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GATEWAY TO AGILE
Happiness	Event
THANK YOU
GERVAIS, ERIC, DAVID
Ø  Gervais Johnson, MATRIX, Western Agile Lead,
Empower Agile Adoptions, Transitions and
Transformations, 16 Years IBM tenure / Agile
Thought Leader
Ø  Eric Mittler, Wells Fargo, Manager for
international team supporting Wells Fargo
Internet Banking Services, evangelist for Speed
to Market
Ø  David Bellamy, CEO of Happiness Lab, focused
on workplace happiness and well being of people
within hyper-performing organizations
Relevant Certifications:
PMP, ACP, CSM, CSP, CSPO, LeSS,
SAFe SPC4, ACC, CISP, ICAgile Coach
HAPPINESS =
PERFORMANCE
Agile	Ecosystem	Thread	#1
Happiness
Science
Work
Shop
Debrief
Dark Agile
OUR
AGENDA
AGILE ECOSYSTEM
Happiness
Thread
HAPPINESS = HIGHER PERFORMANCE
Definition of Done
Definition of Fun
Jeff Sutherlands paper ‘Teams That Finish Early
Accelerate Faster’
Happier People are 12 % More
Productive
You Improve What You Measure
Why focus on
Happiness
“I want the best version of our employees to show
up every day”
everyone
Engaged or
Happy?
Success, leads to happiness, right?
We’ll be so happy when we’re done!
We send rewards, praise & bonuses at the end.
We take vacations after we finish.
What defines your happiness?
What happens when we’re happier?
43% greater productivity (Hay Group)
33% higher profitability (Gallup)
37% increase in sales (Shawn Achor - Harvard)
300% more innovative (HBR)
51% lower staff turnover (Gallup)
66% lower sick leave (Forbes)
125% less burnout (HBR)
…and it’s not just about work
“…Happy individuals are successful across
multiple life domains, including marriage,
friendship, income, work performance, and
health.”
- S. Lyubomirsky
So we’re measuring happiness
Understanding happiness and working to improve
it will help companies, teams and the individuals
within them
it’s win, win, win.
Transforming performance through happiness
www.HappinessLab.com
@happiness_guy
Eric Mittler
Tech Manager
MA Psychology UMN
The How of Happiness?
1
9
Assumption:
You want to succeed and
improve.
Right?
How do you feel?
If you are not taking that question seriously, you are likely
underperforming
How does your team feel?
Really?
Have you asked?
What are you
doing about it?
A lesson from
Cooperative Learning
Positive Psychology
What’s the secret to
increasing team
happiness?
Answer:
Experiment
& Iterate
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
•  Eudaimonia
word commonly translated as happiness or welfare; however, "human
flourishing" has been proposed as a more accurate translation. -
Wikipedia
•  Joyful, Delighted, Smiling
•  Challenged without being Stressed Out
•  Feeling Good, Untroubled, Comfortable
•  Empowered - A Manageable amount of Stress
Stress
BigSuperImportant
DeliveryDay!
Confidence
Consider People’s Feelings in the Process
29
Emotion
Emotion ★  Celebrating micro deliveries
★  Criticism is from people who care
★  Rapid corrective action promotes feelings of safety.
Victory!Celebration Celebration Celebration
Stress
Success
30
PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS
3
1
Experiment!!!
Please don’t use Waterfall to
adopt Agile.
Continuity. You need a team that
sticks together.
Attain an Agile Mindset
(Linda Rising -
http://lindarising.org)
EXPERIMENT:
STAND UP @ STAND UP
•  Literally stand up (one leg?)
•  Try alternative delivery methods (sing/
cartoon)
•  Be Present, In Person (or on video)
•  Say 4 things: 1) what you did, 2) what
you will be doing, 3) What blockers you
have, 4) Something cool you saw
someone else doing
3
2
Pull up! You’re gonna crash!
Why: Stand-ups move faster making team happier. People will smile more.
Problematic/confrontations are made eaiser
EXPERIMENT:
PASS THE BATON
•  At major ceremonies (Iteration Planning or Retrospective), practice “passing
the baton”
•  Cookie rotation
•  When finished speaking, pick the next speaker by
looking that next person in the eye and say
“Vijay, so how do you feel?”
•  Only the person with the Groucho Marx glasses
gets to speak.
3
3
Why: Making meetings fun. Make measuring affect a natural part of the process.
EXPERIMENT:
LEVEL UP!
•  Pair on everything!
•  Rotate pairs every stand up
•  Pick stories — never assign them! It’s more fun to race to
pick a story than to have someone assign it to you. Just
stop using the word “assign” or “assignment”
•  If you don’t know how to do it, you are in charge.
Only have novice people own Stories or Tasks that they
do not know how to do.
Then the expert, who does know, is put in charge of
making sure the novice succeeds.
Why
•  Creates a supportive social environment.
•  It’s OURS not MINE alleviates stress.
•  The act of rotating/variety is fun.
•  Having people compete to get to a story rather than a
PM assign a story is a more happy state.
3
4
EXPERIMENT:
HEAT MAPS IN RETRO
•  Agile teams write retro comments
on red cards
•  One observation per card
•  Use the card color to indicate
how you feel
•  Voilà insta-heat map
3
5
Why Coders are often shy to say how they feel.
Get a metric without much work & without being anonymous.
EXPERIMENT:
GAMES & BREAK TIME
•  Encourage team to take an hour or
TWO to play
•  Get a ping pong table
•  Have a chess board out
•  Dominion! by Rio Grande FTW
•  Get a video game console
•  Geek out
•  Have a public leader board
3
6
Why: Playing games, doing puzzles & sports INCREASES happiness,
productivity, and the desire to be present.
EXPERIMENT:
STUPID NAMES
•  Name your servers, projects, code
names something stupid
•  Nick names (can be self picked) for
people
•  Sum up your iteration or epic with a
stupid code name (can be done mid
iteration)
•  Inside jokes the leadership team doesn’t
understand.
3
7
Why: Make some future teammate unexpectedly laugh.
Build a team culture. Make sure you are always respectful.
EXPERIMENT:
PRAISE & COMPLIMENTS
•  In retrospective force grumpy people to assert 5 cool things
that happen are allowed to voice a criticism
•  A “cool thing” can be anything, can be silly or even gallows
humor
•  This will skew your heat map, but you can do math.
•  Encourage an atmosphere of gratitude
•  Ask why others cannot do that cool thing too
3
8
Why Praising others makes one feel good internally.
It is nearly impossible to both wish someone well and wish them ill at the same time.
EXPERIMENT:
NO DUE DATES OR COMMITMENTS
3
9
•  Continuous Delivery Instead of Due Dates
•  Commit to working hard = Happy
•  Committing to completing a task on a due date = Stress
•  Use math to predict feature completion
WHY
•  Committing to task completion on a specific date is stressful and naturally
results committing to the least amount of work e.g. Slow to Market.
•  Committing to work hard or harder than before, is empowering and happier
EXPERIMENT:
SAY PEOPLE’S NAMES
4
0
Why: Hearing your name engages you makes
you feel included and happier
•  Encourage everyone to learn everyone
else name
•  Practice the pronunciation of everyone’s
name
•  Learn something about everyone on your
team
EXPERIMENT:
BREAK DOWN HIERARCHIES
4
1
Why: DevOps logic. Over time the team
will all be raised up.
Empowerment is a key to happiness
•  Empower everyone
•  Rotate leadership. Have novices lead
•  Senior people do not lead!!!
•  Senior people are in charge of ensuring
novices succeed or fail gracefully
EXPERIMENT:
TECHIE TOYS
•  Your coders should have kick ass
laptops, two HD monitors and the
fastest network connection possible.
Certainly better than what they have at
home.
•  Telepresence robotic flying drones
•  WiFi enabled expresso machines
•  you get the idea
4
2
Why: Techies love environments that…wait for it…have tech
EXPERIMENT:
INNOVATION SPIKES
4
3
Why This engages & motivates Techies. Team discovers new better ways to
work. Fosters happier teams.
•  Have special stories in your
backlog to research new
tech
•  Have special days when
you go off your iteration
stories to explore new tech
•  Have moon shot projects
that you expect to fail
4
4
Practical Experimentation Themes
Note these themes in the suggested experiments
1.  Being Physical/Kenetic vs stationary
2.  Alternative & Alternating Communications
3.  Being Present rather than Virtual
4.  Adding Variety
5.  Increasing joy in others & respect
6.  Gamification
All this stuff is just “nice to have.”
Work is not supposed to be fun.
I’ll wait until management tells me
to be happy.
I don’t care about success.
This will never work.
4
6
Assumption:
You want to succeed
and improve.
Right?
Or are you just waiting to be told what to do?
4
7
How do you feel?
cool cats code
Questions
&
Answers
Discovery
POWER START
•  P = Purpose
•  O = Outcome
•  W = WIIFM
•  E = Energize and Engage
•  R = Roles/Responsibilities
WORKSHOP TEAMS
Chief of Happiness
Chief of Customer
Facilitators
Facilitator: Answer Work Shop Instructions, Gets Help
Chief Agile Officer
WORKSHOP DETAILS
TEAM SCENARIO
The team is not performing
optimally, the Burn Down
Chart, Velocity, and other
management reporting is
showing poor performance in
all categories, thus causing
unhappiness within the team
and leadership. The team
morale is low and the last
retrospective illustrated
very low Team Health.
Workshop Summary:
 
Objectives to demonstrate how to determine individual and team happiness and to come up with
experiments to improve team health and specifically the happiness level
We will use the Retrospective format for team discussion and coming up with the 3 experiments
The team will present their results to the entire audience
Under performing team members
Half of the team members has
low motivation and morale
due to stress at work
One member has low
motivation and moral due to
issues at home
Changing and volatility of success
criteria
During the last 2 Sprints the
success criteria of 50% of the
Stories selected are changing
During the last 3 Sprints the
success criteria of 20% of the
Stories selected are insufficient
UNRELAISTIC DEMANDS (MICRO-
MANAGING)
Since the beginning the Business
executive has been demanding
more completion of Stories per
Sprint than what we have
indicated can be done
Over the last 2 Sprints the
Product Owner keeps wanting
to add Stories in the middle of
the Sprint and does not take No
for an answer
Product Owner is not present
during the Sprint Review
 
WORKSHOP DETAILS
Each team will DESIGN at least 3 EXPERIMENTS to address the low Team Health and
improve CONDITIONS OF TEAM HEALTH AND HAPPINESS. We are looking for Story
level details. The team will present the 3 Experiments to the audience where they will be
rated using the Happiness Lab
 
Team Presentation
 
Each team will present their 3 EXPERIMENTS to the audience.  
WORKSHOP DEBRIEF
Experiences
Wow Moments
Feelings
Follow-up
UNDER THE HOOD OF HAPPINESS LAB
Feb 22, Wednesday
6 – 8 PM
601 Montgomery St
Suite 650
UNHAPPY TEAMS = DARK AGILE
DARK AGILE
Happiness	Therapy
MORE HAPPINESS = MORE AGILE
Barriers to Agile
Adoption can be torn
down with happiness
AGILE ECOSYSTEM
Dark Agile is created
by improper alignment
and care of your Agile
Ecosystem AND
Unhappiness
DARK AGILE PATTERNS
Technocentrics
Self-Absorbed
Augmented Reality
Laissez-Faire Grand Unified Theory
TECHNOCENTRICS
Too much Focus on
Agile Practices and
Tools
Individual Collective
(Limited) Interior
SELF-ABSORBED
Too much Focus on
Agile Practices and
Tools + Agile Humanity
All Individual Interior
AUGMENTED REALITY
Little or No Focus on
Organization and
Culture & Environment
Individual Collective
(Selective) Interior
LAISSEZ-FAIRE
Insufficient Focus or
Alignment Across
Quadrants
Individual + Collective
Interior + Exterior
Minimalist
GRAND UNIFIED THEORY
Too Much Focus on
Each Quadrants, No
Synchronicity
Individual + Collective
Interior + Exterior
Extermist
GATEWAY TO AGILE
Roadmap	and	Interests	Groups
ROADMAP
GRAND CHALLENGE
Team to organize and operate
grand challenge
Prize $TBD
EVENT COORDINATION
Team to help with
Meetup and
Events
SPONSOR MANAGEMENT
Team to help with
Sponsors
THANK YOU
Taste	of	Scrum	at	First	Republic	Bank	Next

More Related Content

Gateway to Agile - Happiness and High Performing Teams

  • 3. GERVAIS, ERIC, DAVID Ø  Gervais Johnson, MATRIX, Western Agile Lead, Empower Agile Adoptions, Transitions and Transformations, 16 Years IBM tenure / Agile Thought Leader Ø  Eric Mittler, Wells Fargo, Manager for international team supporting Wells Fargo Internet Banking Services, evangelist for Speed to Market Ø  David Bellamy, CEO of Happiness Lab, focused on workplace happiness and well being of people within hyper-performing organizations Relevant Certifications: PMP, ACP, CSM, CSP, CSPO, LeSS, SAFe SPC4, ACC, CISP, ICAgile Coach
  • 7. HAPPINESS = HIGHER PERFORMANCE Definition of Done Definition of Fun Jeff Sutherlands paper ‘Teams That Finish Early Accelerate Faster’ Happier People are 12 % More Productive You Improve What You Measure
  • 9. “I want the best version of our employees to show up every day” everyone
  • 11. Success, leads to happiness, right? We’ll be so happy when we’re done! We send rewards, praise & bonuses at the end. We take vacations after we finish.
  • 12. What defines your happiness?
  • 13. What happens when we’re happier? 43% greater productivity (Hay Group) 33% higher profitability (Gallup) 37% increase in sales (Shawn Achor - Harvard) 300% more innovative (HBR) 51% lower staff turnover (Gallup) 66% lower sick leave (Forbes) 125% less burnout (HBR)
  • 14. …and it’s not just about work “…Happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health.” - S. Lyubomirsky
  • 15. So we’re measuring happiness
  • 16. Understanding happiness and working to improve it will help companies, teams and the individuals within them it’s win, win, win.
  • 17. Transforming performance through happiness www.HappinessLab.com @happiness_guy
  • 18. Eric Mittler Tech Manager MA Psychology UMN The How of Happiness?
  • 19. 1 9 Assumption: You want to succeed and improve. Right?
  • 20. How do you feel?
  • 21. If you are not taking that question seriously, you are likely underperforming
  • 22. How does your team feel?
  • 24. What are you doing about it?
  • 25. A lesson from Cooperative Learning Positive Psychology
  • 26. What’s the secret to increasing team happiness?
  • 28. WHAT IS HAPPINESS? •  Eudaimonia word commonly translated as happiness or welfare; however, "human flourishing" has been proposed as a more accurate translation. - Wikipedia •  Joyful, Delighted, Smiling •  Challenged without being Stressed Out •  Feeling Good, Untroubled, Comfortable •  Empowered - A Manageable amount of Stress
  • 30. Emotion ★  Celebrating micro deliveries ★  Criticism is from people who care ★  Rapid corrective action promotes feelings of safety. Victory!Celebration Celebration Celebration Stress Success 30
  • 31. PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS 3 1 Experiment!!! Please don’t use Waterfall to adopt Agile. Continuity. You need a team that sticks together. Attain an Agile Mindset (Linda Rising - http://lindarising.org)
  • 32. EXPERIMENT: STAND UP @ STAND UP •  Literally stand up (one leg?) •  Try alternative delivery methods (sing/ cartoon) •  Be Present, In Person (or on video) •  Say 4 things: 1) what you did, 2) what you will be doing, 3) What blockers you have, 4) Something cool you saw someone else doing 3 2 Pull up! You’re gonna crash! Why: Stand-ups move faster making team happier. People will smile more. Problematic/confrontations are made eaiser
  • 33. EXPERIMENT: PASS THE BATON •  At major ceremonies (Iteration Planning or Retrospective), practice “passing the baton” •  Cookie rotation •  When finished speaking, pick the next speaker by looking that next person in the eye and say “Vijay, so how do you feel?” •  Only the person with the Groucho Marx glasses gets to speak. 3 3 Why: Making meetings fun. Make measuring affect a natural part of the process.
  • 34. EXPERIMENT: LEVEL UP! •  Pair on everything! •  Rotate pairs every stand up •  Pick stories — never assign them! It’s more fun to race to pick a story than to have someone assign it to you. Just stop using the word “assign” or “assignment” •  If you don’t know how to do it, you are in charge. Only have novice people own Stories or Tasks that they do not know how to do. Then the expert, who does know, is put in charge of making sure the novice succeeds. Why •  Creates a supportive social environment. •  It’s OURS not MINE alleviates stress. •  The act of rotating/variety is fun. •  Having people compete to get to a story rather than a PM assign a story is a more happy state. 3 4
  • 35. EXPERIMENT: HEAT MAPS IN RETRO •  Agile teams write retro comments on red cards •  One observation per card •  Use the card color to indicate how you feel •  Voilà insta-heat map 3 5 Why Coders are often shy to say how they feel. Get a metric without much work & without being anonymous.
  • 36. EXPERIMENT: GAMES & BREAK TIME •  Encourage team to take an hour or TWO to play •  Get a ping pong table •  Have a chess board out •  Dominion! by Rio Grande FTW •  Get a video game console •  Geek out •  Have a public leader board 3 6 Why: Playing games, doing puzzles & sports INCREASES happiness, productivity, and the desire to be present.
  • 37. EXPERIMENT: STUPID NAMES •  Name your servers, projects, code names something stupid •  Nick names (can be self picked) for people •  Sum up your iteration or epic with a stupid code name (can be done mid iteration) •  Inside jokes the leadership team doesn’t understand. 3 7 Why: Make some future teammate unexpectedly laugh. Build a team culture. Make sure you are always respectful.
  • 38. EXPERIMENT: PRAISE & COMPLIMENTS •  In retrospective force grumpy people to assert 5 cool things that happen are allowed to voice a criticism •  A “cool thing” can be anything, can be silly or even gallows humor •  This will skew your heat map, but you can do math. •  Encourage an atmosphere of gratitude •  Ask why others cannot do that cool thing too 3 8 Why Praising others makes one feel good internally. It is nearly impossible to both wish someone well and wish them ill at the same time.
  • 39. EXPERIMENT: NO DUE DATES OR COMMITMENTS 3 9 •  Continuous Delivery Instead of Due Dates •  Commit to working hard = Happy •  Committing to completing a task on a due date = Stress •  Use math to predict feature completion WHY •  Committing to task completion on a specific date is stressful and naturally results committing to the least amount of work e.g. Slow to Market. •  Committing to work hard or harder than before, is empowering and happier
  • 40. EXPERIMENT: SAY PEOPLE’S NAMES 4 0 Why: Hearing your name engages you makes you feel included and happier •  Encourage everyone to learn everyone else name •  Practice the pronunciation of everyone’s name •  Learn something about everyone on your team
  • 41. EXPERIMENT: BREAK DOWN HIERARCHIES 4 1 Why: DevOps logic. Over time the team will all be raised up. Empowerment is a key to happiness •  Empower everyone •  Rotate leadership. Have novices lead •  Senior people do not lead!!! •  Senior people are in charge of ensuring novices succeed or fail gracefully
  • 42. EXPERIMENT: TECHIE TOYS •  Your coders should have kick ass laptops, two HD monitors and the fastest network connection possible. Certainly better than what they have at home. •  Telepresence robotic flying drones •  WiFi enabled expresso machines •  you get the idea 4 2 Why: Techies love environments that…wait for it…have tech
  • 43. EXPERIMENT: INNOVATION SPIKES 4 3 Why This engages & motivates Techies. Team discovers new better ways to work. Fosters happier teams. •  Have special stories in your backlog to research new tech •  Have special days when you go off your iteration stories to explore new tech •  Have moon shot projects that you expect to fail
  • 44. 4 4 Practical Experimentation Themes Note these themes in the suggested experiments 1.  Being Physical/Kenetic vs stationary 2.  Alternative & Alternating Communications 3.  Being Present rather than Virtual 4.  Adding Variety 5.  Increasing joy in others & respect 6.  Gamification
  • 45. All this stuff is just “nice to have.” Work is not supposed to be fun. I’ll wait until management tells me to be happy. I don’t care about success. This will never work.
  • 46. 4 6 Assumption: You want to succeed and improve. Right? Or are you just waiting to be told what to do?
  • 47. 4 7 How do you feel? cool cats code
  • 49. POWER START •  P = Purpose •  O = Outcome •  W = WIIFM •  E = Energize and Engage •  R = Roles/Responsibilities
  • 50. WORKSHOP TEAMS Chief of Happiness Chief of Customer Facilitators Facilitator: Answer Work Shop Instructions, Gets Help Chief Agile Officer
  • 51. WORKSHOP DETAILS TEAM SCENARIO The team is not performing optimally, the Burn Down Chart, Velocity, and other management reporting is showing poor performance in all categories, thus causing unhappiness within the team and leadership. The team morale is low and the last retrospective illustrated very low Team Health. Workshop Summary:   Objectives to demonstrate how to determine individual and team happiness and to come up with experiments to improve team health and specifically the happiness level We will use the Retrospective format for team discussion and coming up with the 3 experiments The team will present their results to the entire audience Under performing team members Half of the team members has low motivation and morale due to stress at work One member has low motivation and moral due to issues at home Changing and volatility of success criteria During the last 2 Sprints the success criteria of 50% of the Stories selected are changing During the last 3 Sprints the success criteria of 20% of the Stories selected are insufficient UNRELAISTIC DEMANDS (MICRO- MANAGING) Since the beginning the Business executive has been demanding more completion of Stories per Sprint than what we have indicated can be done Over the last 2 Sprints the Product Owner keeps wanting to add Stories in the middle of the Sprint and does not take No for an answer Product Owner is not present during the Sprint Review  
  • 52. WORKSHOP DETAILS Each team will DESIGN at least 3 EXPERIMENTS to address the low Team Health and improve CONDITIONS OF TEAM HEALTH AND HAPPINESS. We are looking for Story level details. The team will present the 3 Experiments to the audience where they will be rated using the Happiness Lab   Team Presentation   Each team will present their 3 EXPERIMENTS to the audience.  
  • 54. UNDER THE HOOD OF HAPPINESS LAB Feb 22, Wednesday 6 – 8 PM 601 Montgomery St Suite 650
  • 55. UNHAPPY TEAMS = DARK AGILE
  • 57. MORE HAPPINESS = MORE AGILE Barriers to Agile Adoption can be torn down with happiness
  • 58. AGILE ECOSYSTEM Dark Agile is created by improper alignment and care of your Agile Ecosystem AND Unhappiness
  • 59. DARK AGILE PATTERNS Technocentrics Self-Absorbed Augmented Reality Laissez-Faire Grand Unified Theory
  • 60. TECHNOCENTRICS Too much Focus on Agile Practices and Tools Individual Collective (Limited) Interior
  • 61. SELF-ABSORBED Too much Focus on Agile Practices and Tools + Agile Humanity All Individual Interior
  • 62. AUGMENTED REALITY Little or No Focus on Organization and Culture & Environment Individual Collective (Selective) Interior
  • 63. LAISSEZ-FAIRE Insufficient Focus or Alignment Across Quadrants Individual + Collective Interior + Exterior Minimalist
  • 64. GRAND UNIFIED THEORY Too Much Focus on Each Quadrants, No Synchronicity Individual + Collective Interior + Exterior Extermist
  • 67. GRAND CHALLENGE Team to organize and operate grand challenge Prize $TBD
  • 68. EVENT COORDINATION Team to help with Meetup and Events
  • 69. SPONSOR MANAGEMENT Team to help with Sponsors