Leadership

Agile Teams are Self-Organising Teams

We will explore this idea using a combination of Boris Gloger’s Ball Point game (Gloger, 2008) and Mike Rother’s Kata in the Classroom (Rother, 2015).  Kata is a term from martial arts. The Improvement Kate is a repeating four-step routine for continuous improvement: Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA). The goal of the ball point game is for each team to get as many balls as possible to pass through the hands of every team member in 2 minutes. The game involves both estimation and self-organisation.

The four  basic requirements of the game are that:

1. As each ball is passed between team members, it must have air time
2. Every team member must touch each ball for it to count
3. No ball to your direct neighbour on either side, you must pass to your front
4. Every ball must end where it started. For each ball that does, the team scores 1 point (make sure you count your points)

Agile Leadership Style

Agile leadership is situational, adaptive, empowering and inspirational. The most important leadership theory applied to agile is that of servant leadership (Highsmith, 2009).

“For the Agile Leader, servanthood is the strategy. Situational actions are the tactic” (Filho, 2011).

The key characteristics of the servant leader include awareness, listening, persuasion, empathy, healing, and coaching. Situational leadership means that the servant leader may act as a democratic leader, a laissez-faire leader, or an autocratic leader in different situations (Koganti, 2014).

Servant Leadership

The originator of the servant leadership concept (though inspired by a Herman Hesse story) was Robert Greenleaf. “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?” (Greenleaf, 1970)

A longer extract from this work is in this week's media

Teachers as Servant Leaders

Servant leadership has been applied by a number of authors to teaching. “The teacher as servant leader functions as a trailblazer for those served by removing obstacles that stand in their path. Part of unleashing another’s talents is helping individuals discover latent, unformed interests. Art, music, and science teachers are prime examples of educators whose genius lies in leading students to discover unarticulated interests.” (Bowman, 2005),

References

• Bowman, R. F. (2005). Teacher as Servant Leader. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 78(6), 257.
• Filho, H. (2011). Achieving Agile Leadership: Proposing the Agile Leadership Manifesto. Retrieved from
  https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2011/january/achieving-agile-leadership
• Gloger, B. (2008). Ball Point Game: A game to feel what Scrum is. Retrieved from https://kanemar.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/theballpointgame.pdf
• Greenleaf, R. K. (1970). The Servant as Leader, The Robert K. Greenleaf Center, Indianapolis, IN.
• Koganti, S. (2014). A Brief History of the Servant Leader. Retrieved from https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2...
• Highsmith, J. (2009). Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison Wesley.
• Rother. M. (2015). Kata in the Classroom: A simple exercise to help you teach scientific thinking. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/mike734/kata-in-the-classroom-overview-47711515

Digital 

The Agile Manifesto

The key ideas of agile are embodied in the 'Agile Manifesto' - http://agilemanifesto.org/

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Agile is fundamentally about learning, people, and change - three things we struggle also with in education and handle poorly at the present time. 

Agile Schools

Steve Peha, a technologist and educator in the US, has worked extensively in applying the lessons of agile and lean to the classroom. His article on InfoQ, 'Agile Schools: How Technology Saves Education (Just Not the Way We Thought it Would), can be found at http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-schools-education

Agile vs Waterfall video transcript (for in-class activity)

Meet Harry! Harry owns a car dealership - he needs a web application that will help him manage his current customers and their needs.

Looks like you're due for an oil change!

Meet Sally! Sally owns her own beauty salon. She needs a web application that will help her manage her clients and the services they enjoy.

Would you like to use the same color in your hair as last time?

Harry chooses to use traditional development - also known as the waterfall approach. In the waterfall approach, decisions are made at the beginning of the project. During development the customer is not involved with the creative team. Harry is only able to provide feedback at the end of the project when the creative process has been completed.

Sally chooses to use the agile approach. Agile development focuses on one area of the project at a time. During development Sally works with the creative team. Sally is able to provide feedback throughout the entire creative process.

When Harry sees the final product he realizes he needs a login feature. Harry is disappointed when he is told changes can’t be made.

Harry used the waterfall approach. Like water that flows down a waterfall cannot come back, it is not possible for Harry to adjust the scope of this project once it's been developed.

As Sally reviews her project with the creative team - together - they decide a profile feature would provide increased value. Sally is excited when the team tells her they can add it.

Sally used the agile philosophy. With agile, the client and creatives constantly work together to prioritize what is going to be the next feature that provides the most business value.

Every project has three main components: cost, scope and schedule. In order for Harry to get changes made, he is forced to spend more money and wait longer.

In order for Sally to get her changes made, she works with the creative team to decide which features will provide the most value.

The bottom line: Harry is left with a mediocre product and no money.

Sally is left with a superior product and extra cash to celebrate her success with!

The next time Harry needs a web application: “I'll have what she's having!”

Lean Production

According to Barney and Kirby (2004), educators can learn from lean production the importance of empowering teachers by training them to problem-solve and then expecting them to be self-reflective and to continuously improve their practice.

Kanban

One of the ideas that has been taken from Lean Production by agile practitioners is Kanban - which means 'visual card' in Japanese.

For an example of how Kanban boards can be used to help children plan, see Princess Kanban. This is on the agileschool blog, which you may find interesting. More recent materials are now on the Agile Classrooms site.

Trello

Trello is one of the tools that can be used to create Kanban style boards online. It is an easy-to-use, free and visual way to manage your projects and organise anything. Naturally there are other tools too, but this one seems to be the most popular right now, and amongst teachers and their students too. 

User Stories 

In software development and product management user story statements are many times following the format: As a (role) I want (something) so that (benefit). The idea is to capture what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job function. It captures the "who", "what" and "why" of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small piece of paper.

User Story Cards

In software development, if the agile team considers a requirement too complex, the requirement splitting technique helps the customer to divide it into simpler ones. This helps agile teams to better understand the functionalities requested by the customer, and helps agile teams working in parallel with frequent communications between them.The requirements are written on story cards, which means that the complex user stories are broken down smaller stories. (De Lucia & Qusef, 2010)

3'c's

User stories have three critical aspects, Card, Conversation, and Confirmation. Ron Jeffries wrote about the 3'c's all the way back in 2001 and his advice is still good today. A good story card will likely end up with a back side covered with results of the conversation(s) and confirmation tests.

References and further reading

Andrea De Lucia, & Abdallah Qusef. (2010). Requirements Engineering in Agile Software Development. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence,2(3), 212-220.

Barney, H. & Kirby, S.N. (2004). Toyota Production System/Lean Manufacturing. In B. Stecher and S.N. Kirby (Eds.), Organizational Improvement and Accountability Lessons for Education From Other Sectors (pp. 35-50). Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.

Briggs, S. & Briggs, S. (2014). Agile Based Learning: What Is It and How Can It Change Education? InformED. Retrieved from http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/agile-based-learning-what-is-it-and-how-can-it-change-education/

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