Overview One of the biggest challenges that I often encounter on SAFe transformations is dispersed teams. A dispersed team is a team that is spread across multiple locations and often across multiple time zones as well. I’m speaking specifically of dispersal within the team membership – for instance, a product owner in LA, two developers in Bangalore, three testers in Russia – that sort of thing. That’s a dispersed team. While it’s possible for team like that to get work done

The next SAFe mix-in that I’d like to address is dynamic re-teaming. Dynamic re-teaming is a relatively radical agile innovation that changes the way team selection works. Let’s take our typical practice of rolling out a SAFe release train, we have our executives and key stakeholders get together and decide who is going to fill what roles. They make all the decisions: Who is the right person to lead this train, who is the right architect, who should be the Release Train Engin

I find you can learn a lot just by walking around and looking at the spaces that teams occupy. Sometimes, a workspace is full of personality. I used to work with a friend who would put an enormous wall hanging of a dragon over his desk. I don’t know where he got that thing, but it screamed “I’m into fantasy RPGs!” It didn’t matter where he was, that dragon hanging went with him everywhere. He was awesome, probably one of the best developers I’ve ever worked with, and that dra

A few years ago you could walk into just about any high tech company on the west coast and find teams, divisions, and release trains. Perhaps you would stumble over the occasional program or project if they weren’t agile. In all of these cases the terminology was and still is pretty consistent. Consistent is good, right? Along comes Spotify and they introduce squads, guilds and tribes and everyone goes wild. What a bunch of rebels! It was hard not to walk into a company and h

I found this lovely pairing of words in Yves Morieux’s book, Six Simple Rules. He was talking about the corrosive effect that problem escalation can have on teams and management. I’ve seen this before and I know how hard it can be to deal with. On the one hand, as a manager you are there to help and you may feel somewhat flattered when the team comes to you with a problem. On the other hand, as Morieux suggests, an escalation represents a failure of the teams to find a way to

If you do a little reading about Scrum one of the first things that you learn are the 5 basic values of Scrum: Courage Focus Respect Committment Openness I’d like to examine one of those values that I watched a team wrestle with recently: commitment. These were really great folks. They were bright, energetic, friendly and passionate about the work they were doing. Within the team they took a lot of pride in their ability to “be agile.” They seemed to be doing a lot of good st

My Dad has always been a passionate outdoorsman. For him, when it comes to spending some quality time, nothing beats hunting and fishing. So as a kid I spent a lot of time on the banks of rivers and streams with a fishing rod in hand or marching through fields of tall grass with a dog and a 12 gauge. It’s just how I spent many of my weekends growing up. Hunting and fishing are complex activities. First, there is knowing where to find the fish or birds. Then there is selecting

“I have an existential map. It has ‘You are here’ written all over it.” -Steven Wright I happened to be in a cabin one evening after a long day of hunting. The wood stove was blazing and we were all chilling after dinner. The guides were off to one side hanging out together sharing their experiences from the day. It was fun to watch them as they described where they had been and what they had seen. The dialog would go something like this: “We were down trail X off of the old

Today was our annual family visit to the pumpkin patch. We go to a local farm that is a sort of pumpkin theme park. In addition to the fields of U-pick pumpkins, they have a petting zoo, pumpkin launchers, halloween themed play structures, hay rides, and a corn maze. It was a beautiful early October afternoon, and the kids roamed through all the usual activities. Finally we got around to the corn maze. Now you should know that as these things go, this corn maze is pretty dece

“Man’s role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.” – Margaret Mead So there I was talking to a team that was split across two locations. There was the usual set of complaints that you might expect from a scenario where a team is divided across geophysical locations: miscommunication, delay, misunderstandings, etc. In this case, the QA folks happened to be in one location and the development folks in another. As we talked through some of these issues, I couldn’t he

As some of you may know, I’m building a boat in my brother’s garage. We had a big milestone the other day: we finished painting the bottom and rolled the boat over to finish the topsides. From a distance it looks great! Up close is another story though. Up close you can find ripples in the paint from where the fiberglass wasn’t sufficiently well sanded. There are other places where you can see fine lines in the paint due to underlying patterns in the filler compound. Add to t

Back in the day when I was writing windows programs there was this thing called hungarian notation. It was a form of shorthand that allowed you to add the type of a variable to the name of the variable. It led to variable names like “lpszUserName” that stood for “long pointer to a zero terminated string named UserName.” It made for some pretty awkward variable names, but the idea was that you could always tell the type of the variable, even if you couldn’t see the declaration

Years ago I used to read a magazine called Game Development (at least I think that was it). I’ve never worked in game development myself, but I found it fascinating to take a little peek into the world of the game development teams. They were always working on some cutting edge game engine technology that enabled “the next generation of jaw dropping graphics” and some form of ridiculously enhanced gaming experience. At the time it seemed to me like the game developers were ve

My daddy left home when I was three And he didn’t leave much to ma and me Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze. Now, I don’t blame him cause he run and hid But the meanest thing that he ever did Was before he left, he went and named me “Sue.” -Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue I love this song. It makes me chuckle every time I hear it. Its a story about a man who names his son “Sue” because he knows it will be the source of mockery and make him into a stronger man. It

“The most critical aspect of the work, both artists said, was not the objects themselves, but the space between objects.” -Daniel J. Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music As I was reading Levitin’s book this evening I came across the quote above and had to pause. Levitin does an excellent job of explaining musical concepts like pitch, timbre, tempo and harmony in an easily accessible way. He was making the point that the art in music can be just as easily found in the absence

The application of Swarming as a method can be broken down into four main contexts. For each context the process of swarming is different. Allowing for different contexts makes sense, because we really can’t expect the same process to work equally well in every situation. Even the simplest animals are able to exhibit variations in behavior based on the context, so why shouldn’t our processes? We change our behavior to match the circumstances. That is, unless we are using fixe

Have you heard the story of the Brave Little Tailor? Here’s a refresher: So one day this little guy kills 7 flies with one mighty blow. He crafts for himself a belt with “7 in One Blow” sewn into it. He then proceeds through various feats of cleverness to intimidate or subdue giants, soldiers, kings and princesses. Each one, in their own ignorance, misinterpreting what “7 in One Blow” actually refers to. It’s a classic for a number of reasons: It’s a story about mis-communica

No one wants advice, only collaboration. – John Steinbeck Imagine you are working as part of a team on a project. One day your manager approaches you and says, “There is this really high priority project that has come up and we need you and your expertise on it. We are going to move you onto that team for the duration of the project. Is that OK with you?” How would you feel about that? I know how I would feel. I would feel jerked around. I would not feel in control or part of

I’ve always been a big fan of transparency in Agile projects. I love the idea of project stakeholders having an unobstructed view into the work that the team is doing. Of course, what does transparency really mean? To me, transparency means that anyone, whether or not they are a member of the team, can easily see for themselves the current state of the work. That includes all work completed, work in progress, and work remaining to be done. It includes all impediments, risks,

Recently we hired a painter to do the exterior of our house. At the time I thought we had simply purchased the services of a painter, however I soon discovered that we were getting something more. We were getting a tutorial in the fundamentals of craftsmanship. It all started with the first day of work. We had contractors working on an addition to the house. They would typically show up around 8 in the morning each day and work until 5. Our painter however, was different. He