Who Am I?

Me. With just a little information we've learned a lot more about who I am.

We may even be able to discern skill level based on where I work.

Individual proficiency causes differences in productivity of up to 10 times.

For example: If I was to play LeBron James for a minute, he would score 10 points, and I would score?

100

We'll come back to this...

• Plan

  Pull work items from a backlog, and agree what can be delivered by the next sprint.

• Sprint

  Do all the stuff you agreed on, from most valuable to least. Have daily standups.

• Release / Review

  Feature owners sign off on completed work, and you do a deployment.

• Retrospective

  Review the sprint and improve the process.

The big wins in SCRUM aren't from the hard mechanics of the process, but the softer, human side:

Culture

We'll come back to this too...

How not to do IT

Examples of the crap we've all put up with.

Hyper focused silos.

Revolve around roles: DBA role, Ops Role, Dev Role.

These can be Organizational or Individual.

None of these problems are solved by SCRUM, or any other process. These are human problems.

Although they can't be solved by a process, they can impact both processes and outcomes greatly.

What, then, can we do?

Culture

Culture

merriam-webster

the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization.

the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.

Culture

merriam-webster

the act or process of cultivating living material (such as bacteria or viruses(or nerds)) in prepared nutrient media

Culture has a huge impact on the success of an endeavor, and culture is cultivated through leadership, good or bad. When talking about agile, lean, devops, etc, the primary focus on those ideals is dealing with change. This applies especially to cultural change as well.

Puppet Labs "2017 State of DevOps Report"

State Of DevOps 2017 - Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Alanna Brown and Nigel Kersten

It's no surprise that "Transformational Leadership" is called out in the report.

Puppet Labs "2017 State of DevOps Report"

State Of DevOps 2017 - Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Alanna Brown and Nigel Kersten

"The characteristics of transformational leadership are highly correlated with IT performance."

"High-performing teams reported having leaders with the strongest behaviors across all dimensions: vision, inspirational communication, intellectual stimulation, supportive leadership, and personal recognition. In contrast, low-performing teams reported the lowest levels of these leadership characteristics. The differences we found were all at statistically significant levels."

Puppet Labs "2017 State of DevOps Report"

State Of DevOps 2017 - Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Alanna Brown and Nigel Kersten

"Our analysis also found that transformational leadership is highly correlated with employee Net Promoter Score (NPS). We find transformational leaders in places where employees are happy, loyal, and engaged."

Culture isn't just a leadership thing, it's an individual thing as well: Happy employees are more productive.

Social Market Foundation

Are Happy Workers More Productive - DANIEL Sgroi

They found that happier individuals have approximately 12% greater productivity than the control.

You see:

In IT, computers don't care about how happy you are. Processes don't care about how happy you are. Being happy is a wholly human characteristic that YOU care about. Because you're a human...

... not a robot

Whaddyagonnadoaboutit?

Team Focus

why?

Unlike individuals outperforming on a 10:1 ratio from best to worst, Teams outperform on a 100:1 ratio.

SCRUM: The art of doing twice the work in half the time. - Jeff Sutherland et al.

"There's no I in TEAM"

BS

TEEIM

Individual happiness is important, but so is a focus on the teeim. Do both! Teeims can be happy too.

Don't be a Manager, be a Leader

Managers manage. They treat people as "resources"... like sheep, or worse, machines that can just be programmed and told what to do. They'll take loyalty over any other trait, which will destroy teeim integrity and trust.

DON'T BE A MANAGER.

Leaders, on the other hand...

Leaders inspire, engage, and serve their teeims.

"The underlying idea is that leaders, by their preoccupations, shape a unit’s culture. Through their symbolic actions, as well as rewards and punishments, leaders communicate what they feel is important. These preferences then become the preoccupation of the organisation’s workforce, because rewards, punishments, and resources follow the leader’s preferences"

A typology of organisational cultures - R Westrum

(psst... I've got a hint for ya...)

Leadership is a skill like any other. If you want to learn more, or get better, do what you'd do if you were learning a new technology or programming language: Grab some books, join some meetups, take some classes and Google.

On Culture

Culture is the responsibility for all. Although driven by Leadership...

(DON'T BE A MANAGER)

... culture growth benefits from the involvement of ALL facets of the organization.

Conclusion

Being human in the IT world is not only possible, but PREFERABLE. A rich and rewarding culture benefits, not only our personal selves, but the organization as a whole. Leaders should stop focusing on managing the teeim, and start focusing on cultivating a fun, engaging, and challenging culture. Treating people like people is a win win for everyone involved.

Fin

Sources

Suggested Reading