Productivity means more than just keeping busy all the time. For businesses, true productivity is measured at the bottom line. Increases in productivity can often be gained by simple changes in policy or viewpoint, without the need to add resources or to work longer or harder. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the easiest gains in productivity can be had by working less, not more.

And therein lies the wrinkle. How can we help people become more productive when that requires them to work less, especially when external pressure by management or internal pressure from the people themselves tells them to always stay busy, or at least to look busy?

In this hands-on workshop we’ll examine what productivity is and how to represent it as we explore ways to adopt new perspectives that enable productivity gains.

About the Presenter

Steve Bockman is a software developer turned productivity consultant. He is the founder of Agile Unlimited, a company in Northern California that focuses on helping organizations enhance their effectiveness.

Steve is the originator of Team Estimation, a technique for collaboratively estimating work effort. He is also the author of Predictability, a business novel about creating reliable project schedules.

Mob Programming is a development practice where the whole team works on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer.

This is a “Whole Team” approach to doing all the work the team does – including coding, designing, testing, and working with the “customer” (partner, Product Owner, user, etc).  We have expanded the “team” nature of all the work we do – not just planning, retrospectives, and a daily stand-up or other meeting – but all the work that the team does.  This could be thought of as Pair Programming++, or continuous collaboration, perhaps.

In other words, this is an evolutionary step beyond the pair programming, face-to-face communication, team alignment, collaboration,  and “self organizing team” concepts of the Agile approach to software development.

We’ll share how we’ve been using this practice to super-charge our development efforts and deliver high value software for almost 2 years. We’ll see what it looks like, the benefits, and how to do it yourself.  In our workplace we “Mob Program” all day, every day, but we’ll also explore some ideas on how you can employ all of the concepts and practices (and get the benefits) of “Mob Programming” in your own company even if you can’t do it “all day, every day”.

Help Us Break the World Record for a Group Hug

The whole Mob will be there, and we invite you to join in as we have a group hug.  We are trying to break the World Record for the most participants in a group hug, which is currently at 10,554 ( Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on 7 May 2010), so bring your neighbors, friends, relations, enemies, strangers, and everyone else, plus deodorant or perfume, (or nose-plugs) and join in the fun.

About the Presenters

Woody, Gordon, Dexter, Chris, and Aaron (the “funny” one) are all amped up and ready to show you how they discovered and developed their “Mob Programming” style.  This Mop-Top band of Agile Misfits will thrill and entertain you for the entire evening.  Watch them as they perform their crazy antics just like monkeys in the zoo, but without the feces.

Mob Programming Blog

Mob Programming Time-Lapse Video

You may not know this, but Agile San Diego offers a Team Excellence Award to a team that embodies a true Agile sprit and we have yet to learn of a team in San Diego willing to share their success with the broader community.  This is surprising, but true.  We know these teams exist and we want to make sure that you are aware of them as well.  Please do not be shy about your accomplishments – if you don’t tell us about how truly great your team is, we cannot share that with the rest of the world.

To receive this award as team, you must deliver solid business value, support an Agile culture, be engaged with your customer and provide technical excellence.  To learn more about either award please contact agile award_at_agilesandiego.org

In this session Carlton Nettleton and Lisa Montaño discuss ways to recognize the signs of decay and the seven core competencies of a Servant Leader that lift Teams out of decay and inspire them to return to what made Scrum fun. Following identification of the common indicators of Team decay and concrete examples from the presenters’ consulting experience, this presentation will then focus on the seven core competencies of a Servant Leader as an antidote to Team decay.  Participants will have the opportunity to connect their own experiences to the empowering tools of the Servant Leader.  Be ready to share your personal experiences and learn from others how to combat decay.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Lisa Montaño, MBA, CSM, CSPO is based in Southern California and has over 15 years experience in start-up and entrepreneurial companies working as a business analyst and functional lead. Beginning as a Product Owner in 2008, Lisa has continued her Scrum practice as a Scrum Coach and Trainer. Lisa’s passion for Scrum lies in inspiring teams to deliver exceptional business value through collaboration, trust, and commitment across teams and organizations. Lisa’s experience includes leading cross-functional teams to implement customized web interfaces, e-commerce capability, and workflow automation projects.

Carlton Nettleton is the President of Look Forward Consulting and a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST).  Carlton is an international speaker, trainer and author of the book, Fourteen Observations of Good Scrum Practice, which has been published in both English and Spanish.  Carlton’s passion is to share his excitement, enthusiasm, and encouragement with teams and organizations as they reach for higher levels of performance and engagement.  Look Forward Consulting strives to help businesses grow and flourish.

Many organizations have adopted an Agile approach but have not seen the results they were hoping for.

Agile exists because enough people have recognized serious failures in the typical phased (waterfall and other) approaches. However, in switching to Agile, many have brought along the same old thinking, expectations, and way of doing things that caused those failures. Agile is not a new way to do the old things. It’s a way to create software that requires abandoning those old ways and thinking. What was once ‘important’ is now recognized as blocking progress.

In this advanced talk we’ll explore some of the issues that block Agile success, and discuss the 8 Maxims I follow that have made success possible for the teams I’ve coached and worked with.

Bonus Segment: Estimates – Can’t Live With Them, Can We Live Witnout Them?

Regardless of how desperately we desire to know the future, we can’t know it until it is in the past. Getting good (or even less than harmful) at estimating and planning just might be impossible – at least in the ways we traditionally think about them. Even worse, planning out what we ‘think’ we want is most likely causing our failure to produce something of value. Agile is about discovery, not prediction.

Carlton Nettleton (CN): What is Bootcamp?

Jim McCarthy (JM): BootCamp is a team formation and product development simulation. It is known for being a transformative experience. It is the best available means to learn how to get any team to a state of shared vision and multi-personal flow. It is also a great introduction  to the Core culture and protocols.

CN: What is the Core?

JM: The Core is a system of commitments and specified behaviors that, when adopted by a group (“booted”), will greatly accelerate the team’s connection, intensify their vision and ambition, and create a state of multipersonal flow.

CN: Why is understanding the Core important today?

JM: The Core is increasingly understood to be the most “state of the art” culture tech available. It is emerging as a common platform for cultural innovation, is the practical enabler of widespread culture hacking. It is one of if not the first designed, portable, replicable cultures, or at least the kernel thereof. If you haven’t mastered the Core over the next few years, you will be well off the mainstream path. If, on the other hand, you do, you will be happier, more effective and able to connect instantly and much more deeply with teams and people from all over the world. You will be able to realize many new opportunities likely to open up.

CN: Why should someone want to attend Bootcamp?  What new insights can they expect to gain?

JM: They will discover the magic of personal and team alignment; they will discover at a very deep level what they want; they will experience the exalted state of shared vision; they may well see the world they will spend their life creating. Most students report a genuine mountaintop experience and that they grew personally well beyond any expectations, or even any possible expectations. They will see how mature connection and heartfelt engagement creates abundant time and multiplies other resources that were previously understood to be in short supply. If they are smart and brave enough to bring spouses/so and children (as our guests), they will get an enormous hit of energy into those relationships.

CN: If I attend Bootcamp, what should I expect during Bootcamp?  After Bootcamp?

JM: You should expect to disclose what you feel think and want. You should expect to deal with your authority issues. You should expect to be vulnerable generally. You should expect to have to ask if you want answers. You should expect to learn all about asking for help. You should expect to create beautiful and ambitious things. You should expect to read a very good book, probably multiple times. You should expect that a small percentage of you peers may decline to participate, even after starting. You should expect to be surprised and even astonished.

Basically, you should expect what you should expect in a well-lived life J.

After BootCamp, you will have many more beloved friends, we hope including us. Everything will be different. We will help you. Not “taking it back”: is harder than “taking it back.”

CN: When is the next Bootcamp in San Diego and how do I sign-up?

JM: Dec 3^rd-6^th. This camp also includes a one-time only special experiment with contribution-based fee structure.  Also, we rarely personally conduct an open enrollment BootCamp. Please join us!

To attend, contact our brave, committed local host, Erik G.H. Meade (socalbootcamp-m_at_eghm.net).

For more information

• About the Core or Bootcamp, you can contact Jim or Michelle directly (jim@mccarthy.net or michele@mccartrhy.net)
• Jim & Michelle have produced a some really great podcasts about the Core at www.mccarthyshow.com
• To read up on the Core protocols and more visit  www.liveingreatness.com
• What to see you can see global Core culture live, visit their Facebook page www.facebook.com/welcometothebooted

Armond Mehrabian (PMP, CSP, SPC) is the founder of Portofino Solutions, Inc. He is an Agile instructor and coach with a deep passion for coaching teams. He has been in the technology and IT industry for over 24 years. Armond is currently coaching several of his clients through their scaled agile journey. Armond lives in San Diego and can be reached at amehrabian@portofinosolutions.com and @armond_m on Twitter.

Check out Mike Cohn’s October classes in San Diego;
October 23-24 Certified ScrumMaster
October 25-26 Certified Scrum Product Owner
Both cost $1300 at will be held at the Doubletree in Mission Valley.

He will also be paying a visit to Agile San Diego at a special meeting on Tuesday October 23rd and will be giving a new talk on the Future of Scrum.

And we’ll be giving away the ScrumMaster seat at our Sept 6th meeting and Product Owner on October 4th.

For more information on the classes, see: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/san-diego

A culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that both describes and shapes a group. Our era is increasingly characterized by an emergent “software culture.” Not only is software itself creating much of our global wealth, but the unique challenges of creating our software have demanded wholly new types of engineered corporate culture from us. In response to the demands of software, various high tech development disciplines have been articulated and “packaged up.” We have created several seminal management “movements” (such as Agile, Scrum, XP, etc.). These movements represent the birth of culture engineering and are primitive compared to what will soon follow.

Culture hacking is itself a distinct kind of culture engineering, and is faithful to the particular hacker ethos that originated in the world of software hacking. Good culture hacking will tend to protect personal freedom, extend openness, embody rationality and promote culture design elegance. Culture hacking takes into account the limits and uses of authority, is skeptical of incoherent institutional power, and is subversive of it. As our many cultures become increasingly (and fruitfully) hacked, we will likely grow in effectiveness, and ambition. This will bring more and more of the world’s problems into manageable scope. This will likely trigger an unprecedented Golden Era.