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The best processes are those that encourage teams to naturally do the right things at the right times. Amazing processes like this don’t happen by accident; they are specifically designed to encourage desirable behavior while discouraging harmful behaviour. By carefully choosing the process’s affordances -- practices or artifacts that direct our thinking toward a specific goal -- a team can tailor a process that makes success intuitive. The session will begin by presenting the core concepts behind affordence-driven process improvement before diving into a collaborative workshop. During the workshop teams will use information from the introduction to brainstorm practices that will help them promote those values, as you would in a team retrospective.
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Affordance-Driven Process Improvement
Michael Keeling @michaelkeeling
Designing a Process that Works for Your Team
Ariadna Font @quicola
Workshop Agenda
• The Theory of Affordances • Affordance-Driven Process Improvement • Workshop Time!
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FYI -- We’ll spend about the last hour hands-on
Goals for this Workshop
1. Unlock your mind so you can identify affordances in your team’s process
2. Practice affordance-driven improvement in a retrospective simulation
3. Map typical team behaviors to common agile practices
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Warning
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THE THEORY OF AFFORDANCES
You’ve seen these concepts before…
• Software Architects • Object Designers • User Experience Experts • Kanban Experts • Agile Coaches • “Systems Thinkers”
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Goal: Design an object that makes it feel natural and easy
to do the right thing.
What is an affordance?
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An affordance is any perceivable element, such as an object or idea, that directs a person’s thinking toward a specific set of acAons.
J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep:on. Psychology Press, 1986.
Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1998
What is an affordance?
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An affordance is any perceivable element, such as an object or idea, that directs a person’s thinking toward a specific set of acAons.
J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep:on. Psychology Press, 1986.
Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1998
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The Dutch Airport Problem
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The Urinal Fly “It improves the aim. If a man sees a fly, he aims at it. Fly-in-urinal research found that etchings reduce spillage by 80%. It gives a guy something to think about. That’s a perfect example of process control.”
Robert Krulwhich, “There’s a Fly in my Urinal” hJp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121310977 13
Good Affordance..Bad Affordance Push Pull
Good Affordance 14
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Bad Affordance
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Gary Larson The Far Side
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QualiAes vs. FuncAonality
Example: Blend a Drink
• Functions – Prepare the blender – Blend – Clean the blender
• Qualities – Countertop-ability – Clean-ability – Transportability
Galvao and Sato, “Affordances in Product Architecture: Linking Technical Functions and Users’ Tasks” Proceedings of IDETC/CIE 2005 21
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Gas Engine Motorcycle ThroJle
Portable… but noisy.
Application to Software Process
• Example Process Functions – Write software, test software, release software
• Example Process Qualities – Plan-ability – Predictability – Changeability – Quality
– Performance – Reliability – Estimate-ability – Harmony
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AFFORDANCE-‐DRIVEN PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
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Goal: Design a process that makes it natural and easy to do the right thing.
Affordance-Driven Change • Observe and Evaluate Behaviors
– What is your team doing? – Positive, Negative, Neutral
• Identify Affordances – What nudged your team’s behavior?
• Alter Affordances – Change the negative affordances, keep the
positive ones
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Affordance-Driven Change
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Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
Affordance-Driven Change
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Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
What is your team doing?
How do they act?
Affordance-Driven Change
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Is this the behavior you want?
PosiAve NegaAve Neutral
Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
Affordance-Driven Change
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What nudged your team to act the way the did?
Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
Affordance-Driven Change
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Keep the good affordances,
change the bad affordances
Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
Example: Team Square Root
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ObservaAons: Arguments about tasking Team over-‐commiang Resist giving up tasks
Michael Keeling, “Process Affordances: Ignore at your own Peril” hJp://neverletdown.net/2009/03/process-‐affordances-‐ignore-‐at-‐your-‐own-‐peril/
Values: Baseline for Evaluating Behavior
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As a team we valued Predictability Adaptability Respect Open CommunicaAon
Evaluate Behaviors
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ObservaAons: Arguments about tasking Team over-‐commiang Resist giving up tasks
+ – – –
Identify Affordances
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ReflecAng on our pracAces… “Milestone Owners” Nudge: Aatude of lone responsibility No backlog Nudge: Anxiety over future tasks
Alter Affordances
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Created a backlog Abolished “Owners” New burndown chart – show
progress against commitments
Team Values: Evaluating Behaviors
“Qualities your team values” • Examples:
– courage – predictability – sustainability – improvability – measurability
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– scalability – responsibility – feedback – face-to-face
communication
Examples of Good Affordances
• Iterative planning, light documentation – Nudge: changeability
• Pair programming – Nudge: knowledge sharing, performance,
quality
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Examples of Bad Affordances
• Large planning buffers – Nudge: procrastination
• Developer Branches – Nudge: solitary development
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LET’S PRACTICE!
What is an affordance?
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An affordance is any perceivable element, such as an object or idea, that directs a person’s thinking toward a specific set of acAons.
J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep:on. Psychology Press, 1986.
Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1998
Goals for this Workshop
1. Unlock your mind so you can identify affordances in your team’s process
2. Practice affordance-driven improvement in a retrospective simulation
3. Map typical team behaviors to common agile practices
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Ground Rules
• When your team is ready to move on, have somebody wear the party hat
• Manage your time, watch the clock!
• Raise your hand if you have a question
• Have fun!
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Workshop Agenda
1. Establish context, agree on team values 2. Evaluate behaviors 3. Identify affordances nudging your team
4. Propose changes to your team’s practices
5. Finish posters and share findings
6. Wrap-up
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QualiAes your “team” values
Summary of pracAces nudge your team’s
behavior
AcAon items – how to change behavior?
Establishing Context – 2 min • Task: Introduce yourselves to one another
– Briefly share some interesting facts about yourself and your role(s) at work
• Context: – You are now a team, working together to build a
new awesome piece of software.
– You’ve gathered together for a team retrospective….
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Get your package
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Send one team member to the front to retrieve workshop materials.
Agree on Team Qualities – 5 min
• Task: Agree on the 3 – 5 core qualities you value most as a team. – Annotate worksheet and add to poster
• Goal: You are going to focus on these through the workshop and use them to evaluate behaviors and determine what improvements to pursue first.
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QualiAes your “team” values
Start
Start populaAng your poster!
Affordance-Driven Change
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Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
Evaluate Behaviors – 10 min
• Task: Decide whether your team’s behaviors (Blue Cards) are positive, neutral, or negative relative to your values.
• Goal: Learn to observe and analyze team behaviors in your work environment.
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Affordance-Driven Change
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Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
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Identify Affordances – 15 min • Task: Map practices to negative behaviors. What affordances nudged your team?
– Try the “5 Whys” technique
– If there is no practice in your deck that you think leads to this bad behavior, use one of the wildcards
• Goal: Have a handful of patterns like this on your poster
<Practice> nudges <Behavior> because ____ 57
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QualiAes your “team” values
Start Don’t forget your poster!
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Summary of pracAces nudge your team’s
behavior
Affordance-Driven Change
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Observe Behaviors
Evaluate Behaviors
IdenAfy Affordances
Alter Affordances
Propose Key Changes – 10 min
• Task: Create 2 or 3 action items for your team and document why you think they will get rid of the negative behavior
• Goal: Add or remove affordances to your team’s
process. Turn the undesired behaviors into desired ones.
Practice P(Bad Behavior) è Practice P’ Ø / Good Behavior
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Example…
Free dinner nudges developers to stay late…
Change the Free Dinner affordance Free breakfast – nudge developers to come
to work early, not waiting for a signal to mark the end of the day
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Propose Key Changes – 10 min
• Task: Create 2 or 3 action items for your team and document why you think they will get rid of the negative behavior
• Goal: Add or remove affordances to your team’s
process. Turn the undesired behaviors into desired ones.
Practice P(Bad Behavior) è Practice P’ (Ø / Good Behavior)
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QualiAes your “team” values
Summary of pracAces nudge your team’s
behavior
AcAon items – how to change behavior?
Share your findings! – 15 min
• Task: Share your poster!
• Goal: Tell a story so that others can learn from your thinking process
• Reflection – Any surprises in you practice/behavior map? – What can you take back to your team?
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WRAP-‐UP
Goals for this Workshop
1. Unlock your mind so you can identify affordances in your team’s process
2. Practice affordance-driven improvement in a retrospective simulation
3. Map typical team behaviors to common agile practices
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Practices vs. Affordances?
We simplified things a little for the simulation…
The world is not this simple.
Affordances can be subtle, tricky to identify.
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Tools for Retrospectives
• Identify valued team qualities • “Like to Like” game
– Create your own behaviors and practices card decks
• Affordance Awareness – It’s not your fault!
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“A bad system will beat a good person every Ame.”
-‐ W. Edwards Deming
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Go forth and design GREAT systems!
Thank you!
Michael Keeling @michaelkeeling http://neverletdown.net
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Ariadna Font @quicola http://ariadna.font.cat/
References • Robert Krulwhich, “There’s a Fly in my Urinal”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121310977 • Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, 1988 • J. J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.
Psychology Press, 1986. • Galvao and Sato, “Affordances in Product Architecture: Linking
Technical Functions and Users’ Tasks” Proceedings of IDETC/CIE 2005
• Michael Keeling, “Identifying Process Affordances: Nudging Toward Change” http://neverletdown.net/2010/03/identifying-process-affordances-nudging-toward-change/
• Michael Keeling, “Process Affordances: Ignore at your own Peril” http://neverletdown.net/2009/03/process-affordances-ignore-at-your-own-peril/
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