Keynote address for #SGZA 2015 "Unlikely Heroes"
Can Agility Change the World? Bridging the Digital Divide with Agile Training
At codeX we’re developing a breakthrough education model to address the skills shortage and the digital divide, using our experience training agile teams.
We believe in changing the future, and this is a story about what we’ve learnt about agility, diversity and making real change.
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Can Agility Change the World?
1. Can agility change the world?
Bridging
The Digital Divide
#BeUnlikely
Cara Turner South Africa
COO Agile Coach | Disruptive Educator | Community Builder
5. Scarcity Science
Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir
Never Enough
time, money, trust, security
No Slack
Constant Anxiety
Poorer decisions
Greater cost of mistakes
No ‘stop & think’ time
Failure demand
Tunneling
More problems
to solve
Tradeoffs
“The bandwidth tax”
6. The Scarcity Trap
Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir
“When people have very little,
they undertake behaviors that
maintain or reinforce their
future disadvantage.
If you have very little, you often
behave in such a way so that
you'll have little in the future.”
21. Continual Improvements
“We are uncovering better ways of
developing software
by doing it and helping others do it.”
- The Agile Manifesto (2001)
22. Emerging Tools
User Stories
Behaviour Driven
Development
Jobs to Be Done
The right thing
Double Loop Learning
facilitation
CollaborationScrum
Motivation
Back of Room TrainingCynefin
Impact Mapping
Deliberate Discovery
making sense
Relative Estimates
Story Mapping
Continuous Delivery
No Estimates
releases
MVP
Lean StartUp
Test Driven Development
Pair Programming
coding
Continuous Integration
23. “We” are uncovering…
Esther Derby, Diana Larson
Ken Schwaeber
& Jeff Sutherland
Daniel Pink
Dave Snowden
Gojko Adzic
Dan North
making sense
Mike Cohn
Jeff Patton
Vasco Duarte
releases
Frank Robinson
coding
Collaboration
Ron Jeffries
Alan Klement
The right thing
Liz KeoghEric Ries
Kent Beck
Ward Cunningham
Martin Fowler
Jez Humble
Jean Tabaka
Sharon Bowman
35. Diversity Dividend
more likely to report financial returns
above their national industry median
The Diversity Dividend - McKinsey 2013
15%
Gender Diversity
35%
Ethnic Diversity
36. Diversity Dividend
Diversity + inclusion = improved business performance.
Gender and racial diversity are often lead indicators of
a healthy organization that is
fishing from a deeper pool of talent,
accessing a deeper knowledge bank, and
leveraging those resources
throughout the business value chain.
– Deloitte “A Global Diversity Dividend”
Resetting horizons: Global human capital trends 2013
37. But change is hard
“Gestures cost money:
to achieve benefits and avoid costs,
businesses need to see
diversity as a strategic resource.”
The Business Case for Equality and Diversity
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, UK Gov
38. Sound familiar?
We have a culture of Transformation
We’ve built a community of skills, excellence, expertise
39. Start the conversation
Change routines:
- Mentorship
- Change way we recruit
- Extend invitations
Use agile skills:
- Create a safe space
- Talk about the issues
40. Scarcity & Diversity
Why is it so hard to create a diverse workplace?
Too few appropriately skilled people (currently)
47. The Network Effect
learning resourceseducation
commercial environment
career growthfinancial stability
healthy economy employment
security
social support
childcare
healthcare
transport
food
waterfamily
responsibilities sanitationprivacy
sleep
personal safety electricity
study time
attention
teaching skillsnutrition
48. The Digital Divide
childcare
healthcare food
electricity
waterfamily
responsibilities sanitationprivacy
sleep
personal safety
learning resources
career growth
financial stability
healthy economy
security
employment
social support
education
commercial environment
study time
attention
teaching skills
transport
nutrition
59. Cara Turner
Cape Town, South Africa
Get in Touch
projectcodeX.co
sugsa.org.za
twitter: @cara_faye
slideshare.net/carafaye
The best way to predict the future
is to invent it.
- Alan Kay
Editor's Notes
codeX trains people with little or no coding experience to be agile software developers, using agile principles at every level of our program.
Talk is about our path, and some difficult concepts, Diversity, scarcity and poverty, and how our experience implementing agile practices helps to make meaningful change in the world.
Being an Unlikely Hero needs ordinary people, faced with an external trigger (threat or opportunity) to stop their normal routines, respond to adopt and accommodate change to create a future we want to participate in.
Being an Unlikely Hero needs ordinary people, faced with an external trigger (threat or opportunity) to stop their normal routines, respond to adopt and accommodate change to create a future we want to participate in.
The single greatest barrier to change is routine. We need routine because it reduces load on our prefrontal cortex, makes it easier to get through the work we need to do, but stops us from responding differently. Hard to take a routine from background processing to foreground to act on it & make change – especially when we’re under pressure, which is why we tend to slip into old habits when going gets tough.
Agilists are familiar with this experience; not not alone in looking at the problem – Scarcity Science a new science specifically looking at brain function under conditions of scarcity - Bandwidth tax
Trap – lack keeps us trapped in lack.
How systems are designed can enhance or detract from our productivity – airline cockpit story http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/the-science-of-scarcity
How systems are designed can enhance or detract from our productivity – airline cockpit story http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/05/the-science-of-scarcity
Change: Small meaningful changes
The change enabled immediate feedback, supports decision making, was easy to adopt
Does this sound familiar? What rubber bands does agile introduce?
Continuous improvement means we have the chance to make small changes, look at what impact they make; decide what next to improve; and carry on doing this until we’re more better and more awesomer.
It gives us all the ability to be heroes.
Change doesn’t happen in isolation
A healthy system needs multiple parts to function. What is the effect if one is missing or weak? If one improves? If you keep improving?
A healthy system needs multiple parts to function. What is the effect if one is missing or weak? If one improves? If you keep improving?
Vicious cycle example: Downward turn in the commercial environment prompts clients to reduce their contracts, which makes decisionmaking harder (scarcity tradeoffs), reduce flexibility and delay making improvements.
Virtuous cycle example: Product owner decides to change way she works with her clients, focusing on openness & collaboration. This makes it easier to pull stories from the backlog at the right time to implement improvements. Trust evolves so that client relaxes constraints of the contract, and word gets out that this process results in better delivery, creating a healthier commercial environment.
Opening line of the Agile Manifesto (and my favourite part). Agility did not stop with the manifesto.
As we work with others, more tools & practices evolve to suit new problems – from 1994 & before (TDD) to #NoEstimates (2013) & Jobs to be Done (2015)
Agilists, like artists, have a long history of copying, adapting & making things their own.
Developed over time by coaches and practitioners, members of the agile community, working to solve business challenges.
What opportunity / challenge are you facing? What one small change can you make? Formulate an experiment, but don’t wait to know everything before you start. Educate yourself along the way, keep inspecting & adapting to combine experiential learning with new knowledge, bringing both into your processes & practices, for continuous improvement. Share your story, one of the best way to learn, to develop new superpowers for more agile teams.
We need all kinds of people to be involved in creating solutions.
Integrated transport solution(s) – 1.
Travis might look at the problems of personal transport & invent Uber; 2. Justin solving problem of unpredictable public transport schedule information [GoMetro]; Lindani might create an app that solves an informal taxi problem.
All people solve different problems: we see the benefit that diversity brings – common problem – integrated transport solution(s)
Global problem in software is that one demographic has most of the skills, so first world problems have accelerated solutions – Why is that?
Cartoon recently doing the rounds: Equality: people treated the same, but only some see over the wall; Justice: everyone can see over the wall
This is not equality.
This is Privilege. System designed by dominant culture with conscious & unconscious bias – blind to advantages; seen as innate; easy access to benefits seem incidental, not causal.Disadvantages: tends to be homogenous, can be overconfident, hard to shift perspectives, can’t see own shortcomings.
Advantages: not held back > rapid skills acquisition, improvements
System designed for dominant culture; scaffolding in place to assist “disadvantaged” > tall people are still “naturally” better; short people need help to succeed, still no value to their perspective.
Equality requires a change in the system, to respect & value everyone’s perspectives; harness insights across the spectrum.
Which is really idealistic, right?
First off, innovation relies on us interacting, sharing ideas, combining skills.
But also, if management consultants think it matters, you know it’s hitting the bottom line.
Can’t just hire for diversity stats: need to change routines to ensure that we have inclusion – communication channels & practices accommodate needs of all groups. Then benefits accrue.
(and we know it’s a management consultant report because they’re still calling people ‘resources’).
Can’t just pay lip service; must change routines & processes in order to see the benefit. Requires investment to generate the dividend.
Again very similar to agile history – as an agile advocate in a company: presents fundamental challenge to way of thinking.
Diversity is now where Agility has been over time:
Initially the threat to the status quo (villain), then anti-hero / unwelcome guest, able to establish conversation at executive level about benefits to organizational health; then succeeding and transforming – instill superpowers that generate results. Culture of transformation – have become experienced change agents.
So we can use those skills right now to start the conversation, and change routines.
But we still are faced with the problem that there aren’t enough people with the skills for software / complex technical roles. But this is changeable.
Stats for South Africa: Particular opportunity for those actively seeking work in last 4 weeks (narrow definition of unemployment); 42%(NEA) have not sought work in the last 4 weeks
Of the 20,3m unemployed, 5,6million have completed secondary education, and of those 0,9m have tertiary education. Even if we focus only on active workseekers, 2,1m people qualify for tertiary education.
Potential to make change
Scarcity of skills -> Education <- Scarcity of opportunities (in the middle of two scarcities)
The gap between skills shortage in tech and opportunities for active workseekers is the right level of education.
This is the thinking driving the launch of codeX – reach a new pool of talent, increase the pool of software developers.
Concept for the program: teach all the agile things – scrum, pair programming, conscious experiments to inspect & adapt; feedback tools, quick releases -> web developers
Then also recent practices & concepts – story mapping, sense-making, prototyping – give high quality feedback, support decision-making, easy to adopt – replace bad ‘habits’ in software big up front requirements, long development cycles etc. And that we’d do this all in a three month full time bootcamp. Turns out we were wrong about 3 months!
Assumptions: We see education as the foundation of a career; if we provide quality education, the rest will take care of itself.
Reality: education is at the top of another ecosystem – heavily reliant on social support. Privileged groups can be blind to this – if food, water, healthcare, childcare etc. are seamlessly taken care of, easier to access education, and create time and attention for studying. Under scarcity conditions, where social support aspects are missing, very hard to access quality education, and even harder to stick through years of tertiary ed when need to provide basic income for family in survival mode. Vicious cycle keeps talented people out of the educated work force.
Bridge digital divide requires cockpit design changes: incorporate much more into codeX program: more time (1 year) intense but paced-out curriculum; include aspect to alleviate some of the social support issues, and extend focus into the commercial environment, supporting coders into industry. Bigger bridge.
Provide much more scaffolding to build true foundations off a thin education base
Pull based curriculum; self paced; intro routines to support learning; high-value feedback tools; ability to handle unexpected; build web apps, interacting with clients, run own experiments; and be placed in as developers industry.
Coders at codeX – retrospecting, building prototypes; teamwork; even on hardware.
Interacting with tech community – events + hackathon (this one with Uber South Africa)– remote problem discussion; demoing deployed apps built in two days.
We now know that we have a way to conquer the digital divide.
Look at the problems in front of you. Decide on a small change & run experiments. Share your learnings with the agile community … and beyond!
Can Agility change the world? Yes. So let’s tackle the Wicked problems (network effect, lots of moving parts, unpredictable). Agilists already have the skills!