131: Jean Tabaka (In Memoriam)

Listen to full episode:

Jean Tabaka and Joe Krebs at Agile NYC

Joe Krebs speaks with Jean Tabaka about her book Collaboration Explained. I can't think of a better way kicking off the second decade of Agile.FM re-releasing an episode with the person that got Agile.FM going in the first place. The conversation with Jean was originally recorded in 2012.

Transcript:

Joe Krebs 0:00

2023 marks the beginning of the second decade of agile and for the past 10 years, I've been releasing podcast episodes with a variety of speakers and topics to you. And I hope you enjoy the ride so far. I don't know how many of you guys actually know the beginning of agile, and how it all started. While I started, the idea of a podcast actually started after a visit with Jean Tabaka in New York City, where we recorded again, a audio segment for the New York City community. After the recording, she pointed out that this was a really interesting conversation. And she really enjoyed it. And she thought, why am I only releasing this content to the New York City crowd and not on a world level as a podcast? So I began thinking about it, produced a podcast, and eventually it turned into agile FM, something you'll hopefully enjoy today. So as a tribute to Jean Tabaka, which left us way too soon, in 2016, I decided to re release that original content from 2013 with her. And what's amazing after I really listened to that audio segment with her is how much she already talked about organizational agility, somehow business agility, and some collaboration issues that are still valid today. So thank you, gene for, you know, helping me to get into the podcasting. And, you know, having me indirectly meet so many people on this podcast recordings. But I also wanted to make sure that everybody out there knows how influential Ginger Baker was in a variety of ways, and how valid her books and contents still are today, in 23. So I hope you enjoy this one. And in memoriam here is Jean Tabaka. Agile New York City 2013.

Joe Krebs 1:56

I am your host Joe Krebs, and today I'm here with Jean Tabaka. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Joe. Jean, you're in town for a very special event to the edge on New York City community. We're celebrating our fifth birthday. Today, actually here at Pace University in beautiful, sunny New York City today. So thank you "A" for coming to the podcast. And "B" more important is actually speaking tonight to the edge on New York City community. That's a that's a wonderful thing for you.

Jean Tabaka 2:26

Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. And I guess I could take a little bit of credit for the wonderful weather I brought from Colorado. What the heck. Yeah. And to be part of the fifth anniversary. Wow, what an honor. So seriously, thank you so much. This is great.

Joe Krebs 2:45

Well, thank you, Jean, when I was when I was researching a little bit around your book, actually, in preparation for this podcast, I realized that, although we're turning five years, your book is older than five years. Yeah. Well, your book prior to the creation of agile in New York City. Wow. And it's still up to date. No, no. Should we say the book is timeless? It is it's still valid. I mean, people still read it. It's still a topic of conversation. It's not like a programming language has been outdated. The book is still very relevant. It's collaboration explained.

Jean Tabaka 3:23

Right. Interestingly enough. About 2003. I think it was, I'll be talking about this in my talk this evening. But I'd like to really bring it up now. So thank you very much. And I was approached by the executive editor of the Agile Software Development series that was being run by Alistair Cockburn and Jim Highsmith. And he said, someone told me to talk to you. Wow, that was a bit frightening right there. And he said, I gathered that you have a great passion around collaboration, and specifically about how to facilitate collaboration. And I said, Yes, because I believe in the human aspect of agile, I read about it. And I don't see in the books, clear guidance about how to bring about self organization, how to make sure all the voices are heard, and how you can gather the greatest pools of insight. And he said, well, then write a book about it. I said, I could do that. But I think these sorts of things are much better transferred in person. And he said, well write the book. And it took me a long time to write the book, because very honestly, I didn't believe in it. I kept saying to him, but no one will read it. And he said, No, I believe in this book. And in fact, back to your point, Joe, he said, This is material, I believe will live on fact beyond many of the other books and he said if it doesn't, I promise su I'll work with you. I won't publish it if we really don't believe in it. And shoot. It's, it got published. It's gone beyond my wildest expectations. I am blown away, truly humbled by the people who still come to me worldwide and say, Thank you. Thank you for this book. I seriously never would have imagined and the gentleman who urged me to do this. Well, he was right. Yeah.

Joe Krebs 5:40

Being persistent, right, and making you believe in, in what you're doing? Yes, even though you might not be seeing it at that point. But I did.

Jean Tabaka 5:49

And I think you and I were talking earlier about our technical backgrounds. And I kept thinking, my book really isn't technical. Is it going to allow others to see that I have a technical background? Will it look like soft, fuzzy skills. And that was a part of the challenge for me as well to publish the book. And it's, again, just humbling that it's been welcomed into the community as it has.

Joe Krebs 6:18

Well, the the other part of your title collaboration explained is actually facilitation skills for software project leaders. Yes. So what I actually like about this, two aspects of it, which are actually more important than ever, in our Agile community facilitation skills. And in 2006, when he was published your you talked about leadership?

Jean Tabaka 6:40

Yes. In fact, that's the first chapter in the book. Wow. Thank you, Joe. Yeah, the first chapter of the book is on servant leadership, and what it takes. And there were people who had told me, Well, first of all, get rid of that chapter. And I just wouldn't, I refused. I believe that as we not just inform the Scrum Masters and the Agile coaches within our agile world, that is, we scale and have agile move outside development organizations, we move out what I'll call the value stream, that organizationally, we have to invite the notion of servant leaders, and people who believe in the insights of the teams as they bring forth their visions. That was very important to me. And that's why I lead the book off with that.

Joe Krebs 7:39

So you have been doing this since 98. Yeah, the actual community

Jean Tabaka 7:42

I am one of the Agile grandmothers.

Joe Krebs 7:47

Since 98, there was also the word software in your book with would that be a word we could almost now like years later, almost eliminated, like because so many people do Agile outside of software development?

Jean Tabaka 8:00

That yeah, I think that at the time, because my background was strictly software. I have a graduate degree in computer science learn. And that's all I've ever known about the world. And there's been this slow transformation of how I've gone from being analytical, to be more aware of the creative and humane side of how we create software. When the book first came out, I remember I had a gentleman contact me six months to a year afterward and say, he was from New Zealand. So right then and there again, I was blown away. Wow, my book was selling in New Zealand. And he wrote to me to say, why didn't you put the word software in this title? This book is not about software. It's about how to help organizations really be collaborative, how to facilitate collaboration. I knew about that, only in the software world at the time. And as I now look farther out, and around me, I see that and hear from people. This really isn't just about software. And thank you for helping software people understand the value of it.

Joe Krebs 9:18

Why do you think it is that we have seen so many technologies come and go. And the topic of collaboration, facilitation is still very much a coot. I would actually say like it. It's important, more important than ever. What do you think is why technology can't solve specific problems in human behavior? We have all these tools will be now and but it seems like the projects are still not more successful from a from a collaborations perspective. Did you agree or do you do you think just been done some progress?

Jean Tabaka 9:54

It's interesting. Originally, my target audience was For people who felt that more control would provide more success in the software world. And so I was trying to help command and control environments move to more collaborative environments. Some stuff I've been reading lately, interestingly enough, is pushing back on the agile movement saying, no people need to be able to work on their own to be truly creative. And I've been responding to that and a couple of posts here and there saying, I all the more believe in facilitation as a role because in this world where creativity needs to come both from the group, the the team, as well as the individual where creativity comes from both spaces. A really well informed and well seasoned facilitator is also sort of paid to be an observer, and to bring out the strengths of the team and the individual. So we raise the overall wisdom of the team, by individual contribution, and by overall team contribution. I don't know if that really answers your question or

Joe Krebs 11:14

not? Well, yeah, I've seen like teams, distributed teams primarily, there was like, honestly, Cyril collaboration. They were assigning tickets to each other, talking. And that's not the collaboration I have in mind right?

Jean Tabaka 11:29

Now it's not and and thank you for bringing that up. I've worked with a lot of distributed teams teams distributed within the same city within the same same state within the same country within the same continent, and then across three different continents. And again, the assumption is, well, we need to add more and more control. And I recognize that the scaffolding around these environments does require a bit more work than when the team is co located, we lose so much of the communication and the implicit versus explicit communication flow. The the tacit versus tribal knowledge. At the same time, when I've been traveling in India, and China, and Texas, sorry, I had to throw that in there. Talk about three different cultures. And what I have been doing is trying to help leaders in these types of environments understand good facilitation is all the more important. Because what I discovered that is that without good strong facilitation, in each of the remote areas, or distributed areas, as well as across the distributed teams, we can't really be reap the benefits of agile at all. In fact, people will start to become very alienated. And assume, frankly, sabotage by the other people. The only commitment the only communication device you have is a ticket. it for some reason, carries a little, little seed of blame and shame with it. Yes, that's not the intent. But boy, do I see shame and blame flying, you know, transcontinental.

Joe Krebs 13:37

It's true. It's true. It's really true. Yeah. Well, you mentioned the Agile. I don't know exactly what you say as a movement or agile. You want to push back a little bit. You actually seeking a lot of advice outside of the Agile community. In your talk tonight, tell me why the Golden Circle of Agile? You you actually outline on our website, which is on www agile nyc.org. You actually say? Simon's you were very much influenced by Simon Sinek actually by a TED talk. Yes. So you're actually reaching out to totally other communities, tribes, so forth for for advice, and you map that to, to agility. Is that right?

Jean Tabaka 14:24

Yes. Yeah, I want to clarify that I'm not pushing back on agile. What I'm doing is I'm inviting in and pulling in more resources into my technical world than I ever would have imagined. So initially, I was proud and eager to read as many agile books as I possibly could, and seek out the Agile speakers. Go to Agile conferences. What I'm discovering is that over time for Our agile adoptions to move into Agile transformations to move into organizational transformation. I'm being pulled to seek new guidance back to the talk for this evening. Tell me why and the golden the Golden Circle of Agile. When I saw the TED Talk by Simon Sinek, let's start with I was watching TED Talks. What I've been doing that five years ago. No, is Simon's talk about agile. No. But I listened to it multiple times, and took my own interpretations around it. They're not specifically what Simon says, oh, that sounds funny. Sorry. And then I bought his book, start with why. And it gives so much wonderful humanity underneath this thing called the Golden Circle of why, how what. And I said to myself, that really speaks to me. And it falls in line with some other authors and their books that I've been looking at, again, to broad the value of Agile to reap more benefits of Agile. They're not agile books.

Joe Krebs 16:24

You do want to you want to share them with the Agile New York City community, what's on your bookshelf right now? What do you what are you interested in?

Jean Tabaka 16:30

Actually, you know, oddly enough, what's more, well, yes, I have a bookshelf full of books. But, okay, this is a little bit of a nod to the Kindle. Because I love these books so much, I bought a Kindle, so I can carry them with me wherever. And, frankly, seriously, I use a Kindle as my library, as my reference library. So if you come through what I have on there, you'll discover every one of these books, I think that one of the biggest influences on me with regard to being a change agent, and therefore someone who believes in Agile transformation has been Seth Gordon. And admittedly, I haven't read all his books. But I would say this was a transformative book for me, and it's linchpin. I don't know if you've read that one, it blows me away. And it he talks about being prepared to bring your gifts and your artistry into your work. And I was thinking about how agile asks so much of us, and that our organizations deserve and should value our gifts and our artistry, I think agile invites that but it never really used those words. And he also says that we with our sense of artistry should be prepared to lean in to do hard things. And as we lean in a true artist chips, there are a couple of other things, he adds him with that. But I'd have to pull up my library to tell you this. Boy have those meant a lot to me with regard to talking about what Agile and how we as individuals work within an Agile transformation, and how an organization should be inviting our artistry and our gifts should help us lean in and ship. A book very similar to that. Daniel Pink's drive, and that has a lot to do with how intrinsic motivation is far more compelling for individuals and teams than extrinsic rewards, or extrinsic. Punishment is too strong a term but if you don't get this done, then you're in trouble. So you have to go into this depth tomorrow. Yeah. Wow, another book, I've been doing a lot. I've been going back to time and time again. And in fact, excuse me. Pardon me, I'm using sort of my metaphor for the year is Dan Heath and Chip his book switch. Again, nothing to do with agile, but has to do with when we're prepared to preparing to be transformative, and they have three metaphors there which are, drive the rider so set a vision, motivate the elephant, which is look into the emotions and the heart of what it takes to go to transformation and then shape the path so ensure that that can occur. And again, I think about Wow, all these things I care passionately with regard to agile, agile teams, agile organizations. I want to give these gifts to people about I get how hard it is. And we're worth we're worthy of what we can get out of that. And then a bit more technical.

Joe Krebs 20:14

How do you fight broadening that scope? By looking into other industries? What do you what do you think is going to happen to our community? Or where would you like to see the Agile community? Getting stronger getting? Or emphasizing certain topics? Is there anything based on what you're seeing around? Yeah, John community?

Jean Tabaka 20:39

I think I wouldn't be telling you anything new with this answer, but I'll give it to you.

Joe Krebs 20:43

Please give it to me. You can decide.

Jean Tabaka 20:46

And I believe the original agile movement, had a wonderful focus on how to help development teams deliver, and how to protect them from the tyranny that tended to surround them that held them hostage, in some ways. What I'm hopeful about with regard to reading these new things, and the way that I would invite them into agile communities, is that we are broadening, agile scope. And its focus, and inviting, and we're broadening both into the individual values, and our quality of life. And we're broadening out to the organizational view, and organizational quality of life. This is a hard sell, when I go talk to large organizations, they'll still look at the bottom line. And the reading I've been doing is that the bottom line will take care of itself sounds pretty Frou Frou, whatever the bottom line will take care of itself. When you really believe in the people. Every one of these books says believe in the people care and the people and these other things will take care of themselves. I've also been reading Don Reinertsen must be so I feel sorry. That's okay, I keep interrupting you. So.

Joe Krebs 22:21

But that has to be true, right? Like a truthful. You believe in your people? I mean, it has to be, it has to be done right. From an organizational perspective. A lot of people say that it's just like I believe, just take care of your department and takes care of itself. Just focus on the customer. Or other say just focus on the employees, like whatever your viewpoint is. But some organizations try that. And it's still not successful, because they might not be really meeting it. But they're saying, right, yeah, so I guess there's a hidden agenda.

Jean Tabaka 22:54

Yes, yes. And again, thinking about some of the things I've been reading in the agile and Google Groups, etc. And talking with organizations is I wonderfully I get paid to go talk with and listen to people. How did I get this lucky? And I hear that agile still puts them on Death Marches instead of one death march at the end. Now we have a death marked every two weeks. Yeah, let's sign up for Agile. And and they're under the Agile tyranny. Yeah, they're they're under some sort of tyranny of time box.

Joe Krebs 23:33

So torture. Yeah, every two weeks. And that was not the intent. No, that's that's not the intent. Yeah.

Jean Tabaka 23:39

And so as we're trying to do the right thing with agile, I think it's valuable for us to look outside of agile and say, Can we reinforce ourselves of what the intent was? And can we actually have it grow through our nurturing of the intent through these through these other guides?

Joe Krebs 24:00

I do want to come back to something very, very tiny, narrow topics is meetings, you said, we already had focus we have created we have created where we are delivering software. So you're doing all these good things with agile but I still observe and I just wanted to ask you, obviously you're sharing this battle Holly, Holly, anyone meetings, meetings, Ali run any in any kind of shape, they run in an effective way? Do you have any advice for the listeners out there? I do like one tip or something, how to run meetings, a little bit more effective

Jean Tabaka 24:39

Habits of Highly Effective facilitator. Okay. And sometimes I think people are looking at me and saying, Well, Jean, when you see everything is a nail, yeah, your hammer is the right tool. I would like to use my company rally software as an example this coming August 1, I'm celebrating my eighth anniversary with the company. Thank you. And I was the first consultant hired into the company. Here I was writing a book I was hired in in 2004. I was writing a book on collaboration and facilitation specifically. We were very small group at the time. And I approached the CEO, Tim and the founder, Ryan, and said, I think we could really benefit from having facilitated meetings, Agile has so many meetings. And they said, Okay, ceremonies that Yeah, show us what you've got eight, seven and a half years later, we do not have any major meetings without a facilitator. We are an organization of facilitation. And this has not been through me pushing it on people. It has been through groups pulling it. This is not just the development teams, it's every department in the company. We have retrospectives, we have planning meetings. And we now actually have a facilitators group. And we check in with one another about what are you running into? What are some more things you've been reading besides genes, but we truly believe now we are a facilitation driven organization. And when I can bring that message into other organizations, because they say, agile is killing us there are too many meetings, then what I talked about with them is how effective are your meetings? What are you doing to ensure that they meet a purpose that they don't go on forever and ever, that they don't suffer from what I call LV di D? Yeah, loudest voice driven development, loudest voice decision making driven decisions. The facilitator is there to protect everyone and make sure everyone's heard and understood in a safe environment that I believe is truly critical to Agile. And that's why I think facilitation is a isn't great and necessary tool in the Agile set of tools.

Joe Krebs 27:11

How do you see like social media networks, influencing the focus of today's meetings? Do you think that's like with Twitter, with Facebook with all these technical capabilities of instant messaging? Do you think that has any influence negatively on an agile project?

Jean Tabaka 27:31

Well, what I can say is that being the one of the grandmothers out there, figure template inish, initially, I put push back very hard on no electronics in meetings, what I've come to believe more valuable is our intentions in meetings, and how electronic service services again, I'll just use my own company. But I've seen it in other companies, where we make agreements with one another at the start of a meeting, we declare our intentions, and the use of electronics. For instance, recently, we had a meeting where we wanted a colleague engaged. And so we just put her in Google Chat, turned in video chat and turned around and sat in a chair and major part of our meeting. In almost every one of our conference rooms, we now have very large high def, panel screens on the walls, so that we can have people in the meetings. And people will also say I need electrons, I need to have my electronics on because I need to stay in I Am. Part of it is so that we make decisions very quickly that we remove the waste of if someone's not in the meeting, we bring in their information to make decisions more informed and faster than waiting until outside the meeting. So the

Joe Krebs 29:02

technology is related to the meeting itself to the Yeah, no, it's not like just chatting with somebody about something totally unrelated to the meeting. We

Jean Tabaka 29:10

have meetings that still suffer from that. Yeah. And we as facilitators are learning how to check in with people about the agreements, the intentions and the norms. And I'll ask very specifically, who knows right now that they need to be in email. Okay. Yeah, email. Well, yeah, tell me that. Yes. I I have a burning issue that I need to be engaged in and therefore the rest of the group understands why that person is doing email and the others aren't. Yeah. And we still struggle with that.

Joe Krebs 29:44

You said you started as a consultant with a rally Yes, but your title now is fellow keen on finding out what a fellow does for rally. Ah, tell me a little bit about Your day. What are how does a typical day of gene debate look like? What I would Colorado

Jean Tabaka 30:06

in Boulder, beautiful Boulder, Colorado? Believe it or not, this is something of an emotional question and answer for me. I have loved my work as an agile consultant. I have loved and continue to love working with rally. It is the best job I've ever had in my 30 plus years in the technology community. Well, as the first consultant I help define what we would look like as consultants. One of the big things being we would be highly facilitated. When I moved into the role of agile fellow, the intention was, this is going to sound a little self serving that I would travel less travel less. But now you know something about that. What, what has been so deeply rewarding to be agile fellow is that I actually travel more. And it has to do with the fact that I read a lot more and I blog more. And I work with different levels, higher levels in organizations. And how we came up with the word fellow was we brainstormed and said we don't know what to call this. Let's just call it an agile fellow for now. But it's not an untypical definition. I didn't want to be called an agile thought leader. I thought that was pompous. And yeah, a bit assumptive. But I did want to be someone in the rally community and then in the community at large that where I made an intention of I'm here to share ideas and bring in as we talked about earlier, ideas that aren't even necessarily from agile books.

Joe Krebs 31:55

What do you do to relax during boredom? I do try to get a feeling of what is are you scared? Are you ski?

Jean Tabaka 32:02

Oh, well, I'm an extremely bad skier. But you ski Yeah. I just went skiing a couple of weeks ago and suffered about five major bruises all over my body and knocked my noggin my head pretty badly. I've broken a leg skiing. I skied into a tree two very badly sprained ankles. And then this two weeks ago, the worst bruises of my life. And I still get out there. It's so beautiful. Wow, I it is so beautiful.

Joe Krebs 32:40

You're a skier in training. Claiming like, as we discussed earlier, we still feel like we're in graduate school. Yes, right. And you're still

Jean Tabaka 32:50

I'll be in kindergarten as king. And I do love. The other thing about living in Boulder. I chose to live there 12 years ago. It's a beautiful place. There is a lot of entrepreneurship. There's a lot of sense of sustainability, and social impact and giving back to the community. And I've had the deep honor of being engaged with some of the social initiative clubs at the University of Colorado, and also helping with some of the entrepreneur programs. I'm helping set up an agile conference at the University in September. That may not sound like leisure. Okay, let's back off. When when you're passionate about your work, it bleeds back and forth. It really does.

Joe Krebs 33:43

You know, it's like, what weekday is it and you will realize how I work on Sundays. But you don't feel it.

Jean Tabaka 33:49

And I am trying to move away from so much of my reading, feeding into my passion about work. And actually this summer part of the rally program for having been at the company seven years, I'll be celebrating my anniversary. We get six weeks of sabbatical. So I'm intending to truly take six weeks completely away from my passion around agile.

Joe Krebs 34:17

Will that be New York?

Jean Tabaka 34:19

It's going to it's going to be in an undisclosed location in France, okay for four weeks of intense language immersion. And I have reasons for doing that which go back to Seth Gordon, and my need to lean in and ship.

Joe Krebs 34:39

Awesome. With Thank you, Jean, thank you for your time here. It's been a delight prior to your talk. I just want to highlight that one more time. Tell me why they go in so called Agile we're gonna hear your talk later. At Pace University at our fifth anniversary. It's not a lot. Yay, but it's five years and it's good moment for us to reflect. And we're happy to have an amazing speaker like you onstage. And not only onstage, but also on the ground, actually where we have food, drinks and we can stay for some drinks. That's a

Jean Tabaka 35:13

hobby. That's food and drinks. Yeah. And music,

Joe Krebs 35:17

drinks music, and so we have a good time. Thank you again.

Jean Tabaka 35:22

Well, I'll tell you that again. Thank you so much. And thank you for inviting my topic about tell me why that is a passion of mine. I don't think I understood it back when I was an agile neophyte, and learning just how to work within teams. I now look at how passion drives us and should drive the organization. And as Simon Sinek would stay, I would say start with why and that's start with your passion and your vision. That's what I'll be talking about this evening.

Joe Krebs 35:55

Thank you, Jean. Thank you so much. Bye bye.