Talking to Skeptics
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
10:57 AM
{Flip Chart Attached. It was mostly conversation}
If at first you don’t succeed keep sucking until you succeed
If your wrong be wrong strong
Who do you know that are skeptics
Developer
Mainframe
CTO
Client/Consulting/Vendor
Project Managers
Government
Project Managers
Berkman (did a study on skeptics)
Red/Green/Yellow
Could be an indicator of their means of understanding. The skepticism could be an indicator of how they understand concepts
General groups of Skeptics: Open Minded Skeptics and Close Minded Skeptics
Group of Skeptics
Estimator
Know it All
Contract (SOW)
Skeptics in Disguise (Ninja Skeptic)
Its all going to blow over soon
Panic Response
Complainers
Hidden Agenda
Self-Servant Leader
Can Kickers (Delayers)
Too much overhead
I want to know when I am going to get and this doesn’t
Skeptics can be your best ally because once you convince them then they could be a great champion for your cause
Scenarios:
Senior Developer: this could be against everything you have learned but JIT and emergent design does work. If you can get them to play along it
Google the Bowling Game for more info on this
Project Manager: "My job is going away".
If they are highly technical then it’s a good concept to be a good product owner
What is a "Servant Leader"
Care for the Team
Lead from the back
Empowerment
Allow people the best
Robert Green "A leader-leader want to leads because they want more power and control. A servant leader wants to serve and find leadership the best way to lead"
Recommending Lisa Adkins "Coaching Agile Teams"
Level 2/3 Listening: Recreate who they are "See it from their world"
Feed back to them so they see their conversation
Who you are? Why you are? What is your perspective? Then recreate it.
Refactoring: NEW TERM
Understanding their concerns
Alignment
"We are doing the same amount of planning. We are just distributing it over time"
Why? Humans don’t estimate well. Environments change. Etc
Right sizing the tasks so that communication in the burn down make sense
Why does the CTO care about the
The product owner should be evangelizing the release plan and etc
Impediments should be on the wall "Large friendly letters"
Obstacle Board: The SMs job is to remove the obstacle. When an obstacles don’t get removed then it get displayed on a wall and continues up the chain until resolved.
Never have retrospectives that have the same issues
How do you talk to a CTO that comes from the perspective that "I want to see you fail so I can prove you wrong"
There has to be a show me. "Start small and look for a small win"
"Speak inside of their conversation not yours"
"There is no reason to move to Agile unless something is broken"
"Before you used to bring me something I didn’t want in 3yrs in 2mill. Now you bring me something I didn’t want in 2weeks and 50k"
Fist to five
Summary
· Listen First and Recreate
· Prove it and show it is going to work
Created with Microsoft OneNote 2013.