Over the past few weeks I’ve been fretting quietly about COVID-19. I’ve never considered myself a germaphobe, and part of my nervous reaction was amplified by the fact that I was nervous at all. But that nervous feeling was (and is) very real, and I’ve tried desperately to figure out what exactly was triggering such a response. As the nation seems to catch up to me, post-Presidential address, I think I’m honing in on why my reaction to COVID-19 has been so visceral.

First, let’s go back about two years: Myself and two friends are in Nepal, hiking from Lukla airport to Namche Bazaar. We barely made it to Nepal, with yours truly being snowed in the night before we left, stranded cars and lack of heat included. My wife, who at the time was 5 months pregnant, held down the fort while I was gone, but the experience of making bad decisions that could impact others left a lasting impression.

So, Nepal..

Post-hike, and back in Kathmandu, we got adventurous and went white water rafting. The drive out to the river was a bumpy 3 hours. It was an experience, but nothing compared to what would happen half-way downriver: The raft flipped, one of our friends broke his leg, and the next 6 hours were the the most scared I’d had ever been. (There’s nothing more terrifying than needing medical attention in a country where you don’t speak the language, and you’re not sure where medical care can even be found.)

Of course, all’s well that ends well: We made it back to a hospital, found some crutches and medicine, and made in back home for proper medical care. Two years later, it’s a good story to tell at at parties, none worse for wear.

However: I’m mindful that in the span of 10 days, I had put my life in serious danger far more than once. Rafting and strenuous hiking but my friends lives in danger. Snow put mine and my wife’s at risk. And if I went, not only did I leave my friends and family behind, but also my unborn daughter. A sobering thought for any to-be parent.

The result of the Nepal trip was my being ever more mindful and aware that the crazy shit I do directly impacts others – others who maybe aren’t even sure why their lives may have be altered at all. It was important for me to limit this risk, and ensure that I did all I could to provide safety and security for myself and my family.

And so here we are today, with a global pandemic on our hands, and nobody quite sure how to handle it (at least in the US.) We’re all faced with tough decisions, and our enemy is an invisible virus. There is nothing we can physically point to and say “avoid that!” Instead, all we have are guidelines, suggestions, and maybe the occasional poorly-worded mandate.

It has felt that we are at the same time all in this together, and desperately alone to handle “what is best for our families.” What is best for my family in times of uncertainty? I’m not sure I know. Incredibly difficult questions inform the suggestion to “do what’s best”:

• Do we take our daughter out of daycare? If not now, might we have to in the future? Is that a risk we’re willing to take?
• In lieu of daycare, who will take care of the baby? How will we work and watch her during the day? Who can we ask for help? What happens when that help runs out, or need help of their own?
• Financially, are we OK watching our 401Ks and 529s absolutely get destroyed?
• How will COVID-19 impact our efforts to sell and purchase a home?
• What happens if we get sick? How will we self-quarantine? Who will be able to bring us food? What happens to the baby? What happens to us?

And so on…

I tend to believe that I and the people I surround myself with are rational, thoughtful individuals. We kid ourselves at times that we’re in total control of everything, that life is always good, but I think we all know that we fail, we stumble. I worry that COVID-19 is our collective stumble, as a nation that is. I worry that we’re not ready for this. But of course, I also worry that I’m the dumb one; I’m the one overreacting. Hell of a time to have such a complex.

I once stumbled across a series of posts detailing Search & Rescue missions. In one post, the author noted that people who find themselves lost and in life-threatening situations rarely got there because they made one bad decision. Instead, they made lots of little decisions that compounded as the situation worsened. Since Nepal, I think of this often. Today, it feels incredibly relevant.

We have, over the next few months, the ability to make a lot of small decisions. Decisions we may feel aren’t a big deal – to wash our hands or not, to skip going out to dinner, to avoid food shopping during peak hours. These decisions will compound rapidly, and may ultimately determine the total cost of COVID-19. It is this idea – that we’re all deeply trusting each other to make good decisions – that keeps me up at night. To be clear, it isn’t distrust of you that keeps me awake, but rather the weight of my own decisions that must be made.

If you’re nervous about COVID-19, you’re right to be: This is a big fucking deal. But don’t panic. If you’re nervous, you’re on the right track: Listen, think, and then respond to your nervousness. Do what you feel is best for you. But also do what you feel is right for us.

To good health & long lives.

 

Last October I joined SecurityScorecard (SSC) as a Program Manager and have been part of the team helping scale Agile practices across the organization. While we’re not 100% SAFe (Scaled Agile), we borrow heavily for ceremonies like PI Planning. To date, we’ve had three successful PI Plannings, iterating each time to optimize based on feedback. It’s been a wonderful journey, and if you’re interested in learning more about the team, take a look at some of our job openings. We’re very much hiring!

But let’s talk PI Planning, and specifically, how SSC is leaning into the challenges that COVID-19 has dished out these past few weeks. SSC is, at its core, a distributed workforce. We have hubs in NYC, Prague, and Buenos Aires, but there are more people working outside of those offices than have a desk within. This enables us to tackle some of the COVID-19 challenges with grace, but not all things are remote-friendly, PI Planning being one of them.

SAFe refers to PI Planning as “Big Room Planning”, and the reason is quite clear: It’s encouraged that everyone involved in planning Quarterly work meet in a single space, for a couple of days, to plan that work out. PI Planning is a tactical, in-person experience. It’s an opportunity to see folks you normally video chat with, and brainstorm with folks you may never get to see. SecurityScorecard, for its part, has done a multi-location PI Planning, with the aforementioned hubs playing host to local teams. All of Product, Engineering, and UX, on one Zoom link, breaking out into teams as needed, and ultimately plotting out what the next Quarter  will look like. It’s amazing, really.

Alas, with COVID-19, travel is discouraged, and asking folks to be in a room for a couple of days with many other people is a sure way to get nervous looks. So what’s a wto do? Well, for starters, we made sure not to panic. Not panicking is a good way to make sure nobody else panics. It also gave us an opportunity to identify some assets we have on hand that may make this challenge a bit easier to overcome:

1. Zoom – we all know how to use Zoom, and proper conference call manners are always in play. These teams know how to use the mute button and chat functionality.
2. G-Suite – SSC uses G-Suite, which includes Google Drawings. G-Drawings is hugely powerful for ad hoc white boarding & quickly putting together things you may have otherwise put on a wall.
3. Atlassian’s suite of products – JIRA is our backlog management tool of choice and Confluence is home to our internal wiki. Everyone has SSO access, and is familiar with its functionality (and limits!)
4. Finally, the team – We have a rock solid group of employees that want to invest the time and energy into making this a useful event. We knew folks would be willing to step up and monitor Zoom rooms, play facilitator, and be accountable for jobs that someone else would’ve normally had if we were all in the room together.

With those assets in mind, next steps were pretty straight forward: Enable all teams to have a Zoom room for themselves, establish Zoom rooms for when all of us need to be on the line (PI Planning kick-off/close-out sessions, Scrum of Scrums touchpoints), and ensure teams are ready with Features in mind (leaning heavily on Product to ensure said Features were good and ready.)

Our Big Room Planning is next week, and we expect it to go off without any major hitches. Zoom connectivity and the usual browser slowness may frustrate some (including yours truly), but we’ll be able to end the week with a list of committed deliverables, sized and prioritized, for Q2. 

Fortunately we don’t need to deal with global pathogens on a regular basis, but by maintaining flexibility and having clear objectives in mind, SecurityScorecard has been able to set up its teams (and ultimately, its customers) for success. One of the Agile principles behind the Agile Manifesto is 

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

This statement applies to all types of teams, our Program Management Office included. When situations change, we respond in a thoughtful manner. I suspect this will net positive results, giving at least one bright spot to this COVID-19 episode. 

Happy planning!

I recently joined a financial institution where my thoughts on Agile are not always those of my peers. This has lead to engaging conversations about the theory of Agile, and forced me to rethink what Agile is and could be, particularly in the financial services space.

When attending an Agile conference, it’s easy to fall victim to the belief that Agile is incredibly accessible, easy to understanding, basic. Why doesn’t everyone do this? After all, Agile makes more sense. Agile just works. Agile…

Agile frameworks are hard to implement correctly. They’re hard to support as a Leader, and more difficult to champion as a team member. Working in an organization where compliance is legally required, Agile is tough to fit into folks’ day-to-day work. After all, detailed reporting and hard numbers are king, not story sizing and estimation.

Of course, not all is lost: There are benefits that Agile can bring to the table, albeit less explicitly. Agile as a mindset? Not quite, but value-driven processes and an inherent need for lean product development helps set up good coaching conversations with teams and individuals alike.

Navigating these waters so that we are successful Scrum Masters and coaches is tricky. We must be mindful of the system we’re operating within, and be curious about why things are they way they are. Leadership and teams will be more receptive when they see how Agile can help them with their objectives. Any other approach to introducing Agile is likely to encounter rough seas.

Safe sailing.

Looks like Dutch repair site FixjeiPhone beat iFixIt to the punch.

For the XS, a smaller battery, with longer battery life. (Also: I wonder how much those custom batteries cost to make.)

Today my daughter is one-month old; one month of incredible change, growth, and challenge, for both she and her parents. I couldn’t be more proud of this family.

Quickly, some one-month observations:

• Mom and Dad are now masters at operating everything with one-hand. Dinner? One hand. Making coffee? One hand. Changing a diaper? One hand.
• We’ve saved money, but we always haven’t gone out or seen friends. The perks and drawbacks of not being able to go out to dinner are very real.
• Chores are a chore: Remembering what needs to be done takes work. And there’s always something to be done. Whiteboards and to-do apps are my friend.
• The days go quickly, the minutes can crawl: I can’t believe it’s already been a month, but when the baby is screaming, five minutes feels like a year.
• Personal moments matter: I take two moments a day, one reflective, one tactical, to take stock in what’s happening here (a baby!) and get things done like brush my teeth. Sometimes these moments occur at the same time, because chores.
• Every day is a bit easier and better than the last. We’re learning, she’s growing. It’s working itself out quite nicely.

It is an annual tradition for me to watch Apple’s iPhone event live, and promptly pre-order whatever they’ve announced the Friday after. This year, things are different.

This year, none of Apple’s iPhone presentations felt inspirational. The presentations seemed rushed, the metrics felt like a stretch (or sometimes, nonexistent), and the pre-event leaks took a lot of the wind out of Apple’s sails (though event they were met with a collection shrug.) The iPhone, it felt, was passé.

But where the new iPhone felt unremarkable, the Apple Watch did not. In fact, the Apple Watch seemed to steal the show: New form factor, new tech, new screen, same bands (phew!) Now this was a device I wanted to own. But why? Dave Pell had a few thoughts:

1. Today, Apple introduced new iPhones, but it was clear that the company’s focus was on the new Watch.

I think this represents more than just a business decision. On some level, the makers at Apple feel guilty about the technology they’ve shared with the world.

— Dave Pell (@davepell) September 13, 2018

The thread that follows goes a bit like this:

1. Apple creates the iPhone. People love it! Spend all their time on it! Too much time on it…
2. Apple recognizes this. Parents recognize it. Kids recognize it. Our phones dominate our lives and dictate our social interactions. Largely, this is caustic and potentially dangerous.
3. Enter the Apple Watch: All the notifications your phone gives you, without your phone to suck you in. Also, fitness and stuff!
4. The Apple Watch can be positioned as a cure to our phone addictions. And Apple sees this. Parents see it. And kids see it. It’s the new favorite.
5. So while Apple continues to create powerful phones, the most impactful one to us all may just be the Watch.

This felt spot on, and explained my lack of enthusiasm for this year’s iPhone. It was the Watch I wanted, and I wanted it so that I could avoid my phone.

A quick run-through of my day shows how often I leave my phone behind: At work, it sits on my desk. At home, on my bureau. My phone is barely used, aside from podcasts and music in the car, and, (ugh) the occasional phone call. I use my Watch for passive notifications, and my iPad for getting things done; my phone is simply not that important anymore.*

With my iPhone now a second-class citizen, the Watch and iPad will take its place on the regular upgrade cycles. I’m sure this costs more. I’m sure Apple doesn’t mind. I’m quite happy to leave my phone behind.

In journalism, a “cutline” is a caption or description of a photo. It’s a quick summary of what you’re looking at. It may not always be accurate or fair to what lies in or outside of frame. It’s an ancillary, albeit small, function in an article: Without it, you may wonder just what you’re looking at.

The cutline is this blog’s namesake, if only because I intend to keep things cogent, concise, and personal. Politics, technology, family; they’re all fair game.

Onward.