Lasting Behavior Change

Have you ever introduced a new behavior into your life? Maybe a new gym routine, meditation, working habits, ways to deal with emotions, or even the time of day you eat. Did these changes last? If the answer is yes, you probably have mastered the tips in this article. If not, keep reading.

In this article I will be discussing how to obtain lasting change within your Agile Transformation based on a book I read by Charles Duhigg called The Power of Habit.

Sandwich New Behavior

In this book, Charles digs into the music industry and how radio stations knew a song by Outkast would be a top hit but they kept seeing listeners change the station when the song was played. So they had to dig in a bit to understand why. What they found was that people are willing to listen to new music when it is "sandwiched" with another familiar and popular song. So the experiment was to play a popular song by Celine Dion, play the song by Outkast "Hey Ya", and then play another familiar and popular song. When they practiced this, they saw the listeners not only staying tuned but eventually blowing up the charts for Outkast's new song.

So how does this relate to an Agile Transformation? When you implement something new on an Agile Team it would be wise to introduce it with this same "sandwich" philosophy. This might look something like this.

Example 1: The team is already familiar with the work they need to get done and they already work as a team to discuss it/break it down. So you would attend this normal session and as the team is talking about the work you can ask questions like, "ok, so you said we need to first evaluate the VMs to understand which ones we can deprecate correct?". Assuming this is correct, you can jot that down and then ask, "how much effort do you think this is? A month? 6 months?". If the work is a month, you know it is probably the size of a couple Features. Then you can break that into stories and as you do this, you will be introducing the concept of Story Mapping to the team.

Example 2: The team is used to getting requests from people outside of their team to do work but they don't have a Product Owner. But you want to introduce the Iteration Events to help insulate the team and make them more predictable. So when work comes in you ask the team to loop you in. The purpose of looping you in is so that you can create a backlog of the work. With this backlog you schedule a meeting with the team (Backlog Refinement) where you can discuss the work and get it refined more clearly. After the meeting, the team will have more clarity on the work item and you can begin to introduce the other Iteration Events which will help with Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives, and daily discussions of the work amongst the team to ensure they are on track for the goal.

Elephant and the Rider

This book discusses the concept of an Elephant and a Rider which you may have heard in other books or forums. But the gist of this is that the elephant is the larger and more difficult component of your being to control, this is your emotional psyche. Whereas, the Rider is the thought or more analytical psyche. The book describes scenarios where the rider is excitedly steering or riding the elephant until the elephant is no longer having fun. Then they become stubborn and start to do their own thing.

This same thought process applies to Agile Transformations in that when you initially roll out Agile you have this initial excitement and drive. As you move along, Agile isn't so exciting because the extra meetings and change in normalcy becomes tiresome. So employees begin to do their own thing. The key is three-fold: tap into the elephant or emotional psyche, remove obstacles and shorten the distance.

This might look like the following:

1. Thoroughly understand the goal yourself

2. Communicate the goal and how it will benefit the team - tap into emotion

3. Remove any obstacles that will hinder the success of the goal

4. Create small and attainable milestones to reach the goal

5. As the milestones are achieved, celebrate those with the team - also tapping into emotion

In closing, change is difficult but lasting change is even harder. However, with the tips found in Charles' book I believe you can reach a place where change is lasting.