The Dream Team Nightmare

In this episode, Justyna and Paul talk about Portia Tung's choose your own agile adventure novel.

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Portia Tung’s blog

The School of Play

The original Choose Your Own Adventure books

Transcript

spk_0:   0:00
Welcome to the agile Book Club. Your your hosts, Houston A and Paul Heiple. Hello, Houston. How are you doing? I want to ask you first before you're asking. Because I don't know when toe to us. Uh

spk_1:   0:15
oh. I'm doing fine. You know, I started getting out of the house a little bit. I started running in the morning. I've taken a couple of bicycle rides. It was just driving me crazy being indoors all the time. And there aren't that many people out there, and I'm wearing my mask and everything, so I'm being safe and responsible. But I was I was kind of going nuts. And it's amazing how different it is to just get out and exercise and move a little bit, if only for an hour.

spk_0:   0:44
Yeah. Yeah, that makes a huge, a huge, huge difference. But for example, today I realize that it's already around 50 days that I'm at home, and I'm shocked that time passed so fast. Like I don't know, it's crazy.

spk_1:   1:00
If you had asked me a year ago what I would do if I was at home for 50 days, I would answer I would dramatically improve my Polish by now, I would have read so many books my house would be spotless. I finally organized all of this stuff, the bookcase with the alphabetical. And now, thanks to the coronavirus, I realized time at home was never the problem. Because I have only really done one thing that I'm proud of in the last 50 days.

spk_0:   1:39
Oh, does. And

spk_1:   1:39
that is that I have gotten really good at making soured Oprah, just like every other white man in the world. I can't even be proud of being good at making Salado bread because everybody is proud of making a sour dough bread right now.

spk_0:   1:57
Uh,

spk_1:   1:59
cats love it. The cats love having all of the monkeys at home all the time. So how about you

spk_0:   2:06
wait a second? Because I hear a child on the corridor that it's screaming like crazy and literally you can hear that.

spk_1:   2:13
I hear it. Yeah, we'll go smack it.

spk_0:   2:23
I have to keep stare saved this gospel. I can't do it right now. Okay? Child is gone. Actually similar to you. I also had, like, huge plants I made at the beginning of the current, and I made the least with everything that I will learn everything that I will do. So I'm ha live way. So it's not like wanting only but still less less less than I expected. And I have no idea where does all this time going

spk_1:   2:59
now I did find that imposing some structure into my life was helpful. So, like there's, ah, gym owner who obviously gym owners air suffering right now of all of the people who are going to be out of work the longest. I think, uh, uh, hairstylist, barbers and gym owners are probably going to be the last people to go back to work. And so he started offering exercise sessions in real time, which I like a lot better than me choosing the time than doing something on YouTube, for example, because it's a commitment I owe it to him to show up at seven o'clock every morning because I paid for it. Send out for He's expecting me to be there, but, um uh, it's so uncreative for for example, for example, my exercise session yesterday morning Waas we were supposed to do 39 push ups and then eight sit ups and then 36 push ups and 12 sit ups and then 30 to push ups and and 15 sit ups just alternating like that into were doing eight push ups and 40 sit ups. And that was it. That was it. It was just a push. A push up, push a push up, push up, push a push up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, steps it up, push up, push up with And just that for 20 minutes.

spk_0:   4:30
Oh, I would

spk_1:   4:30
think it was exhausting. Yeah, it was absolutely exhausting, but really, really uninspired. And I signed up for a Polish course and intensive polish course. So for two weeks, I was spending 2.5 hours a day just studying Polish online, and I really appreciate that it had a start time and in time. So there is a place that I had to be because procrastination is so easy when all the days just run into each other. If I don't even know what day of the week it is, what does it matter if I don't do the thing until the next day? Whatever that is, you know. So having some kind of externally imposed structure has been really helpful for me

spk_0:   5:11
like, for example, that they we really have to record the podcasts because it's the last day of the month.

spk_1:   5:17
Yes, it is. The last year End of that reminds me of the book that we're gonna be talking about today. One of my takeaways is actually related to the contrast between last responsible moment and procrastination. Where is the line when you're procrastinating and when you being responsible? I have to say in this case, the fact that we have to have this podcast out in the next eight hours and it has to be recorded and edited. I'm saying it's probably closer to procrastination in the last responsible,

spk_0:   5:46
Fortunately is, yeah, but But I hope that it will be fun because book was really great writ, uh so maybe I will just jump into elevator pitch. If you don't mind. Before

spk_1:   5:59
you do that, maybe we should tell people what we're talking about.

spk_0:   6:02
It's about the Dream Team nightmare by Porsche took

spk_1:   6:07
and it is a fun book. Why don't you introduce it to us? Could you could you tell us what was what was your your elevator pitch? If you had to pitch this book to somebody. What would you say?

spk_0:   6:18
First of all, it was the first time in my life that I was so focused and fully engaged during reading, mostly because of the book structure. It was another adventure that required from the reader to become the main character Jim, who had, like, impossible mission to accomplish. He had only five days, and he was in the position off being external, agile code consultant who had to save kind of safe the the Dream Team that was not performing well. And if he would fail, then they will outsource the whole project so the team actually would lose that their job. And I would recommend this book for all agile practitioners who are looking for it safe to fail environment to try their ideas. Or, for example, Teoh make different choices that they would do in the reality because, as I mentioned the beginning, almost at the end off the off it off the page, we have to make decision. Which path do you follow? And depending on your tours, you learned in the different part of the book and during the reading it was very tempting. Teoh check different options and I know Paul would you have done? But I'm not going to spoil that yet. But I was always wondering how many possible endings has this book, and I read it before our podcast. It act

spk_1:   7:40
well, you know, in in terms of my elevator pitch. The introduction of this book makes it pretty clear that it's aimed at novice, agile lists. I mean, very, very novice. She actually the first page before you get in the book, she says. If you don't know what Scrum is, you should probably read a book about Scrum. And so if she's even addressing people who don't know what Scrum is, and this book was written a few years ago, I forget when, um me this check the the copyright So the book was written in 2013. But if you don't know what Scrum is in 2013 year and office, I think and so is written for novice, agile lists. But but I don't say that while it's really good for the novice, I think there's something in this book for everybody and given that the our Allies so low, given that the book is is so light and fun and easy to read. You don't have to get a ton out of it to make it worthwhile. So for somebody who's that who's really in office, there's going to be a ton of new ideas in this book that are great. But for somebody who is not in office, I mean me. I've been I've been working as an agile coach now for what? Another moments ashamed to say it's It's over 15 years now, and I've found two ideas in this book that I've never used myself, and I don't recall coming across before and for ah, light afternoons read. They have to new ideas that I can take the work. I think that's great. So I would recommend this book really to everybody because it's a fun read in this full of full of pleasant ideas. So but but especially I think because there's this two scenarios, I think that could make this book really appropriate. And that is anybody who is just entering a scrum master agile coach role or considering doing their first consulting work. This is kind of an illustration of what What a consultant's first week on the job is. Luck and that's the most terrifying time for any consulting. How do you make an impression? How do you get started? So it's really a nice story that takes some of the pressure off of your first coaching job, your first consultant gig, your first scrum master position. And also, I think that is really good for looking at how to put this as you said this. This is a company that's facing a really a really crisis. It's a team that's facing a crisis. The company's going to have to do something drastic. The teams win, lose their jobs. The coach is not going to get more than five days on the job if Jim can't come up with a solution. And so it's a really devastating, challenging scenario was like the worst thing that an agile coach might be be thrown into. But by walking through the process with Jim, it really demystifies the role of the coach and makes it a whole lot less scary. So anybody who's dealing with ah crisis situation might spend a Sunday afternoon beating. The spoke to get some better ideas about how they could approach it when they go back to work

spk_0:   10:47
Yeah, I think. But also when it comes for the writing craft, I really appreciated. Wish what she had done with the road playing storyline, as you mentioned. And the masterpiece for me was actually attaching James City at the beginning of the book that you had to jump to the last page of the book to actually get into his shoes. I really, really, really, really, really love that one. So it's thank you. Poor suffered

spk_1:   11:16
now when I was a kid, I think it was back in the seventies. I don't know if if the idea of 20 adventure books is older than that, but I remember when I was a child that I did a lot of reading. I was one of those shy kids who didn't go to the playground because they got beat up a lot. So they stayed home and read books and choose your own adventure. Books became enormously popular with Children, so I love these adventure stories where you have multiple endings and you have to make choices and your choice is actually matter. So it was really refreshing and fun to be able to do that again. As as an adult, But I gotta say it was it was also a little scary because, you know, I've been doing this a long time. I know. I know my job. I know my business. I'm good at it. But what? I started going through this the spoken taking what I thought was perfectly reasonable decisions. I got fired twice on the first day. I ended up working a week, but none of my ideas too cold. I am not sure what it is. I think that, uh so, for example, for example, you are engines, shoes, your agile coach. You've got five days to make an impression. If you can make an impression five days, you might have a long term gig that could pay really well. But if not you just out looking for work again, And s I as agile coaches, independent, agile coaches, you know that it might have taken somebody like Jim months of sales work to get this five day gig. Right? So obviously I go in there and I'm faced with a difficult choices. Like, what do you do with the team on day one? And obviously, if you've got to make an impression, if you've got to make changes in only five days. You need to get people lined up and listening to you and ready to obey. And so you have a team meeting and you lay on the jargon. You lay it on heavy. You have lots of slides. You have diagrams. You have lots of jargon. You tell them about weevil distributions. You tell them about about you. You

spk_0:   13:17
want to look smart.

spk_1:   13:18
They know exactly you need them to know that you know more than they do. And you know you can solve the problems because otherwise they're going to second guess all of your decisions, Right? Well, I got fired for that.

spk_0:   13:32
Surprised to price pull, you got fired for trying to be too smart way

spk_1:   13:38
and And also so so like, for example, the top management wants to come into the team introductory meeting. I think that's a fantastic opportunity, right? You know, if I if I'm gonna establish my authority from the beginning, what better than to have the guy who can fire all of them standing by my side, nodding at everything I say now, Porter, apparently portions and think highly that. But

spk_0:   14:04
you see

spk_1:   14:04
the problem is that there's there's there's some parts of this book there, so touchy feely like, You know, you really have to get to know the team and and understand everybody and everything and get everybody involved in all decision making in everything which, which strikes me, is unrealistic because so as an adroll coach on a short term gig, what's the only thing worse than failure? It's somebody else taking credit for your success. You've got to make sure that the ideas air yours and that you're up front and everyone can see you in front of the any action that happens. Because if you if you fail, I mean, let's face it. If you fail, you can always blame somebody else. But if you succeed and don't get the credit, then what's the point of doing this? Introductory five David in the

spk_0:   14:52
story are so evil,

spk_1:   14:55
so I really, really found it challenging to try to get to a success scenario. This book

spk_0:   15:01
I'm not surprised that you didn't succeeds Tube illness Was that an evil approach? It reminds me of our A pretty full to talk with a guy. Cats. You know how you have to make everyone toe a bear. You I succeeded.

spk_1:   15:14
Hey, people wanted to buy that.

spk_0:   15:16
Yes, yes. A lot of people actually dio which makes me think maybe that's worth doing if there's already audience that it's ready to spend money on it. So actually, I succeeded by the first trust, I guess poll you have tow follow my leader this time and learn from me. But there was the one point during the reading at which I was so curious to check what will happen if I followed us my curiosity rather than the rational way off thinking that normally I would do and I got fired. But that was just, you know, one time that I was having, you know, pan in my hand and I was like, Okay, I'm curious. Let's let's check that I was fired, fired, and I doesn't know, came back and pretended that it didn't happen and follow my successful path to go make the nightmare dream. The dream team and staff. But yeah, So let's talk

spk_1:   16:17
about two takeaways. What were your big takeaways from this book?

spk_0:   16:20
Actually, my first take away reminded me off what you told me a few years ago that one of the signs that you should look for when you walk into the new, uh, organization is the way how they behave in the office. That actually office can tell you so many details about the company culture and about people. And it actually stacked with me for years. When you said that when you're in the new room and you see that everyone is busy, you know that they have problems and you if you work through the corridor and you don't hear any conversation, the whole open space, you know that there is a problem. And actually, in the beginning off the book Jim, he had a similar walk walk about. I think that is how he how he call it. And he had already, like a few very brief observations. Like, for example, all the desks are separate, which means they don't do per programming. He had the quick look on their charts so he could spot it summer crucial problems that they're facing. And yeah, actually, I think that this is very, very important part of the consulting toe when you can just make observation without even asking for that. So I like that, Yeah,

spk_1:   17:37
I like that one. I like that with, um, one of the things I like about this book is the way that small things really matter, as you discovered when you when you saw a perfectly reasonable option, not the one that you would have chosen, but but one that was worth investigating and you explored it straight to termination. It may seem a little unreasonable to think that just making a single poor decision could lead to an absolute tragedy. But I think it's I think it's reasonable the way she does it in this book, because the kind of decisions that seem like the reasonably trivial that lead to disaster also reflect a point of view, a perspective that is one of the most challenging things about becoming a good scrum master, agile coach, which is before example, When do you step in and intercede with a problem? And when do you let a team solve their own problems? And if you choose, for example, to to allow interpersonal conflict to play itself out, that's that's probably not the kind of thing that you want to allow to play itself out. If it's ah team, that's that's trying to solve a problem, you might want to allow the team to solve their own problems. So if you're inclined to let interpersonal conflict just go and be okay, then maybe the single instance won't be the death of everything. But that general inclination is going to get you into trouble. And I think she does a good job of making making those kind of ways of looking at problems and knowing when to jump in and do something and when toe hang back really really matter in the book is also very reflective of what makes a great agile coach.

spk_0:   19:28
Well, actually, I'm a laughing right now because that is exactly the moment when I got fired. It was this moment off off the conflict, and I had to choose if I let the conversation, like, actually happen or if I step in and because for me, this this this part of the book was like, you know, the game off turn is happening right now, you know? What do you do? And I had to check both Yeah,

spk_1:   19:51
so I never take a week from you.

spk_0:   19:53
Another take away from me was actually to connect. Scram masters because also in this organization, loving on demand organizations that we've heard or we've seen scram, musters somehow work alone on they don't see a need very often toe actually cooperate with each other because they perceived the goal as making my team the most. Scram, scram ish. A zit is possible. I like that, Jim. Even though that he was there just for a few days, he made it possible for scram masters to collaborate, and he showed them the value. He told them about the importance off sister thinking and the risk that comes from systems up optimization. So I I took that that was just a Braille and and that it was one off. The changes that have done that will stay with them forever, or at least to the first in those crime master ego, fighter, whatever we call it. But, yeah, I thought that that was really, really great and very easy. Think, though it took just in the book. Of course, I know that in the reality it might be a little bit harder, but it took just one lunch one walk around the office to actually discover new people who are also working in scrum and what was interesting. There were teams in this organization that were successful, scram implementation that they could actually learn from each other, but they never done

spk_1:   21:19
let. That's an inspiring point. Two for independent, agile coaches is this book does a nice job of illustrating how sometimes having an outside perspective can really change the way organizations behave and think so. Conversations that wouldn't happen among people in the organization because they all have the same shared assumptions and happened much more easily when there's an outsider involved, and it's also a little sad. So, for example, when he does come up with some proposals for solutions, one of the schoolmasters asks the question. And it's a very valid question, which is, I wonder, if management would listen to us if the proposal came from one of us instead of from you.

spk_0:   21:58
Ah, yeah, and that's it's kind

spk_1:   22:01
of sad, but also, I think, relevant. Sometimes a consultant can say things that an employee can't.

spk_0:   22:09
That's true. That's true. Yeah, so, you know, one

spk_1:   22:11
of things I really like about Jim is Jim had one of things I both liked and disliked. Jim had a set of best practices in his head from his experience and you see this come out sometime when he's talking about, for example, story points or better than estimating in ours, for example, which is it's it's fair not everybody would agree. I think I think it's worth remembering that some of the things that they talk about here are not part of scrum at all. You can have have a fabulous scrum implementation with no estimation. Estimation is not part of scrum story points or Knot's part of scrum planning. Poker is not part of scrum. There are alternatives all of these things. But one of the things that I like about Jim is while he does have these ideas about best practices, he's also very flexible about implementing them at the right time. So, for example, when he sees the team is finding a way of estimating that works for them, he might have a better idea. I say that in air quotes, but he keeps it to himself and he just lets the team take, take their baby steps or when he does the very first rate retrospective and this team is just pulling their hair out in frustration, he knows that a retrospective best practice or these retrospective good practice is to start with the positives to set the nice tone for the meeting and the great connections between people. But he realizes, in this particular instance, these people are just bursting with frustrations. And if he doesn't let them get them out, he's never gonna get them thinking freely and and listening. They have to be heard before they can pick and listen. And so he's willing to bend the rules. He's willing to be flexible to these to the situation.

spk_0:   23:53
But actually, when I was reading, I was a little bit skeptical about one aspect. That he was allowing them to take baby steps. I mean, in the spectrum off just having five days to complete such a huge task, you know, do the crazy enormous challenge actually, for him. When he was in an outsider for this organization, I was wondering how realistic is that that he was letting them taking those baby steps, you know?

spk_1:   24:27
Well, I thought it was reasonable the way he did it, because well, for example, and in that particular case, where would rather than where he had a decision between accepting their estimations and the R A Y calculations that came out of them and taking that proposal to management, he could have instead taught them about how he would like them to estimate and then do the whole activity again. So I think he did a good, good balance of recognizing the team, learning to be agile, which is going to be a slow and gradual process, and the team accomplishing the goals of his particular agenda for those five days well enough, and and that they even there's There's even advice, discussion of the perfection game, which I think is relevant. I think the Jim's got a really good notion of how good is good enough, given the circumstances and how to keep the perfect from being the enemy of the good.

spk_0:   25:29
Yeah, actually, you stole my take away because this perfection gave a Z, probably read in in the book that I'm right, right? Right now, writing and you are just helping me. And I did think it for intelligence. Once I does read this part about perfection game and at the same time I was working the documentary Cosmos about Speed of Light, I was like Oh, my God. There's, like, you know, such a beautiful metaphor that you will never that will never, ever be able to move a speed off life. But we are just trying to go as fast it is possible. And does my head go went crazy? Yeah. Okay. And the way and the way. Speaking off metaphors that stuck with me at the end of the book, I have to mention the planning session that Jim compared to going for a shopping. And I think that it was very, very great idea for team toe understand the limits that they have for the capacity the budget that they could spend and to help them to make a aware decisions off what they can invest. What is the best idea? Toe dough. I'm not sure if you read this part off the book or you didn't go to this choice.

spk_1:   26:41
Oh, no, I read that part of this.

spk_0:   26:42
Okay, Okay. Okay. So I think if I will be again in the room with people during the planning session, I will try to use this metaphor because I think it's very easy for everyone to imagine that they go for a shopping and based on that, they can actually have a better conversation with each other.

spk_1:   27:01
That is what example of several of the tools and ideas that a coach might have in her tool kit. One of the other ones that I enjoyed was whether there's the There's a shopping metaphor. There's there's the the perfection game. There were a few others that I liked, some of the ice breaking exercises to get to know the team exercises, and such, I thought, were a useful guideline. And that's that's kind of what I meant by this book could make it a lot easier for a novice, agile coach or or even an experienced, agile coaches doing their first independent consultant gig to plan her first day on the job. It basically just walks you through the process, what what to do and what not to do On your first days in a new engagement. I feel very comfortable.

spk_0:   27:49
So what was your school? I had a

spk_1:   27:51
few others. Yeah, and some of these are just small things, like things I know, but it was nice to hear, hear it said, because I hadn't heard it. Heard it explains some ET before like, for example, it's better to start a sprint on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday than on a Monday or Friday, because I reminded of a Dilbert cartoon in which the boss was complaining that 40% of all employees sick leaves were on Mondays and Fridays.

spk_0:   28:21
Mm,

spk_1:   28:22
which OK, do the math. I I'll give you give you a moment to do the math listeners. But 40% of all Stickley's happened on Mondays and Fridays, and that sounds like like a employee conspiracy. But but in fact, people are more likely to be either out or otherwise distracted on Mondays and parties. Mondays and Fridays are very bad days to plan team meetings. And if you're sprints, are start on Mondays and end on Fridays. That means that you're going to have challenges getting everyone together for the Sprint, planning for the sport, for you and for the retrospective exact. But if you running, say, say, from Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, then all of your most important, uh, ceremonies happened in the middle of the week, when people are more likely to be in the office and available,

spk_0:   29:16
but earlier, actually right that there is, like so many little things in this book that make you have a smile on your face or things like, Yeah, I'm glad someone says that One of the quotation that I really like that it's extremely, extremely obvious. But as you know, I'm princess. Obvious is many things become possible when people choose to work together. A simple Is that, Yeah,

spk_1:   29:41
yes, that that that is its observations like that that make my son call you princess. Yeah, but sometimes we forget the obvious.

spk_0:   29:50
Yeah, exactly. And one of the obvious. That was also my take, a way that made me happy that she mentioned that was to get product owner onboard because since the first part of the book, I was like, Please take a center like try to build a connection with her. You know for sure she's handling more issues than she's capable off. And that was actually true. As most of product owners, she was pushed by business, marketing says, and also she was having some crucial information that she was not allowed to share with a team. So it was not hair fold in 100% that she was not spending time with them on that she was not talking to them or anything like that, because the and of Ironman made it impossible for her and the happy ending with Cassandra. And at the end, she made her own avatar as a part of the team. I think that it was one of the biggest award for Jim to see that she finally became a part of the team, even though that circumstances are just like that,

spk_1:   30:55
and the way it happened, I thought, was very nice. I'm not gonna go into it cause I don't want to give away any any of that, the juicy bits of the story. But but indeed it it's It's amazing how sometimes things that just seem patterns of, of working patterns, of interaction that air just established seem to be unchangeable, when in fact, the barriers to change can sometimes be very, very minor. It's just it's just assumptions that keep people from stretching what they believe is possible and try to achieve within what they would like to achieve. So that was really nice illustration of how Jim goes about doing that and how Team goes about doing that. I thought was charming.

spk_0:   31:39
Yeah, and pull could please just tell listeners because I know that, but they don't know that you had kind of two attempts to start reading the book.

spk_1:   31:50
Oh, okay. That was a bit That was a bit people, just in case anyone didn't get it. Case. And when is tuning into this for the first time? And they don't know me. That was a bit my my first attempts to read the book. The first times I I attempted to meet the book. My goal was to get fired as soon as possible and because I wanted to find all of the failure scenarios because those are more interesting. You learn more from failure than from success, but, uh, but indeed, I went all the way through the book four times before I hit a success scenario. I found three of the failure scenarios. I don't know if there's more than one success scenario, because I only came to one, but I read the book. I read the book four times. End to end, End to end. You know, it's there's no actually this book and end, you read it from the beginning to and there there are ways that you can read this book and get to the end in 15 minutes if you're enough of a jerk. And, uh but but the kind of things that the kind of decisions that you can take that lead to disaster are decisions that are very, very reasonable and very human, very understandable and that people actually take on a regular basis. There's nothing that I did to get fired that I haven't seen people do in real her. So that said, I am a jerk.

spk_0:   33:20
Did you have any takeaways from from your failures, Like anything that you know surprised you, if that's still possible after center extensive experience in field.

spk_1:   33:32
Ah, yeah, I think. And I touched on this a little bit during when I was talking about the elevator pitch. But really, this idea that that really small things matter and that you can't go through the complex experience of interacting with lots of people, lots of different situations, with the constant fear that at any moment you could make a devastating mistake that can destroy your career that don't just induce way too much stress, but the the fact that there are some heuristics that can be applied to social circumstances like, for example, differences of opinion are okay. Personal conflict is not so. If you see people arguing two different positions but arguing them in a rational, professional way, then you may have an opinion about which is the better one. But that's a good opportunity for school master to shut up and stand back and let the team sort out their problems. But when it turns personal, you little heuristic can kick in and say, at any moment now somebody could say something that they can't take back at any moment. Now we could start slamming doors and burning bridges, and I can't let that happen, huh? So you really have to kind of cultivate those human sticks for yourself so that you don't have to necessarily be terrified, every single interaction. But you do have the the instincts in the intuition to know when to act and would not.

spk_0:   35:14
I couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. They have any any other takeaways ball.

spk_1:   35:19
I like the way that Jim puts together in my set of metrics to gauge whether or not the team is accomplishing what they're setting out to accomplish in improving the way they want to improve, but makes a very useful point that all of these metrics should be displayed together, not individually, because we're talking about a complex adaptive system and any change to any one of its parts there, any change in one of those interactions is going to have unintended consequences. So if you if you're only paying attention to the metrics that are misbehaving to the metrics that aren't performing to the expectations, you can get into ridiculous situations where you can say in this sprint, our goal is to get quality up. And so for the next 34 sprints, we're gonna work on improving quality, and then all of a sudden, throughput becomes our biggest problem. So the next several streams were working on speaking up throughput. And then we realized their biggest problem. That was quality. So gonna spend next several sprints, improving quality.

spk_0:   36:20
All right in

spk_1:   36:21
Bali looks good. Now we need to start working. So if you're not looking at all of the various metrics that are coming out of the system together as a coherent whole, you don't see the relationships between, and I thought that was a result. Valid observation people tend to pay attention to what's on fire and ignore what's going well.

spk_0:   36:41
Yeah, it's Respa shelling as circumstances when you work in the night more night, Marty.

spk_1:   36:49
Okay, can I show one?

spk_0:   36:50
What has it got? One

spk_1:   36:51
more. And I This is another thing that I really liked. I keep a journal myself, and it's it's not a good journal. I don't keep it every day. It's a mixture of personal and professional content, and I used it because I have such an incredibly poor memory for my own

spk_0:   37:09
life. I go see them that yet

spk_1:   37:13
terrible. And so I flipped to my journals, and I'm just astonished that the things that I've done thought experienced last week we were talking Teoh Georgetown, winning the author of the last book that we read software estimation without guessing,

spk_0:   37:28
yes, conduct.

spk_1:   37:29
And he was referring often to the lessons that he took out of his journals. He was referring to how he would keep a journal after important conversations with stakeholders with clients with team members and such. He would make note of the kind of challenges they were facing, the options that they were considering, but also the conditions that were driving these conversations and then reflecting back on them weeks, months and years later with the benefit of hindsight and more experience. And I found that to be a very interesting idea. And in this book, Jim has a particular format for daily journaling, which I found if somebody's not journaling at all, which I think is probably most people, I think Jim's examples of how he keeps a daily journal at the end of every single day he does it religiously is really a useful example of how one can get started. They're tremendously useful for performance reviews. They're useful for retrospectives if they're useful for showing the journey of a team. One of one of the things that Jim says in this book, which I rather like, is it's part of the scrum, master's responsibility, or part of the agile coaches responsibility to keep a record of the team's improvements so that they can look back and realize how much they've accomplished. And the log could be one of those things, too. So I really liked the daily logs in the spoken if a coach or a scrum master isn't keeping a daily record of their activities, interactions, accomplishments shortcomings and having some kind of metric of their satisfaction with their day every day. This model could be a really inspiring one for it.

spk_0:   39:07
Yeah, I remember the feeling when I was actually going through the book and I saw his journal. I was like, I wish I have done it before. You know, I'm doing my personal, like, private journal, but I don't know, It just never occurred to me like, you know, that you can do it the same for your work, like

spk_1:   39:27
so that was my my last big take away favorite quotations. I know what you're going to be. So let you go first. Yeah, let me for taking

spk_0:   39:38
OK, OK, OK, OK, because actually it was now I will play a blame game. It was not my fault that I was out off takeaways. It was your fault because you stole my so I will go first. So I don't think that we all ever become Edgell, says Cassandra. Our organization is not set up for it. It would take a serious culture change and a return to the company's ordinaire values off Kirk consideration and collaboration. It was my favorite one of the favorite quotations, mostly because it was said by Cassandra was the product owner and having her understanding off such a deep, agile minds, it was kind off good to have in the book. Yeah, it was very rewarding for

spk_1:   40:29
a week and as a you know, as a trading from back of the room training trainer, that building on what you already know is always an easier way to learn. So I really like the way that in that observation, she points out that the kind of the kind of culture that they need in order to become his agile as a large organization, as they want is rooted in the kind of culture that they've already experienced when they were a small organization. So they know how to do this. They've done this before. They're just allowing the new circumstances Teoh, to make them forget who they are.

spk_0:   41:09
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Gorky and your school.

spk_1:   41:14
Okay, so I'm gonna take this one from you. Ah, a poem is never finished. Only abandoned.

spk_0:   41:20
Yes, that was a

spk_1:   41:23
quotation of a quotation. So it's a quotation of another quotation. It was included in the book, but I really like the observation in terms of the perfection game, and that is that and and it's so very true. Have you ever tried to write poetry? It's It's never finished. It's now as good as it could be. I've revisited some of my own work. I was like trying to go back and look again at that novel that I started what, four years ago, and I would just rewrite all of the bits that I wrote back then that I was satisfied with time you never actually done. And Justus, you never finished with a poem unless it's not that that that you never finished, it's that you've got to choose the point at which you let it go, and that is true of so much else that we do in software as well. The goal is not to have everything be exactly perfect to have every output every every report every, um, every algorithm, every everything be perfect. It's to know when to let it go and move on to the next thing.

spk_0:   42:29
Paul again, we achieved a new format when you make me cry, but I have no idea. I know I think I was thinking about letting things go and perfection just makes me kind off sensitive interest. Anyway, back to back to the post a one little comment. I had a friend of mine. She communicates with me and my second best friend impose. When we ask her How is she doing? You don't get like it's OK or something just right, like a poem about it. And I remember that at one point my one of my friends was like very analytical, you know, mine said, And she she can't take. And she just said, Could you please just tell me if you're OK? Because I have no idea when I read it. So, yeah, poems are beautiful, but

spk_1:   43:18
okay, I've got one more and that is I like this idea that he came across team furniture and team furniture is doing agile still rather well. I mean, they're getting stuck by a few things, but they're still working on improving, and I think it's the scrum master from that team. I might be mistaken. It's one of the members of the team who says that the key is that instead of doing agile or being agile, the team refers to what it does as learning agile and and I think that's I haven't heard it said that way before. But you hear someone, someone, many people talking about how we're an agile team were doing agile. Are we being agile, not being agile? If they being Angela, they're not being agile, and it's it. Could I really like the idea that it could be a healthier approach to agile, to decide, to embark on the journey of learning that you do not intend to finish? So it was a good book. We both enjoyed it very much and highly recommended. But now we have to be something else. I know you've got some ideas. What do your proposition?

spk_0:   44:29
Actually, my propositions are a little bit lazy because they are the books that I was supposed to read long time ago. But I simply didn't and I thought that if I may commitment and say that we are going to review the review, these booked and I have to read it. Obviously, in edge I word or some positions that are just must treat like the Phoenix project. I low poll that you read it. I'm the truth. What is your opinion? If it would be suitable for our podcast or not Really?

spk_1:   45:04
I don't know the author. I'd love to be the Phoenix project. It would be nice to get talked to touch base with the author to see if we can schedule an interview before we commit to it.

spk_0:   45:15
Okay, how about commitment that it's going back to us? Because I know you read it. I read, I think, on the a book or something some time ago, and I wanted to give it enough attention as it's

spk_1:   45:34
no, no commitment would be a wonderful book to do. I'm pretty sure that the author would be willing to talk to us, and and it's a fabulous book with a lot of great ideas in it.

spk_0:   45:45
So if not this, there's also behind closed doors, Secrets off great management. Who

spk_1:   45:52
wrote that?

spk_0:   45:53
Uh, just give me the same outer as, um, this book about the retrospectives

spk_1:   46:00
yesterday every

spk_0:   46:01
yesterday. Okay,

spk_1:   46:04
that's a fabulous book. I read it when it was first published. I want to say it was way, way back was like like 6 4008 It was It was. It was published a long time ago. I think that was one of the first books to come out of pragmatic press. If those are options for the next book, I mean, they're all good options. We could be any of them. But I think that I'd like to get in touch with the author of the Phoenix project before we do that one to make sure that we can get an interview. But I suspect that either the other two wouldn't be a problem. And I think commitment would be commitment would be a really interesting book to talk about.

spk_0:   46:50
So let's my commitment toe commitment.

spk_1:   46:53
So join us a month from now on the first of June, when will be discussing commitment, and I have been invited Portia Tongue to an interview, and I'm hoping that she will accept in which case will be recording it in the next two weeks and will have an interview with the author of the Dream Team nightmare coming out on the 15th of May. So stay tuned for that.

spk_0:   47:18
Yes, and that will be for sure, exciting because she's a lot off fun. You can watch her talks recording on the YouTube and Gmail from different conference there, inspiring their great It's full off, actually player games and fans of it.

spk_1:   47:34
So as always, thank you all so much for listening. Thank you for putting up with the diminished sound quality. Since we're both recording in our homes and we don't have access to our professional studio, just bear with us. It's only a matter of time before they lift the quarantine and let us go back to our studio. And, uh and well, you know, we love you.

spk_0:   47:56
Take her. But yeah, I think it by.