Category: Leadership

On Mapping

Recently I have been obsessing about the idea of sharing team knowledge. I am seeing huge challenges in getting a team to understand certain things. Software development teams are constantly dealing with software in a state of evolution and transition, yet we really don’t have any tools to show and manage this.

Then I read about Wardley Maps. In it, Simon expresses his journey as a CEO of a successful company but still feeling lost. He was playing a chess game without the board. He eventually figures out that the great generals of wars and battles always had a map on which they would draw out their tactics and their plans. Yet in business, we have no such thing. So he makes one, as I will show you below.

This not only has implications for me when consulting my clients in their business but also got me thinking about how we do clearly show our architectural landscape and how to move through it. In order to see why mapping is useful, let’s discuss what is a map.

What Is a Map

Not everything visual is a map. Most things are only diagrams.  In order to be a map, accordingly to Simon Wardley, needs 5 things:

  • Visual – More than text.
  • Context-Specific -Not all maps can be used for all purposes. A geographical map of Country territories is different than a topographical map of a city.
  • Position – Where things are placed spatially matters. In geography, this is North, South, East, West etc.
  • Based on an Anchor – Something needs to dictate the positioning of the space. In a geographical map, this is the “North” key.
  • Movement. It needs to show something shifting position.

The below flowchart, for example, is only a diagram:

It is visual. It is context specific (Ordering something). However, it has no anchor for positioning nor does it have any movement. For examples I could re-arrange the diagram like this:

It still expresses the same thing. Also, it shows no movement. What is flowing through those arrows? Let’s add the necessary components:

It is still Visual and Context-Specific. The “Time” arrow is the anchor, positioning all the steps relative to their chronological order. And finally, we give it Movement by showing that it is an Order moving through this set of steps.

Why Are Maps Valuable?

Now we know what they are I want to explain their power. One of the maxims given to leadership is  “provide a strong vision that people can align with, execute on. Don’t tell people what to do.” The Devil, of course, is in the details. What does this vision look like? I have tried different mediums myself and most of them have fallen short, creating lots of ambiguity in the team space.

Usually, a vision is something like “Let’s make our system the most resilient ordering system in the market!” This statement may sound inspiring and may be a good starting point but it is missing a lot of things. What is stopping us today from already beginning resiliency? what are the components needed to be resilient? What are the overall steps we are going to take from step A to C? Let’s turn this vision statement into a map:

Let’s see if it has all our elements. It is visual. It has the same context: Online Ordering. It has a chronological position relative to the anchor of time. In other words, each step is in chronological order. And it shows movement towards greater resiliency. It should be clear that our end goal is to get each of these steps to the top of the map.

And look how much more powerful it is than a vision statement! With this, the team can assess what components are most valuable to target first. They can make decisions base don’t he ordering of steps or other criteria. They can counter the map itself, saying a component should move up or down the map.

A vision statement is a good start, but it needs follow-up. Maps can be this follow-up, providing clarity to the team and providing a central point of discussion and execution. That is powerful. Let’s talk about a couple of different kinds of maps.

Wardley Maps

This idea of mapping lead Simon Wardley to create a way to map strategic business landscapes. Here is an example of one:

I am not going to cover all the details of this map, you can find them here. It has all the elements a map needs. The Value Chain is the positioning relative to a Customer, the anchor. It is visual. It is context specific to a software system. And it has movement in the Evolution axis.

Architectural Maps

This is something with which I am still struggling. I think this is where I want to focus most of my study and experimentation. We really don’t have much that can map the evolution of a set of software components.

However, I am determined to figure out what we can do here. I fully expect to post about this in the near future.

Conclusion

The idea of mapping has been profoundly valuable int he last few months. I not only can dominate a strategic landscape with Wardley maps in consulting engagements. I can also give guidance to my development teams by figuring out how to visually map the current state of our system to our desired state. And this has blown any other way of sharing a vision out of the water.

Leadership Approach

A friend suggested I blog about leadership approach, so here we are.

I just started my leadership journey last year, I am learning, there is so much to understand and at which to get better. Here are some things that immediately come to my mind when tackling a leadership role.

These tips may be good for leadership roles of all types, but I am focusing on leading a group of people who do creative, knowledge work. This includes fields like software development, plumbing, engineering, accounting, and marketing.

We Need To Care About the Team Over Ourselves

It seems very common for people in leadership positions to view it as a privileged position. I wish I could say this was pure silliness, but I understand the sentiment. You “climbed” the ladder of leadership and earned the position. It makes you feel like you earned a little privilege. Well down that path lies folly. That path breeds contempt and dysfunction on your team.

Instead, we shine as a leader when we embrace the solitary toil of supporting others. Our team’s success becomes our success. It does not sound satisfying, but I learned there is much joy in seeing someone do better, overcome an obstacle, accomplish something great because of your direct influence.

Let’s  leave our egos at the door.

It is All About Intent

Along with the feeling of privilege  comes the temptation of giving orders. We feel we are now a “master of our domain” and earned the right to boss others around. That is all well and good except this does not work. People who do creative work are competent and need to be freed and equipped, not commanded.

What I find works is to in all thing speak my intent. It is one of the greatest tools to getting people all collaborating effectively to get stuff done.

Our Energy Matters

This is not some New Age philosophy, but we as humans put out an atmosphere around us based on our mood. We also absorb other people’s moods. This means when we feel dejected our team is getting a taste of dejectedness. When we feel confident, our team gets a taste of confidence.

Let’s ensure we are aware of our mood and do our best to keep it positive. We want to show confidence and stability to our team. This does not mean we alway must be chipper our high energy. It does mean we need to keep our temperament and what we say in check.

We are always “on” as leaders. It is alright to let our team know when things are not optimal or if we are feeling sad about something, but it must be done in a way that lets the team know it will be alright in the end. We must have an energy that let’s the team know that we all can overcome our current obstacles.

Beyond just positivity it is also healthy for us to project stability. If we are running around from task to task like a headless chicken, the team will feel adrift and lost. We should ensure that we are setup to project stability and focus in our team space. We shall not let the unending pile of tasks at our doorstep phase us. To tackle this I like to prioritize and execute one task at a time. When new tasks arrive I put them in a personal backlog and groom their priority later. This allows me to focus and keep my temperament more even.

Turn Everyone Into Leaders

If we are good enough we can run a team well, giving orders form on high and ensuring everything is strategized properly. This will work fro awhile, until we leave or go on vacation. Then everything falls apart. Not only this but we are very likely to burnout from all the attention we must give to these things.

In a team of creative workers we can instead turn each member into leaders. A sustainable, high-performing team does not have room for people who only follow. Most creative workers already have initiative and the desire to do good work. Alas, bad bosses, eduction systems, and corporations have beaten this desire out of many. We need to free our team members and give it back to them.

We can free them by getting them to critically think about the problems they regularly solve and to feel safe to solve them in different ways.  We need to transform our team from asking us permission to informing us of their intent. We need to transform us answering their questions to asking them how they would solve the problem or how they would answer the question.  We need to let them make suboptimal solutions. And once we do all this we need to equip them with the tools and training to make optimal solutions.

This is hard and finding balance for each team member is ever a struggle, but the payout is huge. We will have a high performing team that can run without our constant presence and will continue to perform well after we move on.

We Must Be Diligent

We as leaders are loaded guns. We have the ability to do great good in the team space or great harm. I hope these ideas help you do great good in yours.

This post was originally posted at The Simple Efficiencer blog.

Scrum Master is a Marketing and Sales Role, Not a Managerial One

I recently saw this tweet:

and it spurred me to write this post. Note the word “forced” used multiple times here. This Scrum master likely believes they need to control and manage their team. However, I believe an effective Scrum master (or product manager) role is a marketing and sales role.

Even after shown to be false, the myth pervades that creative workers need to be managed and made to follow certain orders. It honestly surprises me  that we still need to write on this topic.

In order to explore this idea more deeply, let’s define what marketing and sales int the team space are:

  • Marketing – Making known to others that you have something potentially valuable.
  • Sales – Knowing what someone values and explaining how what you have is either valuable to them or not.

Note that this may not seem like a typical definition of sales. Sales gets a bad rap from all those used cars salesmen tropes and the like. Ethical sales requires very little convincing, instead requiring a deep understanding of what your potential users value.  Ethically selling sometimes leads us to choose against selling to a user, a negative sell. We must be alright with this happening.

Let’s look at the exciting world of Scrum mastering to the development team from the site, scrum.org:

  • Coaching the Development Team in self-organization and cross-functionality.
  • Helping the Development Team to create high-value products.
  • Removing impediments to the Development Team’s progress.
  • Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed.
  • Coaching the Development Team in organizational environments in which Scrum is not yet fully adopted and understood.

I see coaching in here twice. Coaching is often focused around introducing new patterns and solutions to the team that may solve their current problems. This falls in line with our definition of marketing. One key to successful coaches is that they can explain how a potential solution is valuable to the team members at their level of competence. That matches our definition of sales.

Helping the Development Team to create high-value products is so generic that we could shoehorn in how marketing and sales fits into this, but I don’t believe it is valuable.

There are other things listed above that the scrum master should do, that do not fit the marketing/sales mode. That is alright, a Scrum master or product manager is not only a marketing and sales role, but it is much more so these things than a managerial role. The only thing that could possibly be seen as managerial is facilitation of Scrum events, but that would be a warped definition of facilitation. I find the best facilitation is one where the facilitator is as objective as possible, not displaying opinions or taking sides in discussions during these events.

To force the team is to lose their trust and a loss in trust loses performance. If you put on a marketing and sales hat during many of your activities as a Scrum master or product manager, you will see significant gains in team ownership and performance. As we described above, marketing and sales can allow us to be fully authentic, honest and transparent. We need not apply them as they are traditionally viewed.

 

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