“But what are you talking about, Pablo is doing a presentation on a tool?” whispers one, “Pablo? Pablo!? He’s proposing to stop using physical boards on the wall?” wonders another; and the third one sarcastically: “and how does Pablo react when Stéphane proposes this?”. In my sphere – that is to say a 250m radius around our address in Castelnau-Le-Lez (Montpellier), and 75m radius around my shared flat in Paris – there’s turmoil.

“No I haven’t changed”, as a singer once said so well, I still lean towards individuals and interactions over tools and processes.

But so what is Stéphane doing with you around these tools? And this atlassian.smartview.fr?

A human adventure

It’s first and foremost a human adventure, a question of individuals precisely. I crossed paths with Stéphane on an assignment nearly 5 years ago (with a third companion who decided to stay in the company where we met, become an agile coach, and do better than the two of us combined). Since then we meet regularly, Stéphane sold his company, he looked for his path for some time elsewhere, then we decided to work together, out of friendship, whatever the vehicle.

Since I’ve known him, Stéphane has been a supporter of the Atlassian suite, you know Jira, Confluence, Bamboo, Stash, and the like. Atlassian I know well, as a consumer, I use it often with my clients. And I’m happy with it, which is actually a trap.

A tool in a complex world?

A trap? It’s so easy to get caught up by a tool, we relax, we let ourselves be lulled, we delegate our thinking and our responsibility, Ulysses and the sweet song of the sirens. And then we crash on a reef.

Agile is an adaptive approach to evolve in a complex and therefore shifting world. Agile is often the story of business transformations, and change isn’t just now, it’s all the time.

To this you want to add a tool? Let yourself be dominated by a big frozen obelisk? Represent the fluctuating reality of your teams, their differences, through a single prism? You risk making cold a world that lives, freezing the dynamics, fossilizing the energies.

You’re not there for the tool. Ever. Don’t fall under its yoke.

The penalty syndrome

But it’s still damn practical. Ah, world of contradictions! In fact it’s a bit like the penalty syndrome. There’s drama when you miss it. Making it is normal. For the tool it’s the same thing: It’s useful to facilitate transformations, serve as a (light) guide, for capitalization, as a repository (and there Confluence is my favorite). I save time to disseminate information, centralize certain ways of doing things in broad strokes. When there’s no tool it’s also very good: it flourishes, it’s inventive, but it requires more time (for good reasons perhaps: a more successful adaptation) but often, if one intends the tool for a very generic use, I have the feeling that we lose time reinventing the wheel. There, I hear the song of the sirens in the distance, we must be careful not to get too close to the shore.

The tool is surely not your target, just as it’s not mine in Agile transformations. But I need one to lean on, without it bothering me, without it gangrening me.

A “win-win” rational choice

In this regard Stéphane’s proposal on Atlassian (which he’s been working with for several years) suits me very well. It’s a fairly neutral toolset, quite unobtrusive, it doesn’t sing too much in my ears. It’s there, discreet, faithful, supporting, without dragging me against my will where I don’t want to go. And it proves to be quite complete.

Finally I’m convinced that a modern world, deprived of an abundance of resources, a world where wealth is immaterial, will necessarily involve distributed work, remotely, and there, we’ll need virtual spaces.

To return to the foundation, it’s a human adventure that I accept with pleasure, Stéphane.

A reasoned use

Keep in mind a reasoned use of your tools. The conversations, the stories, the interactions, the individuals over processes and tools, never forget, navigators.

Generally for example: I always keep information radiators, physical wall boards, which offer an incomparable local dynamic. So yes I ask my clients, collaborators, colleagues, to duplicate the physical board and the electronic board. The effort, very small, is very much worth it.

It’s also physically, if you make diagrams or charts, that I propose them. For the same reasons.

Finally, I generally don’t place tasks in the tool, a) it’s a local team perimeter, b) I want to maintain a shared team identity and not an individualized one (in tasks, you can also place a “team” user). We thus unfortunately lose a confluence, jira, bamboo, stash link that can prove quite interesting. Cruel world. As always all this depends on the context.

And so welcome to Stéphane at SmartView, make yourself at home. And welcome to your offering atlassian.smartview.fr.

Written while listening to “Aerosmith - Aerosmith 1973” and “Aerosmith - Draw the line 1977”