This week I had several opportunities to speak with people about Agile.

As I listened to yet another discussion about Agile there were several things about the conversation that just really stuck out to me. It started with one strong idea of which I just couldn't seem to let go:

Agile is great under the umbrella of strong leadership. If the direction, metrics or criteria for success aren't well understood and broadly accepted across the organization, then returns on investment and efficiencies will likely not be realized.

In high-performing companies the gestalt is achieved when the employees are empowered to self-direction and a feeling of ownership. Even in these companies, that sense of empowerment and value is only powerful as the individual choices and decisions can be aligned to the bigger vision of the organization as a whole. When the vision or mandates of the organization aren't clearly articulated or fail to be fully accepted within the ranks, then organizations experience churn and confusion. Without alignment to a bigger mission, the agendas from the various levels of management tend to begin conflicting and drifting as individual interpretations of value and success criteria are formed. This churn due to conflicting expectations makes it easier for issues to hide and for misalignment to go unchecked for increasing periods of time.

Even in cases where misalignment is uncovered, the process needed to achieve consensus can then take longer and without strong leadership won't necessarily drive the business impact needed for growth or even sustainment.

This then is the crux. Leadership is essential for achieving business value. You can use Agile processes to seek business value, but without strong leadership you will find the criteria for success shifting too often and hiding behind the easy process of consensus building.

To bring this back to the Agile conversations, I was feeling frustration with the reactive nature of those who ascribe to the Agile approaches. They espouse this easy-going attitude of reaction in which direction, strategy, and even the definition of business value are left completely to the client. This zen-like state in which the Agile practitioner responds fluidly to the changing and ethereal nature of the client demands is unnatural and impractical. Business value is unlocked by making the hard choices, by understanding the elements of the business value and capability chain better than everyone else and leveraging that unfair advantage.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Simply put, it is called work because it IS hard. It's painful and requires discipline. If you are choosing to avoid the hard choices you are inevitably giving up the business advantages, wasting opportunities, and releasing accountability. Live in a reactive mode long enough and you remove the incentive to estimate well, to live up to commitments, and to deliver beyond expectations.

As everyone in technology knows, regardless of how long a task should take, it always takes at least as long as the plan said it should. We don't finish early, we just fill up the extra time with more stuff and junk. We test a little more, refine a little more, increase scope if necessary. If you aren't pushing the boundary and requiring unreasonable attainment, then you'll never get it either.

When it comes to Agile, I embrace the incremental nature. I covet the consensus of reactive expectations. I do not respect the reduced commitment to discipline, the minimization of leadership, or the dismissal of accountability afforded a facilitator. As Harry would say, "If you are going to come, come correct." Harry can be very wise.

When you hit crunch time on a project, the stress increase has the wonderful effect of showcasing the individual contributions which aren't always apparent. Strengths and weaknesses are illuminated most when risk (and therefore stress) is highest.

You may have heard others talk about stress as a way to weed out those who can't cut it. To identify those people with weaknesses and therefore cull them. Increasing stress works both ways, you can spot both weaknesses and strengths this way. The difference between smart people and lazy people is what they do with this information.

Surely, you can remove people based on their weaknesses, but is that really the best way to get top performers? Not in my experience, and I'm not the only one. A whole slew of authors are writing about this balance between strength and weakness. For example, Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, or Teach With Your Strengths by Rosanne Liesveld , Jo Ann Miller , and Jennifer Robison.

Historically, the path to improvement has always been through building up your weak areas, not downplaying them (or better yet, avoiding them entirely!). We give people feedback on the areas they aren't performing, ostensibly so they'll get better.

When was the last time you got a review or feedback that focused on what you did well and only glossed over how you could improve? We have been obsessed with it, and therefore churn out contributors who try and be well-rounded or generic, living in constant fear their weaknesses will be exposed. Because of this close-mindedness, they are never able to pour themselves headlong into their strengths. Like a fly buzzing around, they are constantly distracted by their weaknesses, so they never put full force into their punches.

This is most definitely not how I give feedback. If I'm going to spend energy and time to think about and communicate my analysis of someone else, it is going to be practical. We will celebrate your accomplishments and spend time talking about how you can use the things you do well to really knock peoples socks off and be smashingly successful. Then maybe if you have really pissed someone off or are offensively negligent in some area, we'll mention how you can either avoid those situations, or how to minimize the damage when they happen. There is no sense trying to make a surgical scalpel into a hammer.

For my own performance, the same rules apply. Certainly I am critical of my failures and short-comings, but only as they distract from my ability to perform with my strengths to their maximum potential. Rather then dwell on not being a white guy with shiny, gleaming, perfect teeth, bushy hair, a perfect handshake and who looks at home in a suit, I play my geeky, straight-shooter, mushroom-like role to the hilt. And then I bring a white guy with full hair, a nice tie, and a firm handshake to the meeting. He talks his white-guy talk and does the secret handshakes so I can focus on the important details necessary for us to actually deliver.

When we try and force people into being generic and "well-rounded" we are really asking them to knock off their typically square edges so you can shove them into your round holes. I like my edges and try to respect the edges of others.

No one can do it all. Recognize what you can do really well and then avoid or compensate for the rest.

The view is gorgeous, I only wish I could be out in it instead of under florescent lights indoor.

Ferries at night are my favorite.

The crew from Bangers and Cash were chilling in the overcast drizzle of Seattle.

Their beats are tight, lyrics ludicrous, and they squander their talent on a couch near Greenlake.

But the roomie is hot. Good thing I'm not a creeper.

I had a great opportunity to say what's up to my boy who was playing tonight at The Tractor.

Josh and Scot hanging out is very reminiscent of good days.

This was a hard post for me write. It will be a difficult post for many to read.

This past week I had the immense pleasure of heading with some friends on a vacation to Las Vegas for my birthday. It was, quite simply, one of the most fun times I've ever had in my life.

The coming home however, shredded my heart in a multitude of tiny lacerations. It was in the tone of voice and the raised eye-brows. It was even in the subtle teasing and prodding of my beloved father "They call it Sin City, do you know that?" The words he spoke in humor and jest, but unspoken chastisement was a familiar lash.

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.
-- John 17:14-16

Don't misunderstand; I am of a singular mind and resolved in my convictions. The peace I found for my own walk is still blown about by the judgments of others. When presented with their own questioning, it makes me second-guess myself as well. As it should. It is not my wish to cause another to stumble. I want only to bring Him glory. As a lamb amongst the wolves, it requires constant vigilance and sacrifice.

I want to be in the world. It is where I live. Where those I would serve reside. How else to lead a rich, full life, amongst those I care about most deeply if not alongside them. If I'm not willing to walk their shoes and share their lives, what makes me qualified to serve?

It is in these amazing times of bonding and recreation that you see clearly what motivates and moves people. When faced with so many compromises, the knife-edged morality we wield stands out in sharp relief.

I am not so naïve as to think this isn't a slippery slope. The dangers of spending too much time amidst the temptations of the world are very real to me. The apostle was clear that we can rationalize almost any worldly behavior given sufficient motivation. Just because it's tempting, just because it's hard, doesn't mean we can just close ourselves off and reject relationships and lifestyles that we are not our own. Just spending a weekend of self-indulgent relaxation does not mean I'm going to end up with a needle in my arm or catch herpes. You can get rowdy and wild without losing your inner compass.

The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
-- 1 John 2:17

So I partied in Vegas. But I still served my friends. My faith is intact and most of my dignity. I am surely in this world. It's my hope I stand apart from it.

Evidently there is something called the Shampoo Effect. Drew introduced me to it while sippin' her Bloody Mary with built in Garden Salad.

The idea is that much like when you wash your hair and you have a little shampoo left in your hair. It only takes a little bit of water to totally rehydrate and get a whole lather going.

So on the day after, you just need a little drink to bring back the whole thing from the night before.

I need to investigate a little and prove the theory but it sounds good.

They like beer andI don't. But it's my birthday week so we're not drinking beer. Of course, you can't get them to put down the texting even in a cool environment.

It's how the roll and I love 'em for it.

Lately, I've been really paying attention to how much functionality you can reuse for free from major players. For example, you can check out the various Google APIs (http://code.google.com/)and the Yahoo! User Interface Library (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/). These libraries are free, released via Open Source licenses, and offer ridiculous amounts of functionality.

As a developer, I love the idea of being able to leverage the work of other people. Most of the time, this is hard to do because so much of the code that everyone else writes is crap. ;-) But seriously, there is even a name for this, we call it Not Invented Here (NIH). The premise being most developers like to know exactly what their code is going to do, so using someone else's code can be hard.

In the case of the big boys like Yahoo! and Google, it becomes a lot easier to trust that the code is going to deliver expected results and not be malicious or buggy. After all, when it is provided (and used) by a company with billions of dollars of online reputation to uphold, you can pretty much bet they've tested it.

Which isn't to say that just because they are all that, you don't need your own bag of chips, they have their issues too. Dependency and version issues, occasional bugs, and warped programming models are abundant. But in the end, you are definitely getting your moneys worth.

The chart at the top of this post is generated using the super cool (and free!) Google Chart API which means I won't be paying for Dundas or ChartFX licenses again. You can find the details at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/.