Conversational Development

Successful teams open conversation but don’t require consensus

2017-04-25T07:00:00+00:00

Successful teams have an open and inclusive culture but don’t require consensus to make decisions.

Instead of locking conversations to a stage, team or specialty leave the doors as open as possible to encourage diverse solutions and improve knowledge sharing. Much like threading the conversation through all stages, opening the conversation benefits from a suite of integrated tools and favors a decentralized and asynchronous approach to work which better prepares the team to work independently and even remotely if desired.

An open conversation does not mean everyone must agree before moving forward, it is used to share and compare different opinions and for the manager to make and own the decision on behalf of the team.

Opening the conversation up can be challenging, it is important that all participants understand and adhere to a code of conduct which at its heart encourages team members to argue the solution with pros and cons and not the person. Agile Coaches can mediate the conversation and Project Managers or Leads can summarize the conversation and make the final decision for the team.

How does your team stay focused with open conversations?

Opening a conversation can lead to more talk and less work if not mediated. We have found that each task or project needs to have someone who is explicitly accountable and owns the decision making process. We would love to know how your team directs conversations to actionable decisions?

Why should you thread the conversation through all stages

2017-04-23T07:00:00+00:00

Work consists of many disconnected conversations happening during meetings, phone calls, video conferencing, over email and team messaging or even at lunch or over drink after work. Efficient teams recognize the value of all these conversations and thread them together to create one narrative from idea to production – a single conversation threaded through all mediums of communication.

To thread the conversation through all stages of the software development lifecycle you will need a suite of integrated tools. Automating the the process is the key to making it a success. The more you can remove steps which require team members to manually take information from one tool to another the more knowledge can be shared.

Setup your meeting recordings to be automatically uploaded and linked to relevant issues.
Use ChatOps to quickly and easily create and manage issues in your project management tool directly from your team chat.
Integrate your CI/CD pipeline with your code repository and issue tracker to have a complete overview of the health of your project.

A conversation threaded through all stages will give you traceability allowing you to measure the time and effort required by each team member for every stage enabling you to make changes to improve efficiency.

Learn how successful teams use Principle 3, open conversations without consensus to get diverse solutions to problems and increase knowledge sharing.

Efficient teams use short conversation cycles to get more done

2017-04-19T07:00:00+00:00

Efficient teams use shorter conversation cycles by identifying what is the Minimum Viable Change (MVC) that can bring value to customers. They are less concerned by delivering entire products or features in one go and instead ask what is the smallest aspect of the feature or product that can be shipped to bring value to the customer as soon as possible.

Interestingly the same rebuttals are always given by those not using MVC, “If we release our product piece by piece our competitors will steal our idea,” or “The product is too complicated and only adds value in its entirety.”

But using MVC allows you to iterate quicker, receive feedback sooner and more frequently, allowing you to affordably accommodate change and provide truly unique value to your customers while always leaving your competitors a few steps behind your incredible pace.

Learn how to use Principle 2 to thread the conversation through all stages to increase transparency and knowledge sharing.

We would love to hear from you

How you have shortened your development cycle? What are your thoughts and concerns with implementing shorter cycles?

What is Conversation Development (ConvDev) and why should you care?

2017-04-16T07:00:00+00:00

ConvDev evolves the agile software development principles into a practical framework for modern software development. The agile manifesto and 12 principles are ideals every team should strive for but they don’t tell you how to get there. Frameworks like SCRUM or methodologies like Kanban have attempted to bring more structure and order to the software development process but introduce additional abstractions or endless columns of tasks with not end in sight.

ConvDev takes a different approach by constraining the agile principles to what’s at the center of getting work done, the conversation.

No matter what framework or methodology is used, work is always organized around meetings, updates and reviews no matter what department or even industry you are in.

ConvDev acknowledges this underlying construct of getting work done - the conversation - and instead of hiding it or abstracting it away organizes work around it to create a natural, light and specific result focused framework. The conversation encompasses every stage of taking an idea to production, from discussing what needs can be improved, how to implement it to asking if worked and brought the expected value to the customer.

The four principles

The values of ConvDev are represented in four principles extracted from years of experience working in, with and observing how efficient and successful teams work.

Find out how efficient teams use Principle 1, short conversation cycles, to get more done.

How to start adopting Conversational Development

2017-04-13T07:00:00+00:00

Adopting a new process can be a daunting task for any team. The key to success is getting everyone on-board and taking on change in a manner that is comfortable for all. In this guide we will cover how to assess your own process and introduce the four principles of Conversational Development into it.

Assess your current process

The first step on the path to adopting Conversation Development (ConvDev) is determining your team’s or organization’s place on the Maturity Model to get an idea of your process maturity, possible problems, and potential for growth.

Each of the five stages on the model has fewer barriers to collaboration and invites more of the extended team to be part of the process. Find your place on the model and set goals for your team to get to the next stage. If your are missing one aspect don’t jump ahead, make getting their part of your goal.

Get familiar with ConvDev principles

Focus on Minimum Viable Change

The objective of software development is to produce value as soon as possible. Instead of minimum viable products or minimum viable features, start thinking in terms of Minimum Viable Changes - the smallest change that can be shipped and measured.

By focusing on shipping Minimum Viable Changes instead of entire feature sets or at arbitrary time intervals your team will be in a better position to measure and assess value and create a result oriented culture.

1. Shorten

As an exercise to get started pick a feature and ask your team what is the smallest amount of change they think is needed to get a working version shipped For example instead of building a full-featured issue tracking solutions with issue boards and reporting start with a simple to do list and gradually expand it.

2. Thread

Record any meetings or if not possible have someone take meeting notes to share with everyone afterwards. It is important to thread the conversation through the entire process either by linking various tools or using a centralized solution. A linked conversation with clearly defined stage transitions will allow your team to measure the entire cycle time for the minimum viable change as well as the time spent in each stage e.g design, development, testing etc.

3. Open

Make sure you invite someone from each cross functional team to the conversation and that the conversation is not dominated by anyone. There is nothing wrong with having a project manager or agile coach lead the conversation and act as a mediator.

4. Results

Tracking the cycle time will allow your team to become more result orientated by optimizing the first three principles. Once you have finished your first cycle begin again with the team thinking about the next minimum viable change to make.

In the next post we will dive into more detail on how to shorten your conversation cycle.