Empty Customer Chairs – Illustrating the Absence of Customer Participation

Once upon a time, there was a company that said it was customer focused.  They used Agile methods to incrementally build software. At the end of an iteration, each team within the company would conduct a demo session.  The feedback from the demonstrations would be used to adapt the product toward what was deemed as customer value.  When the demo was investigated, it was learned that there were no actual customers or end-users in the demo. The question that may then be posed is if there are no customers in the demos, then what are the teams adapting too? 

What appears to be a challenge to some companies who say they are customer-focused or Agile, is how to successfully construct a functional demo.  The short answer is that customers or at least the end-users must attend the demo.  Of course this is more easily said than done.  The long answer is to establish a the Agile Customer Feedback Vision.  This vision is a strategy for identifying the right customers to attend, applying personas that represent the various customer groups, establishing feedback sessions throughout the work, and then motivating the customers to attend the feedback sessions. 

In the meantime, how do you highlight the problem of the missing customers?  Certainly those in the company understand that gaining customer feedback is important to the success of a product.  Even when providing companies with the mechanics of a customer feedback vision, customers are still found missing from the demos.  Why is that?  Maybe it's important to illustrate the obvious, that customers are indeed missing from the demos.    

One way to illustrate the obvious to companies and their teams is by applying the Empty Customer Chairs technique.   The Empty Customer Chairs is a visual way to highlight the absence of customers at a demo of the product.  The technique is applied by having 3 chairs that represent the customer at a demonstration. If customers attend the demo, they fill the chairs.  If no customers attend the demo, then the chairs remain obviously empty.  If the demo is held virtually, then 3 virtual screens are designated to customers.  If no customers attend, then those 3 screens remain empty. 

It would be hoped that a company or team realizes the benefit of customer participation.   Until such time, this technique can help you illustrates the obvious lack of customer participation that may have the intent to motivate the filling of those seats. At the end of the day, it is all about delivering customer value and this is a technique that can help you highlight the importance of this value through the absence of the customer. 

What Colors are on your Agile Career Palette?

For those that advocate for Agile within their organization or help organizations adopt Agile, often times your career path is opportunistic based on what opportunities appear before you. This helps the Agile advocate at one level gain experience but can prevent the more methodical thinking of where you want your career to go.  At some point, isn’t it good to be in the driver’s seat of your own growth? 

For example, if the Agile advocate (e.g., Agile Coach) only has team level coaching opportunities, they will never gain the experience and skills needed to coach at a management or organization level.  If the Agile advocate only has Scrum based opportunities, they will not gain the experience of working with Kanban, Lean Development, or scaled frameworks.  Instead a methodical aspect to their career must be incorporated.  This is where the Agile Career Palette can be useful.  

The Agile Career Palette provides a colorful approach to better understand what Agile capabilities and experience an Agile advocate currently has and then provides an incremental approach to explore, learn, experience opportunities in the future based on gaps and interest. An Agile Career Palette provides the Agile advocate with what is artistically known as the colors they bring to their work.

These colors represent several key facets (IMHO) of what it means to be an Agile advocate of any type.  The key facets include the agile experience acquired, levels coached, agile roles played, fields where you apply agile, agile processes implemented, business and technical practices applied, agile training delivered, agile change management and soft skills applied, agile certifications acquired, and giving back to the agile community in the form of articles and seminars.  While there may be other areas of focus, I have found that these tend to cover most of the important Agile areas. 

Those who benefit most from the Agile Coaching Palette are the Agile advocates who play a role as Agile Coach, Agile Champion, Agile Sponsor, Team level advocates (e.g., ScrumMasters, Product Owner, etc), and Agile leaders of any kind who are looking to advance in their Agile journey. The Palette approach reminds those on their agile journey of the many areas they may desire to experience, learn, and play along the way.

Based on real experience, the Agile Career Palette is a methodical and incremental approach in helping you consider what you may want to do next, depending on where you’ve been and more importantly where you would like to go.  The “where you would like to go” is meant to be applied in an incremental manner.  Usually about 6 months gives you enough time to make progress but short enough to reflect on where you’ve been and where they want to go next.  

If you are an Agile advocate, consider trying an Agile Career Palette approach to help you better shape and color your future.  First start by establishing your current state of the key facets mentioned about.  Then, commit to an increment of improvement based on your interests or gaps.  It will help you be more laser-focused on building your future!

Unlock the Power of Self-Forming Teams

A collaboration by Chris LeBlanc and Mario Moreira

It is quite possible that many teams in your organization are going through the motions of Scrum.  Per the Tuckman model, they are in the Norming phase of team group development, but are hard-pressed to break into the Performing phase.  This may be due to the team feeling a lack of empowerment and what it means to be Agile beyond the mechanics.  We are going to share a technique that can help bring your Agile organization to the next level, increase employee engagement and help make your engineers high performing and happier. This technique is relevant when you have a squad of 14 or more people who need to form into 2 or more teams.  

The common scenario in team formation is where a manager (or those who do not do the work) decides the team structure.  Managers have external knowledge of who may work well together and what skills they possess.  This is an educated guess at best.  Might we consider another approach?

By embracing the concepts of self-organizing teams and bounded authority, we ask those who actually do the work, the team members, to use their team internal knowledge of who they work best with and how their skills are able to complement the members of their team.  The result can be happy, high performing cross-functional teams composed of engineers that that want to work with each other.  For those experienced with the process of self-organizing teams, might it best start with the ability to self-form? 

May we introduce the Self-forming Teams starter kit!  This is a technique used to help engineers self-organize toward an engaged and effective team based on their current skill sets.  There are few steps that need to be completed by the leaders before you begin:

Create a vision of the work ahead.  This will give the engineers the information they need to understand who is best to work with based on their current skill set.

Set up bounded authority for the exercise.  The leaders can provide their bounded authority guidance on a few inputs to the exercise: mix of senior and junior team members and buy-in to this process.Everyone follows the bounded authority of the Scrum process as input: team size (7+/-), cross-functional skills (Dev+ QA)

An Agile Coach or facilitator to help guide the team toward their self-forming goals

Once the bounded authority and the vision are established, the Agile Coach or facilitator is ready to begin.  Here are steps to follow. Again, this is relevant when you have 14 or more people who need to form into multiple teams. 

• Kickoff the session with sharing the self-forming goals with everyone. They include: Well-balanced teams who can successfully and efficiently complete any item in the backlog;  Long-term teams and can autonomously deliver value as fast as possible; Teams that understand skills needed on each squad and a learning path for the short term; Team members like the team they are on and the work they are doing
• Conduct a connection Ice Breaker to lighten the mood of the session
• Describe the definition of self-organization
• Introduce the Product Owner and Architect to discuss the vision and any backlog input
• Conduct a divergent conversation with everyone.  Ask “What skills will be needed to tackle the presented work from the backlog?”  Write down each skill given by the engineers.
• Follow this with a convergent conversation that draws affinities between the skills to generate a list of Macros Skills each team would need (5-7 is a good number)
• Ask each engineer to walk to the board and mark off each skill they currently have and each skill they want.
• Now start the self-formation process.  Ask the engineers to self-form into teams, using bounded authority and the Macro Skills that were generated as guidance.  As the facilitator, move the conversation along when they become stuck.
• Finally, nobody leaves the room unless everyone is happy with the team they are on.  Ask for a Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down vote from the group.  If there are any thumbs down, explore the reason and adjust the teams accordingly.

What we have seen to be true of self-forming teams is that knowledge workers who choose their own team structure are more invested in owning the health of the team.  When something is not working on the team, they are more likely to improve it. They are excited and happy to be on that team.  Healthy, happy people create high performing teams that build high quality products quicker.  Unlock the potential (and untapped power) of your teams and extend your ability to self-organize with self-forming teams.

To read more of Mario Moreira's articles, visit: http://cmforagile.blogspot.com/

To read more about Chris LeBlanc, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-leblanc-47619a5