Agile Coaching, when done right, can be one of the biggest boosts for the effectiveness and success of your teams, the organisation and the customers. Whether you’re in the process of recruiting an Agile Coach to your organisation or you already have an in-house Coaching discipline already, it’s worth considering what you can do to get the most out of this unique role. Having worked with many teams at various stages in their Agile journey, here are some of the patterns I’ve seen which go some way towards helping the Agile Coach help you.

1. Lay the groundwork

The most difficult introduction to a team for an Agile Coach is rocking up to a stand-up unannounced, and having to hastily introduce themselves to the team there. In cases such as this, the Coach has to work harder than necessary to overcome any initial scepticism and gain the trust of the team.

A far more productive set-up is for the teams and wider organisation to be informed prior the Coach’s arrival and, if possible, for each team to consider which areas it would want help in. This establishes a mutually beneficial relationship at the start: the Coach who is there to help, and the team which is prepared to be helped.

2. Provide an access-all-areas pass to your coach

You may notice that the suggestion above recommends that the wider organisation is informed about the Coach. There’s a good reason for this: even if the Agile Coach may never work with every corner of the business, there’s a high likelihood that when the Coach starts to help teams in tackling their problem areas, they will invariably examine the relationship the team has with its stakeholders. When those stakeholders end up being Marketing, Finance, Sales, Customer Service and any other non-tech function, the Coach needs to be able to work with them in the same way they might any team. And this only works if those functions are also aware of the Agile Coaching available to them and prepare accordingly.

3. Be open to being coached

When you boil the work a Coach does down to its most basic, it’s to hold a mirror up to the team, and to ask them if they’re happy with what they see. Where necessary, a Coach will do this with individuals too. The kicker here is that it’s often those who believe they don’t need any coaching who are most in the need of it. The initial surprise of this can cause individuals to become closed and defensive; after all, the Coach is pointing out occurrences where their behaviour is causing more harm than good. Even if this reaction is understandable, it’s not very helpful to anyone. Instead, if you’re working with a Coach, and they start offering you individual feedback and coaching, you should see it as a positive: you’re someone who the Coach believes has the influence and skill to improve things for the whole team and organisation.

4. Make the time for your teams

Anyone who has tried to learn a new skill will know that simply paying for a course isn’t enough: you have to make the time and put the hours in. The same is true of Agile Coaching. Help your teams free up their calendars and lighten their workloads; they’ll need time to learn, explore and try out new ways of working. Rather than seeing this as a situation where the teams do less valuable work, see this instead as a scenario where teams only do valuable. You’ll help them cut away the fluff which only slows them down, giving them the necessary space to make the most of their coaching.

5. Give feedback and guidance to the coach

A coach doesn’t necessarily work off a backlog or a roadmap like many others in the organisation might, instead casting their net wide to find areas which need their focus the most.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t influence their attention to those areas you believe to be problematic. Perhaps there’s a team which doesn’t seem to be delivering, or a product area which never seems to solve customer problems. Although you could wait and see if the Coach discovers this themselves, it’s far more beneficial to alert the Coach to this and discuss possible solutions to the predicament. A good Coach will probe a little to understand why you feel this area needs special attention, but assuming you’re in agreement, it gives the Coach early momentum in helping the team and organisation to be better.

When implemented well, Agile Coaching can transform teams and organisations to work better, happier and deliver valuable products to customers with more regularity. With the above steps, you can give your teams and the coach the best possible start in what should be a very fruitful collaboration.

How to get the most out of your Agile Coach was originally published in Agile Bites on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• vision: is the reason why the product exists. It’s what guides all decisions regarding the product. It gives the context for the product development team to make decisions about what to prioritize.
• strategy: is the detailing of the steps you will take to get your product closer to the vision. Both product vision and strategy are long-term tools, i.e., help you set, communicate and align the direction of your product for the next 2 or more years.
• roadmap: enables you and your team to plan and communicate the view of the future that you have for your product for the next 12 months. It is important to have 12-month roadmaps in order to give additional details of what’s coming. You’ll probably be able to provide more details of the next 3 to 6 months, but that’s ok. The purpose of the 12-month planning is to give a chance to check if things left to be done later should be brought to be done earlier and to give some sense about when to discuss what is not being discussed for the next quarter.
• OKR: objectives and key results, or motivation and metric, i.e., what we want to accomplish and how we will know that we accomplished it? OKRs are composed of two parts, a goal (objective) and 2 to 5 key outcomes (key results) indicating that the goal was achieved. OKRs are normally short term, during a quarter. It is possible to have 12 or 6 months OKRs but since you already have the 12-month roadmap as a mid-term tool, it’s better to use OKR with a quarterly frequency. For some time, I advocated replacing roadmaps, but now it’s clear that these two tools together yield better results. OKRs providing short-term planning and alignment. Roadmaps providing mid-term planning and alignment.

Putting it all together in one image, here are the product management 4 tools:

Final comments

With this article, we concluded the growth phase of the software product lifecycle. We understand how to handle customer feedback, and what it is and how to prioritize a roadmap. We also looked at the most varied types of metrics, including conversion funnel, engagement, churn, global and individual financial metrics, revenue and negative churn, NPS, loyalty metrics, some considerations about metrics. We saw what is and how to build the product vision and strategy, useful tools for making decisions about what will be the future of your product and how to get there. And in this article, we saw how these 4 tools (vision, strategy, roadmap, and OKR) work together to help us manage our product with long, mid and short-term views.

Lean Product Secrets

The Lean Product Secrets brings together the hands-on experience of three successful digital products enthusiastic. Get to know their secrets for idealizing and evolving products, and their combined experience on Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Product Lifecycle Management.

The thing is, two of these E-Books are in the way to their printed edition, so they won’t stay available as E-Books on LeanPub for much longer. For this reason, we decided to create a special bundle price to let you keep a copy of these E-Books.

We will keep updating the E-Books until they are officially released. This way you will have early access to their official first edition releases:

https://leanpub.com/b/leanproductsecrets

“Rather than giving people reassuring — right answers — we may do better to model experimentation, curiosity, and openness.”

and…

“For insights to be useful, they need to be generated from within, not given to individuals as conclusions.”

and…

“Trainers should drop their masks of expertise and reveal their vulnerability.”

Although the paper is focused on training in general, my mind made the connection in how Scrum consultants, trainers, and coaches try to have organizations learn Scrum. Or the other way around. How organizations expect to succeed with Scrum by hiring consultants, trainers, and coaches.

What I see happening a lot is…

• Scrum consultants are hired as experts to implement the Scrum framework in the wider organization;
• Scrum trainers are expected to provide the students (employees from the organizations adopting Scrum) with all the answers & solutions for their daily challenges;
• Scrum coaches are judged by how quickly they get everyone more mature in using Scrum, and its related collaboration, and interactions.

Being a consultant, trainer or coach (sometimes the same person) isn’t necessarily wrong. The problem is the expectations organizations often have from these roles and how the consultants, trainers, and coaches choose to fulfill it.

Complexity

Scrum is built on the observation that within a complex environment and/or doing complex work, an empirical process offers the best chance of success. In complexity, better insights and ideas emerge as we’re doing the work. This makes even the near future difficult to predict. Scrum provides a lightweight framework for allowing this learning to happen as quickly as possible without losing the focus needed when solving complex problems.

People tend to think you can reduce complexity by doing lots of thinking and analysis. This is a wrong assumption. In complex environments, it’s unknown what will happen. Only previous results are a fact and can inform us about possible next steps.

The problem

Most likely, at the start of every Scrum kick-off or Scrum training, complexity and its consequences will be explained by using models like Stacey or Cynefin. Often, everyone agrees with its key takeaway that with complexity the unknown exceeds the known and an introduction of Scrum can be considered a complex endeavor as well.

Therefore, what strikes me the most is that…

• Organizations continue to select large consultancy firms with ‘Scrum experts’ to lead their Scrum transformation. The most detailed transformation plan has the highest chance of being selected;
• Scrum coaches continue to use fancy maturity models in which growth is a linear progression through a number of discrete phases. The expected growth looks the same across organizations, teams, and individuals;
• Trainers continue to share ‘best practices’ — like Story Points and User Stories — in their classes, while they also start their classes explaining models like Stacey or Cynefin;
• Students continue to attend classes with a core focus on providing answers to questions from the related assessment, with the only goal of getting everyone certified.

The problem is that most likely…

• Organizations will not succeed with Scrum because the detailed transformation plan wasn’t capable of dealing with the unpredictable, unexpected dynamics around products, processes, and people;
• The organization’s reality proved to be far messier than the maturity model. The Scrum Teams didn’t grow linear and therefore didn’t fit in the anticipated maturity path (check this article for more details about maturity models);
• Trainers will get feedback from students that their ‘best practices’ didn’t work in their context and environment;
• Students might have passed the assessment, but failed to put everything into practice. The best practices the trainer provided didn’t work. Experimenting with other practices was difficult because they lacked a solid understanding of the underlying principles & values.

It’s time to acknowledge that…

My hope is that organizations, trainers and, students finally start acknowledging that…

• There isn’t a silver bullet to implement Scrum;
• A detailed Scrum transformation plan in itself is already a contradiction;
• Maturity models are snack food: they look appealing at first glance and seems to hit the spot when you consume it, but don’t offer anything healthy at all;
• You don’t need tons of Scrum coaches if you want to succeed with Scrum;
• Training shouldn’t be about providing ‘best practices’ to the complex challenges the students are facing.

Three initiatives

To help shift this focus on silver bullets to implement Scrum, classes full of best practices, maturity models, and unrealistic expectations of/by Scrum coaches, we (The Liberators) are involved in three initiatives:

1. The design and maintenance of the Scrum.org PSM II class
2. The creation and facilitation of the public Scrum Master Learning Journey
3. The start and support of the Dutch Liberating Structures user group

Let’s explore these initiatives in more detail.

The Professional Scrum Master II class

“We are not the experts!”

That’s one of the first statements Christiaan Verwijs and I make at the start of the Scrum.org PSM II class. Within complexity, sharing experiences is useful, relying on one's expertise is a pitfall. The PSM II class was designed to be “by Scrum Masters for Scrum Masters”. The focus lies on facilitation, on creating transparency and on discovering local solutions together.

The class invites trainers to model appropriate behaviors and practices of a Scrum Master, like:

• Use techniques and practices to make challenges transparent
• Don’t provide “simple answers” to complex problems, but inviting the group to discover their own solutions;
• Ask open-ended questions wherever possible to support the process of discovery;
• Approach teaching as “the art of assisted discovery” rather than “presenting the facts”;
• Facilitate bottom-up knowledge creation and to help students to think within the Scrum framework.

Most important, Scrum Masters are servant leaders. They help the Scrum Team be successful by providing the services and support they need to do so, without drawing attention to themselves. Their approach to change is holistic and involves the individual members, the team, and the broader organization. They recognize that in complex work, bringing people together and shaping future actions together is the best way to be effective.

“In complex work, bringing people together and shaping future actions together is the best way to be effective.”

The Scrum Master Learning Journey

Scrum Masters are responsible for helping organizations find ways to deliver value to stakeholders faster and more frequently with Scrum. This is no simple task and requires creativity, intelligence and close collaboration with developers, product owners, and management.

We believe that Scrum Masters make a bigger impact when they work together with Scrum Masters from inside and outside their organization. Working together, Scrum Masters have the creativity, intelligence, and wisdom to overcome the many hard challenges that they face in helping organizations work effectively with Scrum.

Recognizing this challenge, we’re going to start the public Scrum Master Learning Journey where Scrum Masters can learn and grow together with Scrum Masters from many other organizations. We’ve experienced how powerful communities of Scrum Masters are in driving successful Scrum, and want to offer every Scrum Master the same opportunity!

Therefore, let’s grow a community of Scrum Masters focused on learning & sharing experiences and finding novel solutions to persistent challenges. A community that offers opportunities for deepening skills, developing strategies and learning new techniques.

Liberating Structures

Liberating Structures are a collection of 30+ interaction patterns that unflatten, enrich and deepen interactions in groups. With strong roots in complexity science, and collected by Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz, all Liberating Structures implement five design elements and ten principles. This means that Liberating Structures are not a rigid, static set of formats. New structures are being developed all the time and existing structures are modified, adjusted or removed. With Liberating Structures, it’s possible to start shifting entire organizations by tweaking the way groups and individuals interact.

We use Liberating Structures extensively because of their strong focus on minimal structure, the emergence of ideas and self-organization, this makes it a natural fit with Scrum.

“The strong focus on minimal structure, the emergence of ideas and self-organization, makes Liberating Structures a natural fit with Scrum.”

In 2018 we started the Dutch Liberating Structures user group. The purpose of this group is to practice and explore how to use Liberating Structures in a wide variety of situations. Currently, the user group has already 1000+ members!

What these three initiatives have in common

Now you might wonder: what do the PSM II class, Scrum Master Learning Journey and Liberating Structures have in common?

The answer is pretty simple and straightforward: they are all expert-less!

The intention of the PSM II class is to build on the combined experience of the group, rather than having trainers providing the ‘right answers’.

The purpose of the Scrum Master Learning Journey is to learn and grow, together. Without measuring progress by using maturity models. Without Scrum coaches that haven’t fulfilled the role themselves yet recommend their ‘best practices’. The idea is to grow a community with a lot of expertise, but without any experts…

“Let’s grow a community with expertise, but without experts.”

One of the key principles of Liberating Structures itself is that they are expert-less. Everyone can use Liberating Structures and succeed after the first experience. You don’t need a personal coach for using Liberating Structures. Just start using them, share your insights and learnings with the community, and give & get help.

Why it’s mostly about the Scrum Master

So far, this article is mostly about the Scrum Master because (s)he is in a perfect position to move the organization towards an environment where Scrum can thrive. They see what is happening in the most fundamental units of work — the Scrum Teams — on a daily basis. Being part of a Scrum Team, the Scrum Master knows precisely what needs to be changed. The Scrum Master can facilitate conversations and collaboration with other Scrum Teams. Together with other Scrum Masters (s)he can ignite the necessary organizational changes by influencing the system from the inside out.

A Scrum adoption will be more successful when Scrum Masters are encouraged to work together and build on their observations. Together, they can drive change from the ‘Inside-out’. It is natural to focus on the team level initially, but the focus will later shift towards building relationships and acting as a change agent on an organizational level.

If Scrum Masters are encouraged to fulfill the role like this, you don’t need to rely on the earlier mentioned trainers, consultants, and coaches, fulfilling their role as the Scrum experts. Of course, they will struggle. But that’s the entire purpose of the Scrum Master community. Learn and grow, together!

“A Scrum adoption will be more successful when Scrum Masters are encouraged to work together and build on their observations.”

Why it‘s not ONLY about the Scrum Master

Scrum Masters are a vital part of The Liberators network. However, our purpose is unleashing organizational superpowers and liberating organizations from outdated modes of working and learning. In order to achieve this purpose, we need the support of e.g. Developers, Product Owners, and Managers as well.

Therefore, it would be awesome if…

• All classes are focused on bottom-up knowledge creation and the discovery of local solutions. Bringing people together and help them shape future actions is the best way to be effective. Regardless if you are a Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer or Manager;
• Tailor-made Scrum learning journeys are designed by Product Owners, Developers, and Managers to share experiences and find solutions to persistent challenges;
• Liberating Structures are used to tap into the full wisdom, experience, and perspectives of everyone in the organization to resolve problems, make decisions, share knowledge and innovate. By using Liberating Structures all voices are heard. This can help create the necessary understanding & support of why & how Scrum is used in an organization.
• Learning 3.0 gets more traction as an approach for emergent learning over-prescriptive learning. The whole idea is that learning is best done by people acquiring ideas from various sources, running experiments in their own context, and then sharing insights with their peers. It’s about creating your own knowledge, by gathering, experimenting, and sharing;
• Lean Change Management (LCM) is applied as a non-linear, feedback-driven model for managing change. It’s all about incrementally changing organizations in a highly transparent and collaborative manner. Instead of a first-time-right, blueprint driven approach, the focus is on experimentation and trying out different things to learn what works. LCM can be used perfectly for introducing Scrum in an organization;
• Training from the Back of the Room (TFBR) is used to let students take center-stage as they discuss, question, reflect, experiment, participate, present, practice, teach, and learn from each other. It would be great if all Scrum classes would have TFBR as the backbone for collaboration & communication.

Closing

We believe in a radical, expert-less, community-driven approach for organizational change, training, and learning. We are convinced that people should be empowered to drive change themselves and tackle difficult challenges together, as part of a community, while also having fun.

These ideas are inspired by the fields of complexity science and organizational psychology. Concepts and frameworks that support this expert-less approach for organizational change, training, and learning are Learning Journeys, Liberating Structures, Learning 3.0, Lean Change Management, and Training from the Back of the Room. All these concepts enable a strong focus on transparency, an experiential approach and creating a shared purpose.

Most importantly, Scrum itself as a framework is an expert-less approach as well. Meaning, you don’t need experts to tell you what & how to use it. Join the Scrum community, use the earlier mentioned concepts & ideas, share learnings & findings and enjoy the ride!

“We believe in a radical, expert-less, community-driven approach for organizational change, training, and learning.”

By using an expert-less, community-driven approach, organizations are put in a position to thrive on complexity rather than being defeated by it. All without the dependency on Scrum experts but with the support of a strong community!

Interested in learning more about the Scrum.org PSM II class, Scrum Master Learning Journey or Liberating Structures? Check out our agenda for upcoming events. Or join the Liberating Structures user group or The Liberators Network.

The Problem with Scrum Experts was originally published in The Liberators on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the last seven years I’ve focused a big part of my work on the emerging scope of Adaptive Org Design. I’ve been reading, debating, sharing with experienced fellow practitioners and entrepreneurs from all around the world and, most importantly, I’ve been working in and with real organizations fostering the evolution towards real-life organizational adaptability. Even though I’ve had to give higher priority to other kind of activities, I’ve been feeling the desire to share my findings for a while now, and lately I’ve also been increasingly asked for it. So here I am, let’s start.

This article is a first step, there’s more to come as there’s so much to clarify, propose, tell. The topic is going on hype, which is both good and bad for its future. There are already some fads out there about it, some clever marketing operations, and one question keeps coming back to my ears everywhere I work: how? All nice, fancy, interesting, as a concept, ok. But how on Earth do you actually design an adaptive organization in order for it to thrive? Well, you don’t. And of course, at the same time, you do. But let’s start small, as I love to do. Let’s put this article out there and see if there is interest in this conversation. If so, if it’s valuable, I’ll be happy to share all I’ve learnt so far and learn more in the process.

Where should I start? Well, I’ve decided to start with a manifesto. The reasons are quite simple. First of all, inspiration. Back in the year 2000 my work was focused on the evolution of markets (and marketing) and I came across the Cluetrain Manifesto, which happened to inspire a lot of my following work and understanding. Then again, a few years later, the Agile Manifesto had the same effect. So my hope now is that maybe this one could inspire somebody else’s work in return. Hey, if so, reach out! Second reason, for me it’s much more fun than writing a paper or a research, and I love having fun when I work. Last, but not least, a manifesto is written when there is the need to make a point, when out of chaotic mumbling energy something strong emerges and wants to be heard. I believe this is what I’m finding out: the time for Adaptive Org Design has come, so let’s make a point.

Adaptive Organization Design Manifesto

This era of sharp evolution for human society requires and allows for organizations that are able to cope with increasing amounts of unrelenting change, colearning with their context and evolving accordingly and continuously. Achieving this aim demands putting the real system and the formal system back in the right order of priorities, not starting with tayloristic or mechanistic constraints, not trying to fit the territory into a map, instead unleashing the full potential of human systems.

Here lies one of the most compelling revolutions we’re undergoing globally: we’re devising organizations that allow people to arrange the way they work together according to the evolving context, relationships and learning in real time, and having the formal system dynamically adhere to the real one as an enabling support. The organizational design work that can make this happen has been emerging for decades and is now mature enough to be described.

The What

Dynamics>> Structures

Principles >> Rules

Roles >> Titles

The How

Cocreation >> Dictation

Description >> Prescription

Simultaneity >> Linearity

The two triplets

The two triplets expressed in the AOD Manifesto are willingly succinct, and their lines should each be read with a “much more” in between the two words. Thus, for example, Adaptive Org Design is about dynamics much more than structures, about principles much more than rules, and so on.

These triplets are of course no scientific law, they are heuristics based on experience, studies, conversations, challenges. More importantly, these triplets are a pattern. They are a form of order emerging from the chaotic work of experiments, practices, attempts, results of many people around the world. And as such, they need to be conceived as a whole, not as single elements. Let me quote Gregory Bateson here, when he suggests that “it is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity”. Furthermore, I’ve found these triplets to be a system of leverage points for effectively focusing our energy when we approach the complex ecology of Adaptive Org Design practice in real life. They will of course never give us a “recipe” to follow, yet they are a vital compass in our journey towards mastery.

Finally, and of crucial importance, these triplets are sets of polarities. In each of their lines there are two seemingly opposing elements whose dynamic balance needs to be mastered, as they complement each other. In any given moment of the life of any human system, you will always need both the elements of each line, knowing that the elements on the left enhance adaptability while those on the right enhance stability.

The What

The first triplet is about the outcomes of the design activities: the what. It is beyond the purpose of this post to enter the details of each triplet but, in short, what we are saying is that the design activities should lead to describing dynamics much more than structures, principles much more than rules and roles much more than titles. The concept (and artifact) of dynamic is very important here, and can be described as a narrative where actors put roles and principles into action. Narratives arise from the power of stories, involving the human system from the deepest level, well inside the heads and hearts of people, and join it with the outer level of processes and tools.

The How

The second triplet, on the other hand, is about the way in which we operate: how the design happens. What it says is thus that the design for adaptiveness should be characterized by cocreation much more than dictation, description much more than prescription, simultaneity much more than linearity. This triplet leads us towards one important truth of AOD: the organization needs to be enabled to continuously evolve itself, thus its people are the ones that need to be trusted and enabled to do it. Moreover, the classic org design levels of activity (strategic, operational, day-to-day) cannot be linearly approached here, not in terms of time nor in terms of organizational levels involved: iterative simultaneity is required.

Adaptive what?

One last word needs to be spoken about the term adaptive in “adaptive organization design”. Adaptability here is almost always meant for the organization: to design an adaptive organization. That is true, of course. And yet it is far from enough. “Adaptive” needs to be referred also to the other noun: design. It is very important.

I’ve met so many people looking for clear instructions on how to “craft” an adaptive organization, a sort of manual that can be followed. Truth is, the beauty of human systems is inseparable from the impossibility of doing so. Not only each human system is different from the others, but it is also different from itself in each phase of its life. Identity, context and trajectory are key concepts to be embraced and carefully considered each and every time, if we really want to master AOD. Design needs to be truly adaptive as well. We need to be adaptive as well.

Let me stress this even more, using the words of Donella Meadows:

“Magical leverage points are not easily accessible, even if we know where they are and which direction to push on them. There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work hard at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing.”

What’s next?

And here you have it, the AOD Manifesto! As I said at the beginning of this article, I’m looking forward to having valuable conversations about it. Would you “sign” it? In the beginning of this century, when the Cluetrain Manifesto and the Manifesto for Agile Software Development were published, Internet was very very different. Today I’d propose that the best form of “signing” it is sharing it. So, if you’ve found it useful, please share it with your network. If there’s interest for knowing more about what AOD is and how to do it, I’m here happy to have those conversations. Aloha.

Before you go, if you’ve found value in this post please give it some claps.

And if you want to stay in the loop, follow Stelio on Twitter.

Stelio is a curious and active contributor to the global community evolving the concept and practice of work in this decade. If you’d like to know more about him, start here.

For someone that reads books for a living, I’m pretty lazy about updating my recommended reading list. After two years of leaving it untouched, I’ve finally updated it.

Here it is, reproduced below.

I don’t understand it when someone says, “I read books, but a book has never changed how I see the world.” Books are constantly changing my understanding of myself and how the world works.

Here, I share a list of the books that have had the biggest impact on me.

Highly Influential

These books have had the biggest impact on how I think about, see, and act in the world.

• Incerto by Nassim Taleb. A couple times a month, I get an email or message asking, “Why do you like Nassim’s books? He’s an arrogant asshole!” Well, I actually kind of like arrogant assholes. But, more importantly, Nassim’s books opened up more new ways of seeing & thinking about things for me than, arguably, all the other books in this list added together. I revisit his books now, 5+ years later, and I’m still learning new things. Note: The Incerto is actually a bundle of four books — Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, and The Bed of Procrustes.
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. You’re seriously mistaken if you think politics is driven by careful, rational thinking. We vote emotionally, and emotions tied to morality are some of the most powerful (and violent) ones. What Haidt does so well is ground these moral emotions in evolutionary psychology & anthropology and then show us how differences can affect our moral, political and religious view of the world.
• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner. Tetlock managed to destroy my trust in expert judgment (“No better than chimpanzees throwing darts, really?!”) and then restore it again (“Political forecasters suck, but you can learn to do better!”) — all in a single book. (I’d also check out Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?.)
• Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals by John Gray. Reading Gray’s books sort of feels like getting dumped by your high school sweetheart. It’s incredibly depressing, but you’re a lot better off for it in the long run. (You might like this if you liked Harari’s Sapiens).
• The Use of Knowledge in Society by Friedrich Hayek. Not really a book, but whatever. Print it out, read it, scribble notes all over this. You can love or hate Hayek, but everyone should be exposed his ideas. It was life-changing for me to realize that complex systems can work without anyone understanding how or why they do so.
• Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life by Paul Dolan. This gave substance to a lot of the nagging doubts I’ve had about happiness research. Most happiness studies use self-reporting, and self-reporters often have no clue what they’re talking about. Plus, the stories we tell ourselves often “override” our actual feelings, sometimes making us say, “It was a good life” or something when we were actually miserable the whole time. (Which, by the way, is why I’m skeptical about listening to the regrets of the dying as a guide for how to live your life.)
• What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard Feynman. A curious and playful physicist, womanizer and adventurous safe-cracker, Feynman had absolutely no respect for false authority. Did I mention he won the Nobel Prize in physics? Feynman had a big impact on my writing style, and he taught me to write clearly, use intuition, and always, always think for yourself.

Still Pretty Damn Good

The books here are still pretty damn good and worth recommending, but they are not life-changing like the books above.

• Liberty by Isaiah Berlin. Berlin’s ideas of value incommensurability & incompatibility have helped alleviate what, in my early twenties, was an obsessive desire for the ‘perfect’ life. I was so used to thinking of terms of “best answer” and “optimization” that it took a long time to just grasp what (despite his clear writing) the guy was talking about.
• The Monk and the Philosopher by Ricard & Revel. A conversation between a molecular-biologist-turned-Buddhist-monk and his father, a prominent French intellectual. The West has a particular (and often problematic) way of seeing the world, but it’s hard for someone inside the system to see it from the outside.
• The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan. A compelling case that a lot of education — especially higher education — doesn’t teach many valuable skills. It’s more of a big IQ and personality test.
• How to Worry Less About Money by John Armstrong. Armstrong points out something that (in retrospect) is incredibly obvious — many money problems aren’t actually about money at all. They’re about how we think about money. Which, in turn, means that you can’t solve them by earning more or spending less.
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. One of the first books of non-fiction I ever read. I still turn to it when life starts going wrong.
• The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne. The father of the modern essay. Honest and inquisitive, he seems to cover every aspect of human nature in his wandering writings, but he always comes back to one core lesson: be skeptical — think for yourself.
• Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller. A thought-provoking book that connects consumerism and evolutionary psychology. Gave me a new set of ways to think about our obsessive consumerism. We often buy things not for their uses, but for what those things tell others about us.
• Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. This book did a lot of cognitive heavy lifting for me by clarifying the connection between anxiety and our hyper-competitive culture. (A close second to this book is de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy.)
• Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer. Definitely read this if you are a fan of Dan Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman tends to study heuristics/and intuition with the question “When does intuition fail?” Gigerenzer takes the opposite starting point, asking, “When does intuition succeed?”
• Seeing Like a State by James Scott. I’m a fan of the blog Ribbonfarm, which is named borrowed its name from this book. Some brain-turning examples of how ideas in our heads take on shapes in the physical world.
• Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz. I think this book would have made my “highly influential” list if I’d found it five years earlier. By the time I read this, I was already familiar with the main ideas, so it ended up being a refresher more than anything.
• How to Think by Alan Jacobs. A short read that challenged my beliefs on critical thinking as a solitary, non-social activity.
• The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker. It’s terrifying how you can come out of 16 years of education and have absolutely no clue how big of a role biology plays in who you are. I was blaming my parents for all sorts of things that they had nothing to do with! This book was a much needed cure for a hurtful and limiting set of ideas that a lot of us grow up with. It’s also got me interested in evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and all the other sciences that help us learn about human nature.
• Me, Myself and Us by Brian Little. A great introduction to personality psychology that isn’t overly pop science-y. Helped me outgrow the narrative-driven thinking about psychology that we grow up with.

I’ve left out some more practical, self-helpy books from this list. Maybe I’ll add them in another time if people want to see them.

For more book recommendations each week, consider signing up for The Open Circle, my newsletter where I share ideas worth reading & thinking about.

Books that changed my life was originally published in The Polymath Project on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The name and the thing

“It is hardly possible to overrate the value… of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.”
— John Stuart Mill

Designers love to coin new terms, especially when it comes to design approaches and processes. Either because they really feel the need for it or because they want to promote something we all have been doing for decades as the last coca-cola in the desert.

Collaborative processes are no exception — participatory design, co-design, cooperative design, or even collaborative design. It is not easy to find consensus in the industry. Moreover, these expressions are often used with different meanings.

I quit this debate a long time ago to focus on what really matters: the impact of our work. That being said, things need to be named, and my choice was to stay with one of the existing options — we don’t need more noise anyway, do we?

And the winner is… collaborative design. It’s embracing and inclusive and perfectly fits all the activities grouped under this linguistic umbrella — there is more than meets the eye, but no spoilers for now. I’m, however, aware that this expression is far from being consensual. Curiously or not, this wording is usually better accepted by non-designers than by designers, for whom the expression raises several “fears”.

Side note: no, this is not a rant about designers. Stay with me.

Setting the stage

Before jumping to the concept itself, it’s crucial to briefly contextualize it.

VUCA anyone? In the seventies, the US army described the post-cold world as being Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. These words make even more sense now, and a new reality creates new challenges — that need to be tackled in a different way. Yeah, I know that some of you are tired of this VUCA thing, but it fits here like a glove…

To cope with this, the current economy is shifting to a creativity-based model defined by new forms of value creation. Meanwhile, the core activities of the old economy are being displaced to low-income countries or targeted automation processes.

New businesses are emerging every day, many of which find their grounds on the radical disruption of their predecessors. This happens at a mind-boggling rate and necessarily implies a constant reinvention of business models.

Side note: you (yes, YOU) will also need to reinvent yourself, but that’s a topic for another article.

Welcome to a fantastic new world based on non-linear forms of problem-solving, where creativity and innovation are the new king and queen.

Shaping it

In this new world, collaborative design gains enormous relevance as a way of solving problems, but (you ask) what the hell is collaborative design anyway?

Collaborative design is the process of involving people with distinct backgrounds and mindsets in the design process to achieve non-linear solutions for various kinds of problems. It has three main benefits:

1. Business value by enabling innovation processes.
2. Shared ownership of the project, given the fact that the different stakeholders are an active part of the project.
3. (Real) team building since it brings together a group of people with a common mission.

Are we all designers?

“Design is now too important to be left to designers.”
— Tim Brown

Another way to define collaborative design is to challenge some preconceptions that may be associated with the term. Let’s go through them one by one.

First, it is important to clarify that collaborative design is not a designer- exclusive activity. On the contrary, the greater the diversity of the group of people involved in this approach, the greater the potential to reach innovative solutions.

Secondly, and in addition to the first one, some designers think that this methodology may question their role. Nothing could be further from the truth, since it actually allows them to make much more informed decisions in their work. That being said, I completely understand what designers feel and think about this — there’s a jungle out there, and “become a designer in one-day” workshops are popping up all around. Just remember this: there’s a huge difference between being an active part of the design process and being a designer. HUGE.

Lastly, collaborative design is far from being only applicable to design problems in the narrow sense of the term. It can and should be applied to any problem where collaborative thinking is useful.

Collaborative Design Sessions FTW

Time to narrow the focus, let’s talk about collaborative design sessions.

Although collaborative design is a much richer approach, most people associate the expression with these sessions. No problem at all, that’s a good start. Basically, we’re talking about intense sessions in an agreed space, physical or digital, for a determined time period. Yes, I’m simplifying it for now, let’s move on.

Some examples of problems where a collaborative design session can help to produce great results:

1. Defining the strategy for an organization, product or service.
2. Kick-starting a project on the right foot by bringing people together with different mindsets.
3. Generating and discussing ideas in an effective and inclusive way.
4. Solving a specific design problem.
5. Designing the life cycle of a product or service.
6. Sharing insights from previous research and prototype on top of them.

Pretty fancy stuff, isn’t it?

They try to call it brainstorming, and I said no, no, no

When I talk about collaborative design sessions to new audiences, the most frequent question I get is: You’re talking about brainstorming, right? The answer is a straight NO (without shouting).

Brainstorming is an activity that several studies have proven to be unsuccessful. And why is that? Because its structure is based on a group dynamic that tends to overestimate the opinions of some participants over the opinions of others. Long story short, in my experience, usually the HiPPO will prevail. No, I’m not referring to one of the missing Pablo Escobar’s Hippos, “just” to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

Side note: Dear Avinash Kaushik, I’ll be forever thankful to you for giving shape and name to the HiPPO concept.

In collaborative design, there’s rotation between individual exercises (e.g., free listing, Crazy Eights, etc.) and group exercises (e.g., affinity diagram, context map, etc.), which avoids this perverse effect.

Ah, and if you’re the HiPPO listen to Yoda and worry not. There’s a time for everything: giving voice to others doesn’t clash with your power to make decisions; it only makes them more sustained and supported. Right on!

Picking the right “tool” for the job

In theory, to facilitate a collaborative design session, we can use all types of activities that combine individual and group exercises and involve a group of people with different backgrounds and mindsets. In practice, it’s always good to give concrete examples. Here they are:

1. The sequence of activities listed in the book Gamestorming. This book is a collection of the collaborative methodologies used by the most innovative companies, with a particular focus on Silicon Valley. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to get started in collaborate design — although the authors do not use this expression.
2. Design Sprint proposed by the Google team or variations. This method proposes five consecutive days of work, during which the problem is discussed and a solution is tested with representatives of the target audience of the product or service.
3. Design Studio, a fast-paced idea-generation method that is based on quick sketching cycles and combines individual exercises with group exercises.

The most well known of the three is, without doubt, the Google Design Sprint. Don’t be fooled though, you should pick (or make) your “tool” according to the task at hand, instead of going with the one that shines the most.

Wrapping up, or not

It’s important to stress that collaborative design isn’t something new, but an approach transversal to several areas that takes different names depending on the context. The same applies to collaborative design sessions. In fact, I don’t care how other people name it if they are fighting a good fight: results trump wording any day of the week.

My purpose in using a simple designation, coupled with incisive and intuitive rationality, is to contribute to the spread of this approach. In this time of turmoil, we need collaboration more than ever.

One more thing.

I’m writing an article about how collaborative design spreads through the whole design process — and beyond. Stay tuned.

Enjoyed the article? Let me know by hitting the 👏 button. You can clap up to 50 times :)

_______________

If you want to know how collaborative design sessions can improve your business, just drop me a line or swing by the SensesLab’s space — just give us previous notice so we can hide the Nargles.

Collaborative Design Sessions 101 was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In August 2018, Scrum.org launched the Professional Scrum Master II class. The intention of this class is to offer the Scrum community an advanced class designed to support Scrum Masters in their professional development.

Rather than “broadcasting information” and acting as “experts”, the Scrum trainers behave as Scrum Masters. Using servant-leadership as a mindset, all possible stances of a Scrum Master (e.g. coach, change agent, or impediment remover) are modeled, explored and practiced.

“In the PSM II class, all possible stances of a Scrum Master are modeled, explored and practiced.”

Currently, Scrum.org has about 150 trainers providing the PSM II class around the world. Teaching this class resulted in lots of ideas for improvement. This is an on-going endeavor. It also triggered interest in the broader community. Former students of classes are eager to learn more about exercises they’ve experienced and would like to use them as a Scrum Master. Future students ask questions related to what to expect and how to prepare.

Over time, we’ve noticed patterns in these questions, for example:

• What is the difference between the PSM and PSM II class?
• How is the PSM II class going to help me pass the PSM II assessment?
• How is this class going to help me become a better Scrum Master?
• How is servant-leadership part of the PSM II class?
• How is that class going to help me improve Scrum in my organization?

That is why we decided to write a series of blog posts to answer the most common questions. It’s our intention to clarify the purpose, structure and learning objectives of the class. We hope it supports the decision-making process of attending this class with one of the awesome Scrum.org trainers and helps you optimize your learning experience.

This first article as part of the series will focus on the question:

“What is the difference between the PSM and PSM II class?”

If you’ve got a different question about the PSM II class, feel free to share it. It might become another article in the series!

The Professional Scrum Master class

The Professional Scrum Master (PSM) class explains the rules and principles of the Scrum framework. It serves as a great introduction to the Scrum and the role of the Scrum Master. This makes it an excellent class for people new to Scrum and/or people starting as Scrum Masters.

The Professional Scrum Master class explains the ‘Why’ and ‘What’ of Scrum.

The PSM class covers the principles and (empirical) process theory as the foundation of the Scrum framework. It captures all essential elements such as the Scrum roles, events, and artifacts. You’ll be made familiar with the concept of servant-leadership and the importance of the Scrum values in relation to the success of Scrum. As a Scrum Master, you’ll gain insights on how to start with Scrum or increase the effectiveness underway.

During the PSM class, you’ll practice real-life cases that encourage and challenge you to think as a Scrum Master. These exercises will give you first-hand experience with concepts like self-organization, time-boxing, and the consequence of technical debt. At the end of the PSM class, this visualization of the Scrum framework should no longer hold any surprises for you.

The Professional Scrum Master II class

The Professional Scrum Master II class is a continuation of the journey of Scrum Masters into Scrum. The class is not about teaching you new things about the Scrum Framework or complementary practices, but about improving what Scrum Masters already know. It delves into the challenges that Scrum Masters face and reflects more deeply on how the principles and values of Scrum inform what a Scrum Master should (not) do in those situations.

The PSM II class starts where the PSM class stops. There’s hardly any overlap between both classes. We’re not going to spend much time on factual knowledge of the Scrum framework. The visualization of the Scrum framework is present, however mostly as a gentle reminder. We assume you already know the events, roles, artifacts, and time-boxes. You’ve probably studied the Scrum Guide numerous times and have translated the theory into concrete practice while being a Scrum Master.

“The PSM II class starts where the PSM class stops.”

The purpose of the PSM II class is to have you experience what the Scrum Master role is about. Rather than us telling you what to do, we will build on our combined experience together. Instead of offering you a toolkit with ‘best practices’, you’ll learn how to think as a Scrum Master. Through this understanding, practices that fit your context will emerge automatically. Because this class was designed by Scrum Masters for Scrum Masters, the tools, practices, and techniques we use are excellent additions to your own toolkit.

“Instead of offering you a toolkit with ‘best practices’, you’ll learn how to think as a Scrum Master.”

During the PSM II class, you will refresh your understanding of empiricism in Scrum and how it helps solve complex problems. You’ll learn the importance of the Scrum Values and how they help build an environment for effective Scrum. Most important, we’ll emphasize Scrum as a lightweight framework. There are many complementary practices that can be useful with Scrum — like User Stories, Story Points, doing a Daily Scrum standing — but they are not required. Often, these so-called ‘best practices’ become impediments themselves, rather than being useful ideas.

By continuously focusing on the necessary mindset of a Scrum Master, you’ll discover how to become more effective in serving the Development Team, Product Owner and organization. How you show servant-leadership entirely depends on the context. The PSM II class offers you the most important principles to follow: encourage self-organization on every level, empower the people doing the work to shape how they work, frequently inspect and adapt based on (measurable) outcomes.

The Difference in a nutshell

In the previous parts, we’ve described the difference between the PSM and PSM II classes. The table below captures this in one overview by describing the required experience, the core focus, the learning objectives, and the related assessment.

Closing

This blog post is the start of a series of articles about the Scrum.org PSM II class. It’s our intention to answer the most common questions we receive about this class. This first article is focused on the question: “What is the difference between the PSM and PSM II class?”. If you’ve got a question about the Professional Scrum Master II class, feel free to share it. It might become another article in the series!

Interested in joining the Professional Scrum Master II class? Check our agenda for upcoming training possibilities or search for other Scrum.org trainers that offer this class as well. You can also join The Liberators Network, this is a community of professionals supporting each other towards (Scrum) mastery.

The Difference Between the Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master Classes was originally published in The Liberators on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I would say this: If Shia LaBeouf weren’t acting, he would make a great Scrum Master. He is creative, passionate, and he wants you to succeed.

I mean, just look at this video:

Granted, he does scream a bit too much.
But no one is perfect, and he touches upon some very important points:

Motivation and Dreams.

First of all, he starts with a call to action. (“DO IT! JUST DO IT!”)
To encourage his team, he points towards the vision that the team created together. (“Don’t let your dreams be dreams!”)
He reminds the Team of their prior commitments (“Yesterday you said tomorrow. JUST DO IT! MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE!”)
He dissuades avoidance and promotes focus, bravery and commitment. (“Some people [just] dream success, while you are going to wake up and WORK HARD AT IT!”)
He shifts attention away from impediments. (“Nothing is impossible!”)

… or maybe I’m just trying too hard to read into it. ;)

Yes, this is tongue in cheek, and yes, perhaps I’m having a bit too much fun trying to tie Shia LaBeouf to Scrum, but hear me out: By focusing on the dreams of an individual instead of why you think they should do something, you understand something very important.

You can’t motivate anyone but yourself, because motivation is intrinsic.

I’d even say it’s one of the most important points towards being a great Scrum Master. Look at Shia. He doesn’t try to lure you with rewards, or tell you why he thinks you should be doing “it”. Instead, he reminds you that YOU dreamed “it”. He tries to rekindle that dream, that spark that everyone of us feels when we first get into a profession or a new hobby (or a new Agile Framework.) In short, he reminds us of our vision.

But that’s not enough. Remember what Scrum GrandMaster LaBeouf teaches us: Having a vision is easy!
Everyone can dream of success! A beach house in Miami, a new car, and becoming a startup unicorn are all easy to want. But once you realize that you have to work for those goals, you realize the magnitude of your task.
Which is why the Scrum Guide only mentions “Vision” once, when it describes increments.

The increment is a step toward a vision or goal.
-Scrum guide 2017

The focus on an incremental approach here is key, as is the connection to goals. Breaking down your vision into smaller goals is just as important as the ability to tie the increment you are producing to your product vision, because it’s an incremental approach that makes even gigantic goals seem achievable.

In contrast, the term ‘goal’ comes up 37 times in the Scrum Guide, most often in the phrase ‘Sprint Goal’. (Capital S and G!)

A Sprint Goal is defined like this:

During Sprint Planning the Scrum Team also crafts a Sprint Goal. The Sprint Goal is an objective that will be met within the Sprint through the implementation of the Product Backlog, and it provides guidance to the Development Team on why it is building the Increment.
-Scrum Guide 2017, emphasis added.

This “Why” is one of the most important parts of the Scrum Guide, and yet it’s often overlooked.
Without reminding ourselves of our vision, our works gets rote, monotone, and demotivating. It gets harder and harder to feel as though our work has any value.
So we have increments to break down a vision, and have a vision to remind us why we’re doing all this work. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

Take a look at this.

Would you have liked to be a Scrum master in this production? I would have. It’s grand, it’s orchestral, and it speaks of a single-minded vision, sprung out of a very, very stupid-but-funny idea. It is clear that with every step, from scouting the location to casting the dancers, these people had a shared dream in mind: To make a stupid funny video in which people whisper “Shia LaBeouf”. Just like I had the idea of writing an article about having a Vision and the importance of a sprint goal, and I thought it would be funny to tie it to Shia LaBeouf.

So yeah, he might not be the greatest Scrum Master, but I told you Shia LaBeouf motivates people!

In the end, if you take away anything from this article, it should be this:

You must not underestimate the power of your Sprint Goal.

It has both the power to inspire and guide and the power to destroy and lead astray. After all, it’s easy to become so fixated on your Sprint Goal that you start cutting corners.

How do you prevent that from happening? Make sure your goal is pure, and that it holds within itself the 5 Scrum values. Yes, you can reach it faster by sacrificing quality, but by doing so you would sully your beautiful sprint goal with terrible, tar-like technical debt.
Don’t sully your Sprint Goal!

Instead, harness its power. While you may not be able to motivate people, you might be able to help them motivate themselves. Having a Sprint Goal is not only a huge step to not only make their work feel meaningful, it also brings the team together and unifies their purpose.

So are you sure you and your team share the same vision?
If not, it might be time to face your Product Owner, flex your muscles, and start yelling.

If you liked this article and maybe even chuckled about it, leave me a clap, it means a lot! :)
I’d like to thank Willem-Jan Ageling and Raymond Lagonda for their valuable input!

We run a Serious Scrum channel on Slack. You’re all invited. Feel free to reach out and connect with us on Slack to share your thoughts.

Do you want to publish in Serious Scrum? Connect with us on Slack to make it happen!

Shia LaBeouf, Cannibal Scrum Master was originally published in Serious Scrum on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.