Agile Adoption - 6 Influence Strategies

The vital behaviours for successful software projects (agile or not) are simply these: a) improve communication by co-locating, b) get access to the customer and c) have short delivery cycles. (Read part 1 of this post here). This is so simple, and yet agile adoption continues to be a big question mark for many people and a track is dedicated to the question at Agile2011. So how can we influence these three behaviours?

The second half of the book “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything” (Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan, Switzler) is devoted to the six types of influence strategies you can use to make sure the vital behaviours occur. But first, let’s look at some quotes from the book that describe strategies that we often find ourselves using, but that have been proven to be ineffective:

“When it comes to resistant problems, verbal persuasion rarely works” (No kidding eh?)

“People bet on single-source influence strategies all the time (and fail)”

Understanding that I am a beginner influencer, here is a brief summary of the six influence strategies found in the book with concrete examples of how you can execute these strategies in order to bring about the vital behaviours that will improve the results of your software projects.

1) Make the Undesirable Desirable (Personal Motivation)

If people find the behaviour undesirable then they are not likely to exhibit that behaviour unless you can convince them it is fun. One way to make the behaviour intrinsically satisfying is to turn it into a game. Keeping track of things like velocity and the number of passing tests in a visible area can be a fun way to keep score. As the team has early successes, find fun ways to recognize them for their accomplishments such as completed stories, iterations with decreasing defects and happier customers. One of our teams rings a cow bell when a story is completed and employees cheer when they hear the bell. The team also gives a syphilis stuffed toy to anyone that breaks the build (they can redeem themselves by buying donuts). These are simple ways to make new behaviours fun and desirable.

2) Surpass Your Limits (Personal Ability)

People need to be convinced that they have the ability to make the required changes. Send your team to a hands-on agile training so that they can experience what it is like to work on a project that exhibits these vital behaviours. Make sure that the training is hands-on rather than lecture based. Once the project has started, help your team to gain confidence by starting with short delivery cycles where they are producing working, high quality code (even if only in very small batches). Once the team sees early results they will gain confidence that they can change their approach.

3) Harness Peer Pressures (Social Motivation)

Use peer pressure to your advantage by creating a co-located area. According to one of the studies in the book, “one variable more than any other affected how people behaved: the presences of one more person”. Putting people in a common space with expectations set for the 3 vital behaviours will improve your team’s chances of changing their behaviours. Also, find the opinion leader on your team (the one that has the most respect and influence) and spend a lot of time with that person addressing their concerns. If there are included in the process they will begin to share your ideas with the team and the vital behaviours will occur.

4) Find Strength in Numbers (Social Ability)

We are more likely to be successful when we have a little help from our friends. Create a dedicated team that is responsible for the results and hold the team accountable rather than an individual. Teams that work together are more likely to come up with a plan that will succeed.

5) Design Rewards and Demand Accountability (Structural Motivation)

Any system of rewards can be dangerous. The book is very careful to describe that if the other influence strategies are properly used, rewards need only to be small in order to influence change. A simple strategy would be to create a visual project management board where individuals can move post-its from one column to another as they progress through the steps required to complete each story. Moving a post-it is can symbolize a very small reward that happens during your daily stand-up meetings. Rewards such as the cow bell used above for completed stories can also be simple and effective.

6) Change the Environment (Structural Ability)

Make use of the physical environment to influence the desired change. Create your co-located space so that it encourages people to work together by removing the cubicle walls, office doors, etc. Increase the “propinquity” of your teams and your customers by having them work in the same space. “The best predictor of whether two people will work together is the distance between them.” Additionally, make sure your visual project management board is in a central place and displays some of the common metrics such as velocity, wip limits, and burn down charts. This helps make the invisible visible.

To recap, the Influencer book has some great ideas and strategies on how to influence change. If you are considering how to influence your team to improve their software project results, promote the three key behaviours identified above by using all six influence strategies to make the change inevitable. If your teams are struggling to exhibit the behaviours, consider changing your influence strategies rather than giving up or targeting other behaviours.