Table of Contents - May 2009 Version

[Daryl Kulak]

Hi,

We've got another Table of Contents to run by you, this time with annotations explaining what is in each chapter.

Your comments, questions, suggestions welcome.

Table of Contents (May 2009)

Section 1 – Seeing Agile and Software Development With New Eyes
1. Theory, Methodology and Practice – a brief introduction to the book and our use of theory in conjunction with methodology and practical advice, relationship between theory and practice, why theory is necessary, how principles are not theory, basics about Rosen's theories and the machine model
2. Readers' Guides – Executives, Managers, Individuals – our book offers advice at three levels, executives who want to correct their current Agile initiatives and sustain the successes, managers who want to solve the detailed problems of Agile at the project or team level, individuals who want to introduce Agile or change an existing Agile implementation that is not working well from their own perspective
3. The Basics of Agile – a quick walkthrough of the Agile Manifesto, the Agile flavors, the Agile Principles, the Declaration of Independence for Modern Management (Agile for managers essentially), Agile practices, Agile roles
4. Rethinking Agile – where is Agile now, the problem with “True Agile,” is Lean the answer, the waterfall apologists

Section 2 – How to Strengthen the Relationship Between IT and Business
5. Rethinking Software as a Product – internal IT departments can change their relationship with business by taking more of a “service” view of IT rather than a succession of products, and Agile encourages this

Section 3 – Enterprise Agile Scaleability and Sustainability
6. The Key to Scale and Sustain – Know How Your Processes Work – we need to give up the idea of best practices and understand more about why processes work or not, taking things situationally, not as gospel from a guru
7. How to Build Paths to Discovery for Your Agile Processes – how Agile can avoid being the next fad (or fraud), the problems Agile faces today cannot be solved within Agile itself, we need to disrespect the methodologies, avoid “mechanical Agile,” build Agile Experimentation Labs, focus on the people, tolerate mistakes, take advantage of systems thinking
8. How to Create a Responsive, Adaptive Portfolio Management Process – we have risk management all wrong today, including cost/benefit analysis, here are new factors to apply to project feasibility

Section 4 – How to Nurture Team Members Who Can Adapt to Changing Requirements, Technology and Business Conditions
9. How to Treat People Like People, Not Like Machines – how to overcome our own mechanistic bias, the problems with classifying A Players and B Players, Agile can become mechanical as easily as waterfall
10. People Become Your Expectations – let's throw out the Agile principle of “hire quality,” people's quality is subjective and situational
11. How to Encourage Critical Systems Thinking – the problem in the machine is the “yes man,” suggested tools to establish an environment of critical thinking, we need whistleblowers on the process, we also need critical thinking to be applied to ourselves
12. Creating a New Agile Professionalism from the Ground Up – mechanical professionalism isn't working, we need Agile professionalism, encouraging all team members to think critically and systemically
13. How to Rethink Your Agile Consulting Engagements – Client and Consultant Perspective – what can consultants sell if best practices are nothing, Agile and fixed price projects, Agile and outsourcing

Section 5 – How to Create Teams Who are Focused on Corporate Goals Instead of Empire-Building
14. Rethinking Team Management – rigor and project management, management structures for larger teams, scout and ambassadors, manager as teacher, manager as systems scientist, plan-do-check-action, trust = speed, motivating people, measuring performance, completion and acceptance criteria, accountability, Agile illth, the Deming manager
15. Rethinking Program Management – helping projects break their boundaries, risk management of a program
16. How to Build Change-Ready Teams – new competencies of a manager in a systems thinking organization, the Five Whys, are you building a Learning Suppression System
17. Rethinking Training – workshops ain't working, training people in “best practices,” appropriateness of different modes of training
18. Agile Documentation – categories/uses of documentation and how it can be reduced or redirected, models and prototypes

Section 6 – Requirements Aren't Just “Out There”
19. Understand the People Before the Requirements – requirements are just thoughts in people's heads, the Rich Picture, story mapping, people cases, analysis vs synthesis
20. Balancing the Perspectives of the Weak as well as the Powerful – balancing weak and powerful members on an Agile team, balancing weak and powerful stakeholders' requirements
21. Valuing the Structured and the Unstructured – as technologists we tend to build structures for problems, but sometimes a lack of structure is better, our applications need a way for users to “Press Zero” to get around the structure, remember that to structure is to fossilize

Section 7 – How to Adapt Test Cycles to Short Sprints and Frequent Releases
22. How to Optimize Levels of Test Automation in Agile – finding the right level of automation, 100% automation is not the goal
23. How to Incorporate Exploratory Testing – simultaneous learning, test design and test execution, exploratory as in “explore new lands”

Section 8 – How to Make Application Maintenance and Enhancement Less Costly and a Destination Point for Career-Minded People
24. How to Create Release Teams – ways to improve maintenance and decrease costs

Section 9 – Business Agility
25. A Word about Applying Agile to Business – a short chapter about applying Agile ideas to businesses

Section 10 – Reference
26. Twenty Biggest Agile Mistakes – list of mistakes
27. Agile in the Bloodstream Bumper Stickers – one-liners taken from this book that you can remember

Section 11 – Theory to Support These Ideas
27. The Theory Chapter – background to everything we've suggested in the book, some of it in the book and the rest available on a free Website

[Jeanne Baker]

"Enterprise Agile Scaleability and Sustainability" section seems pretty rough to me. (I realize there's lots of the book still getting fleshed out. But I'm really impressed with how it's coming together. I'll buy!) I'm gathering from your summary that the central theme is there's not a recipe that can be mechanically repeated. Agreed, but I do find that scale and sustaining require "habits" that are repeatable (and predictable). The ones that stick best are often organically grown. At Microsoft we call them Rhythms of the Business.
I could prattle on, but just want to make sure that you're not merely asking people to display healthy skepticism but you're also advising on the engine they should create.

[Daryl Kulak]

Jean, I hadn't heard about "Rhythms of the Business" before. That's interesting.

You've caught our general point about going against mechanism, but it is subtler than what you're perceiving. We aren't saying "don't copy practices ever" but we are saying "don't copy practices blindly." That's the difference.

I would actually like you to "prattle on" about Rhythms of the Business" if you have time. Or point us to a reference on it?

Thanks.

[Chuck Suscheck]

I'd be interested in seeing a topic on why we are in the shape we are in (we being the industry). By this I mean why is Deming's work rather dated and generally accepted, yet we continue to use command and control with fungable people in the trenches? If you don't address the fundamental reasons people still follow the old way of project management it will be hard for them to see the error of their ways in themselves and change (IMHO).

Another note: Why don't you use Scrum techniques to write the book. Reword or support the TOC with stories and acceptance criteria. Stories would sharpen the focus on the reader's value of the chapter and acceptance criteria would keep you from writing a huge chapter. Organize the work by sprints that end in a potentially shippable book - although the timebox element of sprints may be challenge since it's not your full time job to write this book.

[Daryl Kulak]

Chuck,

Just so you know, we are at the point where we've finished the first draft of our manuscript. The idea you bring up about a team working on a book using Scrum practices is interesting but not that applicable to us at this point.

I feel the aspect of "why we are in the shape we are in" is addressed somewhat with our attention to the "mechanical model" dialogue. This article on our site might be of interest to gain knowledge on our perspective of the mechanical model:

http://agileplusrigor.ning.com/forum/topics/2075814:Topic:264

Thanks for the comments, Chuck.