Lead, Follow, or Get Fired! ™

Scrum’s no silver bullet. It’s the holster!

2012-01-07T10:13:00.001-08:00

Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, the creators of Scrum, describe it as a lightweight framework designed to address complex problems in an adaptive manner, while creatively delivering products of the highest value. I like to say Scrum is common sense. They say that it is simple to understand, but extremely difficult to master. I say the “extremely difficult to master part” could point to a team or organization’s lack of common sense or their willingness to acknowledge weaknesses.

You’ve heard too often that Scrum is no magic bullet. Folks says that for the same reason they say Scrum is difficult to master. Scrum is a process framework designed to manage complex product development, but it can’t do the work for you. Think of this framework as a tool, better yet, a bicycle. Climb on a bicycle. You can ride across country, but the bicycle isn’t motorized. You still have to apply muscle to get you where you need to go. Climb on the bike backwards, and you’ll find it “extremely difficult to master”, but peddle properly, and you’ll find yourself moving forward.

The Scrumbuts out there would take the chain off the bicycle and tell everyone Scrum didn’t work for them.

Scrum works by exposing the deficiencies of your management and development practices so that you can improve. It is not a silver bullet because it is not a process or a technique for building products. Scrum is the holster for those bullets, a framework of rules and processes to manage the other tools and techniques you employ. Within this holster, you’ll organize your Scrum Teams and their associated roles, events, and components.

Each tool within your holster serves a specific purpose and is essential to your success with Scrum. If you discard one of these tools, you have Scrumbut. However, your holster is large and accommodating. You can add all of the additional bullets or tools you need. Used properly, your holster binds each together by monitoring and managing the relationships and interactions between them.

What kind of oracle do you have?

2011-11-27T09:32:00.001-08:00

I’m not talking about hoodoo mysticism or the Matrix, and the reference has nothing to do with your database. I mean someone that mentors you, your coach, or as Wikipedia defines oracle: a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel.

If you think you are such a good manager or team leader that you don’t need one, that’s the same as saying you have nothing else to learn. When you have nothing else to learn, you are obsolete. Everyone needs a sounding board, a listener or reviewer who helps us confirm we’re on the right track, not full or ourselves, or worse: full of crap.

Who do you have coaching you? Hopefully, it is your manager. If not, then perhaps it is a friend or colleague. The important thing is that you’re not floating in the middle of Decision Sea alone, but if you are, relax. I’ve got good news for you.

Finding mentors and getting input is easier in the 21st century than ever before. Texting, Skype, forums, blogs with interactive commenting, LinkedIn Groups, and even Facebook are tools readily available for communicating with existing coaches or finding new ones.

You’re back at the office tomorrow. Here’s your goal for the week: seek coaching by Friday. Engage in a conversation that helps you move forward. Even if you have no pending decisions, seek second opinions on last week’s decisions. Ask someone to hear you out and provide feedback. Quite often, just hearing yourself recount a decision or path out loud shines lights on new options.

Try this out this week, and let me know how it works for you.

What is a Perpetual Team?

2011-10-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

Do you recall hearing of “perpetual motion” or “perpetual motion machines”?

Perpetual Motion generally refers to any closed system that produces more energy than it consumes.

When the industrial age was in it’s infancy, several inventors attempted to create “perpetual motion machines”—devices that completely eliminated friction and maintain motion forever through mass inertia.

It was an interesting idea, but unfortunately, the laws of physics made their success impossible.

However—lucky for us—the laws of physics have no effect on the creation of Perpetual Teams.

Think of your team as a machine, where each member is a moving part, constantly pushing the other moving parts forward. As long as each part continues to push the other forward, the whole of the parts will produce more energy than was consumed.

If each team member is constantly pushing the other towards a goal—routinely asking: what can we do to deliver better, faster—then two or more heads will not only be better than one. They will be better than teams triple their size.

Of course, there is one caveat…

When one of those parts stops working, that part must be replaced, before the corrosion contaminates the other parts.

I know that sounds harsh, but it is a reality.

To believe anything else is to fool yourself and damage the morale—and the throughput—of your team.

This is not to say that a part cannot be repaired. The team itself should work to oil and adjust its parts to keep them from failing, and the mechanic—the manager—shouldn't be called until such repairs are beyond the abilities of the team.

Everything starts with a truly motivated, self-managed team.

Successful teams lead themselves, and within each team, there are strong members that will push for improvements.

However, those leaders must not be allowed to dominate, as one persons improvement is often another persons impediment.

You must have strong leaders that counter other strong leaders, ensuring the team is always moving forward and weighing options based on everyone's input, in order to find the optimal solutions to all problems.

Any who sees a problem with current processes should lead the team to improve it, just as they would any other problem.

If a member cannot identify a problem with current processes, it is that member's responsibility to support those processes—continuing to move forward and to push other members to move forward.

Those old tried-and-true words of Thomas Paine are still alive and well today: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" of those who are trying to improve and/or support the team.

Yea, I know what you are thinking—and you are wrong.

There is nothing negative about this perspective for two simple reasons:

REASON ONE: The process is a fair one. Everyone has the opportunity to support the team as is or help change the team and its processes for the better. Finding a team where you are a better fit is truly a last resort.
REASON TWO: The process has proven time and time again that it works!

Here’s something else to keep in mind. If you can build one Perpetual Team, you can build many. Just as one member can push another member forward, one team can push another team forward—creating a Perpetual Organization—an organization that produces five times more than it consumes.

You’ve heard consultants babble on about company’s crossing the chasm from good to great? The only way you’ll really do that is with Perpetual Teams.

Perpetual Teams deliver Perfection

2011-10-02T11:14:00.000-07:00

The Japanese word Shibumi translates roughly to "effortless perfection", but this is not the definition of Shibumi as much as it is the goal of Shibumi.
Shibumi is an ancient discipline that disallows stress when obstacles appear—“Worrying is a sin”, grandmother used to say.
Students of Shibumi inspect problems, then improvise and adapt to the best solution presented. If a better solution presents itself later, the students inspect, then adapt again. This cycle continues until one reaches the infinite goal of effortless perfection.
For years, I have described what I termed "The Perpetual Team" and considered this methodology to be my own, but Japanese artists and Jujitsu masters have been teaching the fundamentals of this philosophy for centuries.
If an idea works, you stick with it.
On the Perpetual Team, office politics and the blame game are non-existent. Team-members are committed to the same goals, enabling each member to hold themselves—and each other—accountable for missteps. Each admits mistakes and weaknesses immediately in order to get team advice and address problems by leveraging the collective wisdom of the team.
For a team to achieve Shibumi, they must become Perpetual Teams.
Members of Perpetual Teams push each other to deliver on their commitments. Members are constantly inspecting team makeup and processes, diligently asking, "What can we do to deliver better, faster?"
Like the disciples of Shibumi, Perpetual Teams are constantly identifying inefficiencies and adapting to improve.
If you are reading this and thinking that Shibumi actually translates to "pie in the sky", then you have much to learn about the potential of Perpetual Teams in an organization or even in a family.
If everyone on a team is truly committed to the goal, that team can move mountains.
Commitment happens when team meeting attendance actually synergizes team members.
This synergy manifests when goals are clear and prioritized, and when everyone on the team trusts everyone else to do their best to achieve those goals.
This kind of trust develops when the team believes that everyone else—management included—is being truthful about motives, goals, and obstacles as they arise.
Establishing transparency throughout the team is the key to fostering truthfulness. Everyone must clearly see who is doing what, where, and when, and what problems have or may arise. Teams with fewer than a dozen members achieve transparency with little effort, but dividing larger teams into multiple Perpetual Teams works just as well, if the goals of each team support the goals of the organization.
To ensure this support, Leaders form Perpetual Teams of their own. Just as each member of a team pushes the other to reach the goal, leaders of teams can push other leaders, driving the organization to reach the organizational goal.
The trust introduced by transparency solidifies when leaders stop punishing teams for missteps and learn to improvise, working with teams to find solutions that correct mistakes and to define processes that prevent those mistakes from reoccurring. As Akio Morito, co-founder of Sony Corporation, once said, “Don't be afraid to make mistakes, but make sure you don't make the same mistake twice.”
Does Shibumi translate to “Pie in the Sky”?
At Decade Software, the Perpetual Team concept originated in the Development Department, and then spread to the Design Team and Customer Service. Our company tripled production and elevated quality to the fourth power in less than two years. Where we once released a product annually, today we release new features eight times per year, and we release every product upgrade with zero known defects—a feat previously unheard of in the software industry.
Seriously evaluating the rewards of effortless perfection, a stress-free work and home environment, together with committed trust and transparency between peers and management, another definition of Shibumi becomes clear.
Shibumi is little more than “common sense”.

Put your Bugs where your Mouth is

2009-10-01T01:37:00.000-07:00

Last month, Decade Software released EnvisionConnect 4.0—and what a proud day it was.

The new version is the previous version on steroids, and were constantly making strides to improve performance and make the product easier before version 4.1—always focusing on making the application faster for users to get in and out and still feel good about having got the job done.

My Development Team prides itself in maintaining a zero defect average. Every 30 days—during Sprint planning—we commit to closing every open defect in addition to delivering any new features we committed to providing.

Speaking to software shops across the nation, I have not found one who has been able to come anywhere near our zero defect average. (If you know of any, please let me know. I would love to glorify them in this blog!)

I recapped all of the above so that you understand my dismay at hearing someone say this week…

“One of our clients says he doesn’t like the Page Layout Editor”—Yes, we do allow users to redesign forms and pages—”because the user says the tool is buggy.”

Immediately, I searched the defect tracking system and consulted my Quality Assurance team. I wanted to find out how many bugs constituted “buggy” and why we had not eradicated those bugs.

I found no bugs related to the feature in question, aside from a couple we had fixed but not yet released.

Then I knew our problems lay somewhere else.

Is the problem related to the definition: What is a defect?

Not likely. At Decade Software, We have the most lax description in the industry: If the client is “bugged” by something, that’s logged as a defect. Ultimately, we may fix it as a defect in code, or by adding a new feature, or by changing a design, or by providing training for the user—but no defect is ever ignored with the words…

“…that’s just the way it is.”

So, if the code is not the problem, and the definition is not the problem, then there’s only one thing it can be. Someone found a defect and did not report it.

Even the best software teams cannot fix bugs no one has found. It is the responsibility of user—internally and externally—to report any problem found.

Software shops can’t make you happy, unless they know what is making you sad.

Hands-on Workshop at Decade User Training Conference

2009-09-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

The Decade Software Training Conference 2009 will be one for the record books.

In addition to providing training based on a user-prioritized list, we'll host a hands-on lab throughout the conference—no appointment necessary. If you have questions or just want to test a part of EnvisionConnect you've never used before, this open lab is the place for you. What's more, if you have questions the lab team can't answer, you're not likely to hear, "We'll get back to you on that." or "Can you call tech support after the conference?" Instead, a Conference Concierge will be on call to track down whomever on our staff has the answers you need.

There will also be sneak peeks at the future of EnvisionConnect and the Environmental Health industry from a technology perspective. We'll be presenting awards for best user-authored reports, page layouts, and SQL scripts, and we'll be introducing you to our online and interactive support tools. Our goal in the year ahead is to ensure that you never have to ask why and if you ask how, you'll get answers ASAP.

Want to know more? Join us at the Decade Software 2009 Training Conference, October 19th and 20th.

EnvisionConnect Batch Processing Faster than Envision

2009-09-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

Customers and conference attendees have told us time and time again that financial batch processing in Envision was the fastest in the industry. EnvisionConnect, they also reported, is much easier to use, but not very fast compared to its predecessor. Decade's Development Team took that as a challenge, and early trials have everyone buzzing.

Smart Client Technology—the key to working on the web without giving up a powerful user interface—provides that all is processed client-side, including batches. Envision's advantage in the batch realm was its good old-fashioned client-server technology. Batches processed on the server run fast. The challenge in EnvisionConnect was to move the batch processing back to the server side without sacrificing the intuitive interface EnvisionConnect customers have grown accustomed to.

Through exhaustive research, careful prototyping, and much discussion with EnvisionConnect users, the Development Team provided a solution to a problem.

Perform Aging and Penalization and Perform Permit Billing are, by far, the most powerful of Decade's batch processes. From day one, EnvisionConnect was developed with a "hard things first" mentality.

Developers stayed the course with the batches, converting these two batches to server-side processing before all others, and in side by side trials—same data, same configuration, same hardware—these two EnvisionConnect batches now smoke the Envision batches, and they run in a fraction of the time it took the client-side batches to run.

In fact, Perform Permit Billing now processes half a million records in under one hour!

Want to know more? Join us at the Decade Software 2009 Training Conference, October 19th and 20th.

EnvisionConnect Speaks SWIS-DIP

2009-09-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

California's Solid Waste Information System's Digital Inspection Project (SWIS-DIP) is described this way...

The Solid Waste Information System Digital Inspections Program (SWIS-DIP) provides an easy, electronic way to submit statutorily mandated inspection reports. Using SWISDIP reduces waste and paperwork and improves the accuracy and consistency of your reports. Inspections may be submitted using the SWIS-DIP fill-in web form or with XML web services.

That sounds as close to an "Easy" button as you can get, but Decade Software has been working with the state to provide an Easy button on steroids. This fall, EnvisionConnect provides round trip data integration with SWIS-DIP.

Want to know more? Join us at the Decade Software 2009 Training Conference, October 19th and 20th.

Hiking to Success at Decade Software

2009-08-20T00:55:00.000-07:00

My wife and I took a few vacation days and hiked to the Hollywood Sign, but even the hot sun and aching muscles couldn’t keep my mind off the office.

We’ve got so much going on: business is booming, our biggest release ever is just around the conference, we’re hiring in every department, and our training conference is two months away. Decade Software is truly a company on the brink of jumping from good to great.

That said, I ask myself how we got here.

We got here, the same way a middle-aged overweight man made it to the top of the Hollywood Sign. We navigated the obstacles, the heat, the pitfalls with pure adrenalin and a little something called teamwork.

Decade Software has conquered it’s Hollywood Sign. Now, we’re ready to tackle El Capitan.

Collaborate, support teamwork, or go home!

2009-08-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

In an interview this week with John Chambers, CEO of CISCO, they asked him what has changed in business in the last few years. His answer was dead on…

“Big time, the importance of collaboration. Big time, people who have teamwork skills, and their use of technology.

Today’s world requires a different leadership style — more collaboration and teamwork, including using Web 2.0 technologies. If you had told me I’d be video blogging and blogging, I would have said, no way. And yet our 20-something's in the company really pushed me to use that more.

If they’re not collaborative, if they aren’t naturally inclined toward collaboration and teamwork, if they are uncomfortable with using technology to make that happen both within our company and in their own life, they’re probably not going to fit in here.”

That is exactly how I feel about my team.

Customer design or Too Many Cooks Sink Ships

2009-08-06T00:58:00.000-07:00

When designers attempt to please everyone, someone always ends up angry. The key to good design is bringing all interested parties together in order to balance interests and find solutions that work for everyone.

In the early days of EnvisionConnect, customer advocates on staff shouted:

“Our users know what they need better than anyone else. Let them design the software and force the developers to deliver exactly as they define.”

Who could argue with that philosophy? The customer knows best, right?

Let’s return to the mixed metaphor of “Too many cooks sink ships,” and let me tell you a story…

There once was a shipbuilder who hired the best engineers, but he sold ships to the government and was forced by contract to design the ship according to specs put together by a government committee.

The shipbuilder ordered the designers to build every gadget and widget the government committee could dream up, and the ship that evolved from the process was beautiful!

On this ship, you didn’t have to take the stairs to go from deck to deck. Everything in the ship was put on one easily accessible deck. And all of the gadgets, widgets, bells, and whistles glistened. It was the most spectacular-looking ship the government committee had ever seen.

When war broke, the government ordered the ship launched. It would sail to the other side of the globe and squash the evil doers.

Unfortunately, the ship was too heavy. It moved too slow. By the time the ship reached the enemy, the war was over. That’s not all that bad really. If every country followed this design model, the world would be a more peaceful place.

The moral of the story is that all interested parties have to be involved in design.

Luckily for us, the world of Agile software design doesn’t work like ship building.

We do insist that users of the software design by committee on the first pass (in industry jargon, the first iteration) but then it’s up to the engineers to weigh the needs of the many against the wants of the few and refine (industry jargon again, refactor) the product into that happy medium that makes everyone happy.

This year, our customers will notice that we’re changing the way we collect customer feedback—finding ways to extract information faster without wasting customer time, and our developers are defining “the how” and restricting customers to defining “the what”. And when some “what” is ultimately detrimental to a more important “what”, it’s our job to help customers understand the trade-off they are asking to make.

Now, you know why it’s taking a while to christen EnvisionConnect 4.0.

EnvisionConnect 4.0 as she stands today is the most beautiful and the most powerful ship in the fleet, but Envision outruns her. As goals go, our next BIG target is making EnvisionConnect faster, even if it means dropping a few bells and whistles overboard.

Watch this space to see how we do.

Did you miss me?

2009-08-03T00:21:00.000-07:00

With all of this tweeting and twittering going on, you would think blogging would be losing popularity, but seldom does a week go by that someone doesn’t ask about my blog.

That said, I’m committing to blogging at least three days a week from now on.

…but I owe you an explanation, as to why I haven’t been doing so.

Because of the wild success of EnvisionConnect—due largely to the success of my own team—we’re really, really busy these days.

Presently, I am assisting with the launch of an all-new Decade Software user community, planning our 2009 training conference, and governing the launch of EnvisionConnect 4.0—our most anticipated release ever.

We’ll look at the details as the weeks progress, but in the meantime, I’m begging for your patience. I’m a really busy guy.

What Managers Expect from teams

2009-06-11T00:28:00.000-07:00

Larry Bossidy’s article,“What Your Leader Expects of You,” provides a thoughtful and thorough list of what managers’ expect from the members of their teams.

This is that list with some of my additional thoughts here and there:

Get involved: Bossidy says, “Good managers know when to delegate…but more importantly, they know when to get involved.” I say, “Good managers trust staff to deliver, but they also trust staff to alert management when they’ve hit a brick wall or they’re stuck in quicksand. In other words, stay transparent. From a Scrum perspective, this means update the team, the ScrumMaster and the SOS Master every step of the way.
Generate ideas: Team players should provide ideas rather than playing it safe. Don’t offer random ideas that you haven’t thought about, but ones you’ve considered and have merit.
Be willing to collaborate: Team players sometimes work in cross-functional team where collaboration is required.
Be willing to lead initiatives: Team players should take initiative rather than avoiding the risky projects for the sake of having a good track record. How else will direct report learn to take initiative on their own if they don’t think it’s of value?
Develop leaders as you develop: Good Team players are leaders and teachers, constantly helping others develop. For the good of the company or for the good of the team, leaders and managers coach, mentor, and help team players to be leaders and grow into future managers.
Stay current: There’s nothing more embarrassing than seeing anyone not know what’s going on in their own industry, the market, or with their customers. All managers should scanning and watching the environment for opportunities or competitive threats.
Anticipate: Team players and their management should anticipate what the industry, market, competitor, or customer changes mean for the company and department.
Drive your own growth: Team players should want to learn more and take initiative without waiting for the manager to hand out growth opportunities. Find the white spaces in your job function that allow you to learn something new or expand on existing skills. Take control of your career path within the company.
Be a player for all seasons: Business is good. Business is down. Team players need different flavors of the same skills sets for good times and bad times. Action plans against competition when you’re the market leader can be vastly differently when you are not. Be a well-rounded player for any business circumstances.

Next, we’ll look at the other side of the coin: What Teams expect from Managers.

Bing! And thanks for saying so.

2009-06-08T06:20:00.000-07:00

Just back from vacation, I decided to try Bing!, the new search engine everyone’s been raving about. And like everyone who tests a new search engine, I entered my own name. Doing so, I discovered a PDF from the Center for Aggression Management entitled, Addressing the Loss of Teamwork: Identifying, Measuring and Minimizing Trust-Destructive Behaviors.

The following is a quote from that essay…

“HL Arledge, a leadership expert defines leadership with four “Ts”: trust, truth, team and transparency. He says Trust is a cornerstone to leadership, the development of loyalty and teamwork.”

Real Nice.

BTW, I also found my name on a page entitled “Words about the Dalai-Lama”, but that’s a different story.

Now, that’s a real team!

2009-05-26T01:35:00.000-07:00

Friday night, Joey, one of the leaders on my team got married.

Mike, another on our team played guitar, and Dave, a friend of ours, conducted the ceremony. My wife, Janna, said it was a beautiful reception, but men only attend such events for the reception—so I’ll skip ahead.

Mike, Janna, and I sat at a table with folks from Joey’s father-in-law’s old neighborhood. They still keep in touch, meeting annually for a combination golf tournament and old neighborhood reunion.

We were the only ones at the table not from the old neighborhood. We didn’t mean to crash their party, but all of the other seats were taken. More people had shown than had originally RSVP’ed.

“Who are you?” One of them asked.

“I work with Joey.” I replied.

“What does HL stand for?”

“Hard Luck.”

“Really? That should be my name.”

And this conversation repeated every time another from the old neighborhood joined us. However, over the music, one of the wives missed my introduction, and asked Mike, “Who is he?”

“He’s mine and Joey’s manager.” Mike said.

Her husband heard and said—loud enough for the whole table to hear, “Hey! HL is Joey’s boss. He said he just worked with the guy.”

And someone else said, “Now, that’s a real team.”

Indeed, it is.

Building a better Vulcan

2009-05-12T02:05:00.000-07:00

Outside of the office, I love nostalgia, but inside, I am the first to promote change. Keep the things that work. Build on those things, and throw out the bad.

However, when Paramount Pictures took this approach with Star Trek, I was afraid of the change. I did not trust that JJ Abrams would be able to handle the job.

This was because I was not Paramount’s Product Owner, and their team did not ask me for buy-in, when they gathered requirements to fix something that I didn’t think was broken.

I was wrong. The movie was great, and I learned a lesson I have been preaching to others for years…

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

–Mr. Spock, Wrath of Khan”

This became clear today, as I was reading new words of wisdom this week from Joel “on software” Spolsky…

“Typically, the product owner wants something simple and easy to understand for the users, featuring a telepathic user interface and a 30" screen that nonetheless fits in your pocket, while the developer wants something that is trivial to implement in code.

Lacking a product owner, your garden-variety super-smart programmer is going to come up with a completely baffling user interface that makes perfect sense if you’re a Vulcan. The best programmers are notoriously brilliant, and …have a tendency to get attached to their first ideas, especially when they’ve already written the code.

One of the best things a program manager can add to the software design process is a second opinion as to how things should be designed…

….ideas for how the UI should work, which might be better, or worse, than the developer’s idea. And then there’s a long debate.”

For those of you that speak Scrum, I have substituted Joel’s use of the label “Program Manager” for “Product Owner” to point out that our objectives are the same—the common techniques that work from one software process to the next are essentially the same. Common sense is universal.

Software Engineers know the “how” better than anyone, but the “what” must be defined by those that interact with the customer—or better, by the customer themselves. However, we can’t forget that ancient Decade proverb “everyone doesn’t know what they don’t know”. That’s where the give-and-take and “happy mediums” of good design come from.

Despite what you were taught, compromise is not a bad thing.

In fact, its what makes good teams great. Meeting in the middle has nothing to do with losing ground. It is about everyone coming together to see the big picture and finding the optimal solution for all involved.

Code long and prosper.

It’s really not Swine Flu

2009-04-30T01:15:00.000-07:00

Folks, I’ve been out a few days with the flu.

I suppose it was one of the regular flu’s and not the super-came-out-of-the-blue-hard-to-treat flu’s, as I am back at the office today. I feel a little stuffed up, and my limbs still ache, but otherwise I’m back to normal.

Believe me, you don’t want to hear descriptions of my symptoms when I was not “back to normal”.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to point out something you may not have realized. This so-called “Swine Flu” is really not the traditional Swine Flu we’ve had for hundreds of years.

This thing is a morphing of one of the traditional Swine Flu strains, a strain of one of the common strains of human flu, and the ever-popular newsmaker, bird flu.

If I were a conspiracy theorist—which of course I am not—I’d think someone was cooking this stuff up in a lab somewhere.

Is your software safe from covert secret agents?

2009-04-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the other day how Microsoft was working with the CIA to monitor US computer networks.

Apparently, this Big Brother partnership was just in time. The major news networks and publications reported yesterday that some countries are using computers to steal your electricity.

Didn’t we read this in a George Orwell book, or see it in some Tom Cruise movie?

Beware the Wizard of Oz

2009-04-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you’ll find team members or leaders pushing for something really hard—something that you struggle to understand why, because they have trouble articulating why it is important to them.

Beware the Wizard of Oz.

Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

In most cases like these, the person making the case doesn’t have all of the facts, because they are just acting as mouth-piece for another team member or members.

The person talking can’t convince you of the importance of the issue, because they may not personally have a stake in it themselves. Their objective is simply to not let those down who coerced them into speaking on their behalf.

Dig deeper, and you will uncover the Wizard of Oz—and maybe even a flying monkey or two.

Bill Gates joins the CIA

2009-04-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

Do you remember back in ‘98 when the United States Department of Justice filed the antitrust case against Microsoft? The media speculated that the software monopoly would be broken-up like Ma Bell was in the ‘70s, but in the end, Microsoft got off with a slap on the wrist—and everyone wondered why.

Perhaps, an article in the New York Times last week can offer some clues…

“The electronic spy game has had some real-world impact, they said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities.”

The article went on to quote intelligence analysts who said that many governments and some business organizations use sophisticated computer programs to covertly gather information. This group of 103 countries, they said, includes China, Russia and the United States of America.

The antitrust suit was settled in 2001, shortly after the attacks of 911, when much of our government’s errors were blamed on the Department of Justice’s “antiquated computer systems”.

Happy Teams will weather the crisis storms

2009-03-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

Alex Kjerulf calls himself a CHO—Chief Happiness Officer, and he is one of my favorite bloggers.

He has a new book in the works that explores the economic crisis and it’s effect on happy teams.

The book has three central claims:

1: Most of what companies traditionally do in a crisis doesn’t work.
The way many organizations typically handle crises is by cutting back on all expenses and doing mass layoffs. While this can be necessary, studies actually show companies who choose this approach recover more slowly.

2: It is possible to be happy at work even in a workplace in trouble.
Of course it’s easier to be happy when everything is going swimmingly, but people can still be happy at work in a crisis. It takes determination and focus, but it can be done. Surprisingly, a crisis can make people happy at work, provided that it becomes a reason for people to focus and pull together—rather than an excuse to give up.

3: Happy workplaces get out of a crisis faster.
Especially in a crisis, an organization needs to get the best out of its people—and when we’re happy at work we are more motivated, creative and productive.

I can’t wait until the book comes out. I predict it will be a worthy read.

I never assign work to anyone

2009-03-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

Although I am very good at delegating work, I never assign a task to anyone.

Day to day, I prioritize my workload, and then ask myself…

“Okay, which tasks can be delegated and which am I uniquely qualified to tackle?”

This daily decision is the key to being a good manager.

If you are doing too much, you are saying to your team: I don’t trust you to do as good a job as I will do.

On the other hand, assigning work is a command and control vessel. To “assign work to someone” is to say that their current tasks are unimportant.

Instead, explain why you believe the team member is suited for the task, and then ask them to accept the task, weighing and prioritizing the task against their current workload.

By asking someone to commit to a task, you are building teamwork and proving that you trust that teammate’s skills and judgment.

When you say that you are assigning work, you are essentially saying what you parents told you as a child…

“Do it, because I said so. I am the boss.”

Whether you realize it or not, a simple word like “assign” will lower morale and hurt your team(s) and the culture of your organization.

It’s not really Friday, is it?

2009-03-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy week, but its the start of one of our best sprints ever.

We are overhauling sections of our flagship software that will knock our users’ socks off, and my team is focused tighter than they have been in a long while.

In the meantime, teams from various departments are working more closely to increase transparency and provide customers with solutions faster.

—and we’re growing! We added two team members in the last 30 days, and we are still interviewing.

More and more potential customers are getting excited about EnvisionConnect, and our newly established Customer Communications Task Force is getting off to a great start.

Great week, but I’m exhausted from all of the excitement, and I’m still happy to see Friday.

[For you youngsters out there, the photo is Sergeant Joe Friday.]

The customer is not always right

2009-03-18T00:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve spoken much lately about the importance of working with the customer and creating a transparent environment, where everyone knows the best ways to do everything with our software, and I’ve spoken of the importance of getting customer input on priorities and direction.

I am one of our customers’ biggest advocates, and most of them will tell you so, but let me make this perfectly clear… The customer is not always right.

As I pointed out last Friday, often what one customer wants is detrimental to another. This is why it is so important that customers are allowed—no, encouraged—to share ideas, problems, and solutions with each other.

In other words, the customer as an individual is not always right, but the customers as a group nearly always are.

That said, check out this article from Alexander Kjerulf.

Shine the Light or John Travolta versus Perry Como

2009-03-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this blog—and those who attend my public presentations—know that I was shouting the virtues of transparency long before the recession made the term a household word.

What you may not know is that my first insights into the subject began much earlier—with one of my seventh grade teachers.

In the 1970s, Carolyn Higginbotham was a guidance counselor and teacher at the only school in Holden, Louisiana.

"Ms. Carolyn" was considered somewhat of a radical among the traditional southern teachers of the day. In fact, the blue-haired disciplinarians with their combination rulers and seat warmers thought she was a little nuts.

In her classroom, she and the students designated 25% of the room as a combination library and student lounge by carpeting the floor. Students were led to work together, and when their teams completed tasks on time, they could relax in the makeshift lounge.

This strategy dramatically increased team morale and individual self-esteem by spotlighting both group and individual accomplishments.

[If Ms. Carolyn is reading this, she has crossed out at least half of the words in the preceding paragraphs with a red Sharpie, but I am not embarrassed. One of the first tenets she taught me about writing was that you can break the rules, as long as you know a rule and have chosen to ignore it as a matter of style.]

My class had conducted a fund raiser, and with the money collected, we were directed to purchase something for our student lounge—something that would serve generations of junior high students to come.

As a lesson in democracy, Ms. Carolyn tasked us with campaigning and voting for our vision of that ideal purchase. After hours of debate, the majority vote was in favor of the new Saturday Night Fever record album, featuring an up and coming actor named John Travolta.

Ms. Carolyn thought our idea was unwise—I would have said "stupid" but she hated that word with a passion—but she wanted the class to discover the error of our ways on our own. To assist, she began what she later called "shining the light" on the absurdity of the situation.

Today, I think of the approach as "exaggerating transparency".

It works like this: If your colleagues in a debate do not possess the sense of urgency you know they should have, you can cut through the noise quickly by exaggerating an option that mirrors the one gaining the popular vote.

In the middle of our debate, the teacher raised her hand.

"I'm changing my vote," she said.

"I think Perry Como's Greatest Hits would be a wiser choice. Saturday Night Fever is new and unproven, but this album has stood the test of time."

Some of the class grew annoyed, almost angry, others found confirmation that their teacher was bonkers, but an inspired minority actually saw the light.

I was among that inspired minority, and I count Ms. Carolyn's light as one of the best tools in my leadership toolbox today, but—as you might have guessed—when I use it, some on my team get annoyed, some get really, really angry, and some just think I'm nuts.

However…

There is still that inspired minority that see the light, giving me hope that Ms. Carolyn's torch to transparency will serve them as wonderfully as it has me.

I'll bet you're wondering what became of Carolyn Higginbotham.

Today, she leads the team that manages federal programs for the Livingston Parish School Board.

Unfortunately, I haven't spoken with her since the 1980s. I believe she had just gotten back from astronaut training, when I asked her to assist me with a murder.

...but those are stories for another day.

I'm sorry I ever suggested changing the Decade logo

2009-03-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Decade logo has been in use since Kevin started the company. It looks no more dated now than logos of other start-ups of the day. In fact, Microsoft's 1976 disco letters will make you dizzy if you stare at them long enough.

When Decade made plans to retire Envision—likely the most well-known software in the United States for regulating environmental health—and launched EnvisionConnect, we worked hard to be cutting-edge, partnering with Microsoft and leveraging the latest and greatest of their tools.

When we began building our new web presence, Kevin and I discussed the same goal. We wanted the site to be sanctioned by our customers, while reflecting the intuitive, forward-thinking philosophy that guided EnvisionConnect.

Unfortunately, any design I considered using clashed with the company logo.

No problem, I thought, I have graphics training. I'll just grab some books and find out what goes into a good logo design.

I discovered that a great logo should:

Look as good in black and white as in color.
Look as good small as large.
Hint at what you want people to feel about your brand or brand values.
Make people think of your company without reading the words.
Be simple, yet memorable and describable.

It seemed to me that our current logo looked:

Rough around the edges.
Inconsistent in different incarnations.
Unpolished by today's standards.

None of these three phrases describe EnvisionConnect, and none describe what we want customers to think of Decade Software Company, LLC.

I went to work, experimenting with various ideas, using the rules above, until I found a look that I felt was presentable to the Decade user community.

In the design, I still wanted to use a shade of teal, and I wanted some form of blocks in a "D" based emblem—thinking nostalgia would trigger memories in those who knew the old logo.

At the same time, I wanted a logo that looked as good in solid colors as in modern "Web 2.0 style" 3D.

Since staff and customers rarely say "Decade Software" and never say "Decade Software Company" or "Decade Software Company, LLC," I believed that "Decade"—how everyone actually refers to us—should stand-out more than the rest of our legal name.

And finally, I wanted the logo to "say" software symbolically, so I subtly overlaid the universal mouse cursor. This works as the professionals say brands with common names should always use a unique symbol and/or distinctive typography to bring the name to life.

Most who commented on the logo loved it, but some just thought any change was bad, and at least one thought that the logo should change but not to the one I designed...and so the debate continues months later.

Sometimes, I wish Kevin had left me to oiling my flywheel. Growing a team is less stressful than growing a company.

Customers get bug-free software

2009-03-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in my entry entitled Angry Customers Tell 3,000 Friends, I explained how I became involved in customer relations at Decade Software. Kevin and I had devised a plan to allow customers to more freely communicate with us and with each other through a new web site.

By increasing transparency, we would bolster a trusting environment where everyone freely helped everyone else become successful using our products.

Our past successes had told us that teamwork using cross-functional teams was the secret to meeting goals, so the first thing I did was form a new team. The Customer Communications Task Force was formed to get clients talking.

We scheduled meetings with customers and began demonstrating our ideas for the web site and our ideas for opening communication between customers—and they loved what we were doing!

The CCTF had picked up speed, and we were soaring to the finish line, and then we turned a corner—and we hit a brick wall.

We discovered quickly that launching a new web site is an action that steps on multiple toes, and in short order, I was accused of invading the territories of Marketing, Client Services, Graphic Design, and Administration.

They said, you're moving too fast. If you modernize our web tools, you'll have to change the look and feel of everything, and that will cost the company time and money—and that will cause customers to ask: why are you spending time and money on web sites, when you could be fixing the defect I reported?

I couldn't argue with that logic. Making customers happy is a goal we all share.

So, I gave up and turned my attention back to the Development Team and those defects everyone was so worried about.

To my knowledge, we were the first team of developers ever to adopt a no defect policy. Every 30 days, we plan the next 30 days of work, and we commit to closing every defect reported by our customers. We've been doing this for over a year.

Now, someone was challenging our logic, saying...

"You're fixing every defect reported, but how do you know if all existing defects have been found?"

Kevin responded by hiring three additional testers and an additional developer.

All along, Kevin and I had agreed that our new customer outreach could not succeed unless quality was top-notch, so I asked him to approve overtime to commit to defects as they are reported.

In other words, my team no longer commits to closing all defects every 30 days.

We now commit to closing all defects every day.

This is an accomplishment previously unheard of in the software industry, but my team makes it happen.

Last week, one of our support technicians reported...

"It is really nice when customers call with how-to questions. It has been a long time since someone called to report a defect, and even when they do, it's nice to say it will be fixed immediately."

This empowered the CCTF to return to our communications goals, and this time, with the full support of everyone in every department...

...that is, until I suggested changing the company logo.

Angry customers tell 3,000 friends

2009-03-14T03:44:00.000-07:00

A teammate said to me yesterday—referring to my entry entitled It's the Customer's, Stupid!...

"That's not really your job is it? I mean, you're a software development manager. There's a whole department working with customers. Don't you have more important things to do?"

Of course, I responded as you might expect...

"Taking care of the customers is everyone's job."

And then, I told the real story.

Last Fall, Kevin came to me and said...

"It seems like your team is really self-managed now. You still have to turn the flywheel occasionally, but generally your team can tackle anything you throw at them..."

Since Kevin is my manager, I had a suspicion as to where this was going.

"...So, I'm thinking that maybe you have some bandwidth you're not using, and I could use your help with some things. I would like you to take over as Conference Coordinator for our annual training conference."

Kevin knows I love event planning, and he knew I would dive in head first.

I worked for months assisting cross-functional teams from all departments. My goal was for them to present as never before. I wanted customers to learn more than ever before, but I also wanted them to enjoy the event more than any conference prior.

And—to some extent—we met the goal. The teams shined, and customers did say repeatedly that the 2008 Decade Training Conference was the best ever.

However, I wasn't all that satisfied.

We can easily teach customers how to use the software. It is intuitive and versatile enough to meet any need, and when it's not, we make it so, but how a customer needs to use the software is different from customer to customer and situation to situation. Those things you only learn in the real world—not in a conference class or a software testing lab.

In class after class, customers would ask questions that only other customers could answer. We thought that our staff knew our industry, but we were fooling ourselves.

No one knows our customers business better than our customers.

I left the conference asking myself...

"What can we do to help customers more easily help each other?"

Shortly after the conference was over, Kevin was back in my office. We were discussing another problem related to the conference. I wanted a way to make it easier to plan next year's conference. I wanted customers to be able to more easily register and provide information on how to make the conference better for them.

Kevin said...

"So you're thinking of creating a web site just for the conference?"

I said...

"Uh, hmm, uh... Yes, Kevin, that was exactly the idea that I had."

Of course, we both knew that was not the case. It was just Kevin's way of suggesting solutions without telling me exactly what to do, but it truly was a great idea!

I went forth and prospered, but...

....the more I worked on the site, the sooner I realized...

...how extremely easy it would be to allow customers to help themselves.

We increase the transparency. We give them better tools to freely communicate with each other year round!

I picked up a book—as I always do when I need to learn something fast. It was called Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000, and reading it, I was off to the races.

That, of course, was when all hell broke loose.

It's the customers, Stupid!

2009-03-13T00:48:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I don't want to get into any political debates. To allow me to make my point, if you are a conservative, please suspend your disbelief in the legend I am about to recount.

Legend has it that Bill Clinton entered the White House inheriting a 300 billion dollar deficit. His predecessors had told him...

"You'll see how it is. You think you'll fix the economy, but something more important will always come up. You will get caught up in the crisis of the moment, and you will take your eye off the ball."

Like most of us, Bill was getting older and had to make notes to keep from forgetting. On his first day in the White House, he brought in a sign from his election campaign with writing on the backside in large print permanent marker.

The sign read:

"It's the economy, Stupid!"

He looked at the sign every time he entered the Oval Office—as did everyone who worked with him—and when Bill Clinton left office, the large deficit had morphed into a 200 billion dollar surplus.

[Again, I am just recounting the legend, and I have conducted no independent investigation. Please focus on the story or you will miss an important point.]

Sometimes, Decade staff—the management team especially, with myself included—forget that the crisis of the day is only a small brush stroke in the big picture. If one customer calls with a problem, everyone's on it, until the customer is happy.

This is not entirely a bad thing, but sometimes we become so focused on a single client that we delay tasks that will benefit the entire customer base.

We forget that ancient Vulcan axiom...

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few—or the one."

So—to help everyone focus—today, I will hang a sign on my office wall.

The sign will say...

All together now...

"It's the customers, Stupid!"

It is time to be transparent again

2009-03-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve gotten several notes and phone calls. Readers want to know what happened to the avid blogger they had developed a love-hate relationship with.

Someone wrote…

“I know you were out awhile when your blog host had technical problems. Now that those are resolved, I’m guessing you’re just out of the habit. We miss the craziness. Please come back.”

Now, that was sweet……………but they got it all wrong.

For years, I’ve touted the virtues of transparency. I believe that trust is the key to growing a company, just as it is key to growing a successful team. Without transparency, there can be no trust.

The e-mail got me asking the tough question: Why have I not been blogging very much?

I tell myself that I’m too busy, but I’m at work at 6:30 or earlier every day, so I must be lying to myself.

The truth is: I felt I could no longer be transparent, and if I cannot be transparent, I would rather be silent.

Some folks were telling me…

“Stop bragging on your team’s accomplishments. It makes other teams look bad and feel jealous, and it makes what your saying difficult to believe. No team could be that successful. Talk about your future goals, and let your past achievements speak for themselves.”

While others said the opposite…

“Our company should never talk about what we are going to do. It makes us sound like our competition, full of empty promises. Don’t talk about any of our goals until after we have achieved them.”

That’s why I had a loss for words. I simply did not know what I could say.

Then, I remembered that honesty is still the best policy. When in doubt, just tell the truth.

So…………we're back!

Starting tomorrow, truth, trust, and transparency return.

The President has a blog

2009-02-18T06:41:00.000-08:00

I have said for years that transparency is the secret to solving problems and that one really good component of transparency is blogging.

President Barack Obama has said that transparency is what our government needs to expose corruption and to keep politics at bay.

To prove his point, he has started a blog.

But…

Lately, he has been too busy to update his blog, so he’s delegated the tasks.

Hmm… That could work!

Everyone is Authoritative on a self-managed team

2009-02-13T00:44:00.000-08:00

One of my teammates said the other day…

“It is important that someone authoritative review all requirements documents.”

I gave him one of my you-killed-my-dog looks.

Considering this definition of authoritative…

“Having due authority; having the sanction or weight of authority: an authoritative opinion.”

…or this one…

“Having an air of authority; accustomed to exercising authority; positive; peremptory; dictatorial.”

…then everyone on a self-managed team is authoritative. This is because they are empowered to track down any answers they do not have.

However, there is another definition of authoritative that may be relevant…

“Substantiated or supported by documentary evidence and accepted by most authorities in a field.”

The most successful self-managed teams are those that are cross-functional, providing them with a balanced view of problems from all sides. If they do not have the variety of inputs they require to answer the questions at hand, they must seek out the advice of the experts—quite often “the experts” translates to “the customer”.

Once the team has collected all available inputs, they weigh the pros and cons—the “whats”—and then the team formulates their best “hows”.

If a better solution comes along later, they don’t waste time and resources defending lesser solutions. They adapt to the better solution ASAP and learn from the experience.

Now, if members of the team aren’t asking the right questions or identifying the domain experts they must consult, then those are different problems—”impediments” in Scrum—and they must be addressed by the team. If those problems are not being addressed by the team or the leaders within the team, only then should they be addressed by a manager.

If you have a process where one person has to “sign-off” instead of a process that compiles the wisdom of the crowds—aka project stakeholders—then you do not have a self-managed team. You have a command-and-control operation, and you are on the slow road to success.

Does your team have have forest goals or tree goals?

2009-02-12T00:42:00.000-08:00

This week, Jeff Sutherland revisits the roots of Scrum and expands on why trust is so important to teamwork.

He said…

“With trust based on real unity and cohesion, Boyd's Observe, Orient, Decide, Act feedback loop goes into an implicit state where there is Observe, Orient, and Decisions becomes implicit. The team goes into motion before the leader can give a command. Like in martial arts the Sensei is moving before he even sees the motion of the attacker using a sixth sense. This is the kind of trust a Dream Team has. You know it when you see it, but few software teams have that level of trust.”

I have seen my teams in this state, but they don’t always stay there.

Such a state is only driven by a “sense of urgency”—a sense is created only when…

Clear goals exist—not just “tree goals”, but “forest goals”. Your team must see how the little tasks they’ve committed to delivering add to the “big picture”.
The leaders are practicing what they are preaching. Truth, Trust, and Transparency have to be seen more-often than heard.

In that environment, the type of synergy Jeff describes is a no-brainer.

Incidentally, I have a meeting tomorrow to further to try and solidify my company’s “forest goals”. Wish me luck!

Another Team Parable: Quality and the Self-motivated team

2009-02-11T00:09:00.000-08:00

Nearly a month ago, I called the team together to discuss defects. I wanted their feedback on an idea that I had.

I started the sentence with “What if…”

Someone said “uh-oh” and some eyes began to roll.

I said, “What if we stopped committing to and addressing all defects during a single 30-day sprint and instead committed to addressing them only in overtime. That way, we’d continue to maintain our zero defect count, but we’d be able to deliver more features, sooner.”

“What do you think?”

My team has always hated overtime with a passion.

As always, they thought I was crazy and told me so…

“This is not Agile,” they said. “This will not work. We’ll be coding into the late hours of night. We’ll be exhausted. Quality will decline.”

The sky is falling. That’s what they said.

I then said what I always say in times of change. “It’s your decision. You are a self-managed team, but I would appreciate it if you would at least give the idea a try. If it doesn’t work, say the word, and we can go back to the old way or try something new.”

And with that, my team elected to trust me enough to give the idea a try.

As I said, that was nearly a month ago.

Yesterday, the Scrum Master who most opposed the overtime idea was in my office for our monthly one-on-one.

He said…

“I’ve noticed something really odd lately. We seem to be creating very few defects lately. Now, even the guys who want to work overtime are having trouble finding something to fix.

“We’re coding the way we always have. We didn’t change our processes at all. We code as fast as we always have, and we test the same way we always have. I just don’t understand what changed.”

I said…

“That is bizarre. It’s almost as if the team found some reason to be more attentive to their work. Perhaps, it’s a testament to your leadership?”

He looked at me a moment and said only, “Isn’t it time for your next meeting?”

Sites undergoing operations

2009-02-04T00:37:00.000-08:00

Busy week, but I wanted to touch base.

I’ve gotten several a-mails asking about my personal websites, hardedge.com and leadfolloworgetfired.com. The timing for those questions are perfect. I have taken both sites down temporarily. They will launch with entirely new faces before the end of the month, and I am very excited about them.

I’ll keep you posted.

About those fad management books

2009-01-30T00:30:00.000-08:00

A manager friend of mine said last week…

“I stick with the tried and true. None of those fad management books for me.”

He went on to say that his company was too busy to experiment with new ideas.

“If it isn't broke, don’t fix it. Right?”

Of course, my response was: just because it’s not broken, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. That’s why my team is always focused on improving processes, asking: how can we be better, faster?

Our conversation started with a discussion of “consumer evangelism”—the belief that customers are filtering out advertising and are more willing to trust word-of-mouth recommendations.

The “fad management books” he referenced were those touting the virtues of building online communities to make it easier for clients to exchange data—and fast track those word-of-mouth recommendations.

Here’s an example from Creating Customer Evangelists: How Happy Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force:

Shouldice Hospital in the city of Thornhill encourages patients to meet and discuss the care they receive. Patients compare notes long after treatment ends, and their feedback has been used to improve hospital care and service since the customer evangelist program began.

The program is an amazing success. Patients meet for an annual ball and banquet that includes dining, dancing, and a free medical check-up.

Today, potential patients are actually on waiting lists to get into this hospital!

As I mentioned, their story is covered in detail in a brand spanking new “fad management book”, but Shouldice Hospital started their successful program in 1947.

My Decade Software?

2009-01-27T00:26:00.000-08:00

I promised yesterday to give you a sneak-peek at our new web presence…

In addition to the sleek appearance, the site is a game-changer for Decade Software. It is being designed from the ground up as a collaborative community where customers and staff can exchange opinions and ideas—with a section we’re calling “My Decade Software”.

Among other features, it will provide…

User Community Forums

In addition to being the home of several EnvisionConnect User Groups, a networking and information exchange tool for clients, and a hang-out for Decade staff, our community forums offer areas of discussion on all Decade products and services and the industries we serve, and—best of all—registered users can subscribe to any forum or topic by e-mail.

Surveys and Polls

Decade knows that user feedback is essential to making a good product great. That's why residents of the My Decade Software community are routinely polled. For example, you may be invited to participate in an in depth survey asking which classes should be presented at the user conference, or you may be invited to answer a single poll question regarding a product's design.

Project Central

At Project Central, registered users look under the hood at Decade Software Company. In real-time, clients monitor what work is being done, by whom, and when the work is expected to be completed. They also can report defects or submit feature requests and monitor progress of those requests in real-time.

Answers

Imagine a knowledge base that housed everything a user wanted to know about Decade's product and services, including information on how other agencies leveraged these products and services. Further, imagine a knowledge base where users could ask or answer questions and where they could tell Decade support what information was actually helpful and what was not. Registered users need not imagine. This knowledgebase awaits them in My Decade Software's Answers section.

"Did You Know..." Articles

"Did You Know..." Articles have been a key tool of the Decade support team for nearly ten years. These tried and true "tips and tricks" newsletters for Decade products are available and searchable within our Answers knowledgebase.

Product Downloads

Product installations and documentation are available to registered users, based on the security regulations of each agency. An agency may wish to make these items available to all members of the user community, or they may wish to limit downloads only to network administration. The option is theirs.

Decade Exchange

Decade Exchange is a popular subset of our Downloads section that allows customers to share various resources, including reports, user-defined forms, page-layouts, SQL scripts, and workflow documents.

Learning Management Center

Imagine an online school, where you could review lessons and take tests related to Decade products anytime your staff needed a refresher course. That "school" is our Learning Management Center, and it is available right now to all registered users.

Agency News Authoring Tools

Not an hour goes by today when the media isn't discussing Environmental Health issues and concerns. Now more than ever, it is imperative that Environment Health regulators share information and learn from each other. Our Agency News is authored by any registered user with stories to share.

Private Messaging

When forums and news posts are not personal enough, My Decade Software users have access to private one-on-one instant messaging with any registered user, including Decade Software staff.

Another secret operation in progress

2009-01-26T01:11:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was the guest speaker at one of our “global user group meetings”.

I’ve forgotten what the official title is these days, but basically it is a virtual meeting that allows customers to review and discuss new design proposals.

These little webinars were launched in the early days of EnvisionConnect, and they continue to serve us and our customers quite well.

You may recall that EnvisionConnect is the 21st Century reincarnation of Envision for Windows.

Over time, new wings and windows were added, until Envision grew into the most in depth tool available for regulating Environmental Health—but like all mansions that outgrow their original design, Envision became easy to get lost in.

Enter Envision Connect…

EnvisionConnect was designed from the ground-up to have all of the comforts of the old mansion, but with easier passages to move around in.

The new design was developed in those Thursday meetings.

So, why did I attend last week?

I’m building another kind of house to replace our web home page, and for all of the same reasons, I needed our customers to assist in the redesign.

What we came up with will amaze you…

…but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out more.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing great!

2009-01-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

I’ve recommended Jim Collins’ Good to Great before. Once in reference to Scrum—and once on the subject of estimates—but I thought the book might be worth summarizing for you wannabe leaders who are too busy to read.

To understand Jim’s thinking, first ask yourself: what goes into a company's transformation from mediocre to excellent?

Using volumes of data, Jim and his team compared and categorized three types of companies:

Those that went from “Good to Great” and are still growing

Companies like Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo produced and sustained great results, evolving into companies that would be around for the long haul.

Those that directly compare with “Good to Great” companies

Upjohn, Silo, Great Western, Warner-Lambert, Scott Paper, A&P, Bethlehem Steel, RJ Reynolds, Addressograph, Eckerd, and Bank of America are companies in the same industries with the same resources and opportunities as “Good to Great” companies, but they demonstrated no obvious leap in performance.

Those that looked great for awhile

Burroughs, Chrysler, Harris, Hasbro, Rubbermaid, and Teledyne are companies that made a short-term shift from good to great but failed to maintain growth.

Through careful comparisons of the three groups, Jim’s team identified 23 principals “Good to Great” companies followed that the others did not:

Ten out of eleven Good to Great company leaders or CEOs came from the inside. They were not outsiders hired in to save the company. They were either people who worked many years at the company or were members of the family that owned the company.
Strategy per se did not separate the good to great companies from the comparison groups.
Good to Great companies focus on what Not to do and what they should stop doing.
Technology has nothing to do with the transformation from good to great. It may help accelerate it, but is not the cause of it.
Mergers and acquisitions do not cause a transformation from good to great.
Good to Great companies paid little attention to managing change or motivating people. Under the right conditions, these problems naturally go away.
Good to Great transformations did not need any new name, tagline, or launch program. The leap was in the performance results, not a revolutionary process.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance; it is clearly a matter of conscious choice.
Every Good to Great company had Level 5 leadership during pivotal transition years. Level 1 is defined as a Highly Capable Individual. Level 2 is a Contributing Team Member. Level 3 is the Competent Manager. Level 4 is an Effective Leader. Level 5 is the Executive who builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.
Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.
One of the most damaging trends in recent history is the tendency (especially of boards of directors) to select dazzling, celebrity leaders and to de-select potential Level 5 leaders.
Potential Level 5 leaders exist all around us, we just have to know what to look for.
The research team was not looking for Level 5 leadership, but the data was overwhelming and convincing. The Level 5 discovery is an empirical, not ideological, finding.
Before answering the “what” questions of vision and strategy, ask first “who”
are the right people for the team.
Comparison companies used layoffs much more than the good-to-great companies. Although rigorous, the good-to-great companies were never ruthless and did not rely on layoffs or restructuring to improve performance.
Good to Great management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests.
There is no link between executive compensation and the shift from good to great. The purpose of compensation is not to ‘motivate' the right behaviors from the wrong people, but to get and keep the right people in the first place.
The old adage “People are your most important asset” is wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.
Whether someone is the right person has more to do with character and innate capabilities than specific knowledge, skills or experience.
The Hedgehog Concept is a concept that flows from the deep understanding of the answers to the following three questions:
- Realistically, what can you be the best in the world at and what can you not be best in the world at?
- What drives your economic engine?
- What you are deeply passionate about?
Discover your core values and purpose beyond simply making money and combine this with the dynamic of preserve the core values – stimulate progress, as shown for example by Disney. They have evolved from making short animated films, to feature length films, to theme parks, to cruises, but their core values of providing happiness to young and old, and not succumbing to cynicism remains strong.
Enduring great companies don't exist merely to make money. In a truly great company, profits and cash flow are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life.

In my opinion, the 21st item may be the biggest secret Jim has uncovered.

Think about it. The other items may be the effect with the Hedgehog Concept as the cause. If you are doing anything that you care deeply about—and you truly believe in it—it’s impossible to imagine not trying to make it great.

Finally, something to rant about

2009-01-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

I love blogging.

I love talking about my teams and their accomplishments. I love talking about the improvements this company has seen in these last few years. To me, that is what blogs do best—allow us to share successes and failures, so that we may learn from one another.

Unlike many in the blogosphere, I never use my blog for ranting.

Never—until now!

Our blog host (I almost said “of choice”) is Typepad. They were great until late October of last year, when they upgraded their product—and destroyed my way of life!

Their update broke my ability to post using Windows Live Writer, essentially forcing me to use their web interface to update my blog.

Despite my reputation, I do have more to do at the office than just blog. I seldom have time to toy with a kludge web application.

Sound petty? Of course, it does. Maybe I was really just standing on principal. Being a stubborn Southerner, I do that sometimes.

I started this post talking about how businesses can use blogging to learn from each other. I learned much from this experience.

Even the most minor of software changes can wreak havoc on your customers lives—and make them bitter towards you, your product, and your company.

The customer is still always right.

Sometimes we forget.

Disruption

2008-11-03T22:59:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted lately due to technically difficulties. I hope to get these worked out ASAP.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Thanks,
HL

A poor man's (or woman's) antibiotic...

2008-10-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve had several of my teammates leave sick already this week.

As the weather changes, the flu and cold season nears. With this in mind, I thought I would pass on this tip.

An old Louisiana country doctor once told me…

“If you’re too busy or too cheap to call me for antibiotics, take 3 vitamin C tablets and one B complex every four hours. This will help build up your immune system. If you do this early when you first think you’re getting sick, it may ward off the illness.”

Of course, that’s just food for thought.

I am not a practicing physician—nor do I play one on TV, so please don’t sue me if this doesn’t help you.

Where do Obama and McCain stand on Environmental Health?

2008-10-21T03:43:00.000-07:00

I don't like to get into politics in a company blog, but this one is a safe bet.

On the subject of Environmental Health, both candidates are in total agreement.

According to the group Science Debate 2008, both candidates support:

Offshore drilling
Refining clean coal
Using nuclear power
Adopting alternative fuels
Exploring renewable energy, such as wind and solar

Both candidates tout plans to use emission trading to roll back the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to below 1990 levels before the year 2050. These plans differ only in the degrees set as goals. Barack Obama is targeting a 80% reduction, whereas John McCain is shooting for a 60% rollback.

I don't really see this as any difference at all. With any goals, we may come close, or we may overshoot the mark. With these two goals, either effort should get us in the same ballpark.

Either measure may require Environmental Health regulators to track GHG levels, making the next four years a period of growth for EnvisionConnect.

12 Characteristics of a Remarkable Leader

2008-10-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

Here are the 12 characteristics of remarkable leadership according to author Kevin Eikenberry:

Champions Change
Communicates Powerfully
Builds Relationships
Develops Others
Focuses on "Customers"
Influences Impactfully
Thinks & Acts Innovatively
Values Collaboration & Teamwork
Solves Problems & Makes Decisions
Takes Responsibility & Accountability
Manages Projects & Processes
Sets Goals & Supports Goal Achievement

Does your management pass the test?

Read more about these in Kevin's book, Remarkable Leadership.

18 definitions that can make you a better leader

2008-10-03T00:28:00.000-07:00

When I first took this job, I started jotted down notes, regarding different ways to interpret words. I've come to believe that real leaders have a slightly different dictionary than managers, bosses, dictators, and elected officials.

Here are my top 10 definitions used by real leaders...

Attitude–A state of mind, an emotional and intellectual inclination and predisposition to actions based on what you convince yourself is the truth.

Communication–Refers to anything, verbal or nonverbal, that imparts information, thoughts, or feelings. It is a vehicle than enables leaders and followers to connect with each other and to learn about their respective worlds.

Defensive Culture–A world in which people are more concerned with their image than they are with solving problems.

Desires–Unexpected bonuses or other pleasant surprises. The items that complete a staff member's statement that begins with, "It sure would be nice if..."

Expectations—Refers to perceived entitlements, any deliverable or treatment staff considers essential to happily performing their jobs.

Fertile Workplace Culture—An environment that encourages individuals to grow, learn, and be as good as they can as employees and as people.

Harassment–Selfish behavior by someone who places more value on personal desires and interests than another's right to privacy or happiness.

Leader—A respectful and genuine person who motivates others and builds strong communication bridges by being sensitive and appropriately responsive to others' feelings and desires.

Managing–The ongoing process of developing mutually rewarding and productive relationships with staff.

Mentor–An effective teacher, counselor, or master gardener, helping others improve the quality and quantity of work.

Planned Spontaneity–Knowing in advance what you hope to gain, where you want to begin, and where you hope to end. This is followed by a patient, sensitive, flexible stream of questions and answers that leads from one goal to another.

Problem–A deviation between what is acceptable and what is occurring.

Problem-solving Culture–An environment where leaders trust followers to be responsible and worthy of respect, treating each accordingly and encouraging progress as appropriate.

Quiet Strength–Having a positive influence without making obvious one's methods: being clear about expectations and desires and then supporting staff when obstacles arise.

Risk–The potentially adverse consequences of any action.

Symptoms–Behavioral evidence of a potential problem.

Tone–Emphasis given to specific words or groups of words, created by changes in speed, volume, or pitch of speech.

Weed–A valueless, troublesome, or noxious plant growing wild, especially one that grows profusely or on cultivated ground to the exclusion or injury of the desired crop, detracting from a garden's beauty and using both time and energy that could be spent cultivating those desired crops.

Weeds should always be removed as early as possible.

2008 Decade Conference a Resounding Success

2008-10-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

Tabulating the early results, it seems the 2008 Decade Software User Training Conference was a resounding success, and I especially want to thank Peter Lucas and Sandra Sanchez for making it that way.

Of the conference participants who turned-in their post-conference questionnaires, over 99% said that the classes they attended were structured well, included useful material, and were presented well.

In the written comments, many said that this was our best conference yet!

My favorite quote said...

“Class presenters were much more interesting and knowledgeable than in the past.”

This was important to hear, as everyone on staff was committed to making that happen this year, and we are proud to have made strides in that direction.

Were there complaints? Of course, there were. You can never please all of the people all of the time. Two-thirds of our open forum panelists canceled at the last minute, and the Radisson Hotel had a problem controlling their flies, but by far, the complements exceeded the complaints, and everyone walked away smiling.

Next week, I'll be spotlighting some of the conference presentation teams and discussing the specifics of those presentations, but today I wanted to take a moment and thank the unsung heroes of our conference.

IT Wiz and Documentation Guru Peter Lucas and the company president's right arm, Sandra Sanchez are the glue that hold these events together. Too often, we forget to tell them...

"Thank you!"

And on that note, I want to thank all of those who attended and provided their feedback. We certainly couldn't improve without your input.

Thanks a million!

Meanwhile, in a country called Scrum...

2008-10-01T03:45:00.000-07:00

In the country of Scrum, there is a backlog of bills to be addressed, and there is an impediment list of problems to be solved.

These lists are ordered by the Product Owner—and the Vice Product Owner if the Product Owner is assassinated.

The country of Scrum has two teams. Each team has a Scrum Master, who coordinates meetings to ensure that everyone does what is best for the team and the country.The Product Owner is available to answer any questions and provide any support the teams require.

The Product Owner(s) never interfere with the daily workings of the teams.

The goals of individual team members are rarely considered.

After both teams have delivered on their commitments, they come together, adapting and improving their processes, ultimately delivering a country that all stakeholders are proud of—and one that other country's envy.

I once lived in the country of Scrum, but during some quiet coo, I believe that my country was overthrown by the kingdom of Greed.

Preparing for the Decade User Training Conference

2008-09-25T00:44:00.000-07:00

Everyone, I apologize for not writing much these last few weeks, but everyone here has been preparing for our annual user conference, next Monday and Tuesday.

I will tell you all about it next week, but in the meantime, I thought I'd show you a picture of some of the staff ready to go for the conference.

I think one or two of them might be a bit nervous. What do you think?

Pictured (from left to right) are Nicki Bradford, Jerad Little, me, Cynthia Hill, Art Amezcua, Mark Harmon, and Patrick Glaspey.

Presentation are not about hyperboles or widgets

2008-09-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone, I want to apologize for not updating you as often as I usually do, but the office is extremely busy preparing for our user conference on the 29th and 30th.

More to come on that.

In the meantime—and considering the industry Tom comes from, this could be considered "presenting at a conference" related—PR Guru Tom Murphy has some words of wisdom I would like to pass on...

"[The Public Relations and Presentation industry] needs leadership, we need people to lead by being realistic, by reflecting the challenges we face such as how we can build a better understanding of our audiences and the tools we’ll use to reach them.
This is not about shiny objects, hyperbole or widgets. It’s about world class communication, based on insight into your audience and pragmatic investments in the channels that work."

Decade Software's best-kept is still a secret

2008-09-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

[You may recall the blog post below. It is from last year at this time. Tomorrow, I will try again to get Decade Software's best kept secret. Wish me luck!—and in the meantime, refresh your memory of how this went down last year.]

Every year, Kevin Delaney begins— weeks in advance—planning his Presidential Address for the opening of our annual EnvisionConnect Users Training and Conference—and every year, I drop by with some hint of something I think he should discuss, and every year—he hates my idea.

This year, I thought using the phone would be less intrusive, maybe catch him off guard, and he would be more receptive to my suggestion...

"Hi, Kevin. It's me, HL."

"No."

"You've haven't heard why I'm calling."

"No."

"Kevin, I think it would be great if you told everyone about our new customer portal."

"No."

"It seems to me that customers will be thrilled to know that we are testing a web-based tool that may allow them to open support incidents online, as-well-as review the status of new development and defects being addressed..."

"No."

"If all goes as we hope, it'll have the advanced search capabilities customers have always wanted. For example, I know Nick Reyes and Orange County have been waiting for..."

"No."

"Well, then, uh...Dang it—why not?"

"...because we can't predict the future."

"Huh?"

"Too many times, you technical guys come in here with some great idea. You get me all excited, then I tell our customers, and they get all excited—then some unforeseen obstacle arises beyond our control, and then we can't make it happen."

"Yea, but..."

"...then you guys move on to your next crazy idea, and I alone am left explaining to our customers why I lied to them. Nope—You're not doing it to me this time!"

So—like I said—you never heard this from me.

...and don't click on this link.

My team's success is built on Trust

2008-09-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

Michael Hopkin reported today is his blog "Lead on Purpose" that "Trust is essential to building a successful team"—something readers of this blog have seen proven time and time again.

Michael said...

"One of the best ways to gain trust is to be up front with the people you lead. Great leaders are not afraid to admit mistakes. At first blush it implies weakness; however, admitting mistakes actually helps leaders gain credibility because the people they lead see them as down-to-earth and genuine."

A recent article in Investors Business Daily discusses the importance of winning the trust of your team. Some leaders waste time trying to win acceptance—or even popularity—with their teams, rather than being vulnerable—open, honest, and transparent—about their strengths and weaknesses.

Trust is ultimately more important than popularity.

Patrick Lencioni, one of my favorite authors of wrote...

“Ironically, pretending you’re strong when you’re not is a sign of weakness. Trust is the most important thing a leader can have. People will walk through walls of fire for you if they know they can trust you. Without trust, nothing else matters to them.”

Leaders fulfilling promises and providing feedback—on both desired and undesired behaviors—will gain the trust of their teams and strengthen their organizations.

Truth, Trust, Transparency, and Toy Story

2008-09-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

For years, I have touted that management through truth, trust, and transparency is the fastest way to succeed. In an article in this month's Harvard Business Review, the founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull, says I am dead on.

"Talent is rare. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur. It must be safe to tell the truth. And we must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture."

We've proven this works in just a few short years at Decade Software. Pixar has been following this credo for nearly 10 years.

Pixar is the only movie studio in history to rollout consecutive blockbusters and nothing else.

Axosoft OnTime adopts Scrum in a big way!

2008-08-29T04:31:00.000-07:00

I have made much noise over the past year related to Axosoft OnTime's advertised support for Scrum and the product's shortcomings in this area. I have also explained how Decade Software has found ways to work around those shortcomings—but soon you will not have to.

Hamid Shojaee made this announcement today...

"OnTime is an extremely effective tool for managing Scrum projects, but I think we can do a far better job in future versions of OnTime. To make sure we fully embrace Scrum for future releases of OnTime, I had our entire team learn about Scrum. I also made sure we had multiple team members attend a two-day workshop with Ken Schwaber to become certified Scrum Masters.

Axosoft has embraced Scrum in a big way and we have made Scrum one of the main focuses of the next major release of OnTime. More generally, OnTime 2009’s focus will be on Project Visibility, which will help every single OnTime customer, not just those using Scrum. But for Scrum teams in particular, especially those hungry for some burn down charts and other visualization tools, you won’t be disappointed."

To be clear, I love OnTime. It has increased transparency throughout our company. My goal all along was merely to hold Axosoft accountable for their advertising promises and help them make OnTime even better.

It looks like that has happened.

Thank you, Axosoft. I am overjoyed at the news, and I am standing by to beta test if you need me.

3 Steps to Better Presentations

2008-08-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I will be speaking to the Fresno County Office of Education on the subject of Scrum and Teamwork in general, reviewing the accomplishments Decade Software has made over the last few years.

This afternoon, I will be meeting with those who will present classes at the Decade Software User Training Conference next month.

...so I found Peter Stev's thoughts today quite timely.

"How will I know if the audience is getting what they need? Why didn’t I think of this sooner? The answer is simple: identify the users, figure out what they want to accomplish and why. Give the audience what they need to accomplish their most important goals. If you can identify and address their needs even before they are even aware of them, magic happens."

Check out his full post, and let me know what you think.

Decade supporters prepare to meet in Fresno

2008-08-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

Those who read my posts directly from the blog page will note the new countdown clock on the left. The annual Decade Software User Training Conference is only 34 days away, and as you can see from these photos, we've come along way since those first conferences so many years ago.

Over the years, we've found that conference attendees are as responsible as conference presenters for the success of these events—before, during, and after the conference.

Here are a collection of tips for getting the most out of our next gathering.

Before

• Examine your pre-conference agenda and synopsis to make sure that the classes you have scheduled cover the topics you want, and reflect both your interests and your experience level.

• Consider the class or lab format. Some topics lend themselves well to large audiences. Some offer more hands-on training and personal interaction with the speaker and other attendees.

• Make a list of the things you expect to learn from the classes and questions you want answered.

• Identify your strengths and weaknesses in the areas to be discussed, and be prepared to share your own knowledge when asked to do so.

During

• Attend.

• Take notes.

• Ask questions.

• Be willing to learn new ideas or techniques. Since you attend for the educational benefit, stay open to proposed concepts and workflows, and evaluate them for yourself outside of the conference.

• Give each speaker verbal and visual feedback so he or she knows whether or not the presentation is addressing your needs and concerns. (Is your focus drifting? Taking notes and asking questions periodically can help you stay “tuned in” and may help to make the presentation more meaningful!)

After

• Complete your conference questionnaire and let us know exactly what you liked and disliked about the presentations or other aspects of the conference.

• List the key points, alternate techniques, and new ideas you have learned.

• Review your notes and handouts periodically throughout the year, and download handouts for the classes you missed from the Decade Software Company web site (under Support > Envision User Groups).

• Experiment with the new concepts you were exposed to and evaluate what does or does not work for you. The most enlightening seminar is worthless if attendees immediately file away handouts and never review or practice lessons learned.

• Share your experiences with colleagues who could not attend the event. Be specific about what was rewarding or disappointing about your individual experience at the conference.

See you September 29th and 30th!

3 Big Questions from Patrick Lencioni

2008-08-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

You may recall that Patrick Lencioni is one of my favorite authors.

He has a new book that everyone should read.

If you take time to read The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family, please let me know what you think.

21 tips for delivering killer presentations

2008-08-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

As you know, I worked in radio for 15 years, and I've been speaking publicly since Jimmy Carter was president.

In fact, this month I will be speaking to developers at the Fresno County Office of Education on Scrum.

At the office this week, everyone's getting excited about our user conference, and most are beginning to prepare their training sessions. To assist, I've put together my top 21 tips for public presentations.

Know your 15-word summary. Can you summarize your presentation in fifteen words? If not, rewrite it and try again. Speaking is an inefficient medium for communicating information, so know what the important fifteen words are and repeat them often.
Develop rapport with the audience. Presentations should be entertaining and informative. The audience expects some appeal to their emotions. Reciting dry facts without passion or humor bores your audience, as does repetitious or unnecessary words. Keep the audience engaged. Interesting talks fly by. Boring ones last forever.
Tell stories. If your presentation is lengthy, explain your points using short stories or anecdotes. Great speakers know how to paint mental pictures for the audience, creating emotional connections between ideas.
Tell the truth. If someone asks you a question and you do not know the answer, tell them so, but offer to help them find the answers after the presentation, and when you are wrong, say you are wrong.
Hold questions until the end. To keep the presentation moving, ask the audience to hold questions until the end. If they have questions not specific to the presentation, ask them to meet with you after the session.
Repeat questions. When accepting questions, have the person asking state their name and where they are from. Repeat these details and the question for your audience.
Prepare and adapt. Speak to your audience, listen to questions, respond to reactions—adjust and adapt. In case your material is not getting across, be prepared to change strategy. Know what you can (and cannot) omit, and brace yourself for the unexpected.
Distribute handouts. Ensure that the audience focuses on your presentation, instead of taking notes. Distribute most prior to the arrival of the audience, and hold additional handouts for late arrivals.
Make eye contact with everyone in the room. Sincere eye contact makes everyone in your audience feel involved. Exchange eye contact with many people in the audience for 3 seconds each, and routinely glance at the crowd while speaking.
Remember the slide rules. Show no more than 10 slides per 20 minutes with each slide containing no font smaller than 30-point. Using any audio or visual aids, “going large” avoids interruption by making everything easily understandable from the back of the room. Highlight main points within the first few slides, and throughout the presentation, use more words than those on the slides. Also, remember to number your slides (or script pages) in case you lose your place.
Never read slides or notes verbatim. Use words as reminders, and spend most of your time making eye contact. Knowing your material makes you more competent and confident—and assures your audience that you are an expert on your subject.
Speak with conviction and enthusiasm. With a little practice, you can inject your passion for a subject into your presentations, and enthusiasm is contagious. Structure presentations using logical progressions from introduction (Thesis statement) to body (strong supporting arguments, accurate and up-to-date information) to conclusion (re-state thesis, summary, and logical conclusion).
Breathe. Feeling the urge to use presentation killers like ‘um,’ ‘ah,’ or ‘you know’? Replace those with a pause, taking a short breath—in—not out. Allow everyone time to reflect and think. Racing through will leave everyone out of breath.
Slow down. Nervous speakers tend to talk fast. Consciously slow your speech down and add pauses for emphasis. Use statements like, “that’s a good question,” or “I’m glad you asked me that,” to buy time and organize responses. Astute guests will know, but it still smoother than “ums” and “ahs”.
Never plan gestures. Any gestures you use should be an extension of your message and the real emotions that message conveys. Planned gestures always look phony, because they do not match other involuntary body cues.
Arrive early. Never fumble with software or equipment while people are waiting. Scope the room early, run through your slide show, and identify any potential problems. Verify early that all electrical outlets and devices are functioning properly.
Practice your speaking skills. Practice instills competence and confidence. If possible, practice with the microphone. Some require that you speak from one angle. Other microphones absorb sound from different directions, but are prone to feedback.
Project your voice. Do not yell. Stand up straight and let your voice resonate on the air from your lungs rather than your throat, and you will produce a louder and clearer sound. Vary the tone of your voice and dramatize if necessary. If a microphone is available, adjust and adapt your voice accordingly.
Know when to apologize. Apologize only when you have done something wrong. Never apologize for nervousness or a lack of preparation time. Most audiences will not detect your anxiety, unless you draw attention to it. Apologize when you are late or shown to be incorrect. Confidence will promote audience trust, but arrogance will erode it.
Be the Audience. When preparing your presentation, think from the audience’s perspective. What might they not understand? What might seem boring? As an audience member, “What’s in it for me?”
Know when to stop talking. Conclude your presentation by summarizing your main points. Follow with an interesting remark or an appropriate punch line. Leave your audience with a positive impression and a sense of completion. Do not belabor your closing remarks. If there is time remaining, take questions, thank your audience and sit down.

Let me know if you have any to add!

BIG things will be happening in September!

2008-08-15T00:53:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have a secret that you were dyeing to tell, but no one would let you?

What if you had dozens of those secrets just aching to get out?

That is the way I feel about the 2008 User Training and Conference sessions.

EnvisionConnect is more powerful than ever before, and we have wonders to show our customers.

Additionally, the conference itself—September 29th and 30th, here in Fresno at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center—is undergoing changes, changes that guarantee to make it our most polished to date.

Watch this space for more details!

Scrum goes Green

2008-08-11T01:31:00.000-07:00

Dan Greening is doing an incredible job explaining Scrum in no nonsense terms.

Scrum is a software management technique with high transparency, adaptive control, reasonably accurate release forecasting, and high productivity. However, because Scrum exposes marketers and developers to greater visibility and accountability than traditional waterfall approaches, and because it requires different management structures, some organizations encounter resistance implementing it.

There is much, much more on his site.

Check it out.

Lead, Follow, or Get Fired!

2008-08-08T00:56:00.000-07:00

After a few false starts, I still have not been motivated to get my podcast up and running, and I am beginning to think I need a co-host. With a team in place, perhaps we can push each other forward.

Afterall, that's what the phrase Lead, Follow, or Get Fired is all about.

Teams must be perpetual—where each member is a moving part pushing the other moving parts forward. When one of those parts stops working, that part must be replaced.

I know that sounds harsh, but it is a reality.

To believe anything else is to fool yourself and damage the morale—and the throughput—of your team.

Successful teams lead themselves, and within each team, there are strong members that will push for improvements.

However, those leaders must not be allowed to dominate, as one persons improvement is often another persons impediment.

Any who sees a problem with current processes should lead the team to improve it, just as they would any other problem.

If a member cannot identify a problem with current processes, it is that member's responsibility to support those processes—continuing to move forward and to push other members to move forward.

Those old tried-and-true words of Thomas Paine are still alive and well today: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way" of those who are trying to improve and/or support the team.

Yea, I know what you are thinking—and you are wrong.

There is nothing negative about this perspective for two simple reasons:

REASON ONE: The process is a fair one. Everyone has the opportunity to support the team as is or help change the team and its processes for the better. Finding a team where you are a better fit is truly a last resort.
REASON TWO: The process has proven time and time again that it works!

So, about my podcast: I need to get a partner who can lead me, follow me, or fire me. This has gone on long enough.

Any takers?

Having a pow-wow with the wife

2008-08-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

For my first wedding anniversary, I went to an Indian Pow-wow.

By now, my female readers are throwing tomatoes at me, and the Native American activists of the world are preparing their picket signs.

Get over it!

It was my wife's idea to attend the pow-wow, after some Mono friends of ours invited us to the foothills for the weekend—and those same friends positively hate the term "Native American".

The name "America" came from the same folks that labeled the continent's indigenous peoples "Indians" in the first place.

It's true that these folks are not from India, and that Columbus thought they were, but why someone coined a particular term doesn't make the term any less valid.

If you truly want to be politically correct, call a Mono a Mono, an Apache an Apache, or—here's a novel idea—simply call them by their name.

My great grandmother—"Mamaw Teya"—was Cherokee.

Her family name was Gill—not Native or American or Indian.

And by the way, the expected first anniversary gift is "paper".

Our "Indian Fry Bread" was much tastier than paper...

...and besides, my wife did ask me to take her dancing for our anniversary.

15 Scrum facts that can make or break your team

2008-07-31T02:24:00.000-07:00

If you follow Scrum, it can work miracles in your organization, but I've explained many times before that it is far from being a silver bullet. Without making the effort to built and maintain a solid team, Scrum is completely useless.

Scrum is a tool.

Use it properly, and it will accomplish what is was designed to accomplish.

Abuse it, and you will fail.

To confirm that this is not news to anyone, I offer Scrum Founder Ken Schwaber's text on the subject:

Scrum is Hard and Disruptive!
1. Scrum is a framework for iterative, incremental development using cross-functional, self-managing teams. It is built on industry best practices, lean thinking, and empirical process control.
2. Scrum is optimized for high yield product management and product development. Scrum is particularly appropriate for high risk, complex, large projects and can be used when other parts of the endeavor are hardware or even waterfall development.
3. If waterfall suits current needs, continue using it.
4. An enterprise can use Scrum as a tool to become the best product development and management organization in its market. Scrum will highlight every deficiency and impediment that the enterprise has so the enterprise can fix them and change into such an organization.

5. Whenever an enterprise modifies or only partially implements Scrum, it is hiding or obscuring one or more dysfunctions that restrict its competence in product development and management.
6. The iterative, incremental nature of Scrum puts stress on the product development organization to improve its engineering skills and on the product management organization to optimize the return on investment of every release and project. The phrase, "That can't be done here" really means that it will be very difficult to do so. The gap between current practices and target practices is a measure of incompetence and competitive risk.
7. The use of Scrum to become an optimized product development and management organization is a change process that must be led from the top and requires change by everyone within the enterprise. Change is extremely difficult and fraught with conflict, and may take many years of sustained effort. Turnover of staff and management can be expected.
8. The most serious impediments to using Scrum are habits of waterfall, predictive thinking over the last twenty to thirty years; these have spawned command and control management, belief that demanding something will make it happen, and the willingness of development to cut quality to meet dates. These are inbred habits that we aren't even aware of anymore.
9. The focus of using Scrum is the change from old habits to new ways of doing business. Scrum is not implemented or rolled-out as a process; it is used to foment change.
10. Scrum is not a methodology that needs enhancing. That is how we got into trouble in the first place, thinking that the problem was not having a perfect methodology. Effort centers on the changes in the enterprise that is needed.
11. Iterative, incremental development is much harder than waterfall development; everything that was hard in waterfall engineering practices now has to be done every iteration, and this is incredibly hard. It is not impossible, but has to be worked toward over time.
12. Managing a release or project to deliver only the highest value functionality and not deliver the rest optimizes value [and] is the job of product management and customers.
13. Self-managing teams are extremely productive. When they work closely with the customer to derive the best solution to a need, they and the customer are even more productive.
14. A team consists of people under pressure to do their best. Conflict is natural and the team needs to know how to deal with the conflict and have resources to draw on when needed.
15. The role of an enterprises management changes from telling people what to do to leading and helping everyone do their best to achieve goals. People aren't resources and managers aren't bosses.

A doctor's call on finding new blood for your healthy team

2008-07-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

When your organization moves from a command and control environment to a network of self-managed teams, productivity will increase dramatically—as can turnover.

"There’s good fit – like a glove – or there’s bad fit – like socks on a rooster. In terms of an organization, fit has more to do with adapting to, and embracing an organization’s culture."

In a post regarding hiring for a medical team, Dr.Carol Westfal not only defines the problem, but the solution.

"Different personalities can help you define the cultural orientation of your organization. Becoming aware of the importance and value your organization places on these characteristics will help your interview team identify and define its own culture and make it easier to discover the candidate’s relative fit."

Here are some traits Carol says defines an organization’s culture:

Customer-focused:

· Compassion.

· Access and patient satisfaction.

· Listening and approachability.

· Dealing with ambiguity.

· Interpersonal savvy.

Process-focused:

· Planning and execution.
· Managing through systems.
· Priority setting.
· Process compliance.
· Focus on quality.

· Models preferred behaviors.

Performance-driven:

· History of achieving results.
· Driven to achieve.
· Accountability – self and others.
· Self-manages & self-corrects.
· Strong business acumen.
· Appropriately autonomous.

Relationship-centered:

· Builds relationships.
· Responds to coaching & feedback.
· Integrity and trust.
· Social skills.
· Organizational agility.
· Loyalty.

In reality, there is no magic bullet for assessing a good long-term fit, but careful appraisals of your organization and corresponding explorations of candidates personal and professional traits, will help you locate good cultural matches that will support your team for the foreseeable future.

Use the Cone of Silence: It's the Law

2008-07-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

This morning, I was abiding by California Law, driving with my cell phone in "speaker" mode.

Not only is this experience like using Get Smart's Cone of Silence, but the whole thing is completely unfair.

It's unfair to me, and it's unfair to the underwater person I am attempting to have a conversation with.

This awkward situation has us screaming at each other. Not only is this unfair, but it is also very rude.

I stopped at one light to find a rather obese guy with two egg McBurritos in one hand and scalding hot coffee in the other—but no worries: he had both elbows on the steering wheel.

At the next light, I found myself beside an attractive blond—attractive, because she had her whole beauty shop in her car. She was applying so much makeup as the light turned that I could have sworn she had three arms.

Where's the law against applying mascara and stuffing your face while driving? Is there some survey that proves these folks cause less accidents than those with cell phones to their ears, or is that a law, only because some bored California lawmaker had nothing important to talk about?

Almost to the office, I hit one of those uncomfortable lights. The ones where you are forced to sit in front of a cop. You know you're not guilty of anything, but you're nervous anyway. You start thinking of "what-ifs".

What if I weaved, and he thinks I'm drinking? What if my break light went out overnight? What if that parking ticket in New Mexico last summer finally caught up with me?

What if the cop is bored and looking for something to do? What if he is having a bad day and is looking for someone to take it out on?

In the end, I was able to breath a sigh of relief.

The officer had no time for me.

He was busy with his cell phone in his ear!

Scrum Teams: weighing Individual Performance Appraisals

2008-07-25T03:26:00.000-07:00

According to a recent Wall Street Journal headline...

“Teams have become commonplace in U.S. Companies.”

Of course, that is common knowledge to readers of this blog.

It is also descriptive of a problem that I am trying to solve this week.

As I've noted before, most performance appraisal techniques are formulated with individuals in mind—they measure and rate the performance of the individual employee. Therefore, with the number of teams increasing in the organizations, it becomes difficult to measure and appraise the performance of the team.

The problem is in defining how to separate the performance of the team from the performance of the employees.

One solution being adopted by many companies involves measuring both individual and team performance. Sometimes, team based objectives are also included in the individual performance plans.

From a software development perspective, I am pondering how this can be applied to a Scrum team.

I would love to hear any ideas you may have.

Only 12% of all software companies leverage Scrum

2008-07-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

You might recall my complaints regarding Axosoft OnTime's advertised support for Scrum and its short-comings.

This week, Axosoft conducted a survey and determined that I was right.

"...Scrum is one of the top methodologies getting adopted by teams. At Axosoft, we’ve been very intrigued with Scrum and the philosophy behind it. Scrum is very much inline with our own development philosophy, and we hope to improve OnTime even more so it addresses the needs of Scrum teams even better in the future."

They also discovered that most software companies are not using Scrum.

Now, you understand why Decade Software is surpassing our competition like never before.

Hiding unjustified stress from your team

2008-07-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

Someone said to me today...

"You hide stress really well."

I thought of all of the people in my life that would disagree with that statement, and then, I realized that I do act differently at the office.

Don't misunderstand me. I do try to be vulnerable and honest with my team at all times, but I also strive to guard them from the sky-is-falling types. If my team knows I am concerned, they may lose confidence in our work or in the company as a whole.

For this reason, I try to expose my stress only when I am 100% certain there is a real problem.

Steve Jobs once said...

"Remembering that you are going to die is a sure fire way to remind yourself that you have nothing to lose."

I prefer that my teams think this way.

Don't ignore the risks, but don't run away from them either.

If a team has a leader that is constantly in panic mode, no risks will be taken, no one will focus on mitigating risks, and innovation will die.

How's that for a doom a gloom viewpoint?

Leaders—any persons of influence—have a duty to remain aware of their own moods.

Yea, it’s difficult to remain positive when customers are screaming, but failing to do so will dampen the spirits and the productivity of your team—and that dampening can last for weeks.

So...

How to you control these things?

I discovered the answer in drama class back at Southeastern Louisiana University, but you can read about it from Napoleon Hill.

He said...

“Think, act, walk and talk like the person you want to become and you’ll become that person.”
“Act enthusiastic and you will become enthusiastic.”

Combining those thoughts provides a simple solution for controlling morale.

This is a quote of my own for you to remember...

"Positive ultimately means productive."

Try it, and if it doesn't work for you, I'll give you your money back.

What do you mean 'no commitment'?

2008-07-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

When I read Ken H. Judy's post title—Stop calling it an estimate. Stop pretending it’s a commitment.—I launched Windows Live Writer ready to attack.

Reading on, I realized it was one of those tongue-in-cheek titles that trick us into reading blog posts.

Ken says...

"Setting an achievable target and owning that decision, communicating the rationale for your decision and having that rationale inform your priorities earns trust and rallies a team to deliver.
Don’t set arbitrary targets. Don’t burden yourself with unnecessary risk, demotivate your developers and thoughtlessly constrain the value built into your software.
Do set meaningful targets. Take calculated risks, manage costs, partner with your developers and know what and when you need to deliver to your customers.
It’s not an estimate. The developer cannot assume your risk.
It’s not a commitment. You’ve got to earn that."

Now, maybe you still see Ken's last statement above as controversial? If so, you have much to learn about truth, trust, and transparency.

Of course, no one in the Scrum trenches would disagree, but on the road to the statement above, Ken has much to say about estimating in general—an area that always prompts a debate or two and is well worth a read.

Grizzlies lost last night, but our team won!

2008-07-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

Last night, Decade Software teams from all departments gathered their families and made another trek to Chukchansi Park for an all-you-can-eat BBQ outing.

The Fresno Grizzlies lost to the Portland Beavers, 4-2, but the July temperatures were lower than expected, allowing a good time to be had by all.

I wanted to thank Kevin for funding the event and to thank all who attended for coming out and supporting the DSC team.

Thanks! It was a blast.

How not to hire a developer

2008-07-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

This is from a job posting I found on the net...

"Knowledge of agile development methodologies (e.g. SCRUM, RUP).
A BS/MS degree in Computer Science or related technical field is required...One of our guiding principles is no meetings across the team one day a week—great for heads down work and potentially where you do your best work."

This is a place I would never work.

Let's look at the problems individually...

"Knowledge of agile development methodologies (e.g. SCRUM, RUP)."

Any shop that thinks that Scrum is an acronym and that this project management tact somehow equates to the Rationale Unified Process development methodology has no idea how to succeed.

"A BS/MS degree in Computer Science is required."

This requirement has always been one of my favorites, and my perspective on the issue is likely to offend many among you.

I have a degree, but outside of using Pascal when I worked in Delphi, most of my management and development skills were acquired in the trenches or with my head in a book—not during those years I spent working three jobs, walking around like a zombie, memorizing lecture notes, and drinking beer.

Frankly, I have seen developers without degrees who work circles around some who do. Professionalism and dedication to learning out-produces a piece of paper with your name on it any day of the year.

"One of our guiding principles is no meetings across one day a week."

Meetings equal communication. If your meetings are counter-productive, fix that problem. Don't stifle the team's ability to communicate and collaborate as needed.

"Heads down work is potentially where you do your best work."

Oh yea, this is a place that I want to work. The statement above is one of the most anti-team statement I have ever heard.

It's like that old saying...

"One of us cannot think better than all of us."

Working in a vacuum almost always guarantees that a better idea was available but not considered—and it certainly guarantees rework.

I'll bet this company has a sign on the wall that says:

"Do more with less."

(Before you ask, Kevin—No, I did not find this listing, while looking for a new job. I have the utmost respect for my team, and I am very proud to be working with them. Give us another mountain to move, and we stand ready.)

Public appearance this week, call the assassin

2008-07-09T02:57:00.000-07:00

An invitation for you...

Central Valley Software Partnership

presents

A two-meeting showcase of innovation
in Fresno's software development industry

Participating companies include

July 10

Argos Software
Decade Software
Decipher
WatchDoit
Yosemite Technologies

August 14

Famous Software
Galaxy IT
SJV Technology Group
Company TBD
Company TBD

Who Can Attend:

Anyone with an interest in the growth and well being of Fresno, California's software development industry.

When:

8 to 9:30 a.m., Thursday, July 10 and Thursday, August 14

Where:

Central Valley Business Incubator
1630 E. Shaw Ave., #163, Fresno
(northeast corner of the Old Spaghetti Factory parking lot)

Why:

To increase the visibility of Fresno's software development industry and to celebrate the innovation happening every day.

For More Information:

Allyson Robison at 559.294.6025

Real leaders can save the world

2008-07-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

On the subject of Environmental Health...

What would you say if I told you there was a conservative oil tycoon—the 117th richest man on earth!—who had a realistic plan for breaking the United States' dependency on oil and saving the world in the process?

In this blog, I love to point out great leaders.

I'm beginning to think—unless he really has a lot of people fooled—T. Boone Pickens is one of the greatest.

Fireside Chat provokes Spooky Actions

2008-07-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I received a nice note from Michael DeWitt...

"HL, I heard your Fireside Chat with Lisa Haneberg and was very impressed with what you had to say. I decided to check out your blog, which is great. I was particularly taken with your Agile / Scrum / HueyLong post. It's probably in my top 10 all time in the blogosphere, because it was entertaining and right on the money!"

Michael also pointed me to a related article on his rather famous blog, Spooky Action. If you liked my Hipopalorum and Lopopahirum post, I recommend checking out Michael's take on the subject as well.

Talking Team, a fireside chat with Lisa Haneberg

2008-07-07T00:19:00.000-07:00

Author Lisa Haneberg at Management Craft fame invited me over for one of her famous fireside chats.

We had a great time discussing the power of teamwork.

Check it out.

Liberty and Justice for all...Happy Independence Day!

2008-07-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

"Liberty is the quality or state of being free; the power to do as one pleases; freedom from physical restraint; freedom from arbitrary or despotic control; the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges; the power of choice."

—Webster's Dictionary

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny...Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people...A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.”

—Thomas Jefferson

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

—Benjamin Franklin

“...we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

—John F. Kennedy

No rest for the Scrum warriors

2008-07-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

Over at Elegant Code, David Starr seems to be talking about our office...

"Scrum has finally been recognized as an excellent team management model that supports agility. It is also prone to fracturing at large scale and must be held together with more pressure at large size. It takes more than Scrum to deliver on the whole promise."

And about my team...

"Test Driven Development is a wonderfully lean practice that has genuinely matured to a standard engineering practice.

Who can argue with the constant attention to quality? Now that we can agree this is how to do business, we are simply evolving the technique rather than arguing about whether it has value.

Good stuff."

He also offers some warnings that almost applied to our teams...

"I cannot count the number of times people have represented their practices as 'Scrum-like'. I commonly ask, 'Did you start with Scrum and modify it to fit your shop?'
'No,' is the common answer. 'We read the books and picked the parts that seemed to make sense for us.' "

I laughed out loud when I read this, remembering how hard we fought off Scrumbut in the early days with my team—and more recently in our Design and Client Services teams.

However, David's warning is an important one. If we get lazy, if we start sinking back into our old processes, all of our successes could vanish in a heartbeat.

There is no rest for the Scrum warrior. One must be ever vigilant to ensure that the process machine is well oiled and humming quietly.

Thanks for the reminder, David!

Learn Scrum for a mere $2,200.00 plus airfare to Sweden

2008-06-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this...

Scrum Leadership Summit
When? October 20 - 22
Where? Stockholm, Sweden
How Much? $2,200 (USD)

More Information:
http://www.scrumalliance.org/events/6--stockholm-scrum-gathering

This will be the first time that both Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland will be together at a Scrum Gathering and on a panel to take on all questions. Space is limited so if you can make it to Stockholm we suggest you register early.

Ken and Jeff are great guys, and the Scrum world owes them much.

In fact, I would love to go there and speak with them myself.

...but if your goal is only to understand Scrum, buy their books instead—and then get to work delivering.

Scrum is not a difficult tool to use, and it is extremely fast to learn, but your time and resources must be spent doing.

There really isn't that much to learn once you understand the basic problems you are trying to solve.

Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't go to Sweden anyway. Just find something better to see than a conference hall.

Agile and Lean really Hipopalorum and Lopopahirum

2008-06-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

In his blog this week, Martin Fowler attempts to explain away the misconceptions that "lean" and "agile" software practices are two different methodologies. I wanted to add that the idea that these were different came from consultants who are trying to convince you that the differences are so complicated that you need a consultant to succeed.
Whether your talking about Extreme Programming, Scrum, Lean, or Agile, you are really talking about tools that follow the same basic practices and understandings that make these all work.
As I explained in my guest post at Management Craft, you are talking about common sense.
Agile practices work well in Software Development, but if you boil them down to their basic common denominators, you are talking about something that can work for anyone—without consultant hand-holding.
Being a history buff, this whole Lean versus Agile debate reminds me of something Senator Huey Long used to joke about in the 1930s.
There were two patented arthritis medicines on the market, one was called Hipopalorum and the other was Lopopahirum.
One you rubbed on your body from bottom to top and the other you rubbed on your body from top to bottom. The ingredients of the product were exactly the same. They were just being promoted by different salesman.
This is not unlike the different business consultants that confront us today.
Anyway, just to finish the story...
Long—aka "the Kingfish"—had been elected Louisiana governor, then United States Senator, and he announced his candidacy for President of the United States in 1935.
Most of his speeches compared our political parties to Hipopalorum and Lopopahirum—and their product vendors.

"The only difference between the two parties is one skins us from the top down and the other skins us from the bottom up."

Huey Long was assassinated in September of 1935.

This is the funniest Scrum thing I've ever heard

2008-06-23T06:10:00.000-07:00

The following is from the agenda for the Agile 2008 Conference.

It describes one of the classes they offer...

"Come to this tutorial if you are an Agile coach or a Scrum Master and want to let your teams self-organize. They just don’t become self-organizing on their own."

For a mere $1,999.00, you can attend this conference and find out how to organize your self-organizing team.

Give me a break!

Scrum is common sense.

Attend one Scrum class if you need to—I do have two Scrum certifications—but once you understand the fundamentals of what works and what doesn't, move on, and get the job done.

Unless you're just looking for a tax write-off, stop wasting company money on consultants and conferences.

Once you understand the basics of creating a perpetual team—be it Agile, Scrum, Six Sigma, or Super Process Come Lately—there is simply nothing else to learn.

Get out there and make it happen.

Jack Welch remembers Tim Russert

2008-06-20T00:21:00.000-07:00

On the news last night, I caught some folks trampling the memory of the late Tim Russert.
It frustrates me how low some will stoop.
Here's what Leadership Guru Jack Welch says about Tim...

He was a colleague and friend who was loved by everyone he touched. My last encounter with Tim was a month ago, and it typifies everything about him. I called to ask him to speak at a Boston charity. Although I was long-retired and someone who could do nothing for him, he didn’t say, “Let me look at my calendar.” He said, “Tell me where and when.”

Why can't doctors afford software?

2008-06-19T00:54:00.000-07:00

Did you see this report?

"Electronic health records, touted by the government as a way to reduce medical costs, are used by few doctors in the U.S. because they are too expensive for their practices, a Harvard University survey found.

The poll, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that just 4 percent of doctors use software that includes electronic prescriptions and drug-interaction warnings.
A larger group, 13 percent, opted for more basic software that only allowed them to enter notes and medical histories. Those who use the computer systems said they helped improve patient care."

Using computer records to lower cost and eliminate inefficiency has been a recurring theme among both major U.S. presidential candidates this year, and last week, the federal government offered $150 million in grants to promote use of electronic records among 1,200 doctors in 12 communities.

Perhaps, we should collect a fund—or maybe hold a telethon—to help starving doctors buy software and welcome them into the 21st century?

Everyone knows, they're not paid enough, and they are oh-so helpful when we visit.

This reminds me of a quote from Comedian Chris Rock...

"The last thing doctors cured was Polio, and that was back in the first season of I Love Lucy ...That's because when they cure you, they stop making money off you ...I've been watching the Jerry Lewis Telethon for more than 20 years now. Not one stitch of progress whatsoever. "

Full Moon has customers and staff howling

2008-06-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

It's only Wednesday, but this week has been crazy.

Murphy's Law is everywhere, and folks are panicking over the smallest things. My usually successful requests for patience and rationality seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

I was scratching my head, wondering what was going on, when someone said...

"It must be the full moon."

And I knew they were correct.

Hear me out. That was not one of my usual tongue-in-cheek statements.

I wasn't kidding.

Numerous studies have been done on this subject with mixed results, but a recent study at the University of Miami really stands out.

"At the University of Miami, psychologist Arnold Lieber and his colleagues decided to test the old belief of full-moon “lunacy” which most scientists had written off as an old wives’ tale.
The researchers collected data on homicide in Dade County (Miami) over a period of 15 years — 1,887 murders, to be exact. When they matched the incidence of homicide with the phases of the moon, they found, much to their surprise, that the two rose and fell together, almost infallibly, for the entire 15 years.
As the full or the new moon approached, the murder rate rose sharply; it distinctly declined during the first and last quarters of the moon.
...researchers repeated the experiment using murder data from Cuyahoga County in Ohio (Cleveland). Again, the statistics showed that more murders do indeed occur at the full and new moons."

An earlier report by the American Institute of Medical Climatology to the Philadelphia Police Department entitled “The Effect of the Full Moon on Human Behavior” found similar results.

That report showed that the full moon marks a monthly peak in various kinds of psychotically oriented crimes such as murder, arson, dangerous driving, and kleptomania. People do seem to get a little bit crazier about that time of the month.

"Dr. Lieber speculates that perhaps the human body, which, like the surface of the earth, is composed of almost 80 percent water, experiences some kind of “biological tides” that affect the emotions. When a person is already on psychologically shaky ground, such a biological tide can push him or her over the edge."

During my college days, I held three jobs, one of which was at a mental hospital—I'm not kidding.

If you want to know whether there's something to this full moon theory, hang out at a mental hospital for a month. Most days are as quiet as any other hospital, but during the full moon, you be afraid to go anywhere alone.

MySpace finally listened to me

2008-06-13T05:46:00.000-07:00

After my many posts as well as others regarding the fallacies of building enterprise-level applications using ColdFusion and BlueDragon, rumor has it that MySpace has finally dumped them entirely.

Last year, the pulled sections of the flawed application, replacing it with a .Net application, announcing...

"...we wrote a custom configuration section that maps fuseaction URL parameters to ASPX extensions so that we'd maintain link integrity. The only place we aren't doing this is 'Browse' and certain other new features.

Meanwhile, the parts of the site that are running in Cold Fusion (CFML) are essentially doing so in ASP.NET 2.0 (via Blue Dragon)."

MySpace announced today that the all-new MySpace 2.0 will go online next Wednesday, but they are keeping hush-hush regarding the technologies they replaced and with what.

Most likely, their completely ASP.Net now, but we'll know more after Wednesday.

This blog did not make the Top 100

2008-06-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

HR World released their annual list of Top 100 Leadership Blogs.

No, this humble blog did not make its ranks.

However, Author Lisa Haneberg's popular blog, Management Craft did make the list.

...and guess who's sitting in for her today.

Game developers embrace Scrum

2008-06-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

In an interview this week, Relic General Manager Tarrnie Williams tells Will Wright that Scrum is the most widely used management methodology for game programming.

"We use Scrum.

That’s the way we manage our projects and we really like it. We’re big fans.

We’ve done our last three productions with it; Company of Heroes was done with it.

We transitioned midway through Dark Crusade, Soulstorm—although it was an external project. Certainly our end game was done that way.

Opposing Fronts and Dawn of War II were also done with Scrum.

Those projects have been finished on time, on budget with little or no overtime."

Eventually, it seems, all development teams everywhere will be Scrum shops, as those who Scrum are consistently out producing those who do not.

As more and more teams outside of software development begin to understand why Scrum works, the same will be true of other industries.

I don't expect all industries to endorse Scrum itself, but once they understand the problems that this tool solves for them, these industries will likely adopt other Perpetual Team methodologies.

If they do not, they will likely lose their businesses to those who do.

Every Sherlock needs a Watson

2008-06-09T04:24:00.000-07:00

No matter how brilliant those on your team are, they will fail without someone on the team accepting a "doctor" role—identifying and removing each team-player's pains—all obstacles to their success.

Kevin said to me last week...

"At first, I was a little concerned about these monthly one-on-ones you have with your staff. I thought having an open-door policy was enough. If someone had something to say, they would let management know. We shouldn't have to ask.

However, considering the good our new break room has brought, I've changed my mind. Maybe one-on-ones do improve communication. Maybe they are not a waste of time after all."

If everyone had outgoing personalities, Kevin's original perspective would have been dead on. The problem lies with those folks who keep their pains to themselves.

Those pains will eventually hurt enough to prompt them to look for another job—or to share the pain only with peers, causing a decrease in team morale.

If a manager identifies the pains early, he make me able to correct the problem, and that person will continue to support the team.

My friend, Lisa Haneberg, touched on this in her blog today...

"I have a pal who is very conservative when it comes to being assertive about her hopes, dreams, and wishes. She does not want to be a bother and feels a bit selfish to ask (I am not putting words in her mouth, we have talked about this).

Every now and then, I put myself in her shoes and share what I think she would ask if she had the courage. I have been right, I offer the help, she says "yes" and things surge forward for her a bit. You have a friend like this too and you can do the same."

Give those on your team a forum to describe obstacles privately, as well as in a team environment.

If your team is happy, your team will be more productive, and team happiness begins with the happiness of the individuals on your team.

Blues, Brews, and Barbeques this weekend

2008-06-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

Some of my team will be joining me tomorrow at the Engelmann Cellars winery for Fresno's annual Blues, Brews, and BBQ festival.

They'll start serving at 11:AM, and the first band hits the stage around 1:30 in the afternoon.

If you haven't been to one of these before, you should check it out. It's a great time, and the weather this weekend is expected to be perfect.

Axosoft OnTime does not support Scrum out of the box

2008-06-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

In spite of what Axosoft's sales demo and their Google Ad says, Axosoft OnTime does not support Scrum out of the box, and according to the company's owner, they never intended for it to.

However, they do insinuate that OnTime can be easily configured to support Scrum.

This is not entirely a true statement.

Since the last time I mentioned this, I've gotten several e-mails asking for clarification...

"How can one of the most successful Scrum shops out there, be using daily a product that doesn't support Scrum?"

Firstly, let me say that I love OnTime.

It's very intuitive, and it works well for us, but the tweaks we had to make to support Scrum went far beyond simple configuration.

To use OnTime with Scrum, we relabeled "Features" as "Product Backlog", "Tasks" as "Sprint Backlog". We track Impediments through Incidents, however we did not relabel Incidents, as Incidents are also used by customer support. We leveraged user-defined fields to denote teams and members and used the workflow steps to drive QA and customer interaction.

The major drawbacks are...

There reporting tool cannot be used to create burndown charts. We create them all using Microsoft Reporting Services and have the automatically e-mailed to team members. We also had to store some data outside of their database tables, as the historical data needed for burndown charts is not tracked by OnTime.
The Customer Portal does not include Tasks, so Sprint Backlog Items cannot be viewed by customers acting as members (either Pigs or Chickens) of your Scrum team. We workaround this by showing OnTime in webinar standup meetings and automated reports.
There is no support for calculated user-defined fields. We had to create a trigger on the database to calculate time remaining.
Some of their fields (like Estimated and Actual Duration) are not used by Scrum, but OnTime's canned reports, Quick Add Task Bar, etc. expect these fields to be used and cannot be redirected to use user-defined fields.

Everything else—with the aid of a few user-defined fields and custom workflows—works perfectly.

Scientists prove Scrum increases brain function

2008-06-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Jeff Sutherland reported this week that a new scientific study proves that Scrum actually makes you smarter...

"Brain research on rats suggests that voluntary pressure in the form of audacious goals taken on by high performance teams makes them produce more neuron stem cells, rewire the brain, and become smarter.

Involuntary pressure, often seen on waterfall teams, may reduce stem cell production and make employees stupid.

People should abandon teams on death marches as it is not healthy for them and will decrease brain function."

Find someone who is not using Scrum and organize an intervention.

You could use posters. Here's someone's brain on Scrum. Here's someone's brain on Wii. Here's someone's brain on talk radio.

Decade Software inspects restaurants in Canada

2008-06-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

This morning, I am meeting with our sister company in Canada. The team there is taking first steps to migrate HES customers to EnvisionConnect.

As Developer Mike Vea and I prepared for the meeting, it considered that some of you may not yet heard of Decade Canada.

Here's the scoop as recounted on their web-site...

"In November 2003, Decade Software Company, LLC incorporated a Canadian subsidiary company called Decade Software Canada Ltd.

The Environmental Health software assets known as the Hedgehog Environmental Systems (HES) software were purchased from Procura along with the rights to the existing contracts.

The Hedgehog Environmental Systems software was originally developed in 1993 by Neil Grinwis of Hedgehog Systems. Neil was recruited to run the Canadian company and to continue servicing the Canadian Environmental Health customers."

Today, we are comparing business rules between the two products to ensure that HES customers have all they need before the move to EnvisionConnect.

Growth is always exciting for us. I'll keep posted on our progress.

Bush-bashing again this weekend

2008-05-30T00:48:00.000-07:00

Trying to stay in shape as the years pass can be tough, but I've found a way to enjoy losing weight and staying fit. This year, I am spending more and more time hiking in Yosemite National Park.

Right now, I am preparing for my first overnight back-country hike is just a couple of weeks.

If you're looking for a good team-building exercise, you can't go wrong with hiking.

This summer, I hope to organize a group excursion with some of my fellow Decadians.

We often get involved in team river rafting, but I think this could be equally challenging and do more for bringing teams closer.

You're wondering about the title of this post right?

In Australia, hiking is called "bush-bashing".

So, here are a few bush-bashing tips for you...

When two groups of hikers meet on a steep trail, there may be contention for use of the trail. To avoid conflict, a custom has developed in some areas whereby the group moving uphill has the right-of-way. In other situations, the larger of the two groups will usually yield to the smaller.

Being forced to hike much faster or slower than one's natural pace can be annoying, and difficult to maintain consistently. More seriously, walking unnaturally fast dramatically increases fatigue and exhaustion, and may cause injury. If a group splits between fast and slow hikers, the slow hikers may be left behind or become lost. A common custom is to encourage the slowest hiker to hike in the lead and have everyone match that speed. Another custom is to have experienced hiker(s) sweep up the rear on a rota, to ensure that everyone in the group is safe and nobody straggles.
Hikers often enjoy the silence and solitude of their surroundings. Loud sounds, such as shouting or loud conversation, disrupt this enjoyment. Some hikers purposely avoid loud sounds, out of deference to other hikers. Staying quiet will also increase the likelihood of encountering wildlife.
Hikers sometimes trespass onto private property from public land or rights of way. Such trespass can alienate the property owners and (in countries where rights of way are not protected by law) close down hiking rights-of-way. To maximize hiking opportunities for everyone, most hikers will either stay on public land and easements, or solicit permission from property owners. Staying on well-marked trails avoids the possibility of trespass.
Tree branches or other vegetation often hang low across trails. A passing hiker may cause a tree branch to snap back in the face of a hiker behind. While it is courteous to warn following hikers if a branch is likely to snap back, it is every hiker's responsibility to allow enough space between himself and the hiker ahead to avoid the hazard.
When two groups of hikers meet, it is considered a common courtesy to exchange greetings (either verbal or physical, e.g. smiles and friendly nods). To pass another group without such acknowledgement is seen as rude.

In summary, always smile when bush-bashing in public.

Requirements, I pondered, weak and weary...

2008-05-29T01:49:00.000-07:00

I went. I saw. I learned. I am here to recount my experience.

Firstly, if you follow use case best practices, then you are way ahead of the game in understanding how RAVEN works. We do so at Decade Software, but instructor Steve Yeo told us that this rare among the software shops he visits.

The user-interface is modeled after Microsoft Outlook, so there was only a small learning curve. We covered the basics of the application in under two hours.

The other six were discussing those best practices.

The rules for writing Use Cases are simple:

Write concisely—no extraneous words.
Write in Active Voice—not passive voice.
No assumptions—assume your reader knows nothing that you are explaining.
Be consistent—if the system shows once, it shouldn't display later.
Flows describe Functional Requirements Only—Preconditions, Post-conditions, and Business Rules are documented outside of the flows.
Document all alternate flows—If this then that, otherwise that.
Use Requirements English—Actor Function Object Target ("User enters Login Credentials in the Password Dialog.")

RavenFlow's sales folk get a little cryptic discussing pricing structure, but once you cut through that—and verify that you can live with the best practices defined above—I assure you that RAVEN can help your organization deliver requirements faster with little rework and greatly improve transparency.

But...

As Steve said...

"We can only give you the tools to get the job done. Solid processes start at the top and only work with complete buy-in from the team."

Now, where have I heard that before?

Requirements Problems? Nevermore, nevermore.

2008-05-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I'm traveling to the Bay Area for a live demonstration of the RAVEN software everyone is raving about—bad pun intended.

Check out what they're saying...

"The award-winning RAVEN software enables business analysts to quickly build stakeholder consensus on requirements, reduces the time required for stakeholders to approve specifications, reduces developer rework due to requirements errors, and seamlessly links requirements and testing."

Too good to be true?

I'll let you know when I get back.

Remember...

2008-05-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

The story of America's battle for freedom is inscribed in the tombstones of those who defended her.

Top 3 de-motivators used by poor leaders

2008-05-23T00:13:00.000-07:00

There are those who think that the whole “manager versus leader” discussion is just current buzz-talk—some temporary fad with no meaning.

Those people are dead wrong!

There are many leaders who are not managers, and there are more managers who are not leaders.

True leaders use positives to show respect for the team, and they motivate the team as a byproduct.

Managers who are not leaders use negatives that bring down morale and consequently de-motivate the team.

The following three words are the de-motivators most commonly used by these managers: “Can’t”, “Only”, and “Easy”.

Can’t

Manager's approach: “Joe, you can’t take off at noon on Fridays any longer.”
Leader’s approach: “Joe, I need your help on Friday afternoons, because…”
This is more than an example of catching more flies with honey than vinegar. This is an example of how mutual respect boosts morale and fosters teamwork.

Easy

Manager's approach: “That’s easy. You guys can knock that out in a couple of hours.”
Leader’s approach: “Take some time and look into this. I need your expertise to tell me if it is doable and if so, how long it will take to complete.”
The word “easy” is such a de-motivator and morale deflator for my team at Decade Software that I purchased an “Easy Button” from Staples that the team uses as a stress reliever when folks outside of our team use the word.

If the task is not yours, it is disrespectful to assume that you know what is involved and how long it will take.

To do so is to say to someone, “This should take you two hours. If you tell me it will take longer, I’ll think you’re incompetent.”

The result is that the tasked person will cut corners, deliver a less than desirable product, have much rework to do, and experience a decrease in both morale and respect for leadership.

Only

Manager's approach: “…but you only need to do this.”
Leader's approach: "Tell me about the problems you're facing..."
This word is bad for all the reasons the previous word was bad.

Leaders must challenge teams to think and find resolutions to problems themselves. They do not make assumptions about the workload. Leaders express concerns and goals, asking questions that may lead the team to consider solutions, but telling them how to do their jobs only as a last resort.

Of course, there are other words that decrease morale, but understanding these three and how they decrease morale will reveal the big picture, allowing you—as a leader—to develop a subconscious list of your own.

Leaders who can see this big picture will keep morale up, and keep teams motivated, as teams are allowed to prove they are more than just minions doing management’s bidding.

Once that happens, team players want to come to work, and they are motivated to excel on the job.

They will be proud to tell people where they work, and they will be happy to call you their leader.

Leadership lessons from Indiana Jones

2008-05-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought that a rogue with a lone wolf reputation, known mostly for thinking outside of the box, could also be a good leader?

Take a group of folks with mixed skills and form a team.
Give them a common goal.
Let them solve it any way they can using the skills that work best for them, both individually and as a team.
Provide the team with a leader that primarily removes obstacles until the team directs him to take action somewhere else.

This sounds like a recipe for Scrum, but it is actually the plot of every Indiana Jones movie.

Again, I watched the first three this week.

Last night, I watched the Last Crusade, and tonight, I'm be at the theater watching Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

My Fedora and whip are in the car.

New ideas in Environmental Health

2008-05-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

As you know, Decade Software leads the industry in providing software for Environmental Health regulators. As such, I like to keep readers abreast of new ideas in Environmental Health.

The folks at the Cowlitz County Environmental Health Department in Longview, Washington have started an interesting movement.

They are getting the community involved in identifying and correcting local Environmental Health concerns, using what they describe as a national protocol to work through the process.
The final of three public meetings will be held 7:30 to 9, Friday morning.

Get ready for Scrum TV

2008-05-20T00:25:00.000-07:00

Mountain Goat reports that Scrum Guru Mike Cohn has been interviewed by Dave Prior of the PMI IT & Telecom Sig.

The exchange is available as a video podcast if you'd like to check it out.

To lead any team, you have to be willing to follow them

2008-05-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

I've decided to publish some of my favorite quotes on Mondays.

No one has the energy to be original on Mondays.

This week's subject is one of my favorites—Leadership.

“No man will ever make a great leader who wants to do it all by himself or to get all the credit for doing it.”

— Andrew Carnegie

“You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.”

— Anthony J D’Angelo

“I’ve got to follow them, I’m their leader.”

— Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

You’d think the attitude demonstrated in the last quote would be more common—considering it’s been around over four thousand years!

How do you please all software users all of the time?

2008-05-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

Today, EnvisionConnect has no known defect for more than 30 business days.

This is a rule, and it supersedes all other rules.

Why?

Back when we had defects that lived beyond 30 business days, customers would beat us up over it. We'd address the most critical issues, but the rest would hang out in our tracking systems for years.

And we didn't know what to do about them.

Each customer had their own little pet bug that drove them crazy. This prompted them to drive the folks in support crazy. And that prompted the folks in support to drive Development crazy.

But there was little Development could do.

Since each individual customer had their own pet defect, there was no reasonable way to prioritize the list and make everyone happy.

This, however, was only the tip of the ice-berg.

Anytime we added new features or tried to modernize the look and feel of the application, customers would ask: Why is that more important than my pet defect?

Eventually, our very livelihood was effected by this.

We were afraid to modernize the look and feel of our application, because our customers would complain, but when competition came on the scene with spiffy, cutting-edge looking applications, our customers complained that our application wasn't as cute as the competition.

We were in a no win situation.

We had to revamp the way we do business. We had to find a means to deliver cutting-edge applications with a modern, spiffy look and feel—and still deliver a bug-free application.

It wasn't easy finding that happy medium, but we did it.

And now no one drives anyone crazy any longer.

Well, almost no one.

Lead, Follow, or Get Fired! ™

Scrum’s no silver bullet. It’s the holster!

What kind of oracle do you have?

What is a Perpetual Team?

Perpetual Teams deliver Perfection

Put your Bugs where your Mouth is

Hands-on Workshop at Decade User Training Conference

EnvisionConnect Batch Processing Faster than Envision

EnvisionConnect Speaks SWIS-DIP

Hiking to Success at Decade Software

Collaborate, support teamwork, or go home!

Customer design or Too Many Cooks Sink Ships

Did you miss me?

What Managers Expect from teams

Bing! And thanks for saying so.

Now, that’s a real team!

Building a better Vulcan

It’s really not Swine Flu

Is your software safe from covert secret agents?

Beware the Wizard of Oz

Bill Gates joins the CIA

Happy Teams will weather the crisis storms

I never assign work to anyone

It’s not really Friday, is it?

The customer is not always right

Shine the Light or John Travolta versus Perry Como

I'm sorry I ever suggested changing the Decade logo

Customers get bug-free software

Angry customers tell 3,000 friends

It's the customers, Stupid!

It is time to be transparent again

The President has a blog

Everyone is Authoritative on a self-managed team

Does your team have have forest goals or tree goals?

Another Team Parable: Quality and the Self-motivated team

Sites undergoing operations

About those fad management books

My Decade Software?

Another secret operation in progress

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing great!

Finally, something to rant about

Disruption

A poor man's (or woman's) antibiotic...

Where do Obama and McCain stand on Environmental Health?

12 Characteristics of a Remarkable Leader

18 definitions that can make you a better leader

2008 Decade Conference a Resounding Success

Meanwhile, in a country called Scrum...

Preparing for the Decade User Training Conference

Presentation are not about hyperboles or widgets

Decade Software's best-kept is still a secret

My team's success is built on Trust

Truth, Trust, Transparency, and Toy Story

Axosoft OnTime adopts Scrum in a big way!

3 Steps to Better Presentations

Decade supporters prepare to meet in Fresno

3 Big Questions from Patrick Lencioni

21 tips for delivering killer presentations

BIG things will be happening in September!

Scrum goes Green

Lead, Follow, or Get Fired!

Having a pow-wow with the wife

15 Scrum facts that can make or break your team

A doctor's call on finding new blood for your healthy team

Use the Cone of Silence: It's the Law

Scrum Teams: weighing Individual Performance Appraisals

Only 12% of all software companies leverage Scrum

Hiding unjustified stress from your team

What do you mean 'no commitment'?

Grizzlies lost last night, but our team won!

How not to hire a developer

Public appearance this week, call the assassin

Central Valley Software Partnership

presents

A two-meeting showcase of innovationin Fresno's software development industry

Participating companies include

July 10

August 14

Who Can Attend:

When:

A two-meeting showcase of innovation
in Fresno's software development industry