#selforganizing

[cubicrab]

Iteration = 400 I'm almost burning my computer..... Growing little creature...... And a strange shaking camera...... Maybe I should add some lifespan settings......

[cubicrab]

Field differential growth A developed version with a new idea of vector system

[cubicrab]

Field differential growth A developed version with a new idea of vector system

[5mincolumns]

Learned helplessness

“Everytime you fix a problem for your team, you take away an opportunity for them to grow. Fixing problems is nothing to be proud of :)”, Cesario Ramos, Agile Trainer, Twitter 

“Some employers are willing to buy a books and send you to training classes and conferences. That’s fine, they are doing you a favor. But never fall into trap of thinking that is your employer’s responsibility. (…) Your career is your responsibility. It is not your employer’s responsibility to make sure you are marketable.”  The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin

Recently I have one question in my mind, over and over: why is it that software developers expect from agile coach to be responsible for the learning outcome? I mean, that agile coach are in charge of our learning ability. When we are in gym we surely don’t expect that trainer will practice instead for us. The same is when we need a diet consultancy, we certainly don’t expect that consultant will take diet instead of us. What’s is going on then???

I have one conspiracy theory which is most of all connected with Krakow area and corporate world here: “learned helplessness”.  Maybe the problem is, that the lack of self-organization on team level is deeply interconnected with “learned helplessness” on very personal level of each particular developer. How it is possible?

IT Krakow area is now mostly “employee market”. Current situation drive organizations to create fancy work environment and offer huge benefits. In the same time organizations are removing all impediments which stand on our road.

Organization become a “mother” which cares about everything. And employees are naturally settled on such luxury pillow. We - developers lost ability to do something “alone”, we stopped thinking, we got paralyzed and cannot move forward and we wait to see that organization will take care of everything.

What can agile coach do in such situation? Is he supposed to be “good uncle” or “devoted mother” like organization? Maybe I’m out of patience now, but I don’t see any other solution, but to tell the ugly truth: lack of autonomy and independence starts in the very moment, when we give up on changing our close environment, which we have the power to change.

[neoartistlostintime-blog]

Emergent system experimental research. #selforganizing #formvsformation #abstract #yetdirect

[5mincolumns]

Self-organizing Team - the Last Unicorn

Autonomous and self-organizing team is the basic rock of the agile framework. But sometimes it seems to me that it is too vague and has nothing to do with reality.  Even better, it is the matter of desired goal – “to become autonomous and self-organizing”. It is definitely not the matter of beginnings, when team is like a bunch of chaotic electrons and protons and project manager is like a “daddy”, who distributes tasks and says what to do & how to do it. Developers are sleeping in their comfort zone and for them project manager is like a soft pillow who takes all the responsibility.  Ok, maybe not a pillow, but an air bag that will amortize every disturbance.

I believe that not every team has the ability to take a responsibility of being autonomous and self-organizing and often need an intervention from the outside in the deus ex machine style. It is good when sometimes project manager push the button and decides about team internal structure and roles.  It takes time to understand that the team itself, not the manager, has a power to change something. And this way, step by step, team is changing, re-allocate its roles and structure. And all that without project manager assistance.

But I must say, autonomous and self-organizing team is still a vague ideal from agile books. Because, in the reality, making a good team is like never ending process of repeating failures and successes. An autonomous and self-organizing team is much more connected with fairy tales character like last unicorn - everyone knows it exists but nobody ever have seen it.

Development team is like a boat which sails “under the permanent construction” in the open sea.  

[tanjatuulia]

[tanjatuulia]