Geek Leadership in Deep Legacy

1
Geek LeadershipinDeep Legacy

• Michael GeePaw Hill
• GeePawHill_at_AnarchyCreek.com
• _at_GeePawHill on Twitter

2
What is coaching?

• Coaching Is Action
• A coach is always taking action
• in one form or another.
• The Jack Of All Trades
• is the coaches card.

3
Helping Geeks Produce

• Every action I take seeks to increase geek joy,
  business value, or both.

4
What's a Pillar?
The pillars are what keeps giving my coaching
practice new life. Pillars help me create new
actions. Pillars help me evaluate actions, too.
5
The Five Pillars
Releasing Sorting Inviting Modeling Situating
6
Releasing
Helping a team gain freedom to move experimentin
g with ideas, ending pro forma
gestures, removing legacy rules, making
retrospectives real.

• Releasing moves responsibility from you to the
  team.

7
The Releasing Mantra
I dont know, what do you think?

• Ask for help every day.
• People who help you make a decision also help you
  each other to follow it.

8
Take Care!
Once released, you cant call a team back. You
have to mean it.
Theres a reason this pillar isnt called
empowering, yo.
9
Sorting

• Sorting means choosing a most important story and
  acting on it.
• Its one of the most important techniques a coach
  demonstrates.
• But you have to sort more than just production
  stories!

10
Sorting

• For a coach, any of these can be a source for
  most important story
• production
• technique
• environment
• team
• The list of possible stories is infinite, and
  coaches have to sort their work, too.

11
Sorting Urgency Principle

• Coaches need a better grasp of the urgency
  principle than their teams do!
• Most resources on most important story, less
  resources on less important stories, no resources
  on unimportant stories.
• You Are Human. Focus Your Efforts!

12
Inviting
Inviting Is Two Things Throwing a Party Finding
a Place for Everyone
13
Throwing Great Parties

• For geeks, a great party means
• having food drink
• lots of chatter
• cool (or soft) toys
• no interruptions
• secret geek cultural references

A successful agile transition is one continuous
party.
14
A Place For Everyone

• Throwing parties is a blast, but the un-placed
  teammate is a serious issue.
• Everyone doesnt have to be good at everything.
  Find something something genuinely useful for
  an isolated person.
• Do it fast.

15
Modeling
Supermodel
Role Model

• Be the change you wish to see

16
Obvious Modeling

• Think of how you could model
• choosing the most important story,
• testing before coding,
• story-slicing,
• observing meeting discipline.

If your practice is healthy, modeling will be
everywhere
17
Subtle Modeling
There is no real end to modeling geek
joy, making mistakes, missing a
deadline, working with other teams. Modeling is
much stronger than teaching.
18
Situating

• Bringing a team to a better fit with
• ...its company,
• ...its market,
• ...its biology,
• ...its psychology,
• ...any context at all.
• Many teams fail through misunderstanding
• the contexts in which they live work.

19
Situating Obvious Cases

• A team builds the wrong product.
• A team holds engineering value
• over business value.
• A team thinks e-mail is communication.
• A team works constant overtime.

20
Situating Subtle Cases
The Block-Of-Coding Fallacy The Comment Smell The
Number Seven Plus or Minus Two Body Language For
Pairing The Nature of the Blind Spot

• Anything you can use to help your team to a
  better stance or grip.

21
Generating Actions
Any problem you see can be used in combination
with the pillars to suggest new actions. Try it.
Suppose you have a team with low energy with
lots of code smells goldplating every
requirement
22
Evaluating Actions
The DoubleDawgDare Dare the team to show me
their worst, then fix it. Can you see how I use
the dare for modeling? situating? inviting? even
sorting? A four stars action? Trust it!
23
The Five Pillars Redux
Releasing Get them to guide themselves. Sorting
Show, be, and choose urgent. Inviting Help
them have a good time. Modeling Be what you want
them to be. Situating Tune their grip and
stance. Keep your coaching practice lively and
entertaining, for you, and for everyone!
24
Some Questions
These are mine. You gotta find your
own. Wheres manipulation and morality? Should
tale-spinning be a practice? What are some
cool tactics? (I have answers to these, just not
sure theyre right.)