Author Archive

Agile Consortium Benelux

On the 27th of February I attended a knowledge-sharing meeting of the Agile Consortium Benelux (ACB) which is a successor of the DSDM consortium. DSDM, as you might know, is a particular way of executing a software project with joint requirement planning (JRP) and rapid application design (RAD) and users as ambassadors. This method wasn’t seen as one of the – real – Agile practices until it was renamed Atern about 2 years ago.
Anyway, the old consortium needed to be revived in these Agile times. And , because Agile is becoming mainstream, the board is very keen on becoming Agile for commercial purposes.

As with the DSDM group, this consortium consists of a bunch of companies (70 at this moment); Other Agile groups are more organized around people, like Agile Holland, Agile Belgium and Agile Luxemburg. Mission and vision and also strategy still need to be formulated. The majority of the companies that will join are not known in the market for their Agility. So now there is a platform to help these companies.

ACB wants to publish whitepapers, articles and books, initiate research on Agile aspects, support local agile initiatives, organize conferences, knowledge sharing meetings for members and special interest groups etc. They would like to identify what combination of Agile practices and methods can be used depending on the kind of project and the environment it’s in. Of course I told them that Alistair Cockburn has done the same thing. (ISBN 0-321-482751)

This subject appeals to me because I am doing the same research in conjunction with more formal frameworks in daily life and doing so for more than a year now.

ACB wants to become a Agile certification body for companies and individuals, as well as a place where Agile practices are taught. I wonder how this will be implemented and what accreditation they have in mind. Unfortunately, the person from the board who is responsible for this couldn’t attend the meeting.

The planning for this year is to organize several knowledge sharing meeting, some inner circle meetings for the happy few, and an Agile conference in June. A call for papers will be made. This year’s theme is ‘time to market’ although I heard some of the topics that were discussed were not related to TTM.

Anyway, most of the concepts used will appeal to the management level of the larger members. For the individual developer or consultant this doesn’t look like a close fit. Especially since many of us are already certified scrum master and Prince2 or PMI certified. The same thing applies for specialized companies that already practice Agile development. It does not seem an advantage for them to join. Or is it?

The chairman asked me if I would like to contribute to a research group (area: 1. how to introduce agile project management in organizations and 2. making a methods application framework). I asked what the individuals that are asked to help research and work groups, will gain when they’re not employed by the larger companies the ACB addresses. At first it seemed ‘a volunteer job’. Somewhat later they have asked me to prepare a small business case for the reasons why they should make it appealing for an individual to contribute; what it will take. Actually kind of a weird question. To be continued?

Change management 6, coaching for change

Coaching for change
The 6th seminar change management was presented by Erik de Loo. Erik is professor “Leadership and Behavior” at INSEAD and is partner of Phyleon. Furthermore he is a graduate in clinical psychology, has a doctoral degree in social sciences and a masters degree in ‘Work and Organization in Occupational Health’ and is clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst.

He is involved in management development and consulting for national and multinational corporations and specialized in design and implementation of major change and transition processes in organizational culture and leadership. He helps leaders to better understand themselves in their roles and interactions with individual employees, teams and organizations. He is also a coach of individual top-managers and leaders.
After a pretty long introduction of himself, the real presentation started with Erik’s proposition that sufficient attention is spent on the rational reasons for change in change programs. Even symbols and gadget are distributed to mark the ’start’. So, this aspect on the agenda is well addressed. The idea that there is also an emotional item to address, starts to gain insight. At management levels the notion grows that the emotional matter must be taken into account. There is, however, still an item on the agenda which is given little attention: behavior (as this is the most visible part of change). I would say: change is about head, heart and hands.

Erik seems to focus on the emotional needs of top managers and small teams of managers. It appears to be savagely complicated to get all the noses in one direction even at boardroom level and he helps these people to get insight in their personal ambitions, strengths, weaknesses, needs and reasons. And to find out, where in their youth or life, the foundation was laid for their core values, competencies and character. (especially the dysfunctional ones, of course)

That’s why I made the remark that hopefully every top manager who is helped by Erik isn’t going to exercise this psychoanalysis on staff – employees. Erik confirmed, this indeed isn’t the intention. But because changes are almost always initiated by top management and all too often implemented top down it is important that managers are aware of these conditions and know that this comes in play for every organizational member.

The cave
He told us the tale of the cave by Plato. Unfortunately in a way that the people who sat around me – according to their remarks and facial expression- did not understand: behind the world you see and sense there is another reality and vice-versa. In the session brake that followed, I could explain this story and what it means to some of my fellow participants.

To me, in essence, Erik sends the message across that a LEADER must look after his primary tasks and be busy with those. To be busy with all other kinds of things can be, or is, a sign of fear to execute those essential tasks. (which is motivated by assumption, conditioning or mental constructs, which have arisen by education and experience)

After the brake we would do an experiment to explore our own assumptions and fears. But not before we had to listen to a long introduction again. One reference Erik pointed at are the three levels of organizational cultures (Edgar Schein) artifacts, norms – values en basic assumptions. This was more or less a kick-off for the experiment.

The experiment
Went as follows: We had to draw a table which existed of 5 columns.
In the 1st column we had to write down what personal change we want to commit to. In the same column we had write down what 5 trusted persons would recommend us to change about ourselves.
In column 2 we had to write down what reflex we would have, to let us fail to make that one important change.
In column 3 we had to write down what condition/fear was ‘behind the scenes.
In the 4th column we had make note of the ‘big’ assumption that comes into play.
And in column 5 we had to write down what action you could undertake to try to make the change anyhow.
At each of this steps Erik told stories to make clear what he meant. To give an example. 1. A woman is advised to write a publication on a professional topic. 2. She instead, keeps herself very busy with other things 3. Dad always suggested that she wasn’t that bright and that is alright because she is a she. 4. She feared that her peers wouldn’t like her that much as soon as she had published. 5. Seek contact with the one who advised her to publish and look for the possibility to do it together.

I think you’ll understand that I wrote down something entirely different When considering the one thing I would like to change about myself and all recommendations of others about me, I would have to stop writing just after filling in column 1. Rely on your own competencies, don’t be so modest, stay who you are, be less arrogant, don’t change anything, don’t share all you insights so generously with others …… In comparison, these recommendations are almost diagonal related to each other.

Good example of several realities, views and ‘local’ truths. I guess I just have to pick the most daring one.

Wow, can you imagine? Almost 200 people, at the same time, on the couch at Erik’s.

This session certainly had a high level of psychology in it. Actually it confirms my view that no one is perfect, we are all human. Some (managers) are seemingly more human than others, but still. Let’s stay open-minded and look for reasons behind behavior and help others to do so too.

My colleague Michiel Borgart will post about the next seminar: change management nr. 7

change management 5

From somewhere to anywhere

This 5th time the seminar was presented by Thijs Homan. He studied sociology, business administration en psychology and many more ‘ologies’. Thijs is professor organizational design. The other professors that gave the previous lectures where dressed in business suite but Thijs was dressed in jeans and sweater.
During his presentation he used words like ‘the F word’ and made gestures like pointing his middle finger at an imaginary person. It made me laugh and made the lecture very vivid. Fortunately he asked us at several occasions: ‘are you still there’ and ‘are you all still awake? Pff…. as if someone would dare state he – she couldn’t understand what he meant.

In this seminar Thijs explained that there are different ways to deal with organizational change. These ways to change can be plotted in a kind of matrix: on the horizontal axes ‘planned’ – ’spontaneous’ and on the vertical axes ‘mono vocal’ – ‘poly vocal’. Mono vocal being: just one vision of the future and poly vocal being: have more visions than one of the future organization’ To make it simple he stated that we should remember the is no linear relation between the one and the other.

After this he explained what he means by ‘clouds of meaning’, mutual meanings that groups of people give to reality and share amongst them. He explained other words he uses to explain what he wants to get across: contagious cognitive interaction between the clouds of meaning, transverse connections by mental fierljeppen (the latter is a sport by which you cross broad ditches by mains of a long pole – a pole vault from Friesland, a province in the Netherlands ) sex taking place between ideas and what this has to do with complexity theory and chaos theory.

Quickly said, to Thijs its comes down to this: changes can’t be managed at all because any form of directing change will inevitably lead to conformation of the old situation and changes only happen by coincidence. Any attempt to steer change is doomed to fail. The more interventions managers make the less effective it will be. That wasn’t nice to hear for the more than 100 managers in the auditorium. No more ‘from Ist to Soll’ as we say in Holland using German words (why do we do that anyway?). More likely it will be ‘from Ist to Etwas’ or better: ‘from Etwas to Etwas’. In plain English: No more ‘from here to there’ but ‘from here to somewhere’, or better: ‘from somewhere to anywhere’

My question, if his theory only applies to top down steered changes, was answered thoroughly with all of this: No, it applies to any planned change.

He pleaded manager not to think linearly and showed systems of unequal complexity that coexist, and that there are orderly and simular patterns in chaotic systems. He showed beautiful and more or less equal patterns that emerge (computer simulated) when one hundred thousand light bulbs are all interconnected and the electricity is switched on. These patterns also emerge in schools of fishes and swarms or sparrows. He asked: who is leading the school?’ and ‘who is the boss in a swarms of sparrows?’. To him change wears an overall and looks like work.

Because I already asked him a question earlier and Thijs wasn’t very benevolent in answering other questions from the audience I didn’t dare to ask him how technical systems (light bulbs) or other kinds of living systems (like school of fishes and swarms of sparrows) can be compare with systems of people sharing the same clouds of meaning. I think they can’t be compared because they are from other order. Perhaps I will ask him by email.

According to Thijs Homan an organization can’t be seen as an organizational chart. It’s has to be view at, as a constellation of communities that have similar clouds of meaning. Managers have to realize that no one can have the overall view because there are only local realities and truths. Giving meaning only emerges by interaction within clusters of equal minded, brothers of profession, networks, learning friendships.

He told us about the difference between ‘to game’ and ‘to play’ en mentioned that you have to have a lot of sex between ideas to create new ideas and to create new ideas you have to create an atmosphere that resembles the atmosphere when you and your partner want to….well it was very unconventional speech.
Not to leave all managers in total confusion behind, at the end of this seminar he gave a few tips:

- Organize coincidence
- Look for connectivity
- Make sure you disturb things
- Search for ambiguity and recomplications to stir curiosity
- Import variety
- Set the atmosphere
- Organize a focal event
- Make the goal for change look sexy
- Facilitate collective action

And he advised on some ‘light’ reading – literature. Wow!

I am not sure this will help managers. They have to do so much circular thinking and have to have so much capacity to empathize. In my cloud of meaning there are so few people that can do this. In my working life I just met one manager whom has a minimum set of these qualities.

Very heavy stuff in this seminar! It gave me a lot to think about.
And I had a lot of trouble translating my Dutch report of this seminar into English. Some terms I couldn’t translate at all. Hope you understand.

change management 4, change is an easy trick

Change is just an easy trick

Under the title ‘change is just an easy trick’, professor dr. Marc Buelens presented the fourth session of the change management seminars at Nyenrode University. He started by quoting Sumantra Goshal: ‘You cannot manage third generation change with second generation processes and first generation managers’. This meaning that the old fashioned way to manage change which was applied after WO II, although updated in later years (the 70- ties and 80-ties), doesn’t make sense in the 90-ties and later.

Quickly we understood what the link was between this insight and his presentation. Marc Buelens pointed out and shared with us his view on the main principles that were (and are) leading with first generation managers after WO II, the economical types. According to me in fact a rational-empirical paradigm of managers worldwide.

It has to do with the view of principal and agent relations with reward systems which had to ensure that the agent did what the principal expected him / her to do. Meantime Marc mentioned all kinds of literature in which these ideas are formulated.

He explained to us the law of Coase which says that a company grows to the point that its `internal’ cost of operation becomes equal or more than the external operation costs (which in the course of times has just decreased). Perhaps that’s why it became more economical to outsource.
Furthermore he shared he with us his idea that a company is in fact a dictatorial system in a `free market economy’. How this influences a change program he did not say. He just shared his amazement about this.

Marc distincts the (1) mechanical change type (engineering strategy), the (2) process style (kaizen and quality circles), the (3) learning organization and (4) strategic change type and he claims that manager generations have followed these change strategies. According to him these 4 `pure’ change types you can plot on two lines (array). One axes reflects power distance and other axes reflects the degree of uncertainty. Now, you may be thinking: ‘I have come across this earlier’, and yes indeed, these are two of the cultural dimensions by Geert Hofstede.

1st generation sought burning platforms (creating a crisis as reason for change) where people were remembered of their duty and responsibility. Kipling and Kurt Lewin (the latter being the one that distinguishes freeze, unfreeze and refreeze periods, I think)
2nd generation managers rule with insights from of Covey, Collins and Kotter and use SWOT, balanced Scorecard, TQM and ‘play matrix’.
3rd the generation managers originates from the `Einstein’ generation. Their ideas come from ‘the learning organization’, where the principal is just one of many stakeholders, Their activities are multitasking and residing in cyberspace.
4th generation change isn’t clear yet for this professor. According to him it has to do with the network organization and having meaningful and satisfactory digital relationships, a phenomenon so very strange to him.

The title of the lecture prof. Buelens started with, wasn’t meant to state the case, on the contrary.
Still, I didn’t learn much more than the quotation of Sumatra Goshal, he began this lecture with.
‘Als je een hamer hebt zie je in alles een spijker’ is a Dutch saying that explains a lot. In English it means that when you know to use a hammer you are likely to see a nail in everything and change becomes an easy trick.

I would gladly invited him to a discussion by means of Internet, e-mail or LinkedIn but he isn’t present there… moreover he is a Belgian professor and therefore he likes the power distance to be larger than the Dutch are accustomed to, according to Geert Hofstede. If I may rank this lecture I would give it a 7-

Of course the Dutch version of this post can be read at www.abc-thinkBIG.com.

Change management 3, Organizational learning

The 3rd change management seminar was held in Zeist. This time André Wierdsma was our lecturer.
André studied business administration and organizational design at Nyenrode and clinical psychology at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
He works at Nyenrode and teaches within the field of ‘management and organization’ with focus on organizational dynamics.
He is a guest lecturer for various domestic and international Executive and MBA programs and is responsible for ‘in-company’ programs.
He is co-author of the book ‘Op weg naar een lerende organisatie’ (‘Becoming a learning organization’) and `Co-creatie van veranderingen’(‘Co-creating Change’).
‘Lerend organiseren’ (Organizing while learning ) is his latest book.

A lot of what Wierdsma told us, I could link to several well-known theories or methodologies from experts. In this blog I will make a note like this …//name// in this blog when I come across one of them.
One of the leading thoughts in his presentation was that

• organizing and changing is inspiring and meaningful for people if they have been part of the process of meaning creation and envisioning //Senge//
• changes are implemented in roughly 2 ways: the well planned & upfront designed ‘travel’ and the ‘going on an excursion’.

He emphasizes that these ways to change (the chosen strategy to change) are parallel to the two ways in which organizations are managed (the chosen strategy to manage). E.g. by position (legal power) or transactional (personal influence).
He suggests that the essence of any organization can be found in its rules, insights and principles.
Rules are all the explicit and implicit instructions that affect the desired behavior. They indicate how the organization should behave.
The way stories are told and the language spoken within management levels, and between managers and ‘workforce’ is an important reason why people don’t adopt proposed changes and collective learning isn’t facilitated. The latter being a philosophical theory //Wittgenstein?//

Organizational learning is a collective learning process that results in a change in organizational behavior. The organization learns when the change in one person’s behavior influences the behavior of others, leading to mutual behavior change. Collective learning aims to increasing the collective competence of the organization’s members. He told us about learning loops. Single loop, double loop and triple loop learning and to what extend /what level it influences change and organizations.

The way to change:
The travel way – forced by positional management – assumes the world as is, assumes on context-free truths, thinks in subject – object and transfers the meaning and reason for change.
The excursion way – forged by transactional management - assumes the world as to be, contextual (multiform, several) truths, thinks in object – object and is about to meaning creation to change.

Traveling gives a blueprint for change and the excursion co-creates change.
Organizing by position – thru legal power – is done by the manager, top-down, whom can delegate on the basis of his or hers expertise and overview and insight. The transactional manager organizes on the basis of the decision-making process, creates conditions for limited self organizing abilities (facilitates) and balances power.

André confirms that management practices today are still mechanical and bureaucratic but because of value chain thinking // Porter// and a shift towards the network society, the world gets flat. These are changes I discover in more fields, disciplines and dispositions. He explained that ‘scientific management‘ masters complexity by dividing work into specialized tasks //Mintzberg// performed by specific persons. To master cognitive complexity in dependent value chains, relational complexity must also be taken into account. In inter-dependent networks complexity comes from many sources, they are emergent and chance plays a even larger role. Mastering complexity in such an environment asks for another approach, he argued.

The thing I agree upon most is the understanding that the old way of changing is not appropriate (anymore / in changing environment), change programs based on the old change (travel) paradigm showed to be unsuccessful and that developments and behavior of people are irreversible, uncontrollable, unforeseeable and indefinite. The ability of an organization to adapt to change in a continuous changing, unpredictable business environment is called Agility. //amongst others Agile Manifesto//

That’s why managers should no longer believe in the myth that the organization / people can be man-molded into whatever shape, by using force and disciplinary measurements and they can no longer govern on the basis of their position (formal power). And especially, if they want to stimulate changes the have to get rid of their old paradigm, their old ‘culture of language’ (memes) and gain another change proficiency. E.g. competencies to cause and deal with change.

A lot has been said and presented in highway speed so it’s almost beyond of what I can grasp. :)
I must say that it was a sparkling meeting what has a lot to do with the way André shared his opinions and information with us. He jumped regularly up and on the podium, stimulating questions from the audience (and vice-versa). He highlighted his questions and answer with, sometimes, hilarious practical cases and with a generous laugh. Next to the hand-out of the presentation itself, we received a number of articles which he has written. In the meanwhile the book ‘Organizing for learning’ is in my possession. With this material I can reflect sufficient on André’s interesting views.
.

SOA and Agile

On the weblog I posted on a presentation about SOA and Agile during XP day Benelux I got some nice responses. We at Approach think it is very important for the maturity of IT and SOA to share opinions and knowledge. That’s why I elaborate further on this topic here in this posting.

Most people still seem to be searching for answers about what SOA has to do with Agile and vice versa. Most discussions start high level but quickly go down to the nitty gritty technical details and use a lot of three letter acronyms. There are not a lot of people in the Agile community that think SOA can be Agile (as meant by the Agile Alliance). On the contrary: most people say that SOA is an open invitation for Big Upfront Design and therefore can’t be Agile.
So(a), let’s talk about SOA and Agile by looking at the 4 core values from the Agile Manifesto:

- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

This statement is about the development process. This can be applied to any architecture, including SOA. There are, obviously, some processes and rules about tools in place when working in a SOA. For example: If you need a change in a service that other service consumers are using, you need to make sure you don’t break anything when you implement the change. This sounds very similar to changing an interface in a Java program: you need to make sure you don’t break any other classes that are using it.
Agile development has some good ‘processes’ in place for that: test driven development, to name one.

- Working software over comprehensive documentation

This statement is about focus: do you spend most of the time in a project in designing and documenting your code or do you create self documenting code and only write documentation that is actually needed by the stakeholders. Again: this has nothing to do with architecture. Of course, if you want to reuse services, you need documentation and some thought about the interface. Writing testcode for the services you have built is a very good way of documenting services. To reuse service, they need to be working. Again, no clash here.

- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

This statement is about the contract for developing software. A lot of fixed price contracts go over budget. It is very hard to calculate cost exactly at the beginning of a project. Again, this has little to do with architecture. One of the nice things of SOA is decoupling of code. This makes it easier to change, and easier to prioritize: we talk about a business service that adds value to the business. Implement the most important services first. Value can be measured in different ways: for one specific customer to reach enterprise wide goals or to reduce risk.

- Responding to change over following a plan

The reason for SOA is agility, flexibility: by decoupling service providers from consumers, it becomes easier to change implementations. By using standardization it becomes easier to change. By using separation of concern, it becomes easier to change. Etc etc.

Conclusion:
The first three statements from the manifesto are about developing software and apply to any architecture, including SOA. The last statement is striking: SOA is all about change… The way you implement it, should be about change too. So to me, SOA and Agile are a very good fit.

Change management 2

11 december 2008 Considering stress perception while planning for change.

The seminar of today was presented by Theo Compernolle. Theo is doctor, psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He lectures at the university in Brussels and Solvay business school. He teaches at business schools in Belgium, the Netherlands and in France. He has worked at INSEAD and was professor at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He has a 30 years experience in research on stress and he coaches managers, entrepreneurs, teams and companies on the emotional and relational aspects of leadership, particularly in times of stress and change.

Compernolle presented his story partly by means of very crammed;) slides, that were selected from an enormous file, on the basis of the response from the public and due course. He made some statements concerning the ability and preparedness for change in relation to stress and emotions. We had to talk briefly in pairs about these statements and then, by means of showing hands we could indicate which percentage would be ‘true’. We could observe in what way our common opinion corresponded with published results from research. Our shared reactions to the questions were pretty optimistic. That is, we thought that the impact of management actions for change was overestimated. It appeared that our group underestimated the emotional side of changes and the required soft skills considerably too. During the seminar it showed that Compernolle believes that stress can be very positive and it depends on your own perception how you can handle stress. In that respect he indicated that pessimistic people have a more realistic view on change while positive people get more done.
The analogy of the tale about being in a traffic-jam was funny. Don’t get uptight but survive: once you’re in it, you can’t do anything about it….
Research results show that the stress level at work you can deal with, depends on:
- the degree of support by your boss you experience and
- the degree of influence you yourself have on a situation. A manager can reduce stress level e.g. by expressing regular appreciation. This must, however, be genuine and honest or else it won’t work: This is so very simple and does not take a lot of effort.

Especially interim managers start projects and changes by saying: `Now we’ll handle it the professional way’; which in fact denies the history of the company and all peoples efforts taken in the past. This is really deadly for any project. This opinion was more or less confirmed with the question how much the success rate of huge change projects such as `Centurion’ at Philips and similar ones. I thought of something less than 5%; a peer of mine estimated approx. 30%., as did the majority of the audience. It proved be only 1,5%!

Why do we in fact do these large projects? I wrote some blogs earlier about WIA project and other large government projects (you might also want to read the interview in Software Release Magazine no. 5). Compernolle said that change plans can give guidance and are a framework and that’s a very good thing as long as you don’t do fixed planning for a very long time. You must realize changes in small steps and celebrate the achieved results each time even when they are very small. I couldn’t agree more: Think BIG and take small steps.

In my opinion Compernolle is humour-full and says impressive things, and he contributes considerably to my conviction, that leaders are very different from managers and ‘agile’ methods are a very good alternative for the procedural or waterfall methods in projects. After all, taking small steps is one of the key factors of agile development.

Change management I

Change management seminar, 25 November 2008
In my daily work, I get to deal a lot with hurdles that come with change. Trying to make SOA work, implementing business process management, working in projects, etc. has a whole lot to do with change. In my experience you cannot change people; at most you can help make people aware that changing their attitude or behavior is useful or necessary in these compelling and trying times in life. I decided to attend a series of seminars on the subject of change management. I like to read about and discuss this topic and with these seminars I would be able to hear experts speak about this, share views, or perhaps even get tips. The seminars are organized by Focus at Nijenrode Business University in Breukelen.
After every session I will share my experiences by posting a blog. This is the first of the series.

The first seminar started at Midday. I think there were more than 200 people attending. So, it was very busy at the registration desk. Introductory by Hans Schoen and opening speech by professor drs. Wessel Ganzevoort.
The first lecture about ‘the essence of leading, management and change’ was given by Wessel Ganzevoort. It was about great companies and what makes these companies great. A lot of what he told us, I have read in ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins.

He made statements like: ‘ Organizations are going from being factories and treating people as resources as in scientific management (Taylor) to organizations as ‘mental construct’ and people being the organization. Organizations will not longer try to bind and buy employees but empower them.. Professionals reinvent their jobs over and over again and smart people just need a critical minimum of specifications to do their job. They need autonomy. Professionals don’t do what the customer wants but look in-depth at the customers problem and solve this’. Very powerful stuff.

According to Wessel superb organizations are recognized by:
- A strong sense of purpose and a few value driven principles
- Use their core competencies (as meant by Hamel & Prahalad; not what HR has done with this); so do what their very good at, what makes them unique.
- They have deep respect for their customers
- Trust being much more important than control, process more important than structure and really learning from mistakes

Select people on who they are and if they fit in. Making peoples decisions quickly when needed, not as cost cutting device. Here Wessel explicitly referred to Good to Great: first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off, the right people in the right seats and then decide where to drive.
- It is a great place to work because management is trustworthy, there is fairness, respect, camaraderie en pride
- Leaders are servant leaders, whom know and believe in their own vision, mission and values and act according to these (congruent), you really like to be near these people, they organize their feedback and steer on conditions rather on result.

Organizational change is feasible when taking what’s already there and what is good; when you plan only what is necessary and believe that is never going to be as you could think of in advance. A lot of wisdom!

The second lecture was given by Reynier van Bommel. He told us about the history of his family’s shoe factory from 1734 to the present. In that time there were more than 250 shoe factories. He presented a very informative and humorous story with old pictures of relatives and examples of challenges they faced during more than two and a half centuries. Van Bommel shoe factory is the only real shoe factory existing in the Netherlands today. They had to adapt to change a lot in order to survive.

After a half-hour break the third and last lecture was given by Professor Cham Kim about ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’.
A ‘Red Ocean Strategy’ is one engaging in a head to head competition, fighting rivals (blood flowing) in a shrinking profit pool. The Blue Ocean strategy suggests an approach which will lead to making competition irrelevant. Instead of striving to competitive advantage, defending market share and/or differentiation strategy, discover new market area’s In his book, which he wrote with his co-author Renée Mauborgne, he presents a framework and several strategic moves which will lead to blue ocean strategies.

Mr. Kim as Mrs. Mauborgne together, studied 150 strategic moves over 1 century in 30 industries and extracted 6 major principles:
- reconstruct market boundaries,
- focus on the big picture,
- reach beyond existing demand,
- get the strategic sequence right,
- overcome organizational hurdles, and
build execution into strategy.

As an example of this blue ocean strategy he showed us what makes the difference between the declining audiences for traditional classical music performances and football stadiums filled with people joining André Rieu’s pop-concert like, interactive music events. This was very humorous and enlightening. A good choice as well because of the Dutch ‘example’ of Blue Ocean Strategy.

This seminar gave me lot’s of things to reflect on. And it gives me energy to bring some, perhaps still out of the ordinary, actions in to practice to help realizing the changes that makes sense.

XP Days Benelux, second day

21 November 2008

The bed I slept in was very good. It had become very cold in my room and the heating didn’t work. Took a hot shower and dressed. I should have gotten my breakfast (package) at my room but it never arrived. There was no personnel and no one answered the phone. So no breakfast. I went down to wait for the cab and found out that the baker left my breakfast on the doorstep of the hotel in a cardboard box (in the rain!). The taxi was right on time. So I took the fruit drink and left for the second day of the XP day’s conference.

We started out with an opening plenary, where the sessions were introduced in 30 sec. The introduction made me change my mind and I rearranged my choices. Only ‘Agile and SOA’ and ‘resistance to change’ stayed on my list. Two topics at this time in life that interest me a lot.

I attended ‘introducing scrum in a large organization‘ by Didier and Jan. This session started out and finished with commercials for the company’s products. In between they explained the start of the project as usual: budget, time and goal. Then explained how they first introduced XP. This was Agile in the small, and they added metrics and retrospectives and some more Agile instruments and explained ways they extended the whole approach. It was interesting enough to let the law of two feet go by. I could distil some pointers of things that were meant to introduce Agile in the large… Perhaps they should read Jutta Eckstein’s book. Their approach was instrumental and technical and we understood what issues were left unaddressed.

The second session was about Agile and SOA. For this session I was well prepared. Unfortunately again a very technical architectural view. It focused on a ‘utilities departments’ management problems. The presenters was throwing threee letter acronyms at us. 3 or 4 times I tried to take de discussion to another level by asking tempting questions but it didn’t help so I left the session after approximately 15 minutes. Very disappointing.

After lunch I attended the session named ‘Overcoming resistance to change‘ by Dave and Lasse. This is one other of my ‘pet’ topics. It was a very enlightning session and there were some good hints and tips on approaches to overcome resistance to change. Some of which I wouldn’t like to practice, but still. (e.g. manipulate, question someone’s credibility;)

The last session I attended ‘Hey scrum master! Let the team decide‘. This was a very interactive session that starting with a lot of humor. We explored the possibility of letting the team decide whether to do retrospectives or not and to give them room to fail. To facilitate this we looked for possibilities and attitudes the scrum master would have to master. I loved this session.

In the closing session prizes were awarded to the teams (our team too). The awards were: a license to some IDE and each a bottle of Belgium beer. After that drinks were served by courtesy of one of the sponsors. Unfortunately, I had to leave because my taxicab would arrive at 6 o clock to take me to the train station again. Heading home in the train I wrote this second report of XP days. I am certainly going to attend a XP day’s conference again! Met some beautiful, knowledgeable and very friendly people again and spoke to old and new friends.

XP days Benelux, first day

20 november 2008
The Benelux XP days were held in Veldhoven, a little town near the city of Eindhoven. Because of the heavy traffic from my hometown near Zaandam to the conference place I decided to go by public transport. At 6.15 hours I left home by car and went to the train station at Zaandam to take the intercity train. I could read the morning paper and do some Sudoku’s. A relaxed way to travel and quite a new experience. Took a cab at the train station in Eindhoven to arrive there at the conference centre at about 9 o’clock. First registration and coffee, choosing what ‘persona’ you resemble the most, and saying hello to some of the people I already knew.

The opening plenary started at 9.30. We immediately got an assignment to form a team of 4 members of different personas and to have a kick-off meeting during the day. Then all presenters told us in 30 seconds what their session would be about. We formed our team in a short time: we were complete after the first session. I realized again that people like to be asked to join. We agreed to hold our first team discussion during lunch. This first day 4 rounds of sessions were held. Sometimes it was hard to choose. I picked the following:

‘Dynamic planning for fixed price projects‘ led by Koen and Walter. They explained what they think is the difference between iterative and incremental, and what is disruptive about iterative. These guys explained that dynamic planning gives better financial results. They showed a two-dimensional diagram; on the Y-axes discounted cash flow, and on the X axes a cost curve and break-even point and return on investment they named ‘time’. I didn’t understand even after they tried to explain it again. I am well educated in financial accounting and I perhaps missed a third dimension, or would replace discounted cash flow for discounted budget expenditures and ROI for ‘return on revenue’? I think I have to do some reading: I got a tip from a new friend Yann to read a book by Alistair Cockburn. What I liked was the explanation of the difference between project results like ‘dirt’ road, ‘cobblestone’ road and ‘asphalt’ road. The whole thing reminded me of the three ways things move in many projects within the triangle of cost, time and functionality. The different roads stand for alternative functionality..

The next session was ‘So now you are an agilist… what’s next‘ by Jurgen. He pointed out 6 of his 12 law’s of software development or actually 6 of the 12 laws of ‘creative teams’ and the relationship and difference between ordered, complex and chaotic systems. We discussed some important assumptions. This was a very nice session.

Our (Ward, Stefan, Yann and me) kick-off team lunch was very good to get to know each other and to discus some of the topics.

After lunch I attended ‘mirror, mirror on the wall” by Portia and Pascal. We did something that was a bit like speed dating. To get to know as much people in a very short time. And then listen to the story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs and realize that these characters resemble types of people (like with Belbin’s team roles and Myers Brigg type indicators) The thing I liked most was that you could really experience that teams that consist of different characters work very well, a theme I like best: ‘Diversion and Inclusion’. Coincidentally I co-organized a meeting just the day before: a Women-in-Charge session in Rotterdam that was about this theme. I enjoyed myself very much.

The last session I attended was the one titled ‘the 9 fit falls of adopting scrum‘ by Eelco and Cesario. In this session they focused on big organizations and to 4 of the 9 pitfalls: not preparing the organization, defective product owner, doing scrum only by the book and no organizational learning. This was very informative; we had some good discussions and tried out the ‘fishbowl’ format. That is a kind of informal forum discussion. I found out I like it a lot.

After the closing-ceremony there was an Aikido workshop that was real fun. Somewhat sweaty I helped gathering Lego building blocks from previous sessions and then we had diner. Unfortunately I had no room to freshen up so I had to do this in the powder-room We had a lovely diner with again some nice talks and discussions. The food was very good. At about nine I said goodnight and ordered a cab which drove me to hotel Que Pasa. All rooms were booked and I had to book this hotel about 2 km from the conference centre. I phoned my loved one and after taking a shower wrote this part of the story on my laptop. Read my email and sms and voicemail messages and closed my eyes at about 23.00 hours. It had been a long but very good day!