You've got the values and the practices, and now you've got

practices in between. Values and principles, and you've

got the practices in between. Now, if you look at these
practices, the top ones they have, I'm just going to show
you 10 or 12 of them, just the important ones.

You look at these. This is a social contract. This is

where every team gets together for one hour and writes
yellow sticky notes. So, you know these sticky notes, 3M
notes.

On each note, you write acceptable behavior and

unacceptable behavior. And you put them up on the wall and
then you group them. And within 45 minutes, you have a
list of the behaviors that your team are going to live by.

This is not some company policy sent down from the HR

department in a big brochure. No. This is what you make.
This is what you live. And you put that up on the wall,
on the butcher's paper, just on a wall where the team sits,
and who is now accountable? Who owns that social contract?

The entire team. What if somebody breaks the social

contract? Who will hold that person accountable? The

entire team. Anyone in the team can say, hey, we talked

about this. What? You forgot it? Shall we change the
social contract?

-1-
I had a team once that wrote...of course, you write things
like be on time for meetings sometimes. Sometimes you'll
write no bullying. So, normally, what you see on the list
is an indication of what's happening.

So, it's very interesting to look at different social

contracts because it gives you a flavor. It gives you a
smell of what the existing culture is and what people
actually want to change, because you're going to change it
now.

So, you put it up there, and you have little penalties if

you break it. So, I had one team I worked with, and there
was a person in there who said no bad language. It was
very difficult for me.

[ LAUGHTER ]

And five dollars in the jar every time you swear. The jar
was full of my money, but I tried. I tried. Because you
have to respect someone else on the team. You have to
respect them.

And then at the weekend, we'd all go out for a drink and
then you can use bad language. So, those are sort of
examples that you have. That's one.

-2-
Then there's a scale of expectations. I'll show you that
one. Now, about five years ago, I had a bit of a
transformational moment. I went to an ashram somewhere in
the forest where you sit and listen to this long bearded
man telling you about life and things like this.

He was a very good guru, by the way. He said something.

He said the worst thing you can give somebody you love is
trust. Does that sound sensible? No, it doesn't sound
sensible.

Said what do you mean? He said, think about it. Just

write down put your loved one in front of you. Yeah. Now
you write down darling, I trust you to...finish the
sentence. To love me, to be faithful to me, to make my
breakfast, to whatever, whatever, whatever. I trust you to
do this, this, this. I trust you not to do this, this,
this.

So, what is trust? Trust is nothing but a box of

expectations with a nice ribbon around it. You don't say
then oh, darling, I have expectations for you. Then you
get one on the head. I tried that. It didn't work, you

know. Doesn't work.

You say darling, I trust you. But what is it? That's

-3-
nothing but your set of expectations. So, it is...it is
conditions. That's what it is.

So, I brought this back to the workplace and eventually

developed a little exercise, a practice that you can talk
about your expectations off each other. How many times
have you writ be down and been clear about your
expectations with your boss? Can you put up your hands?

With your boss, right. Clear. Okay. I've got two hands
up. How many times has your boss been clear of their
expectations with you? Been clear. Also one or two hands.

Of course, there's a few things, I want you to do this and

they're more commands than instructions but real
expectations. So, all you need is half an hour where you
sit down together with your customers, your boss, your
supplies, your partners, your product owners, whoever, and
you open this little exercise and use your sticky notes and
you talk about your expectations.

And you listen. And you put it together and you have a set
of expectations that you will live by.

What is acceptable? Can you...we talk about self-directing

teams. Self-empowering teams. Does that mean you can do
anything? Tomorrow you can take the money from the cash

-4-
box and go home? No. So, what does it mean? What can you
do? What can't you do? That's what expectations are.

So, we're going to talk about them. And you can do it in a

practice, and then it's very clear. So, there's mood
marbles. This is just a jar of marbles. Do you know
marbles here, marbles? Yeah? What do you call them? Oh,
[goulich]? Okay. Yeah, [guichky]. Yes, these colored
glass balls.

So, you have red ones and green ones in a big bowl, and you
have a glass jar where your team sits. And every day, when
they go home or when they come in the morning, they put a
colored marble in the jar, depending on how they feel.

Am I feel good? You put green. If I'm feeling not so good

you put red. At the end of the day, all you have to do is
just look at the jar and from the color, you can tell how
your team is feeling.

Isn't that wonderful? It's so simple. Just so simple.

Why don't we do it? Oh, no, no. We have to have a survey.
Yeah.

[ LAUGHTER ]

Survey. Yeah?

-5-
[ APPLAUSE ]

And then which are the five questions. Then we have a

preparation meeting to discuss the questions that will be
in the questions. Then we have to discuss it with the
boss, then we have to find an IT tool. Oh, yeah, that's
from the CIO department. And so on.

So, by the time, the year has gone. So, simple. Keep it
simple. Agile is about simplicity. You find a problem.
You will soon develop a practice to solve that problem as
well.

Okay. So, then there's small things like the standup, the
retrospective and the showcase. The standup is where you
stand up and you do...we call it a standup, because when
you sit down things don't happen.

Did you realize how difficult it was to get your bottoms

out of that chair to touch the pen? Yeah, you wanted to.
Your mind wanted to, but the body said no. I saw it
happening. Yeah, yeah, uh-huh. Then you go a little more,
oh, yeah, but you won't get up and do that.

So, when you move, when you move, things happen. So, we
stand up because that's when you can actually talk.

-6-
And then there's a wall there. There's a wall with all the
actions and you're talking to the wall. Now, Agile has,
over the last ten years, absorbed a lot of neuroscience
principles in there.

When you talk to somebody, you go like this and we're

talking. Look at the body action. Look at the hand
movement. It's all a bit confrontational.

So, we write story cards, we write yellow stickies and we

put them on the wall. Now we are talking to the board.
Everybody is talking to the board. The confrontation isn't
there so much. You're talking to the issue, not to the
person.

You stand up and you have one minute. What did I do since
the last standup? What am I doing until the next standup,
and are there any blockers? Look at that question. Are
there any blockers?

You're asking people, can we help? Agile is a very, very

supportive environment. It's tremendously supportive.
It's sometimes too supportive. When you're mature, you'll

find that you actually have to be careful that you're now

all singing Kumbaya together. So, you have to be careful.
But it's very supportive.

-7-
So, because people want to help you, you say yesterday, I
couldn't do this because I didn't have that. Someone
taking notes, I'll help you. I will sort that for you
afterwards. That's a standup.

Retrospective, the most important practice, and I can't

tell you how many teams I find that say we don't have time
because we have to deliver something. You don't have time
to learn to do it better, but you have time to do it wrong.
That's always there.

So, retrospective is a little action. You put three pieces

on the board so three pieces of paper on the board and one
has got a smiley face, one has got a sad face and one has
got question marks on them, right?

And you write yellow stickies. What is working well, what

is not working well, and I don't understand this. What
puzzles me. You put them up. 15 minutes, you group them
and normally you will get five or ten key problems that the
team has.

You prioritize them and you pick the top two or three. You

don't want to solve everything. And you say, as a team,

how am I going to fix that in the next two weeks? In the
next iteration, how am I going to fix it?

-8-
There is no boss telling you how to do this. There is no
manager telling you to do this. This is the team doing it.
There is no transformation group and run group. You
transform yourselves. It is your job to get better, not
someone else's job.

You come up in the morning, every day you want to be happy.

So, that's that. And then the last set is a set of
measures and things. There are burn-up charts. There are
bull's-eyes. There's risk matrix.

So, the issue, how do you do issue management. How do you

do risk management. We put a piece of butcher's paper on
the wall with a bull's-eye on it. Big bull's-eye. And gin
at any time can stick a sticky note there that they think
is an issue. So, Shawn, where are you? Here, do you want
to tell them what happened with the issue experience?

>> Okay. So, one day, I was away from my desk and
we had the bull's-eye up on the wall. And the next
morning, I get in before the team, didn't see anybody,
didn't talk to anybody. And on the wall, in the very
center of the bull's-eye was a yellow sticky, and it said

this person's time. I won't say whose name it was.

But basically, there was one person on the team who didn't

-9-
have enough time to deliver because they were committed to
other things. And there was a little initials on there,
SR, Shawn Riley, right, as the owner who got assigned to
that issue.

So, without even talking to anybody, without seeing

anybody, without having to go through my emails or
anything, I had a very clear indication, very visible
indication of an issue that was assigned to me.

So, it's just one of those visible management systems, one

of those very visual cues that was very deliberate and very
obvious that something that had to be solved. Something
that had to go back and rectify. So, I did.

Just had a nice little sit-down, had a discussion, what are

the issues, what is the other work, how do we find ways to
take some of that off your plate so they can get back to
delivering against and be committed to what we have as our
commitments as part of the academy. So, just a very
practical application of the issue bull's-eye.

>> Thanks, Shawn. So, as you can see, they're all

very small, simple practices. I don't need IT systems.

You need a lot of paper, butcher's paper, sticky notes and

that sort of thing.

-10-
So, this is the example of the contract, the social
contract. So, you can see here, you can write down the
expectations that you have of each other. Now, have you
heard sometimes when you say, oh, you know him? He's a
very good person. But.

And you hear a little but at the end, you know. So, what
is that but? The but is actually saying he or she has a
very good character, but the competence is a bit dodgy.

So, expectation busy two things. It's about character.

Trust is about character as well as about competence. Not
only about character. So, you must talk about it. You
must talk about what are the expectations. What is the
trust I will have in you to do this.

Okay. So, you do this, and everyone writes it and you put
it together and you just have that conversation. Sometimes
just having the conversation has taken the problem away.

This is the scale of expectations. This is the chart you

can draw on the wall. On this side, you've got...there is
a rule, and you've deliberately violated it for your own
purpose. Is that acceptable or not acceptable? What do

you think?

It's not acceptable. What about it was clear but you

-11-
didn't follow it. What do you think? The team agreed to
do something, to do it in some way. But this person said,
I'll just do it my way. Not so good, huh?

So what about this one? There is a process, but the

process is wrong. It's a stupid process. And I have to
follow it? So, is that wrong or right? Come on, guys.
What do you think? Listen to your heart, wrong or write.
Don't worry. Put your hands on your ears. Cover it. He's
not listening.

Tell me what do you think? Wrong, yeah. It's okay. If

the process is faulty, you have to look at solving the
process. You don't just accept it. It's not acceptable.
But it's your job to fix it. Don't just whinge about it.
Oh, it's wrong, it's wrong. Fix it.

What if it's not clear, the process is not clear? So, you
don't know how it should be done and you did something and
it's wrong. Can you be blamed for that? Do you want...no.
You have to clarify it.

Now you have done something. You have tried something new
in the best interest of the company, and it failed. What

do you think? Is it okay? Do you want...yes, it is okay

because you need failure. Failure is the way we learn. It
is okay.

-12-
As long as you fail fast, and the biggest failure is if you
don't learn from failure. That is the biggest failure.
So, you quickly learn and recover. But the intention must
be good. If the intention is this and you fail, then it's
a bit dodgy. That's not acceptable.

So, simple practice. Then this is very important. This is

the wall. From left to right, can you see the work
flowing? This is just columns on the wall. You put sticky
tape and these are your projects.

These are your large projects, your medium, small projects.

Now, they're waiting discovery. They're waiting approval.
They're waiting the resources. Now you're doing
discovery.

Hey, once the discovery is done, these are the gate checks.
This is the approval. Now you're waiting the resources to
deliver. Now it's in delivery, now it's in deployment, now
it's done.

Here are your prioritized lists. Look how simple this is.
Just on the wall, every piece of work at the portfolio

level is there for everyone to see. Not only the boss.

And by just looking that the wall, you will see the

-13-
bottlenecks. Let's supposing you have 23 items in this
column awaiting approval. What does it tell you? There is
a problem there, huh? There is a bottleneck in the
approval process.

It tells you that either...there's no point in doing any

more work here because you've already got 23 awaiting
approval. So, why would you waste time doing all this?
See, it just starts speaking to you. These are for
projects. You'll have similar walls for operations. And
you will change these walls. You will change these columns
to suit yourself.

But you visualize the work. The problem we have today is

when you work, you go into any office, IBM, anywhere,
anywhere in the world. That's what you see. People behind
computers. What are they doing? Even the manager doesn't
know very often.

Yeah, they are very busy. Yes, my team is very busy. Busy
doing what? So, visualize it. Visualize the process,
visualize the work so everyone understands, including the
managers, what is going on.

So, this is the release plan. So, here you can see a
project bone down into iterations. Here's all the features
that they're doing. And then now you're in iteration

-14-
number one, two, three, four, five. Iteration number five
is broken down. You can see what is planned, what's in
progress, what's in testing, what's done.

It's on the wall. Does this make sense? Yeah. It's there
for everyone on the team to see where a thing is. And on
these sticky notes, here you will have people's faces. So,
you will have pictures. Only one person is responsible.
So, make sure you take a good photograph as well and put it
here.

Sometimes they use avatars, you know. They use Pokemon and
things like this. So, you can put your picture on there
and know by looking at this wall, hey, this is what's
working on and she or she is working on this.

And there's all sorts of walls, and you just look at the
type there. It's hand drawn. It's sketched. They're not
posters that have been printed in some graphic design
company. No. You just hand draw it.

You can have scope. You can have the bull's-eye. Here's
the bull's-eye. Here's the risk matrix. Here's customer
satisfaction. You can put your mood marbles...remember the

mood marbles. Every day, you just plot red, red, red,
green, green, red. What happened there?

-15-
Okay. Red, red, green. Now you're looking at a trend of
the mood of the team. Now when you do your retrospective,
you analyze the mood marbles and you say, we were going
perfectly fine. We're green, green, green and now suddenly
there's red.

What happened? Oh, well, the boss came. Sorry, that was a
joke. So, here you have the leadership practices. So,
there's all sorts of practices. There's leadership
practices, problem solving practices.

If you look here, there's only a few DevOps practices.

Technology practices are a few. There's not many. So, my
question to you is...just before I go there, where can you
use Agile? What do you think?

Everywhere. What about operations? Can you use Agile for

operations? Of course. What about projects? What about
management? Yeah, of course. You can use it.

What about developing your strategy? Yes, you can use

Agile there. Look at this. This is what you have to do at
work. Values and principles. Collaborate, iterate, learn,
self-direct.

So, I want to say something about documentation. In Agile,

there's a lot of myths that, oh, in Agile you don't have

-16-
documentation.

In traditional work what we do is we document, then we pass

it. Then you read it and you comment on it, you pass it
back. Then you comment on it, you pass it forward. Then
you pass it forward.

We use documentation to get shared understanding. In

Agile, we talk. We converse. Then we get shared
understanding and then we document the outcome. There's a
big difference because documentation, written language can
be misinterpreted so much. It is not a very powerful means
of communicating.

The best way to communicate is to talk, either on the phone

or video conference or whatever. So, how many of you can
make a curry? Come on. Oh, my God, in India everyone put
their hands up.

[ LAUGHTER ]

It was a problem for me. So, how many? We've got one
person. One, two, ah, she says a little bit. Small, a
little bit of curry. So, if I asked you you're a cook, you

can make some curry or maybe you can Slovakian food and I
said can you bake me French pastry.

-17-
Can you do French pastry? Maybe not. But I say no, I want
French pastry. So, what do you do then? What do you do?
That's it, Google. You go on to Google. Now, you don't
get the pastry from Google. You get the recipe from
Google.

You get the recipe, you go to the shop, you buy. Then what
do you do? You follow the recipe. You don't say, halfway
through the recipe, you know, the recipe says put it in the
oven for 30 minutes, but I'm a curry chef so I'm going to
boil it for 30 minutes.

You don't say that. You follow the recipe. The Japanese
call that Shu Ha Ri. When you're learning Agile or you're
learning anything, you follow the recipe. You do the
practices as they tell you, because you don't know better.
You don't understand yet why it's like that. And there's
a lot of wisdom why.

And you follow the process. Now, once you put it and you
bake two French pastry, two, three, then you say, oh, you
know what? It's getting burnt on the outside because you
have this very good oven.

So, you say I don't keep it for 30 minutes, I keep it for

25 minutes. So, you have changed the recipe. That is the
Ha stage. And finally, you write your own recipe. And

-18-
that's the Ri stage. So, Shu Ha Ri. That's the process
you will go through on your learning journey of Agile.

When you start, follow the recipe. Once you do it once,

twice, thrice, then you say, ah, okay. Then you will fine
tune it. So, Agile is not prescriptive forever. It gives
you some guidelines and some practices to start, get on of
the cycle. Now you start.

Okay. And then as you go, you start doing things yourself.
You start mountain biking yourself.
[END OF SEGMENT]

-19-