Creating Change one "Tic Tac" at a Time

Jeffrey Fredrick (Agitar Software), Alistair Cockburn

Discovery Sessions · Leadership

Thursday, 10:30, 1 hour 30 minutes | Renaissance West A

Agile Development builds upon some simple principles to offer compelling benefits, but there is a hidden catch: Agile means change, individual and organizational behavior change, a huge obstacle to overcome. Broadly speaking "why is change so difficult?" and "what can we do to implement successful change?" are the topics of this workshop, and we are seeking to explore two models that suggest possible answers to those questions. The first model we offer is the "capability dip" model of change. In this model any change in behavior is accompanied by a drop in capability as the skills and habits of the new behavior are acquired. For a whole host of really strong and valid reasons change is innately scary, and this dip combined with those pre-existing fears provoke fierce resistance. While human psychology raises specters that must be overcome it also offers mechanisms that will ease and enable the process of adopting change. The second model on offer, the Tic Tac model, explains why some practices reinforce change through providing tokens to mark small wins. Behind this model is the observation that people move into better habits when they receive frequent small prizes, not when promised of a big prize at the end of a long journey. Seeing a bit of improvement; completing a bit of work; getting feedback on an idea, all these count as wins and therefore prizes, and support the move to new habit. Common automated and interpersonal agile practices (daily stand-up meetings, monthly reflection workshops, information radiators) supply those wins. In this workshop we want to move as a group towards conscious competency as agents of change, with both the collected folklore of a set of practices that have proven useful and also an understanding of the psychology of change that can help lead us to new practices.

Jeffrey Fredrick is a 15-year veteran of the software industry with a mission to change the way software is created. From his varied career Jeffrey brings the perspective of having performed virtually every role in the software development lifecycle including product conception, coding, testing, documentation, technical support and management of all of those functions. A founding member of the JBuilder development team, he has been involved in Java tool development since before its 1.0 release. Jeffrey is an experienced speaker and trainer on development techniques and process, having spoken at Gartner Application Development Summits, JavaPolis, Software Development Best Practices, EclipseCon, Better Software, and the STeP-In Summit. He is currently indulging his passion for development tools as Director of Product Management at Agitar Software, as the Co-Organizer of CITCON (Continuous Integration and Testing Conference) and as the top committer for CruiseControl. Jeffrey's blog is available at http://www.developertesting.com