Author Archive

It’s often in the process, not always in the tool

Machiel Groeneveld and Mary Beijleveld  just finished a project at an educational institution. Schools often work in close cooperation with other schools and are usually part of a larger partnership with various schools in there municipality. Part of the cooperation and collaboration is regarding allocation of types of education and schools. This school for predominantly HAVO / VWO education (ca. 1500 students) and a smaller part consisting of VMBO vocational education (ca. 500) has more than 200 people working there. Personnel consists of teachers, deans, staff, facilities, and a few people minding all IT systems.

Approach was asked to advice the school on how to make best use of ICT resources for creating schedules for students and teachers and the formation of the teachers workforce.

In summary, the experienced problems were  late completion of grids/schedules and therefore late insight on how many and for which subjects to hire teachers. This also depends on prognosis  on how many new students registered, how many student proceed to next school year and school type and has great consequences on school budget . Our first view on the case was that content of programs and applications were not synchronized, information wasn’t up to date and necessary information not congruent.

In order to give a practical and good advice we first had to identify the most crucial problems regarding process, what IT resources where available, in what manner IT resources were used, and what priority solving a problem has to the school stakeholders. To find out what bothers most, takes the most time, how many and which stakeholders are involved, we held interviews with all stakeholders.

Machiel has in-depth knowledge and experience on how IT systems work and knowledge on some pretty important lean practices. Mary is expert in BPM methods &  techniques and has experience in solving organizational issues. Working together enabled us to take a multidisciplinary view at the problem and to assemble the best and most valuable advice for this customer.

In the interviews we walked, step by step, thru the whole end-to-end process to see where bottlenecks occur, where transfers to other roles were necessary (or not) and which IT resources were used to support stakeholders and process. We didn’t use a sophisticated tool, just rounded A5 papers and pencils or whiteboard and markers to make process visible.

In short, problems were caused by low assessable homemade systems (access dbase, spreadsheets), synchronization of information between homemade systems & commercial products and between Do-It-Yourself systems themselves. Furthermore, process was not ranged optimally and errors easily occurred. Limited accessibility to the content of programs and applications (for example the scheduling makers) and various officials at different times and places making changes in program content.

For quick wins Approach, amongst others,  advised on making clear decisions on moments and responsibilities within the end-to-end process, communication and governance on decisions  & appointments  and improvement on the use of (DIY) systems by supplying a ‘howto’.  For long term alleviation, Approach suggested sensitive communication to understand who needs what information in which step, where an inaccuracy cascades in multiple errors further on in process and disciplined actions for controllability and management.  And we recommend on further research on functionality, integration capabilities and interconnectedness of their existing or future IT resources.

When we presented our report, stakeholders said they didn’t expect to get such advice. They expected something like: ‘get rid of your IT resources, DIY systems and buy ‘this’ one’.  At the end of the presentation session we helped stakeholders to realize about their own responsibilities in the process and to decide about the next approach. The school leaders expressed they were very pleased.

Views on Management: Rijnland vs. Anglo-American

On invitation of Bram, who is a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma, I participated in a meeting with members of a Dutch network of quality managers (Nederlands Netwerk van Kwaliteitsmanagers – NNK). The goal of this NNK network and someone that brings Lean Six Sigma into practice is, as you might have guessed: quality improvement.
As I am a Business Process Management consultant at Approach, which of course has a lot to do with (process) quality improvement, I gladly accepted this invitation. Topic of the evening was the difference between two views (Rijnlands vs. Anglo-American) on quality management. Rijnlands being a management paradigm from the Netherlands and Germany, Anglo American as a management culture from USA and UK.

Cultural dimensions and adopting Agile practices

In this blog I want to prove that the extend in which Agile practices are adopted is strongly related to a country’s culture.
On two separate occasions: Gartner Xebia Agile maturity master class and Agile consortium Benelux / Agile Holland’s conference ‘Integrating Agile’ the 2 invited foreign speakers – Dave Norton and Rob Thomsett – emphasized that our country, the Netherlands (NL), is the ‘hot spot’ for adoption of Agile methods & practices. In their experiences and looking at the analyzed facts and figures, many companies in the Netherlands are practicing Agile methods or are seriously exploring the possibility to adopt them.
I asked both men if they thought this could have anything to do with our Dutch culture. For some time now, I’ve been playing with the thought that culture and agile maturity /adoption grade could have a link. They both considered this to be very well possible.
You might know Geert Hofstede’s comprehensive study on how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. I wanted to compare the outcomes of, this study to Dave Norton and Rob Thomsett ’s insights on agile adoption in the Netherlands and other countries. Do they relate?

Dimensions
According to this study there are 5 dimensions on which countries can be compared: Power Distance, Individualism, Masculinity, Uncertainly avoidance and Long term-orientation. Hofstede indexed the differences on a scale from 0 to 100.

Dimensions explained:
Power Distance Index (PDI) is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. (This represents inequality accepted from below, not from above)

Individualism (IDV) (its opposite is collectivism) is the degree to which individuals are integrated into groups. On the individualistic side we find societies in which ties between individuals are loose: On the collectivist side, we find societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families. The word ‘collectivism’ in this sense has no political meaning: it refers to the group, not to the state. Again, the issue addressed by this dimension is an extremely fundamental one, regarding all societies in the world.

Masculinity (MAS) versus its opposite, femininity, refers to the distribution of roles between the genders. It is considered another fundamental basis for any society in finding (other) solutions to corresponding issues. The assertive pole is called ‘masculine’ and the modest, caring pole is called ‘feminine’. In feminine countries, both women and men have the same modest, caring values; in masculine countries women are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as men: masculine countries typically show a gap between men’s values and women’s values.

Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) deals with a society’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. It ultimately refers to man’s search for truth. It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Unstructured situations are novel, unknown, surprising, different from usual. Cultures that avoid uncertainty introduce strict laws and rules, safety and security measures. On a philosophical and religious level, they have a belief in absolute truth; ‘there can only be one Truth and we have it’. Its members are also more emotional, and motivated by inner nervous energy. The opposite types, members of cultures that accept uncertainty, are more tolerant of opinions different from what they are used to; they try to have as few rules as possible, and on the philosophical and religious level they are relativist and allow many trends to flow side by side. People within these cultures are more phlegmatic and contemplative, and not expected by their environment to express emotions. Uncertainly avoidance has a lot to do with acceptance of change.

Long-Term Orientation (LTO) versus short-term orientation: this fifth dimension was found later It can be said to deal with virtue regardless of Truth. Long Term Orientation is associated with values like thrift and perseverance; values associated with Short Term Orientation are respect for tradition, fulfilling social obligations, and ’saving your ‘face’.

In this picture you can see a comparison I made using Geert Hofstede’s model:

To make this a bit more visual I made this graph:

In Belgium, power distance acceptance is high, in the other chosen countries below world average.
In almost all chosen countries, except for Scan, Germany and Belgium individuality is very high. In USA highest.
Masculinity in NL and Scan is extremely low, Germany and USA rank highest.
Uncertainty avoidance, and in my view therefore resistance to change, is highest in Germany and Belgium, lower in the Scandinavian countries and the other chosen countries score below world average.
NL scores about average with the world on long term orientation. Taking risk is more applicable to UK and Canada. Unfortunately no index figures are known of Scan and Belgium of this dimension.

Conclusions:
When we take into account what is said about the Netherlands in relation to Agile adoption / maturity and look at the differences between the cultural dimensions of the chosen countries we can cautiously come to a conclusions.
The chances for successful adoption on Agile methods & practice are obviously strongly related to a low masculinity index and low acceptance of power distance index (NL and Scan) and uncertainty avoidance (NL and Scan lower than world average)

In Belgium (high power distance) for instance, it’s much more important to first gain executive support for Agile practices. In the Netherlands you have to prove that Agile works and gives sustainability.
Belgium’s higher score on uncertainty avoidance suggests less acceptance to change. Belgian decisionmakers might have a higher need for clear measures, rules and more waterfall-like project methods. NL and certainly the UK and USA will be more open to other solutions. Germany is -’in between’.
In the Northern European countries, the practice of one of the Agile methods – scrum- is very common. Could there be a link between MAS score to the fact that in Norway 25% of the executive board is female? And in Denmark about 40%? This is a challenging idea. The degree of masculinity may be muted by a larger feminine participation and sponsorship from the boardroom for Agile development methods (executive support is in the top ten success factors for a project: No. 2 on the list in the studies of Standish University)

In conclusion, we can agree that, based on cultural differences in Belgium and Germany, chances for Agile project methods to be adopted are less than in the other six countries. Also the UK, the USA and Australia seem culturally less inclined to adopt Agile practices.
I think, keeping the cultural differences in mind, it can help us to find ways to tailor (training in) Agile methods and practices to fit within a culture.

Your opinion:
Now what do you think of the relationship between agile adoption and cultural differences? Do you work in one of the countries mentioned here? Did you actually experience the assumptions just mentioned, or do you have a different experience of your own? Please feel free to share your thoughts with me.

Architecture in Practice

On May12th I attended a book launch and seminar called ‘architecture in practice’. I worked with one of the authors, Hans Tönissen, in a project. I met and corresponded with The other author, Guido Bayens, on several occasions. The day seemed a bit like a reunion because I met a few colleagues from my past employer too. That felt very nice.

Chairman of the day was Harry van Zon. He connected the different contributions of the speakers very smoothly. The day had six themes:

• The making of the book ‘architectuur in de praktijk’
• The function of architecture within (our) companies
• Professionalizing the function of architecture
• Connecting the architect and other professions within a company
• Innovation with architecture
• Developing architecture proposition

Architecture in practice – Architectuur in de praktijk

The book contains an easy to read explanation of different views on (IT) architecture. The authors have integrated a few of the approaches that are being used in the market today and looked for a way to connect these to TOGAF standards and methodology. I think they did a really good job!
When one looks at the many approaches and ways to do architecture, you realize that an architect can never have in-depth knowledge about all the approaches, let alone apply them. So you really have to work in multidisciplinary teams. I agree with this.
Hans and Guido are looking at the possibility to organize recognized certification for architects. Both are connected to the Novius Architecture Academy and teach there.

After ‘the making of the bookâ’ several other speakers enlightened us with their insights.

Professor Theo Camps elaborated on organizational issues and architecture and talked about the difference between architecture as an art and architecture as a craftsmanship.

After lunch I had to choose between four parallel sessions: The first choice was between ‘developing architecture’ at a large Dutch insurance company or ‘architects and projects’ at the Dutch Railways, the second choice was between ‘governance and change with architecture’ at Province Flevoland and ‘the making of a business architecture’ at Holland Casino. Difficult choices!

Knowledge & skills of an architect

After a short break at 3 pm, we split into different smaller groups to discuss certain topics. I joined the group that discussed what qualifies an architect. We talked about whether an architect should be a generalist of specialist, what rolls he/she has to fulfill, and what knowledge, skills and behavior is needed. Furthermore we identified what you could do (practice) to gain experience and what instrument could be used. Great discussion and very practical suggestions! This is the conclusions we reached:

Knowledge and awareness

• Knowledge of how to get from strategy to design
• Overall business knowledge (generalist) with some knowledge of some domain-specific issues (specialist)
• Knowledge of the (type of) organization
• Awareness of the state of affairs / maturity of architecture and informal structures
• Awareness of the phase the organization and architecture (role) is in
• Knowledge of the roles that are present within the organization
• Affinity with ICT (preferably not too technical)

Skills

• Ability to work together to reach consistency
• Ability to connect architecture with business strategy
• Ability to create a platform for consistency
• Ability to translate architecture into principles and instructions
• Ability to consider organizational design as a constraint
• Ability to direct
• Ability to communicate
• Ability to act as an adviser or partner to C-level management and senior partners of the organization

Behavior

• respect for specialization and understanding of the specialist
• Courage to pioneer
• Patience, continued willingness to teach and explain
• Align with business
• Continue learning

Means

• Getting applicable experience (with change) by doing just that
• Change jobs every 5 years
• Give presentations
• Selling architecture within your own company
• ‘Catch-up talks’ with colleagues
• Take up more difficult or complicated cases
• Horizontal and vertical networking
• Inter vision with colleagues, coaching and training

As I said, I was part of the discussion group, and I agree with all of the ‘features’ mentioned. As an architect you need to have many competencies and skills, but you don’t need to know about everything. With your communication skills, eagerness to learn and ability to connect you will succeed.

The day ended with some networking and I spoke to several nice people. It was a very interesting and nice day. Thanks!

Head, heart and hands

Although I realized that it could be a little bit too technical for me, some titles of presentations intrigued me so much that I decided to attend the SOA practitioners Forum by Software AG in April. The fact that my colleague was planning to attend this meeting as well, gave me even more reasons to go. It is always very enjoyable to go to an event with a coworker.

SOA is dead
The sessions ‘SOA has come of age’, ‘enterprise architecture’ and ‘the lifecycle governance’ interested me a lot. The presentation ‘SOA has come of age’ treated the notion that ‘SOA is dead’. Anne Thomas Manes and others wrote many blogs stating this. Nothing new to the people that keep in touch with market development. The speaker pointed that part out very well, quoting Gartner and others. He tried to prove the maturity of SOA with some customer based figures from his own company. Hardly sufficient evidence, but it explained the focus of his company.

enterprise architecture
The enterprise architecture part was presented by an English speaking French woman who talk without a microphone while looking at her own slides behind her. So, this was very hard to follow and again treated from a tool perspective.

bridging the gap
It struck me that every presenter seemed to try to bridge the gap between IT and Business. Considering from whose viewpoint you’re looking at this gap, there seems to be push or pull mechanism. In Anglo American countries it is the opinion of the IT world that Business has the responsibility to align IT to Business (IT pulls). In Germany and the Netherlands IT feels the responsibility to align Business people to their IT (IT pushes).

I filled in the questionnaire and gave some advice: use microphones, make challenging statements, allow attendees to ask questions during the sessions to make the whole more interactive. And please don’t change anything to the friendliness of the hosts, to the catering and the accessibility of the location because these were great. Thanks for Software AG’s hospitality!

change management 10, “inspire change”

The last in the series of the change management seminars was presented by Jaap Boonstra, professor of management changes in organizations @ Amsterdam University. He works primarily for organizations in financial services and government.
Jaap’s seminar was titled “to inspire change.” It was very nice Jaap welcomed everyone (who was in time;) personally when entering the conference hall. He shook my hand and I immediately told him I liked that. It creates an immediate opportunity to talk, to share information about previous seminars and what I liked about it.

As I was almost the first person to arrive and was very near the open door, I could see the reactions of the participants when they too were personally welcomed by Jaap. It struck me that many women, like me, expressed they enjoyed this way to get to know each other, while men were almost all (pleasantly) surprised but said nothing about it, except a few single “O’s”.

It was not only pleasant but prevented a long introduction, because Jaap could immediately begin his presentation, which had an informal character during the entire evening. Instead, the public was ‘characterized ‘. The participants in the seminars, 265 in total consisted of:

• 104 line managers
• 42 directors
• 41 project managers
• 40 staff and
• 38 consultants

They work in services industry, financial services, consultancy, health & education, production, local and central government.

The content of the seminar was about the subjects of management changes:

• why changes are difficult,
• choosing a change strategy and
• dilemmas and successes

And it was about leadership and change:

• about paradoxes and transformative leadership perspective,
• about open-mindedness and ‘appreciative’ search and
• strategic communication.

The subjects were underlined with real case examples, some so aweful they caused me a stomach ache.

Besides the emotional impressions which I had to digest, some hard facts remained in my mind:
a. That, in accordance to the bell curve of change, 5% of all people are against any change, 15% is critical negative, 5% all for, 15% is positive critical and 60% neutral. That would mean that, if you have 15% of the critical positive with you in the process, you have sufficient critical mass to begin change.
b. That your organization can best be treated as an integrated system where everything is connected to everything, and that change is not possible if you do not take all aspects into account.

The main aspects why changes fail, is if you do not take into account (in order of importance):
1. culture,
2. unclear strategy,
3. politics,
4. staffs labor uncertainty
5. classical (hierarchy) structure,
6. technology and
7. your own clumsiness.
So, before you start with change, you first stop to think before you go ahead.

Jaap talked about the difference between design and development, between acting and reflecting, denominating and researching , aspects and objects of change and, support patterns and action patterns ( system & spiral dynamics). And he spoke of ‘places of difficulty’.

I really enjoyed Jaap made references to viewpoints and approaches from professors of the previous seminars like Beulens, Stoker and de Caluwé. And of course he linked to theories of gurus like Senge, Quinn and Kotter. Thus connecting the one to the other.

Unfortunately I had to leave a quarter of an hour before the end of this session (18.45 uur). I had agreed to meet a friend in Hilversum to travel to Ghent in Belgium together for a two day Open Space Conference.

This seminar was a worthy last session of the series, in my opinion. Am very curious what the “day of the change management ‘ on April 7th 2009 will bring. Looking forward to it.

2009 Belgium Agile Open Space part 2

Saturday, the 2nd day started with breakfast, hotel checkout, feeding the parking meter and hiding our suitcases in the trunk of my car. We took our laptops with us to the conference. We didn’t dare to leave them in the car.

Memorable of this second day were the sessions “Can architecture be agile?”, which Katrien and I hosted, “writing a book on Agile means” and “Play Politics.” Of course the one about agile architecture since Katrien and I hosted this together. We traveled from enterprise architecture to application architecture and forth and back and forth. I made a few notes that can help me to gain more insight . That is very nice.

The session on Agile means was a sticky note session on which the participants recorded all tools and means you can use to facilitate Agile processes. Some needed no explanation, others were completely new to me and explained. Great session!

In the last (double session) ‘Play Politics’ we formed political parties that had to promote a program, established by fate, and get votes from other parties. So, coalitions were formed, negotiations were performed, we debated, we dealt (I strongly suspect even bribes came into play). Marc and I formed the ‘perfect pair’ party and finally won the most votes (and money). Participant argued that I put the rules to my hand, spoke ‘to the point’ and reinvent the game on the fly. I surprised myself by playing this political game so well, where, in reality I get really allergic. Am I that political or did I learn by experiencing? Mmm, time to personally investigate my behavior .

Again I enjoyed myself this day. At noon a cook served lasagna, salad, French bread, vegetable burgers and Mousaka. Very nice! The cook said he had great admiration for the fact that we attended the meeting in such large numbers on our Saturday day off and were so keen to work. Peter explained we we’re really happy to do so.

After this very interesting day Machiel and I, despite the extensive lunch, went to eat Thai food at around six and then leave for home because driving on an empty stomach is not pleasant. Because Eva tomtom gave directions in a very soft tone, I drove in the wrong direction (to the city center), but after a few maneuvers we got back on the E17. En route, we talked about our favorite music so the 2 hour drive to Hilversum seemed very short. To get to my home place it was just a short ride.

I had two great days. Harald and Stefan posted photographs on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/groups/agileopen/pool/show/

2009 Belgium Agile Open Space part 1

I was very eager to participate in Agile Open Space Belgie2009 in Ghent.

The day of departure on Thursday, February 19 was a long and exciting day in which I had to ‘devoure’ a lot of miles. First, from my home in Assendelft to Nijkerk to go to work, then drive to Nijenrode at Breukelen in the afternoon for the last of a series of seminars on change management, and then pick up Machiel in Hilversum for a joint trip to Ghent.

In Ghent we arrived at our B and B hotel where we were welcomed by two very friendly hosts. We decided who would take which room. I took the room in which a lot of African art and things were displayed, singing ‘welcome to the jungle’… Machiel took the room that looked like an office. We were invited for a glass of wine and were also served a snack. I think that we chit chatted for over an hour. Because of 8:00 am breakfast next morning, we wanted to go to our rooms early.

Friday morning we were served a delicious breakfast. We were not even 300 meters away from the conference location IBBT and therefor got there in time. We saw some familiar faces and a lot of new people. So, meet and greet. Of course we started with kick-off, explain how Open Space works and topics were suggested by the more than 50 participants. Very interesting topics for me as well. The most interesting this first day were Machiel’s session about scrum Kanban and the one hosted by Koen about Agile Consortium Benelux (ACB).

The scrum Kanban session was an intense meeting of proponents and opponents of the combination scrum + lean. Some of the participants were very passionate and got quite personal. Machiel reacted very professional and calm with caution, imho. The questions and replies gave him a good opportunity to sharpen his approach in real life. That’s why I like Open Space and am so happy to join.

The session on ACB focused on the, still very small, participation of Be in the ‘Benelux’ and about what ACB could mean to the Agile community. At this moment it is more a Dutch initiative (and possibly European when UK gets involved). The observations and suggestions made during the session, gave Koen and Patrick things to research or insights on the possible added value of ACB to (Belgian) Agile community.

IBBT turn out to be very suitable for this type of meetings. Hot coffee and tea (with biscuits) were available throughout the day, in the afternoon tasty sandwiches were served for lunch and later in the afternoon we could also take soft drinks to our liking. After an intensive and enjoyable day, dinner was served in ‘Vooruit’, which was located appr. 1800 meters from the conference site. Machiel and I would get directions on how to walk to this place by one of the other participants, but instead we got a ride to Ghent town centre in ‘Amsterdam’ style.

The daily special with fish, vegetables and basmati rice was very tasty. The drinks flowed abundantly. The moment that a few pints of beer ended up into Rob’s lap, was a sign for us to go back to the hotel. It was a nice walk along a Ghent’s canal, called ‘Muinkkanaal’, and a lot of vintage industrial buildings. There wasn’t anything wrong with our coordination for, even though we were not familiar in Ghent, we walked straight to our hotel. In my room I called my spouse to say goodnight. And then, before my head even touched the pillow, I fell asleep.

Change management 9, anti-therapy

This seminar was given by Rene ten Bos. He is a professor of philosophy and organizational studies at Radboud University in Nijmegen. He wrote several books on strategy, business ethics and information e.g. “Modes in Management” and most recently “The Genius Animal”.

He is, in my opinion, the personification of anti-management thinking. So nice to hear someone like him in the series.
I read his book “Rational Angels’ which pleads against the atmosphere of ‘managers among each other’ . He expressed in scientific (and sometimes very difficult and for me inaccessible concepts) the self-imposed straitjackets in which managers maneuvering themselves. They loose their humanity (hence angels) by rationalizing very human and difficult issues. In the beginning managers are unhappy with this approach but in the long run they think that’s the way to act because of peer group bias and pressure. And thus, the next wave of dismissals of workforce is a cinch. Maybe today, businesses need these managers help more because of the crisis that’s ahead (or is your company already experiencing impediments?)

I believe this man is always ‘anti’. He didn’t give hand-outs or whatever artifact to us about his ideas or opinions, unlike the other professors. One of his statements is: “We are too far from being the animal we are and ask management gurus and consultant to help us. He calls for “anti-therapy”, we have to listen to ourselves. I can appreciate he is a philosopher. Even so he gave this lecture to us. Am curious what the 104 line managers and 42 directors in the audience thought about his statements. I didn’t dear to ask them.

Change management 8, managers views

This event was hosted by Janka Stoker, the only female professor in this series.

Even thought the conference room not being suitable for interactive seminars, Janka Stoker, our lecturer for this evening, got it done to make it an interactive session. She hopped on and of the podium with a microphone on a long stick, she called a fishing rod, to get answers and responses from the attendees to her questions and propositions as a result of which a discussion unfolded. Janka showed us two short but interesting pieces of film.

Theme of the day was, in fact, the perception of managers about themselves and their peers and the perception of people around them (employees) on their behavior. It became clear from research that these view are completely different. In fact an appeal to do 360 degrees research regularly.
The phenomenon of ‘coaching’ was the main topic of this seminar.

Almost all managers still think of themselves as coaches, even when they are responsible for 50 people whom are spread across several work locations.
Furthermore they think it’s more than all right to impose decisions to change ‘from above’ (top down).
Some cherish the aureole of coach, because it wouldn’t be accepted by their peers and employees if it was otherwise. Then the employees are seduced to tell them they agree with the directives or the manager just presumes that the employees agree. Afterwards it will be apparent that the BOHICA principle (bend over here it comes again) has come in play. But frequently then it is too late….

This view of managers of themselves are not knocked on with all other realities. Janka confirmed this, with a number of research outcomes and study.

Beside of the affirmation of the insights I got from the other presenters in the previous seminars, it made me conclude that a manager must ensure that he/she gets regularly feedback on his/hers work and attitude. To keep them humble and aware