It’s a kind of magic: Embracing the unconventional in Agile
Predicting, collaborating, reaching agreement. These have always been problem areas within IT, but with IT projects increasing in scale and complexity, many are seeing these pain-points explode geometrically.
I’ve worked as a coach with a broad clientele and have many close friends in the field. As such, I have endured many a war story which revolved around how a team struggled in this area. I’m sure you have a tale yourself.
I’m always intrigued by such stories, especially regarding how the storyteller addressed the issues. Because in trying to stay on top of my game, I’m forever scouting for something new to try.
So, when I recently heard through my network about a company called summerTech, I wanted to know more. They have some big claims, particularly around what they call their unique people-first approach, going so far as to scoff at the models of their competitors.
But finding out more about this approach beyond the sales pitch and success claims turned out to be harder than I thought. They don’t even have a website (“our customers know who we are,” I’m later cryptically told). But after some investigation (thank you, Yellow Pages), I was delighted to finally get in touch with one of their product managers, Will MacGregor, who told me he would be delighted to explain more about how they do things, inviting me to visit them and join their Easter bonfire celebrations.
Their headquarters in sleepy rural Oxfordshire looks much the same as many tech firms you find off the beaten track. It’s a collection of old farm buildings converted into a set of offices with a view of the picturesque countryside. They even have a pen where a few goats and chickens are kept next to the visitors’ car park spaces!
But as Will had promised, their grounds are dominated by a giant pyre that looks ready to burn for tonight’s Easter festivities. I’m sure it must have taken weeks to assemble, and I just hope it’s far enough from the office.
As I sign myself in to reception, the pedant in me cannot stop myself from commenting to the young receptionist that the poster for tonight’s festivity has a spelling mistake, as it’s advertised as Ostara, not Easter. They correct me that it’s an old English term, which is quaint.
But my attitude has seemed to annoy a black cat who is sitting on the desk, and is looking at me with disdain. It’s a little unusual to have an office with a cat, but I’m told that the local mice still think this is a farm, and make themselves unwelcome visitors. It’s Bella (the cat’s) role to escort them off the premises.
It’s a relief when Will arrives with an energetic handshake and escorts me through the open-plan offices, where I seem to be an object of fascination. It’s obvious that despite the designated parking outside, they’re not used to visitors on site.
Their lead developer, Rowan Morrison, meets me in one of their stylised meeting rooms that is decorated using vintage furniture. It’s very much in sync with the company’s old-meets-new vibe.
Making ourselves comfortable, Will tells me that Rowan is the thought-leader behind the initial changes at the company, explaining:
“Up until 2013 we were much like every other tech startup. We’d grown to an appreciable size, and we were chasing leads for every imaginable tool to help us operate at scale. We felt the solution to our issues lay in the use of the right software. But cutting-edge tech wasn’t the answer; we needed to rely more on human wetware, the very thing too many companies in our industry are taking for granted.”
Rowan smiles at this and picks up the story:
“We were working on a major site redesign for a customer. We’d hit so many problems with that project, but we had this big burndown chart which was telling us everything was going to plan. Most of the team knew we were never going to really hit that date … but the graph said otherwise.”
Will shuffles a little uncomfortably and it’s obvious his reliance on that graph was a bit of an embarrassment. He continues:
“From the management perspective it did look like everything was going well. Then Rowan returned from a weekend conference, and the whole office braced itself for her pitch to try test driven design again, but no … it was something very different.”
Rowan smiles and rolls her eyes before filling in:
“Well, for once I wasn’t at a technical conference. I’d agreed to go to a Mind, Body and Spirit retreat with a couple of friends, and found myself trying out their Tarot card workshop. It left me inspired, so to mix things up, I suggested we try a basic card read in the Monday morning meeting. I got Will to shuffle a deck I’d purchased and we selected three cards. I put them up on a whiteboard, and asked what people thought. ”
She reaches into her pocket and retrieves her smartphone, showing me this picture:
Will can’t seem to stop himself from interrupting at this point, and said:
“There was silence. Absolute silence. I could see a couple of the team were looking at each other going ‘What’s she up to now’? Without doubt that felt one of the longest, most uncomfortable silences of my life.”
Rowan blushes before continuing:
“But then out of the blue James, one of the key developers started with, ‘Well, I feel the code we’re building is like the tower, it’s crumbling as we’re building it. And the signs in the sky in the other card … our graph is something we worship at each morning, but it’s hiding something ominous. And this doom isn’t going to be averted unless we do significant change.”
Will weighs in with his initial reaction at this point:
“I thought I was going to collapse into giggles. This seemed the most ridiculous thing I’d ever experienced. But then I looked around the room and I saw how seriously the team were struck with what he’d said.
Almost immediately, people picked up from there. They opened up about the problems they were encountering, and it exposed the big lie in my graph. The team had deliberately steered to do the simpler, easier quick wins from our task list, and they’d encountered issues.There were items they’d avoided because they didn’t know how to approach them. I was horrified, asking why they’d not come forward with this before.
They replied, ‘You were only interested in keeping the graph tracking positively’. I wish I could say I took it with good grace.”
Rowan is quite diplomatic when she points out:
“But you did the right thing. You took us offline for a fortnight while we did some research into handling some unknowns, and put together a new plan which we put in front of the customer.”
I can tell that this wasn’t an easy decision for Will, but as he reflects:
“Obviously, the customer was not terribly happy, but to my surprise, neither did they pull the plug. We used it as an opportunity to build much closer relationships with them, especially trying to keep them informed of issues immediately. I think it’s a testament that they’re still one of our prime customers. We saw that the Tarot readings helped us to dig deep into problems.”
It all sounds fanciful but Rowan had a surprisingly logical take on it:
“We used the graph to measure how we were doing, but it only measured what’s known. It didn’t encourage us to dig deeper. There’s a phenomenon known in World War One as target fixation. Pilots would be so focused on a plane they were trying to shoot down, they wouldn’t notice they were being targeted themselves, with fatal consequences. Show a team a chart and make it the focus of their work, they become fixated.
With the Tarot cards, we tried to interpret the ones that we’d drawn. It’s a defocusing technique which shifted how we looked at what we were doing. It allowed us to look at the bigger picture. It was incredibly helpful, and we’ve run internal Tarot reading workshops to help people get better at using their own intuition. And that’s hard, intuition seems to be something that’s drummed out of us as IT professionals.
Within the technology space, when we encounter problems, especially human problems, we assume that the solutions must involve more technology. It’s like the adage that once you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
Rowan added:
“This really bore fruit, but we didn’t stop there. With the Tarot readings being so helpful, we wondered what other items in this domain we could try.”
At this point, I’m a little incredulous and make a joke about if they have Gandalf on their staff. I immediately regret my comment as Will meets my gaze with a cool sincerity:
“There are activities and rituals which human beings have found themselves attracted towards and practiced for hundreds, if not thousands of years. What would have been the attraction if there wasn’t something in it?”
Rowan continued:
“Using the Tarot readings to find problems in delivery and predict the future was our first success. But there have been others. For instance, Jeremy out there is currently pair programming.”
She points through the meeting room window at a solitary programmer who has candles and incense burning at his desk.
Rowan explains:
“He’s pairing with Danielle, who’s working from home today. He’s psychically channelling her. Our team works very closely, and we’re expected to open our minds to each other so we can think like them when we need to. We’ve had similar successes channelling end users to get into their heads to find issues earlier in the process.”
Sensing I’m not convinced (it’s probably my raised eyebrow), Rowan tries a line of thought on me conjecturing:
“Have you ever had news to deliver to someone, and before you gave it, you knew exactly how they were going to react? This is the realm we’re working within, and we all have experiences that echo this.”
Will articulates some of the other avenues they’ve pursued:
“And then there’s people management. Before we tried alternative paths, I took a professional course on practical influence skills. That course was mainly about listening to people who were being unreasonable, trying to be sympathetic and reach compromise. We’ve recently been doing work based on suggestion, hypnosis, and other mind control techniques.”
This causes a bit of a giggle from Rowan who lets slip:
“Remember the customer who came here and wanted to shorten the timeline, but get all the features that they had requested, and you were all ‘Look into my eyes…’”
The skeptic in me was not convinced and I asked if they could manage a demonstration of something for me, a Tarot reading maybe. There’s a bit of eye-rolling at the suggestion, but Rowan gets a pack of cards from a shelf, which I’m encouraged to shuffle until I’m satisfied.
She turns the first card. It’s ‘the beacon’, which she explains to me is probably related to the Ostara bonfire they’re having. She explains that on its own, it doesn’t mean a lot. It’s why you need additional cards to help you tune into the context.
The second card is ‘death’. Oh boy! There are nervous glances all around, before Rowan chortles. Will explained:
“The death card is probably the most misunderstood of cards. In most religions the idea of death is strongly linked to the idea of rebirth. Ostara in the Pagan calendar aligns to spring, when you have the land around you being reborn and waking up after winter. Even the story of Jesus at Easter is one of both death and rebirth.”
As nerves calmed, we dared to turn over the third card, which is ‘the hanged man’. Rowan tells me:
“This card is all about sacrifice. It’s no secret that the current political climate has been very tough for our industry.”
I make a joke about this sounding a little like the psychic conference that’s cancelled for unforeseen circumstances, which elicits a slight twitch from Will:
“We are doing okay, but what we’ve harvested in the last financial year has been a bit … disappointing. We’ve been very transparent at the management level that we know turning into the new financial year will call for a degree of sacrifice. We’re leaning into this with the ritual for our Ostara fires to embrace those Pagan themes of death and rebirth as we go into the first quarter next week.”
Intrigued, I of course have a lot more things I’d like to ask and see, but it’s at this point Rowan reminds Will that they’re both needed for some final preparations for tonight, and they’re running a little late.
“You are of course staying around for the ceremony, aren’t you?”, asks Rowan. “We’d be pleased to have you as our special guest, and you can experience firsthand what we’re about.”
I’d made other plans, but I’ve never really witnessed an Ostara bonfire, so agreed to stay. It’s a good opportunity for me to type this up, and set for publication on Monday as I wait to be their guest of honour.
I have to admit it’s been a little hard to finish this write up, there’s been a bit of a cacophony coming from outside, as it turns out Will and Rowan’s task seems to be shepherding the outside livestock from the car park to a pen closer to their bonfire festivities. It looks uncomfortably close to the pyre for a petting zoo to be located. But it reinforces that feeling of how much they like to do things a little differently here.
So, what do I think? Are they onto something?
My first reaction was that they’re a little cracked, that it’s all somewhat too fantastic. Then again, didn’t agile sound supernatural just twenty years ago? Honestly, their novel approach is to be commended! They’re trying things, including some ideas which are seriously left-field. They’re building on them, and asking themselves ‘what’s next?’, and it seems to work for them.
I’ve witnessed far too many agile teams who were far too conservative in their retrospectives, and half my battle has been to get them out of that thinking. Certainly, these ideas are something to consider with the next group I coach.
Oops … they seem to have locked me in the meeting room by accident. I do hope they remember to come fetch me! Maybe I should send them a psychic SOS!
Afterword…
Okay… time to come clean. If you’ve not worked out before now, and if the 1st April publication date didn’t clue you in, this is indeed an April Fool’s article.
This piece was originally approved for publication in 2018, on that happy and rare day where April Fool’s and Easter coincide. Unfortunately, the day before publication was due, it was pulled due to tone concerns, and I have patiently waited for the realignment of these two occasions.
The article, you might have noticed, does riff on themes from The Wicker Man. See if you can pick up the references! Hopefully, you worked out why the narrator was the ‘special guest’, and that there was not going to be a petting zoo next to the bonfire.
I’ll just reference a little how this article (like The Wicker Man) does play the ‘Pagans are sacrificing humans’ trope. Please take this as pure fiction, mainly due to the source material. Paganism is a religion, and indeed as a practicing Wiccan, I have a lot of time for it. I’ve been to a few Pagan/Wiccan events (we generally play nice together), and the closest to blood sacrifice that I’ve seen is there’s catering which included meat (which I assumed was not ritually slaughtered, as it was most likely purchased at Morrisons).
As you know, I really love my April Fool’s articles. I’ve written about them before and how a good article just pushes the envelope of incredulity one step at a time. My favourite hoax of all time is without doubt Alternative 3, an April Fool’s which due to scheduling issues, ended up being broadcast in June! If you have a spare hour, it’s well worth a watch.
Thanks to Melissa Eaden and Janet Gregory for helping with the editing and making me sound smarter than I really am.
I found it a fun article to revisit, and this side of the pandemic, it’s interesting to reflect on how, in those early days of lockdown, trying to get remote working right felt like arcane magic. It’s why I wrote an article called “The Start Of A Video Conference Is Indistinguishable From A Séance” for the LeanPub book “Software People… Work From Home”.
