Simple Approaches To Build Trust On Remote Teams

Deconstructing Value Is Just Like Demolition!

Trust is an important component for building effective teams, unfortunately, you can’t buy a bag of trust and like plant fertilizer, sprinkle it on a team. In a special panel discussion aired on SPaMCAST 591, Jeff Dalton reminded us that trust is built; it does not magically appear because we want it to. Many of the Software Process and Measurement Cast and Blog listeners have been thrust into situations where they are suddenly remote and learning to build trust as part of newly remote teams. Sandeep Koorse made an interesting observation in the same podcast that many of us had been lulled in a false sense of trust and intimacy because we have been face-to-face for so long. The implication is that teams don’t invest the time needed to build trust that can withstand shocks like we are now facing. A few simple (no consultants needed) ideas to begin building trust on your suddenly remote team include:

 

SPaMCAST 560 – A Scientific Method For Agile, A Conversation With Al Shalloway Part 2

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In SPaMCAST 560 we complete our wide-ranging interview with Al Shalloway.  We continue our conversations about the troubles dogging classic agile, the Agile Industrial Complex, using a scientific approach to change, and FLEX.  I recommend that you listen to SPaMCAST 559 before listening to this week’s podcast. 

 

When Meetings and Management Styles Are Collaboration Fails!

Is a root canal collaboration?

We ended Part 1 of our evaluation of activities confused with collaboration with a reminder of logic: all dogs are mammals, but not all mammals are dogs.  All collaborative processes include communication and have a workflow, but, if we flip the equation, not all communication and workflows are collaboration.  Management and meetings are the last two areas of activities in all software development and maintenance organizations (and I do mean ALL) that we will discuss. Collaboration a critical part of delivering quality, in order not to dilute the power at the core of collaboration it is important to clearly understand which behaviors are easy to conflate with collaboration.

 

The Pros for Big Bang Change Implementation

Well the computer cord has been replaced but I am still catching up so it is another refine

A big bang adoption of a process or system is an instant changeover, a “one-and-done” type of approach in which everyone associated with a new system or process switches over in mass at a specific point in time.  There are positives and negatives to big bang approaches.  We begin with the positives.

 

#NoProjects

#NoProjects Pure and Simple

#NoProjects reimagines the classic organization of work that has a definite beginning and end (limited duration) often with a temporary organization as an ongoing operation. The first attribution of the #NoProjects is from @joshuajames (Joshua J. Arnold) in the following tweet:

@DamienSchreurs Projects kill flow and teams. Focus on products, not projects. #NoProjects

Note:  Bob Marshall may have coined the hashtag earlier than June 2013, however, I have not found evidence (yet).

 

Lots of Seed Questions For Value Chain, Value Stream, and Process Stream Mapping

Seeds grow flowers!

Taking a very binary view of why people expend the effort to create value chain, value streams, and/or process maps, there are two reasons for mapping. The first is to generate a cost advantage by increasing efficiency. The second is to generate product differentiation. Each reason requires information about customers, how raw materials are transformed, and how the product is delivered.  The analysis and decision based on the maps are very different. Seed questions are a useful gathering data in a repeatable manner. Here are some sample mapping seed questions:

 

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Re-read Week 6 – Chapter 5: The Power of Context (part two)

Tipping Point

In Chapter Five of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (remember to stop borrowing your best friend’s copy and buy a copy of the book for yourself!), Gladwell uses the story of how the book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood found its way over the tipping point as an example of the power of context.  Ya-Ya had a long glide path to a being a best seller, but once it started being read by groups such as book clubs or just mothers and daughters sales skyrocketed. The book evoked solidarity and linkages between groups of women. Gladwell links the explosion in sales to groups acting as super connectors.

In Chapter 2, The Law of the Few, Gladwell described how a connector could take an idea and spread it to many people.  Super connectors connect groups. Ya-Ya was the type of book that was read by groups (book clubs in this case) which made the book significantly stickier. Groups are powerful forces that act on how humans behave and think. Groups have social norms and apply pressure to hold members to the norms the group feels are important. The number of people in a group can impact how fast an idea moves is absorbed into the larger community.