AW6 Concurrent Session 11/13/2013 2:15 PM 

       

"I Thought YOU Were Flying the Plane: Preventing Projects from Falling Out of

the Sky"    

Presented by:

Steve Adolph WSA Consulting, Inc.

      

Brought to you by:  

  

340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073 888‐268‐8770 ∙ 904‐278‐0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com

Steve Adolph WSA Consulting

An agile coach with WSA Consulting, Inc., Steve Adolph partners with Scaled Agile and Rally Software where he pursues his passion for helping organizations get the job done. He has been creating and managing software development projects long enough to remember Fortran and OS/MVT JCL. Steve’s professional career includes many exciting and critical projects—designing call processing software for digital telephone exchanges, design and development of leading edge network management systems, railway signaling, and telecom billing. He has diverse experience in job roles ranging from developer to chief engineer to CTO. Steve is coauthor of the popular book, Patterns for Effective Use Cases.

But  I  thought  you  were  flying  the  plane!    

Preventing  Great  Projects  from  Falling  Out  of  the  Sky  

Steve  Adolph  steve@wsaconsulting.com

Eastern  Flight  401  (Dec  29  1972)  

United  Flight  173  (Dec  28th  1978)  

 

Air  Florida  Flight  90    (Jan  13  1982)  

Common  Theme  

A  minor  situation  escalated    into  a  major  catastrophe  

What  did  the  airlines  learn?  

   “…not  a  deficiency  in  “s/ck  and  rudder”  skills  but  an  inability  of  the  flight  crew  to  func/on  as  a  team”   (Wiener,  Kanki,  &  Helmreich,  1995)  

Mismatched  Perspectives:  How  Many  Generators?  

So  what  does  this  have  to  do  with  agile  and  software  development?  

 

Requirements  

“it’s  getting  everybody  to  understand  things  in  a  similar  manner.  Get  everybody  on  the  same  page.  I  think  that’s  –  that’s  the  biggest  impediment  is  people  walk  away  with  misunderstandings  and  you  haven’t  clarified.  And  they  just  run  with  their  assumptions  or  what  the  way  they  understand  things.  And  then  we  either  have  to  go  and  correct  them  or  back  out  of  it  or  redo  um  something.  And  I  think  that’s  the  thing  that  causes  us  the  most  pain”    –  Site  1  Subject  1  follow-­‐up      

Perspec0ve  Mismatch    in  So6ware  Development  

13  

14  

Converging:  Reaching  Out  

15  

Converging:  Negotiating  Consensus  

16  

The  Consensual  Perspective  

   

17  

Validating:  Bunkering  

18  

Validating:  Evaluating  

“…There  just  weren’t  enough  conversations  taking  place”    site  2  subject  3  

Root  Cause  of  Failure?  

Tension  in  the  Process  

Relationship  Between  Performance  and  Communications  Frequency  (Patrashkova-­‐Volzdoska,  et  al.,  2003,  p.  266)  ©  2003  IEEE    

Is  More  Communica0ons  Always  Be>er?  

Projects  can  crash  because  of  faulty  social  processes  

Photo  by  Seven  Resist  

Software  development  is  a  Social  Process.    

   

“The  design  focus  of  software  methodologies  should  be  away  from  production-­‐centered  practices  and  toward  socially-­‐centered  methodologies”  –  Sawyer    &  Guinan  1998  

Bottom  Line:  

“People  trump  process”              -­‐Alistair  Cockburn  

 

What  did  the  airlines  do?  

“Airlines  were  noticing  that  although  pilots  were  technically  competent,  their  people  skills  were  deficient.  In  other  words,  the  captain  could  fly  a  perfect  ILS  approach,  but  could  not  work  in  a  synergistic  environment  to  effectively  accomplish  tasks”  

“Companies  were  noticing  that  although  engineers  were  technically  competent,  their  people  skills  were  deficient.  In  other  words,  they  could  design  and  implement  perfect  modules,    but  could  not  work  in  a  synergistic  environment  to  effectively  accomplish  tasks”  

A  pilot  is  a  highly  skilled  individual…  

 

 

…  whose  job  requires  them  to  work  as  an  effective  team  member.    

 

 

“Pilot  error”  as  team  failure  

The  Soloist  

The  Two  Rules  of  the  Cockpit  Rule  #1The  Captain  is    always  right  Rule  #2  See  Rule  #1    

Crew  Resource  Management  

l Formal  training  program  set  up  to  concentrate  on  the  human  factor  in  aviation  

l  CRM  Domains  l  Communications  l  Situational  Awareness  l  Problem  Solving/  Decision  Making  l  Leadership  l  Interpersonal  Skills  

United  232  (July  19th  1989)  

Qantas  Flight  32  

Sprint  2-­‐4  Weeks  

Daily  Scrum  

Scrum  as  a  Social  Process  

Is  Skills  Training  Enough?  

CSM  Learning  Objectives:  Learn  the  responsibilities  of  the  Scrum  Master  role  including:  •   serving  the  product  owner  and  team,  •   removing  impediments,  •   coaching  the  Product  Owner  and  team,  and  •   protecting  the  team.  

Managing  the  Tension:    Leadership  –  Team  Processes  

l Sheltering  l Supporting  l Drum  Beating    l Boundary  Spanning  

Leadership  as    Boundary  Spanning    

Photo  by    Robert  Conley  

“Leaders  are  created  not  born”      

–  Jack  Welch  former    General  Electric  CEO  

“an  organization’s  objectives  are  best  met  not  by  the  optimization  of  the  technical  system  and  the  adaptation  of  the  social  system  to  it,  but  by  the  joint  optimization  of  the  technical  and  social  aspects,  thus  exploiting  the  adaptability  and  innovativeness  of  people  in  achieving  goals  instead  of  over  determining  the  manner  in  which  these  goals  should  be  achieved”    –  Albert  Cherns,  

Socio-­‐technical  Systems  

 “They  can  match  our  costs,  

but  they  can’t  match  our  culture”  Herb  Kelleher  

Culture  as  a  Competitive  Advantage  

“Personnel  attributes  and  human  relations  activities  provide  by  far  the  largest  source  of  opportunity  for  improving  software  productivity”    

 -­‐  (Boehm,  1984)  

Steve  Adolph  steve@steveadolph.biz  

Thank  you!