Hello, my name is Marcin Żmigrodzki, and I was asked
to speak the keynote at this conference
During next...
just a moment
how does it click?
with the Space button?
During next two days, you'll be getting to know tools
which provide teams with increased effectiveness
of their work
mostly project-based
Meanwhile
when I was asked to speak
I thought to myself
that I'd like to raise the topic
of how the methods
and rules we believe to be working are verified
just like IT systems supporting teams
how are they verified by scientific methods
which are measurable and give sustainable results
I did some research
digged into a couple of sources
I'm a practitioner myself
often coming across organisations
managing projects in different ways
But I also have a scientific mindset
which made me check some common beliefs about management
so
You may have already come across some of them, like
"mindstorming increases creativity"
or "it's good to have people of different roles in a team"
or maybe "people's needs are arranged in some hierarchy
from the basic ones, related to the body, to higher ones
connected to self-esteem and social acceptance"
There is one thing that connects all these beliefs
All of them were partly or entirely disproved
It's not like mindstorming always works
There are situations when it acts vice versa, reducing creativity
when we host it badly, so in these situations
it's better to think it over on one's own
then there's more chance that we find out a creative solution
The idea of teams' development according to sort of a cycle was also disproved
forming, storming, norming, that is
a team will always conflict upon development, but will norm itself later
it doesn't work this way - it was studied on
AA groups, which do not always resemble
teams working for businesses
What I'm trying to show you is
not a denial of business practices that you may follow
because we see many things work, and it's obvious
This is just another approach to their verification
We try to find out what kind of situations lead to them working
and also I'd like to throw in my two cents
on how you can implement
some mechanics discovered by scientists within last couple of hundreds of years
related to leadership, proof of facts and business practices
Let's start from making clear what we're talking about
In order to clarify and point out the definition of management
let's have a common ground of what it is
So management is about groups of people, not individuals
I know that it is a common term in many books
written by both gurus and average authors
where they explain self-management and time management
But really, if we think about this term
which we're used to connotate with management
only a group of people can be managed
Secondly, management touches upon
assigning tasks and controlling their completion
Obviously, we can execute tasks in a team and manage it at the same time
being a manager in a way and not being a manager in a way
This role has become somewhat blurred in the Agile approach
but still the managing aspect
is about me asking someone
or suggesting, or facilitating on a meeting, to do something
versus situations when I get to work myself and say "OK, I'll show you how to do this"
"You can't do it on your own"
We had such an experiment during a training
when we wanted to extract
which parameters
of a group may be named, measured, and controlled
and which of them are a big question mark
The experiment was very simple
A couple of dozens of Lego bricks
were there to build a small house or a tower
The bricks were of 5 colours
The whole exercise lasted for a couple of minutes, so it was really easy
Skill requirements seem to be very simple as well, because it's all about joining two bricks together
We tried it on children, and it worked
It turned out, though, that after the experiment
on over 700 people from different countries, companies and teams
different industries as well
we've managed to extract
42% of variability
or, in other words, 58% of group behaviours
when building a simple construction from Lego bricks
is still human factor
As of today, we don't know
why one groups do it better and the other ones do it worse
I talked to a friend of mine, who is a psychologist
who told me that these 42% of measured team's variability
is still a breakthrough in studying teamwork
because usually in scientific articles
the authors are happy when they have 15%
I want to show you
to what extent this human factor
is imprecise and unpredictable
encumbered with situations we come across at our homes
simple lack of sleep
negative feelings about their job
and our employer, or those positive ones
These are things that are hard to control
and based on such an environment
we start creating management practices
and implementing tools
which are presumed to turn a team into another team
I want to show you that very often we don't recognise these changes
but in some situations
we could notice some rules
The state of research as of today is
comparing to practice, where we believe what we do is right
that we are basically puzzled with hundreds of observations
which don't constitute a general collaboration theory
Anyway, I've written down some of these observations
There are areas which we know better
in which we can build kind of a model
motivation, for example
The fact that the Maslow pyramid was disproved
doesn't mean that we haven't got another model, which has been verified positively
and which works, however it is quite complex
A variety of studies show the first conclusion
Collaboration can be taught and learned
so my profession will not get extinct so quickly
because we actually teach management, that is collaboration
This competence is transferable
There is a list of factors that cause
better or worse productivity of a team
The good thing is that most of them are inside the team
in the way they work together
Among them is clear goal setting
It turns out that management through goals actually makes sense
because people can identify themselves with those goals, if motivated positively
And there's another element
which is omitted in textbooks, but very widely present and studied
People build mental models similar to each other
If we implement a system, for example
we also implement a certain way to use it
and every user imagines a way that she will use it
This is a mental model
which encompasses the terminology
for example, what a ticket is
how to make an issue and where it should go
what to expect from people in various roles
Then these things become obvious, so we use a system this way
If they are not obvious, or we start applying different models
mental models, speaking scientifically
then conflicts arise, and productivity goes down
Another interesting factor which appears here
which I'd like to mention
is contact frequency
It turned out that the more often teammates meet each other
the easier the collaboration becomes
We're still animals, if it comes to being social
so we need this contact
What was measured, for example, at meetings
was how our brains behave, and it turned out
that during a meeting, a hormone called oxitocyn is secreted
which has a lot of functions, but among them
is in charge of our feeling connected to other people
This oxytocin is secreted when we contact people
like now I contact you
What's more, it turned out that during remote meetings
which often make use of different software platforms
this contact is also maintained
The problem is that it's building very, very, very, very slowly
It's measurable, and it was checked
A good practice implied by this one
is that it's worth to maintain contacts. Just so simple
In a moment, we'll touch upon another aspect of implementations, which is stereotypes
Another interesting observation is
that there is a strong connection
it was tested on pilots
between the speed of spotting a problem
its resolution time
and the level of collaboration effectiveness in a team
They measured it in different teams
by simulating a problem and observing
how fast are these teams to spot this problem and make the right decisions
It turned out that unhealthy teams
took on actions much slower and did not feel so responsible
and did not react in such a intuitive and correct way
Again it is the human factor in the area of strong procedures
We'll come back to the pilots soon
There's a lot of talking about Agile, I even mentioned it a moment ago
and it is also verified
by a number of studies. What's interesting
when scientists sought after the type of a leader that can build effective teams
it turned out that not only a supportive leader can do it
or a servant leader, a Scrum Master who is not even a manager
can do great things with an agile team
It turned out that even a directive manager, the classic one
takes upon a role of a facilitative manager
so that he can behave this way apart from his main role
If support is there, positive impact is noted as well
A conscious and grown-up leader who can wear a different hat
and say: "OK, I'm stopping conducting and want to help you"
People must believe it, though, and it's an important element
of building a certain mental model
then it has similar impact, starts working
and it's measured
Another interesting thing
retrospectives, which are present in the Agile approach
meetings where people discuss
how they should train their skills and increase effectiveness
along with the velocity in the upcoming sprint
Scientists call this thing "team's reflexivity" and can measure it
as a skill of learning from themselves and coming to conclusions
It can be supported by proving that everyone's in the same boat
which is called dependability correctly
So making clear that everyone depends on each other
so when one person makes a mistake, everyone else will feel it
up to having to search for another career
This feeling is kind of a collective responsibility
It increases our motivation to learn, as we see that we must learn together
as a team, as an entity
In effect
reflexivity skills, such as building rituals
of team learning
influence effectivity of innovative teams very much
In other words, retrospectives work, if held the right way
As I mentioned, a team's motivation
has been studied thoroughly
if someone's interested, I recommend Richard Ryan and Edward Deci's book
from a variety of experiments
The conclusions they came to were:
People want autonomy very badly
and freedom to decide about theirselves on their own
So people who feel they can decide
for even a tiny aspect of how the work should be done
are able to create internal motivation in themselves
which flows from "I want to do something without external stimuli"
'I like doing these things and I want to do it'
It was studied in different ways, but often it comes down to trivial things
like in one experiment
where doctors were measuring their patients taking medicine
how scrupulous they were with the prescription rules
One group of patients
were told to take their meds in the morning
so as to influence them externally. The other group were asked
'Listen, you have to take these every day. What time will suit you best for it?'
So the patients could decide about the time
And then the doctors measured
how these meds were taken in fact
It turned out there's a big difference
between the patients who were told to take them in the morning and those having a bit of autonomy
It meant nothing in terms of medical effects
but those allowed to choose the time were more likely to take the therapy, which actually helped both groups
Yes, those were more likely to participate
I came across a case study of a person
who didn't take any meds because of feeling controlled
so she returned to the hospital often, as her health went worse over time
until she was allowed to make such a trivial decision
So autonomy builds internal motivation
It was verified by other experiments
Introducing external factors
such as penalties or rewards
leads to decreasing internal motivation
If a reward is used as a tool for controlling
'I'll give you the bonus, but remember it'
it becomes a reason for us to switch our engagement
from 'I want to do it' to 'I'm paid for doing it' level
What's interesting is that narration is also important
If that same reward is presented in a softer way
it turns out to be able
to increase motivation without killing this internal aspect
Sportsperson and artists were studied
and this seems to be applicable to business
how time is felt internally when we're motivated from inside
It turned out
maybe some of you working after hours know about it
It turned out that some professions
I think it can be applied to IT people
can actually be hobbies as well
It's like 'We make it just for the fun of solving problems', like sudoku
Seeing a problem solved is a reward in itself
and learning along the way. It was studied as well
It's called the state of flow
by Mihai Csikszentmihalyi
I'm sorry for pronouncing it this way
It's pretty difficult
for a Polish guy
So he checked how time is perceived by someone being in the flow
It turned out they couldn't tell how much time went since they started working on a problem
What is the state of flow?
It is an increasing engagement into some task
caused by
overcoming barriers and learning
If the problem is not easy and is not hard as well
so it cannot bore nor frustrate us
and we are in charge of the working tempo
we're able to forget about everything
We're motivated by things going better and better
This is used widely by online games, for example
when more complex challenges are given to players based on statistics when the flow should come in
as well as companies giving their technologists all the new toys to play with
and giving them creative autonomy
The computer wants me to use Wi-Fi
I'll refuse for the moment
So to sum up the research results, I'd like to say
One of the most influential studies was performed by Google
you may have read about it - 180 teams took part
working on projects in that same company
Google took on 150... no, sorry, 250
250 variables that had an impact on their work
And one of the main conclusions
that they noticed
was that it didn't matter who was on a team
More important was how the teams worked together
Of course we can assume
everyone was competent and skilled
so they could do their work
However, it seems interesting that setting up a team's workflow
its structure, roles and tools
in an optimal and most effective way
leads to a significant increase of a team's effectiveness
So their next question was: which factors
are going to have most impact on effectiveness?
Here they are
5 factors were named, which influenced at most
this effectiveness of a team
What's interesting, the first and most important factor
is safety feeling
Why's that?
Feeling safe is connected to be willing to learn
because when we learn, we're taking a risk
of doing something wrong
In the project world, risk is permanent
The risk arises when I assume someone will behave one way
and then I'm surprised - sometimes positively
sometimes not, but I'm always sure about the result
If people believe that it's worth experimenting
and learn by these experiments, they will become more effective
If they have a feeling
that if they say something stupid at a meeting, they will be laughed on, criticized or told things
then they will be more and more reluctant to accepting new challenges
saying unpopular opinions out loud or risking otherwise
exposing theirselves to criticism
Among those unpopular ideas
which are risky and can be ineffective and miss the point
there can be some little pearls
which can push the team to improve further
Safety feeling was studied widely by various scientists
while the studies by Google are still known best
but it was checked regularly and is still proved
We have to feel safe
to improve ourselves and being able to take risks
Another factor
which stood out (they're sorted by impact level)
is the mutual dependability
We have to be sure we're in the same boat
that both success and fail is the matter of the whole team
so if someone fails, everyone will lose
At the same time, I have to feel vice versa
that if I take on some activity
everyone else will support me, and I can rely on them
If I ask someone to help me, she will because she's a professional and I know her
so I'll be able to use her effort to build something on my own
Another factor which Google came across
The last I'll speak about, in fact
is about breaking work down into parts
Setting a goal and planning means we're delivering piece by piece
Research doesn't tell if it was a backlog, WBS, CPath or any other project planning technique
but giving the problem a structure, building a plan and setting the direction
is something that increases productivity a lot
In other words, planning is worth it
As the conference is about tools, I searched for more
so the question is why we need tools at all
if teams can improve themselves
and increase their effectiveness, maybe it's false pretense that tools are helping?
I'm sorry for that
I'll explain
I've found some articles which
speaking scientifically
were studying how tools support teamwork
Of course it was not about bug repositories, project management systems
ERP systems or company intranets
The scientists chose an abstract term - they called it 'transactive memory system'
to which a group of people puts in information
and then can put out things from it
like information on other users
who their teammates are
or information about the status of an ongoing task
or information about the ways to solve a problem they came across
to build a common mental model of the problem they're working on
or just remind they're part of a group of people all the time
however I haven't seen this man for ages, as I've been sitting in another room
but this is the project I've been working on, and there are other people on the other side on the net, working together with me
What can such a generally defined system give us?
This includes all the tools you've been working with
The first and most visible outcome is better memory
which is an advantage for our unreliable organ
situated around here
which can forget things, confuse facts
which cannot put out some observations or names at times
versus a system where I can find gathered information
or meet people who can give it to me
regarding the current problem and how to deal with it
Another aspect, which was measured precisely
is an increase in motivation
and mutual dependability
And this is really mutual, two-sided connection
On the one hand, motivation and dependability
affect the speed of implementation
when we know we'll make use of it together
or generally help finish a task, a project
we'll engage into the implementation as well
On the other hand, having an implemented system
I'm more conscious about being a part of the team
and that we should make it up to the end together
Another factor
this is an interesting one
they checked how users of such systems
who don't see another person directly
react on his or her expertise
It turned out that there are very strong stereotypes
We react one way when we see a photo
of a person of certain sex
seeing how he or she looks like and some description
and we react the other way if this person is of opposite sex and has the same description
If we think in stereotypes
we tend to ignore people's competence
who seem to look unfamiliar
They are then classified
by sex, age, race or location
language and many other aspects
In effect, people less willingly use knowledge management systems
as stereotypes become an implementation barrier
A method on breaking stereotypes is
making teammates interact with each other
and getting to know each other. It turned out
if teammates were able to meet each other in person during the implementation of a system
they worked with this system more willingly afterwards
They asked questions and got into interaction
just because they knew the other people
We are still social animals
like in a savanna
One more thing than can be important for implementations
The efficiency of using a system was measured
in situations of group and individual onboarding
If people learn the new software together
and can share their experience with each other on the fly
impressions, tips and errors
they're more keen on using it after that as well
Maybe it's all about dependability and not being alone with the problem
some new software that no one else has to use
It's a lot easier to adopt a solution if we know we're all into it
and everyone will benefit from using it
or someone else may rely on things I put into it
my knowledge and my responsibility
There are many more such observations, but
but the one that's critical is
that operations depend...
Well, we can maintain collaboration and interactions without software
The problems begin when things scale up
When it happens,
the costs are also going up
and implementing a tool that works and unites a team
causes these costs not to grow exponentially
but in proportion to the growing scale
number of people engaged, documents, tickets or files in the system
Without such a system
we risk that the cost of maintaining
these processes and tasks
will grow exponentially
This is, to sum it up
a common benefit of implementing such tools
So how should we approach
management inspired by science?
This approach questions everything
and requires proof
Based on these examples, other books
and my personal experience
I can name two ways to approach it
The first one is what I call sportsmanship
In professional sports (it's good that we are at a stadium actually)
repetitive actions are observed
and measured by certain parameters
throw distance, speed, strength
or goals number, for example
Then statistics are gathered
which help us generate models allowing
to measure effectiveness
of a sportsman, a team or a strategy
So it's about models
There's a movie called Money Ball
if you haven't seen it, it's about
mathematical approach made a revolution
in such an American sport as baseball
They implemented KPIs and discovered that
players who seemed to be incredibly valuable and were paid high
were in fact mathematically
or statistically not as valuable
and there were many hidden stars who could play
The table you saw on the screen earlier was about
basketball
this one is about baseball
and the big equation that you have here
measures a baseball player's effectiveness
based on his results in previous matches
As you see, to be a coach
you need to know algorithms
at least natural ones
as this one's pretty arithmetic
This is FIP, or Field Individual Pitching
supposedly a common way of measuring players' effectiveness
based on different aspects of their behaviour
The second method...
Oh, sorry. What does it have in common with business?
According to this method, we have to find repetitive actions
try to measure them and build KPIs
Production, and maybe IT to a smaller extent
or logistics and storage
are into statistical tools very much
which measure things precisely
Obviously, we have great variability due to the human factor
but we can predict it, if we categorize work
It can be bug fixing time
or price validity for a module
or profit margin of a project
common risks that occur
When we gather numbers
we can try to make statistical conclusions
This method is reliable when we have lots of data
then the conclusions are precise as well
But the costs of such a model are its weakness
We have to break everything down into small parts
create many repetitive processes and gather data
And then not to follow expert judgement
which is so far the most popular estimation method in projects
but to get interested in how did it look like statistically
during the last couple of projects, contracts or implementations
So the second method
which is used in aviation, in its turn
or maybe just inspired by the approach they used
I found it in a book called "The Black Box Method" - I encourage you to read it
It allowed to get rid of a spectacular number of
aircrashes within last 30 years
The diagram you see shows
the number of crashes for each million flights
If you didn't know it, and I have read it in the book
in 1920, one fourth of cadets
in USA didn't survive the training, which was difficult
Maybe it doesn't happen in IT, but they had such a problem
Don't know which is the percentage with Jira trainings
But you can ask these guys
Deviniti will surely answer you
I advise doing it before the training
And what we managed to achieve within these 30 years
of the Black Box Method implementation
is the situation where aviation
is the less dangerous kind of transport
People are still afraid of flying
There is often footage
of planes hit by rockets or fallen to the ocean
In fact
flying by plane is less dangerous than going to school by bus
So how did they manage do achieve that?
It's well explained in this book
First of all, culture is crucial
of being safe to make and call on mistakes
I'm not afraid of being punished or blamed for making a mistake
The regulations in aviation state that
if I call on an unfollowed procedure within a couple of days
even an intentional error, made because of laziness
I can't be punished, if I call on it and describe the case
just because now the procedure can be modified for the future
If an incident happens
a crash or an aircraft damage
it cannot be investigated against someone
but just to clarify the situation. No one is guilty
The IT industry is slowly adopting similar models which ensure psychological safety
In some companies, "fuckup nights" are practiced
which generally are about sharing project experience
and problems
These can be retros, where we discuss what was happening
The goal is to open people a bit. Building an attitude takes time
This is not a switch which we turn on and people start changing
In teams, it sometimes takes years
but building such an attitude for 30 years caused it to be obvious
If there's an error, I just inform about it
explain the case, and then I get the new procedure which makes me safe
This approach implies eliminating mistakes as a whole
We don't look for a statistical population of errors, don't observe
the last 100 flights and choose which crash to prevent
because of its frequency
After all, it's about people
This approach praises zero tolerance for mistakes
but doesn't blame anyone
So if any situation happens which stands out
from standard procedures
or best practices
we find it immediately and come up with a way to prevent it
so that it's totally impossible
How to surround a procedure with explanations
and how to change the system so there's only one possible way to do things
so I cannot plug a connector into a wrong socket
because that's how it is built
it allows only one way
the right one
There is a tool, don't know if you're familiar with it - FMEA
This is one of the most basic tools
constructed by NASA
for their space program
There is a spreadsheet to observe potential
different factors and reasons for dangerous situations that may occur
and there are scenarios: "OK, if I see this...
...then I react this way in such a situation"
Then I figure out what is the chance that this one happens
and the chance of reacting properly to solve the problem
Anytime I see a possibility for incidents
I have to make another scenario. So huge tables come into play
where we can actually make our company, project or team bulletproof
So this is an approach for unique cases where there are no statistics - zero error tolerance
To sum it up
We often follow best practices in management
or follow some gurus at a conference
or get inspired by a book
or a friend tells us that something works or that we should ignore it
In one company
I received such feedback from a team I worked with
"Our Scrum Master told us that retros are ineffective, so we stopped doing them"
"We have more time now, in fact"
Positive effect, indeed
So these best practices are everywhere
that somebody or something, a tool or a procedure someone recommends
But sometimes it's worth thinking over
if these practices are really helping and reliable
because if we get back to expert judgement, it was studied as well
and this is one of the worst estimation methods ever
Estimation based on our thoughts is very weak and imprecise
In his studies, Philip Tetlock
asked a couple of hundreds of experts questions from their fields
and from other fields for comparison
and then measured their answers
from expert questions and non-expert ones
And there was no difference until the third number after the decimal!
What's more, there were interesting correlations
e.g. experts who often appear in mass media
and are popular, give slightly worse answers and make mistakes more often
So when you watch the news next time and someone says that CHF exchange rate will go this or that way
or that Russia won't attack Crimea, remember it please
What's really crucial about being an expert
is the mindset
We are either open to alternative opinions
or get stuck in the answers we've got before
Few people can think about opposite things at once
and set them together in doubt
This kind of thinking, called "fox thinking" by Tetlock
is increasing effectiveness a lot
along with the predictions' accuracy
So to finalize the speech
maybe you have some questions?
Because I've got one more pleasant thing to say
So thank you very much for your attention
If you'd like to contact me, feel free to drop a line
and ask your questions by email
And together with the organisers of this conference
we've come up with a social contest
which is about teamwork, too
Inside the gadgets which you'll take from the registration desk
you'll find cards
Here are examples, there are dozens of them
They contain information like
"An audit is looking over your dirt in a professional and respectful manner"
And your task
if you want to play with us, will be
to find someone who has got an identical card
the same color and the same text
When you find your other half
go to the registration desk and get the full deck of such cards
so you can play this social game called The Weasel
This is a corporate social game
to have a beer with
don't know if I can talk like this at a professional conference
So I encourage you to find your pairs
look for the same cards
and get your Weasel cards
We've got 100 decks for 50 pairs here today
so we'll give them away
If someone doesn't get it, leave your contact, and we'll send the game to you
So thank you very much!
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