Transition Patterns

A lot of good discussion...

Meeting Notes from Patrick WW via Jeremy A

The following are good patterns (+) and bad ones (-), as suggested by session attendees, with a bit of annotation and editorializing. ;-)

+ Start (Apprentice) with Practices; Evolve into (Mastery) Deep "Blink" Knowledge of Principles - "So, these are the kinds of things I have learned and benefits I have seen from painting lots of fences this way, and that I hope you will learn."
- "Please, just paint the fence this way; then we'll talk more about painting the fence"
+ Practices are not Enough
- without the deep understanding, nothing will stick

+ Start with the right metric to measure progress
- "Firehose transition"
- Too many practices at once
- Too many people at once

+ Root Cause Analysis for current client situation - "Current Reality Modeling"

+ Transition Team - "ears and muscles"
- Mix of developers, managers, customers, others

+ Create Feedback Loops Early
+ Get Some Early Wins
+ Situational Leadership
+ "Enough" Motivated Individuals
+ All Transition is Contextual/Situational
+ Local Adaption Always Happens
- "Over Coaching"

+ Pair-Coaching? / Triangulation
+ "Background" / Meta Coaching - Varied/Random Inspection
- Internal Meta-Coach?

+ Varied/Random Inspection
+ Find "Beginner's Mind"
+ Find a Formal "Devil's Advocate" - If this person flips, they can be powerful advocate for change

+ Don't Answer Unasked Questions

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Henrik's Suggested Transition Strategy; Early Engagement "Phases"

Goals phase
- Learn what major stakeholders want to see change
Interviews/Learning
- Learn from what several individual stakeholders think and feel about the current situation.
- Focus on current breakdowns, challenges, problems
- Build trust
- Active Listening; Empathetic Listening; Deep Listening

Quick Agile immersion/presentation
- Based on what was just learned, coach designs a half-day presentation or experiential session to introduce entire organization to a a goal-state

Workshops
- Smaller groups get together to focus on problems, learn more...
- Gather more buy-in

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Rob Park's Summary

* There are patterns associated with assessing a team's status and transitioning them into an agile methodology.
* First, gain some understanding of the goal (generally key stakeholder to coach)
* Second, as a coach spend a week or 2 to learn about the current context
* Third, give a general educational lecture to all on the team(s) involved.
* Fourth, conduct workshops / discussion groups of about 10 people each. Let them drive the line of questions. Gain buy-in.
* Fifth, conduct specialized coaching
* e.g. Product owner coaching for backlog management
* e.g. Developer coaching on TDD

* Transitioning of individuals is highly dependent on personality patterns
* The treatened
* The willing but needs help
* The motivated