The art of systemic feedback - AOB2013

Slides from the Agile on the Beach 2013 conference talk on art of systemic feedback.

Transcript

1. The art of systemic
2. I’m Marcin Floryan http://marcin.floryan.pl
3. Sergei head of IT @mfloryan
4. The Conference: This presentation: #agileotb #feedback
5. The Law of Two Feet
6. Acceptance criteria Recognise feedback as a tool Identify properties and limitations of feedback Discover an approach to consider when designing feedback ☐ ☐ ☐
7. Disclaimer It’s not about personal feedback
8. Personal feedback considered harmful Commercial break
10. Non-inverting amplifier
11. Non-inverting amplifier
12. “ feedback improves performance (gain stability, linearity, frequency response, step response) and reduces sensitivity to parameter variations due to manufacturing or environment. Wikipedia
13. “ Because of these advantages, negative feedback is used in this way in many amplifiers and control systems. Wikipedia
14. “ information about reactions to a product which is used as a basis for improvement Oxford Dictionary feedback is
15. “ the modification or control of a process or system by its results or effects Oxford Dictionary feedback is
18. The client knows what they want
19. “ No heart patient ever asked for a pacemaker Dr Deming
20. “ People generally work better by starting with something concrete and tangible, such as examples, by altering rather than creating from scratch, by watching, and by getting feedback. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
21. The developer knows how to build it
22. “ Wouldn't it be easier just to do it right in the first place? Extreme Programming Explained
23. Of course it would, except for three things:
24. We may not know how to do it "right". If we are solving a novel problem there may be several solutions that might work or there may be no clear solution at all. 1
25. What's right for today may be wrong for tomorrow. Changes outside our control or ability to predict can easily invalidate yesterday's decisions. 2
26. Doing everything "right" today might take so long that changing circumstances tomorrow invalidate today's solution before it is even finished. 3
27. “ We think that the best approach a team can take is to use empirical feedback to learn about the system and its use, and then apply that learning back to the system. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
28. Nothing will change along the way
29. “ If your customer knows now just exactly what she wants, and if by the time you’re done she’s still going to want the same thing… Extreme Programming Installed
30. “ It may be the first time in software history that this has happened. Extreme Programming Installed
31. “ Directions set in advance of experience have an especially short half-life. Extreme Programming Explained
32. “ Change is inevitable, but change creates the need for feedback. Extreme Programming Explained
35. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it
36. Agile manifesto – principle 12 At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
37. “ To mitigate the risk of uncertainty, Agile prescribes short iterations with lots of feedback. Lean-Agile Software Development
39. How’s this for feedback?
40. “ Feedback - To learn the appropriate lessons at every possible opportunity The Art of Agile Development
41. feedback
42. deliberate learning
43. feedback
44. feedback recipe o make assumptions explicit o set a clear objective o create a careful design o learn from results o rinse and repeat
45. assumptions
46. “ Scientific reasoning is not something most people pick up naturally or automatically Kludge
47. confirmation bias ! ! !
48. “ […] people all too often look for cases that confirm their theories rather than consider whether some alternative principle might work better. Kluge
49. clear objective
50. Double loop learning
51. careful design
52. fast
53. “ It should be obvious that fast feedback improves the speed of learning. The Principles of Product Development Flow
54. “ What may be less obvious is that fast feedback also increases the efficiency with which we generate information and learn new things. The Principles of Product Development Flow
55. short
56. “ One thing scientists have noted about these intentional negative feedback loops is that short cycles are often better than long ones. […] And evaluating and correcting a project once per day is better than once per month. Management 3.0
57. elimination of
58. “ First learning obstacle concerns the lack of sufficient feedback due to infrequent decisions, which makes it hard to separate signal and background noise. Brilliant Mistakes
59. learning
60. “ Whether professionals have a chance to develop intuitive expertise depends essentially on the quality and speed of feedback, as well as on sufficient opportunity to practice. Thinking Fast And Slow
61. repetition
62. “An effective feedback process can be described as “acting responsively to meaningful data.” Release It
64. “Begin at the beginning, […] and go on till you come to the end: then stop. Alice in Wonderland
65. “Software development, for any one work item is a process of knowledge discovery. David Anderson
66. “ From cybernetics, we have adopted the view that a software development team is a goal- directed system that regulates itself using various feedback cycles. Management 3.0
67. feedback about the product feedback about the process
68. agile is naturally full of cycles
69. iterations iterative development
70. iterations produce increments
71. 1 2 3 Incremental development by Jeff Patton
72. using feedback requires iterative development
73. 1 2 3 Iterative development by Jeff Patton
74. Yes, iterative development means doing the same thing more than once
75. feedback about our product
76. by  VFQ  from  emergn   Loops in software development
77. exploration
78. “ If the only feedback you receive is the errors detected late in the lifecycle of your project, during testing in the large, or after the application has been released, they are likely to be very expensive to fix. Agile Modeling
79. coding
80. “ Let’s be clear about that: if it’s worth having the programmers build it, it’s worth knowing that they got it right. Extreme Programming Installed
81. unit testing
82. “ Test-driven development applies the same [principle of fast and short feedback] principle to programmer intent. The Art of Agile Development
83. integration
84. acceptance
85. demonstration
86. production
87. monitoring
88. concept
89. “ Only code that you can actually release to customers can provide real feedback on how well you’re providing value to your customers. The Art of Agile Development
90. by  VFQ  from  emergn   Loops in software development
91. “ The nested feedback loops reinforce each other; if a discrepancy slips through an inner loop, there is a good chance an outer loop will catch it. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
92. feedback about our process
93. “ Everyone involved in a software project has to learn as it progresses. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
94. “ What is the simplest thing we can do to create fast feedback in a group of humans? Increase face-to- face communications. Don Reinertsen
95. XP
96. Scrum
97. PDCA
98. PDCA
99. Lean
100. OODA
101. “ The second O, orientation […] is the most important part of the O-O-D-A loop since it shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act. John Boyd
102. “ we apply feedback cycles at every level of development, organizing projects as a system of nested loops ranging from seconds to months Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
103. The right tool?
104. Cynefin by  Karl  Scotland  
105. Cynefin simplified 1.  Just about everyone in the world has done this. 2.  Lots of people have done this, including several people in the company. 3.  Someone in our company has done this. 4.  Someone in the world did this, but not in our organization (and probably at a competitor). 5.  Nobody has ever done this before. a5er  Liz  Keogh  
106. Cynefin by  Karl  Scotland   feedback
107. Don’t use feedback
108. “ information is fundamentally tied to the recipient’s uncertainty about the message’s content and their ability to predict it in advance WHAT-IF XKCD
109. So, how’s this for feedback?
110. What did we learn?
111. I guess we learnt not to do it again…
112. I guess we learnt not to do it again…
113. “ Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming, feedback is the treatment. Extreme Programming Explained
114. Further reading
115. The Remember Slide • feedback is a learning tool • requires cycles • loops can be nested and concurrent • you have to design your feedback • assumptions + objective + results
116. So Thank You
117. License This presentation is provided under the Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 3.0 Unported License to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work to Remix — to adapt the work You are free Under the following conditions Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.