I was thrilled last year when I opened Sanjiv Augustine’s brilliant new book “Managing Agile Projects” when found a reference Fernando Flores.
Flore’s was a very young finance minister in Chile before being imprisoned during the Pinochet regime. It seems he spent most of his spare time in prison thinking, as you would, and when he was finally released he went on to become a very rich consultant, practicing his special and unique form of managing and design businesses – what is now known as Commitment Based Management. I joined VISION Consulting specifically because they (I mean we) are one of the few organizations practicing Commitment Based Management. CBM compliments the TOC, Lean and Quality thinking perfectly and it provides an elegant framework for understanding Agile too. I’m slowly learning the Flores approach and working with my colleagues to join up the thinking between Agile and Commitment Based Management. Some of this work will appear in my book.
Anyway, as I was saying, Sanjiv’s book has a section on Flore’s work. His book is fascinating because he looks at both project management and Agile just a little differently – a little more profoundly even – than most other Agile books. I liked what he’d written about Flore’s work and Sanjiv has kindly sent me some copy to share with y’all.
Today, we kick of with a brief introduction. It refers to 3 ways to enable transforming exchanges, one of which is linking language with action, but future postings will only cover linking language with action.
TRANSFORMING EXCHANGES
Transforming exchanges are exchanges of information between people that result in personal transformations: each person participating in the exchange gleans some new insight, some new experience or some new learning.
Take the example of an acceptance test, when a customer first sees a demonstration of a requested feature. The customer may learn something from the ex-change about the restrictions in system implementation. Or she may get some new insight into further possibilities. The development team may learn something from the customer's initial response. Was the feature exactly as she had imagined it, or was it implemented differently from the way she had described it? The customer's reaction usually speaks volumes to the development team, and they will learn much as a result. The acceptance test serves as a great vehicle for transforming exchanges of information.
If there aren't sufficient transforming exchanges between team members, their work will be disjointed and lacking in end-value. Agile methodologies enable transforming exchanges through several practices covered above. However, there is still a need for Agile Managers to recognize transforming exchanges as such and enable them in fuller fashion. The three activities presented next: encourage feedback, build trust, and link language with action; all con-tribute towards amplifying the intensity of the transforming exchanges on your agile team.
Anyway, thanks for sharing Sanjiv. More to come.
