Process + Brand = Experience

Content has been created, just not here.

Although I haven't posted here in a long while, I have a good reason for that. I have been busy creating all types of materials for Gearmark, my company. 

For example, I worked on a series of ebooks about Gearmark's process steps:

Listening

Read how Gearmark approaches listening for employees and customers and why listening is a key step of the process to create compassionate, memorable experiences. 

 

Assess

By leveraging the information gathered during the Listening phase, this ebook outlines the steps that Gearmark follows to determine what's a symptom vs a problem in a company. 

 

Identify

Or how personas, customer journeys, and KPIs can come together to create digital experiences that help customers.

 

And there are posts on Medium about meditation, online dating, and why communities are easier to access online. 

I know that I need to get back here to add to the library for digital experience creation. However, I also knew that I needed to add material to Gearmark to support visitors' understanding of how Gearmark can help their business.

There is also a case study library at the site as well. 

Currently, I'm working on an ebook about acceptance, which is the mindset you need to have to listen well. It's pretty exciting how it is coming along, and hopefully, it will be complete in the next few months. Until then, my LinkedIn posts capture points emerging from the work. I hope it's helpful to some who read it. 

More to come with updates. There is a last-mile delivery experience article coming soon that I'm excited to write. There are always improvements to experiences to be had.

 

 

 

 

Designing while grateful.

Thanksgiving is my absolutely favorite holiday. It's not just because I love to cook. Ok, maybe it's a strong reason. But I love this holiday because I like to reflect on my life and what I'm thankful for - the people, my health, work, just everything. Life is pretty wonderful.

I am grateful and feel blessed that I chose the career path I did in customer experience. I feel like my life is a present every day. I get to work on innovative projects with smart people and develop solutions for people's problems. And I'm encouraged to consider multiple approaches and options to discover what's best. It really is a great job. In what other profession do you get to help people complete tasks in their lives, help businesses engage with customers in a better way, and be paid to be creative with crazy ideas? 

This is why I'm bothered when I see designers being snarky. I understand why. First, there is no excuse for poor design. There are too many great designers out there to help you create a usable product. A designer spending an hour on a product can improve its experience 100%. Great design doesn't cost that much. Second, it's easy to be critical of ourselves and others when it comes to design. Hindsight is 20/20 and if we could all go back in time to create a different product than what we did, we probably would. Or we would take a different approach entirely, making and experience simpler. Third, if our egos are involved in our designs, then no one designs better than we do ourselves. I have been in too many arguments with other designers, not about the design approach, but an argument closer to, "I would have done it THIS way."  I used to joke that information architects (what a UX designer was called 500 years ago) were like Betta fish (or Siamese Fighting Fish). You can only have 1 per bowl. So only 1 IA per team. And don't question their design or approaches. 

I'm always nervous when I design a new approach for an app. I want everyone to like it and find it useful or helpful in some way. I'm always looking for experiences to be innovative, yet familiar. And I have to remind myself, how people see my design, my work, is not a reflection of me. My work reflects my understanding of what will help the business and the customer. I could have misunderstood a strategy or approach. Or I missed a way to simplify some steps. In the end, I'm helping people complete a task to help them in their lives and helping the business help their customers. I'd say I'm less a designer and more a facilitator. 

There's this weird legacy belief about "the hero designer," who becomes a celebrity for having "the" innovation that rocks the world. I remember being at a Design Management Institute conference over 10 years ago where one of the speakers said that such an idea was dead. With the rise of interactive design and automation, you can't create anything alone. This is true. I think this also speaks to the elusive unicorn - designer, developer, UX strategist, all-in-one. Some exist, but some debate that maybe not. Or that it is difficult to do all things well. Either way, I would argue that design was never about heroism. Even in the "Mad Men" advertising era, great graphic design relied on great copy, good account management, honest customer ad testing, and clients who knew their business and markets.

We were fed a myth. 

Instead, I believe that heroism in experience design comes from being that facilitator in the background, listening, observing, and discovering trends in the conversation. It's not always the fabulous, glamorous person who makes everything shiny and spectacular or fills a room with charisma. It's the person who makes an experience come alive by communicating well with the entire team, making sure everyone is aligned and the business and customers have been heard and understood. The great experience designers often sit in the background, helping the team make a vision real, leading the charge through influence.

Effective experience design helps a team collaborate, bring a vision to life, and enables everyone to be more productive.  

So this Thanksgiving, maybe we designers and strategists need to look at our jobs differently. Rather than be the "fabulous designer creating," what if we were facilitating change, solving people's problems, and helping visions become real? We shouldn't dismiss the fact that as business facilitators, we are helping professionals ease into this new world of automation and customer interaction. We are working at the cutting edge of a new world, a new age. That's a wonderful opportunity. I know I'm truly thankful and grateful to be part of it.

You're invited to the new Gearmark community

 

A few years ago, I met entrepreneurs at networking events who were creating exciting new products. I realized during these conversations that many could have used a consultant with user experience and marketing expertise like me on their team. I think these entrepreneurs did too.

 

We'd have great conversations brainstorming ideas and solutions. Many of these founders were changing industries. Personally, I love working on projects like these, create a product from simply an idea and see it go to market and make money. However, the end result of these conversations was often the same. After about 10-15 minutes of intense brainstorming, right where the boundary between free ideas and paid, implementable ideas lies, I would see their faces change. Excitement, hope, and promise faded to silence. Often, these founders had little to no budget available for my services. They were nice people, so rather than pretend that there was an opportunity for me and get more free ideas out of me, they found a gracious way to exit the conversation, suddenly needing a beer or a sandwich. We'd connect on LinkedIn, but that was that.

 

After these conversations, I often felt that I failed. But I didn't feel that I failed as a business owner. In business you want to find people who can pay you. I felt that I failed as a person who couldn't help them achieve their dream and help us both succeed. I felt that my design mind should have been able to create a solution for this problem, but I wasn't sure what would work best.

 

After about 6 months of these incidents, I knew that I needed to offer more than consulting services for Gearmark. Something more economical and scalable.

 

 

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together"

- Origin unclear. Possibly African or general Internet proverb.

 

I first encountered this quote at an Agile conference in a session about teams. I think it's overused because it's just too accurate. Teamwork is always the answer. Even in learning.

 

 

Where did this community idea come from? 

I tried to create a user experience course for managers and directors twice over the past few years. I really didn't know what I was doing. I tried. I failed. I wanted to share my ideas, but I wasn't communicating them as well as I could, and I didn't understand how video really worked at the time. Until I took a course in public speaking, I didn't know how little I understood how to give a proper talk. 

 

But hey, I tried! 

 

So now I'm trying again - in a different way.

 

There was one lesson I got from HP that I will always carry with me: consensus and collaboration is key for anyone to achieve a goal. We all help each other, even though the message may not come from the expected source. Sometimes HBR resonates better with people than McKinsey or MIT Tech Review or someone's blog post. It matters less where you learned what you did; what matters is that this learning, this message, helped you achieve you goal.

 

This is why I want to create a community.

 

Not only is it great for the members to learn in a community environment, but I learn from them too. We are all learning and sharing knowledge to help each other succeed. On all teams, everyone has something to contribute. A link. An idea. A thought. A video. Sometimes, a comment can give you a new perspective that you never considered and inspire you to finish a project.

 

 

Here's how I describe the Gearmark community on the site.

 

The Gearmark Community is a place where you can learn how to create great customer relationships through exceptional customer experiences. The best learning happens from others.  

 

Knowledge comes from everyone sharing their experiences, information, and insights. Why learn alone when we can learn together?

 

But it's not up to the community alone to do this. We'll also be available to answer questions and participate in conversations to provide help and advice.

 

Who would benefit most from the community?

Anyone who feels that their business isn't meeting its potential, but they aren't sure why.

Anyone working alone or who feels like they are working in a bubble when creating a customer experience.

Anyone working in a company that doesn't support this style of thinking, but feels this is the right approach.

The Gearmark Community is a great place to find other like-minded professionals who want to create great experiences. Connect with other marketers, sales, UX and CX professionals to stay current about trends, results, and what's coming next.

 

Let's learn together so we all win.

Special introductory rate.  

Join the Gearmark Community.

 

If you are an entrepreneur or solopreneur who feels you need more focused guidance, I offer a special startup package. I won't be writing your marketing plan, but I will help you identify elements that you can use to build a better customer relationship and get you started on your business. Email me or contact me through social media for more information. 

 

What else is coming soon near you? 

I plan on creating more ways for leaders to learn about customer experience. So much is coming in 2019 - it's crazy!

• My new book, Revenue or relationships? Win both. A customer experience primer to shift your perspective of business, will be released in early 2019.
• A new webinar to complement the book (of course!)
• I'll be launching a 4 week course in February, What are your customers telling you that you aren’t hearing? This course will look at how your metrics are giving you a wealth of customer information - if you are listening.

 

 

Work in Agile. *check* Work with a UX individual or team. *check* Next: Create Memorable Experiences

For the past year or more, I've been wondering if I need to continue selling Agile UX to teams, treating it like something people should convert to, like a religion. At times, I would feel like a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness knocking door to door, trying to get each household (team) to see that there is a different way to live, or in this case, work. Or I would discuss the various ways to accomplish Agile UX, which is basically integrating UX into the iterations. And there's isn't one-size, fits all. It depends. Some organizations want more customer feedback, some need more visualizations and a vision first, some need help on the fly. 

Lately, I'm not discussing the benefits of switching to Agile and integrating UX. Everyone understands the value of that.

I'm having conversations about how to make their existing experiences better.  

My latest experiences get me to wonder if we need to keep discussing Agile UX or even Lean UX? Aren't we all pretty much doing it? It is now the premier way to create software and pretty mainstream. Waterfall has died, or is close to it, and we're making better products because of that.

I see 2 reasons why I've stopped promoting Agile UX so strongly. And then I have an answer to the big question: what's next?

 

1. Design is no longer the leading effort in a project. Designers are now facilitators and influencers.

Design heroes are dead. Designers no longer dictate the final solution. Design is now a collaborative effort from the start.

I remember being at conferences about 10 years ago, where experts discussed how design is really collaborative. It's not art; it's not a great creation. It's meant to be used to make an object or interaction helpful, attractive, informative. The user who will be using the designed object needs to be included in the process, as do the people who are creating and developing it. It's about a team. 

The group defines what a product should do and how it should work.

The designer facilitates the discussion, recommends best practices, suggests a process, and provides design. 

I think we have found that we can do without grand design plans before we start a software project. And it's probably better that way. Why waste time creating elaborate, well-designed features that will never see the light of day? Too many of us have created features that sit in a dusty binder rather than in a matrix of code, ready to be used and make someone's life easier. We're all better off building something that will be used, and the best way to do that is to design throughout the development process. 

Sure, a project needs a vision to aspire to achieve, but the details for how that design should be implemented should be addressed during the process.

I have been doing this for years and it works like a charm. 

Good design is about influence and collaboration. A great designer is skilled at learning what users need, where their problems lie, understand the context, and find solutions for that problem. Great designers have a lot of empathy for people and how they use and interact with machines. They also spend time thinking about what it means to have a better life, a life where technology is integrated into experiences seamlessly, and improve how the world works.

Great designers have a strong sense of what it means to live an easier life. Most actually do live a pretty swank life because that's what they think about and what they do.

If anything, I think we need to talk more about the problems customers are having and create strategies to address them. We almost need to balance the conversations the industry regularly has about tools, methodologies and process. They don't effectively solve a problem of users not using products on their own. A strategy does. We should talk more about goals, strategies and approaches. Case studies. Customer research results. How to build upon functional experiences to meaningful experiences and memorable experiences.

 

2. Agile is mainstream 

Agile is everywhere. I don't think everyone knows how to do it properly, but most people know what it is and generally how it works. I think it's backwards for a company to use waterfall methodologies. The Agile Manifesto got it right about the best way to work - and not just to create great software, but to create anything. Prioritization is important. We don't need to put in over 40 hours each week at work - unless it's a total emergency. Our teams need to be aligned to work on the right things that will generate the most revenue. And we need to scope work properly. 

It's hard for companies to completely shift to Agile because that means they need to address transparency issues. Transparency is hard. It means that everyone sees what you are doing and how you do it. There are no secrets. If you make a bad or good decision, everyone sees it. However, we aren't trained to be transparent in life. We tend to like our little secrets. And we're not used to accountability. 

Today in business, transparency is a requirement. You need it in order to prioritize well and be on target with a goal to do the right things. It's less about hidden agendas and personal gain. With the growth of team-driven environments, flat organizations, and more direct yet diplomatic communication, we need to work in a different way. 

We don't need to keep thinking how do we integrate UX into Agile. We need to do it - and refine how to do it better. 

 

 

The next movement: Memorable Experiences

We often talk about MVP product and what that means. I think MVP has gotten a bad reputation. MVP is minimum viable product. That means the experience should be pretty basic; it doesn't mean the experience is a disaster. But it does mean that it is memorable.

Memorable experiences take their cue from the peak-end rule. People remember experiences that have a lot of emotional charge and the end result. For an MVP product, your goal is probably to not be memorable in a bad way, meaning it doesn't suck. It's easy to use, there are no bumps. If anything, that process alone makes your product memorable. The user succeeded in the task he wanted to complete, which is a positive memory. That's a great goal for a first release product!

Later on, you need to create experiences that engage with customers on an emotional level. What do they really want to be able to do? It's probably functionality they want. Functionality that will make their lives better in some way, make their lives easier. They remember that. 

Users also remember their interactions with you and your site. They remember what happened when they had questions. They remember how you resolved their issues. They remember what you knew about them and their preferences. They remember that doing business with you was meaningful to them.

Customers come back because they remember to contact you. There are many options out there to choose, but there was something about your company that made this customer or prospect want to come back.

Now let's focus on making your experiences memorable so customers will choose you again and again.

 

In case you missed the Sococo Webinar the other day...

I always find it difficult to attend all of the Webinars I feel I should. There just aren't enough hours in the day!

That's why I wanted to share the Virtual Goody bag from Sococo for the Webinar I was participating in with Elinor Slomba at Arts Interstices -Cultural Self-Inventory for Distributed Agile Teams.

In it you'll find a number of resources recommended by Elinor, some favorites of mine (like Sherry Turkle and Justin Treasure), and the Webinar recording itself.

Enjoy!

Lessons learned from Agile Art

The other day, I participated in a fun activity - Virtual Agile Art facilitated by Giada Crispiels.  We participated on our phones and through Google docs. 

The instructions were that we would doodle for a while on our own, in the company of others in the same Google doc in our own spaces, and then doodle in a "community" setting in Google and talk to each other on the phone along the way. I knew only 1 person there before I participated (Elinor Slomba) - everyone else was new to me.

We started the activity by doodling. That took a lot of pressure off us to make a perfect drawing. We drew what came naturally to us. And it was fun was to watch other people doodle. Some made real drawings (a rooster, a bouquet of flowers), some made lines, some made squiggles, and I made curves and squiggles that I colored in (I always color corners and such. And yes, I color outside the lines!).

The best part was doodling together in a single, open space. It was like we were working together, but not on the same vision. Some on the call noticed how our doodles were starting to converge, in a way, with similar shaping and colors. In a way, we were getting a vision together.

It was a wonderful experience to work with others I haven't met before, online in real-time, reacting to a situation. I can't wait to do it again! And I learned a bunch from it.

What I learned about groups and virtual teams:

• It's natural for a group of people to come to consensus - even if they live and work far away from each other. Once they start interacting, the best of everyone in the team emerges and the co-creating takes on a new level and persona.
• You can learn a lot about people by their doodles and how they interact with other doodles. And it's a fun way to test the waters about collaboration.
• Usually we collaborate to produce - it's rare that we can collaborate to create. We should be doing more of this! It's liberating!
• What you do in meetings, in-person is similar to what you do on the phone and on a live, shared screen. I couldn't stay in the meeting longer, but I wanted to ask the others on the phone a bunch of questions about who they are, what they do, etc. I was a little challenged because I had a meeting right after and was at a client site, but if I did this focused in a room with no meeting to run to, I would have been trying to get to know the others on the call. And I would have done the same in person if I had to run to a meeting right after - clock watch and stay silent. We don't act too differently online or offline.
• There were some technical challenges - but they weren't insurmountable. Some had issues with the phone or Google docs here and there, but it wasn't a show stopper from participating (almost as if a marker were broken or something similar). It's about perspective.

What I learned about myself:

• I don't like lines/boundaries to keep me restrained. When our personal boxes for doodling were removed, I felt relieved and happier. 
• When I doodle, I like to draw "s" shapes and give a 3D shading to things. I also like to color in corners and gaps. I reflected on this later and in many ways, that's reflective of my personality - I usually find gaps and like to fill them in, adding value to the end product where there's space to do it. 
• I prefer working in a group setting. It was ok for me to doodle in my box alone, but I much preferred the experience figuring out where to doodle with everyone else.
• I enjoy adding to other people's work and not working alone. I had fun making my s's and coloring corners, but I felt like I added more value doing that in a larger doodle setting.
• To me, being virtual isn't isolating. I was hanging on the phone, kinda quiet, but I'm always quiet around new people. 

I look forward to the next virtual adventure in Agile Art!

 

 

Agile transformations: Honor the past. Respect the future.

I was going to write about UX and Agile - something I haven't written about in a while. However, I went to the Agile Leader's Network meetup in Dallas a few nights ago, and a conversation about Agile culture inspired me to take a different turn.

We were talking about cultural changes in Agile organizations - and the conversation covered the usual suspects:

• How to reverse misconceptions about Agile
• Why it's hard to be transparent and honest
• How change can work (bottom-up vs. top-down)
• Virtual teams

It was a great conversation! Especially talking about why people choose to change or not to change.

Often people have a hard time making changes that benefit them - even moving to Agile when it will clearly help an organization be more competitive and make more money. It's always intrigues me as to why people won't change when it benefits them to do so. I wonder, what about staying the same serves them? 

I have been exploring this in my own personal journey. There are times I will experience something that doesn't serve me anymore that I need to change. And when I ask myself that question, "why does it benefit me not to change?" I usually spark an immediate transformation within myself. Staying in situations that don't serve me usually are based on validating limiting beliefs - like staying in relationships because I don't feel I deserve better, or thinking that some situations are ok because there isn't a way to change it. I had a hard time going freelance because I had a belief that I couldn't make a living doing it. That was definitely false! 

Change is scary - especially making the leap to Agile! I didn't bring it up in the meeting, but being honest and transparent with colleagues is DAMN SCARY! You need to admit you don't know something, you can't do something, or you missed a deadline. You have to share information - and in some organizations, knowledge is power, and withholding information from a team can give someone an edge. In addition to being open and honest, Agile cultures require that the team isn't judgmental. That's hard to do. 

One of the guys there raised a great point about Agile change and how in some ways, we forget to respect the accomplishments of those who got a company where they are at now without Agile. And some of them feel that the change to Agile, depending on how it is presented, diminishes their accomplishments and contributions - the old way is "bad" and the new, Agile way is "good."

Such a great point! (I should have grabbed his card - my bad! Loved this perspective!)

Agile is a different way of seeing the world. Like waterfall - it's not good, it's not bad, it just is. Agile works well today because of the number of changes we are experiencing, and not just in technology, but in authenticity, collaboration, leaving hierarchical models. 

That's where Agile comes in! And it's not just about speed - it's about truth, honesty, transparency, trust, collaboration. Companies succeed when they are collaborative. 

It's hard to accept that past ways won't work because the world is different. 

The easiest transformations come from the top-down, but the most effective transformations come from the bottom-up. Agile didn't start from an executive order - it grew out of development cultures. In many companies, Agile transformations start in the development group and make their way to the business. The business needs to then think about their work in a different way. As does design.

We need to talk to people openly about the past and the future to bring them with us in Agile transformations. Some ideas how to do this:

• Openly discuss how business is changing and how can we better respond to that change
• Discuss how not changing allows us to maintain limiting beliefs about business (it provides us excuses, e.g., we can't enter new markets, we can't respond to competitors that quickly, we are too big to possibly be nimble)
• Demonstrate the benefit of transparency through your own actions - hold nothing back and be open and honest. Encourage others to do the same. People will see the benefit of this behavior through experience.
• Stop the blame game starting with yourself. There is accountability and blame - they are not the same. Blame brings a "you did this" attitude with it. Accountability is being responsible for contribution. We need to shift to encourage contributions and reduce work fear that comes with blame. 
• Experiment with Agile in a group to demonstrate how it can work. Sometimes, people need to see and experience the benefits.

This discussion inspired me to reflect on why UX teams have such a hard time shifting how they work to an Agile paradigm. Designers had a lot of success in isolated communities, working towards a world of perfect design and interactions. Today we create software in a world focused on "good enough for today," based on enhancements and updates, iterative testing and updates. It's a shift in thinking about work, roles, and contributions.

The old ways served us in UX well and today, those approaches just aren't working. And it can be hard to let go.

I'll be posting more about this soon.

I'm curious how we can be more inclusive of development veterans who achieved incredible results without Agile, and how we can include them in transformations to new ways of approaching software development.

Look forward to reading your suggestions! 

 

Days 3, 4 and 5 of Agile 2015 - I learned so much!

I'm back from Agile 2015 - and I miss it already!

What a great week! 

 

Agile Day 3

Individuals, Interactions and Improvization (Jessie Shternshus)

Improv and Agile are like chocolate and peanut butter - they just go together. Jessie founded Improv Effect to help businesses reach their full potential by means of interpersonal-communication skills training. She's an awesome presenter and has a knack to get everyone involved in the improv experience, not stress about doing things on the fly, have fun and learn how to collaborate better.

During the session, we did some improv exercises (many of which I can't wait to use in meetings!) - from dreaming up loser superheros and sidekicks to creating stories with a partner. (My partner was awesome! Diane and I can spin a good yarn!).

Waterfall processes are plan-heavy; plans create other plans. I'm not saying plans are bad - they aren't. A plan or a vision can unify a group of people to reach a goal. The problem I have with plans is that teams can sometimes get caught in infinite what-if scenarios that don't drive anyone in the team closer to making a decision or getting things done (Here's my series about Agile, belly dance and improv).

Improv allows everyone involved to think about what's happening at that moment and contribute a word, an action, something that will keep the story or performance moving forward.

Great improv comes out of being true to yourself, your character, and having the confidence in yourself to make a decision on the spot. I think confidence is what's really needed for an Agile team to succeed - the confidence each team member has in themselves and in the group.

 

No Dream Crushing: Human Centered Design Solutions using Design Thinking (Kathryn Kuhn, Skip Angel)

Great talk by Rally team! They had a challenging crowd - we were all amazingly punchy! Kathryn and Skip definitely had their hands full!

They presented a framework for us to leverage when designing our customer interviews for products and processes - what types of answers and responses are necessary to fully define the problem and create a true solution. It's a great method to gain solid insights and help people use tools and processes better.

The focus of the presentation was mainly for coaching purposes, but it could be used for customer product reviews as well (that's what I plan on using it for - can't wait to leverage it on my next project for usability reviews and testing). It's a super useful framework!

 

There was a talk I wanted to catch, but missed - Can you be remotely agile? (Mike Kilby) - take a peek if you get a chance!

 

Agile Day 4

I presented that day. I didn't attend a session because I was prepping (i.e., stressing). I think I ran through my talk 2-3 times.

It was titled UX practitioner? In an Agile virtual team? 6 ways to bridge the distance. 

Here are the slides. 

I wanted to catch Virginia Cagwin's talk on Enterprise UX. Here is a link to her talk and her slides.  She's awesome - I'm sure it was a great talk.

 

Agile Day 5

Well Begun is Half-way Done: "How to" guide for Organization Assessment Prior to Scaling (Michael Spayd)

I learned so much in this session about organizations, leadership styles, and ways teams can be self-managed.

During the talk I got distracted reflecting as to why I work better with some teams and not others and why I like Agile. Now that I'm launching Gearmark 2.0, I'm trying to figure out how I want to structure the company and how people collaborate in it. During the course of this talk, I realized that I want it to be a Teal company - not a place where people are contributing by role or hierarchical standing, but where they are adding value. I think everyone has something to contribute to the project, and sometimes what they have to contribute may be a little out of their role, but it may be a great insight others didn't see. I prefer to work on projects where the team members contribute what makes most sense for them, and when there is a need, either a team member steps up to help, or we find someone else outside the team to contribute. It's more about the value people bring to the table.

But I digress.

What I took away from this session is that not all companies are necessarily ready for Agile and the work style related to it - and that's ok. I learned what to look for in companies to see promise and hope for such changes, and when it's time to just walk away. You can't force Agile to work in an environment that isn't open to self-managed teams and open collaboration - a brutal reality, but a reality nevertheless. Great insights to help create change!

 

Final session: Want better collaboration? Don't be so defensive! (James Tamm)

We got a lesson about chickens. I didn't know that chickens can be very competitive. The "alpha" chickens (top egg producers) will make the lives of the other collaborative chickens horrible so that they maintain their position. Basically, they play dirty games to win.

If these competitive chickens are removed and the collaborative chickens are grouped together, the collaborative chickens increase their production over 250%. Yep, you read that right.

The competitive chickens will peck themselves bald and kill each other.

So, which type of work environment would you rather work in?

James presented amazing statistics about collaborative companies and how they over performed regarding profits and in the stock market. Our old notions of competitiveness are just wrong - it's far better for the team to collaborate to achieve a goal. Collaboration pays off.

However, with collaboration comes conflict. There are healthy conflicts and ones that make us nosedive into competitive defensiveness. 

I know when I get defensive, I become a rabid graduate student, defending my position like a goalie. And if I'm winning, I don't just win gracefully, I'll work to win until the other person almost screams mercy. Doesn't that sound awful? Well, he gave us strategies for how to stop ourselves from our primal defensive instincts like this and be more open to a collaborative environment in trying times (and how to always bring not just yourself, but the team back to that).

There is no reason to make everything a competition when collaboration brings better performance - and just makes us better people. 

 

Now I can't wait for Agile 2016! 

 

And if you are curious to hear more about Agile 2015, here are my experiences of days 1-2.

My Experience of Day 1 and Day 2 of Agile 2015

I love going to the Agile conference every year because I learn so much in such a short time. There are so many people achieving tremendous results using Agile - so many people trying new things and sharing their knowledge. 

 

I wanted to originally share a blog post each day. Unfortunately, it has been so busy, I haven’t been able to do that. But here is a summary of the days so far. 

 

 

Agile Day 1

 

Awesome Superproblems 

The conference kicked-off with the opening keynote by Luke Hohmann of Conteneo. Luke is always an inspiring speaker and sparkles when he talks about using games to solve problems.

 

He showed us how Agile thinking - especially collaborative games for learning - can be reworked slightly to achieve goals outside software development in areas like government, psychology/therapy, and more. 

 

He shared his experience with the City of San Jose and their annual games over the past 3-4 years and how they were able to involve more community member perspectives in budgeting decisions. He also talked about the Los Altos School District and their experience with games to make difficult decisions about over-crowded classrooms - and again, including more people into the decision.

 

He showed an app to help with collecting decisions and helping to come to consensus for large-scale games - multiple teams of 8. So many teams, there needs to be a heat map to help communicate trends.

 

At lunch I was talking with a new friend I met at the conference who mentioned that games like this could eventually be used by us to manage government and asked a radical, but true, question - Do we really need a legislature if we could accomplish something similar thru games?

 

Something to ponder. How awesome would that be if everyone were collaborating using games in that way!

 

 

Learn Like a Scientist - Design Experiments Using Lean UX (Will Evans)

Will presented a lot of theory and information about experimentation - how to define a good experiment, what to expect from it, and how to know if you succeeded. Lots of guidance for what to do or avoid. 

 

 

Then we had lunch.

 

 

After lunch, I learned a valuable lesson about Agile 2015: Get to your sessions early! They book up quick! I think I wandered to 4 different talks that were full until I gave up.  

 

So I decided to visit the vendors.

 

I saw the new Mingle demo. It was great to see how a program manager can have visibility into Agile projects from the top down and the team can view a project from the bottom up thru stories. There are more ways to help the teams have visibility into roadblocks or challenges, workloads, and understand what's happening where. They have done some great work with their app - I can't wait to play with the demo site!

 

I also visited Axosoft, which is a great tool that is a little like Trello. It also allows someone the ability to give bug tracking access to customers. This is great for custom app firms or even companies that are getting a product off the ground and value customer input. I want to get in and explore that tool a little more. It has a lot of functionality, but not overwhelming with features.

 

Leankit is a great for organizations that value quick visual summaries of their projects. If your company loves Kanban boards - this is for you! They support Agile and Waterfall, but they are about making the presentation super simple and straight-forward. I need to get a full demo when I get home.

 

Workfront is perfect for mixed waterfall and Agile environments. This seems to be the trend as enterprises are adopting Agile - change is hard, and it's hard to let go of the known process. I look forward to talking with them further.

 

I think it's great that the vendors are open to how enterprises and companies are using Agile. It's also wonderful to see such diversity for products - there are so many ways to work, and now there are many tools to support those different approaches and processes.

 

Flexibility is key for change, which leads me to the next talk by Esther Derby.

 

 

6 Rules for Change (Esther Derby)

I attended Esther Derby's session - engaging and fascinating as always! 

 

Her perspective on change resonated with me and my experiences - change just can’t happen overnight, and Agile needs to be flexible enough to allow for iterated change. It's funny - organizations need to change but there are so many things happening that needs to be adjusted. 

 

And she communicated so much in just a handful of slides and 6 rules. I love her stories and how she integrates them into the session. It was wonderful!

 

 

 

Agile Day 2

 

Visioning - the Practical Art and Artful Practice of Conceiving Complex Products (Alan Goerner)

I LOVED this session. I think it’s important for a product owner to have a strong vision about what the product should be, how the product will stand in the market, and be able to prioritize features and stories to that vision.

 

Alan presented a framework and tools for product owners to get that vision and have a way to help them prioritize their work. He also mapped how risk drives a lot of decisions in enterprises (something many Agile startups don’t face and have a hard time understanding). Some systems just can’t be integrated into an app development team because they are so central to the enterprise/business.

 

He also included a way for the business to create light personas to help define products. Sure, personas should be researched and validated with customers, but at least the business will start thinking about the users. It's a start - an important start - to include customer perspective and empathy.

 

I can’t wait to review the slides for this talk! It was stellar!

 

 

The UX Connection: Driving Innovation on an Agile Project (Hugh Beyer)

The premise of this session is that UX can actively contribute to project innovation in Agile environments - and it's easy to do. For the workshop, we spent some time interviewing each other and then sketching some solutions, being encouraged to think differently about a problem and solution. Mainly, we were being encouraged to get new ideas.

 

I enjoyed this speaker’s speaking style and what he was presenting. I also liked how he defined UX as creating something the users didn’t know they needed. That's true innovation.

 

 

Rewire Your Brain: Practices to Use Brain Plasticity to Become a Better Coach (Sarah Baca)

This one shifted many of my perspectives of people and situations. Sure, we know about the primal brain, the emotional brain, and the executive brain, but how do you shift between them? And how can you - and your team - stay in the executive brain more often?

 

I often listen to spiritual masters discuss how to change behaviors and imprints and find a way to live in that executive brain. What I liked about Sarah's presentation was that she described a similar process outside of a spiritual context, which could help in work situations. The workshop during the session gave us hands-on experience using these methods. I feel I can use this now when working with anyone - as well as to help myself be in the executive brain area more frequently and not let certain circumstances or imprinted emotional responses get in my way of work. 

 

Fantastic session! Definitely get the slide deck. I hope someone recorded it.

 

 

Games to Learn Stuff (Michael McCullough, Don McGreal)

After all of the mental inputs of the day, I wanted to shift the focus of my brain a little bit - so I decided to see how games could be used for learning. This was the perfect ending to the day! 

 

Some of what we learned through the games:

• What makes a great manager/leader (hint: not micromanaging)
• How change impacts people for the good or bad and what makes it easier to swallow
• What are good stories/requirements
• How changing requirements can be confusing - and difficult to process

 

It was all hands-on, activity-based, physical learning. I can’t wait to use some of this with clients!

 

I need to check out the tastycupcake.org site now for other methods like this. What a great icebreaker for a full-day meeting!

 

 

And now on the Day 3, 4 and 5. I can’t wait to uncover what will happen today!

 

Reflections on why I love going to the Agile Conference (can't believe it starts in a few days)

Every year I look forward to the annual Agile conference. I enjoy going - meeting new friends, catching up with old ones, and learning so many new things. I think I missed a couple of years here and there, and I regretted it. I felt like something was missing that year. Each time I go, I bring back new ideas to work with my clients and ways to be more Agile.

Last year was the first time I got to speak at a big conference - and I was so happy I got to speak at Agile 2014! And I'm feeling so thankful and blessed to be able to present again (Here's my session and here's a blog post about the theme - UX, Agile and Virtual Teams). 

But the learning, friends, and speaking opportunities aren't the only reasons I keep coming back.

It's the personal growth opportunities that come from the energy there. 

Personal Growth Opportunities 

Believe it or not, it was at an Agile conference where I met a woman at a UX vendor booth (my now friend Janet), who later encouraged me to start writing articles and keeping a regular blog. From there, I aspired to speak at Agile and eventually write a book (I hope that dream will become a reality soon). I never viewed myself as a writer before then, and if I didn't attend the Agile conference that year, I may not have started down that path. 

I have also been inspired to experiment with new ideas - learning and using innovation games (which was always a hit! Even on phone calls and in virtual sessions), sketch noting (which has proven to be a great skillset), setups for Agile teams, and ways to better interact with teams and team members. I've implemented these ideas at different client sites and in projects. I am able to stay innovative and current with the flood of ideas at each conference.

And from these experiences, I've been inspired to write new articles and pieces on my blog and stay current on Agile perspectives. And it's from the energy and the ideas that are flowing during those 5 days. 

Energy

There is an air of informality that invites friendship and comradery balanced with an air of formality to learn how to get things done better. You can have conversations that go on for hours about the benefits of Agile, better practices, or the successes and challenges of various Agile organizations - and it's the energy of the participants and their passion for Agile methodologies that keep you engaged, listening and contributing to the conversations.

Last year, I had a great conversation with some guys from Intel, who were using Agile for hardware development. At that time, I wish I knew some hardware guys at HP to share the Intel guys' passion, insights, and knowledge about making hardware products Agile. I also learned how some other software companies implemented Agile, the challenge project managers can face with it from executive structures that just don't understand what self-managed Agile teams are and how a scrum master guides them without an iron fist. And of course, I had some discussions with UX professionals about what their teams face when engaging with the business and developers and being Agile. 

 

I am very thankful and grateful for this conference, the community it attracts, the knowledgeable people who are willing to share their experience, and the friends I met.

I can't wait to see what this year brings!