How do I sign up for the CoP? Register here. It’s free.
A note from Al Shalloway:
In 1999 I formed Net Objectives with the mantra “Effective Software Development Without Suffering.” I later changed that to “Effective Software Development With Joy.” As I have grown older I’m becoming clear about my mission on the Earth plane. It’s about helping people achieve success via an engineering approach that leads to joy. People often mistake my mission as to be promoting what I am doing at the time, be it design patterns, XP, Scrum, Lean, Kanban, SAFe, or now Amplio. But these are all means to an end – helping people do better in their working environment.
The key words here are “success”, “engineering”, and “joy.” Joy is the goal, success is the target, and engineering is the approach. People often equate engineering building overpasses, but it is much more involved than that. I like Albert Einstein’s observation that “Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been.”
Billy Koen gives a great definition of engineering in Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer’s Approach to Problem Solving – “The engineering method is the strategy for causing the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources.”
I study what works and what doesn’t. I change my model based on the reality of what I’ve seen. I recognize that my methods are incomplete in that everything I’m aware of can be improved and I am not aware of all I should be. But this incompleteness and lack of perfection are no reason to not take advantage of what we do know.
My intention is to convert learning from what is often a painful experience of realizing you’ve been doing something wrong to the joyful experience of discovering a better way.
The purpose of the Amplio Community of Practice is to create a community that wants to join me on this journey.
The Purpose of the Amplio Community of Practice
Over the last 20 years, I have talked to thousands of consultants and practitioners about what worked and what didn’t. What continues to surprise me is that dozens of essential concepts are either not known or are pursued when they shouldn’t be. The Amplio Community of Practice is a vehicle for me to 1) present these core concepts to the interested public, and 2) provide a taste of what learning from me would be like.
We have a four-week rotation where 3 webinars are presented in a row and then we have a general meetup where community members can ask questions.
You can see a list of past presentations here. They are available to community members immediately and to the public about a week after being presented.
The Monday before a presentation there is a 10-minute overview by Al Shalloway and Joshua Barnes at 10:30 am Pacific. Here’s a link to that (this link is typically updated on Thursdays).
Upcoming presentations
9/27 Wed. Using the complicated we know to deter the adverse effects of the complex we don’t. Knowledge work is complex. While we know a lot about how to do it, there is always the chance something will surprise us. What’s important to recognize, however, is that the biggest wastes result from non-linear events. A non-linear event is when a small event creates a large outcome. For example, one vendor used the imperial system and the other used the metric system causing the Mars Climate Explorer to crash into the planet. The reality is there is always uncertainty, but we shouldn’t ignore what we know. The key is to use quick feedback to avoid non-linear events and to decouple events so that when something goes wrong it does not cascade into a bigger problem than it needs to be.
10/4. Community Meetup. Bring questions or anything you’d like to discuss. We’ll also talk about how you can get involved in the gamification of the Amplio Navigator.
10/11. Why the concept of Minimum Business Increments (MBIs) is so important. Agile is about quick delivery of value. A minimum business increment represents the smallest chunk of value that can be released and is worth the transaction cost. It provides focus, alignment, and avoids wasting time putting things in a timebox. If you’re doing SAFe planning around released MBIs can lower work in process while delivering value sooner.
10/18 Proper use of the Definition of Ready can avoid be almost done but not able to release. Definition of Ready should be used to ensure we don’t start work unless we can get everyone that needs to be involved, ready for the work.
Tentative topics.
MVPs by Eric Ries are known as a great vehicle to discover if a product is of value. In the Start-Up Way, however, Mr. Ries demonstrates they are just as much about validating assumptions made on how the product is going to be released and supported.
Why using Planning Poker and t-shirt sizing results in poor estimates and a misunderstanding of velocity. Team Estimation will be presented as an alternative approach. There are many unknowns in estimating. It is important to do relative estimation and include estimates of past work to both improve our estimates and to get an understanding of the real value of velocity – not as a metric of speed but as a way to incorporate our “unknown unknowns” into our estimates.
Why we must understand the value to be achieved before starting and how to accelerate it by attending to the customer journey.
How we may have uncertainty about the specifics of a product, but we should have reasonable certainty on what is of value. Many people conflate having uncertainty about the value of a product with uncertainty of what its details will look like. This often results in not getting enough clarity around the value of the product.
Why it’s important to avoid immutability in any approach. We should have an approach that focuses on doing what is effective, not whether it is in the guide for the approach.
What learning first principles and factors for effective value streams can do for you. There is a great deal of science to Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints. This is somewhat like the strength or weakness of materials used to build bridges. We must understand them in order to be effective.
The role of management. Managers have a definite role in Agile. It is about creating great environments for teams and individuals to work in.
How to be a value coach.
—————————
Recordings of past presentations are here. The last one is only available to community members.
- Why systems thinking is essential.
- Why understanding value streams is so important.
9/13 Wed
Systems Thinking has us recognize that the system within which we are working causes most of the problems we have. The system includes culture, environment, the people doing the work, and the people themselves. The system is also more about the relationships between these “components” than about them individually. This means that when something goes wrong we have to look first at the whole of the system instead of looking to blame someone.
When one looks at LinkedIn, it does not appear as if this is appreciated in Scrum adoptions. I say this because when Scrum is not adopted properly the conversation tends to be around people not being motivated, not understanding, or not being disciplined enough.
A systems thinker would notice a lack of motivation, understanding, and/or discipline but would not blame the people for this. Instead, they would look at Scrum, and how it was implemented, and if the level of discipline required to adopt it well was greater than what the team had. Instead of pointing the finger at the people, they would look to see how to improve the way Scrum was being implemented.
This might well require going beyond Scrum.
The benefit of this is that people would adopt Scrum, or a Scrum-like approach, must faster and more effectively.
The benefit of this benefit is that they would be happier and more productive. And their management would be happier with their results and would trust them to work the way they wanted to.
9/20 Wed. Why understanding value streams is so important.
Attending to value streams provides insights that help teams and organizations avoid the pitfalls and stagnation that hit many Agile endeavors. Scrum aficionados often complain about management’s lack of support and Scrum teams becoming feature factories. SAFe implementations often start out well only to stagnate later. These disparate behaviors are sourced by the same missing concept – attending to the value stream.
The reason for this is that value streams combine a holistic perspective with a focus on creating value for an organization’s customers while improving how they do their work. This perspective provides insights to managers to better understand the challenges of the teams they are responsible for. It also provides a way to detangle value streams that result in multitasking and delays in feedback that create substantial waste. gnation are widespread.
Attention to the value streams of customers (referred to as “the customer journey” provides insights on how to create innovative products.
In the earlier systems thinking presentation, we learned why systems thinking required us to look holistically. In this session we learn how value streams can help us do that.
The presentation begins by introducing value streams and emphasizing the reasons why they should be utilized. It highlights the disparity between how companies are structured and how their work actually flows, shedding light on the inefficiencies that can arise. The discussion further explores the detrimental effects of delays, which can lead to wastage of resources and time. Shifting the focus from people to the work itself is advocated as a key strategy for optimizing value streams.
The Agile GPS: A Path to Enhancing Value Creation for You and Your Stakeholders
Discover a unique approach to Agile frameworks that goes beyond simple impediment identification or providing all-encompassing solutions for the entire organization.
Our Agile GPS empowers you to align teams around value, obtain quick feedback to avoid working on the wrong things or in the wrong way, manage workloads efficiently to prevent development bottlenecks, foster collaboration and alignment, and nurture a culture of continuous learning. The choice is yours: follow a guided approach until you gain a deep understanding and then venture on your own, rely on a comprehensive framework that covers all aspects (almost), or trust your own problem-solving abilities with the clarity we provide on avoiding and resolving challenges.
Why We’re Doing This
A personal note form Al Shalloway
In “Unlimited Wealth”, Paul Pilzner posited that wealth equals physical resources multiplied by technology (including information) raised to the nth power where ‘n’ is the effects of the technological advances. The industrial age brought in great advancements because it greatly increased the technology available. But the industrial age is still one of a zero-sum game. A zero sum game occurs when there is a transfer of wealth from one person to the other but the net wealth remains the same. For example, a person may buy a stereo from a store and the person now has a stereo and the store has some money but the net wealth of the two entities remains the same.
The information Age shuffled in yet another major wealth creating potential. For the first time we didn’t need to be enmeshed in a zero-sum game. Wealth can be multiplied in every transaction. If one company has information of value and provides it to another company, now both companies have the information. While the industrial age enable us to create wealth faster by leveraging human physical strength, the information age allows us to create wealth through sharing it. With artificial intelligence, information is now being created from information itself.
The potential now is advancing the state of technology. Fortunately, how to do this is already known. The question is not creating new methods but taking existing ones and enabling organizations to apply them.
I feel that the potential of changing the world may just require making everyone wealthy by doing what we already know how to do.
“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.” – Buckminster Fuller
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Meade
Upcoming Events
The Amplio Community of Practice (Free)
Latest Learning Journey
The Amplio Development Masterclass
Amplio Consultant Educators
How do I sign up for the CoP? Register here. It’s free.
A note from Al Shalloway:
In 1999 I formed Net Objectives with the mantra “Effective Software Development Without Suffering.” I later changed that to “Effective Software Development With Joy.” As I have grown older I’m becoming clear about my mission on the Earth plane. It’s about helping people achieve success via an engineering approach that leads to joy. People often mistake my mission as to be promoting what I am doing at the time, be it design patterns, XP, Scrum, Lean, Kanban, SAFe, or now Amplio. But these are all means to an end – helping people do better in their working environment.
The key words here are “success”, “engineering”, and “joy.” Joy is the goal, success is the target, and engineering is the approach. People often equate engineering building overpasses, but it is much more involved than that. I like Albert Einstein’s observation that “Scientists investigate that which already is; Engineers create that which has never been.”
Billy Koen gives a great definition of engineering in Discussion of the Method: Conducting the Engineer’s Approach to Problem Solving – “The engineering method is the strategy for causing the best change in a poorly understood situation within the available resources.”
I study what works and what doesn’t. I change my model based on the reality of what I’ve seen. I recognize that my methods are incomplete in that everything I’m aware of can be improved and I am not aware of all I should be. But this incompleteness and lack of perfection are no reason to not take advantage of what we do know.
My intention is to convert learning from what is often a painful experience of realizing you’ve been doing something wrong to the joyful experience of discovering a better way.
The purpose of the Amplio Community of Practice is to create a community that wants to join me on this journey.
The Purpose of the Amplio Community of Practice
Over the last 20 years, I have talked to thousands of consultants and practitioners about what worked and what didn’t. What continues to surprise me is that dozens of essential concepts are either not known or are pursued when they shouldn’t be. The Amplio Community of Practice is a vehicle for me to 1) present these core concepts to the interested public, and 2) provide a taste of what learning from me would be like.
We have a four-week rotation where 3 webinars are presented in a row and then we have a general meetup where community members can ask questions.
You can see a list of past presentations here. They are available to community members immediately and to the public about a week after being presented.
The Monday before a presentation there is a 10-minute overview by Al Shalloway and Joshua Barnes at 10:30 am Pacific. Here’s a link to that (this link is typically updated on Thursdays).
Upcoming presentations
9/27 Wed. Using the complicated we know to deter the adverse effects of the complex we don’t. Knowledge work is complex. While we know a lot about how to do it, there is always the chance something will surprise us. What’s important to recognize, however, is that the biggest wastes result from non-linear events. A non-linear event is when a small event creates a large outcome. For example, one vendor used the imperial system and the other used the metric system causing the Mars Climate Explorer to crash into the planet. The reality is there is always uncertainty, but we shouldn’t ignore what we know. The key is to use quick feedback to avoid non-linear events and to decouple events so that when something goes wrong it does not cascade into a bigger problem than it needs to be.
10/4. Community Meetup
10/11. Why the concept of Minimum Business Increments (MBIs) is so important. Agile is about quick delivery of value. A minimum business increment represents the smallest chunk of value that can be released and is worth the transaction cost. It provides focus, alignment, and avoids wasting time putting things in a timebox. If you’re doing SAFe planning around released MBIs can lower work in process while delivering value sooner.
10/18 Proper use of the Definition of Ready can avoid be almost done but not able to release.
Definition of Ready should be used to ensure we don’t start work unless we can get everyone that needs to be involved, ready for the work.
Tentative topics.
MVPs by Eric Ries are known as a great vehicle to discover if a product is of value. In the Start-Up Way, however, Mr. Ries demonstrates they are just as much about validating assumptions made on how the product is going to be released and supported.
Why using Planning Poker and t-shirt sizing results in poor estimates and a misunderstanding of velocity. Team Estimation will be presented as an alternative approach. There are many unknowns in estimating. It is important to do relative estimation and include estimates of past work to both improve our estimates and to get an understanding of the real value of velocity – not as a metric of speed but as a way to incorporate our “unknown unknowns” into our estimates.
Why we must understand the value to be achieved before starting and how to accelerate it by attending to the customer journey.
How we may have uncertainty about the specifics of a product, but we should have reasonable certainty on what is of value. Many people conflate having uncertainty about the value of a product with uncertainty of what its details will look like. This often results in not getting enough clarity around the value of the product.
Why it’s important to avoid immutability in any approach. We should have an approach that focuses on doing what is effective, not whether it is in the guide for the approach.
What learning first principles and factors for effective value streams can do for you. There is a great deal of science to Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints. This is somewhat like the strength or weakness of materials used to build bridges. We must understand them in order to be effective.
The role of management. Managers have a definite role in Agile. It is about creating great environments for teams and individuals to work in.
How to be a value coach.
—————————
Past presentations. All are available to community members. All but last one available to public here.
- Why systems thinking is essential.
- Why understanding value streams is so important.
9/13 Wed
Systems Thinking has us recognize that the system within which we are working causes most of the problems we have. The system includes culture, environment, the people doing the work, and the people themselves. The system is also more about the relationships between these “components” than about them individually. This means that when something goes wrong we have to look first at the whole of the system instead of looking to blame someone.
When one looks at LinkedIn, it does not appear as if this is appreciated in Scrum adoptions. I say this because when Scrum is not adopted properly the conversation tends to be around people not being motivated, not understanding, or not being disciplined enough.
A systems thinker would notice a lack of motivation, understanding, and/or discipline but would not blame the people for this. Instead, they would look at Scrum, and how it was implemented, and if the level of discipline required to adopt it well was greater than what the team had. Instead of pointing the finger at the people, they would look to see how to improve the way Scrum was being implemented.
This might well require going beyond Scrum.
The benefit of this is that people would adopt Scrum, or a Scrum-like approach, must faster and more effectively.
The benefit of this benefit is that they would be happier and more productive. And their management would be happier with their results and would trust them to work the way they wanted to.
—————————
Other topics – content to be expanded on soon.
9/20 Wed. Why understanding value streams is so important.
Attending to value streams provides insights that help teams and organizations avoid the pitfalls and stagnation that hit many Agile endeavors. Scrum aficionados often complain about management’s lack of support and Scrum teams becoming feature factories. SAFe implementations often start out well only to stagnate later. These disparate behaviors are sourced by the same missing concept – attending to the value stream.
The reason for this is that value streams combine a holistic perspective with a focus on creating value for an organization’s customers while improving how they do their work. This perspective provides insights to managers to better understand the challenges of the teams they are responsible for. It also provides a way to detangle value streams that result in multitasking and delays in feedback that create substantial waste. gnation are widespread.
Attention to the value streams of customers (referred to as “the customer journey” provides insights on how to create innovative products.
In the earlier systems thinking presentation, we learned why systems thinking required us to look holistically. In this session we learn how value streams can help us do that.
How to be a coach. Effective coaches are more than facilitators. They must learn how to guide their teams without telling them what to do.
Past presentations
Several Presentations are available on our presentations page. Here are two of our latest.
The presentation begins by introducing value streams and emphasizing the reasons why they should be utilized. It highlights the disparity between how companies are structured and how their work actually flows, shedding light on the inefficiencies that can arise. The discussion further explores the detrimental effects of delays, which can lead to wastage of resources and time. Shifting the focus from people to the work itself is advocated as a key strategy for optimizing value streams.
The Agile GPS: A Path to Enhancing Value Creation for You and Your Stakeholders
Discover a unique approach to Agile frameworks that goes beyond simple impediment identification or providing all-encompassing solutions for the entire organization.
Our Agile GPS empowers you to align teams around value, obtain quick feedback to avoid working on the wrong things or in the wrong way, manage workloads efficiently to prevent development bottlenecks, foster collaboration and alignment, and nurture a culture of continuous learning. The choice is yours: follow a guided approach until you gain a deep understanding and then venture on your own, rely on a comprehensive framework that covers all aspects (almost), or trust your own problem-solving abilities with the clarity we provide on avoiding and resolving challenges.
Why We’re Doing This
A personal note form Al Shalloway
In “Unlimited Wealth”, Paul Pilzner posited that wealth equals physical resources multiplied by technology (including information) raised to the nth power where ‘n’ is the effects of the technological advances. The industrial age brought in great advancements because it greatly increased the technology available. But the industrial age is still one of a zero-sum game. A zero sum game occurs when there is a transfer of wealth from one person to the other but the net wealth remains the same. For example, a person may buy a stereo from a store and the person now has a stereo and the store has some money but the net wealth of the two entities remains the same.
The information Age shuffled in yet another major wealth creating potential. For the first time we didn’t need to be enmeshed in a zero-sum game. Wealth can be multiplied in every transaction. If one company has information of value and provides it to another company, now both companies have the information. While the industrial age enable us to create wealth faster by leveraging human physical strength, the information age allows us to create wealth through sharing it. With artificial intelligence, information is now being created from information itself.
The potential now is advancing the state of technology. Fortunately, how to do this is already known. The question is not creating new methods but taking existing ones and enabling organizations to apply them.
I feel that the potential of changing the world may just require making everyone wealthy by doing what we already know how to do.
“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.” – Buckminster Fuller
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Meade
Upcoming Events
The Amplio Community of Practice (Free)
Latest Learning Journey
The Amplio Development Masterclass
Amplio Consultant Educators