Cues on Selling Agility

Joshua Kerievsky charmed people with two narratives, the first one about three plummers, the other one about the right wacom tablet to buy, and asked people to evaluate them, in order to extract the way to selling effectively. This was a smart way to introduce the Selling Game.

We were involved to a smart game to be played in pairs about appeareance (hey, guys, I can't tell you the end of the story, right?). The interesting thing is that I got aware of the relationship between change and feeling of loss. When people are forced to change things, they feel a certain loss of certainty and control, and even identity. I got aware as I experienced it directly. Of course, Joshua was addressing change2 (the system change), not change1 (change in the system), in Watzlawick's terms. This game was a great way to introduce the Virginia Satir change curve. In the vertical axis you have performance, in the horizontal axis time.



Consider that the infernal moment between the old status quo and the new status quo, when performance sinks and people feel lost, lasts approx. 3-6 months for a groups of 20 people. Transitions to agility involves to enter Dante's inferno, before to see the stars. When was last time you did a major change in your career?

Of course, all these things were metaphors of agility, and two sententiae I've understood (hopefully) can be reported.

1. do not focus on new exciting methodologies, but rather focus directly on the customer's needs.

2. time for a change is short. Suddenly introduce the whole agile package (a core set prepared in advance according to sententia 1) maybe for a small project, but by sure for every actor of the company process, i.e. clients, customers, managers, domain experts, and developers.

Corollary of 2: most of the time agile people try to convey the approach step by step (e.g. stand-up meetings in a first phase, retrospectives in a second phase, pair programming in a n-phase), forcing people to continous change of habits, and never showing the real thing -- it is a different, alternative way to work! Keeping it simple: don't be shy, be brave in your proposals.

A story about this. Joshua told us about his ten weeks of ancient greek: learners should keep in mind the full paradigms, not only present tense -- the risk is knowing a bit of everything, and mastering nothing. Instead of pushing the full spectrum, think in a full scale. Think for instance to TDD. Not test-first, I mean TDD, a way to build software quickly without stress, where tests are a tool to make your software really incremental, while test-first implies simply that you write tests before the code (if divide et impera strategies are possible, you are note performing TDD at all). In reality you need a daily discipline: use it everywhere and all the time, otherwise you simply don't learn it.

3. Sell the antibodies. Don't tell the benefits of a new discipline, get listeners aware about the disadvantages of the opposite habits they still have.< For example, Joshua asked us to individuate the risks of solo programming. In a sense, let people sell therisks to themselves.

4. coach after training: your goal is to be inutile. So that people can cascade their learning in the whole system, otherwise the trained people are perceived as a casta and the others try to destroy training, so that they can't emerge. Provide a way to spread up teh word internally, without your presence! Joshua suggested to read the book by Gerald Wineberg, the psychology of computer programmers.

5. Show the invisible physically. Joshua uses simulation games to introduce concepts, and a lot of small hand-made videos too. Videos are more effective than photos, in particular when you have to show the invisible (refactoring or legacy code, for instance: try to print out that 30-pages long Java method or provide absurd and redundant routing instructions, respectively) to managers. I'm not totally convinced, but it can work -- if they have to pay for seeing it, and they can see them in advance, so onsite they ask the right questions.

Analougously, make the invisible guns pointed to you as a speaker visible making them emerge. Examples: "Oh, yes, I'm no selling a religion to you, I'm not fanatic" (the gun: agilists = evangelists). "There are a lot of way for the transition" (the gun: becoming Agile is a Unique Path).

Finally, always ask yourself: how visible are you making your successes? No idea how to do it? Why not append weekly dazebaos in toilets? So you will be sure that poeple do read them...