114: Jon Kern
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Joe Krebs speaks with Jon Kern about quality the creation of software as well as adaptive organization and the future of agile in the business world. Jon is one of the 17 co-authors of the agile manifesto and we are using the 20th Anniversary to reflect on the creation and the time since then.
Transcript:
Joe Krebs 0:10
Agile FM, radio for the Agile community. www.agile.fm. Welcome to another episode of Agile FM. Today I have John Kern with me who is a one of the authors, a co author of the Agile Manifesto. He enjoys loud cars, travel, climbing beer, individual freedoms, small governments. That's what his Twitter profile says. So welcome to the podcast, John.
John Kern 0:44
Thank you, Joe. Appreciate it.
Joe Krebs 0:46
Yeah, we could talk about a lot of things here, including beer and travel, and you do travel quite a bit. But the one thing I want to talk about is the Agile Manifesto. We are recording this in February 2021. And that is also the 20th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. So very timely recording you and I want to reflect a little bit on that day that weekend you guys had in Utah. So this is the how do you feel about this anniversary? Just like curious. It's been 20 years. And you know,
John Kern 1:18
yeah, I remember that the 10th anniversary. Yeah, that was kind of shocking. That was already 10 years. And 20 certainly seems like it flew by. So it's it's pretty amazing that the opportunity I've had that much of an impact over 20 years on so many millions of people is really humbling. And the fact that it's still relevant still worth talking about you, I think, is is a fairly amazing feat of happenstance. Frankly, nobody knew this would take off and anyone would care about it. Even 20 days from the day we we left Snowbird. So
Joe Krebs 2:12
yeah. So I mean, obviously, nobody could know what would come out of this weekend, right? It could have been just a fun weekend of skiing. Or there's more and there was more there is after 20 years, we're still talking about every time I talk about the Agile Manifesto, and I refer to it to folks I work with professionally. I always say this is a site. That is probably the one website in the internet that not a single pixel has changed in 20 years. I think.
John Kern 2:41
That's a great point.
Joe Krebs 2:41
Yeah, it's like it's still the same, right? And but there is something about that, that it is still the same. So it's still relevant in the same way, we're still talking about very similar topics and coaches, maybe on different levels, but they're also talking about the same topic. So it shows how instrumental this, this was. So thank you for that. How do you feel? How do you feel about agile in 2021? Now, like, I mean, obviously, there was a lot of things going on in the in the early days in 2001, 2002, financial crisis and all that kind of stuff that that was now we're in the middle of a pandemic. But so we went through a lot as a society, but from, from a community's perspective, where are we what how do you feel about agile as a as a topic in the community in the industry? And what companies out there do with it?
John Kern 3:32
Well, I think the weather, you know, I would say part of the problems that maybe anything like this face is is how folks embrace it, how they interpreted how they practice agile. So there's, it's been this way from pretty much the day we published it. It obviously resonated obviously struck a chord. I feel we got to the gist of the kind of how humans endeavor to build software. But yet, there's always going to be I don't want to say it's the Crossing the Chasm type thing. But, you know, there's still plenty of frustratingly non agile going on in the name of Agile. And I think that that's just you, the sort of the beauty of the Agile Manifesto is its its humility. Its its brevity. Its ambiguity, shall I even say, right? It's not it's not. It's not prescriptive. Yes. And that means you have to think and that means you have to apply it in context. And that means you have to be curious and to humble about your, your ways of working. And so I think those that get it it's a boon, right? There are kickass agile teams and agile companies and Agile and Lean companies, right? You can see there's a radical difference of those who get it, practice it, live it, breathe it. And then those who treat it more as a prescriptive, they might have latched on to Scrum or, or SAFe or, you know, some very prescriptive and then not moved on from there, you know, just still locked into a different I don't want to say draconian, but a different command and control way of being agile, I think, you know, that's, you can't have perfect, perfect interpretation of such a small document. So, you know, I It's understandable, but I think that's, you know, that's still going on, and I, you know, I hope folks push can push through that really get more of the benefit of the agile mindset, not just a handful of prescriptive recipes.
Joe Krebs 6:23
Right, very much like a declaration of independence, but also not. There's also room for interpretation. And that makes it so so flexible, right?
John Kern 6:32
Yeah, and with all due humility, I think I draw a parallel to a unique group of individuals came together, thought up some pretty amazing intense words, about in on the Declaration of Independence about how to how to govern people. Yeah, we were more of course, just the software side of things. But yeah, it's, it's getting to the gist of the problem domain, so to speak. And, you know, I think it's, it's very similar, how do you and you know, France, for example, screwed up, you know, their, you know, revolution, but and was not built on the right principles? versus, you know, the freedom that the Declaration of Independence, right, talked about? So I think Agile is very similar. You can it's interpreted and think you're going along that way, and still end up being a kind of a command and control, not happy place to work. But you're agile,
Joe Krebs 7:38
It's, that's what I what I often see is when people are talking about the Agile Manifesto, but they're not even aware of the 12 principles, right? It's just like the four value statements. And obviously, those are very vague and purposely, right. And that really leaves room for interpretation either way, and you're ending up with an organization so called Agile. That is, that is really far away from what you might be thinking of agile, or I will be thinking of agile, when are you are you nervous that this is might get washed away that term overtime? I mean, it's been around for 20 years, but with the current trends we're going through, do you feel like at one point, people will be like, alright, is agile? We don't have a handle on it, there is no clear definition. Are you nervous? Or are you feel like there is there will there's light at the end of the tunnel that will we're getting to this state of what do you guys thought of 2001?
John Kern 8:32
But that's a good question. I wouldn't be nervous because it's not my job to, to, to, you know, force people to get it. You know, it's, it's, I treat it as a personal practice, because it really does start with you. It's not, you know, organizations want to have an Agile transformation. But it starts with the individual. It starts with understanding, as you said, it's not only the the four tenets, but the the principles and, and even more, because we were humbled, like the one of the top words is uncovering. It's not even uncovered, right, we're not even past tense. You know, we didn't act as if we had, you know, God's gift to the answers of the world for software development, but we said we're uncovering because we're learning I practice a lot of Defense Department, heavyweight stuff and created in self defense kind of as a taxpayer a lighter weight methodology to work with my Defense Department. Customers, you know, so even there and you're we're constantly are we really left, in my mind left it clear that it's still going on. That was a certain point in time what we uncovered And what we were trying to address and heavyweight processes. And you know, I think going forward, you can, in my mind, those bullets still apply. Principles are still valid, and what you do with them, I'm not so much troubled, and I'm hopeful. I think this might, you know, this, this anniversary might inject because there's people, it's shocking to say there's, there's people that didn't hear of anything but agile in the industry now. They didn't, they didn't experience what, what I experienced with MIL standard 2167, or heavy waterfall type processes or some of the crazy stuff that was, you know, the elements that we were trying to combat in terms of heavyweight process. So a lot of people don't even know those existed. You know, it's a good opportunity to maybe reinvigorate some some of those who might have slipped into learned helplessness, you know, in a large organization, like, Oh, that's right, there's, there's, uh, there, it could be a light at the end of the tunnel, let's, let's return to some of these basics. Let's, let's try to try to get back to what Agile was all about in the beginning. So I'm hopeful, but yeah, like, whatever. You know, I
Joe Krebs 11:31
It was Arie van Bennekum, I spoke with here on Agile.FM a little while ago. And he was the one who actually said, John was the guy who said that everybody leaves their ego in front of the door before you come in at that weekend. So it was and that goes back to your statement about being humble, right? There were lots of people 17 of them different opinions. What was Why were you there? We know like people that were from, from scrum there was DSDM was extreme programming. So it was a broad mix of different kinds of streams, I would say at that point, right of development things were but just curious whether
John Kern 12:14
there was the, you know, the XP contingent. I was there because I was working with Peter code. And we were doing Feature Driven Development, we had to get rebuilt TogetherSoft at the time, a wonderful UML modeling tool that I remember messing around with Bob Martin with. So yeah, I mean, I co-authored some things, but I was not famous, like the others in the room. So I was on the coattails of Peter Coad. And Peter said, This sounds like they're right up your alley, John. So I attended and participated heavily, because because of my Defense Department days, and my pension for being pragmatic, and lean, and absolutely, to deal with the ambiguities of software development, I had a lot of opinions.
Joe Krebs 13:09
And you you're the one that I came across your notes from the event, right? So you captured notes and everything, you release those, it's almost like, it's like a museums artifact, almost like the personal notes from the from the weekend. And maybe we can hyperlink those on the Show page as well, for people to see. So that is all great stuff. What are you focusing on these days yourself? I know you do quite a bit of traveling, but from a software perspective. What are you focusing on these days?
John Kern 13:40
Well, right now I'm working at adaptavist adaptiveness.com, who you would think might be a little odd, because they are the probably by any reasonable measure, the biggest, badassed, best Atlassian partner, you know, and, and in many circles, the agilistas, you know, will shun Jira, or something like that. I've been using JIRA and Confluence since whenever the hell it came out. And I was using other tools before that. And I've been pitching for 20 years, people process and tools in that order. And tools are a real third distance. And I've sold tools, but I know where they live, you know, it's the people first. So. So there was an opportunity there. And one of the gentlemen one of the reasons why I knew somebody who worked there who insisted that I talk talk, talk to the CEO. So we're setting up more of a Innovation Center and helping other companies learn how to have more of an agile mindset. It's really hitting the people and culture side of things and process and tools. But it's the more of the kind of agile mindset and the workshops and some of the we combined and some elements of motivation, orientation and engagement. And we're also working with Heidi Araya who's, who has a lot of experience with larger organizations than I do, for example. And so we're really striking out on a pretty fascinating core, because until I met John, you know, some of the things that that, that we began talking about, and he helped shed light on about ways that people make their meeting different different, like leadership development profiles. So I learned why, in some cases, a technique that I would use worked like gangbusters with a team. And other times I've talked, and I'd be like, Knock Knock, Knock Is this thing on? You know, do you can even hear. And he, he, let me understand that? Well, actually, they weren't receiving on the frequency that you were transmitting. And sort of like, I may have been two steps in front of them, where the other team, I might have been only one step in front of them, and they could, they could, they, you know, was just slightly uncomfortable, but they could move their two steps was like a cliff. You know, so. So we're really, I think, opening up more of the realm around. I've been preaching it for a long time that the good people of their own will create a process. They don't need to read about anything in Scrum or write some somebody would you know, that they were really good focused on a vision, trying to get somewhere will create a process, I always say, you know, that a good people will trump every other thing that you tried to do. And they'll even create tools, right? It's just just now you have some places to start, if you want to, you know, begin with Scrum, or begin with anything, any kind of, you know, Kanban, or agile, lean any of that stuff. But it all boils down to the leadership and the people. And everything else is far secondary. So that's kind of what we've been doing. It's pretty fascinating to me, because we're, you know, really helping teams, and leadership, engage and understand a little bit more about their culture and their social networks or organizational network analysis, that kind of thing. You know, are they siloed? Are they control oriented with their motivation? So, so it's, to me, it's a, it looks like it could be the next wave of really trying to make an impact with the team, by understanding a lot of the, you know, where people are at today, and help nudge them towards a place in the future. But don't, you know, don't make them take two steps at once, one step at a time. Right. You know, so I think that's, that's pretty fascinating stuff. To me.
Joe Krebs 18:03
It was very interesting. Why because you all pointing out the cultural difference. And that's, that's something I see right now also, as a as a very big trend right now. Or we're designing adaptive having a culture of agility across the entire organization, then you do see, and this is, and I had worked with, just as an example, with Spotify in the past, right? People are now looking at, like, how do we map Spotify model to our organization? And it's, again, it's the, hey, we'll just use a process from somebody else, and we apply it to us, right? And then you get frustrated, why wouldn't work again, just to your point here, right? It's the, the incremental approach is taking step by step and taking a cultural from A to Z, but you know, every cultural or every organization is different set up and people and everything. And so there's just the whole idea of it. So we're falling into the same traps again, right,
John Kern 18:55
Yeah, that's, that's, that's a good way to put it. And the other thing that I kind of keeps me grounded is, since probably 2005, I've worked on a program for firefighters. So it's kind of a pro bono do good work, to help save lives and property and things like that. So I write code every week, I do BDD and TDD and deploy and that kind of thing. And it's extremely rewarding to get high NPS scores to get really good feedback from our customers. Because it's, it's real, right? I mean, agile. I experienced it myself how real it is. And being able to impact customers and get that kind of feedback that keeps me my fingers on, you know, and I've recently led teams through development so I'm kind of a favorite word is definitely building products doing software that's fun and tangible. And when engineering so
Joe Krebs 20:05
exactly what in this is what the manifesto is, the word software in it too, right? So there's a reason why that exists. And you pointed out earlier, there are listeners now on this podcast that might not have seen actually the, you know, the wrong way of doing it, or the one that is possibly causing a lot of difficulties and challenges. Are there a waterfall, for example, right. Now, what's interesting is that I think the manifesto came just at the right time. And we recently had time to mature into something, because what we're seeing now also is very different compared to 2001. Is, is the fact that in 2001, was we supported businesses with technology. Now, the business is technology, right? So a lot of companies are the when you said what your business is, like, it is cold, right? Was this before it was like, Hey, let's get a product from out of the way hours or something like that. And there was like IT solutions to support that, but it has drastically changed. Not talking about, like planes and embedded systems, and you name it. I mean, there's so much software everywhere in cars, you know? How do you how do you see all that complexity being handled, like more from a technical perspective, rather than the Agile Manifesto here, but what's your, what's your outlook? Is this going to? Most likely it's gonna get even more? So more complex? software is increasing?
John Kern 21:28
Yeah, in the scary part, as as an aerospace engineer, I would normally regularly, sarcastically say, if most buildings or aircraft or cars were built, like our software, or enterprise software, not a chance that I'm stepping in that building or walking over that bridge or right, because I submit the software and industry what I have to to focus on my shoulders that can fight it out about this, because you can you can argue both both sides. But in general, the the industry, I think, is very young still as an engineering discipline. And some would argue it's not even an engineering discipline, right. So I would say it's a lot of a lot of ad hoc. Not such good practices. But I'm assuming most folks applying software in what you might call a critical life critical or safety critical systems are still falling back on classic designs for failsafe, like, I'm pretty sure the elevator is going to still use a mechanical failsafe and not trust software. So but it certainly is scary to think the more systems and we started to see some, you know, the 737 max and started the a few things that are all of a sudden popping out of that's a pretty bad bug. Yeah, or bad testing or bad whatever. Certainly, we'll you know, we'll learn from it. And it's not like, you know, everyone's probably seen that the bridge there oscillating bridge, and wherever it was in Portland, or Oregon, or some or Seattle, you know, that that was an engineering, like, oh, turn that into oscillating vortices. All right, you know, with the wind, who knew? So yeah, it's not to say that everything will always be perfect. But it is a little scary to think of how how software in the past 20 years, really has become so dominant, and, you know, I used to say about technical debt, it can get so bad that you can go bankrupt. And the more that you are, is a software company, the more you better really care about being lean and agile and, and have a architecture and, you know, TogetherSoft 20 years ago, we rewrote the software probably every 18 months from scratch. Because we couldn't because we learned so much and we couldn't, we didn't do a good job of maybe always refactoring it but said screw it, just start over knowing what we know now, we architected make it leaner and meaner and then carry on, you know, keep both things going, you know, BaseCamp, you can still get the old version. Like there's a lot of different ways to think about solving problems. And you know, I think that the the more innovative companies will grab onto it, do it right because they'll understand talking to some a team In the development team about TDD and BDD, and hearing a developer, the ones that slow me down. Well, my you know, you're not born knowing you're not born with some knowledge. But you know, things like what will look quality will a QA people, write, write, these tests, man know, like, the gap between under like understanding the holistic aspect of what we do to try to deliver outcomes and the interdependencies between, you know, for me, having tests is like, a confidence booster. Right? I feel more comfortable. I'm not saying they're perfect. But it was more comfortable. Did it take more time? Maybe the first time but, but Right? It's that it's like, how do you? How do you break that mentality? Right, that now we just have to constantly be grinding out code. And we don't actually track all the debug later on, we don't actually track that we built the wrong thing we don't. So that kind of stuff is frustrating as hell, yeah. Or, you know, our profession.
Joe Krebs 26:10
I mean, I'm just this goes to the point of, you know, software getting more and more complex, you know, in the coming years, and there's just a trend, and I think it's gonna continue, right. It's obviously that more software is being included, I think, into lawn mowers everywhere, right? So it's like, so, software is going to be everywhere. And it becomes more important to have a good quality strategy around these things. Because we might have fatal accidents, we might have issues. So quality is a key thing. And that is that is deeply rooted in the Agile Manifesto. So I think that is the, you know, we were lucky in 2001, that you guys did this and wrote this, because it's going to be a guiding principle now for for these organizations who are dealing with this complexity. I always tell engineers, when I work with them through coaching and training, I always tell them, like the line of code they're writing is not the expense of you writing their line of code. It's, it's maintaining that line of code. Right? So and obviously, refactoring or rewrites are necessary, because the cost of that long term listing has to be upgraded, maintained, and possibly there's a side effect of defects on that line of code. So the writing the line of code, it's true, like minimal compared to, compared to the following costs.
John Kern 27:24
Yeah, that's so true. I would often say, you know, when someone puts something cryptic, like, it's not the one time you wrote it, it's like the 1,000th time someone's gonna read this later. Exactly. That's the penalty. Right? That's good. And it could even be your future self. Right. So yeah, it's, it's trying to build that, that, that professionalism, the craftsmanship and the, again, the understanding of beyond the the silo that you might think you're in being a broader thinking, individual understanding, we're trying to, we're trying to build something long term, hopefully, for for a piece of software. And we're trying to make our customers happy. And yeah, there's, there's good ways and bad ways to make that happen. You know, I liken it to two different styles of gardens. If I if I might do an analogy, my, my parents were big into square foot raised bed garden. So people probably have seen raised beds, so you don't trample on it and stamp down them. And then he could work compost into it. And the square foot technique was different plant you know, you have different boards with different holes on different centers, different types of plants needed to be planted on for it. Anyway, he also planted things cooperatively, like something could grow underneath another thing that would be beneficial. So it was a some of the most productive soil on the planet probably. And then you can have a giant garden, somebody's different tactic, maybe full of weeds. Not pretty to look at, not with nice wood chips in between the ego walk along, you can see his family aid, charities and the asparagus might not be pretty but it produces,
Joe Krebs 29:16
it produces Yeah.
John Kern 29:19
And the two CEOs running to those two different farms, you think they have a chance of comparing you know, input versus output any kind of process efficiency or right our industry is so bereft of being able to understand effort versus output and and you could even say well, I don't care I can get really cheap labor on that that big pile of land and out under every year and weeds at all, and it produces enough and I have cheap labor. And I just rewrite it every every year. Right? So I don't know the right I actually don't know the right answer because some industries It might be cheaper to throw it away and start over again. Yeah, in other industries, it might be worth to building a beautiful manicured English garden or something, right? Who knows what the answer is? No, no, no, no need to be, you know, gardens of Versailles. But we also don't all need to be, you know, weeds, you know, a garden full of weeds. I can barely find the plants. Is it a challenge in our industry? Yeah,
Joe Krebs 30:28
I agree. And it's a it's a great metaphor. No, thanks for that. Just by the end of our podcast here on our time together, is you you do travel a lot, and you travel to some remote places, as far as I can tell, right? And is there any kind of place you encounter where you still hear people's Agile Manifesto? What? Because it's always there's like, are you not not talking about your celebrity status? I know, we, you. You know, you're you're humble and everything. But are there still areas in this planet where you would encounter and people would not necessarily know that a there was an agile manifesto you've traveled to and that you were part of that?
John Kern 31:11
I don't know. It's a good question. Because I gave a talk with a group out of a few cities in China. They were big into it. I will say that. I think a couple years ago I was down in Colombia with with a friend of mine Ryan Lockard, who brilliant DevOps guy and beer maker friend of mine and I think it was their first we we keynoted their first I believe scrum day event, right? So it's gone de Colombia or something like that. But I will say that Colombia and I also spoke with a group in Mexico City and, and agile, agile Greece. In in each of those cases, especially the ones I was in first I was in person in Colombia and in person in, in Athens. It was it was like the early days of the manifesto. I mean, it was so heartwarming. Folks, were so excited about the possibilities. And I really don't want to say it was like the first time that they were learning about it, but it seemed like the community was was just beginning to blossom. I think agile Greece is a little more mature but but certainly struck me the in Colombia just wonderfully optimistic, and hopeful folks, and and when people come up, you know, what their pictures taken or thank you for the aftermath. I mean, that that is so meaningful to me, because in some small way, what we did in Snowbird had such a positive impact on people flocked. that's meaningful. I mean, it's, it's real, right? It's, it's not, it's not fake, and you can feel it in their gratitude. And it just, it was lovely to see that kind of enthusiasm again. So that's fun. Yeah,
Joe Krebs 33:33
totally. I can see and especially in those early days, right where you were like, wow, we're already seeing the initial signs of this there's more to it and this is going to be long lived. I mean, I can only speak for myself here. There was a lot of things in my life I got tired of very, very quickly not agile way to there's something to this this lifelong learning. There is always something to be uncovered, discovered. So it's, it's really fantastic so, and Agile FM my podcast wouldn't be called Agile FM without you guys, so thank you. Why don't you think you will next time we'll talk about beer or we talk about other things on your list. But this was all about the Agile Manifesto's 20th anniversary. Thank you, John.
John Kern 34:21
Thank you, Joe. And I'd be happy to talk about any any other subject anytime.
Joe Krebs 34:29
Thank you for listening to Agile FM, the radio for the Agile community. I'm your host Joe Krebs. If you're interested in more programming and additional podcasts, please go to www agile.fm. Talk to you soon.
