The first of the 12 Principles in the Agile Manifesto is:
“Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
Couple that with principle number three:
“Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale.”
These two principles foreshadow Marquet’s concept of “Complete” which is the next chapter in Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say – and What You Don’t. This concept suggests breaking goals into smaller chunks with pauses to think and replan between each. This is a different way to describe iterations or sprints. As an agile coach, I counsel teams and leaders on the idea of getting something useable into the requesters’ hands every sprint. This is a core idea in agile, and 20 years into the agile revolution isn’t strange or radical. But it still is hard to implement, waterfall delivery concepts are hard to destroy. I find Marquet’s explanation of the idea of Complete is useful for explaining the rationale for incremental delivery models.
One of the central threads in the argument for Complete is the need to create space for learning. If we accept the idea that the world is rapidly changing then we must accept the idea that sitting still is the same as falling behind. Recently I visited The National Museum of Iceland. The last exhibit drove the idea of accelerating change home. The exhibit uses an old airport luggage carousel as its base. Sitting on the carousel are 30 smaller exhibits showing the technological and social change during the 20th century. As the decades marched by the rate of change exploded. Just think of the change in the world between the introduction of the telephone, tube TV, portable PC (think large briefcase), and a video game console. If you want to get serious, pull out the smart device in your pocket which replaces all of those items from the last century and includes a flashlight. These are just the visible representations of change. What is unseen is the change in knowledge and the amount of research needed to make and use each of those technologies. Using Marquet’s terms, the ratio of redwork to bluework has had to drastically change for creators and users. Shortening the time between pauses allows thinking, course corrections, and learning to keep pace with rapid change. The industrial age play of continue, just do, and do forever, is now a boat anchor that slows change down.
Iterations create a natural cadence of pauses so “we” can ask whether we are doing the right thing and whether we are doing it right. In agile we frequently pause, review, and reflect so that we can adapt to dynamic environments. The hard part for middle managers raised under the mantle of industrial methods is that pausing for re-planning gives the production team some of the responsibility for whether they are doing the right thing right. Some of the pushback for implementing the concept of complete, with its frequent reflection points, is that it makes it feel like the “doers” are spending less time on the redwork. I heard a team lead ask a fellow coach to explain their job if the team gets feedback and replans their work. When frightened managers do silly things to make sure the doers are doing and not thinking, thinking stops. I can tell you many stories I hear about leaders implementing key loggers to make sure coders are coding…all the time. Forbid anyone spends time thinking before they touch the keyboard.
The area of this chapter that struck me the hardest, during this read, was the need for celebration. Marquet points out that implementing iterative completion points provides a pause not just for thinking but also for celebration. Incrementalism, breaking things into smaller pieces and getting them done is a core to Marquet’s concept of complete. Breaking things into smaller chunks, allows you to complete something, declare it done, reassess your plan, reflect on how you are working, and then move on and do it again. Demning and Shewart would be proud to see a plan, do, check, act cycle in action in the 21st Century. Getting something done provides a team with a sense of accomplishment and release. The concepts of celebration and completion are intertwined. When we reset at the end of each iteration, the past becomes a sunk cost that we can move on from.
The author identifies four ways to execute the complete play.
- Chunk work for frequent completes early and few completes late.
- Celebrate with (the team), not for (what you got from it).
- Focus on behaviors, not characteristics.
- Focus on the journey, not the destination.
I want to highlight the cost of failing to celebrate. Two examples jump to mind. The first is personal. When I left a job, my manager took the department to lunch to say goodbye and then had everyone pay their tab, including me. It’s been several years, I still remember and I heard several colleagues comment about the manager’s lack of awareness of the message they sent. Turnover has been high ever since. The second was more recent and less personal. I overheard a manager addressing a team during a sprint review. They announced, “I am happy with the progress you have made in the last couple of sprints but remember the only thing that matters is getting everything done.” The team was pumped up before the comment and deflated afterward. The next sprint was a horror story. Language is Leadership…I guess that is why the book has been so useful. FYI, the manager publicly blamed Scrum for the problems their words caused. The team is now using an iterative waterfall approach and calling it Scrum. We will see what gets delivered in December (a few months from now).
I considered the idea of “celebrating with, not for” as I walked around Rykevic a few weeks ago. The concept generated a conversation between my wife and me about our language. Changing how we have been taught to deliver praise is harder than it appears. “I am very happy for how you planned this trip” delivers a different message than “The planning for this trip provides a good flow of activities.” The second asks the intended party to feel intrinsic satisfaction. The first statement makes the satisfaction something I provide. The second also has the added benefit of being an observation of value rather than a judgment about value.
Experiment for the week: Try rephrasing how you point out accomplishments. Try to make it less about you and your judgment. Let the person you’re talking to draw joy from their accomplishments rather than making it about your joy. It’s hard, which is why practice is important.
Another of the points that this chapter reminded me of is the need to have people tell the story of their journey toward a goal. When work gets broken into parts it is easy to focus only on the mile marker, the status of the step. Stories provide space to celebrate the journey towards each of the subgoals while keeping their eye on the overall goal. This increases goal orientation.
Previous installments of our re-read of Leadership is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say – and What You Don’t (buy a copy)!
Week 1: Logistics, Introduction, Foreword – https://bit.ly/3sTqyu3
Week 2: El Faro – https://bit.ly/3RnkUue
Week 3: The New Playbook – https://bit.ly/3Llgmki
Week 4: Control the Clock – https://bit.ly/45UFp5Z
Week 5: Collaborate – https://bit.ly/3PzFiXI
Week 6: Commit – https://bit.ly/46DMmsF
