsibility doesn't have the empathy of how hard it is to
build software or other organizational challenges and
impediments.


Bob Payne: [00:10:44] Yeah but also if they if
they're making decisions without the information they're flying
blind you know as well I mean it just is. You know it always
surprises me when they don't care how hard it is to Bill will
you'll care when it's late or we've gone over budget


Dan Fish: [00:11:02] Or their expectations are
wildly off because they haven't engaged right. And that's where
they get to sort of sit back and you know kind of sit in judgment
of it without actually participating. I think that's frustrating.


Gabe Weaver: [00:11:12] Yeah that's one of the
interesting things is another survey by Gardner. Basically 51
percent of organizations have no plans to establish refactoring
as a core principle and how they build products and software. And
they're not. They're not investing in the long term and stability
and they want to go faster quicker. And I think that's where even
a lot of business owners they don't want to hear that it's going
to go slower or they don't care. They want to get to market
quickly but they don't realize that by doing that they're
actually short circuiting the speed later on and rendering more
or less useless. Right. Oh by the way we're running a free
platform the whole thing and you can't have new features for
eight months. I think the only opposing force there is you know
is there some over optimization there. Right.


Dan Fish: [00:12:00] Is is is creating in a
really sophisticated tooling and some of the you know test driven
development stuff you know doing that too early before you know
your product market fit. I could see that being an opposing
force. But I think once you've gone to market right once you have
customers once you know you're going to be around for a while
right. You want to be sure that all of the stuff you put in place
before you know is at a certain level of maturity.


Gabe Weaver: [00:12:25] We disagree a little
bit.


Bob Payne: [00:12:27] So for the folks that came
up test infected the TDD is not only free it go you go faster
because it's not a testing it's not a testing activity. It's a
thinking activity. But


Dan Fish: [00:12:47] Sure I got a different way
which is you don't actually need bulletproof Hice high scalable
high you know responsive software when you have no customers.


Bob Payne: [00:12:54] Right.


Dan Fish: [00:12:55] Right now that's all trying
to say there.


Bob Payne: [00:12:56] There are people that
absolutely agree with you and there they are well respected. So
Dave Thomas a pragmatic programmer Dave says you know I don't
write many tests anymore. I don't know that he does a ton of
production code anymore either but


Gabe Weaver: [00:13:15] He's also like elevated
past level mastery and some some other force of nature that is
amazing.


Bob Payne: [00:13:22] Me i'm just trying to
..i'm doing the best I can. I need a crutch right. I'm not a free
climber. I need to attach my ropes as I get up the walk on the
one I'm talking about. But I only see the tests there to help the
cycle ocracy.


Dan Fish: [00:13:45] That's a good one.


Bob Payne: [00:13:46] Yeah. So how's that
working for you?


Dan Fish: [00:13:50] Peaches and cream


Bob Payne: [00:13:50] And you know some people
say What if I don't like peaches and cream when the holaocracy
revolution comes, You will like peaches and cream.


Gabe Weaver: [00:14:03] I will say it's not
perfect but it's better than what alternatives there are. They
are well documented and easy to adopt an organization. Yeah it's
certainly a little bit heavy handed and it feels that way. But
once you do it for a while you realize the intent behind the
heavy handedness is to protect everyone from waste and it's
almost like a kind thing where you have efficient meetings
instead of it being nice human you have very human interactions.
But when you go to like a tactical meeting which is basically a
stand up is very quick fire very rigid about the process because
you don't want to have 20 people cross talking in a room


Bob Payne: [00:14:41] And when you just starting
out like scrum you need rules. Yep yeah I mean I see that those
sorts of structures as supportive of instantiating the first
first steps.


Gabe Weaver: [00:14:55] I think the most
important thing about it is there's no rule in the Constitution
which is kind of what we adopted. You can't change the
constitution. Right. So. So the board of our company ratified the
Constitution and basically ceded their authority to governing the
organization according to the rules. Right. But it can be updated
and changed and evolved over time. And I think that's the whole
intent behind it just like it's continuous improvement in
software. You apply the same principle as the organization and
you can change it to how you need needed change but we're trying
not to do that until everybody understands the responsibility of
self-management.


Bob Payne: [00:15:33] Yeah until you can do it
well until you can demonstrate that you can execute it's what
qualifies as an I'm not pointing at you guys... You can take a
you know what qualifies you to say this way who would be better
until you've least tasted what you know the ability you can't
deliver. You can't improve your delivery. Right. So but I don't
think you need to go too far down the line. You know you don't
have to be the perfect scrum team before you start making minor
macro level changes to the process that takes you off scrum so be
it or it takes you out of the official official ocracy. You know
you've got to make contextually appropriate choices and and it's
your your team your company. This period of time this competitive
landscape and assume that it will evolve in the same way that
Toyota evolved and maybe they're at some plateau. But I suspect
they'll have disruptive change that they'll want to adopt. I will
say it was not perfect. 


Gabe Weaver: [00:16:44] We had our our company
wide meet up a couple of weeks ago and I reiterated the fact that
everybody in the company is considered a partner. Yep and
everybody's empowered to make changes and improvements. And it's
actually the responsibility of every partner within the
organization to do that and that's the evil that is.


Bob Payne: [00:17:03] And That's the thing
that's sometimes difficult for folks they don't want the
responsibility of changing the system.


Gabe Weaver: [00:17:09] But we've been pretty
good about hiring to let people know what they're coming into.
And the interesting thing is we haven't had any voluntary
turnover in three years.


Gabe Weaver: [00:17:18] And it's not just
because of velocity but I think it's more because of the shift in
how we're approaching people and putting people first and
organization like we made it clear we're happy to ditch it if it
doesn't work but only do it if there's something better to go to
that keeps the same spirit of putting people first in empowering
people and allowing people to become their ideal selves.


Dan Fish: [00:17:40] Yeah and I see some of the
things that have really resonated with me and with hypocrisy is
transparency. Yeah you know that's one of those things put people
put on a white board or a slide. It's hard to actually do right.
How do you give transparency to organizational strategy and
performance and things like that


Bob Payne: [00:17:56] And gain alignment in a
non-centralized system.


Dan Fish: [00:17:58] Absolutely. Particularly if
things aren't quite maybe baked right that idea that there's a
kernel of an idea that needs to be developed a little bit more
and that's when you know if there's too much sort of transparency
to it it can die or die quickly before it's ripe and so getting
that right balance you know that's not easy either. That's not
some idyllic paradise that we're swimming in every day. Right. So
that's something we we've been spending a lot of time in the last
six months to really figure out OK how do we get enough
transparency to things that are happening on decisions in
progress or big strategic shifts. And I think that's really
important when you want an engaged team and you treat your people
as good or better as your customers. I think that's that's an
important piece.


Bob Payne: [00:18:34] Great. Well I am excited
to see companies going down this path we're.. at LitheSpeed we're
kind of you know thumpin away and taking maybe more experimental
using some techniques from some from Buurtzog and some from
Morningstar. But yeah congratulations and it's going to be fun.


Gabe Weaver: [00:19:00] I appreciate that


Bob Payne: [00:19:01] Will not be peaches and
cream. May you live in interesting times. 


Gabe Weaver: [00:19:04] Maybe some vanilla ice
cream on the side.


Bob Payne: [00:19:06] Yeah. Excellent. Thank
thank you very much for coming in. Thank you VERY much.


Gabe Weaver: [00:19:13] I see what you did
there.


Dan Fish: [00:19:13] Yeah.Thank you. It's a
pleasure.