A Mystery to Heuristic: Is it Unacceptable?

What is Mystery?

Something that is complex or impractical to figure out or demonstrate.

Whenever we start working out a problem for the first time, for us it looks like Mystery.

When we seek to figure out the trouble, in a process when it is taking more time, team members started exploring various Heuristic to deal with the problem faster.

Recently I have encountered the same situation in one of our assignments. The assignment was complex and we were trying it for the first time in the context where we are working. Most of our team members applied Heuristics to deal with the issue.

I glanced into all the heuristic which we have applied to come up with the solution. 

The quick fix is no more mystery for us but there is a working solution available with many issues which we will clear up rapidly.

What is Heuristic?

A heuristic is a technique, is a approach to problem-solving, learning, or discovery that utilizes a workable way not guaranteed to be excellent or appropriate, but acceptable for the immediate objectives.

Heuristics are susceptible to bias and introducing errors.

Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will work further, and relying on an existing heuristic can drive it challenging to identify alternative solutions or come up with different solutions.

Examples of heuristics include using:

• A rule of thumb
• An educated guess
• An intuitive judgment
• Stereotyping
• Profiling
• Common sense

The most fundamental heuristic is trial and error, which can be employed in everything from matching nuts and bolts to identifying the values of variables in algebra problems. In mathematics, some common heuristics involve the adoption of visual images, additional assumptions, forward/backward reasoning, and simplification.

Here are a few commonly used heuristics from George Pólya’s 1945 book, How to Solve It:[6]

If you are having difficulty understanding a problem, try drawing a picture.

• If you can’t find a solution, try assuming that you have a solution and seeing what you can derive from that (“working backward”).
• If the problem is abstract, try examining a concrete example.
• Try solving a more general problem first (the “inventor’s paradox”: the more ambitious plan may have more chances of success).

Most of these we have applied in our assignment to come out with the solution. It looks like common sense but helped us a lot to quickly come out with the solution.

Some more Heuristic which helped us

Similarity Heuristic:

The Similarity heuristic is a flexible strategy. The objective of the similarity heuristic is maximizing productivity through appropriate experience while not repeating unfavorable experiences. Decisions based on how useful or objectionable the present seems are based on how similar the past was to the present situation.

The availability Heuristic:

Involves making judgments based on how comfortable it is to create something to mind. When we are working to carry out a judgment, we might quickly recall a number of significant examples. Since these are more easily accessible in our mind, we will likely consider these results as being more familiar or frequently-existing. 

Cognitive Heuristic:

This involves searching through the possible options until an acceptability threshold is reached.Was introduced by Herbert A. Simon.

Simon used satisficing to describe the behavior of decision-makers under circumstances in which an optimal solution cannot be established. In decision making, satisficing refers to the use of aspiration levels when choosing from different paths of action. By this account, decision-makers select the first option that meets a given need or select the option that seems to address most needs rather than the “optimal” solution.

Fluency heuristic:

In psychology, a fluency heuristic is a mental heuristic in which, if one item is dealt with more fluently, faster, or more smoothly than another, the mind interprets that this item has a greater value with respect to the question being considered.In other words, the more effectively or elegantly a concept is communicated, the more likely it is to be treated seriously, whether or not it is logical.

Affect Heuristic:

The affect heuristic involves making judgments that are greatly aroused by the emotions that an individual is experiencing at that moment. 

Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution.

Rajesh's Comment

Inspiring remarks to read through and emboldens me to stretch further! thanks, Rajesh for your admirable words. The Agilist’s Guidebook’s 57th reader reviews. In 13 months, the book has reached to 600 copies. This remark encourages other readers to glance through the book and embrace if this book helps, anyway. Thanks for helping fellow readers and writers to improve I cherish this book will trigger a few thoughts to look at your world in a distinctive manner.

The Agilist Guidebook

How User Interview technique helped me to develop my books?

Both the book, “The Agilist Guidebook”, and my forthcoming book “The Scrum Master Guidebook”, heavily influenced by design thinking technique.

Conducting an effective focused interview is a fantastic tool for this type of information gathering, and is an extremely valuable component of the design thinking process.

Interviews provide a mechanisms to thoroughly understand an issue, problem, or indeed a proposed solution. Gaining insights, or understanding anything valuable from an interview for that matter, requires great skill and a plan.

I carefully use SPICE framework 

• Social: What do individuals require from their relationships with others?
• Physical: What do individuals need on a personal or practical level?
• Identity: What do individuals require to strengthen their sense of self-worth or build up their personal existence? 
• Communication: What kinds of information do individuals require and when and where do they desire it?
• Emotional: What do individuals need psychologically and emotionally?

The Various guideline I have employed to take the user interview efficiently to gather the expected information are

• Proper homework: I have extensively covered the homework before the interview. Whom I am interacting with, what he/she is presently working, what is his/her position, domain, business, nationality, etc information.
• User mapping and develop a list: I have gathered and detailed all the individuals whom I am going to take the interview. Their all the detail information I have gathered. 
• Establish rapport: Apply the technique to establish rapport during the interview. Give the warm to seamlessly connect with the individual.
• Listen intently and thoughtfully: Apply listening techniques, note down all that you hear and continue the conversation. Perhaps record the conversation for future reference.
• Formulate thoughtful, penetrating questions: Be genuinely curious, and remember the goal is to keep learning even if you consider the responses to a given query may not at all clarify what you’re researching. Dig deeply after a response.
• Observe sensitively and with focus: Be vigilant in your dialogue.
• Maintain a sense of humor: In all my discuss this is one of my favorite motives, The individual will feel good, I will find some way to set up environment light.
• Make yourself impartial: I do not comment or share my solution. I simply note down my observation. I am indifferent to all the conversations. 
• Use the power of silence: I give it an appropriate thought that an individual can think during our conversation, there is no hurry to respond to all the queries. I stimulate the conversation and wait for the answer.
• Active deep listening: I apply my big ears to find out what is not yet said! or all will be going to be answered. It encourages me to bring about my next questions. 
• Asking Why? I ask 5 why very graciously with an abundance of curiosity by sharing some of my life stories so that discussion proceeds and the individual shares more details. Which helped me to understand the situation better.
• Context and illustrations: Every context is unique, it is fundamental to understand the discover the context better. It is during the interview we discover the context better. 
• Avoid leading, closed question: Leading questions are usually undesirable as they emerge in inaccurate information. I ensure no questions ask which will answer into yes/no.
• Ask for real-life experience: I ask to record some real examples the individual has experience. That helped me a lot later to figure out the situation. 

All these good practices helped me to build many stories and insights into the other's life.

Many roles of Mother in Law

How my mother-in-law wears many hats when she is here with us?

She is an extremely talented cook, Passionate cook, chooses to cook with many experiments. She is 75 now and stayed far away from where we are living now. 

I am not a good eater, so she is annoyed most of the time but my kids like eating delicious foods.

Every time she visits, she will do something different with the new recipes.

I have noticed she has applied many hats to explaining the cooking. Which is her favorite subject, BTW she was a school teacher. Now retired.

Some time is she is a coach, sometime mentor, sometime counselor , sometime consultant, and sometime trainer!!!

How? I am sharing this same description in my training to explain these points distinctly.

• Sometimes she would ask you questions about what end result you choose and check if you had everything you required, what other material/ ingredients you might require and check with you that it matched your preferences. She is coaching for cooking. 
• Sometimes she would share his or her recipe with you and his or her experience of how he or she does it. She is mentoring for cooking. As mentors, she brings their range of expertise, knowledge, and experience.
• When we have to cook for many guests, she would examine any anxieties we had about cooking the foods, she is counseling. Counseling supports individuals in working through emotional distress or anxieties that prohibit them from functioning as well as they’d like to.
• Sometimes she would check out the situation, provide three or four recipe options and examine which was appropriate for you. She was a consultant. Consultants bring knowledge and expertise in their areas of work and pass advice on to their clients.
• Sometimes she would demonstrate how it was done, give you the equipment and ingredients you need, and observe while you were cooking it, giving feedback when required. She has become a Trainer. Great training is about preparing individuals with new skills and knowledge to help their personal and/or professional development.

We learn maximum when we perform it ourselves.90% of learning comes when we teach others. At the end of the day my mother in laws wants us to learn fast.

According to the coaching ladder, leaders will assure we reach to self-sustaining state, in our situation, my wife is equipped enough to run the cooking for several guests at any point of time, of course, we all have passed through these phases.

I am sure you have also observed similar type of scenarios and helped your team by explaining when to coach , when to mentor and when to delegate.

Are we aligned with Nature and nurturing ourselves to become Natural?

In my book, The Agilist Guidebook - a reference for organizational agile Transformation, I spoke about Pancha Bhoota Model.

We all composed of 5 bhoota.

Five forces which drive everything. The same five forces we can identify within the Organization to obtain Organizational Agility. 

According to the ancient theory of life on earth came into existence because of these elements.

Look at your organization, How strong or weak all these forces are? What can you identify as a coach? 

Is Air is pure enough ? or Polluted? Air governs the movement of all things in the universe, Air in the organization is like Agile leadership. In the Pancha Bhoota model, I consider Air is equal to Leadership. We all thrive with good quality air. Once Air quality degrade we get into many troubles.

How is the vastness of space? which I am comparing with an individual mindset. Do we have all growth mindset? or all stuck with a fixed mindset?

How is mother earth? how strong it is? Organizational development activities are rooted in the strength and fertility of the earth. 

Are we all coaching each other, Leaders are acting as a coach? in the Panch bhoota model, it is like pure water, the life of all the creatures in the earth. Is it contaminated? 

How is the fire? that is vital for everything, without fire, we can not do anything, that is the first human discovery to build the better life, to live a better life, same in the organizational context it is High-performing team.

All these pancha bhoota , how well they are balanced in the organization?

Five elements in the Pancha Bhoota Model are the enabler which will contribute to the organization to promote agility.

The old paradigm: Organizations as machines, The new paradigm: Organizations as living organisms. When living things appears, we need to take care of the organization like Panch bhoota takes care of our body.

In my forthcoming book, The Scrum Master Guidebook- A reference to obtain Mastery, I highlight, 7C Chakra Model.

We all have 7 chakras in our body, In yogic philosophy, Chakras are represented as energy vortex or houses of pranic energy that are found lying dormant in specific areas in our subtle body.

Energy centers or chakras filter and feed the human body with the essential energy from the chaos of the surrounding environment.

7C Chakra model, Communication, Creativity, Companionable, Competent Team, Change Management, Charismatic Leadership, and Catalyst --
• The Crown Chakra – All about Communication
• The Third Eye Chakra - All about Creativity and Innovation
• The Throat Chakra - All about Companionable skill
• The Heart Chakra - All about Competent Team
• The Solar Plexus Chakra - All about Change Management
• The Sacral Chakra – All about Charismatic Leadership
• The Root Chakra - All about Catalyst

The 7C Chakras in the human body are a gate that transmutes energy downward from the spiritual planes, which are the highest frequencies that enter into a person’s energy field. Energy from the physical body can be transmuted upward for being used in higher bodies.

When all these chakras are balanced, we become healthy and it reflects our personality.

7C chakras when strengthen Individual attains Obtains Agility.

Case studies for Scrum Masters

Case Study 1:

You are the scrum master for the project where the budget has been fixed. The scope has been discussed with the top-level managers and high-level plan has acknowledged. Managers demonstrated the confidence that IT delivery team has performed such work and can do it on time within budget. Now the project has come to the execution phase. During the execution of the project, you have started following the scrum process and start elaborating the backlog, showing the demo to the business stakeholders. You have started discovering that there many challenges which never looked at during the initial scope analysis and budget finalization. Whenever you are reviewing all these challenges to the business, the business is consistently blaming saying that IT is not competent to accomplish the work. You also as a scrum master acknowledge that there are competency issues that with the current team skill-set many things are not going as per the plan.

Give it a thought:
What you should be doing? Business is pretty upset? you may lose the contract? There is a deadline on the final date for go live and business is anxious.

• What do you think as a scrum master you can do?

Case study 2:

You are a scrum master for a team who is working on the latest digital product, your team is working on a couple of microservices API. Your team is small and having 9 members; most of the team members are having 4-6 yrs. of experience and they are extremely efficient developers and your manager is a micromanager where he is not having any other obligation other than taking care of the 9 individuals. He is forcefully coaching the team, where he is 100% immersed in the PM way of looking at the world. You have one Product owner who is in France and there are 3 more developers working as a contractor from

France working with this India team; any day their contract can be terminated and all the scrum events are going on smoothly but everywhere you discover people are sitting on top of your shoulders, asking for micro-level details, asking for billing hrs., asking for velocity vs quality defect data, and pressurizing to do more? At every senior leadership visit, your product is showcased as a digital product development initiative. You are under terrible pressure to deliver higher quality product and through rapid delivery. You are having an issue and the team members are not performing well and the attrition is very high.

• How do you drive?

Case study 3: 

You are the scrum master for a product-based company where your team is supporting back office work for a bank. Your end product development is done in India by your scrum team. You are dependent on some component which comes from the Vendor company based in Gurugram, India. Your product owner and the user base are in Germany. You have a total of 15 members in the team and many stakeholders are spread across multi geographical locations. You are the senior scrum master for this team and an expert who is expected to minimize some of the burning issues happening with the team. You have asked a few of the team members who are working for a long time with this scrum team. They showed a pessimistic view that nothing can be done. By applying your world-class communication skills,

• How can you motivate the team for a better performance? 
• How will you break the distributed challenges in this case? 
• How do you simplify vendor management and your scrum teams’ frictions with other partners?

Case study 4:
Penguin software is a small-scale software development company. They are mostly into software services. They have got a subcontract from a product development company to do end to end automation testing by integrating their team with the product development company’s scrum team.
The expectation is very high which is to rapidly automate all the end to end test suites that are continuously produced by the full-stack team members. As a scrum master, every sprint you will be fully in charge of the overall product quality. The team is using the latest cutting-edge technology for developing the solution. One of the challenges that is present is that you do not have highly competent team members to run the show. But while getting the order, your sales team had promised a lot. Now the order has come, and you need to fulfill the dream. You are the scrum master for the team.

• What are your thoughts to build the team, which is doing long term product development work for more than a year?

Case Study 5:
Project Power world has 40 team members in a scrum team. There are 5 scrum teams. It is a geographically distributed team. There was an immense expectation from this team with a tight timeline. Team was formed newly after going through several months of recruitment drive for new members. Each scrum team has one scrum master and one shared product owner for all these scrum teams. Each scrum team was dealing with many challenges within the India teams plus among India and Sweden teams. Leaders of the team are struggling hard to bring in scrum discipline and establish the self-organized team. There was cultural barrier which is leading to many issues, there were new ways of working which causing issues with old timer, there were new governance which causing some issues etc. There were leaderships support but only 50%.
By knowing more about human psychology,

• How can each scrum master can Improve the situation? 
• What do you do in such situation?

Case Study 6:
You are the scrum master for one of the product teams which is developing a Realtime Database. This is a database and it is not a standalone product. This database will be used by the Airline platform and there are many consumers who will use this product. Your team is releasing through sprints, but the airline platform team is doing a release in six months. You are going too fast for them and your team is not getting real-time feedback about the software you are building.
How are you planning to collaborate with the airline platform team, which is 100+ team members?
Your entire product management team is supporting you, but you are getting resistance while collaborating with the Airline team.
As a scrum master, what do you think you will be able to do to control the damage?
There is a lot of conflict within the team and outside the team. Teams are based out of Denmark, US and India. You are the senior scrum master and with the team for the last few months.

• What will be your change strategy?

Case study 7: 
Opto automation has many scrum teams which are building software for the next generation Industrial Automation control systems for the cement plant. The team has adopted many tools to increase the speed of delivery. New tools to code, design, test and deploy everything is being used in the project and it is completely new for the team members. It is a 30-member team and there are 3 scrum teams which are geographically distributed (India, Switzerland and US).
Recently, it moved from waterfall to an agile way of working. You are the scrum master for one of the scrum teams in India.

• How do you ensure all the change initiatives run smoothly and are sustained for the long-term? 
• Why do you think culturally divisive teams will listen to you? 

They are already comfortable with the team tools they were using.

Case study 8:
Germpower is an automobile software product company where many scrum teams are working to develop a product. Recently, they received an order to build a product, which needs to be migrated to a modern technology from a legacy product. The organization is not a high paying company and most of the team members do not have a strong track record with their education.
The software was absolutely unfamiliar, and nobody knows where to commence. The Scrum master was a senior team member within this organization. The Scrum master was one of the best people leaders and he was accepted by many of his colleagues. His leadership style was genuine and people-oriented. Everyone prefers to work with him. He encourages individuals to take initiatives; he supports and cares about the well being of the people. During the initial days, when the teams were in the discovery phase, there were demands to put extra efforts to know more about the technology plus the legacy system, as the scrum master was easygoing and a fun-loving individual. The team members were always putting extra efforts to understand more about the technology and the legacy system. Unfortunately, after 6 months of the project, he received an onsite long-term opportunity which was greatly required by the organization and he has to travel to Switzerland with his family. You have been recruited as the new scrum master for this project.

• What do you think you will be performing to reinstate the old scrum master style?

Case study 9:
MegaAero system is a product-based company building solution for the Aircraft cockpit. Recently the organization has started a new solution for the Cockpit Display System. Though the development is with multiple scrum teams, but the parameters are fixed (Time, cost, etc.). The contract has been signed, the release date is fixed, team members are from different departments and they are billing 50% for this program. You are the scrum master for `the multiple scrum teams!
An Expert higher than the Product Owner is your boss/Line manager. He is setting everything and asking on a daily basis about the program progress. The team members are under tremendous pressure to deliver. You can see the psychological pressure on the teams. They are already burning out due to the pressure. They express their concerns in the many retrospectives which you have started driving.

• What do you think about this scrum program and what should you do, what can you do differently by knowing the motivational factors?

Case Study 10:

You are the scrum master for the team name RAID which is building up a platform product for multiples business lines. Initially, this project was launched with a small idea and after one year of work, this was accepted by the business extremely successfully, and businesses prefer to develop RAID 2.0 and other business lines also grew interested to reuse this platform. The platform is built up in the XYZ cloud web service platform. Team members from XYZ company were in your scrum team as a full-stack developer to establish this proof of concept and ensure the capability of the XYZ cloud platform. Now after one year, your company decided to minimize the contract employee from the XYZ as a full-time developer. You as a scrum master scared that with the competent team members you have, you will not be able to demo sprint on sprint. As you had experienced at an initial couple of sprints where you were struggling to develop potentially shippable products every sprint, that why you have hired XYZ full-stack developers with higher prices and XYZ also involved to establish their cloud platform to be used. 

• What do you consider you need to work out as a scrum master? 

There is pressure from top to get rid of XYZ team members owing to the higher cost.

Can these case studies be solved by below model?