How do you effectively scale skill-based, quality training across your organization?

Over the years, I’ve experimented with different ideas/models to scaling skill-based training across an organization. In the last 4 years, I’ve pretty much settled down on the following model. Its very useful when mentoring teams on skills like Test-Drive-Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), Product Discovery, Writing User Stories, Evolutionary Design, Design Patterns, Problem Solving, etc.  I’ve successfully implemented this model at some very prominent fortune 500 enterprises.

* This model assumes that the potential trainer has first-hand working experience on the subject to be trained on. Also we assume they have the basic skill required for effectively delivering any training. We are mostly focusing on building on those 2 basic skills to help them deepen their subject matter expertise and enable them to effectively impart their knowledge.

I curious to know what other models have worked for people and if anyone else has tried this model?

How different is Counseling from Coaching?

Definition: the provision of assistance and guidance in resolving personal, social, or psychological problems and difficulties, esp. by a professional.

While the approach might look very similar, there are 2 key differences:

• Generally people go for Counseling when something is bothering them. So counseling typically focused on trying to find the root-cause of something that occurred in the past. While coaching is mostly focused on achieving a goal/skill in future.
• Counseling can also be used when the person is not really in a mental state to accept coaching.

What about Consulting?

Definition: A senior person in a professional or technical field, engaged in the business of giving advice to others working in the same field.

In my experience, consulting is at a whole different level. Typically as a consultant, I use coaching skills to gain deeper understanding of the situation/context and thus discover the real problem/s, which would help us co-create an agenda/plan to resolve the problem/s. This agenda/plan might consist of more coaching, training and/or mentoring. Its also important to note that sometimes, since the consultant is a subject matter expert, a consultant might be called in to just give their advice or do actually do the work for the client. In the second case, the consultant might not using coaching, training or mentoring at all.

I’ve managed (small and large) teams for some well known companies (including a couple of my own companies.) And through this experience, I’ve learned that mixing “Performance and Appraisals” is like mixing “Drinking and Driving.” In layman’s terms, it’s a stupid idea.

Sounds strange? May I suggest the following video from Daniel Pink, which takes a peak into what motivates individuals and what actually leads to poor performance.

I’m sure you’ve heard these stories before and deep down even agree with it. Yet, everyday we go out of our way to measure the performance of individuals and teams in our organization to decide their salary appraisal at the end of the year.

I’ve yet to meet a single individual how understands how to effectively measure performance. For a creative, problem solving field like software product development, how do you even measure such a thing? Remember output (code, features, bugs, products, etc.) is a lame measure of performance. Outcome and Impact is what matters. But that is hard to measure, so we simply measure what we can, output. And in most cases, output that someone else decided on your behalf.

Unfortunately this a very broadly used management philosophy that kills employee’s motivation everyday. To make matters worse, the employee feedback process is also tightly coupled with the appraisal process.

Why just drink and drive, let’s drink, smoke and fly!

At the beginning of my career, many times my manager would give me some feedback during the appraisal process and this would be the first time I was hearing about it. Indeed an excellent way to motivate and improve employees!

And I still remember the horrors of “Goal/Target setting” at the beginning of the year. My salary appraisal would be based on how well I met my targets. And guess what, I flunked every single time. I’m the only unfortunate person who does not possess a third-eye to see the future and decide what targets would be important. I kept blaming myself until I read Goals Gone Wild.

So what’s the alternative?

Its simple: Don’t mix performance, feedback and salary appraisals. This is what I’ve successfully implemented in a few companies.

So how does it work?

If someone is not performing, they are simply not meant for the job at hand. We can help them by mentoring and guiding them. We can let them select a different project. But after the best of our efforts, if they can’t cut it, they should leave. Its best for both; the organization and the individual. I really mean the last sentence.

At some companies, I was responsible for firing the largest number of employees in the history of the company. By now you must have made up your mind that I’m this evil guy who goes around firing people. Here is the best part, most of the guys I fired, still keep in touch with me and look up to me for advice. I’m really happy seeing them grow in their new organizations. In our organization, they were stagnating and probably feeling an inferiority-complex by high performances around them. So it was best for them to leave and find a place where they can really shine.

In fact, on many highly collaborative teams (like Agile teams) poor performances can’t find a place to hide. They very quickly realize they can’t survive in such an environment. Even before anyone does anything, they are gone.

So once we’ve got rid of the employees who don’t fit into the team/organization from a performance point of view. We are left with a bunch of high performers. Remember there will always be a range in terms of performance. But the range should be too small to be worried about it.

Given that we have a team of high performers, we set up a 360 degree feedback process in the teams, which ensures that every individual is constantly getting feedback to improve. Nothing discussed in a feedback meeting with your reporting manager should be a surprise. It should be something that was discussed on the shop-floor with folks working closing with you on the floor. I call this the “Rule of least Surprise“.

Lastly we need to handle salary appraisals. To me there are 2 parts to salary appraisals:

1. Market Correction – inflation, job market, demand, etc. decides this portion.
2. Profit your product/service is making – Out of the profit, a pre-determined percentage is fixed, which would be shared with the employees. Each team decides how they want to split this percentage amongst themselves. Some teams I’ve worked with, rate each other and then based on the rating the percentages for each person is decided. Some teams just want to equally distribute the profit. Note: The distribution is based on a percentage of their current salary. Which means not everyone gets the same net amount. Employees with higher current salary will get larger amount.

One thing I learned early in my career, when it comes to vitamin M, no matter what you do, you can never make everyone (sometimes none) happy. So instead of you deciding the numbers, fix the high-level numbers based on a transparent process and let the employees take care of how they are going to split the amount.

Last, but the most important learning for me has been around tying salaries with product/service’s profit. This goes a long way in empowering the team to take total ownership and responsibility of what they are working on.

Agile Software Community of India is happy to announce 4 new exciting conferences.

• July 19th and 20th 2013 – Agile Coach Camp Bangalore 2013
• September 21st and 22nd 2013 – Agile Goa 2013
• November 29th and 30th 2013 – Agile Kerala 2013
• February 26th – March 1st 2014 – Agile India 2014

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* Agile Coach Camp is an unconference for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Agile Trainers, Leaders, Change Agents and Mentors. (Last coach camp in June was completely sold out 2 weeks in advance. Since we had a waiting list of 43 coaches, we’ve organized another coach camp in July. Last few seats left – register today – http://booking.agilefaqs.com/accb13/

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* Agile Goa 2013 conference is our 6th Agile Conference in Goa. It will be held at Taleigao Community Centre, Panaji.
Interested in presenting at the conference? Submit your speaker proposals before July 31st. More details: http://agileindia.org/agilegoa2013/proposals
We are also looking for program reviewers, if interested find details at http://agileindia.org/agilegoa2013/proposals

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* Agile Kerala 2013 conference is the FIRST ever Agile and Lean Software Development Conference in Kerala. It will be held at Park Centre, Technopark Campus, Trivandrum.
Interested in presenting at the conference? Submit your speaker proposals before August 31st. More details: http://agileindia.org/agilekerala2013/proposals
We are also looking for program reviewers, if interested find details at http://agileindia.org/agilekerala2013/proposals

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* Agile India 2014 conference is Asia’s largest & premier international conference on Agile and Lean Software Development methods. Unlike previous years, next year, each day has a specific theme. Also each day is a stand-alone event and participants can register for 1 or more days. We’ll limit the participants to max 500 on each day to ensure higher collaboration.
Based on consistent feedback, in 2014, we’ll focus on have more practitioners sharing their Case Studies and Experience Report.

Themes:
** Day 1 – Scaling Agile Adoption
** Day 2 – Offshore/Distributed Agile
** Day 3 – Agile Lifecycle
** Day 4 – Beyond Agile

Currently we are forming the program team. You can apply before June 30th to be a reviewer.

Conference overview presentation: slideshare or PDF

Stay tuned for more…

What: Unconference for Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Agile Trainers, Leaders, Change Agents and Mentors.
When: 7th-8th June 2013
Where: Hotel Ramada, Bangalore
Theme: True Essence of Coaching

Over the last few months, multiple friends and connection from US have asked me to share my experience with pricing Agile related tools and services in Asia (specifically India.) Following is my perspective:

Disclaimer: Asia is the most diverse and dynamic continent out there. Any reasonable generalization is bound to have loopholes. Take it with a pinch of salt.

Since the topic on hand is pricing & positioning agile related services and tools, let’s focus on senior managers at software companies, who are interested & responsible for procuring (or at least recommending) a service or a tool for use inside their company. These folks mostly belonging to upper-middle class or above. Its important to focus on these folks because we can draw the following behavioral patterns based on their profile:

• 1. They are very value-for-money conscious. .i.e. while they are very price conscious these days they are also getting quite brand conscious. Feature-richness or “fully-loaded” appeals to them because they associate it with value-for-money.
• 2. Premium pricing model works well with them. .i.e. price the product or service artificially high in order to encourage favorable perceptions among buyers. Exploits the tendency in buyers to assume that expensive items enjoy
  • an exceptional reputation,
  • are more reliable or desirable,
  • represent exceptional quality and distinction
• 3. If they can’t bargain the price while buying, they feel they did not get a good deal.
• 4. In my experience, Freemium model generally does not work very well. People will somehow find a way to stay on the free plan. Software Piracy is still a notable problem. Things like sharing a license with others is considered wrong, but people will still go ahead and indulge in it. May be because they don’t fully think through the implications or can’t empathize with IP related regulations.
• 5. Price Discrimination strategy appeals to these folks. .i.e. pricing the product differently for different companies. Bigger discount for larger number of licenses is common. But doing something more like: bigger discounts for startups or discounts for specific verticals like Telecom can attract customers.

Based on my experience consulting and coaching IT companies in India, I would categorize Indian IT companies, who are interested in Agile, into the following 5 categories:

• 1. Large Outsourced Services Organization (InfoSys, Wipro, TCS, CTS, HCL, MindTree, TechM, etc.)
• 2. Large ODC (Off-shore development centers) for giant software product companies (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, McAfee, EMC, Philips, Dell, GE, Siemens, VMWare, Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson, Aricent, Huawei, etc.)
• 3. Large ODC for large non-software product/services companies (Banks and Financial Institutes [JP Morgan, Citi, RBS, Fidelity], Store Chains [Tesco, Walmart, Target], Transportation [Volvo, John Deere], etc.)
• 4. Mid-size product and services companies (Directi, SlideShare, ClearTrip, Cactus Global, etc.)
• 5. Startups (Eko, Interview Street, CommonFloor, HelpShift, OlaCabs, Olx, Zomato, etc.)

Category 1 is highly obsessed with process adherence & compliance. Typically they have an internal process & tool which all projects have to use. In addition, clients of most projects might have a different process & tool required. Teams end up using both. Most teams use different tools because there are concerns regarding how much transparency is healthy for an outsource client-vendor relation. They want only limited data to be shared with the clients. In fact in my experience, to ensure company-wide consistency and compliance, most companies even have their own home grown tool/solution to deal with this issue. If majority of customers are using a process/tool, its an easy pitch to the companies to use the same approach, provided there is an easy way to share limited info with clients. Using same process/tool could add to the company’s marketing/credibility pitch. These companies are price conscious, but if the value proposition (better customer acquisition) is shown, they have the budgets to buy the tool or service. Might require multiple rounds of negotiation. They are willing to commit higher numbers if bigger discounts can be offered. Fairly long sales process.

Category 2 is fairly process conscious, but certainly to a lesser extent compared to Category 1. For these companies majority of the process and tool decisions are made by their counter-parts from west. They do have a say, but are not going to make the buying decision. However they can sabotage the process/tool decision if it does not work for them. Because of the “distributed & off-shore” nature of work, their needs might be different from the folks making the decision. These guys appreciate higher attention/care to their specific needs. Sales process tends to be much faster than Category 1.

Category 3 is also very process conscious. They are predominantly cost centers. Any tool or process which can show clear cost saving, better accountability & tracking is a big hit. Buying decisions are jointly made, however offshore folks do have a big say. Typically these folks require quite a lot of customization to the service or tool to fit their specific needs. Sales process tends to be very long.

Category 4 is out of the startup mode, and are the “wanna-be-enterprise” scale. These are in my opinion the best companies to chase for process change and tool adoption. They have the right attitude to change. Typically they also have the cash and they generally don’t bargain much. They have a strong desire to scale and standardize. Perfect pitch for a Industry Leading Tool to come in and steal the deal. Again these guys don’t tend to bargain too much, but if you give them a discount it will help make the decision faster because they are still price conscious. These guys will do a very detailed market study & competitor analysis. If possible, they prefer to pick the best in category. Sales process tends to be either couple of days or 6+ months (extremes.)

Category 5 is the least process conscious. However are very efficiency & savings driven. They won’t even talk to you if they feel the product is priced and targeted at Enterprises. They would assume/feel the product is expensive and too heavy-weight for startups. A clear pitch for startups in your offerings is very important. These folks will hunt you down. Again very price conscious, but can be good brand ambassadors. Sales process does take some time.

Hope this helps. Also would be keen to hear your experience.

Agile India 2013 Conference hosted a total of 904 attendees over the 4 days. These attendees represented the following 195 different companies:

We had participants with 320 different roles at the conference:

Participants from 25 different countries participated in the conference:

They had the following Agile experience:

Number of Years of Experience

In the last couple of months, I’ve got several requests from top-notch product companies in India, asking me to facilitate a hands-on workshop on decision making using Lean-Startup’s hypothesis validation techniques for their Executive and Senior Management. I’m thrilled to know that companies are seriously exploring these options.

Following is a 1-Day workshop which I’ve successfully ran a few times:

Experimentation Driven Decision Making Workshop

Large number of products/services fail today, not because they cannot be built and delivered, but because the entrepreneurs building those products/services are disconnected from the people consuming them. This disconnect, leads to early assumptions about consumer’s behavior and motivations. To one’s surprise, these decisions can turn out to be based on stupid (read as: deadly and risky) assumptions.

Traditionally, entrepreneurs believed that the only way to test their product/service hypothesis was to build the best product/service in that category, launch it, and then observe user behavior. And of course the big bucks spent on marketing campaigns. Surprise! Surprise! This can be a very time consuming & expensive process; not to mention the huge opportunity cost.

(src: Kent Beck)

Luckily today, we know that many entrepreneurs are using Lean-Startup methodology’s Customer Development practices to help them make important product/service decisions (cheaply) based on Validated Learning.

This workshop will give you a hands-on experience to formulate and quickly test out your value and growth hypothesis.

Process/Mechanics

This is a group activity and the participants have to work in small groups.

In the first one hour of the workshop, each group has to come up a product/service idea, which they believe will really succeed. Then they craft out the elevator pitch about the product/service and put together a basic business model. Post that, the group has to clearly highlight what are their value and growth hypothesis.

The rest of the workshop is dedicated to the participants trying to validate their hypothesis. They can use phone and/or Internet to do their research and validation. The best results, of course, are got when the participants meet real people face-to-face to validate your hypothesis. I’ve seen participants wait outside restaurants, cafes, health-clubs, malls, etc. to run their tests. Some participants also get really creative and build some paper prototypes or fake products to validate their hypothesis. Using a fake credit card swiping machine to see if people will really pay is one of my favorite validation techniques so far.

It always amazes me how creative people can get during this process. Also it’s very fulfilling to see the “Aha moment” on the participant’s face. I can’t describe in words, the shocked look on their faces, when they spend the day validating their hypothesis and discover various hidden assumptions about their target user’s behavior.

Learning Outcome

• Learn how to decide which assumptions you MUST absolutely test.
• Understand why just marketing metrics won’t help you make a better product/service.
• Master the art of leveraging the Minimum Viable Product to create maximum validated learning for minimum cost.
• Learn how to systematically decide when to Pivot to a new strategy.

Workshop style

Interactive dialogues, case studies, hands-on group activities, and on-field exercise.