Let Go Knowing: How Holding onto Views May Be Holding You Back - Mile High Agile 2015

You undoubtedly have a firmly held set of convictions about what is necessary to do agile well. These convictions have served you well—your teams have delivered better products more quickly and more economically than before they were agile. But could some of your firmly held convictions be holding you back? And have you ever wondered why some of your most agile friends are similarly firm in their own opinions—even ones that are the exact opposite of your own?

In this session, you’ll see ways that biases may be preventing you from questioning your assumptions, why being open to new views is hard but vital, and why beginners so often think they know it all. After this session, you will know how to discern the inviolate rules of Scrum from its merely good practices. You’ll know why you feel certain of some aspects of agile, less so about others. You’ll leave with the confidence to let go of knowing. And when we let go of knowing, we open ourselves to learning, which is the heart of agile.

Transcript

1. Mike Cohn Mile High Agile April 3, 2015 Let Go of Knowing: How Holding onto Views May Be Holding You Back
2. Parametric Estimating Task Decomposition Story Points Ideal Days
3. E xperienced S enior P rogrammer Days E S P
4. 5 8 5 8
5. Parametric Estimating Task Decomposition Ideal Days Story Points
6. Pages 238—40 (and more) are wrong!
7. Open-Minded Willing to consider new ideas
8. 1-week sprints are the best Let’s include the product owner in the retrospective
9. “We do waterfall, but we test all the time.” “We do waterfall, but we integrate weekly.”
10. “I was wrong. The vastness of my wrongness was staggering.”
11. Sprint retrospectives
12. “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it’s not open.“ —Frank Zappa
13. #ICouldBeWrong
14. #QuestionYourAssumptions
18. Loving father
19. #QuestionYourAssumptions Confirmation bias Hindsight bias
20. One-week sprints suck. 1-week sprints are stressful. There’s no time for testing. +1
21. #ConfirmationBias #HindsightBias
22. 1. Question our assumptions 2. Exhibit intellectual humility
23. “Who does such-and-such in Scrum?” “When you’re teaching, always assume there is a silent student in the class who knows more than you do.” —Leo Strauss
24. Dunning-Kruger Effect
25. ComparativeAgility.com False Mostly False Not True or False Mostly True True Management sets goals but doesn't tell team members how to achieve them. All bugs are fixed during the sprint in which they are found.
26. Seven dimensions • Teamwork • Requirements • Planning • Technical practices • Quality • Culture • Knowledge creation • Is the product owner involved in identifying acceptance criteria? • Are tests automated? • Are testers involved early?
27. Quality False Mostly False Not True or False Mostly True True Timing 2 years 6 months Acceptance tests Timing Quality focus
28. #AvoidBrandLoyalty
29. #AvoidBrandLoyalty
31. Sample Scrum rules • Sprints cannot be longer than a month. • Be done with something by the end of the sprint. • Meet at the start of the sprint to discuss what you’ll do during the sprint. Do these
 or else!!
32. “If I’d followed all the rules, I’d never have gotten anywhere.” Marilyn Monroe
33. Test-Driven Development Pair Programming Sprint 0 Definition of Done User Stories Don’t Start Sprints on Mondays Product Backlog Refinement (Grooming) Practices Task Boards
34. “I’m the world’s greatest ScrumMaster!” “I’ve never heard of pair programming.” “Hey, I could be wrong!”
35. “In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know, that's a really good argument, my position is mistaken,’
36. and then they actually change their minds, and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it.
37. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful.
38. But it happens every day. 
 I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
 —Carl Sagan
39. Question your assumptions Exhibit intellectual humility Avoid brand loyalty To remain open-minded:
40. #ICouldBeWrong #ThankYou @MikeWCohn mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com