Intro - Giants
Invention > Innovation > Implementation
Innovation is not about generating new ideas, it is about commercialising an idea that has already been generated, so it can be implemented.
There is always a lot of talk in the agile, product and data domains about innovation, but as with most things agile, product and data there are many different definitions on what the word Innovation actually means.
For me Innovation is not about inventing something new, it is about taking an idea that has been invented before and working out how to use it in anger.
Over the last decade I have constantly innovated with combining agile, product and data ways of work, but I have done little if any invention. I have generated very few, if any, unique ideas. My skill is recognising patterns in ideas invented by others and working with teams to see how we could use them to make our ways of working better. And then progressing those patterns to a level where I can articulate, teach, mentor and coach data teams to use them.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
I have constantly iterated the work of others and this content is nothing if not a different retelling of ways of working that have been written before. I have taken ideas that have been invented, innovated and implemented outside the data domain and have adapted them to be successful within the data domain.
I am not the first to take this approach and I won't be the last.
I think it is critical to recognise the work that you adopt and iterate when you do so, and recognise that you are “standing on the shoulders of giants” to reach those lofty goals you aspire to reach.
I give you the agile, product and data giants
Here are the giants who have been critical to my work over the last decade, and have influenced this content.
The giants are listed based on the order I wrote each piece of content and needed to recognise their contribution to that piece of content.
Scott Ambler
Scott has been instrumental in the creation of the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) approach and is also a master of delivering “Dad Jokes”.
He publishes patterns regularly on https://ambysoft.com/, https://agiledata.org and https://agilemodeling.com.
He co-wrote the book “Choose your WoW - Second Edition: A Disciplined Agile Approach to Optimizing Your Way of Working”
While I cannot remember directly iterating one of Scott’s patterns, whenever I read one of his published patterns I can see the genesis of a lot of the ways of working I have iterated and I have no doubt that his writing has influenced the patterns I use and recommend.
Scott holds a special place in my AgileData journey, as he is the person I most associate with coining the terms Agile Data and Way of Working. Both terms I reuse heavily in my content and in our AgileData.io Startup Product/Company.
You can listen to our podcast with Scott https://agiledata.io/podcast/no-nonsense-agile-podcast/disciplined-agile-toolkit/
Shoulder Standing:
Agile Data > Use of the term AgileData;
Way of Working > Use of the term Way of Working (WoW).
Lawrence Corr
Lawrence co-wrote the book, “Agile Data Warehouse Design: Collaborative Dimensional Modeling, from Whiteboard to Star Schema” which describes patterns to gather data requirements from your stakeholders and articulate those requirements in a way that can be easily mapped to logical and physical data models. It also provides a shared language which can be used between stakeholders, business analysts and data developers.
I discovered Lawrence's book early in my AgileData journey and it was one of those books that allowed me to experiment with innovating and implementing his patterns straight after reading it. In my previous company we created a one day version of Lawrence’s BEAM course and successfully delivered it to hundreds of people.
At its core, I would not personally do an Agile Data delivery for a customer without using BEAM as the primary way of gathering data requirements and I strongly encourage data teams I coach to experiment with the BEAM patterns as part of their way of working.
Shoulder Standing:
Business Event Analysis and Modeling (BEAM) > Concepts, Details and Events;
Who does what > Use of the term and the requirements gathering process;
Mapping BEAM outputs to Dimensional Models > Mapping BEAM outputs to Data Vault models;
Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur
The Business Model Generation book is one of my favorite books of all time. It is something about the way it is written with the inclusion of lots of diagrams and lots of examples to reinforce the concepts that really gels with the way I think.
So while not about agile, product or data as such, the agile community has embraced the idea of a canvas and has iterated the canvas pattern multiple times.
Lawrence Corr iterated the Business Model Canvas to create the BEAM canvas which visualises the Who, What, Where etc. That gave me the inspiration to iterate on both the BEAM and the Business Model Canvas to create the Information Product Canvas.
Shoulder Standing:
David Guest
T-shaped is a term that describes the breadth and depth of skills an individual has acquired. It is a term I have used for many years, but I cannot remember where I first read or learned about it.
With no understanding of the genesis of the term I did a bit of Googling and the term T-shape is widely credited as being coined by David Guest in his article “The hunt is on for the Renaissance Man of computing” published in 1991 in the UK newspaper the The Independent.
Shoulder Standing:
T-Shaped > Use of the term T-Shaped as part of T-Shaped Skills.
Ralph Hughes
Ralph Hughes wrote three books that spanned the agile and data domains, Agile Data Warehousing: Delivering World-Class Business Intelligence Systems Using Scrum and XP, Agile Data Warehousing Project Management: Business Intelligence Systems Using Scrum and Agile Data Warehousing for the Enterprise: A Guide for Solution Architects and Project Leaders.
I read all of these books early in my AgileData journey and they were instrumental in forming my thinking in this space. To date they are still one of the few books I know of which talk about combining Agile and Data Ways of Working.
In his books Ralph stands on the shoulders of giants and either describes their patterns in a way that makes them more applicable in the data domain or iterates upon them. Having this content consolidated in one place certainly shortened the time I had to expend finding and experimenting with these patterns.
Shoulder Standing:
Small / Vertical Slice > Use of the Thin Slice term / pattern
3 week iteration length > Recommendation teams start off experimenting with 3 week iterations
Geoffrey Moore
Geoffrey Moore has written a number of books, one of which was called Crossing the Chasm. The book is focussed on how to sell your products to customers, so why do I hear you ask, am I adding it to the list of Giants?
Well because in this book Geoferry outlines a pattern called the “Positioning Statement” and we reuse this pattern as the Vision Statement pattern in the Information Product Canvas.
I have a vague hint I read about this pattern in one of Ralph Hughes books, but I cant find the reference, which means I was probably introduced to it by Geoff Hunt.
Shoulder Standing:
Positioning Statement > Vision Statement
Geoff Hunt
Geoff Hunt worked with me as part of the OptimalBI team. Geoff was there in the first part of my AgileData journey and we worked together to discover and experiment with combining agile and data patterns to see if they added value to the customers and teams we worked with.
Geoff came from a traditional business analyst / project management background and he agreed to join OptimalBI in its early days to try and help us harden up our waterfall consulting methodology. Shortly after Geoff joined we decided to experiment with this thing called “agile” and Geoff now found himself on a boat that had done a massive left turn. I'm not sure whether Geoff will remember that change as a positive or negative change for him personally, but I am forever grateful that he was there to help me in the early days of my AgileData journey.
Shoulder Standing:
I can’t remember any specifically, but given we worked closely together at the beginning of my AgileData journey, there are bound to be quite a few.
Dr Carol Dweck
Dr. Carol Dweck published the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success in 2006 and describes two mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
I have always used the concept of a growth mindset in the conversations I have had with teams, but never explored where it came from.
Shoulder Standing:
Growth Mindset > Agile Mindset
Kent Beck, Mike Beedle, Arie van Bennekum, Alistair Cockburn, Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, James Grenning, Jim Highsmith, Andrew Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jon Kern, Brian Marick, Robert C. Martin, Steve Mellor, Ken Schwaber, Jeff Sutherland, Dave Thomas
These gentlemen were the founders of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, commonly referred to as the Agile Manifesto, as well as a lot of patterns from the various agile approaches and practices that preceded it.
With every team I have coached or taught I have always referenced these values and principles.
Shoulder Standing:
Ahmed Sidky
While researching the chapter on Agile Mindset I came across a simple but powerful diagram by Ahmed Sidky which provides a view of how the Agile Mindset could be related to the Agile Manifesto Values and Principles.
The original Diagram referees to unlimited practises, in the AgileData way of Working we focus on patterns over practises, so we adapted the diagram very slightly to apply this perspective.
Shoulder Standing:
Christopher Alexander
When researching the genesis of the concept of patterns I found a lot of references to Christopher Alexander and his books on architecture patterns.
Alexander published a book titled “A Pattern Language” in which he documented and named 253 patterns that he had observed in the design of buildings and towns.
The examples of repeatable building architecture patterns for courtyards, windows and porches solidified by understanding of what a pattern is.
Shoulder Standing:
Use of the pattern of patterns throughout the AgileData content
ChatGPT
A portion of this content has been drafted by ChatGPT and then updated to produce the final content.
ChatGPT is a large language model trained by OpenAI. It is an artificial intelligence that is designed to assist with a wide range of tasks, such as answering questions, providing explanations, and generating natural language text
Shoulder Standing:
Production of initial drafts of some of the content in this book
John Rossman
John Rossman is a former executive at Amazon who wrote a book called "The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company." In his book, Rossman outlines four key rules for writing an Amazon Future press release.
Shoulder Standing:
Four rules for the Amazon Backward Working Press Release
Nick Butler / Boost
Nick wrote a blog as part of the Boost team in New Zealand titled “Press release template and tips: the Amazon path to success”, which did a great job of explaining the Amazon Working Backwards Press Release pattern. It also provided a template so teams could experiment with it.
Shoulder Standing:
Amazon Backward Working Press Release Template
Ralph Kimball
Ralph Kimball is considered to be one of the pioneers of the data warehouse industry, and has written extensively on the subject of data warehousing, data management, and related topics. Kimball is the co-author of numerous books on data warehousing and data management, including "The Data Warehouse Toolkit," "The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit," and "The Kimball Group Reader, Volume 1." He is known for his work on the "Kimball methodology," a set of best practices for designing and building data warehouses.
Shoulder Standing:
Definition of Subject Area
Bill Inmon
Bill Inmon is considered to be “the father of data warehouse” and has written extensively on the subject of data warehousing, data management, and related topics. Inmon is the author of numerous books on data warehousing and data management, including "Building the Data Warehouse," and co-authoring "Corporate Information Factory,".
Bill has two Scotty dogs Jeb and Lena.
Shoulder Standing:
Definition of Subject Area
Len Silverston
Len Silverston has written a number of books on data modeling. One of the most well-known is "The Data Model Resource Book," which is a comprehensive guide to data modeling concepts and techniques. The book covers a wide range of topics, including data modeling principles, data modeling methods and techniques, data modeling tools and technologies, and more.
The Data Model Resource Book is effectively a pattern library for data models, gotta admire somebody who provides patterns in the data domain.
Shoulder Standing:
Definition of Subject Area
Juan Sequeda
Juan is the co-host of the “Catalog and Cocktails” podcast. Juan uses the term “don’t boil the ocean” a lot on the podcast. That term has permeated my nomenclature and so you will find it sprinkled throughout the book.
Shoulder Standing:
Use of the term “Don’t boil the ocean”
Roman Pichler
Roman has authored a number of books that describe combining the agile and product domains. He has published a number of useful product related canvas on his website.
Shoulder Standing:
Iteration of The Product Strategy Lifecycle in the Prioritisation Chapter.
Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber
Jeff and Ken are the co-creators of Scrum. They maintain the Scrum Guide.
Shoulder Standing:
Use of Scrum patterns throughout the book
The Scrum Team Design in Scaling Team Design chapter
Jeff Bezos
Jeff is the founder and CEO of Amazon. He is believed to have coined the term “Two Pizze Teams”
Shoulder Standing:
The Two Pizza Team Design in Scaling Team Design chapter
Henrik Kniberg, Anders Iversson
Henrick and Anders published a number of inspirational blogs and videos that outlined the Way of Working they had adopted at Spotify. These videos have been an inspiration to us on the patterns available to scale agile teams. Spotify Engineering Culture Part 1 & Spotify Engineering Culture Part 2
Shoulder Standing:
“The Spotify Model” in Scaling Team Design chapter
Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais
Matthew and Manuel published the Team Topologies book which provided well articulated patterns for scaling agile software teams.
Shoulder Standing:
Software Team Topology in Scaling Team Design chapter
Jurgen Appelo
Jurgen has been developing and publishing a set of patterns for scaling agile teams as unFIX.
Shoulder Standing:
unFIX in Scaling Team Design chapter
The recognition of the art of whispering
Where I can I have tried to reference the original work I iterated, for example the Information Product Canvas is an iteration of the Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder and the idea was sparked by Lawrence Corrs work on the BEAM Canvas.
But often I find that I don’t really know where the original idea came from, I have assimilated the pattern through reading or watching something in the past that was then brought back to my memory when a team struck a particular problem. Or often the team has found the pattern themselves and I never bothered to ask where they first discovered it.
Or there have been instances where I have used and iterated a pattern for a while and then when I read a new book I see the pattern is described in that book. However I was using the pattern well before I started reading the book. I would love to say it was a coincidence of invention, but the truth is more likely I heard, watched or read something that was based on the book without the book being referenced, or me remembering the reference.
Or I find that I see a pattern in the writing of Giant B and then find it is an iteration on the work from Giant A, so there is a pyramid of giants reaching for the sky so to speak.
So for the purposes of this content, where I have conscious recollection of where I first discovered a pattern I will reference it. If you are reading this and you recognise a pattern you invented or iterated on, reach out and I will add a reference to your work.
Photo by Simone Pellegrini on Unsplash