Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group

Jim Highsmith is in Melbourne via Thuoghtworks' "Out Compete - Out Innovate' session and has agreed to share some time for a Q&A session. Numbers are limited for this one. You might like to check in on this article: http://drdobbs.com/ar...

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, February 8 at 6:30 PM

Attending: 3

Details: http://www.meetup.com/scrum-12/events/49348842/

Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group

This month the group talks about common smells and anti patterns.  We will have a short intro sharing the concept of scrum smells and then open questions and discussions to a panel.

Some of our volunteer panel members are;

• Erik Petersen 
• James Ross
• Reg De Silva
• Neil Killick
• (Anyone else? Just edit yourself in here)

You might also like to check out this wiki on scrum smells!

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, February 29 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 20

Details: http://www.meetup.com/scrum-12/events/47307282/

Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group

Dom Fenton talks about Scrum.

This presentation is aimed at introducing new people to Scrum and reminding more experienced practitioners of how important the basics really are.

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session facilitated by Dom and several other experience scrum professionals.

Dom is a project leader with experience both across Europe and locally with several of Australia's largest corporations. He is currently leading an agile team at Telstra.

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, March 28 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 8

Details: http://www.meetup.com/scrum-12/events/44154082/

Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group

TBC. Suggest a topic

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, April 25 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/scrum-12/events/cmtvtyqgbhc/

Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group

TBC. Suggest a topic

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, May 30 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/scrum-12/events/cmtvtyqhbnc/

Melbourne Agile and Scrum User Group

TBC. Suggest a topic

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, June 27 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/scrum-12/events/cmtvtyqjbkc/

Agile Business Analysts, Melbourne

At this month's meet-up we review the concept of the Story Map, per Jeff Patton's model. We will also discuss how other analysis models can also provide a framework for sorting and categorising user stories.

The session agenda will look something like this:

• Introduction to the topic: 15 minutes
• Break into groups and generate a story map from your projects or a fictional case study: 30 minutes
• Review groups outcomes and share learnings: 30 minutes

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, February 15 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 19

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Business-Analysts-Melbourne/events/46913642/

Agile Business Analysts, Melbourne

Shawn Callahan of Anecdote comes and share some tips about storytelling and the importance of narrative when we communicate with our business partners and peers.

The Anecdote approach to corporate storytelling is relevant to agile business analysts because it is built upon the ideas of facilitation, discovery, alignment and evolution.

the format of this will be a facilitated discussion by Shawn.

Melbourne - Australia

Wednesday, March 14 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Business-Analysts-Melbourne/events/47390112/

Agile Business Analysts, Melbourne

Alec Sharp brings years of experience in consulting on, training in and executing process analysis and business process management. He has strong views on how process analysis is a critically important tool for agile analysis, and how it's common absence is a common failure mode for agile teams. Alec is the principle at Clariteq consulting based out of Canada. He is in Australia delivering a master class series on Business Process Management via Softed.

Melbourne - Australia

Monday, March 26 at 7:00 PM

Attending: 17

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Business-Analysts-Melbourne/events/49224732/

Agile Business Analysts, Melbourne

A debate investigating what agile means for the role of a business analyst.

Is business analysis a competency or a role on an agile team.

Kevin Broughton will be hosting a debate exploring what happens to a BA in an agile world. Two sides will debate two perspectives and the questions and comments will be opened to the audience.

What's your experience? How do you think this role debate should play out?  Come along and participate in the discussion.

We have opened a discussion thread to support this debate.

This month's meetup is a great opportunity to bring 'non-BA' colleagues to help them understand the contribution analyst make (or don't make.)  Bring a friend.

Light refreshments will be available.

Melbourne - Australia

Tuesday, April 10 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Business-Analysts-Melbourne/events/49698302/

Agile Business Analysts, Melbourne

Melbourne - Australia

Tuesday, May 8 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Business-Analysts-Melbourne/events/cmkvvyqhblb/

Agile Business Analysts, Melbourne

Melbourne - Australia

Tuesday, June 12 at 6:00 PM

Attending: 1

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Business-Analysts-Melbourne/events/cmkvvyqjbqb/

The Victorian State Ombudsman tabled his report titled “Investigation into ICT Enabled Projects – November 2011” in which he analysed the performance of 10 high-profile publicly financed projects. The findings of the Ombudsman’s report are fascinating and today I would like to focus, in a bullet point and short format, on his findings as relate to the Myki project.

• A 2004 Business Case by the Transport Ticketing Authority (TTA) forecasted total expenditure of $741.9 million over the life of the project (2004-17).
• Project costs revised up to $999 when a vendor was appointed to develop the system in 2005.
• In April 2008, the budget was increased to $1.35 billion (an increase of 35% in just under 3 years).
• Under the terms of the original contract, the system was to be fully operational by July 2007. Full implementation is yet to be achieved and the project is some four years behind schedule.
• Until two years into the project (when the project failed to meet its two years delivery deadline) the board of the TTA had a single board member with relevant ICT projects’ experience.
• In the initial evaluation of the six tenderers, only the successful bidder was unable to evidence a proven solution: all others nominated sites where their solutions were in place.

Corruption or stupidity? Either way the cost will be covered using my tax money.

For more information regarding the general trends associated with Transportation Infrastructure projects read my earlier post on Bent Flyvbjerg’s research on Cost Overruns in Transport Infrastructure Projects.

Hiya

I have been wrong about many things – I am happy to admit that. In SharePoint land, one of my bigger naive assumptions was that in early 2007, I figured I’d have maybe a 6 month head start before the rest of the industry began to learn from its initial SharePoint deployment mistakes and start delivering SharePoint “properly.” I thought that I’d better make hay while the sun shines, so to speak, as the market would tighten up as more players entered it.

Yet here we are, heading to the latter half of 2011 – some five years later. As I continue to go into organisations, whether in a SharePoint remedial capacity, or a training/architect capacity, I am still seeing the legacy of really poor SharePoint outcomes. Furthermore I am seeing other, frankly disturbing trends that leave me both concerned and pessimistic. I now have a label for this concern: “SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome.” SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome is hard to define, yet its effects are there for all to see. I suffer from it at times, and I am certain others do too. As an example, recently on the Perth SharePoint User Group on LinkedIn the following topic for discussion was raised:

Hi folks, as you already know we have a worrying skills shortage in SharePoint Development / Architecture in Perth and things are getting worse. It’s getting to the stage where companies have to suspend or worse still abandon their SharePoint projects due to lack of available talent. As the core of the SharePoint community in Perth your suggestions are vital towards finding real solutions to this growing problem. What can be done?

Now I know that this problem is not just limited to Perth. There are consistently reports online that speak of SharePoint people being in demand. So you would think that in a “hot” sector like SharePoint, where the industry is crying out for talent, that the rate of attrition would not outpace the uptake of new talent. After all – money talks, right? If you are a .NET developer with half a brain, there is serious money to be made in SharePoint development land. On top of that, there is the collective realisation in the marketplace that actually talking to people about how SharePoint could make their lives easier, leads to better outcomes. Hence the emergence of this notion of a “SharePoint Architect” with a more varied skill-set that just tech or dev. This role has further been legitimised by entire conferences now just catering to the business this end of the market (I am thinking the Share conferences here).

So, we have all of this newfound collective wisdom spreading through the community via various channels, in terms of the skills and roles required in SharePoint circa 2011 and beyond. We have the fat pay-packets being commanded as a result of demand for these skills. So, with that in mind, why is the attrition rate growing?

As an example, I know personally, several exceptional SharePoint practitioners who are no longer in SharePoint. I’ve also had various quiet conversations with many SharePoint practitioners, right up to SharePoint MCM’s, who vent their various frustrations on how difficult it is to get truly lasting SharePoint solutions in their clients and organisations. I’ve reflected on the various reasons I have come to the conclusion that SharePoint is just plain tiring. As a result, people are burning themselves out.

7 causes of SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome…

Burnout, in case you are not aware, is actually a lack of emotional attachment to what you are doing.  Quoting about.com:

The term “burnout” is a relatively new term, first coined in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger, in his book, “Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement.” He originally defined ‘burnout’ as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.

SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome is SharePoint manifested burnout. The symptoms include feeling physically and emotionally drained, difficulty maintaining optimism and energy levels, feeling that you have less to give as the burden of work seems overwhelming. Sound familiar?

So why does SharePoint work run this risk? I see 7 major reasons.

1: Cost pressure leading to overwork

First up, the lure of the big dollar is a double edged sword. Not long ago I shared a beer with a SharePoint developer who’s work I respect greatly, yet I can’t afford to hire. This is because the percentage of chargeable hours he would need to work just so I can break even, is very high. This puts me (the employer) under pressure and at risk. As a result, I need to ensure that my newly minted SharePoint employee is productive from day 1 and I need him to work a lot of hours. But here is the irony. When I had my beer with this developer, the conversation started with him lamenting to me that he is already pulling ridiculous hours (60 to 80 per week). He was looking for a job with less hours and yet more money. This is simply not sustainable, both for employer and employee. The more you chase one (work hours vs. money), the more you lose the other it seems.

2: Structures that force an inappropriate problem solving paradigm (and wicked problems of course)

Then there is the broader problem where structure influences behaviour. As a basic example: from the developers’ perspective, they have to put up with sales guys who promise the world, and project managers who then make their life hell and force them to cut corners delivering the impossible. Project managers find out that their beloved work breakdown structure gets chopped and changed when their pain-in-the-ass developers whine that they can’t make the schedule. As I have stated many times previously, SharePoint project are likely to have wicked problem aspects to them. The structures that work well to deliver tame problems, such as Exchange, a VOIP system or a network upgrade, are much less effective for SharePoint projects. While organisations persist with approaches that consistently fail to deliver good outcomes, and don’t look at the structural issues, the attrition rate will continue. There is only so much that someone can take putting up with these sorts of stresses.

3: Technical complexity

SharePoint’s technical complexity plays a part too. No-one person understands the product in its entirety. The closest person I know is Spence and ages ago on twitter he remarked that even within Microsoft no-one understood it all. As a result, it is simply too easy to make a costly mistake via an untested assumption. (I thought the user profile service was tough – until I did federated claims authentication and multitenancy that is). The utter myriad of features, design options and their even greater number of caveats, mean that one can make a simple design mistake that causes the entire logical edifice of an information architecture to come crashing down. Many have experienced the feeling of having to tell someone that the project time and cost is about to blow out because nobody realised that, say,  Managed Metadata has a bunch of issues that precludes its use in many circumstances. Accordingly, SharePoint architects learn pretty quickly that it is hard to answer a definite “yes” to many questions, because to do so would require a question worded like a contractual clause, to ensure it is framed with appropriate caveats. Even then, consultants would know that lingering feeling in the back of their mind that they might have missed an assumption. This brings me onto…

4: Pace of change

This is BIG…and becoming more acute. Remember the saying ‘The only certainties in life are death and taxes?’ Outside of that, the future is always unpredictable.

In between SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007, the wave of Web 2.0 and social networking broke, forever changing how we collaborate and work with information online (and some of those effects are still to be felt). Microsoft, like any smart organisation, responds to the sentiment of its client base. Microsoft also, like most mature organisations, tends to hedge its bets in terms of marketplace strategy in which it tries to get in on the act with the cool kids, yet tries not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Just look at Windows 8’s new interface, tablets, app stores and the cloud.

But that is one facet. Change happens in many forms and at many scales. For example, at a project level, it may mean a key team member leaves the organisation suddenly (SharePoint fatigue no doubt). At a global and organisational level, events like the odd global financial crisis force organisations to change strategic focus very quickly indeed.

I don’t know about you, but when Windows 8 was announced recently I was not excited (in fact I was not excited by SharePoint 2010 either). I thought to myself “So soon? I am still figuring out the current platform!”

As an example of the effect of pace of change, consider all the Government 2.0 initiatives around the world. Collaboration is in-vogue baby, so information should be free and government agencies should engage with the community. While that’s nice and all, there is the world of compliance, security and records management that takes a very different view. So, we end up with market forces that push against each other in combination with vendors hedging strategy of being all things to all people. It’s little wonder that SharePoint projects become very complex very fast.

By the way, it is worthwhile checking out what Bill Brantley in this post sums up the whole government 2.0 issue when he said:

What exactly is the nature of the Gov 2.0 challenge? This question was inspired by Andrew Krzmarzick’s post (What Gov 2.0 Needs Now: Managers, Money and Models) and Christina Morrison’s post (What is Gov 2.0? A survey of Government IT pros) on the recent GovLoop survey about Gov 2.0. As Andrew and Christina argued, the survey demonstrates many differing perspectives on Gov 2.0 in terms of what it actually means and how to implement Gov 2.0. To me, this suggests that Gov 2.0 is the classic wicked problem

5: SharePoint Entropy

One of my clients (who you will meet in my book when it’s published), once said to me “All good ideas eventually deteriorate into hard work.” This is a nice way to lead into the concept of SharePoint entropy, which in some ways is the inevitable outcome from the first four symptoms. The easiest way to understand entropy is to watch this awesome TV series called the “Wonders of The Universe.” In that show, the concept of entropy was discussed and for me made a lot of intrinsic sense. Without getting into the detail, entropy is the notion that over time things move from an organised to less organised state. Rather than have me waste your time trying to explain it in prose, let’s listen to the show in question. (Don’t skip the video – this is important!)

Now what does this has to do with SharePoint fatigue? Gordon Whyte saw what I am getting at with his post on entropy within organisations, especially in relation to change management.

For example, when we build a car we take raw materials such as metal, leather, plastic and glass and arrange them in a highly organised way to make a car. But if we then leave that car for long enough the metal will rust, the glass will become brittle and break and the leather will dry out and turn to dust. If the car is left for a very long time it will eventually disappear altogether. This thought left me wondering about the nature of organisations. If a progression from order to chaos is the natural order of the universe, then is this same pressure present in organisations and, perhaps more importantly, what is the optimum position for an organisation between the extremes of rigid inflexibility (low entropy) and complete chaos (high entropy)? This question is not as crazy as it might at first appear”

Gordon has nailed the issue in his post. Any SharePoint solution that has a low entropic nature requires more energy and effort to maintain that order and control. Complex SharePoint solutions often have complex governance wrapped around them. Governance that is process and structure centric by definition, has low entropy and accordingly, needs higher effort to maintain over time. In fact, if you do not maintain that effort and energy, then any SharePoint solution will usually disintegrate back into the sort of information management chaos that gave rise to SharePoint in the first place!  Rather like the sandcastle in the video.

By the way, I feel that email and file shares are high entropy solutions – all failed SharePoint projects lead back to these tools because they require less structure to maintain (in the short term).

In short, if SharePoint is implemented with low entropy, more energy is needed to maintain it. Remove the energy and very quickly, things become chaotic again. Governance approaches that are not cognisant of this will never stand the test of time. The question then becomes whether people feel that the end in mind is worth the perceived extra effort that is being asked of them.

6. Social complexity

Social complexity is also somewhat of a result of the first five symptoms. Most organisations have a blame culture. If they didn’t, then people wouldn’t spend so much time trying to position themselves for blame avoidance. Social complexity is the result of turf wars, ideological smackdowns and all of the other sort of things that result in the cliché of “the silos” where people are not talking to each-other in organisations. SharePoint exacerbates social complexity for two main reasons.

Firstly, because it is a collaboration tool, it actually requires some collaboration to put it in! This is often easier said than done. Secondly, because it is a pervasive and disruptive technology, it almost always clashes with an established tool, process or practice where proponents aren’t willing to change. In fact, they may not even recognise that there is a problem to solve – especially when SharePoint has been thrust upon them. (In an old post, I wrote about the notion of memeplexes and the ideological immune mechanisms that they create and why it is so hard to get shared understanding across departmental boundaries in organisations. Memetic smackdowns are the result).

The long and the short of social complexity is that there is only so much stress people can take. We all seem to have a pathological need to seek order and safety, rather then remain in a stressful situation. Once social complexity bites, the merry-go-round of staff attrition really starts to bite…

7. Meaning over motivation…

Now if I haven’t completely depressed you, let me offer you a perverse glimmer of light. For those of us who understand the preceding 6 fatigue symptoms, recognise them for what they are and take steps to mitigating them, there is one other symptom that contributes to SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome. This is the trickiest of all – and I am a somewhat willing victim of it.

I have spent a lot of time learning techniques to help address the symptoms I outlined here and as it turns out, these skills are universally applicable, whether in SharePoint, IT or beyond IT. For years now, I have metaphorically had one foot out of the SharePoint world door and the other foot into the world of construction, health and management sectors. Hell…I have written what I think is the first business book ever by a SharePoint person that is a non SharePoint and non IT. I also have clients with SharePoint deployments who do not know me as a SharePoint person at all, but only as a sensemaker (and for that I am grateful.)

The point is this: While the investment in these skills enables me to counter the effects of SharePoint fatigue syndrome, it is also inexorably pulling me away from SharePoint work. It seems that once you crack this nut a little, your skills are in demand across the entire problem solving spectrum. Right now this is my coping mechanism for SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome – I get to step away from SharePoint for periods and work on something else. Eventually…inevitably…I will also be one of those attrition statistics.

Conclusion:

The problem is that SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome is a negatively reinforcing cycle. As evidenced by the SharePoint attrition rate, money isn’t that great a motivator. If it was, then the void of skilled resources would have been filled by now. Paying more money might give you a short term gain, but in the long term is not going to address my seven causes of SharePoint Fatigue Syndrome.

I will leave this admittedly negative sounding post with the key to breaking this cycle. While you can attend my SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture class or Issue Mapping Class to learn many ways, the video below says it all. I encourage you to watch and reflect on it, because it’s the same key point to understanding how to do effective user engagement.

Thanks for reading

Paul Culmsee

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In their new book, Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage, Scott Keller and Colin Price identify nine factors that are critical to organizational health: Direction, Accountability, Motivation, Leadership, Coordination & Control, External Orientation, Culture & Climate, Capabilities, Innovation & Learning

Organizations that thrive over the long run, in good times and bad, pay explicit attention to all these issues. Three of them, though, seem particularly crucial as we think about new challenges confronting us today.

Motivation: As products, services and even knowledge itself get commodified ever more rapidly, we need organizations that are capable of producing a steady stream of highly differentiated products and services. This requires imagination, which is, in turn, the product of passion. In business as in other aspects of life, passion is the difference between "insipid" and "inspired." Innovation doesn't come from dispirited employees.

Amazing contributions don't come from employees who feel like conscripts. Therein lies the problem. By one recent estimate, only 14% of employees around the world are highly engaged in their work. This has to change. We must be as rigorous and inventive about inspiring passion and unleashing contribution as we are about every other aspect of business.

External orientation: In our hair-trigger economy, customer preferences change at light speed. Unexpected new challenges can pop up at any moment, and new opportunities come and go quickly. The environment for business is more dynamic, more complex, and more global than ever. Given that, we need organizations that can draw meaningful insights out of the maelstrom of fragmentary and incoherent data that daily surrounds them. We need companies where every individual is equipped to sense emerging trends, where the implications for action are rapidly recognized, and the necessary resources are quickly brought to bear.

The decision lags typical of large, bureaucratic organizations are becoming untenable. Individuals on the front lines must have the discretionary power to respond instantly to shifting circumstances. Rather than moving information up to those with authority, authority must be pushed down to those with real-time information.

Coordination & Control: With global supply chains, distributed production networks, and virtual teams, the challenges of coordination are more pressing than ever. In most organizations, managers are the rivets that hold everything together. They connect activities, teams, programs, and business units. The implicit assumption: coordination requires a hierarchy of coordinators. Problem is, hierarchy adds costs and reduces responsiveness. What's needed now are ways of integrating complex activities with little or no management overhead.

And then there's control. Managers are often the enforcers. It's their job to ensure that procedures are followed, budgets are met, and slackers are punished. But again, a supervisory superstructure is expensive and profoundly disempowering. We need organizations where control comes less from rules and sanctions, and more from norms and peers. We need to radically reduce the management costs associated with both coordination and control.

Hence The Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge, the second leg of the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation. Help us build organizations that are fundamentally fit for human beings, characterized by:

Total Passion: We know a lot about what it takes to drive deep engagement: purpose, self-direction, a sense of community, and opportunities to grow are a few of the most important. What we're looking for are examples where engagement has been taken to new heights, where management assumptions, processes, and behaviors have been radically overhauled in ways that create a sense of adventure, that inspire leaps of imagination, that foment excitement, and take the work out of work. If you don't have a real-world case to share, invent a hack — a bold, new idea for turning contented team members into zealous ones.

Outside-In: How can we turn an entire organization into a sensory organ, ever alert to the changing dynamics of the marketplace? How can we dramatically improve the signal-to-noise ratio in environment scanning? How can we ensure that weak signals don't get filtered out when the implications are politically uncomfortable? How can we eliminate the lags between "sense" and "respond?" How do we mobilize teams and resources faster than ever? And how can we inject the voice of the customer into every decision? More generally, how can we create organizations where a lot fewer people are inward-focused and a lot more are outward-focused and where contributions at the edges are every bit as important as those emanating from the center? Once again, we're looking for game-changing practices and mind-flipping hacks.

Managing without Managers: Managing is largely about controlling and coordinating. Can the work of managing be pushed out to the periphery of our organizations? Can it be automated? Can it be dispensed with entirely? Is it possible for an organization to be highly decentralized and precisely synchronized? Can you get discipline without disciplinarians? Are there ways of combining the freedom and flexibility advantages of markets with the control and coordination advantages of traditional hierarchies? Can we reduce the performance drag of our top-heavy management structures without giving anything up in terms of focus and efficiency? To what extent can "self-management" or "peer-management" substitute for "manager-management?" If you've got some hard evidence, or just a wild idea, share it with the world.

Help us turn healthy organizations into world-class athletes that are able to vault over tomorrow's challenges. Learn more about participating in the challenge at the MIX.

Awards are a very interesting thing, especially the motivation for giving them. I’m particularly uneasy about the UK Agile Awards, which ran for the second time this year with the results being announced a few weeks ago. As far as I can tell pretty much all of this years winners have a relationship with one of the sponsors. Lets go through each of the winners and see:

Agile Project or Programme Manager of the Year: Chris Berridge

Works for Emergn, who were a sponsor.

Edit: Correction, Chris works for Maersk, who worked with Emergn, who were a sponsor.

Best Agile Project or Innovation: ”Fixing the Flaws in Government IT” – The IfG Report 

IfG worked with Indigo Blue closely on the report, who were a sponsor.

Agile Consultancy of the Year: Indigo Blue

Who were a sponsor…

Best Agile Team: The Guardian

Worked closely with Indigo Blue on their major redesign a year or so back, who were a sponsor.

Most Agile Aware Organisation: Simply Business

Not found a link, but not looked that hard. Anyone?

Edit: As per Paul’s comment below Simply Business are associated with Emergn, who were a sponsor

Most Engaged Management Team: IPC Media

A sponsor…

Best Use of Agile in the Public Sector: DWP

Working closely with Emergn, who were a sponsor. I also find this one particularly irritating as they haven’t even delivered anything yet! As one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto states, “Working software is the primary measure of progress.”

Best Use of Agile in the Private Sector: BSkyB

Not found a link, but not looked that hard. Anyone?

Best Agile Coach/Mentor: Dot Tudor

Works for TCC, who were a sponsor.

Most Valuable Agile Player (UK)

Keith Richards, who was a sponsor.

I’ve no doubt that some of these organisations were approached after they were nominated, but looking at who the sponsors were for the previous year it’s mostly the same faces. Hmm.

Well… if it’s that easy then I hear by announce the Rob Bowley “Agile as Fuck” Award and the winner for 2011 is…

ME!

A year ago I bought the book “Visual Meetings” (doodling for team productivity) and a Moleskine notebook (of course) on my way back from Washington to Amsterdam. At the stopover in New York I drew this:

And this:

It changed my work. Really.

Before I just had a stack of Moleskine notebooks (what else) full of seemingly unrelated notes. Words. Lots of words.

I knew there was a pattern. Somewhere.

But connecting the dots got just more difficult. Making more notes made things worse. Not better.

So. I started doodling. Making awful simplistic drawings. And I am sharing these drawings. Not to show off my skills. It is more to show you it’s ok if you can only doodle and not create picture perfect images.

This is what I found.

If you make a lot of drawings, a common visual language emerges. You use several symbols over and over again. The use of identical symbols reveal a hidden link.

After the individual images I crafted a “story”. On the topic I find most difficult. Identity. Ok. I also used text and quotes.

I created many pages to explain to myself the things I had written over the last years.

This helped me immensely in explaining this stuff. To you and to myself. Mainly that last part.

It changed my approach to almost every thing that feels complex and appears difficult.

As always. You don’t have to try this. Really.

But before you decide, I hope you have a look at this short (5mins) TED talk by Sunni Brown, author of “Gamestorming”. Doodlers, unite!

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their projects and organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Connecting The Dots With Doodling. Making Complex Things Less Complex. is a post from: Project Shrink.

Here is a video of my presentation on challenging requirements, filmed at AgileEE last week, filmed by someone from the audience.

Here is a video of a recent session on effect mapping at the Agile testing UK user group. I introduce effect maps, then Jenny Martin and Kate Warner from Loyalty Management talk about how they applied it in their company, then David Evans presents some ideas on how to improve testing by extending the maps.

For years critics have raised alarms about higher education: rapidly rising tuition costs without corresponding increases in value, a trillion dollars of student debt, compromised access, country club tenure for academics, decreasing relevance of tuition to the real world, among other issues.

The Innovative University

Now Clayton Christensen, the father of the theory of disruptive innovation, and his colleague, Henry J. Eyring, in The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out (Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series) (Jossey-Bass, 2011) tell the stories of two very different universities—Harvard and BYU-Idaho—and how they are addressing innovation in higher education.

The two universities have an interesting link in that in 2005 the highly successful Dean of Harvard Business School, Kim Clark, surprised everyone by leaving his posaition at Harvard to become the president of BYU-Idaho. BYU-Idaho? Most of his colleagues had never heard of it. The book tells how Clark went about reforming a traditional university, showing his successes as well as the roadblocks he ran into.

After a lengthy examination of the histories of these two very different universities, they discuss how these universities are exploring innovative, less costly ways of performing their uniquely valuable functions and thereby save themselves from decline.

Online education

In particular, the book advocates that colleges and universities embrace online education. It argues that online technology makes a college or university vastly more attractive to a wide subset of students. It gives many people a second chance at learning – i.e. those who cannot afford a traditional college education, those who do not have the flexibility to take part in a full plate of coursework, and late bloomers or dropouts who have fallen behind and now have the chance to catch up. But online learning doesn’t just offer cheaper education for the masses. It improves the student learning experience across the spectrum by allowing students to learn at their own pace and on their own timetable.

Q&A with the authors

I talked recently with the authors about their book.

1. The book discusses at length the history and evolution of two important but very different universities, Harvard and BYU-Idaho. What do you see as the respective strengths and weakness of these two universities today?

Harvard of course excels in its reputation, faculty, wealth, and alumni network.  Its few significant weaknesses include organizational complexity and high operating cost.  The high cost derives from traits of the traditional research university, such as faculty who spend a relatively small percentage of their time in the classroom and a campus that sits largely idle during the summer.  Also, Harvard has invested heavily in a system of residential housing and high-quality tutoring.  This means that even students who pay the tuition sticker price aren’t covering the full cost of their education.  Thus, growing the size of its “customer” base, which is how businesses achieve scale economies and greater profitability, is financially problematic for Harvard and for other universities with similar operating models.  The number of students they can serve is limited, not because they don’t have enough qualified applicants, but because they can’t afford to subsidize additional students.

BYU-Idaho’s strengths include a low-cost operating model, which derives from (1) faculty focus on undergraduate instruction, (2) year-round operation, and (3) use of online learning technology.  A “Learning Model” common to all courses promotes consistent learning quality, even in online offerings.  BYU-Idaho’s ongoing challenge is to ensure learning quality by rigorously defining and measuring learning outcomes and continuously improving the curriculum.

2.       What is the purpose of a university as depicted in this book? Is it: A. A university is an institution that provides a degree, which is a credential or screening device for the economy and for society? Or B.  A university is an institution in which people acquire the knowledge they need for a particular job? Or C.  A university is an institution in which people acquire the knowledge they need to be a citizen? Or D.  A university is an experience where you acquire a capacity to be a lifelong learner (because most of the knowledge you acquire will be obsolete within a few years and the jobs of tomorrow will not be the jobs of today)? Or E. Something else?

Ideally, a university or college education serves all four of these purposes.  The degree is the easiest to provide, and the types of knowledge listed above are sequentially more difficult to impart.  That becomes increasingly true as the world grows more complex.

3.  Some have argued that goal #2. D. (a capacity for lifelong learning) should be the most important purpose, given the highly dynamic state  of today’s economy. Do you think the book gives enough emphasis to that? How good a job are these two universities doing at that?

The book doesn’t directly address the importance of lifelong learning.  However, it describes learning approaches, such as BYU-Idaho’s Learning Model and Eric Mazur’s use of peer-to-peer instruction at Harvard, that prepare student for lifelong learning.  One of the best ways to learn to learn is to be an active learner and a teacher of one’s fellow students in college.

This instructional philosophy isn’t yet widespread, but its effectiveness has been proven, and it doesn’t require additional financial investment, only a change in the attitudes of faculty members and students.  Broader adoption seems likely, with time.

4.   The book says that in performing its purpose, a university has three “jobs to do”:  discovery, memory and mentoring (p.335). Could you explain this framework?

Traditional universities do three valuable things that other institutions don’t.  All three require talented faculty members with scholarly training.  These things are (1) discovering and disseminating new knowledge, (2) preserving the discoveries of the past, and (3) personally mentoring students in ways that allow them to participate in (1) and (2).  Doing these things well takes special training.  It is inherently expensive, because the processes involved are hard to automate or even systematize very much.  Still the value is great, and society needs universities to do these “jobs.”  The trick is to get the jobs done at a price that students and society can afford.

5.  The book gives both universities generally high marks for discovery and memory of knowledge.  How does this fit with the recent realization that several decades of foreign outsourcing by the private sector have resulted in the loss of knowledge related to huge sectors of the economy, particularly those that crucial for the economy’s future, with no obvious way to get that knowledge back to this country? What role do you see for universities in preventing further loss of knowledge that is crucial for the country’s future?

Economic and social globalization makes the traditional university more valuable than ever.  Unlike most for-profit organizations and even governmental institutions, the university is designed to be global in its pursuit and preservation of knowledge.  Thus, a nation that invests in effective research universities can worry less about the specialization that inevitability occurs as it focuses on the industries and value-adding activities in which it is most competitive.  This won’t happen without thoughtful direction and coordination, but nations with outstanding university systems will continue to enjoy a competitive advantage.  These nations can specialize their activities without losing touch with the full range of knowledge needed to be world leaders.

6. Some have argued that the ability to ask the right questions is today as important as and possibly even more important than a capacity to give the right answers. How well do these two universities do in responding to that challenge?

As mentioned in response to question 3, Harvard and BYU-Idaho involve their students in teaching one another.  They also have general education courses, created in the last five years, that cut across academic disciplines and engage students in applying principles and theories to real-world problems.  These instructional approaches challenge students to frame inquiries, rather than merely respond to questions posed by their professors.  More can be done, but Presidents Derek Bok and Kim Clark, who championed the new GE programs and learning models at their respective institutions, helped their schools go a long way toward graduating students who can ask good questions.

7. The book praises BYU-Idaho for holding costs more or less constant for an in-person degree, i.e. preventing further cost increases (p.300) and cutting costs of an online degree by 75% (p.317). The book gives less information as to what Harvard has done to control costs. Do you think these efforts at cost control are adequate, given that student debt in the USA is now around $1 trillion and growing rapidly?

We all need to be looking constantly for ways to do more with less.  Fortunately, new learning technologies make that possible.  But Harvard and other elite institutions are in a paradoxical position.  Their students and alumni are satisfied with their current offerings; in fact, they have a huge surplus of qualified applicants.  They are exploring and investing in new learning technologies, and they have the capacity to use that technology to serve more students at lower cost, if they choose.  The question is when and how to change in ways that won’t detract from the quality of what they already do.

We’re likely to significant change in the next decade, the net effect of which will be more students served at a lower average cost.  However, the nature of the evolution will differ among institutions.  The elite schools will hybridize their courses not primarily to reduce cost or grow enrollments, but to better serve the rising generation of “digital natives” and to make the most of learning-enhancing computer-adaptive technology.  By contrast, schools without the benefit of high prestige and large endowments will hybridize and offer fully online courses mainly so that they can keep tuition affordable, admit more students, and use the incremental revenues to plug the hole left by rising operating costs and declining state support.  In all cases, students will benefit.

8.  The book says that world needs more university education, not less (p.344). Could you explain what you mean here? Given the financial issues in question #6, how realistic is that?

It’s clear that some form of higher education is becoming more important to making a comfortable living.  That doesn’t necessarily mean a four-year college degree, but I’m certainly challenging my children to make that their first target.  As noted above, new technologies make it possible to provide a good college education at an affordable price.  BYU-Idaho, for example, has online degree programs for $65 per credit, or less than $10,000 in total.  Many students will be willing and able to pay more for a mixture of online and on-campus instruction.  Traditional institutions will offer programs at various points along this spectrum, as for-profit institutions are already doing.  We’re going to see more higher education options, more providers, and more students.

9.       The book seems to suggest that tenure for life is justified for qualified academics (p.377). However philosophically sound and desirable such an approach may be, how realistic do you think this is in the current context where practically no one else in the economy has any guarantee of lifetime employment?

It’s important to clarify what we mean by “tenure.”  First, its performance based: you don’t get it for life unless you perform well for life, based on regular review.  Partnership in a law firm, an investment bank, or a consulting firm may be a helpful analogy.  Second, the activities being performed by the tenured professor must be consistent with the mission of the institution, which for most institutions is likely to be narrower than the mission of a large research university.  Most professors will need to spend the majority of their time teaching.  A school that generates the bulk of its revenues via tuition will be able to afford some time for faculty research.  However, that research will need to have relevance to the student learning experience, and it won’t be the driving factor in tenure decisions; teaching quality will be.  Tenure based primarily on publications isn’t a sustainable model for most institutions.

10. What other questions should I have asked you?

It’s worth noting that we’re predicting a different kind of disruption in higher education than the type seen in computer manufacturing, book publishing, or music and movie distribution.  Traditional university and college campuses won’t go the way of the record shop or the video rental store.  Particularly for young students, a college education is a social experience requiring some amount of face-to-face interaction.  The expensive investments that traditional institutions have made in brick-and-mortar facilities and full-time faculty members will always have unique value.  As these institutions adopt online learning technologies, they will be able to offer the best of both worlds to students who can afford to relocate from home and pay a premium over the cost of a fully online education.  Institutions that cling too long to the old model are unlikely to survive.  But those that innovate quickly have a bright future.

___________________

Steve Denning’s most recent book is: The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass, 2010).

Follow Steve Denning on Twitter @stevedenning

And join the Jossey-Bass webinar series aimed at “Killing Dilbert-style management once and for all”: Sep 22-Oct 20, 2011. The second session begins next Wednesday September 28 at noon ET. To register, go here and use discount code JBMSD.

#pmchat is an awesome weekly tweetup of project management enthusiasts.  It starts every Friday at 4.30pm (GMT) with the pre-game radio show hosted by Rob Prinzo (@robprinzo) and Robert Kelly (@rkelly976).  After the 15 minute webcast, the interactive hour long tweetup kicks off.  Topics covered so far include managing scope, building strong project teams, and gathering requirements.

#pmchat enjoys active participation from a tight community of friendly and experienced professionals including @HELENSStudio, @dwrichy, @klkaz, @Project_Mom,@michael_greer, @irivera, @unlikebefore, @RailComm_Paola, @sewah_kram, @ColleenGarton,  and @BridgePM

I hope you can join us next week

Happier Employees Give Companies Better Returns.  Makes sense doesn’t it?

As an industry based lobby group we were faced with Legislation to reduce government funding by $1.9B. We needed to respond quickly and adopted an Agile approach to our digital campaign strategy in order to have a skinny version of the website up and running as soon as possible. We used a mix of Scrum and Kanban methods to prioritize widgets we required on the website and ensure our campaign remained responsive to stakeholders and built iterative changes to the site in order to respond to stakeholders and the political debate.

This is my Agile Lightning talk outlining how a mix of Agile approaches, namely Kanban and Scrum were used as a management tool to coordinate the development of a new website for the campaign. I demonstrated how the adoption of Scrum allowed the team to iteratively build features based on weekly sprint cycles and ensured weekly collaboration and communication between product owner, designers and developers of the website.

 
The introduction of a Kanban board to the Scrum process helped to manage the backlog of work packages and help focus the team on the ranked priorities for the current sprint. This provided a process to manage Workflow and allowed the team to remain flexible and responsive to the changing environment and stakeholder needs when changes were required mid sprint.

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning was done utilising the Elements of User Experience Framework (Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Surface) in order to plan what needed to be produced , what activities were required and requirements we needed to consider.

Kanban Board

• Needed to prioritize features to ensure campaign remained responsive to stakeholder needs
• Visual tool to manage the backlog, focus  team on the ranked priorities
• Process to manage workflow and remain flexible
• Used it to manage 3 projects within the same program “Scrum of Scrums” Board

What we Learned

My Favourite Board – Fin!

Today, the most popular way people prefer to make contact with organizations is online as customers embrace new digital channels. We needed to modernize our digital presence to take the conversation to the channels where those conversations are taking place. Utilising an Agile approach allowed us to increase site usability and responsiveness to consumer needs and adapt and modernise our systems.

What We Did

• Used Agile and User-Centered Design (UCD) tools to elicit requirements, prioritize and groom backlog
• Allowed team to collaboration and get buy-in from stakeholders
• UCD tools developed iteratively to help determine value to stakeholders
• Agile process allowed alignment of wants and needs to prioritize & provide most value

Approach

Our Scrum Process

• 2 weekly sprint cycles
• Continuous integration to build upon skinny solution to respond to evolving needs
• Collaboration between product owner, scrum master and team
• Needs changing so estimation of what could be done and definition of done important
• Prioritisation helped us weight “$$$ Cost” vs “Opportunity Cost” 

I recently presented an overview of the project to my organisation and demonstrated how personas were developed and workshopped with key groups to determine the needs and wants of consumers. The personas were also used to develop user stories which formed the basis of the requirements and feature sets of the site. Card sorting was used to understand how consumers classified the information and what features were of value. A prototype was developed which was a “skinny” version of the site and was used to communicate functionality and desired look and feel of the site to the team and to validate the site with consumers.

Learning Outcome

• User-centered tools and techniques are effective way to improve collaboration and encourage communication with stakeholders and within the development and design team
•  Using a multidisciplinary approach (Agile and User Centered Design) enables you to ensure that the website is useable, adaptive and meets the digital needs of the modern 21st century consumer

Why is your project taking place right now? And not last year, or next year? Are there also any other projects taking place now? Why? What is the challenge? This can be either a threat or opportunity that is the cause / reason for the project. What is the legacy the organization wants to leave behind?

These questions matter. A lot.

Being busy in a project can be overwhelming. Before you know it you are only focused on this Big Adventure. Of course, your project is worth your time and attention. And of course, it is an incredible story, this temporary awesomeness that you and your mates are doing right now.

But it is just exactly that. A temporary story. When you’re done, you’re done.

Your project is part of a larger context. Longer journeys. Larger stories. And these stories shape your project more than you know. It’s like Star Wars. You can watch just episode IV. And enjoy it. But it starts really making sense when you watch the entire series.

Your project is an episode in two stories.

The story of you. The individuals that are involved in the project. An individual has an ambition and a reputation. And he has a role in your Big Adventure.

And the story of the organization.

You can address the Story of You with the Map Of You.

The same principles can be applied to the Organizational Journey.

By exploring the relationship of the project and The Organizational Journey, you and your team create awareness around why you doing things. Awareness beyond the normal “build this” specification. A sense of why you are doing what you are doing. This will help the team to make decisions that fulfill the organizations desires and be more in tune with its context.

Draw an empty map which basically looks like a bow tie. Put “NOW” in the center and “PAST” and “FUTURE” on both sides. Ask the participants to write keywords that answer questions as formulated in the first paragraph of this post.

This exercise is related to The Story Of Your Quest – exercise.

Other Maps.

The Organizational Journey is part of a change/project management strategy focused on culture and using an “adventure travel” metaphor. For more maps and exercise, visit my list of Shrinkonian exercises.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their projects and organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - The Organizational Journey. Mapping The Project Context. is a post from: Project Shrink.

David G. Wilson brings a quote from Consultant-News.com, suggesting that “more and more people seem to be coming to a realisation that it’s not so much that their problems are complex, but that their problem is complexity“.

I have had a number of goes at the issue of complexity in previous posts and I have to admit that over time my view of what complexity is and why it exists, has changed somewhat.

Let’s see if I can explain it in writing:

From a critical analysis perspective the interesting thing about ‘complexity’ is that in essence, in reality, it does not really exist. It is rather a virtual perception, subjectively created by some observers but not by others. I often hear people commenting how ‘in the past the world used to be simpler’. If you contrast the changing reality in the world over the past 500 years or so it is not difficult to see that what some call ‘increased complexity’ is really increased level of interaction, increased lines of communication, many more interfaces etc. Take for example the modern TV remote control. Today’s TV remote control can still perform the simple task of switching the TV on and off. It can also change channels and control the volume. It can also perform some tasks that were not available in the past. For insance you can now freeze the screen, view what’s on in other channels, insert sub-titles, etc.

So it is not that the world has become more complex, it is us who have changed as we now want to manage far many more interactions than our evolutionary capability is allowing us to do comfortably. And this is where Darwin’s theory kicks in. Those of us who feel more comfortable in managing the increased load will do better than those for whom this increased load is a point of increased pressure, tension and distress.

With the above in mind it is clear that reducing complexity will not be possible unless we change our nature and adopt a less competitive nature. Naturally, this is unlikely to happen and so we can expect complexity to further increase.

Think about it!

…is here.

If you asked me to point a single thing, which I hate most in senior management role, I wouldn’t have any problems with the answer. It would be firing people. On my personal hate scale there’s firing, then huge, huge void and only then other unpleasant things and tasks to do.

Each time I fire someone I feel like a complete jerk. It doesn’t matter that the decision is well-grounded. It doesn’t even matter when I’m proven, after some time, it was the right choice. It isn’t any easier.

And the next time you do it doesn’t become any easier either. I mean if executing such decisions is easy for you and you feel comfortable firing people there must be something seriously wrong with you.

Yet I still think firing people is extremely important part of pretty much any management job. If you’re a senior manager you likely have power and authority to make such decisions. If you’re a team manager dealing just with your team of six or something and you don’t have that much of power, you still can convince your superior to make a tough move. Sometimes the latter is even worse as you have to do all the talking as it is you, who started the whole thing.

OK, why is it so important then? Because this is one of methods of building great teams. As harsh as it sounds: sometimes you don’t have enough resources (meaning: time, patience, money) to make a person act on acceptable level and the best thing you can do is to split your ways.

Don’t get me wrong, my advice still is: do everything you reasonably can to fix an underperformer. I know way too many people who started shining when given a second chance to say otherwise. But then remember that it’s a manager who is responsible for building the high-quality team, so if you just accept the underperformer in the team you basically harm the team on many different levels.

What more, sometimes we’re out of luck and we don’t have all the time and money of the world to try virtually every possible thing one could think of. Sometimes our fixing options would be limited. Sometimes constant resistance of the underperformer will make us lose faith faster. Shit happens. We don’t live in ideal world. And then it’s time…

Well, for many managers I know then it’s time just to accept the fact someone is underperforming. And you know what? I understand them. I understand them because firing people is so damn hard and so freaking unpleasant that I can think of thousands of reasons why I shouldn’t do that. At all. So yes, I can perfectly understand them.

But I don’t agree with them. We are paid to do our jobs even when the jobs suck on occasions. When we make our developers write boring documentation which just has to be done it works similarly. The only difference is in level of responsibility. But we still expect our developers would deal with crappy tasks, don’t we?

Having balls to fire people isn’t something which makes a manager. In fact, with a bit of luck we won’t need to fire anyone for years and will be able play the role of guru manager neatly. However, when time comes you better be ready to deal with the worst management task ever. Otherwise your whole team will be constantly taking big hits on morale and you no longer will be considered a rock star manager.

If you’ve just lived through such situation for the first time I have two messages for you. First, it’s one of the most valuable experiences as a manager you can possibly have so good for you. Second, yes, I know how crappy you feel now and it’s not going to become easier next time you do this, sorry.

The discussion of how do you know what done looks like? in the agile software development world has many answers. Ranging from we'll let the customer tell us, to we have this collection of User Stories and Use Cases that tell use what done looks like.

Jens Coldweys (turn on translation) blog speaks to the use of Use Cases and Scenarios in the development of software. These Use Cases and Scenarios need a Reason for existing. This reason is usually missing or is linked to the wrong source.

• The reason we need this is the customer says we do
• The reason we need this is that any system like this has this requirement

The missing piece is not only why but the connections between the why and the actual mission outcome. By that a business mission, a government mission, a military mission, any mission.

So before the next step, let's put some definition out there:

• Mission - why we exist, why we want this system.
• Values - the guiding principles we'll use in fulfilling the mission
• Vision - the picture of the future
• Strategy - the differentiating activities that will be used to fulfill the mission

So where do these Use Cases and Scenarios come from? Good question. No answer to that question? Then these Use Cases and Scenarios have no real reason for being other than someone or some group says they want it. But that usually leads to trouble when those needs and wants themselves don't have an architecture.

• How do they relate to each other?
• What are the dependencies between them?
• Which are more important than others? This is not a ranking system, but which are more important in terms of fulfilling the mission?

The answers to these questions come from the Capabilities Based Plan for the project. This Plan states what capabilities are needed for the mission to be successful, for the system to provide the needed outcomes for the customer, for any result to fulfill its mission.

Don't know what capabilties are needed, the units of measure for those capabilities? Then any set of Use Cases or Scenarios that the user and developers come will likley be OK. This is the same problem with the requirements elicitation process. Requirements need a reason for being. A Raison d'être. Why do we have this requirement, why do we have the Scenario.

Here's how to develop those capabilities statements. Without answering these questions, those wonderful scenarios, Use Cased, User Stories have no real reason for being in the context of a "system."

In 1935, Bill Wilson – an alcoholic whose doctor had given him 6 months to live if he didn’t quit drinking – had a vision. His vision was that while experts were ineffective in curing alcoholism, the addicts themselves were the keys to helping one another overcome the disease. And with that, Alcoholics Anonymous was born. Today, they help over 2 million members and have been the model for numerous Anonymous addiction recovery groups.

In the 1980’s, Richard Stallman’s fierce beliefs in freedom and in the importance of free software (free as in free speech) towards securing the future of a free society led him to create the Free Software Foundation. FSF became the impetus behind the open source movement. Today, developers around the world freely volunteer their time to develop the open source software that tens of millions of us use every day.

In 2000, Jimmy Wales decided to launch a free online encyclopedia for children whose parents couldn’t afford their own. After a tedious process that produced a mere 24 articles, the encyclopedia’s editor – Larry Sanger – introduced wiki technology. That decision led to the 100% user generated encyclopedia that ultimately cost Larry his job. Today, Wikipedia is the world’s largest reference site with over 3.7 million articles. It attracts over 400 million unique visitors every month.

The Community

What is amazing in all of these instances is how people stood up and contributed. Contributed even though there was no clear reward for them to do so. AA members took the 12 Steps and created new chapters around the world, running those chapters with no involvement from Bill W. Developers regularly volunteer their time to create hundreds of thousands of open source projects. Wikipedia’s users not only write the articles, but they serve as custodians to the site. Ask Jimmy Wales who runs Wikipedia’s servers and he’ll tell you he has no idea. The users decide for themselves.

Not only do people voluntarily contribute, but they contribute high quality. A research study found Wikipedia on par with Encyclopedia Britannica for accuracy. And much open source software is considered the best of it’s kind.

The Catalysts

Bill Wilson, Richard Stallman, and Jimmy Wales are all catalysts. Catalysts are visionaries that develop amazing ideas. But instead of holding onto those ideas for themselves, they share their ideas with others. And they inspire others to take action on them. And then, the Catalyst steps out of the way and lets the community carry the idea to incredible results.

Catalysts share their ideas, but they don’t take ownership. If they had, every new AA chapter would have had to go through Bill W. and it would likely have never have reached as many it did. When Jimmy Wale’s initial free encyclopedia was “owned” by him and his editorial team, it managed 24 (as opposed to Wikipedia’s 3.7 million un-owned) articles. And Richard Stallman is quite vocal about his dissatisfaction on open source’s split from his initial vision. But he doesn’t take them down, and so the open source movement continues to grow.

Unstoppable

By not taking ownership, catalysts allow each and every member of the community to take hold of that ownership. The power is distributed to all of the people and these communities become unstoppable as Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom describe in The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

The catalyst’s presence almost always remains felt, but catalysts understand it’s all about letting go and trusting the community, because that is where the true beauty lies.

Trust is a beautiful thing.