Happiness:A Key Component of Agile

Presented by: Organizational Engineering

Jeremy Webb – Managing Partner

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

Sources:

Objectives

• For Agile practitioners - Connect happiness to Agile implementations

• Improve Agile implementations

• Share techniques for overcoming Agile adversity

• For everybody

• Convey benefits of happiness in the workplace

• Help people increase their happiness

• Make a positive impact on the way business is done

Sources:

Count to 10Ninja!

• Circle with 10-20 people• Choose a facilitator to start the round• Nobody can say more than one number• Count to 10 without repeating any numbers• If a number is repeated, start over

• Circle with 5-10 people• Choose facilitator to start round by saying “Bow

to your opponents”• Hands together and bow• Strike a “Ninja” pose with 1 hand behind back• Game begins to left of facilitator or with last

winner• Try to slap hand of anybody else in circle• You can dodge slaps but must remain still

otherwise unless you are slapping• If your hand is slapped, you are out

Sciency

Stuff

Sources:

What Drives UsDavid R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. says:

Everything we (people) do is driven by the pursuit of two basic emotions

“Thousands or even millions of thoughts can be replaced by a single emotion”

Sources: Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender

Loss of Capacity to Experience

What is Happiness?

Sources:

Traditional View of Happiness

Sources: The Happiness Advantage, Photo courtesy of 1shots at freedigitalphotos.net

Success Happiness

New View of Happiness

Sources: The Happiness Advantage

SuccessHappiness

Sources of Happiness

• Autonomy

• Mastery

• Purpose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdzHgN7_Hs8

Sources: Drive by Daniel Pink

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Sources: Wikimedia

Positivity and Happiness

• Hot trend in research

• Happiness Advantage: Fear narrows thinking, happiness expands it

• State of the American Manager: 61% (2X avg) of employees are engaged when managers focus on strengths

• Psychology Today: Stress causes mental capacity to drop while mindfulness meditation increases mental capacity

Sources:

Studies Have Shown…

• Doctors in a positive mood show 3X more intelligence and make accurate diagnosis 19% faster

• Happy sales people outsell other salesman by 56%

• Judges like sandwiches!

Sources: The Happiness Advantage

Impact of Fear

Sources: Photos from freedigitialphotos.net courtesy of 1) dream designs 2) 9comeback 3) Naypong

1

2

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Opposing Forces

Sources: What Every BODY is Saying, The Happiness Advantage

Freeze

Flight

Fight

Reinforcing Habits

Sources:

Broaden and Build Theory

• Barbara Frederickson circa 1998

• Positive emotions

• Lead to building skills over time

• Provide a wider range thoughts and actions to choose from

Sources: The Happiness advantage, Wikipedia

Concepts

Applied

Sources:

Agile Manifesto

Sources: agilemanifesto.org

12 Principles – Part 1

Sources: agilemanifesto.org

12 Principles – Part 2

Sources:agilemanifesto.org

Approaches

Waterfall and Traditional Practices

Focus on Eliminating Risk - Fear Driven

Agile and Scrum

Embraces Uncertainty - Focus on the Positive

Change Control / Resistance

Multiple Gates & Approvals

Elaborate Plans

Empowerment Minimal Planning

Responding to Change

Elaborate Processes

Minimal Overhead

Specific Roles

Customer Focus

HeavyDocumentation

Cross-functional

Scrum Principles for Happiness and Motivation

• Work in teams and pass or fail as a whole

• Sprint Reviews and Demos

• Retrospectives

• User stories (good ones)

• It takes as long as it takes

Sources:

Sutherland On Happiness

• Happiness is a Leading Indicator of Success

• Happiness Metric (Next Slide)

• Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose make people happy (and great teams)

• Connection leads to happiness (Zappos)

• Happiness comes from achievement not complacency

• The journey is more satisfying than the result

Happiness Metric (From SCRUM)

1. On a scale from 1 to 5, how do you feel about your role in the company?

2. On the same scale, how do you feel about the company as a whole?

3. Why do you feel that way?

4. What one thing would make you happier in the next sprint?

Sources:

Scenario

• A dev team is transitioning to Agile.

• Velocity has been increasing

• Large amount of technical debt

• Team meets and puts together a plan to address the issues and build out infrastructure at the same time

• Management decides that if they product doesn’t ship in 2 months, employment contracts will be changed or terminated

Sources:

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Team X Velocity Chart

Points Completed (Stories only) Avg velocity

Avg velocity from 2/17 Linear (Avg velocity)

Linear (Avg velocity from 2/17)

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Start Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10

Team X Data (Bug Fixing)

Bugs added Stories Added Remaining Issues:

Ideal Burn Linear (Remaining Issues:)

Unconventional Approaches for Happiness• Vanderbilt University uses Aromatherapy

• Reports of being stressed often 68% down to 14%

• Major mood improvements

• Higher energy levels

• More ability to handle stressful situations

• 84% strongly agree and 10% agree (94% total) that diffusers had a positive effect

• Volunteering programs

• 20% time

• Daily writing

• Marine Corps using meditation in a program called M-Fit (meditation) to increase mental capacity, reduce illness and reduce fear

Sources: Washington Times, http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/

My View of Happiness

Sources:

SuccessHappiness

Sources:

What did you learn?

Feedback

Thank You!

Contact info:

Website: org-eng.com

Email: jeremy@org-eng.com

Phone: 434-260-1450