Watercooler moments, and hybrid work

Posted on By Mark Wilson

In last week’s weeknote, I asked a question:

“Much is made of “watercooler moments” as a reason to return to the office (RTO). Well, is there any reason that such moments can’t happen outside the office too?”

I wrote about “coffees” (as a metaphor for meeting up with no agenda), but only this afternoon I witnessed a “watercooler moment” away from the office. Two of my colleagues were on a Teams call, and they discovered that they live only a few streets away from one another. Actually, as the call went on, I realised that 80% of the attendees were in/around the same city (I was the exception).

But what also became apparent to me is how these four people in the same city had different needs – and that travelling to a city centre location was almost easier for me (80 miles away) than it was for some of them!

This is where the subject of this blog post shifts to hybrid work. And it seems that the thing to remember about hybrid work is that what works for one does not necessarily work for another.

It’s complicated

On the one hand, we want to nurture a culture, and to get people working as a team. One way to do that is to co-locate them. But we have distributed teams too. Regionally, nationally or globally. There’s limited value in going to the office if you won’t actually be in the same place as your colleagues. Conversely, there’s an view that you might meet people from a broader cross-section of the company. That holds some merit.

I planned to be in an office tomorrow, then my diary filled up and it looks like I will spend half the day on the same Teams calls I would have attended from home. Is that a good reason to be in the office?

There’s also the view of productivity. Being present in an office isn’t the same as doing good work. Some find it easy to work at home. Others struggle to get motivated. Some find it easier to work in an office. Some struggle with the noise and disruption. Some people have better IT at home (e.g. a faster connection to the Internet).

Some people will say “you used to come to the office before Covid”. But did we? Working patterns have been changing for a while. Even before the pandemic, I was at home or on client sites most of the time. I was rarely at a company location.

And there seems to be an assumption by some that employees took remote or hybrid jobs as if it was some kind of favour, and can now absorb the time and costs associated with commuting. I’ve been contractually based from home since 2005. If I travel to an office, it costs the company money, not me. That may work for a professional services business charging me out on a fee-earning basis, plus expenses. But less so when it’s “everyone into the office x days a week”.

I do feel for those who are starting out or early in their careers. It must be tricky when you don’t see the people you work with. I learned by observing others, and by being shown what to do. We need to find new ways to do that and to nurture people’s growth.

But, for those with caring responsibilities, the flexibility of working from home means they can continue delivering value to the organisation whilst fulfilling the needs of those they care for. As a society, we’re living longer. Those of us in our middle age are sandwiched between the needs of our children and those of our aging parents. And that’s not considering the changes in our ability to work that come with this time of life, for example adapting to deal with the menopause (that’s a whole blog post in itself).

We don’t want to lose good skills to when we really just need to accommodate different people’s needs.

And then there’s the green angle. “How can we be more environmentally-sensitive?”, asks the person responsible for the organisation’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals. Perhaps, by travelling less?

It’s about autonomy

I’ll be the first to admit that 100% remote work doesn’t work for me. And I get a lot from being with others to collaborate on something. Earlier this month I did travel to meet a colleague and “write on the walls”. We got a lot of value from that meeting.

And that’s the nub of it. Not blanket RTO edicts, as I’ve heard mentioned in multiple organisations recently, but autonomy and flexibility. Or, as one Gartner Analyst put it:

“The key to hybrid work is allowing employees the autonomy to work when they want and where they want.”

Gavin Tay, Gartner Inc.

Provide a place for people to meet and collaborate. Provide a place with a desk and decent Internet connection for those who don’t have a suitable workspace at home. Encourage people to come together. But be clear what it is you are trying to achieve. If the answer involves filling up rows of hot desks, then you may want to think again.

Related posts

It seems this is a topic I keep returning to (I clearly have Opinions on the topic), so here’s some posts I wrote earlier:

Featured image by Israel Andrade on Unsplash.

Taking time “off sick”

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 3 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

My family has had various lurgies over the last few days. Stomach bugs, sore throats, colds but mostly feeling “non-specific urgh”. Or just “meh”.

It might have been the ‘rona, but we all tested negative so it’s more likely that 18 months of not mixing with other humans means that, when we do, we pick up their germs and get ill.

After a weekend of broken sleep and with a headache and a sore throat, I needed some rest and I called in sick at work.

Pressure to work

I’ve been based from home for a long time. Remote work is not a new thing for me that started with the pandemic (although exclusively working from home is). A side effect of that is that I rarely take time “off sick”. I might not be well enough to travel to an office and mix with others (potentially making them ill too), but I can generally drag myself to my laptop and push some emails around. And anyway, what about that meeting? Or, if I don’t do that work today, it will only add pressure later in the week. Normally, I’d dose myself up on paracetamol (or similar) and “man up”.

Except, is that really a good mindset? If I’m not bringing my a-game to work, then maybe I should rest up and come back when I am properly fixed. Take some time to recover, step away from the screen. Unfortunately, because I felt able to do something, I felt like a fraud.

I got back from the pharmacy and had woken up. Maybe I could (should?) just check those emails?

Whilst I’m very disciplined at keeping away from work on my weekends and holidays, it was a lot harder when I wasn’t feeling well, but I wasn’t completely ill and confined to bed either.

Is this just a sad indictment of modern life? Implied pressure to contribute at all times. Being a consultant and knowing that it’s an important month and every billable day counts. Or, as one person (who I’ll let remain anonymous) put it:

“You definitely shouldn’t be feeling you have to work because years of conditioning of the UK workforce has led us to a place where unless a limb is hanging off you’re ‘fine’.”

Get well soon

In the end, it was these wise words that I decided to stick by:

“Commit one way or the other. It’s horrible when you half commit to work and half commit to putting your feet up and do neither very well. (Get some rest).”

And, when I got back to work after some proper rest and recuperation, I could bring my a-game with me.

Featured image: author’s own.

Weeknote 14/2021: A week off work

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

This week has been spent at home. Mostly. It also involved some time wrapped in blankets in friends’ and family’s gardens, as England and Wales return to some degree of limited socialisation but northerly winds mean it’s still pretty chilly. Actually, it was snowing as I started to write this blog post.

As I mentioned last week, there were a few things planned for my time away from work. I celebrated a birthday on Monday. I had the final assessment for my First Aid Essentials in Sport certification on Tuesday. Then, Saturday was my first experience of coaching a group of young people to help them develop their cycling skills. It was… interesting. Oh well, they do say that practise makes perfect…

This week in tech

I haven’t really got much to report this week from the world of tech except:

  • After helping my youngest son out with renewing his Xbox Live Gold subscription (hint: CDkeys is your friend), he found that some updates in Minecraft were conflicting with the Windows Family Safety settings. That can be a minefield, but the error message directed me to the “Minecraft Realms and Multiplayer Troubleshooting” page on the Microsoft website, which helped me adjust the settings. The “I’m Getting an Error When Trying to Play Multiplayer with a Child Account” page makes it even easier to work out what to change, although I was able to leave the Privacy settings as they were (so only his friends can contact him by voice or text). Kudos to Microsoft for making it easy to work out what we needed to do.
  • I also got pretty frustrated with the limitations on my Apple Watch pairing with various old iPhones (or not). The end result is, I’m still selling my iPhone 8 Plus (which still has some residual value) and I’ve bought an iPhone SE for my wife. Expect to see a blog post here soon on the fun and games of moving cross-platform (I switched to Android when I bought a Samsung Galaxy S20 last year). Spoiler: don’t do it unless you really like messing around with tech and various platform lock-ins.
  • Apps asking for feedback really should be more considerate about when they interrupt your workflow:
  • Vodafone let us know that our monthly broadband is going up by £3 a month and by 3.9% above inflation. Apparently, that’s to cover the extra costs of running their network, but it seems to something that many providers are doing now…

Elsewhere in my life

Without going into specific details about my family’s medical history, Mark Booth at Body Limits is bloody brilliant. After just one session with Mark, my son could feel a tremendous difference in the knee pain he had been suffering whilst cycling.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure if carpentry and power tools are “tech” or not, but:

  • I found that drilling holes through plywood can easily split the face of the wood. The trick is to stop, just as the centre of the drill starts to emerge, and then use that centre hole to drill back in the opposite direction.
  • This video was handy as I fought with a jigsaw I’d borrowed from a friend. I had seriously started to doubt my blade-fitting abilities as I got through four of them to slice a sizable hole between two sets of shelves:

More thoughts on hybrid and remote working

I’ve been pretty open about my thoughts on remote and hybrid working and it’s only a few months since I wrote this post musing about the future of the office. This week, I saw The Economist had an interesting video on some of the challenges of working from home:

I was particularly pleased to see they called out having good home working facilities as a privilege many do not have and the consequential need for hybrid working (not just remote). Meanwhile, for those who can go fully remote, The Republic of Croatia is offering a Digital Nomad visa for a year…

Back in Blighty, my friend Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70) was finally pushed over the edge with one online meeting too many:

“By removing the last filter of meeting organisation, the meeting room, we probably are organising more meetings than ever before.”

Matt Ballantine: “Zoomed Out”

And, as for the impact of remote work on our mental health… maybe let’s consider it’s not just remote working that’s been introduced to our lives over the last 13 months but also a whole load of other restrictions on social contact:

This week in photos

Weeknote 12/2021: IT architecture, design thinking and hybrid work

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve tried writing weeknotes a few time over the years and they have been pretty sporadic. So, let’s give it another go… this should probably be weeknote 28 (or something like that) but it seems last year I named them after the week number in the year… so let’s try that again.

Because I haven’t done this for a while, let’s add some bonus notes for last week too…

Last week:

This week:

  • I published my long-form blog post on developing IT architecture skills, spun out from conversations with Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70) but also part of the work I’m doing to develop my team at risual.
  • My technical training was interrupted to complete the Microsoft Catalyst pre-sales training. It started off as what I may have described as a “buzzword-filled gamified virtual learning experience”. Then, I started to learn some consulting skills as Rudy Dillenseger brought Design-Led Thinking (aka Design Thinking) to life.
  • It was interesting to see Microsoft recommending the use of Klaxoon with Teams when facilitating remote workshops, which made me speculate about the future of Microsoft Whiteboard.
  • Was a week of virtual calls – even in the evenings. I had Zoom calls with British Cycling and for some financial advice but also a really pleasurable couple of hours on Signal chatting with an old mate I haven’t seen or spoken to in a while, who now lives overseas. It was definitely one of those moments when I appreciated a good friendship and it made me think “we should do this more often”.
  • Just when I thought I’d handed off some project management duties to a real PM, they bounced back at me like a boomerang…
  • The UK Government’s comments on returning to work (ahem, we have been working, just not in the office) reminded me of a post I wrote at the start of the year. Hybrid working is the future folks – we ain’t going back to 2019…

The last couple of weeks’ photos

What’s the future of the office?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

2020 saw huge changes in the way that we work. The COVID-19 novel coronavirus forced home working for millions of people, and left office blocks empty for weeks or months at a time. As we enter 2021, will that change? And will we ever go back to our previous work patterns?

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’d have to answer that with a “yes” to the question of change and a “no” to the return to 2019 working patterns.

Unfortunately for commercial landlords (and so for large chunks of our pension funds), the genie is out of the bottle. Remote and flexible working is now normal. Physical distancing requirements mean that offices can’t operate at their previous capacity. We simply cannot go back to a world whether offices squeeze people into banks of hot desks based on a 6 desks for every 10 people model. And as for lifts – pah! You’d better get used to climbing the stairs.

Even my rather poor fortune-telling skills come to the conclusion that we have to find a new way to use office space. And conversation with others more intellectual than I has led me to the conclusion that, rather than offices being the place for people to meet and come together to do work, they will be the places of safety for those who cannot work at home.

Offices as a meeting space

In April 2020, I’d probably have said that we still need somewhere to go and meet. Humans need contact, and some of our best work is done together. I’m itching to go back into an office, grab some pens and write on the walls, as I get increasingly excited by a concept and thrash out the details with my colleagues.

As 2020 continued, we got used to doing everything on a small screen. Whilst I seem to hear nothing but universal hatred for Microsoft Whiteboard (personally, I can’t see the problem) and tools like Miro are lauded as the latest and greatest, we are getting used to working as remote teams.

The problem comes when we have a hybrid approach with groups of people “in the room” and groups outside, as Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70) has noted on multiple occasions, including the Twitter thread below:

Offices as a place of security

Some work needs to be performed in a secure environment. Arguably that could still be remote (digitally secure) but if analogue paperwork is involved then that could be a challenge.

And not everyone has a place at home in which to work, securely. For some, a kitchen counter, shared with children for their homework, may not be the best place for work. Similarly those who live with parents or in a shared house with friends may only have a bedroom in which to work. If your work is harrowing (e.g. social work), do you really want to sleep in the same room?

We need to provide a place for people to work who don’t have the option of remote work. Offices will continue to function for that purpose and it’s entirely possible that making these spaces COVID-secure will see “hot desks” return to single-person occupation.

The rise of localism

Many people are concerned about the impact of reduced office working on local businesses. What about the cleaners (if anything, they have more to do)? What about the sandwich shops? What will this mean for the country’s future transport needs?

Whilst I have genuine sympathy for the independents that are no-doubt struggling with reduced footfall and enforced closures, or partial closures, that sympathy does not extend to the Pret a Mangers and Wetherspoons of our identikit town centres. I am concerned for the people that work in these businesses but not for the corporates that own them.

But, for every pound that’s not spent in big towns and cities, there’s another that’s spent in a local economy somewhere else. The small town where I live appears to be thriving – people who previously commuted and simply weren’t in the town during weekdays now use the Thursday market and the local shops. The local coffee shop has even opened new branches.

We’ve also seen banks, for example, starting to bring spaces above branches into use as local touchdown centres, rather than encouraging workers to commute to large offices in major towns and cities.

This rise of the local economy is good for society in general and good for finding a work-life balance.

Helping people to do their best work

Perhaps the real purpose of the office is to help people to do their best work. That may take a variety of forms but it’s also where technology can help. We need to provide the safe working environment. We need to provide the collaboration spaces, whilst remaining physically distanced. We need to keep people communicating.

  • The way we work has changed and we cannot rely on being co-located.
  • “Working out loud” has to be the operating model, supported by flexible technology and processes that encourage collaboration.
  • And services provided across the Internet are now at the heart of this transformation.

Some Business Transformation may be required, to make sure the processes can keep up with new ways of working – but, whatever the future of the office is, we can be sure of continued change over the coming months and years.

Acknowledgements

Large parts of this post are based on conversations with Matt Ballantine and others on the WB-40 Podcast WhatsApp group. Thanks to Matt and to Chris Weston for the inspiration and for providing this community where we often work out loud, in digital safety.

Featured image by MichaelGaida from Pixabay.

What does it mean to work flexibly?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

2020 has brought many things – not all of them welcome – but for many office workers one of the more significant changes has been the acceptance of working from home.

Of course, there are many jobs that can’t be carried out remotely but, for a lot of people, the increased flexibility that comes with home working is a benefit. For others, it may be less welcome – for example those who do not have a regular place to work from, or who share a house with family who are also competing for the same resources. That means that offices continue to have a role but we’re not quite sure what that is yet. One thing does seem certain: it will continue to evolve over the coming months.

Outputs, not inputs

I’ve been fortunate to have worked from home for some of the time for many years. I’ve been contractually based from home since 2005 but even before then I tried to work from home when I could. What I’ve seen in 2020 is organisations where managers previously wouldn’t allow their teams to work from home being forced to accept change. Very quickly. A culture of “presenteeism” was often rife and sometimes still is. Some organisations have transferred poor office-based culture to a poor online culture but others have embraced the change.

Moving to remote work means providing flexibility. That certainly means flexibility in where work takes place, but it may also mean flexibility in when the work happens.

My own work is contractually 30 hours over a 4 day working week. In reality, it’s not based on hours, it’s based on outputs – and I put in what is needed in order to deliver what is expected of me. That will almost always take more hours – and sometimes there’s a fine balance. Sometimes, I have to say “enough”. I’ve learned that modern work is never “done”, just that priorities change over time. And, as a manager, I have to look for the signs in my own team’s workload and be ready to reassign work or adjust priorities if someone is overloaded whilst a colleague has gaps.

Crucially, I don’t need my team to be in front of me to manage them.

“Working hours”

Similarly, many of us no longer need to be tied to the “9 to 5”. Some roles may require staffing at particular times but, for many office workers, meetings can be scheduled within a set of core hours. For organisations that work across time zones, that challenge of following the sun has been there for a while. Avoiding the temptation to work extended days over multiple time zones can be difficult – but, conversely, working in bursts over an extended period may work for you.

I’m mostly UK-based and nominally work on UK time. For many years, I’ve had an unwritten rule that I don’t arrange meetings first- or last-thing in the day, or over lunch. If that means that all of my meetings are between 09:30 and 12:00 or between 14:00 and 16:30, that’s fine. A solid day meetings is not good. Especially when they are all online!

Before 09:30 people with chlldren may be on the school run. Those with other dependents may have other responsibilities. Everyone is entitled to a lunch break. At the end of the day there may be other commitments, or maybe another meeting is just not going to get the best out of people who have already been in back-to-back Microsoft Teams calls.

Often, I’ll return to work in the evening to catch up on things. That’s not to say I expect others to. I actually have a disclaimer on my email which says:

“My working hours may not be your working hours.  Please do not feel any pressure to reply outside of your normal work schedule. Also, please note that I do not normally work on Fridays. Another member of the risual team will be happy to assist in my absence.”

It’s about setting expectations. In a previous role, I wrote about my email SLA but people shouldn’t feel pressured to respond immediately to email. As a former manager once told me:

“Email is an asynchronous communication mechanism over an unreliable transport.”

[Mark Locke, Fujitsu, approx 2010]

When working across time zones, that’s particularly important but we should also be empowered to work when it works for us.

For me, I’m not great at getting up in the morning. I often get into flow in the late afternoon and work into the evening.

So, whilst I’m sure messages like this one in Microsoft Outlook from My Analytics are well-intentioned, I don’t find them helpful because they are based on the concept of “working hours”. Yes, I could delay send, but what if that person likes to start their day early?

My Anaytics prompt in Microsoft Outlook to consider delaying an email until working hours.

On the basis that email should not be time-sensitive (use a chat-based medium for that – maybe even a phone), it shouldn’t matter when it’s sent, or received. The workplace culture needs to evolve to prevent the “I sent you an email” response from being acceptable. “Ah, thank you. I haven’t seen that yet but I’ll make sure I watch out for it and respond at an appropriate moment.”.

Time to adjust our expectations?

So, in a world of increased flexibility, with colleagues working at a time and place that works for them, we all need to adjust our expectations. I suggest thinking not about when a message is sent but instead about whether email is actually the right medium. And, as for whether we need a meeting or not… that’s a whole blog post in itself…

Featured image by congerdesign from Pixabay.

Weeknote 21/2020: work, study (repeat)

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Another week in the socially-distanced economy. Not so much to write about this week as I spent most of it working or studying… and avoiding idiots who ignore the one-way system in the local supermarket…

Some more observations on remote working

It’s not often my tweets get as much engagement as this one did. So I’m putting it on the blog too (along with my wife’s response):

My “Build Box”

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch the Microsoft Build virtual event this week. I’m sure I’ll catch up later but it was great to receive this gift from Microsoft – it seems I was one of the first few thousand to register for the event:

Annual review

This week was my fifth anniversary of joining risual. Over that time I’ve watched the company grow and adapt, whilst trying to retain the culture that made it so strong in the early days. I don’t know if it’s possible to retain a particular culture as a business grows beyond a certain size but I admire the attempts that are made and one of those core tenets is an annual review with at least one if not both of the founding Directors.

For some, that’s a nerve-wracking experience but I generally enjoy my chat with Rich (Proud) and Al (Rogers), looking back on some of the key achievements of the last year and plans for the future. Three years ago, we discussed “career peak”. Two years ago it was my request to move to part-time working. Last year, it was my promotion to Principal Architect. This year… well, that should probably remain confidential.

One thing I found particularly useful in my preparation was charting the highs and lows of my year. It was a good way to take stock – which left me feeling a lot better about what I’d achieved over the last 12 months. For obvious reasons, the image below has had the details removed, but it should give some idea of what I mean:

Another exam ticked off the expanding list

I wrapped up the work week with another exam pass (after last week’s disappointment) – AZ-301 is finally ticked off the list… taking me halfway to being formally recognised as an Azure Solutions Architect Expert.

I’ll be re-taking AZ-300 soon. And then it looks like two more “Microsoft fundamentals” exams have been released (currently in Beta):

  • Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900).
  • Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900).

Both of these fit nicely alongside some of the topics I’ve been covering in my current client engagement so I should be in a position to attempt them soon.

Weeknote 20/2020: back to work

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Looking back on another week of tech exploits during the COVID-19 coronavirus chaos…

The end of my furlough

The week started off with exam study, working towards Microsoft exam AZ-300 (as mentioned last week). That was somewhat derailed when I was asked to return to work from Wednesday, ending my Furlough Leave at very short notice. With 2.5 days lost from my study plan, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that I ended my working week with a late-night exam failure (though it was still a disappointment).

Returning to work is positive though – whilst being paid to stay at home may seem ideal to some, it didn’t work so well for me. I wanted to make sure I made good use of my time, catching up on personal development activities that I’d normally struggle to fit in. But I was also acutely aware that there were things I could be doing to support colleagues but which I wasn’t allowed to. And, ultimately, I’m really glad to be employed during this period of economic uncertainty.

Smart cities

It looks like one of my main activities for the next few weeks will be working on a Data Strategy for a combined authority, so I spent Tuesday afternoon trying to think about some of the challenges that an organisation with responsibility for transportation and economic growth across a region might face. That led me to some great resources on smart cities including these:

  • There are some inspirational initiatives featured in this video from The Economist:
  • Finally (and if you only have a few minutes to spare), this short video from Vinci Energies provides an overview of what smart cities are really about:

Remote workshop delivery

I also had my first experience of taking part in a series of workshops delivered using Microsoft Teams. Teams is a tool that I use extensively, but normally for internal meetings and ad-hoc calls with clients, not for delivering consulting engagements.

Whilst they would undoubtedly have been easier performed face-to-face, that’s just not possible in the current climate, so the adaptation was necessary.

The rules are the same, whatever the format – preparation is key. Understand what you’re looking to get out of the session and be ready with content to drive the conversation if it’s not quite headed where you need it to.

Editing/deleting posts in Microsoft Teams private channels

On the subject of Microsoft Teams, I was confused earlier this week when I couldn’t edit one of my own posts in a private channel. Thanks to some advice from Steve Goodman (@SteveGoodman), I found that the ability to delete and/or edit messages is set separately on a private channel (normal channels inherit from the team).

The Microsoft Office app

Thanks to Alun Rogers (@AlunRogers), I discovered the Microsoft office app this week. It’s a great companion to Office 365 (or , searching across all apps, similar to Delve but in an app rather than in-browser. The Microsoft Office app is available for download from the Microsoft Store.

Azure Network Watcher

And, whilst on the subject of nuggets of usefulness in the Microsoft stable…

A little piece of history

I found an old map book on my shelf this week: a Halford’s Pocket Touring Atlas of Great Britain and Ireland, priced at sixpence. I love poring over maps – they provide a fascinating insight into the development of the landscape and the built environment.

That’s all for now

Those are just a few highlights (and a lowlight) from the week – there’s much more on my Twitter feed…

Weeknote 19/2020: Azure exam study, remote working, and novelty video conference backgrounds

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Another week in the furloughed fun house…

Studying

I still have a couple of exams I’d like to complete this month. I’ve been procrastinating about whether to take the Microsoft Azure Architect exams in their current form (AZ-300/301) or to wait for the replacements (AZ-303/304). As those replacements have been postponed from late April until the end of June (at least), I’ve booked AZ-300/301 and am cramming in lots of learning, based on free training from the Microsoft Learn website.

I’m sure it’s deeper (technically) than I need for an Architect exam, but it’s good knowledge… I just hope I can get through it all before the first exam appointment next Thursday evening…

Thoughts on remote working during the current crisis

I’ve seen this doing the rounds a couple of times on Twitter and I don’t know the original source, but it’s spot on. Words to live by in these times:

  1. You’re not “working from home”. You’re “At your home, during a crisis, trying to work” [whilst parenting, schooling, helping vulnerable people, etc.].
  2. Your personal physical, mental and emotional health is far more important than anything else right now.
  3. You should not try to compensate for lost productivity by working longer hours.
  4. You will be kind to yourself and not judge how you are coping based on how you see others coping.
  5. You will be kind to others and not judge how they are coping based on how you are coping.
  6. Your success will not [should not] be measured in the same way it was when things were normal.

This animation may also help…

Also, forget the 9-5:

As for returning to the office?

Video conference backgrounds

Novelty backgrounds for video conferences are a big thing right now. Here are a couple of collections that came to my attention this week:

Upgrades to the Zwift bike

My old road bike has been “retired” for a year now, living out its life connected to an indoor trainer and used for Zwifting. It’s needed some upgrades recently though…

I also realised why I struggled to do 90km on the road today… that was my fifth ride this week, on top of another 100km which was mostly off-road!

When is agile not Agile? And why Waterfall is not always wrong!

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 5 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

In 2004 (when I started writing this blog), I was working for a company called conchango*. The developers talked a strange language – about Scrum and XP – and it was nothing to do with Rugby Union or Windows but it did have something to do with sprints…

That was my first encounter with Agile software development methodologies. Not being a coder, I haven’t done a huge amount of agile development, with the infrastructure projects I’ve been involved in generally being run using a traditional “waterfall” approach.

These days, things are different. There’s a huge push for Agile projects and the UK Government Digital Service’s Service Manual even says:

“You must use the agile approach to project management to build and run government digital services.

Agile methods encourage teams to build quickly, test what they’ve built and iterate their work based on regular feedback.”

Agile and government services: an introduction

There’s also a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Colleagues and clients alike are using the word “agile” in different ways. And there’s an undertone that agile is the one true way and waterfall is bad.

No!

Agile/agile/agility

Let’s start off by comparing uses of the word “agile” (in IT) and what they mean:

  1. Agile (big A) often relates to a methodology – for example APMG International’s AgilePM project management methodology or the AgileBA approach to business analysis – but really they have their roots in Agile software development, with the Agile Manifesto, written in 2001.
  2. When we talk about being agile (small a), it’s a mindset: the approach taken. Literally, being able to adapt to change and to move quickly. We might use Agile (big A) approaches to help increase our agility (small a).
  3. Agility is about reaction to change. Many business want to be agile. That doesn’t mean they only run projects with Agile approaches. It means they want the ability to flex and change in line with business requirements.
  4. And then there’s the UK public sector. Specifically Police, who for some reason refer to what the rest of us consider to be remote/mobile working as agile working (as shown in this Agile Working Policy from West Yorkshire Police). That’s just an anomaly.

So that’s Agile/agile/agility sorted then. There are Agile frameworks/methodologies/approaches to delivering outcomes in a more agile manner, to increase organisational agility.

Agile=good, waterfall=bad?

Now waterfall. If Agile, is the one true way, waterfall must be old hat and avoided at all costs, right?

Not at all.

Agile projects work well for quickly creating a minimum viable product (MVP) and iterating development – for example as a series of sprints. They are great when there is a known problem but the requirements are less clear. The solution can evolve in line with the definition of the requirements. The requirements may change as the solution develops: respond to market changes; adapt to new requirements; fail fast.

But some projects are less defined. In a 2018 blog post, Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70) referred to unknown problems with unknown solutions as tinkering. That seems fair – if you don’t know what the issue is, then you can’t have a solution!

Similarly, unknown problems with a known solution. That’s nonsense. Or “WTF?” as Matt so succinctly puts it in his 2×2 diagram:

Matt Ballantine's 2x2 diagram of which path to take, including Agile and Waterfall approaches
Matt Ballantine’s 2×2 for which path to take, including Agile and Waterfall approaches (used with kind permission).

You’ll see though, that there is a place for waterfall project management. Waterfall works when there is a known problem and a known solution. Instead of constantly iterating towards an end, work out the steps to go straight there. It will almost certainly be more efficient. Waterfall projects are based on the golden triangle of time/cost/quality (which together define scope). A known deliverable (scope) bounded by how fast/cheap/good you want it to be – and there’s always a trade-off.

So there we have it. Agile is not a silver bullet and there is still a place for waterfall projects.

What to use, when?

In my line of work, Cloud Transformation might appear to use a combination of Agile and Waterfall approaches. We might create a virtual datacentre in Azure or AWS and take an iterative approach to migrating workloads but that’s still really just Waterfall with incremental delivery – even if a Kanban approach is used to inject some urgency! Similarly migrating batches of mailboxes to the cloud is just iteration, as is a programme that’s adopting Office 365 workloads one by one. An Agile approach comes into its own when we think about Business Transformation, or Digital Transformation, where we can define an MVP and then use sprints to iterate development of a set of new business processes or the digital tools to deliver those processes in a new way.

Further reading

For a clear definition of Cloud, Business and Digital Transformation, see my blog post from last year: “Digital Transformation – it’s not about the Technology“.

* The small c is not a typo – that was the branding!