Agile Animal Farmunderstanding Agile through our behavior

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who am I?

Senior Lean Agile Coach Senior Scrum Coach & Trainer

Agile Management Catalyst father, brother & son

ORES, SAP UK, Kingfisher, Euroclear Group, GDF Suez Europe, AXA Group, Invivo, CTIE, atHome, Accenture, Touring Assurances, Cloudwatt, Swingmobility, Lumension Security, Wemanity…

my house

my office

Pierre E. Neis

my offices

Pierre E. Neis

Starting with a metaphor

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based on Mario Moreira’s

work

… adapted for the Middle East…

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Purpose of this game

๏ understanding the basic principles of the Agile Culture and understanding behavior

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๏

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I don’t know. What would we

call it?

Hey Lamb, I was thinkin’ we should open a Restaurant.

Lamb Awarma

How about Lamb Awarma?

the main story

๏

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No Thanks, I’d be committed, but you’d only

be involved!

briefly

๏ the chicken only gives their eggs

๏ Lambs have to put their flesh on the table

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Lambs

๏ They are involved, enganged to the project. In Scrum, it’s the purpose of the Scrum Team (Delivery Team, Scrum Master and Product Owner).

๏ They are committed to the work. They are working in a sheepfold with other lambs who love their work.

๏ When Agility is well set, they are all willing to put they « flesh-on-the-set » each day because they feel ownership of the work.

๏ They are assertive and accountable for the success of the project and have a majority (if not all) of their performance goals linked directly to the success of the project and their specific Agile team.

10credits M.Moreira

๏ They come and go on the project.

๏ While chickens are mostly helpful, because they are contributing their eggs, they don’t always understand the full context because they are not a dedicated team member.

๏ So occasionally they may accidently contribute a rotten egg.

๏ They are not accountable for the success of the project, although they may have a small portion of their performance goals linked to the success of the project.

Chicken

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credits M.Moreira

๏ They like to stealthily move into and through the team seeing who has certain skills and ideas.

๏ Then they like to steal not only resources (Agile team members) for their own teams, but they also steal ideas.

๏ They are not necessarily negative, because they are often so quiet in their manipulative work.

๏ They are dedicated to their own success.

Foxes

credits M.Moreira

¶R

๏ They like to fly around the project and not really contribute in any manner.

๏ They enjoy “talking” (mostly hearing themselves speak) and pretend they are adding value, but they are only annoying the lambs (Agile team members).

๏ Often, they like to swoop in so it can look like they are involved (and they’ll tell others this).

๏ They are often quite negative, squawk a lot in a “know it all” manner, and often poop on people and their ideas.

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Seagulls

credits M.Moreira

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Rats

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๏ They are deceiver types who will use the trust of the team to gain insight into topics so they can then “rat” on what is going on to others.

๏ Often on Agile teams, they are really deceivers because they are really anti-Agile or just plain negative people.

๏ They often know the decisions that are made based on certain contexts that the team is in, but will twist the truth in order to bring the project down.

๏ It is important to identify these deceivers as quickly as possible and get them off the team. credits M.Moreira

๏ They are a lazy type on an Agile team that really do not pitch in but instead like to sleep instead.

๏ They are almost purposefully not assertive, have been used to just “getting by” on projects for years, and are not really interested in feeling ownership of the work.

๏ They typically neither positive nor negative and simply like to be left alone.

๏ The other team members will begin to notice this behavior and realize they are not really interested in becoming part of the team.

Cats

credits M.Moreira

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Bulls

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๏ They are command-and-control types who think they can continue to tell their folks what to do even though they are dedicated to their Agile teams.

๏ Sometimes referred to as bullies, they charge right into the team and attempt to direct them to their own work and often deviate the team from building product functionality.

๏ Typically, they are not interested in the Agile mindset because they see it as a challenge to their authority (technical or managerial) or don’t really understand or care about the business benefits of Agile, but instead want to maintain their own status. credits M.Moreira

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Shepherd Dog

๏ And finally no farm is complete without the Shepherd Dog.

๏ However, on an Agile farm, it cannot be just any Shepherd Dog but instead a benevolent Shepherd Dog who is good to his animals and ensure the animals have what they need to grow and prosper.

๏ The Agile Animal Shepherd Dog encourages, inspires, and allows for team autonomy and self organization.

Let’s try a game?

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Rules of the game1. we are 16, let’s make 3 teams

2. each team seats around a table

3. I came to with « animals » cards and assign a « role » to each of them

4. we got a team of lambs, a team of lambs and seagulls, a team of cats and seagull

5. during 15 minutes, each team has to draw or make a prairie with 5 flowers in different colors

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… what happened after 15 minutes ?

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after 15 minutes

๏ 2 teams delivered the work

๏ one team did nothing

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all together…

๏ we tried to identify who played what animal

๏ and debriefed the pros and cons

๏ to be honest… people playing the cats where stressed because they couldn’t make anything

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If I had time

๏ all the teams should worked on a single backlog during 15 minutes

๏ objective: understand dependencies and Team « Animal » behaviors

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… for what is it good for ?

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using posters in Retrospective for

fun to understand how we were

together and with others

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More questions?

Pierre E. Neis | @elpedromajor | pierre@wecompany.me27

Luxembourg | Paris | Bruxelles | Amsterdam | Beirut

Thank you

We & Co

Agile by Nature

Credits

๏ based on Mario Moreira’s Agile Animal Farm

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