I’ll start by saying that I think the book could have titled “How we implemented Agile successfully in our workplace” and it would go unnoticed. Of course, that does not diminish the book’s message and I took some insights from it and agreed with its entirety

Trying to summarize what I got out of the book, these are the main factors to create Joy huddled into 3 categories (the categories are my own):

1. The Team — generally:

a. Exterme Programming

b. Open Space seating

c. Team Independence

d. Trust

e. Honor people over process

2. The Work

a. Agile (early feedback, short plannings, involvement)

b. Pride

c. Transparency

d. Accountability

e. Community

3. The Process

a. Sprint planning + kanban (my wording but the gist in the book is the same)

b. Understanding the customer (Personas that use the product, his “business”)

c. Experiments

This reminded me of one of my previous posts Motivation payoff (or cheese only just doesn’t cut it anymore) , where the main premise was on alignment of your goals to the company goals, the feeling of importance in the work you do, progress in your expertise and personal goals and of course a good word. If something comes up in different places — there must be something to it.

The engineer is a complex individual and it takes more than one factor to create Joy or motivation so the more we widen the scope and have different factors and options the better.

The Team

From the beginning of human evolution we’ve been working in tribes, this in itself creates a conditioning in our mind to be part of something. I don’t necessarily agree with the Extreme Programming initiative or the Open Space seating but I think these are enablers for better and constant communication in the team.

The other factors all point to the same conclusions — what we should seek out in building a team is — an independent, communicative team that trusts each other.

How can you go progress these in your team?

I am a big fan of the team independence, I believe that even if the team decides something that is different from my opinion — I will offer my advice but I trust the team to reach its decision. This is important because this could also be the wrong action which ultimately I would need to defend but this is one of the most important parts of team forming and team learning. Independence Let the team choose with your guidance , and don’t hold them to it if eventually they. Analyze it with them, get the insights the team needs and move forward.

Communication and Trust — I believe these two have a reciprocal relationship — e.g The more (good) communication you have the more trust you’ll gain and the more trust you have → the more communication you will have between members. The best way to create these is to encourage communication in the team, I do this by sharing information, things I’ve learned and by setting an example of creating openness and a safe environment to share thoughts and of course criticism. (An environment were criticism is shared in a constructive way creates trust and better communication). I believe this environment, which is often a by-product of extreme programming and “open space seating”, is far more important and consequential.

The Work

As I said in my opening, the book could have been named “implementing Agile in the workplace”. I’ll skip over this factor as professionals far more experienced than me have written a lot about why in this day and age Agile is probably the best methodology today, adapting to constant changes (Take a look at this excellent TED talk Bruce Feller — Agile Programming — For your family to see just how it can be implemented everywhere).

Instead I’d like to focus on Pride. I think this is a very important factor in our software today. I am involved in a big project with very strict timetables and the question that I think all of us as managers can relate to rose — “Value vs Foundations”. Quite the predicament. The bottom line of the company is always to sell… and well “we always have those housekeeping sprints to fix everything”. I myself in this project thought that its more important to push through product value, get early feedback. Later did I understand that this was a mistake.

On the other hand, as we know architects and software engineers — foundations can be refactored and then refactored again to perfection, support all platforms be dynamically loaded and have the built-in ability to refactor itself every few weeks BUT do we need this with 0 product value? The balancing act and tug of war is always there.

I tend to think that a good guideline to ask the team would be “What is code you can stand behind and that 5 years from now other engineers won’t curse us?”. Of course there will be a wide spectrum of opinions and thoughts but I believe this question, coupled by transparency on the importance of the features\project timetables and a good communicative discussion will bring much better results. Engagement in this process and getting the teams opinion creates accountability — Although ultimately I think everything is my responsibility I encourage people to take ownership of whole tasks, creating their own accountability and I take a step back allowing the team or the individual to put their thoughts and creativity into the work.

The Process

Sprint planning and working with a board (physical one or virtual) are good practices which I think are very important for transparency but enough has been written about them.

The main insight I have here is the experiments factor — This directly relates to creating a SAFE and OPEN environment in the workplace and thus creating JOY.

When you have experiments — successful outcomes or not — and a learning process in place , people are not afraid to fail, people feel encouraged to try things to push themselves beyond their comfort zone and grow. If they fail? Be supportive and allow the individual or the team to learn from it and implement it again. This start in small things — when someone comes with an idea — don’t shoot it down right off the bat. Hear the person, challenge the idea and give him the resources to implement it.

Our JOYful summary

As always, the human mind is complex and we can only theorize and experiment on what creates a better environment and JOY in the workplace. I believe that the combination of having people accountable and proud of their work together with their independence to make choices that affect in a safe and communicative environment, transparent decision making and goals are very substantial factors for the JOY of workplace.Also making it a CRAZY FUN place, won’t hurt.

I think the main points to reflect on in creating your own “bundle of workplace joy” is

1. Communication and trust — be active in creating this atmosphere in your team. Encourage talk and constructive criticism. Consult your team, share with them your thoughts and reasoning and see how they begin to take a more active role.

2. Independence — encourage your teams to take responsibility, give them the space to fail as long as they can learn from their mistakes. Encourage them to learn from their failures and their successes.

3. Pride — In general I think this should be a factor of the release quality measures — Ask them “are you proud of this feature?” “What would have made you prouder?” “How can we learn from this and implement it in the future?”
This will both create more communication and trust and enable you to understand what makes your team proud, what are the pains that are worth solving in your prioritization.

4. Be AGILE , experiment. Not everything is supposed to work or fit your team — Try, learn, repeat.

What experiments have you done? What do you think contributes to JOY in the workplace? Share in the comments!

Reading it sounds like an oxymoron, no? Like “Military intelligence” or “Trance Music”.

But what does it actually mean and how can it improve any organization ?

Someone who exercises initiative by organizing a venture to take benefit of an opportunity and, as the decision maker,

decides what, how, and how much of a good or service will be produced.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/entrepreneur.html

I would like to focus more on the first part which is the main motivator for a corporate entrepreneur.

That is to say, anyone on any level can do it and push for change in his organization. True, the more “power” you have enables you to remove more obstacles in your way but even small steps on any level can result in compounding effects of change for the better.

A Corporate Entrepreneur (from this point on let’s call it a CE) does just that only in on a corporate scale — “Exercises initiative by organizing a venture to take benefit of an opprotunity”. This is true on a team level, group level and basically goes on and on depending on how good your idea is, how much you are willing to push it and the company readiness for change.

I believe that corporate entrepreneurs are the catalysts of change and are a vital part of the growth of a company (moving from start-up to medium sized to enterprise).

On the WIINFM side — I think CE is also a drive for change in you, enables you to push your boundaries and challenge yourself and as a result you grow from it.

when you are a force for positive change (we’ll talk more below on understanding when to push for change) another possible effect is recognition.

So What does a corporate entrepreneur do?

I think the main wording in the question is do.

Yes, people think what is the change they want to bring, they research about it (see more below in CE rules) and they plan what they want to achieve.

But then it stops.

The corporate entrepreneur DOES. He doesn’t talk a long time about what he wants to achieve, he doesn’t research it for months only to run out of steam, he experiments, he challenges, HE MAKES IT HAPPEN.

I believe that its better to execute a thought-out move than plan and re-plan it to perfection. The experiment requires some level of planning because an experiment is based on having some “model of reality”, making a hypothesis about something that emerges from that “model of reality”, planning an experiment to prove or disprove the hypothesis and then doing it. Its important to have just enough planning and not just to run ahead and experiment because it will backlash when you come to scale your experiment.

Better to have an experiment that fails and learn from it than no experiment at all. We all fail sometimes, its learning from our mistakes and executing them better next time that counts.

Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.

— Peter Marshall

A CE is disruptive, he finds the places that can do better and challenges them — The process, the standard, the mindset.

Like Marshall says — it could be small things — doing a retrospective better or changing the way the team thinks of code reviews up to larger things like company culture and even new products. Start small, think BIG.

Corporate Entrepreneur Rules

I found this post https://medium.com/the-mission/these-11-rules-will-change-your-life-forever-c2e4af244087#.n36zzof9e articulates some of my ideas well so I got some insights from it.

1. Challenge the status quo. Just because something is that way since always doesn’t mean that is the most effective way to do that. Perhaps for the given time that was decided, that was the best option available, but surroundings change and sometimes so do we. Challenge the process and thought, have DISRUPTIVE thoughts.
2. Question yourself and your narrative. Just because you believe something and think that is the best option don’t rush into things.
3. Consult your manager and hear other thoughts before moving forward.
4. Don’t make assumptions, test ideas and follow the evidence. Test your basic assumptions (“Do people do X because of Y?”), understand what you are actually trying to improve.
5. Start small, think BIG. What is your endgame? Place that into your frame of mind but start from a smaller unit to test ideas and get early feedback.
6. Everybody does the best they can. The thumb rule in interacting with people is that they are doing the best they can with what they have. Operating with that mindset greatly reduced my frustration at times and in improved my relationships.
7. Operate with good intentions — remember that like you they are doing the best they can and have other constraints of their own.
8. You can be wrong. Maybe your venture failed. ITS OK, its always one of the possible outcomes. Don’t let that deter you from your next idea. Learn what you can from it and MOVE ON.

There is a lot more that can be written on this but if there is one thing I want you to take from this is:

Hit me up in the comments with ideas you have or pushed and let’s share them around.

Agile

http://illustratedagile.com/2016/10/09/even-happier-product-owners/

“Why Agile turns into micromanagement” Stefan Wolpers https://medium.com/swlh/agile-micromanagement-in-the-era-of-autonomy-mastery-and-purpose-68378d978f3e

Video: http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2016/10/tactics-redesigning-relaunching-legacy-products/ (Didn’t see it through but seemed interesting enough to share)

Management

This is part of 3 part series, suggest to read them alone (There are links between them)

“How to give a great 1:1” Kimber Lockhart https://medium.com/@kimber_lockhart/how-to-give-a-great-1-1-5cf923d9c6d8

Time Management

“How to Run Engineering Team Meetings (and not waste anyone’s time)” https://hackernoon.com/how-to-run-engineering-team-meetings-and-not-waste-anyones-time-612d55480d8

Development

“Full-stack development is alive and well. And for good reasons.” @alexnmoldovan https://medium.freecodecamp.com/full-stack-between-reality-and-wishful-thinking-43110005f2a2, I actually disagree with some things in this article (I believe it is a function of company size and project complexity).

“How To Make Practical Innovation Sustainable” Faisal Hoque https://hackernoon.com/how-to-make-practical-innovation-sustainable-603ee97c6eda

“How Google builds web frameworks” https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-google-builds-a-web-framework-5eeddd691dea

Enrichment

About keeping you internet identity to a minimum -

“A complete guide to keeping your digital identity short and sweet” https://medium.com/broken-window/a-complete-guide-to-keeping-your-digital-identity-short-and-sweet-570cfb3c2ed4

“Here are 250 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free” @dhawalhshah https://medium.freecodecamp.com/ivy-league-free-online-courses-a0d7ae675869

See you next week!

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary

What makes us or our teams come to work? We have been pondering this question for quite awhile and recently more intensively.

In this post I want to share my insights from Dan Ariely’s new book — “Payoff — The hidden logic that shapes our motivation” and finish with a nice little exercise I did in my 1 on 1 with group members.

Simple motivation experiment

As we all know, motivation is a fickle thing, it is dependent on many factors — external, internal, varies from person to person and changes through the course of time.

In his book, Ariely gives an example of an experiment they did in Intel -

“On the first day of the work cycle the manager informed the employees of their production target in the assembly line — they had 4 different incentive groups

* Monetary bonus: “If you reach\exceed X chips today , you’ll receive 100 NIS in cash”

* Pizza voucher: “If you reach\exceed X chips today, you’ll receive a voucher for pizza”

* Compliment: “… get a text message from their boss telling them “Well Done!”

* Control: no note and no bonus.

So what do you think were the results? The pizza voucher boosted productivity by 6.7%, The compliment by 6.6% and the cash award by a mere 4.9%.

But what was the additional twist? On the second day, when nothing was offered, people who got the cash award performed worse by 13.2% !

Yeah but R&D are so special!

I believe that basic human nature regardless of your position is affected by motivation and even by the simplest of things.

As Ariely puts it in his book — A good word goes a long way and it is important to show your satisfaction and excitement from your teams’ work.

Another thing that occurs and I think is very relevant to our environment is meaning (“What I am doing is important in my eyes”) and connection (“I feel that what I am doing \ the company is doing is aligned to my values and goals”).

Companies, as Ariely says, who offer employees more opportunities for meaning and connection make the employees more engaged and they in turn work harder and are more likely to be loyal to the workplace. (You can also read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA_effect)

I try to achieve this in the teams I managed in two ways:

1. Create the role of the sprint leader — I believe this gives the individual (and it is rotational between team members) the ability to manage the sprint — he gets the responsibility and “power” to affect the outcome of that sprint together with the PO\PM
2. Give the team the power to create their sprint content — the Sprint leader delivers the business goals but the team decides what actual cards they can pull given their velocity and priorities. I am also a strong believer in the team deciding on what technical debt they can manage.

In addition, I think that explaining as much as we can on the business side of the product \ feature and give them the full picture engages us even more.

Progress and achievement

One of the important motivation pillars of motivation is the sense of progress and achievement. This is both in our work (nobody likes the feeling that he is standing still professionally) and the sense of actually achieving something. That is why I believe that publishing the sprint outcome is important, the sprint demo (if you have them) and most importantly getting actual feedback from the field and sharing it with the team. (Ariely also touches the subject on how companies (like zappos) help employees reach their personal goals by hiring coaches).

Creativity (or “where did you get that Funko! pop doll” ?)

“At the offices of Zappos, for example, employees are encouraged to be “weird”. They decorate their cubicles in all kinds of wonderful, adventurous ways

People who know me and saw my table (when its clean) know that I am a firm believer in dolls or fun accessories, I believe this brings a lot to the workplace and creates motivation by having a playful environment.

People should take their work seriously but their surroundings lightly.

This also gives way to a creative mindset, of thinking outside the box and ultimately being disruptive. As Ariely says — This coupled with a kind word , genuine appreciation and the feeling of progress and achievement are the forces that motivate most.

What motivates you?

In the introduction 1on1 I did with the group members I showed them the following cards (I took this idea from the Agile workshop I attended)

Each card represents a value (it has a little description) and I asked members to organize the value from the top most (this is what motivates me most in my work) to the least (I don’t really care about this). I was astonished at what a thinking exercise it was!

Then I asked them to take the top 3 and give me , on a scale from 1 (least) to 10 (most) how they feel about these values and what is missing to make it a 10.

I felt that this gave me very strong insights to my teams and the feedback I got from them was great too. It also enabled me to gauge on a team and group level what motivates people and if I see a trend act to leverage it. (for example if individuals mainly chose “Relatedness” as their main motivator , I should push to create more social interactions and opportunities).

The topic of motivation is very wide, complex and sensitive, and I don’t believe there is one science that can explain it all.

I hope that in this post I managed to give you some insights on how to increase motivation by internal factors and a nice way to learn more about what motivates your people.

** My Ideas are my own and do not reflect the views of CyberArk **