Lean Tribe 45 - Dancing in the Stairs - Tobias Fors

Effective agile collaboration between business experts and developers requires effective communication - but we often talk past each other. Why is this - and how can we fix it? In this lightning talk I'll present a simple but powerful thinking tool that will let you have better conversations around how purpose and strategy connect with with code and activities.

Tobias Fors is a partner at consulting company Citerus since the year 2000. He has the completely made up title "full stack management consultant" and spends his days teaching and consulting with Swedish software developing organizations.

Transcript

1. Dancing in the Stairs
   Tobias Fors
   tobias.fors@citerus.se
   @tofo
   0709 - 43 90 86
   A thinking tool for connecting strategy and execution
   # Dancing in the stairs
   
   Effective agile collaboration between business experts and developers requires effective communication - but we often talk past
   each other. Why is this - and how can we fix it? In this lightning talk I'll present a simple but powerful thinking tool that will let you
   have better conversations around how purpose and strategy connect with with code and activities.
   
   Tobias Fors is a partner at consulting company Citerus since the year 2000. He has the completely made up title "full stack
   management consultant" and spends his days teaching and consulting with Swedish software developing organizations.
   

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2. http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
   Agile brings business and dev people together daily
   

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3. What if I told you …
   Story mapping
   Features - epics - stories
   Impact mapping
   Product breakdown structure
   Splitting
   

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4. But there’s a gap
   

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5. The collaboration monster?
   

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6. We build bridges to connect the two sides

   Make it easier to collaborate as closesly as we need to
   
   Collaborative planning sessions, demos, and so on
   
   But there’s another gap. This one is a mental gap.
   
   Even though we now meet regularly, this mental gap still remains.
   
   We see it as when meetings seem to drag on forever
   
   and we often misunderstand it each other.
   
   ”Just tell us what to do!”
   
   ”How hard can it be? Just do it!”
   
   

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7. We’re comfortable at different conceptual levels
   
   Some love to talk time, money, value
   
   Some love to talk code
   
   Somehow, these obviously have to connect
   
   

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8. Presenting the ”why-how-stairs”.
   
   Or maybe ”the value stack”, or ”the ends/means stack”
   
   If you step up, you get answer that are increasingly about value
   
   If you step down, you get answer that are increasingly about solution choices
   

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9. ”We’re aiming for twice the X!”
   ”How does this help us get twice the x?”
   Of course, to those more comfortable closer to how, the top seems like ”up in the clouds”
   
   and for those comfortable at the top, the bottom seems like ”way below the surface”
   
   We counter this by beeing specific without providing solution: ”We’re aiming for twice the X!”
   
   We counter the latter by always connecting to value. ”How does this help us get more of X”?
   

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10. Example. Can be skipped.
    

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11. Recommendations
    ‣ Increase your awareness of which ”level” you choose to operate at
    ‣ Practice ”dancing in the stairs”
    ‣ Collaboratively examine the connection between ends and means
    ‣ Grow a strong cross-functional team …
    ‣ … that can explore the solution space more autonomously
    

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