Episode Description
This week, Dan Neumann is joined by his colleague Misi Eyetsemitan and together they are exploring the value of Empiricism beyond the Scrum Team.
In this episode, Dan and Misi dive deep into the meaning of Empiricism and how it contributes to a Scrum Team predictability. Empiricism leads to more effective decision-making and is considered a powerful tool to manage expectations within an organization; you can’t miss this episode for a thoughtful discussion of its extent.
Key Takeaways
What is Empiricism?
Empiricism is knowledge from experience and using that knowledge in decision-making while ensuring we are eliminating risks
In a Scrum Team, empiricism is at the core of the work
Empiricism helps to build some level of predictability to the goals a Scrum Team has
Empiricism from an organizational point of view:
Each Sprint is an experiment, each idea is a proposal to experiement
The first step is going out, using the available data to make informed decisions, and testing the existing hypothesis in order to validate that data
From the moment a concept comes up, those who are going to be building it need to provide feedback to formulate an early hypothesis
Budgeting within the agile space:
After developing a concept and a way of materializing it, the following step is funding. These questions proceed: What is sustainable and what is not? What is emerging?
How we use the empirical data that we have to find what is emerging is what really provides the most value
Misi explains how the concepts of profit and value have evolved over time
A budget needs to support what is bringing the most value
Empirical data shows in many ways in decision-making, going beyond the day-to-day of a Scrum Team
How can we use empiricism to help us better manage expectations?
Empiricism is key to setting goals, road-mapping, and validating MVP
Evaluating success is a challenging task
Organizations use different tools to measure success, but the primary measure is how much value is being provided to customers
The vision must always be present as the main driver of an organization
In order to share empirical data, a safe environment is required
Mentioned in this Episode:
Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]
Intro: [00:03] Welcome to Agile Coaches’ Corner by AgileThought. The podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work and pave the path to better outcomes. Now, here’s your host, coach, and agile expert, Dan Neumann.
Dan Neumann: [00:17] Welcome to this episode of the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast. I’m your host Dan Neumann. And today I’m excited to be joined by one of my AgileThought colleagues, Misi Eyetsemitan, thank you very much for joining.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [00:30] Hi Dan. It’s always fantastic to be here with you.
Dan Neumann: [00:33] I’m looking forward to this. You played the role of Santa’s helper for our Christmas episode, which was a hoot. So thank you for that. And then thank you for being brave enough to come back.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [00:45] I’m always happy to come back. Santa’s health is always happy to help Santa.
Dan Neumann: [00:50] Perfect. Well, if we see Santa, we’ll be sure to have him pass along appreciation again. The topic we’re going to explore today is one you proposed and it’s on the topic empiricism, we hear a lot about empiricism and the value of it within scrum teams. And what we’re going to explore today is the value of empiricism beyond the scrum team. And I’m wondering if you can maybe frame that up a little bit for us.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [01:18] So, you know, I think it’s always great to start with what is empiricism right? What do we know empiricism be right? Empiricism at its simplest is really knowledge from experience and utilizing that knowledge in our decision making while ensuring that we are eliminating waste, which in short means while in showing that we’re lean. so really, empiricism is very fact based, very knowledge based and extremely focused on what have we learned through experience.
Dan Neumann: [01:55] I tend to think of it, an example in scrum that comes up and of course, we’ll get outside of scrum. How fast will the team move? That’s often an example where empiricism comes in. You might hope to move faster. You might wish you could move faster, but if you’re not moving faster already putting a plan in place based on moving faster is a fallacy. And so empiricism would say, look at how fast you’ve been moving and use that going forward.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [02:25] Very true. And for scrum teams really empiricism is really at the core of how we work, right? How we make our decisions, whether it is what are we going to work on, or how are we going to work on, whatever it is for our products. Empiricism is key to the scrum team’s ability to build somewhat some level of predictability towards goals that they have within their product backlog. So it really is a very key component of scrum. It’s actually what the pillars of scrum try to ensure that the team lives into right? The whole idea of being transparent and consistently inspecting and adapting, but to what? To what we’ve learned, right. And using what we’ve learned to make our decisions on what to do next or what is visible next for our product. So empiricism shows up in so many ways on the scrum team.
Dan Neumann: [03:27] Perfect. So help us take that then outside of the scrum team towards more of an organizational view or wherever you want to take us.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [03:37] Okay. I always like to start with where it all starts from, right? What journey has to take place before it even gets to the development of value stream or the scrum team. It starts from a simple idea, right? A simple idea for product of a service, right? How does empiricism show up in how we idealize right? What knowledge factors, what knowledge indicators are we utilizing to come up to ideally? If you look at the lean startup model, it’s all about experimentation, right? Experimenting to validate a hypothesis, right? In scrum, really each sprint is an opportunity to put that mechanism in motion to validate some hypothesis, really each scrum, each sprint is an experiment. So think about the concept of each idea is a proposal to experiment, but what empirical information are we using at ideation? What key design thinking tools are we using to format ideas? You will hear product owners and product managers just going out on Gemba works, right? A Gemba work is an opportunity to see, to feel, to think, like who you are providing your service or your product to, and from the feedback or from what you see, it forms cognitively into what your ideals or your ideas will be. So first step is going out, right? And using the data that you get from going out tangibly to making informed decisions that become your ideas. That’s the first step in, and that’s how empiricism shows up. What did you see? What kind of information did we get? What did we use with the information we got? How did we inferred it to come up with our next steps?
Dan Neumann: [05:49] That’s perfect. And, there were a couple different examples of going out in there, use that phrase, describing the Gemba. And one of those being at the product ideation, go out and make sure that your hypothesis is valid. Test the hypothesis. Eric Reese advocates very strongly for doing very simple things to validate that hypothesis so that we don’t go build a product and go, oh gosh, nobody wants this. This doesn’t solve an actual problem in the world. And then the other one was more internally, at least in my mind, a Gemba walk is usually internal, where you go to the place of the work, you go to see what’s happening and you’re able to then inspect and adapt at that level. Is that kind of how you see it?
Misi Eyetsemitan: [06:41] So I like to always when I’m thinking of Gemba, right? I always like to think of this Japanese word called the power of bar. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that phrase. It really means that the subject and the object are one. Right. So if you’re taking feedback from who you’re providing for, then also take feedback from those that are building and the system, right. And marry that information to make decisions, right. My customer wants to fly. Can I build currently where I’m at? What are my people that can build say about getting my customer to fly? I’m not just going to ideally and just come up. You know, I have to make informed decisions. What are my people saying that are also my customers? Because really sometimes, most times the builders are also users of whether the service of the product and my customers and what are they seeing given, you know, whatever ideas or information I’m getting. So you got to marry the two.
Dan Neumann: [07:48] That’s perfect. And that matches with what we would advocate for getting somebody with a product idea together with the people who are going to build it and starting to marry those up. Because if the product idea person has a solution in mind that can’t be built or can’t be built economically, it’s fairly useless. And if the people building it, don’t actually achieve the outcome that’s desired, then that’s also wasted. And so that’s where I see that concept of lean fitting in making sure that we aren’t generating waste and inventory and waiting.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [08:24] And that’s one of the primary differences of agile and, you know, traditional waterfall, right? It’s that early engagement from idealization, right? From the moment that a concept comes up, ensuring that those that will be building are providing feedback just as you give the same weight of relevance to who you are giving, providing the product to. That way, we are able to either nullify and purchases early, as opposed to waiting later where there’s been so much expense and time utilized towards building something that can not be achievable.
Dan Neumann: [09:05] Perfect. And does this factor in as well then into budgeting as we start to explore that?
Misi Eyetsemitan: [09:12] So once you move from ideal. The next step is funding it, right? And this is where you hear of different concepts of budgeting within the agile space. Really it’s really using and empiricism data to find out what is sustainable, right? What is not, and what is emerging, right. And being able to use budget in an agile fashion to support it. If this empiricism is null and void, where do we go and using the empirical data that we have to fund what is emerging and what really provides us the most value. So you see how one way or the other, just as we are able to apply the knowledge and experience at the idealizing phase now that same knowledge moves into how we are utilizing our funding, such that we are capitalizing on the utilization of our people, as well as our I that we expect to get back. We’re funding what is most expedient and most valuable in real time.
Dan Neumann: [10:22] For sure. There’s that investment making sure we’re investing in the right things. And I also see it in another place makes me think of my car. I tend to buy used cars. I can’t wrap my brain around buying a new car. And they take me all cars take maintenance, new cars take maintenance, old ones do. But if I pretend like next year my car will take less maintenance than it did this year. I’m probably making a flawed decision. And I see companies do the same thing. Well, keeping the lights on running the business cost X last year, it’s probably going to be that same X of a drag on your organization for the next year, unless you’re doing something really intentional to actively pull that down, whether it’s investment in different infrastructures or solutions, et cetera, but, kind of wishing that maintenance isn’t a need for your company isn’t going to make it so.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [11:14] Yeah. Organizations consistently review what’s their sinking cost, right? They’ll also review what’s the cost of delay in those decision making. Those are tools or those are techniques to ensure that we’re using empirical data. How do we come up with what’s our cost of delay, right? It’s empirical data that’s going to let us know that look delaying on this is costing us this by the minute or by the hour. Right. And you know, this is sinking cost that we are going to accumulate regardless. And how does that information then translate into how we make decisions that are most profitable right now? So the mindset of profit and value has evolved over time, before it was all about the money, how much money is coming back. Now, it’s expanded into how much money am I losing in real time if I’m not doing this, how much money am I losing in knowledge share? It’s not just in funds, in resources, in people, right? Because think about it. You have to keep knowledge professionals motivated and, intrigued by what they’re building to stay. Otherwise you’re going to lose them to the next thing. So a lot of empirical data shows up in so much ways in decision making in an agile organization to remain marketable and relevant. It’s beyond just the day to day of the scrum team.
Dan Neumann: [12:48] Absolutely. You touched on something when you were talking about budgeting. That made me think of how infrequently a lot of organizations budget and a lot of them do it annually. And, as the world doesn’t sit still for a year. And so shortening those feedback loops. Is that typically something where you would see a lot of value on quarterly budgeting, kind of an annual forecast or the next 12 months forecast, but a revisiting of that as we get empirical data?
Misi Eyetsemitan: [13:15] Definitely. And that’s why we set up value streams. Because it gives us much transparency into how value is flowing within our organization. And then we’re enacting teams to support the flow of value. And hopefully if done right, we are also reviewing the budgeting associated with that and ensuring that our budget supports what brings us the most value as defined by what value means to us in our organization, because value in one organization differs from value. I always want to stress that, value in company A is different from value in company B. So as we identify one out the value flows within our organization and enact our networks to support that, then the next part is supporting that from a financial stance, from a budgets stand. You’ll hear concepts like participatory budgeting. There’s so many ways that organizations have attempted to solve for that concept and ensuring that, you know, we’re agile about finances as well.
Dan Neumann: [14:21] And I love that you brought in the people part too, especially as right now, there’s the, the concept of the great resignation happening. If companies aren’t using empiricism, looking at what’s actually happening to address staffing and sources of dissatisfaction or potential attractors that other locations are having, they will find themselves in the very unfortunate side of that talent war too.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [14:47] Very true. The world has become a very small global village, right? And it’s those organizations that are able to keep their teams and their people engaged value and motivated that retain them. Otherwise, they’re going to move to the next best thing. Right now, organizations are learning the importance of satisfying the intrinsic motivators of their employees. Otherwise, they’ll go for the next best thing. And thankfully with the pandemic, the pandemic has shown us that, you know what I could be anywhere in the world and I could be relevant to any organization anywhere in the world. So organizations are learning that pretty fast now.
Dan Neumann: [15:34] Absolutely
Commercial: [15:37] Have a topic you want us to tackle, send an email to podcast@agilethought.com or tweet it with a #agilethoughtpodcast.
Dan Neumann: [15:48] Let’s take the empiricism part and talk about how we use that for better managing expectations of those interested in the different outcomes.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [15:58] So empiricism is key to setting goals, right? What are those things that we are looking to see in a year, in two years, in three years, right? For organizations, I’m sure empiricism is key to road mapping, right? And then connecting those roadmaps to if you have value streams or to scrum teams, because it feeds into the execution, what the focus will be from an execution perspective at the program or at the scrum team level. And from outside of, you know, enacting a roadmap, let’s talk about, you know, one word that we are all very familiar with empiricism is key to validating our MVP. The whole concept of using that links, that approach to validating what it means for our product and experience out there in the customer’s hands making us our eye that we expect. So empiricism feeds into how we enact our roadmap, how we set up key milestones that validate or substantiate whatever MVP or MMP that we have identified as organization for our product or a service. And then that detail now feeds into, at the granular level, how teams plan their work and how they prioritize their work. And more importantly, how we say we’ve attained success, right. Because if we don’t have those key OKRs or those what will satisfy MVP, how then do we say we’re successful?
Dan Neumann: [17:50] So Missy, you are talking about how do we evaluate success? And that is obviously a really tricky thing to measure. How do we know if we have a good developer? How do we know if we have a good team? How do we know if a manager’s doing an effective job? All those things get extremely difficult to answer. Sometimes it’s, you know, when you see it. Yeah, that looks pretty good. Something over there doesn’t look right. But how do you kind of pull out some of the more thoughtful insights or more objective indicators of whether something is going well or not going well so that we can use empiricism.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [18:29] So I know from my experience, organizations use different things to kind of measure success, right? it’s how much value? That’s the primary measure is how much value are we providing to our customers at our organization versus the original goal of this enterprise, right? That’s always the first thing that organizations are always going to measure success on is how we tracking along versus what we said we initially wanted to do. Right? And this is a tested by what were the versus our holistic goals. So if I was a company that wants to ensure that I’m primarily the number one telecoms pump me in the world is I want to make sure that my services is the number one for all my customers, right? So in this year, value to me is how did we push that needle forward to make sure we remain number one? Right? So, and that in turn could mean key capabilities and features that need to be in my customer’s hands this year. So from a scrum team perspective is measurement towards those key capabilities and features or key or OKRs that will ensure that we meet that number one goal of this company. I like to tell people is everything in an agile organization is connected. It’s connected to number one. And number one is always, what is our vision and what is our goal as an organization, right? That is where all our key OKRs will come from. It is where even our MVP for whatever is of value at this time will come from. And it is where the predictability and the stability of the scrum team from a performance perspective will be measured.
Dan Neumann: [20:22] I think that’s a really important point to kind of pause on and highlight. The importance of having that vision set for the top. What’s the purpose of the organization as I bang my elbow on the desk, and that probably sounded awesome. So apologies to anybody who was listening at that point. but so I’ll repeat it. So the vision at the top, and having that radiate down through the company so that all the decisions are made in alignment with that bigger vision. And I was actually at a company and they had somebody who was in the meeting our weekly, all hands meeting, kind of repeat what the company vision was, so that they knew it. And you didn’t know if it was going to be your day to repeat it at the company mean, so you darn well better know it by heart. And, and I think it’s easy for companies to think, oh, well, we’ve said it once, or it’s on the wall or it’s on the website. People should know it. They probably don’t, if it’s not to the point where you’ve said it, you think too many times, it’s probably not clear.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [21:28] Yeah. It all has to map to number one, right. Even from maintenance, what are we maintaining? It goes without saying that an organization that doesn’t have a vision, where are you going? You’re just going to be all, it’s impossible to be all things to all people. You got to have, where you want, you have to have your niche or what it is that you want to focus on. Otherwise you’re just going to be all over the place. And that’s why you’ll hear coaches always advocate for vision mapping. That’s our north star, right? Our vision is our north star and everything else needs to point to the north star because then it’s number one, it builds our culture, right? Our vision ships, what we want to be seen and known for. So it’s always important that that be established. And I love that that organization that you were at continually reiterates it. Because we’re not going to ideally on something that’s outside of our vision, that’s wasting time. We need to build towards or build upon our vision. So I just shared some tools, right? One of it is, it all starts with a vision, right? Vision mapping is a good tool to utilize our MVP or whatever our focus is, has to tie in to the vision, right. Even when we are doing feature decomposition and using whatever backlog strategies that we have in our organization. It’s factoring that major component, but more importantly, using design thinking approaches to ensure that we are making informed decision given what we know today.
Dan Neumann: [23:29] That’s perfect. And then are there other things that you would advocate for measuring for? Because some of these things are pretty tricky. They’re hard to measure. It’s hard to measure a business value, at times.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [23:44] It’s very important, right? We have to ascribe or identify, not ascribe, identify what does value mean to us? What is value to us? Once we understand as organization, what value means to us, everything else somewhat becomes easy, whether it’s that we are setting up quality metrics, whether it is that we are setting performance indicators or, performance measurements to ensure that whether it’s a system or a product given what our customers are saying is performing as expected, right? It all starts with what are our values? What is value to us? What is the value we’re expecting from set product or service? And organizations have different ways that they do this at the scrum level, whether it be a program, one of the ways we try to do this is also have like, make sure that our backlogs reflect all of those key components of our product, whether it’s that, Hey, we’re going to give 50% of our backlog to new functionality or to functional work and 25% is going to go to performance and technical debt. And another 25% is going to go to maintenance so that we are not ignoring any part of ideals as an organization and everything that makes our product or our service remains in focus. So it’s not just about giving the customer something new. It’s also ensuring that what exists meets the customer, where the customer is at
Dan Neumann: [25:21] Perfect, perfect. As we get towards the back part here, let’s talk a little bit about how safety fits into the ability to experiment, the ability to measure, the ability to be transparent.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [25:37] You and I, when we first started this conversation, we talked about per and using gay, empirical data from the customer and gain empirical data within. Empirical data within is very tricky, tricky in the sense that you have to have empowered the people in the organization to be able to give that information. And if an organization does not promote some level of psychological safety or an environment, a generative environment where people close us to the work or within the organization, feel comfortable to speak up, to live into those strong values. To live into our, or that we’re not living into agile values. Then the whole, you lose the opportunity to get good data from within the organization. And it’ll be more about our staging then, right? Because we’ll just be given what you want us to see as opposed to what is true. And nothing beats true data, because then you know that the information, the assessment that you’re making is correct. And you can use that information.
Dan Neumann: [26:58] Perfect. Yeah. And when you as a leader, as a stakeholder, see the information, if you react negatively to it, you’re probably not going to see negative data. The problem will still be there. The data will be massaged to make it go away. And so you have to approach that with curiosity, oh, what’s happening? How could we do better? Let’s go and see, it’s probably something in the system in the environment that the leaders need to help address. It’s often not something within the team’s control that they can unilaterally address. So because you said earlier, everything’s connected. And a lot of times solving problems where everything’s connected is a leader problem or, or something that leaders have to address.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [27:43] I think leaders have a responsibility to approach feedback as a blessing, wherever the feedback is coming from. Otherwise, then you will not get the kind of feedback that you would need to grow your business or grow your product. People would be giving you PR version of feedback as opposed to tangible feedback that you can actually use to blow up your company, blow up your product. So creating that psychological safety and ensuring that there’s that openness to that individuals within the organization can comfortably share should always be welcomed.
Dan Neumann: [28:32] Perfect. Well, Misi, I want to thank you for taking some time to explore empiricism outside of the scrum team with me, and then of course, with the listeners today. So, thank you very much. Any closing thoughts?
Misi Eyetsemitan: [28:44] Just an encouragement while we focused more within talking about from a business perspective, enterprises and organization, and empiricism is also something we can use personally in our daily lives. I like to always say feedback is a blessing feedback from my children feedback from my husband. It helps us grow as individuals. And the more you know, the more informed you are, the better decisions you can make. So a lot of us tend to think all these tools and techniques that they’re best at work in our professional environment, but really it’s very applicable to our everyday lives. It’s very informative to how we see, the world and the people within it and how we relate to it. So think of empiricism as something that you might want to utilize every day as well.
Dan Neumann: [29:40] That’s a beautiful reminder. Thank you for that, Misi. And at the end of the episodes, we typically explore what is on your continuous learning journey. And I have no doubt, you’ve got some things on yours. So what can you share?
Misi Eyetsemitan: [29:56] Dan, Misi is a very, very, very busy woman. So I have are short term goals from a continuous improvement perspective. I’m currently working part of a cohort for positive intelligence, which is valuable to me personally as a coach. Also working simultaneously on my professional Coach Certification by the International Federation of Coaches. It’s called the PCC. And also, a certification from Alliance as a Certified Enterprise Coach. So lot of stuff going on for me in 2022.
Dan Neumann: [30:40] That’s awesome. And when we are interviewing people, a lot of times the candidates will ask me, well, what do you like about AgileThought? It’s one of the questions that often comes up and it’s like being around people that are doing what you’re doing. I’m like, that’s pretty exciting. It’s not just being there with a bunch of people who are waiting crud it’s Monday. I got to go to work. Oh, darn it’s Friday. And or yay it’s Friday. Sorry. That’s I get confused. but it’s like people who are learning and growing and sharing ideas. So that’s awesome. I’m looking forward to all this goodness.
Misi Eyetsemitan: [31:13] Dan, you can’t give what you don’t have, right? You can’t be a coach coaching people to continuously improve if you are not continuously improving yourself. So it’s something that I’m passionate about and that I do give quite a lot of my effort and my time too. So it’s important to me.
Dan Neumann: [31:31] That’s wonderful. Well, thank you for sharing that and thank you for sharing on the podcast until next time.
Outro: [31:38] This has been the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast brought to you by AgileThought. The views, opinions and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of agile thought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes at agilethought.com/podcast.
