[OSList] Agile culture - video (X-posted OS/GC-list)

Daniel Mezick dan at newtechusa.net
Fri Jan 10 15:13:08 PST 2020


Greetings to All, 

This is an interesting thread to say the least. Agile culture...


Regarding The Push or Infliction of Agile without Consent

Imposed Agile is now a worldwide epidemic. An epidemic of...closed space. 


2006

Martin Fowler, an Agile Manifesto signatory, warned about the folly and harm of imposing "agile" on people

The whole industry looks the other way, and still does to this day: 

"...Imposing an agile process from the outside strips the team of the self-determination which is at the heart of agile thinking.

"....personally I'd rather have a team work in a non-agile manner they chose themselves than have my favorite agile practices imposed upon them.
"So I hope I've made clear that imposing agile methods is a very red flag." -Martin Fowler, 2006



2012

No one with a prominent voice except Martin Fowler (and maybe Ron Jeffries once in a while) wanted to talk about the folly and harm and horror of imposed "agile" practices back in 2012, or 2013, or 2014, or 2015. Too much money at stake !


In 2011/2012 I started experimenting, in client engagements, with "before-and-after OST" with 90 days of enterprise-level experimentation in the middle. By 2012 I had something working pretty good! The results were very strong for the client, although it did tend to reduce how long I needed to be there at very high bill rates...

...I started Tweeting a leading questions, questions like "don't the folks have to be truly engaged for any of this agile stuff to work? Don't they have to want it, for it to work?"


2013

As a result of those Tweets, in September of 2013 I received an invite to keynote the Global Scrum Gathering in Paris France, which I accepted. I delivered a speech called DARE TO INVITE which was description of OpenSpace Agility, aka "OSA". 

OSA creates 90 day waves of change punctuated by whole-group Open Space events that a) look back and inspect those results and b) look forward plan the next 90-wave. With the whole enterprise. Every 90 days. 

It has since spread throughout the world. There are over 1000 people who have been trained in OSA. Based on OST, it is being used worldwide for enterprise agility at scale. 

The good news is: almost anywhere that whole-group Open Space is used at the enterprise level in Agile adoptions, the results are much better. You can see video testimonials from executives, managers, developers and UX people, here: https://openspaceagility.com/testimonial-videos/


2015

Around 2015 I taught some agile stuff online, for free, to people from OSLIST, under the auspices and authority of OSI-US. It was all by invitation to just a few people. I recall that Lisa Heft, Tricia and "a few others from around here" did attend those sessions. I taught the Agile fundamentals. Scrum. Kanban. Etc. At the time, the idea was to bring some OST people into the Agile space, to open it up a little bit. Eventually I even invited Tricia C. to help me out in some of my accounts, doing agile stuff with me here and there and even facilitating a big OSA-OST event at Intuit in Boston.

Even with this progress, things started to get worse. The imposition of Agile became a kind of epidemic. Agile quickly became mostly all about transactions. Some folks were making millions per year on coercive, forced-march "trance formations." (Many still are.)


2016

In 2016, I met Mike Beedle. Another Agile-Manifesto signatory. Unlike almost all the other prominent voices, Mike was 100% OK calling out all the imposed "agile" going around. Very few of the other prominent voices were saying anything. This is still the case today !



NOW...

Since 2016, there is widespread and growing acknowledgement that the agile world has actually degraded further. The good news is that there is a new generation, of new and open-minded leaders that are unapologetically ALWAYS using Open Space, usually inside OSA iterations, as a way to invite and engage everyone in the change, everyone, instead of "rolling it out" and inflicting Agile practices on teams and managers without their consent. 

OpenSpace Agility is not a Agile framework. It is an engagement model you ADD to your framework. And Open Space is the key and central element that makes it go. 



Open Source Licensing for Culture Tech:

OSA is a freely available engagement model you can add to whatever you are using. It is published under an open source license. Feel free: anyone can derive from it and even commercialize that derivation. For an example of this kind of open-source spread of OST and OSA, take a look at OpenSpaceBeta.com from Niels Pflaeging which derives from and is based upon the the foundations of OSA and the open source license: 

https://www.openspacebeta.com/license/

Open source licensing for culture technology is very important. You can learn more about that here, and affix your name to the Declaration On Progress: 

https://openleadershipnetwork.com/onprogress/

In the future, real soon now, we will be able to look back on when Agile practices were routinely imposed on people, as a push, as a MANDATE, and ask: 

WHAT WERE WE THINKING ?!?



Daniel Mezick
Co-Founding Member, Open Leadership Network <https://openleadershipnetwork.com/>

Learn how to really transform this time: 

Learn how to use Open Space Technology,
and other Open leadership patterns, 
at the Open Leadership Symposium Feb 4-5-6 in Tampa Florida <https://openleadershipnetwork.com/events/2020-tampa>




> On Jan 10, 2020, at 2:57 PM, Diana Larsen via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
> 
> I love your story, Michael. I’m another person who had the privilege of seeing Spotify close up a while back, been involved in events there with colleagues, and have enjoyed watching it grow over time. 
> 
> My connection with them began in 2012, and that came about because of another related idea, the Agile Fluency Model. The leaders were among the first to recognize the synergies of multiple good ideas.
> 
> Thanks for starting this thread, Thomas!
> Diana 
> 
> 
> ***********
> Diana Larsen
> Agile Fluency™ Project <http://agilefluency.org/>
> The Article: The Agile Fluency Model: A Brief Guide to Success with Agile <https://www.agilefluency.org/model.php> - Get the eBook! 
> The Video: The Agile Fluency Model Explained  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvvMl1F_Tow>The Workshops: Workshops and Events <https://www.agilefluency.org/workshops.php>
> 
>> On Jan 10, 2020, at 11:09 AM, Michael Herman via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> When I first met the (fledgling, at that time) Agile community, Thomas, it was because they'd asked me to introduce OS as a track in their first annual conference (2002).  When I showed up, they explained to me what Agile was.  I just started laughing. "Guys," I said, "You do realize that you're making software in Open Space!"  My short explanation of that characterization is that in both Agile and OS, "We put all the most important stuff on the wall.  And then we get it done."  
>> 
>> Fast forward to 2017, Mike Beedle, one of the original co-authors of the Agile Manifesto (agilemanifesto.org <http://agilemanifesto.org/>), launched a framework for (whole) Business or Enterprise Agility.  The foundation of that is an adapted "Business Model Canvas."  Mike and I used to muse about whether the 9-15 boxes on those canvases were so many small open spaces (on important dimensions of the work, or if it was really one big open space with a finite number of predictable tracks of work (e.g. purpose, customer, metrics, team practices, resources, governance, value delivery, and so on).  Either way, we always agreed that Mike's Enterprise Scrum canvas-based framework was surely a form of Ongoing Open Space.  
>> 
>> Since then, in practice, I've found that following an OS meeting with work in an Enterprise Scrum canvas, the canvas being a way to keep the marketplace open and loosely organized going forward, is a somewhat more rigorous but also natural enough way to support "keeping the work going" after the OS.  
>> 
>> Overall, what I like about the pairing of OS and Agile approaches is this:  The strong invitation, engagement, alignment that arises so quickly and easily in OS doesn't automatically lead into rigorous action, if the organization doesn't already have that rigor active in itself.  At the same time, Agile approaches bring an easy, natural rigor to work, but don't necessarily invite, engage and align.  Imposed, and Too Narrow (closed), understanding of Agile, Value and Transformation too often have Agile teams working very rigorously but not as smart and aligned as they really want/need to be.  
>> 
>> Some combination of open (space) invitation and operational (agile) rigor, however, in the same/shared spirit of self-organization, is my favorite way to play these days.  
>> 
>> Michael 
>>  
>> --
>> 
>> Michael Herman
>> Michael Herman Associates
>> 312-280-7838 (mobile)
>> 
>> MichaelHerman.com <http://michaelherman.com/>
>> OpenSpaceWorld.org <http://openspaceworld.org/>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 10:48 AM Thomas Herrmann via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>> wrote:
>> Dear friends in Open Space
>> 
>> I had an interesting meeting today with a person in a large IT company and I was reminded about this video, I think I shared it here before but it’s worth watching again – I noticed! This link leads to the full 25 min video, about the Agile Culture in Spotify company. There are shorter versions too, but I recommend the full if you are really interested. Lots of good stuff and interesting to understanding more about this approach and how it can be used in a healthy way (as it sounds). I know it can also be ”mis-used” just like OST.
>> 
>> https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=spotify+agile&&view=detail&mid=5DC370E7746AF98272625DC370E7746AF9827262&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dspotify%2Bagile%26FORM%3DVDVVXX <https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=spotify+agile&&view=detail&mid=5DC370E7746AF98272625DC370E7746AF9827262&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dspotify%2Bagile%26FORM%3DVDVVXX>
>> We had some great conversations and areas of collaboration we will explore bringing OST and GC into that company.
>> 
>> Wishing you lots of open space for fun during the coming weekend
>> 
>> Hugs
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Thomas Herrmann
>> 
>> Open Space Consulting AB
>> 
>> Pensévägen 4, 434 46 Kungsbacka, Sweden
>> 
>> Telefon: +46 (0)709 98 97 81
>> 
>> Email: thomas at openspaceconsulting.com <mailto:thomas at openspaceconsulting.com>
>> Homepage: www.openspaceconsulting.com <http://www.openspaceconsulting.com/>
>> Profile on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/thomasherrmannopenspaceconsult <http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasherrmannopenspaceconsult>
>> Company page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/OpenSpaceConsulting <http://www.facebook.com/OpenSpaceConsulting>
>>  
>> 
>> Open Space Consulting frigör livskraft i människor, organisationer och samhälle.
>> 
>> We release lifepower in people, organizations and society.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Medskapande är hör för att stanna – dags att vässa er förmåga?
>> 
>> Co-creation is here to stay – time to sharpen your skills?
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Trainings/workshops 2020
>> 
>> Febr 5-7 Organizational Health and Balance – Berlin, Germany
>> 
>> March 12 Online erfa-utbyte om Open Space-metoden (gratis!)
>> 
>> April 2-3 Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution – Netherlands
>> 
>> June 7-11 Från vanespår till integration – den glömda kreativiteten. Öland, Sweden
>>                   (From old habits to integration – the hidden creativity)
>> 
>> Sept 1-3 Working with Open Space Technology - Netherlands
>> 
>> Sept 4-5 Genuine Contact Mentoring circle, Amsterdam Netherlands
>> 
>> Oct 25-27 Working with Whole Person Process Facilitation – Berlin, Germany
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Trainings/workshops 2021
>> 
>> Febr 2-5 Genuine Contact Organization – Netherlands
>> 
>> Apr 12-16 Genuine Contact Train the Trainer - Netherlands
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> More info & registration: www.openspaceconsulting.com <http://www.openspaceconsulting.com/> (Aktiviteter)
>> 
>> Or get in touch via email thomas at openspaceconsulting.com <mailto:thomas at openspaceconsulting.com>
>>  
>> 
>> <image001.png> <http://www.genuinecontact.net/>
>>  
>> 
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