Jazz improvisation as a metaphor for understanding agile development organizational behavior
Overview
Despite the maturity, available training, and publications related to these processes, most organizations are not well positioned to adopt them. Agile development involves changes in organizational behavior which can take years and require a good understanding of the behavioral support needed for agile development. Designing organizational behavior is a difficult task and not easy to understand, but metaphors can aid considerably.
This talk will focus on the participants and interactions inherent in a jazz improvisation band as metaphor to understand the organizational behavior needed to support a migration to agile software development.
Intended audience
Primarily intended for those managing agile teams. Also theam members or management attempting to migrate to agile development.
Benefits of participating
This metaphor is important for agile team members as a way to communicate collaborative, emergent behavior to their management and it is important as a way for management to understand the necessary behavior on their part to encourage collaboration with agile teams.
THIS IS A 60 MINUTE PRESENTATION.
The presentation will consist of small group exercises (approximately 20 minutes total) and lecture.
Talk will be as follows:
What is Organizational Behavior and how can I use this information? 5 Minute
Where did the idea of jazz ensemble Improvisation come from? 5 Minutes
What are the special characteristics of jazz improvisation? 10 Minutes
Exercise 1 How can you work like a jazz ensemble? 10 Minutes
Applying jazz improvisation ensemble characteristics to agile development team behavior? 10 Minutes
Excercise 2 What works, what fails with collaborative behavior? 10 Minutes
Metaphor strengths and failings. 5 Minutes
Conclusing and using the metaphor at work. 5 Minutes.