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This is a schism. Just because it is being orchestrated by smart, tall-steeple pastors who are our friends and evangelical theologians whom we have all respected doesn't make it any less of one.
This is a schism. Just because it is being orchestrated by smart, tall-steeple pastors who are our friends and evangelical theologians whom we have all respected doesn't make it any less of one.
There is a split coming in the Presbyterian Church USA. The new denomination, which calls itself the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (ECO) was established last month in Orlando as a "new Reformed body" to which disgruntled member churches of the PCUSA might be dismissed. The denominational rollout was beautiful, thoughtful, even gracious, in that the fire-breathers of the movement did not seem overtly on display. But as smooth as that presentation was, for those who intend to stay in the PCUSA, there needs to be a frank discussion about what is going on here that foregoes the usual presbyspeak which avoids confrontation at all costs. Usually, that's a strength of our system. But not now.
I was surprised when learning of the denomination's name. It is fascinating that the organization includes the word "covenant" in its name, even as it invites PCUSA members, elders and churches to lay aside those which they have already made. It is their intent to take their talents, gifts and resources away from us and leave the rest of us to manage mission projects both locally, nationally and around the world which they helped to start and which heretofore, in covenant, had maintained. One would think that, if covenant was of such importance that these folks would set themselves to keep theirs, rather than constructing newer, easier ones for themselves in the wake of a vote that didn't go their way. Not surprisingly, ECO has very little to say about their past covenants and is instead focusing its energies on constructing the next ones, which they swear they will keep this time. I'm deeply grateful for the hundreds of thousands of faithful evangelical Presbyterians who were grieved by the results of the vote on ordination standards last summer but who nonetheless have remained and will remain true to their covenants and who thus will work for change the way we always have as Presbyterians. It is such people who understand what it is to be a Presbyterian and who grasp the real meaning of what a covenanted life is all about. For them, covenant isn't about whether their side wins or loses. They have been called to a life "in the harness" with others with whom they often disagree and yet they intend to remain true to that calling and all its attendant vows for the rest of their days. May God bless them for their faithfulness.
I want to focus in this post on the curious construal of connectionalism that the ECO envisions as the covenanted life for congregations. As befitting our consumer culture, there are three ways that a congregation can connect with the ECO. First, for the furious and unreconcilable congregation, they can be dismissed from the PCUSA and welcomed into the blessed rest of everlasting peace by making the ECO their final destination. This makes the most sense, of course, because what's the point of claiming there is a status confessionis (a crisis point in the life of the church which requires that a new line in the sand be drawn to deamarcate truth from error, which is precisely the point at which we are, the ECOers have been saying) if we aren't making a place for which to leave? Although on their website, ECO seems to have gone to great pains to downplay the rift, anybody who has been following things over the years knows that this is the justification for why this has to be done. Despite the fact that the theological substance of the justification for the split is fuzzy to many of us, this position to an extent has to be respected, in my opinion, because it manifests the courage of their convictions and isn't just a lot of talk, which is what we have had. They feel they must go, so I believe we should let them. Of course, if there were real rather than trumped-up theological issues at stake which would actually justify a split they certainly should have been filing heresy charges years ago against persons whom they think are in error but with whom they instead have been amicably working in presbyteries for ages, but better late than never, I suppose.
But this is not the only option. The ECO will, incredibly, let churches swing both ways. They will allow a kind of "half-way covenant" for congregations who can't quite make up their minds. They can walk in the light at the ECO presbytery meeting on Tuesday and yet have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness at their meeting on the very next Saturday, all with apparently perfect consistency! I can understand why a congregation might want to do this–you can have all the benefits of the money, power and history of the PCUSA while thumbing your nose at it by signing up with the ECO. But why would you even need an ECO if it wasn't for having to get away from the unfruitful works of darkness in the first place? Why would the congregations who are trying to flee from the Devil let him have his foot in the door by a union? If it's OK to be in covenant with a church who works with homosexuals or universalists in other churches, why waste the time and money to create a whole new structure? Can you imagine Athanasius making such a deal with Arian congregations or Luther offering an olive branch to his inquisitors at the Diet of Worms? If there has to be a "a line drawn in the sand", how can you in the very next action, rub out the line? It makes not a whit of theological sense to me and thus appears be a pragmatic decision designed to take advantage of any impulse of a congregation to react negatively to the vote on ordination standards. The ECO is apparently intent, not simply on doctrinal purity as they have maintained, but on leveraging the anger of PCUSA congregations to its maximum extent in order to build their brand. Fifty years from now, when their grandchildren cringe over this decision as we did those who made the same error in the 1850s ("You split the denomination over WHAT?") and each of our two denominations' descendants will be trying to piece back together that which is now being rent asunder, such union congregations will be needed. But right now, they will harm the PCUSA and should be rejected outright by all of its presbyteries.
The intent of the ECO can be seen even more clearly in light of the THIRD way in which congregations can connect with the ECO. Does your congregation owe money to the presbytery for a building project and can't get dismissed until the balance is paid off? Do you have a majority of elders on your session who want to leave the PCUSA but you don't yet have the two-thirds necessary majority among the general membership to get the job done? Do you have the required majority to be dismissed but are blocked by a big tither who won't be moved from the denomination of his or her forebears? Well the ECO has a plan for your church while you are in ecclesiastical limbo, so that you can show your colors until the time is right to make your move. The ECO has a plan to partner with what it calls "affinity groups," which are PCUSA congregations who are kind of "bi-curious" and who for whatever reason can do no more than dip their toe into the water of schism rather than diving in. Not to fear. You can affiliate with them without being dismissed by your presbytery. This policy is being presented by the ECO under the guise of doing joint mission, but Presbyterian churches don't need any kind of affiliational decision to do mission with a congregation of any other denomination, Presbyterian or otehrwise. We work across denominational lines every day. My congregation will work with anybody who serves the same ends, even if we don't share the same theology—we work with both Jewish, Muslim and Unitarian congregations, for example. No, this isn't about mission. It is aimed specifically at PCUSA congregations (see their polity document) and appears rather to be about harnessing resentment for the benefit of the new brand and to the detriment of the old. Angry congregations who can't leave can still make public protest by joining an ECO-recognized affinity group. The ECO has a plan for every congregation; no matter how angry, they'll work with you!
All of this should be very troubling to traditional Presbyterians. It doesn't matter how mellifluous the name of the new denomination sounds; they come preaching schism and an ongoing one at that, which appears designed to diminish by whatever available means the resources and energy of the PCUSA. It isn't about doctrinal conviction, for if it were there would be but one option: either in or out. That is our way. Thus, Presbyteries should countenance neither the second or third options proffered by ECO. Allowing either of these decisions to stand in congregations would be to imbibe the cancer of schism in the name of some odd kind of forbearance. Normally, not reacting would be the best and easiest path to the amicable resolution of such a dispute. But that doesn't seem possible here, when the ECO seems intent on doing all it can to undermine the life and mission of the PCUSA. Churches that vote to align with the ECO in any way should be presumed by presbyteries to be intent upon renouncing the jurisdiction of the PCUSA and should thus be given a certain time frame in which to be formally dismissed from that presbytery under that presbytery's dismissal policy. If the congregation does not comply by the date set by the presbytery, then unless there are mitigating factors, the presbytery should dissolve the pastoral relationship and the session and assume original jurisdiction.
This is a schism. Just because it is being orchestrated by smart, tall-steeple pastors who are our friends and evangelical theologians whom we have all respected doesn't make it any less of one. John Ortberg's sermon on the ECO site which "introduces" the new denomination is brilliant, passionate and powerful for the first 17 minutes, for example, but urges on his hearers thereafter a complete capitulation of Reformed ecclesiology. There isn't another nice way to put this. You can, as they say, put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. So the response to this movement, therefore, has to be different from what has been the norm, which, for the most part, has been forbearance. This is an existential threat to the life of the PCUSA. It's horrible that it has come to this, but it is what is. The schismatics are threatening the body, and the body has a responsibility to protect itself from the harm. It can't do this by downplaying what is happening or placating those threatening to leave in the hopes that this will make the problem disappear.
The PCUSA welcomes dissent. The PCUSA is a denomination teeming with evangelicals. We need evangelicals to stay. No one wants anybody to leave. But if people are insistent on going, then they should go, not part way, but all the way out. There should be a gracious separation and we should part on as good of terms as possible. They should not, however, be allowed to draw and undraw their line in the sand as it suits them, congregation by congregation, angling for the best terms. Nor should they be allowed to draw this matter out, year after year, threatening to leave if they don't get their way on the next issue over which we can't agree. This is what I fear could happen in presbyteries where they allow union congregations and affinity groups. Long arguments with your family are normal; they are draining with people who have decided you are the enemy. Our understanding of ecclesiology is at stake here. If the ECO insists there is to be a line, then so be it.
Wow! This is very true. I heard a comment about "faithful disagreement" yesterday. But, this draws a very important "line in the sand."
Isn't more important to be faithful to God's word than to your denomination?
I believe you are correct. Conviction before denomination.
The saddest thing is, I doubt this will even last.
Splinter churches are held together by a common chord of discontent.
United churches are bound in covenant by a common vision of the future.
Timothy – just a question – do you view federated churches, or churches who have long been a part of affinity groups like More Light or CovNet in the same way?
I'm actually more concerned with the sort of back to the future affinities within the new ECOP. Having served as a pastor in a congregational church and in the denomination of congregational churches – the UCC – I'm reminded of the difficulties that arise when problem pastors are accountable to no one but their peers. Although the UCC has a brilliant and lovely theology of covenant, it is ever and always the autonomy of the congregation that rises above the covenant. I've returned to the PCUSA because I so missed the connectionalism and the polity.
It seems like the theologians doing the writing for ECOP are sorting through things saying, this is Biblical and this is not. It's the same sort of sorting, perhaps that you speak of. For example, GA is not good because it is not Biblical. But apparently a pension plan stays (although I'm at a loss to understand it as particularly Biblical.)
Thanks for your thoughts. Peace –
Perhaps a number of people feel any implied covenant has already been broken by tolerating and even celebrating heresy (and please, what court of the church is going to discipline anyone for heresy when we don't even have an understanding of "essentials" anyway), and giving self-affirming homosexuals positions of honor and influence even when the prohibition on gay ordination was still in place (Women of Faith Award to Jane Spahr in 1999 comes to mind)?
Thank you for hitting the nail squarely on the head. That pastors and ruling elders who choose to renounce their ordination vows by sowing seeds of schism and then proceed to lead their congregations out of the PC(USA), especially over a non-doctrinal issue taken entirely out of its biblically cultural context, is to me a denial of him who is Lord of the conscience. If ordained leadership is so bent out of shape over the passage of Amendment A, then let them individually and personally seek communion with a denomination more in keeping with their persuasion. While I might disagree with their reasoning for doing so, I would deeply respect their personal integrity. But there is no integrity to a process of persuading whole congregations to abandon a denomination on the basis of false charges and sour grapes. As an intentional interim minister for the past 21 years, I have encountered a few messes that were created by unscrupulous ordained ministers and elders who were unfaithful to their ordination vows. As long as those of us remaining in the PC(USA) remain true to our ordination vows, our strength shall be renewed and the PC(USA) will become all the more faithful, as well as stronger.
Non-doctrinal issue? Oh my goodness. Based on what is written here, you truly do not understand what is going on. I'm a little embarrassed for you as I read it. I can think of no better illustration of why the people associated with the Fellowship of Presbyterians and the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians are doing what they're doing. If you think the matters of ordination and its related issues are non-doctrinal, then I seriously doubt your powers of deduction and you really don't get it. I'm not saying you have to agree with the Fellowship-ECO folks; it's obvious you don't. But at least take the time to understand those of a different perspective, name the issues correctly, and stop conflating them into something of your own creation.
Clay, you needn't feel any embarrassment for me. Having been ordained 50 years this coming August, and having served in both installed and interim pastorates, as well as an interim presbytery exec., I assure you that I understand quite well what is going on. Also, I take ordination and the vows I took quite seriously. For that reason, if I had felt unable to remain faithful to my vow to "submit to my brethren in the Lord" and to support the PC(USA) because of the previous ordination statement, I myself would have left. But I would not have, under any circumstance, attempted to lead a congregation out of the denomination. In my opinion, to have done so, would have been to encourage schism by tearing down the body of Christ rather than building it up. Again, I fault no one for following the Lord of his or her conscience.
You've written a thoughtful statement. Here's where I struggle. It's hard to judge heresy, or even bad theology, in a denomination in which there there exists nothing but competing "perspectives". The relativizing hermeneutic of suspicion reigns. Which perspective wins is based on power, not truth, however modestly defined. Ultimately those who have prevailed will require conformity to their perspective,either by means of marginalizing their opponents or polity mandate.
My second concern has to do with expansive claims made for the PCUSA or any other denomination. It is no more the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church any more than any other part of the body of Christ. If a I announced tomorrow that I was more in accord with the Episcopal church and left, you probably would not accuse me of schism. If one of your members walks out the door tomorrow and joins the Methodist church will you accuse them of schism? If a congregation struggles to maintain its connection with a denomination that has departed from fundamental matters of theology, why is the congregation in schism? Who has in fact stepped further away from the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith?
Timothy, your ire is misdirected concerning the origin of the idea of union churches. It was PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons who first suggested this as a means of keeping churches from completely separating from the denomination, not the tall steeple pastors. His hope, I believe, was to keep lines of communication with the NRB (now named ECO) open in hopes, I believe, of one day healing the breach. Please don't assume the worst of those with whom you disagree. And please, don't use the term "schism" with regard to ECO, unless you are prepared to argue that the PCUSA is "the true church," something which would exclude the vast majority of Christians around the world.
"And in the PCUSA, we have always believed that the answer to this question is to be decided in the body of believers through a centuries-old process. That process has spoken, but rather than live with it, folks are threatening to cut and run."
Are you saying that the process didn't speak in all the previous votes on ordination?
Having just read something that calls the FoP and ECO as schism, I am happy to be able to sit and watch Joseph Fiennes' performance in the 2003 film 'Luther' … and know that what is one man's schism, is another man's Reformation !!
Perhaps we have a new opportunity for unity. Let's be rid of the schismatics and pursue with new vigor a united church (on the model of Canada or Australia). Might the time be full for a new face of Protestantism in the U.S.? Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbys unite!
Yeah that's been such a brilliant success in Canada and Australia.
I've got two things working my mind over. Here's the first.
There are terms being thrown back and forth which need not only to be defined, but for those definitions to be held in common between those seeking to maintain covenant and those seeking to establish a new one. In particular, I'm thinking about "heresy," "apostate," and "essentials."
The lack of agreement even on what these words mean make conversation impossible.
Seventy-five years ago the first Othodox Presbyterian Church was birthed from the congregation I currently pastor. As a relative newcomer to the area, I started asking why the split happened. The folks in my church thought it was about the ordination of women. The folks in their church said it was about a change in the Westminster. Even 3/4 of a century later we still don't know what we were fighting about.
Now we have the "behind the wall" and "at the wall" conversations using these three words. Those seeking to be dismissed use apostate, heresy and a lack of being able to articulate the essentials as wedges to justify breaking covenant. But we don't agree on what rises to the level of apostasy, heresy, or essentials. As I listen to disaffected pastors and read their blogs, I can hear them making the argument that the very lack of clarity over what is heresy and what is apostasy underscores the need to be clear on what are the essentials of the Reformed faith.
If there is going to be any meaningful dialogue, then we'd better find a commonly held working definition of these words and hold folks accountable who use them arbitrarily to support their own hermeneutic.
Here's the second thing. While you've been arguing covenant, I've been thinking about sacrament. I was ordained a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the RCA and have been actively folding more and more sacramental elements into each service of worship so that both Word and sacrament are in balance.
Baptism is a sacrament of belonging, an extension of the covenantal practice of circumcision to welcome a person into a community of faith. It is a sacrament which joins us by our vows into a lifelong commitment to each other's discipleship, through which we demonstrate how we belong to God and to one another.
Communion is a sacrament of reconciliation. Those who are reconciled to God are called to reconcile with each other, to be ministers of reconciliation. I see that not merely as a categorical forgiveness for sin, but as forging a path toward a stronger, deeper, fuller relationship even with our enemies. That is what Christ did for us while we were still sinners.
To me, the process to seek dismissal needs to be weighed not only on the scales measuring Biblical authority, covenant and ecclesiology, but also in the balance of baptism and communion, of belonging and reconciliation.
On a personal note – I left the RCA to join the PC(USA) for many reasons. I grieved when the action became final, and I grieve it more, now. Only after breaking covenant and sacramental promise am I aware of how eagerness to effect change can stampede covenant. If not for the grace I find in the Preamble of the RCA's BCO, and in my RCA brothers and sisters, I'd feel like the biggest hypocrite in the world for arguing for constancy in the PC(USA).
Timothy, your negative and judgmental tone and words, always assuming the very worst of those whom you differ clearly show me how much you value and desire to keep your "evangelical brothers and sisters" in Christ.
In answer to your questions:
>then why weren't we driven from the church decades ago?
1. Because some of us who know the truth wanted to show grace hoping to see repentance; and
2. Because in the majority of cases, when charges were brought, a largely biased judicatory system and PJC's, protected, ruled and governed based on Book of Order provisions rather than biblical truth or theological correctness.
> in my twenty years in the PCUSA, during all of which I have advocated in the same fashion, nary a soul questioned my orthodoxy in any of the four presbyteries in which I served..
This says no more about your orthodoxy than it does the legitimacy of my comments. Arguing from an absence of something accomplishes nothing. The fact that I have never been arrested for speeding doesn't
mean that I haven't broken the law, perhaps even daily.
> People can't work with you for that many years, knowing you believe as you do, and then when they lose a vote, turn on you and call you a heretic.
This is not at "us" or "them" war. The truth is the truth whether charges are brought or not, whether your heresy is tolerated or not, whether a vote goes one way or another. The fact that for years the PC(USA)'s "votes" seem to have clearly spoken God's will on this matter effectively doesn't mean that councils may not err and in this case they have.
> It's only now, after losing a vote, that they want to gin it up into a first-order issue. And that just has no credibility to it. I'm the same guy I was before this vote as I am now.
As long as the truth was being upheld by the Presbyteries it wasn't as crucial an issue. Now that the error is systemic it has become something of a first order issue.
To label as "disgruntled" those who want to continue the clear witness of sexual chastity and fidelity that has governed this denomination since it's inception is silly. It is those who want to destroy the clear teaching of scripture that are the schismatics. You've already left the fold.
> I'm the same guy I was before this vote as I am now.
I rest my case.
You suggest that patience with heresy is not Biblical? What of 2 Peter 3:9:
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Is not the Lord's patience with us not a model for our interactions with others? Perhaps I am naieve to think in such simplistic terms.
And by the way you should not assume that I am leaving the denomination. Likely I will not, but neither shall I label as "schismatics" those who in good conscience feel a need to withdrawl quietly.
Well, I'll only say that when I saw the title, I knew this would be a slanted article. Go ahead and defile your church, not mine.
I am obviously late to read of these developments… Amazing position by the author to make such a fuss about these folks departing AFTER A 30YEAR BATTLE ROYALE!!! in which evil finally prevailed in the vote. Truly hysterical
position my friend. Let me guess, you like the playful use of language in such mantras as "Pro-Choice", etc. To allow such a lengthy session of discussion with all of the REPROBATES at the PCUSA only shows me that "they tried as long as hope remained…" When the vote for apostasy was complete, the end of the "relationship" was assured.
One word …………..Leagalism .


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Get certified - Transform your world of work today
2 May 2011
Alan Shalloway
After years of helping organizations large and small to transition to become more Agile, I have learned one thing: The larger the organization, the more Lean thinking helps to be effective while using Scrum. Lean is not as necessary for smaller organizations with independent teams; however, it is vital for larger development organizations, say of 100 or more. If you work in a larger organization, this article is for you.
Forget what you have heard about Lean being derived from Toyota and manufacturing. While true, it gets in the way of understanding. Rather, think of Lean as a body of knowledge, mindsets, approaches and tools that apply to the work we do (1). Lean is composed of three main bodies of knowledge: Lean science, Lean management and Lean learning. In this article, I will describe each of these and include a description of how they help Scrum teams.
Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2010) defines science as:
"an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the natural world"(2).
Software development has a science with, admittedly, considerable unpredictability in it. However, even though it is not fully predictable we can still apply scientific processes to it (3). I will use the term "Lean Science," to mean the knowledge of how software development and product development works. Agile already describes some of these "rules" or "laws." One "law" of software development is that, for large projects, you cannot figure out everything up front. It is not a lack of ability that makes you unable to figure everything out up front; it is just the way it is. This leads to approaches such as "build things in stages and see how to respond with what we've learned" – what Agile/Scrum calls iterative development with "inspect and adapt" as a learning model.
There are quite a few of these laws. Some of the most important ones that relate to software include:
Experienced Agile developers know many other such laws based on their past experience. And these laws, being true, require us to modify our practices to align with them. In many ways, Scrum is designed to deal with these laws.
For example, the practice of iterative development is itself a method of not doing too much analysis up front. Getting feedback from the customer at the end of every sprint is an attempt at discovering our misunderstandings quickly. A two-week time-box for a sprint naturally limits how many things can be worked on. The team-swarm (two or more team members working on the same story) also limits the amount of work being done at one time. And one of the more important Scrum practices – having a team focused on one product backlog – is following a fundamental law – co-location and focusing on one project increases productivity and quality (5).
Scrum is one practice to achieving short cycle-times by incrementally building software with rapid delivery when possible. Kanban software methods take this a step further. Kanban is another practice, also based on Lean science, that takes into account the human aspect of change – that too much can be daunting and that discarding what people already know can be considered disrespectful. It is designed to improve an organization's ability to deliver high quality software faster. Kanban allows organizations to start where they are, including its team structures and roles.
To change its methods, the organization first examines how its processes are working and then seeks to improve them by limiting the amount of work-in-progress (WIP) at each step. The underlying tenet is that delays cause defects as well as increasing the time to fix the defects. Kanban creates visibility into the impediments slowing down work and provides a way to improve at a rate the teams find most advantageous. The largest factor in slowing down work is typically working on too many things. Therefore, Kanban suggests setting limits on how much work can be done at each step of the way.
In Kanban, teams develop explicit policies about the work process: about limits on WIP, about priorities of work, about entry and exit criteria, and so on. The team agrees to abide by these explicit policies and to revise them if the policies are helping or hurting the flow of work. One advantage of this is that it allows teams to adjust appropriately to current conditions. Another advantage is that it allows teams to learn together as they discuss the process and their beliefs about the work being done. Explicit policies reflect the current understanding of the team.
This latter point is powerful. When teams talk about their work process in the midst of doing their work, they can make changes while it still matters. This is usually better than waiting until the end of a sprint to hold a retrospection about what has happened after everything is over. Such retrospections often become stale exercises. And discussing work styles and approaches on a daily basis via the explicit policies helps the team gel and keeps the team focused on the affects of changes to work practice. My experience is that having these conversations does not result in extra meetings or time away from work and, in any event, not having agreement on how to work can cause considerable challenges for the team.
Much of current thinking on management appears to come from one of two paradigms. Either management knows best and tells teams what they need to do or teams know best and believe it is sufficient to tell management what they are working on and what their results are. The first approach leads to micro-management and absurd demands for getting more work done. The second leaves management in the dark, unable to assist the teams when they need it. It implies management's role is only to set up the work for the team, but not to be involved in helping achieve the work. This reflects a common fear that management will interfere with the work.
What I call "Lean Management" offers a third approach: the manager as leader / coach. It starts from the position that management and teams need a common ground for conversation. While team members will better understand how to do their work, management will have a better perspective on the enterprise view and how to best create the context for the teams to work together. This approach marries the local knowledge of the team with the broader perspective of management. Each play a part in the collaboration on how doing the work of the organization can best be accomplished.
This role of leader / coach is critical and is more than simply a facilitator or process coach. It keeps accountability with the needs of the enterprise as well as the process. The leader / coach steps in and helps redirect a team with a timely word or observation or question to help the team solve problems or redirect when they get stuck or distracted. For example, sometimes, developers are so passionate about solving a problem that they keep going and going, sticking with an approach way too long before trying another alternative. They need a strong coach to step in to help them redirect.
This is a bit of a change from the common approach in Scrum. I am not suggesting that Scrum teams should have managers directly coach them. That would likely be too big a step for many to handle. However, I believe Scrum teams should ensure that they are getting coaching in improving their methods from their ScrumMaster if that is not already taking place. I have seen many ScrumMasters limit themselves to facilitation when a coaching role would be more valuable, even if sometimes a little more confrontational, to the team.
Scrum teams need to recognize and respect management's need for visibility into the team's process. Line and product managers at effective organizations are just as committed to the project's success as the team is. Their questions should be taken as evidence that they need to understand the team's approach. In his seminal book Kanban (Anderson, 2010), David Anderson describes a case where product managers quickly learned how their asking teams to do "one more thing" adversely affected the teams. They learned to discuss amongst themselves any special requirements for adding something to the mix. This is much more effective than having to tell management being told to do something will require aborting the sprint. The fact that pulling out the aborting sprint card is almost never used is indicative of its ineffectiveness.
Lean is a combination of thinking scientifically and respecting people. Lean is often thought to not attend to the people aspect of software development, but the truth is just the opposite. Respecting people means more than just letting them figure out what to do. It means recognizing that people are human and are therefore emotional. It recognizes that change can be difficult or even traumatic for organizations (6). Kanban is designed as a change management system to enable teams to progress at the pace they are most capable of. This is the ultimate respect, making it ok that people can move at the level they are capable of and not forcing them beyond their abilities.
People learn better in frequent, short steps, than in infrequent, big ones. What I call "Lean learning" would have us focus on small improvements to both our methods and our understanding of these methods. Create explicit policies, test them, and change them… daily if necessary. However, it is also critical that local changes not adversely affect the overall flow of things.
Focusing on coding quickly, at the expense of testing is an infamous example of what not to do. Lean and Kanban focuses on removing delays between steps – typically by either having a small number of items being worked on or by changing the order in which the work is done to minimize delay. The way the work is done is reflected on the project board. This makes the development team's progress visible. It is usually easy to see how removing one delay affects other steps. This, of course, requires rapid feedback, which is achieved by updating the board in real time.
So far we've discussed how Lean/Kanban practices inside of a Scrum team can be very useful. However, applying lean practices in value stream prior to the development team can have even more impact. In "Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility" (Shalloway, Beaver, & Trott, 2009), I relate a story where an upstream problem in sales was causing a 20% loss of productivity with the teams. Assumptions had been made that poor code quality was the culprit while it was really a challenge with procedures during the sales cycle. Overly focusing on the team often results in missing the big picture.
More typically, however, Lean helps teams by providing business stakeholders and product managers insights on how to better identify, size and prioritize the work to be done by the teams. This should be aimed at reducing the workload teams have to work on at any one time. My experience with large organizations is that the biggest impediment to team productivity is overloading the teams with too much work to do. While Scrum attempts to attend to this by having teams only pull the number of stories from the product backlog they feel they can do during their sprint, reality often has teams be overloaded or working on too many things. Alleviating the upstream pressure often has a very positive effect on the teams by enabling them to focus on the most important work and to have all of the resources they need to get their job done.
It also tends to make the product owners more available to the teams since they are not spending all of their time making a product backlog that is already too large. Working too far ahead on the product backlog often has product owners be unavailable to their teams – further impeding their teams. Virtually every business executive I have talked to has recognized this as a problem when I have pointed it out to them. They understand that development teams need their product managers and product owners available to them while they are working. While they may not understand the cost of delay the certainly understand the cost of not having people available when needed.
By discussing how the work load presented to the team affects the team's efficiency, executives and management can often be enrolled in being more selective about what truly adds value to the customer. This is often a job too big for the product owner alone since in large organizations many different products are involved.
Thinking about Lean as a combination of science, management and learning provides Scrum practitioners to start with including Lean/Kanban practices into their Scrum practices. Explicit policies, managing work-in-progress, and creating visibility have a direct, measurable impact on a team's throughput (velocity). By acknowledging there is a set of laws which much be followed, we open up the possibility of conversations between management and teams – where management can both help and understand the work of the teams. Lean suggests learning in smaller steps to validate one's assumptions by checking the results against the way the team is working, as reflected by the Scrum board.
Lean provides an important and useful environment in which teams can learn more intentionally about their work practice. It makes their decisions explicit. It creates natural and helpful collaborations. And it offers clearer guidance on what to do. Even if many of the external practices of a Scrum team are similar to a Lean-based Scrum team or a team doing Kanban, it is the underlying framework that makes for a more powerful environment.
1. The interested reader should listen to a podcast of mine called Redefining Lean or read Managing the Design Factory (Reinertsen, 1997) which doesn't mention 'Lean' once but is one of the best descriptions of how it works that I've ever read.
2. www.wikipedia.com/science, November 2010
3. There is much confusion about predictability and controllability. I recommend my blog Types of Processes – Don Reinertsen for clarification.
4. This is the key tenet of Lean. It transcends manufacturing, services and product development which is why lean-thinking is not limited to manufacturing.
5. I have seen the mere creation of teams – moving away from a matrixed organization – create 200% improvement in true productivity. Why? Because having people work more closely leads to better communication and more focused work at any one time than people working on many things at once with no true teams present. For more information and evidence of this, see my blog post, Challenging Why (not if) Scrum Works.
6. I'm referring to the difficulty many matrixed organizations have creating the true teams that Scrum requires.
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text: all ===> sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot making sure the sa library is up to date... `libsa.a' is up to date. making sure the z library is up to date... `libz.a' is up to date. making sure the kern library is up to date... `libkern.a' is up to date. cc -O2 -Werror -DSTANDALONE -DRELOC=0x300000 -DSUN4 -DSUN4C -DSUN_BOOTPARAMS -I/usr/src/sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/../../.. -I/usr/src/sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/../../../.. -nostdinc -idirafter /altroot/usr/include -c /usr/src/sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/../common/promdev.c In file included from /usr/src/sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/../common/promdev.c:628: /altroot/usr/include/machine/pte.h:407: warning: `getcontext' redefined /usr/src/sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/../../../sparc/stand/common/promdev.h:78: war ning: this is the location of the previous definition /altroot/usr/include/machine/pte.h:411: warning: `setcontext' redefined /usr/src/sys/arch/sparc/stand/boot/../../../sparc/stand/common/promdev.h:79: war ning: this is the location of the previous definition *** Error code 1 Stop.


text:
Thursday February 25 2016
THE BEST COFFEE: A way out the current coffee woes is to borrow a leaf from Ethiopia, where farmers consume half of what they produce, which is six times what is grown and harvested in Kenya, says Isaac Gichia.
Whereas it takes seven kilos of roasted coffee to make a cup of coffee, a farmer, he says, is only paid Sh5 for that coffee. But a cup of the same coffee costs more than Sh100.
"Why can't we start consuming what we grow, which is one of the best coffees in the world?" His contact is [email protected]
exam certificates.
The order by the Ministry of Education to secondary school headteachers to release KCSE examination certificates withheld for students with fees arrears, following a directive by Deputy President William Ruto, is a sign of impunity that will just drive schools into big debts, says university don X.N. Iraki. The ministry, Iraki proposes, should pay the arrears.
"Such orders are also making parents irresponsible. Why should I pay fees if, eventually, I can get away with it?" His contact [email protected]
VOTER REGISTRATION: As it steps up its campaign to get more Kenyans to register as voters, the IEBC has no choice but to send out clear messages.
Francis G. Muhindi, acknowledging the commission's recent colourful pull out on its mass voter registration, says the message was confusing.
"It asked, 'Are you a registered voter? And proceeded to invite one to register at the nearest centre. It would have been better to say, 'If you did not enrol to vote in the 2013 elections, register now!" His contact is [email protected]
BLATANT BRIBERY: Joginder Sokhi was at the JKIA, Nairobi, on January 8, to see off his children.
After dropping off his passengers and their luggage, he went looking for a parking and was surprised to be flagged down by a policeman wearing a GSU-type jacket, with a gun hanging from his shoulder.
He was accused of driving into a "no entry" gate and asked to cough up Sh10,000 or be detained and his car towed to the airport police station.
The officer later accepted Sh2,000 and let him go. In case the authorities are interested, his contact is [email protected]
BAD FOR THE STOMACH: And while driving on the Thika superhighway recently, Joginder had yet another harrowing encounter, this time with a traffic police officer.
He was signalled to move from the outer to the inner lane, where the officer was standing, and accused of speeding.
Though he was sure he had done nothing wrong, the officer demanded that he pay a cash bond of Sh10,000.
"After arguing with him, he let me go as he did not have any proof that I had been speeding. Such officers should be warned that this kind of money will one day spoil their stomachs."
DIFFERENT TALENTS: Gospel singer David Chegerichman, noting that it is rare that people are gifted in everything, says that in music, there are some fellows who are good at singing but cannot write songs.
But when they get songs that are well-written by others, they do a pretty good job of singing them.
He is, therefore, exhorting these people to bring their different strengths together to forge the best product.
"Let's shun selfishness and work together for mutual success." His contact is [email protected]
Have a collaborative day, won't you!


text:
The Fran Crippen Elevation Foundation is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit. It was established to promote Fran's legacy through its core mission to empower athletes who exemplify the principles Fran embodied as they elevate themselves in pursuit of their dreams.
We appreciate your consideration in donating to fulfill this mission. All contributions will specifically support the programs and missions of the foundation.