Podcasts about agilists

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2025 43:45

In this episode of the Agilists: Aspire and Achieve podcast, host Renae Craven chats to Emily Lint about her journey into entrepreneurship. Emily shares her insights into how she made the decision to work for herself and how she prepared herself for that. Emily talks about how she finds clients and wins work and what she has learnt about herself and entrepreneurship along the way. About the Featured Guest Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive. Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. Follow Emily on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilylint//) The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Renae Craven has been coaching individuals, teams and organizations for over 13 years and has spent a lot of time investing in and formalizing her professional coaching skills in recent years. Renae's passion is leading and coaching organizations and as a Certified Team Coach with Scrum Alliance, she helps teams to find their rhythm and pace that balances learning with delivery. Renae established her own company NaeCrave Pty Ltd (www.naecrave.com.au) in 2020 and keeps herself busy with coaching and training delivery. Renae is also a certified BASI Pilates instructor and runs her own pilates studio in Brisbane, Australia. She has a YouTube channel called ‘Pilates for the Office Worker' which features short 5 minute guided sessions that anyone can incorporate into their day, especially those of us who have been sitting down for extended periods. Subscribe to her channel Crave Pilates. Renae has been organizing the Women in Agile group in Brisbane since 2018. You can follow Renae on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/renaecraven/).

The Big Agile Questions for 2025: A Community Reflection With Your Submitted Questions

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2025 22:24

This is a special episode, where I introduce the "Big Agile Questions" survey and review some of the questions that you've already submitted! Thank you all who did! You can find the submission form here. Submit your questions, as we will be reviewing these in future episodes! To join 25,341 other Agilists on our Newsletter (˜1 post/week), visit this page, and join. The Power of Asking Better Questions At every major turning point in history, from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution, progress has begun with asking better questions. The Agile movement itself started with the authors of the Agile Manifesto questioning traditional software development methods. Now, in 2025, with significant changes in the industry including PMI's acquisition of the Agile Alliance, the community faces a crucial moment to shape its future direction through thoughtful inquiry and reflection. "Throughout history, the biggest leaps forward have come from people willing to ask difficult, sometimes even quite challenging, questions." The Future Beyond Agile

World Work: Agile for Non-Profits - Ann-Marie Kong and Joanne Stone | 2503

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2025 47:48

In this episode, we discussed what sustainability truly means and why agilists are uniquely positioned to lead impactful sustainability initiatives. Joined by Joanne and Ann Marie, we explored their journeys into agility and sustainability, as well as two key World Work initiatives: The Week and the Sustainability Incubator Project. About the Featured Guests Ann-Marie Kong: Ann-Marie Kong is a facilitator, coach, practitioner, change agent, avid learner, and community grower. She serves as WIA World Work Awareness into Action Program Director facilitating The Week and inviting Agilists to join us to get to a tipping point soon. She is living her life's purpose, shifting from a life of success to a life of service, and making a difference by sharing enduring love. Follow Ann-Marie Kong on LinkedIn Joanne Stone: Joanne is in their third year leading the Agilists for Sustainability movement. She founded Sustainability Incubator Projects, We Hope Magazine, and the Agilists4Planet Conference, which showcases the inspiring stories of Agilists in sustainability. Other facts: she practices laughing meditation and loves being with her two dogs and four daughters. Follow Joanne Stone on LinkedIn Reference(s) World Work on Women in Agile: https://womeninagile.org/world-work/ The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive. Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. You can also follow Emily on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilylint/). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

#122: Empowering Diversity with Nosa Oyegun & Louria Lindauer

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2024 37:15

Join us as we explore how Agile in Color is breaking down barriers in the Agile community and empowering people of color through mentorship, support, and leadership. Learn how you can be an ally and foster a more inclusive environment in your own Agile journey. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner is joined by Nosa Oyegun and Luria Lindauer from Agile in Color to discuss the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Agile community. They dive into the mission of Agile in Color, barriers to entry and success for people of color in Agile, and the role of allies in fostering a more inclusive industry. The conversation also highlights the power of mentorship, vulnerability, and community support to drive meaningful change in organizations. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to engage with Agile in Color and contribute to the movement for a more diverse Agile community. References and resources mentioned in the show: Nosa Oyegun Louria Lindauer Agile in Color The Canary Code by Ludmila N. Praslova, PhD Email For Details of Coaching with Mountain Goat Software Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Nosa Oyegun has over 15 years of experience, and is a seasoned Agile Coach passionate about empowering cross-functional teams, removing impediments, and championing customer-centric solutions. Skilled in Agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban, she focuses on fostering collaboration, driving value delivery, and nurturing growth for individuals, teams, and executives. Louria Lindauer is a dynamic enterprise strategist and coach with over 25 years of experience, known for transforming complex challenges into clear, actionable solutions. Certified in DEI strategy, Agility, and Emotional Intelligence Leadership, she helps leaders build vision, empathy, and bold organizational cultures where courageous truth and sustainable change thrive. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in, Agile Mentors. We are back. We're here for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. And today, I have with me actually two guests. I know, you're shocked, right? I only ever really usually have one, but I have two. Two for the price of one today, right? I have with me Nosa Oyegun and Luria Lindauer. Welcome in, guys. Nosa Oyegun (00:27) Thank you. Thank you for having us. Louria Lindauer (00:30) Yes. Brian (00:30) Delighted, absolutely delighted to have you guys here. And I hope I said your names correctly. If I didn't, please correct me. OK, awesome. Well, for the listeners, I did get help before. just so you know. But we're here because both Nosa and Luria work for, or are associated with, I should say, associated with an organization called Agile in Color. Nosa Oyegun (00:37) You nailed it. Louria Lindauer (00:38) You did. You did it. Brian (00:56) And I've known several people that have been in and around and involved with that organization. And I just thought it would be a good idea to have them come on and tell us a little bit about it and kind of help us understand a little bit about the mission and purpose there, what they're trying to accomplish with Agile and Color. So let's start with that. Give us kind of a, if you had to describe it, why does Agile and Color exist? Nosa Oyegun (01:24) I would say Agile and Color exists for people who look like us, right? Now, does it include everybody? Yes, we do have members who do not necessarily look like us on the outside, but we all bleed red, right? And so it is a group of like-minded individuals who have come together and said, how do we support our community? How do we support those who are already in the industry? And how do we support those who are trying to get into the industry? Because one of the things that we've realized within the community is there are so many people who might want to get into the industry, but do not have the resources. And so we consider ourselves that resource hub to be able to allow and say, hey, why don't you reach out to this? Why don't you contact this? But that is the sole purpose of being able to mentor and be mentored, just like you always say, Brian. Brian (02:15) Love it, love it, thank you. Yeah, that's awesome, that's awesome. That's a great mission and a great purpose. I know, in today's world, I think there's a lot of confusion around kind of the diversity, equity, inclusion kind of whole topic area and maybe some controversy that may be unfounded and just kind of silly. I'm just kind of curious. I mentioned both your perspectives on this. Why do you feel like really that diversity, equity, inclusiveness, why do you feel like that's an important thing for Agilist, for Agile teams, for Agile organizations? Louria Lindauer (02:48) Hmm. Okay, so this is one of my loves. do a lot of push-packing inclusion. It's important for no matter who you look like for everyone. I'm sure you love a sport. What sport do you love? Okay, so you go with a group. Brian (03:14) gosh, football. Football's my sport. Louria Lindauer (03:18) Going with me to a sporting event, I'm not your people, right? But you wanna go with your people. You wanna go have some fun so you don't have to explain why the ball just went out of bounds and why he's down, is he hurt? And I'm asking all these goofy questions, right? And the reason it's so important is because we need diversity of thought. Because in any, like let's think of a group and let's take away the one dimensional just color, which it is very important. That is a important part. It's a part of who I am as a human being. We are multi-dimensional. I'm sure that you're just not Brian. I'm sure you're just like Brian with the glasses. There's so much that encompasses you. know, like me, I'm a mom, I'm a daughter. You know, I'm an agilism diversity, I include them so many different things. And to be able to have that diversity of thought allows us to have cross-functional teams. But the biggest thing is it's a sense of belonging. So I don't have to explain why maybe my hair is like this or the challenges that I embrace in an organization. There's systematic discriminations in almost all organizations. Because that's just where we, as we change, there's still things that were a certain way. And so now what's important is that we start to recognize those. And you may not see them. So like, I'll give you an example. If you came, well, I was gonna say to my dinner, but my family's very diverse. My dad is... white and Jewish. But anyway, if you go to where I am, you know, into my family and we were in a group, I'm the majority. And so we welcome you in. In the organizations, Aladi's organization, was the only, I have a background in South American, the only Black woman, period. And as we move higher, it becomes very lonely. And even CEOs become lonely because they're the only one. Brian (04:47) Hahaha. Louria Lindauer (05:15) And so when we get together, it's about leadership opportunities, but it's also about that sense of belonging. We can talk about things that other people may not understand. Because this is about people of color as well that come and we can share. It's so important to have a place where we can talk about the things we want to talk about, just like you want to talk about football facts without explaining to me all that stuff I don't understand. Brian (05:40) Right, right, that makes sense. Nosa, anything that you would add to that? Nosa Oyegun (05:43) would even say that the interesting part about it is, like Loria alluded to, is the fact that we all have the story. And so when we all get into the room, what's that shared story that doesn't create that imposter syndrome? Or just that life experience? I can look at Loria and say, hey, I'm having a bad hair day, and she knows what I'm talking about. And so it's the beauty of having that shared experience and being able to say, it's a safe space. You can talk about your fears and we can lock arms together and make this happen for you. Brian (06:23) Yeah, now this is so good. Yeah. Yeah, please. Louria Lindauer (06:23) And can I add one more thing is the beauty also, Nosa and I are very different also. So I learned from her. She has a totally different background from me. A lot of people think because we're all per se like black, we come from very different. I have a friend, she's Nigerian and she came here at a very young age and she did not understand why people were like almost, she felt targeted. as a Black person. She was like, what is going on with all of these isms and race? I don't get it. And so that very different experience opens up insights and perspectives that even happen with people of the same color because people know that people are different. We're all different. Yeah. Brian (07:13) That's really good. I mean, for the listeners here, I mean, I wanna be real, right? I want us to have some honest discussion here because I think you have to have honest discussion here when we talk about things like this. what you guys said, I think is a really important consideration because we all have our own. kind of biases that we may not even be aware of. And even saying that word, I know there's probably some people who are listening who think, OK, now you're calling me this. No, I'm not trying to place a label on anyone, right? If you can set that aside for a moment, set aside the triggering and just not allow yourself to go to that place for just a moment and just consider, right? The point you make is a great one that we tend to want to find likeness, right? We want to have someone we identify with that that person's like me, so they understand me. They know what I'm going through. They know my considerations. In the past, what I would hear a lot in organizations is this term about they're not a good culture fit, right? Somebody is not a good culture fit. And that kind of language can sometimes, you know, kind of belie something underneath it. It's like, they're just not like us. And, you know, that's the issue, right? That's not a problem that they're not like you. That's actually a strength, right? That's a good thing. You don't want everyone all thinking the same. Nosa Oyegun (08:47) Yeah. Exactly. Diversity matters. Brian (09:01) You want people who, yeah, that bring different perspectives, different paths, different cultures, that makes us better. So I really hope people consider that, right? And like I said, we all have sort of innate bias. That doesn't mean racism. That just means bias. Right, everyone. I mean, we talk about bias in product owner classes that, you know, like, Louria Lindauer (09:08) Yep. Okay. everyone. Brian (09:30) a sunk cost fallacy and things like that. That's a bias, you know, and we all have biases whether we recognize them or not. And I think part of the effort in this, from my perspective, is just trying to recognize and overcome those things in all of us, right? Trying to say, where is that boundary line for me? And how do I push past that, right? Nosa Oyegun (09:32) Mm-hmm. Louria Lindauer (09:55) I would also say there's an awareness that you, my lived experience may be different than yours. And if something happened to me and it didn't happen to you, that it doesn't make it real. So I don't think Brian, you will ever understand the pain of having a baby, but you might just say it's fine. No, it is not. It is you worst pain and you can't describe it. It's something that instead of, if someone feels Nosa Oyegun (10:07) Correct. Louria Lindauer (10:24) Like if you say something and I feel hurt by it, the always say impact supersedes intent is to listen. And now you become the student. This person also has to speak up and say why that is offensive. And the other person say, it's not really about you. It might be that I got ran over by a bike once and then you say something and it triggers a trauma in me. And so that, you know, when I say, tell people, and if I told no, this is I have to work 150 % as a black woman to, I still, have all these degrees and certifications and years and years. I won't tell my age, years and years, right? And I still, they're like, really? And the other thing, we're talking to a community of practice right now, Agilist, okay? It is how sometimes, how you're in an organization and they're like, there goes those agile people. I know we've all heard it. Like don't pretend like you have, Brian (10:56) Yeah. Yeah. Right. Louria Lindauer (11:23) point to you, you've heard it. And the engineering are like, man, here comes his out-y'all coach. It's that type of And if you could step into that, it's just a different context is that it's there. And biases are also, we all have them. And sometimes it is a meaning of safety because something happened to us. know, like my daughter is, she's a teenager, she always says like, teens are bad because she saw teenagers doing bad things. Nosa Oyegun (11:34) Absolutely. Louria Lindauer (11:53) I'm like, but you're a teenager. That's just a bias that she has. culture fit, I heard you talk about culture fit. Culture fit, sometimes, like Southwest did this. Southwest did where they wanted people who were open-minded and had an agile mindset. Okay? They wanted that leadership. If you came in with a fixed mindset, you didn't fit that culture. But however, what you're alluding to is sometimes people use culture fit. in another way. There's always a yin and a yang, right? And so it's the one that is not right where we're like, it's the culture of it. And, you know, and that's called like a halo bias where we look at people. You can have a HR person and they'll hire 15 new people. And I've had this and I'm in the room and I'm like, all these people, they have different skin colors, but they all are you. They all like they're, they're all introverts. They're all this. They're, Nosa Oyegun (12:21) way. Yep. Brian (12:23) Right. Yeah. Louria Lindauer (12:49) cultural values are the same. They care about labels, they care about power and all these things, they wanna be on time. I'm like, you just hired a bunch of yous. So there's no diversity. And so we still can do that. Diversity and equity inclusion is more than just outside and we look indifferent. Cause I can just hire a bunch of me's and you still won't go anywhere. You know what I mean? Yeah. Nosa Oyegun (12:58) Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Brian (13:13) Right, right. Well, so I want to ask you guys this because there's a there's I did some research earlier this year and read this book called The Canary Code that was really focused more on neurodiversity and kind of inclusion programs for the neurodiverse. But one of the things that kind of resonated with me that they pulled from that book that was really something that they pulled from more racial diversity, equity, inclusion programs. was that they divided up to saying that what we're trying to identify is that there are barriers to entry and there's barriers to success. And that started to really resonate with me that there's barriers to just getting your foot in the door. And then there's the barriers that once I'm there, that prevent me from actually being successful. So how does Agile and Color really help in those situations? How do they help with barriers to entry and barriers to success? Nosa Oyegun (13:52) Absolutely. First thing I would say is just knowing who you are as an individual. Because it's one thing for us to say, hey, I'm an agilist and I'm in this group, okay, fine. But do I go back to the fact that my foundation, I do have the degrees that I need, the certifications that I need, the education that I need, the experience that I need, the community that I need, right? To thrive in this space that I'm trying to get into. because again, goes back to that imposter syndrome, right? You have an interview, you have a panel interview, and you have nobody in there that looks like you. And you wonder, okay, am I in the right space? Am I in the right place? You know, would they even hear? For example, a lawyer alluded to this. I am originally, my family was originally from Nigeria. A lot of times people joke and they say, no, so you don't have an accent. And I'm like, well, because, you know, but people expect. that if you're talking to a Nigerian or someone who was originally from Nigeria, they have a thick accent. Well, I don't. And actually sometimes don't understand people who do, believe it or not. And so, you you walk into a boardroom or you walk into a meeting and I have to literally program my mindset. so Agile in Color, one of the things we do again that being mentored and mentoring is saying, who are you? Right? Take away your... Brian (15:16) haha Nosa Oyegun (15:34) limitations, take away the fact that even you're an agilist, put that to the side. Who are you? You you're empowered to do great things. You're empowered to succeed. You're empowered to thrive in whatever organization you choose to go into. And so being able to, again, lock arms together and support each other and remind each other of who we are innately first, and then add on that layer of not only do you know your stuff, right, but you're also educated. Louria Lindauer (15:40) Okay. Nosa Oyegun (16:02) You're also learned and you're in a community. And that's where our group as a community of practice is really essential. Because when you start hearing other people's stories, know, there are times that we have meetings and we're like, this happened at work and this, this, this. And we're like, you're not the only one that didn't know that. And so again, just being able to come together, remember who we are, one. Two, realize that we do have the skill set to thrive in whatever organization. And then three, to say we have a community that is a safe space. And so Agile and College provides those three steps, right, and more. To say you can come together and meet other people. Yes, we may have been in the industry for years and decades, but I always joke about the fact that Louria Lindauer (16:41) Yes. Okay. Nosa Oyegun (16:47) Only people who are below six feet below ground level stop learning. We all learn every single day. Brian (16:54) Very true, very well said. Louria Lindauer (16:54) Yeah. And we also have some very specific programs, like she was talking about coaching and mentoring. I mentor, I'm professional coach. And also we have a coaching, you can be coached. And that's Noza was talking about, that who you are. So when someone is new, I mentor some very young Agilist. And we have them come in, we set them up with a mentor, and they walk through the program. And we're also in a transition where we're rebuilding a lot of things at Algencolor right now, especially with the change in agility right now. And teaching people how can we use the skills that we have as Algenlists and remarket ourselves. But then we walk. This we help them. I've helped them learn how to interview but a lot of it's self-confidence working on imposter syndrome And we do these one-on-one mentors and coaching. We also have something called colorful voices where I think it notes that she was at the one in new orleans was it Was in global scrum gathering and will be at one in munich in may 2025 And so we help people colorful voices is helping people who have never really maybe spoken, you know, they've never done a speech Nosa Oyegun (17:52) Yes. Louria Lindauer (18:07) And we help them figure out how do you do that and getting seen to help you through the door. And then we also, because I've had that journey of how do I move up and around? That's what the mentoring is so special about. How do we do that? And the frustration of, you know, some people really want to give up that that being down and you hit a ceiling, it can make you want to give up. it's like. When do we transition? So that coaching and mentoring is really deep and we created a strategy and a plan for people and we walked through, but we do coaching and mentoring because you have to do self and you also have to do techniques because you can have all the techniques in the world. But if you don't know your impact and how to be a leader, okay, thanks. I've been led by super smart with tech and they have no emotional intelligence. And it's like, no, thank you. Please don't do that to me. Nosa Oyegun (18:56) Yeah. Yeah. One more gathering that we host as well, share your story. And so we bring in like-minded individuals in the agile space and they could be anywhere from non-tech roles, right, to in the tech space, but have some agile component in there and different roles. So not just coaches. So we have product owners, we have developers, anyone. The beauty about that is you get to see someone. Brian (18:58) Hahaha. Okay. Nosa Oyegun (19:24) who may not have started on a traditional path or maybe has to share their story and their journey. And then what I love about Share Your Story is the person who shares then nominates the next person to share. And so that just builds that community of, yeah, I know somebody else who may have a different path, but has also been through something that is worth sharing. And so, yeah, so several opportunities. Brian (19:39) That's awesome. Nosa Oyegun (19:53) And again, like Luria alluded to is because we're in that transitional phase in the season right now with leadership and all the things, we're also looking outside the box because we have some organizations that are saying, Agile is no longer relevant. And we're like, hold on. If you have to make a decision, you have to think through the process. It is a process. It's a framework. It's not, you know, just established. And so being able to recreate and reinvent ourselves and say, Brian (20:09) You Nosa Oyegun (20:22) Hey, do we need to incorporate change in here? Do we need to incorporate AI in here? Do we need to incorporate something else that makes our role more relevant and makes each person more marketable within their organization? So those are things we're considering in this moment. Brian (20:38) Yeah, that's great. There's a lot there, I think, for anyone who's listening who thinks, hey, maybe this could be of help to me in some way, shape, or form. I think that's a great job of explaining some of the kinds of ways that maybe Agile and color can be helpful. And maybe that is part of that barriers to entry, right? Just helping people, giving them that friend. friend, right? The kind of support. They can say, hey, it's someone like me. I think your example, Luria, about giving birth is a great one, right? Because I can sympathize, I can hold your hand and bring you a towel. I can do all these things, but I can't know what it feels like. I can't understand it from the same perspective. And if you want sympathy, you're going to feel better. if you get it from someone who's gone through it, right? You're gonna respect that person's opinion more than you would mine, because all I have experienced is the same thing that you have if you haven't gone through it, you know? So that's a great example to kind of make for this. Kind of flip a little bit, because we talked a little bit about how this can help people in some of the programs you guys offer that would help individuals. But I know there's gonna be a lot, you know, There's a lot of people that look like me as well that are out there that hear this and think, you know what, I support this. I want to do what I can do. I, you know, we understand, like, I think there's a lot of us that understand, hey, no one's saying that we need to be the Superman to come in and solve the problem. But, you know, we can ally, we can come alongside and say, Louria Lindauer (22:05) Yeah Brian (22:29) How can I be supportive? How can I make an impact in this area as well? What can I do? So what would you say to those kind of people who aren't people of color, but would support Agile and Color and want to see it grow and succeed? Louria Lindauer (22:43) Bring it on down. We have someone actually on our core team, Matt Carlson. And we are going to have, as we're transitioning, allyship. How you can come in, how you can help. And as an ally, they also get help as well. We need allies, no matter where we are. And we'll have some allyship training as well of what does it mean to be an ally, because we've had that. in the past where we've helped allies with, I really want to help and how do I, how am I an ally? What is the best ways? What do I need to learn? And so it's very important that we have allies where there is with organizations or, you know, it's, it's about that complete circle. You know, we need all people to help, you know, it's like a family. And then we have, we have extended, you know, like there's, have the allies of, you know, agile in color. I remember When I was a kid, would walk down the street and then it was safe. Okay, so please people don't call the police on my parents. They're too old for that. while I was like nine years old, I could walk to the store, it safe. But along the way, there was people who were always watching me. They were on the porches and they'd be like, bring me something and bring me this. But they watched me all the way to the store. And I came back. Those were my allies, my family allies. So it takes a community, it takes a village to... Nosa Oyegun (23:44) You Louria Lindauer (24:09) create change and to do things. So we more than welcome allies. And Matt is an amazing ally. Also, the important part of allies is that they give a perspective that we may not see. I always say that sometimes when it is my issue, if it's really close to my heart, I look at people like a tree and I'm, you you can see my whole tree. Nosa Oyegun (24:15) AMAZING! Louria Lindauer (24:34) But if I'm on that issue, I see the veins in the leaves. Like I'm not on the branches. I'm all the way in the veins. And it's the only part I can see. And so sometimes we need those different perspectives to be able to get it like, never thought about that. And that has really helped us a lot with, did you think about this? Or maybe this as well. And we're like, yeah, we never thought about that. And so that helped we educate one another. What do you think, Nosy? Yeah. Brian (25:00) That's so awesome. That's so awesome. Help me then just I'll throw one last thing you guys direction. In thinking about kind of where we are today and we've come a ways but we have a ways to go still. What do you see as sort of the biggest challenges today, the biggest hurdles that we've yet to really Nosa Oyegun (25:01) Yeah, absolutely. Brian (25:30) overcome that's really holding this back. Louria Lindauer (25:36) What do you mean by this? This? do mean this? Brian (25:38) Well, holding diversity, equity, inclusion, holding people... Louria Lindauer (25:42) You can. That's a great. Brian (25:44) barriers in either sense of the word. what are we not doing very, especially in the agile world, like what are we not doing very well right now that we really need to do better? Nosa Oyegun (25:57) Now, Brian, how much time do you have? That's the question. So, yeah. So here's what I'll say. And this is the NOSA version because again, that experience of, we have a different experience based on our backgrounds, right? So, and I think Loretta alluded to it earlier saying, well, my background, remember people saying minority. I'm like, who you calling minority? I'm not minority because where I'm from, I'm not minority, right? And so when I hear... Brian (26:00) Hahaha! Louria Lindauer (26:01) I'll say we are out of this. Brian (26:24) Right. Nosa Oyegun (26:26) even the term people of color and I'm like we're all a color you know that and this is what I love about our t-shirt right because it's a spectrum right and so going back to your question there is beyond the outside beyond the exterior the question becomes how do we unify and support each other like truly genuinely support each other because everyone always brings something priceless to the table. There's a reason why we all have a unique thumbprint. What I'm great at and what I excel at and what my strengths are, most likely not Loria's strengths. And so if I bring my strengths to the table and I am vulnerable and bring my weaknesses to the table as well, and my weaknesses are Loria's strengths, then we lock arms together and we make this happen. And so two things I would highlight is one, being vulnerable to say, I really don't understand this. Can I get some support? Can I get some help? Can I get some partnership? And then two, that encouragement of not saying, why don't you know this? You've been in the industry for five years. You should know this by now. There's no need to shame each other. Neither is there a need to say, because Brian is of a different hue, he needs to be in the C-suite office and I need to be in the back. No, it needs to be, we all bleed red. let's get out of our mindsets about this whole external thing and let's begin to truly and genuinely support each other as humans. One of the things I love, friend of mine always says is she's like, let's just be human. Let's just be kind and let's be there for each other because at the end of the day, there's so much going on in our world, right? But if we can truly be human and truly say, how can I live in a space where I can support someone else? And then how can I be vulnerable as well, regardless of who am in my career path? We can make things happen. Louria Lindauer (28:26) I have to, I love that note. I love the vulnerability because it's really, it is so important in the agile world and it's sometimes harder for organizations. And it's really hard for the minority or a person of color to do that because they don't want us to do it. They don't, sometimes it's just hard to be yourself because You know, there was a time when being LGBTQ or black, was frowned upon. I couldn't wear my hair like this. She couldn't wear her hair like that to work. There was a time where my best friend's a guy, he couldn't wear a beer. You can wear a beer because you had to be clean shaven. And the biggest fear, and I love this question, is people don't want to change. People like the same old same old. I've seen Agile is so hardcore Agile and they come in with all their Agile speak and they're doing, and they're not listening to the team that's right in front of them. Yes. Nosa Oyegun (29:17) I job police. Brian (29:19) Yeah. Louria Lindauer (29:20) They don't see, they're not aware, they don't have group awareness of what is happening and the impact. They go to these classes and grade and they come back and they try to just push. You don't wanna push, you wanna pull. You want people to be coming towards you so they're pulling. They're like, okay, okay, okay. I don't wanna push all my stuff on them. I want them to be pulling me towards. And so one thing right now with diversity, people don't want to change. It feels safe. If I was the majority and you told me I had to change and I'm like, why? know, sometimes that's hard when you're comfortable. So people are like, But now, thank goodness, I can actually look at people who are not my same color and say, buckle up, buttercup, because now you get to feel what I feel because that's so important in the agile community. It is Brian (30:10) You Louria Lindauer (30:17) taking your experience as an Agilist today and how it feels and saying, this is my experience, I wonder if someone else feels like that. Really taking the time to do that. And I think we do it better in Agile communities where we do the doing and the being. I'm not saying all Agilists, okay, but when we really embrace, the being is so important because sometimes we're technically strong and we gotta get better at that leadership mindset of emotional intelligence. Nosa Oyegun (30:34) I'm going to go Louria Lindauer (30:47) and being able to say, we need to change. Because if we we're going to get left behind. But in the same thing, know that you might be hurting someone. And to be curious, we need to get more curious, less defensive, and listen. Like, shut up and listen. Just be quiet. Listen. Nosa Oyegun (31:05) Exactly. Yeah. I actually coin. No, I was going to just add this real quick. actually coined my role as an agile coach as a therapist. And it's interesting because my colleague and I joke about the fact because I have a master's degree in psychology and she says, see, I wish I did that. And I say this to Laura's point is a lot of times people just want to be heard. And in addition to that is not just being heard. But what are they not saying that they're really saying by being quiet? Brian (31:08) I was thinking that too, the whole time. Sorry, go ahead. Ha Nosa Oyegun (31:36) Listen for that as well. Brian (31:36) That's so good, that's so good. Yeah, and I was just gonna say that it sounds like maybe we just need to all start by listening a little bit better to each other and seeking first to listen rather than to be heard. And if we can do that, then it's so much easier to understand each other and understand and help each other, right? Nosa Oyegun (32:00) Absolutely. Louria Lindauer (32:01) Yeah, let's lock arms and then let's take action that is agreed upon between us. So sometimes in the lead is called I can leave from behind and doesn't and I'm leading from the front, but we're still there or we're leading side by side. And to listen that maybe Brian, you're the one I need to listen to for this moment. And I'm just still there supporting you. It doesn't matter. We're all leaders. So how do we so that we all get what we need because a lot of people, awareness is great. Please start there first. Please don't move into action if you're not aware. Like go back. But sometimes we just stick, we get stuck in awareness. It's time now for action and it doesn't have to be this huge thing. Sometimes just a mentoring program and a hiring process instead of hiring a bunch of people of color and then they're now in this environment that kind of is awful and then the retention rates. We see that all the time. But having a mentor when you come in to help you and also work on the actual change in the culture, because maybe it is kind of, you know, messed up because sometimes a lot of companies, and I know this isn't your company if you're watching this, they are about money. So that is they won't mess with this very toxic, awful environment. And I'm not talking about diversity. can conclude I'm talking about for everybody in there because it's a money, moneymaker. And so then it has this toxic environment. And so us as Agilent, Nosa Oyegun (33:14) Yes. Louria Lindauer (33:28) can't help. And that's why at Agile and Color, we're starting to transition to how we can use our skills in project management, change management, because our skills are all the ones that they use anyway. just start. If you're looking for a job and you're an Agile coach, look now for change management, else? Project manager. They just change. And then if you look in the thing, job descriptions. just. Nosa Oyegun (33:36) Exactly. Yeah, very fluid. Mm-hmm. Just changed the title. Louria Lindauer (33:52) hype up that resume with more change management and those type of things because they can't get rid of that we need to do things quicker and faster and be human. They'll never get rid of that. Brian (34:04) That's awesome. I love the phrase too that you said there earlier, just about like it's a time for action. And I think that's a great way for us to kind of wrap up. if the people out there, if you hear this and agree, hey, it's time, I'm ready to act. I'm ready to not just stand up by the sidelines. Then what we're gonna do is we're gonna put a link in our show notes that will put you in touch with Agilent Color. And I encourage you, if you're a person of color or if you are interested in being an ally in some way for Agile and Color, I encourage you to reach out to them. They're a great organization. I'm really happy to have you guys on to share some of that vision and to spread the awareness a little bit of it. I can't thank you enough. Thank you for making your time and coming by and speaking with us. Nosa Oyegun (34:57) Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. And for the platform that you all do here, it's amazing just to see not just the topic, but the diversity of the topics as well, Brian. So thank you. Louria Lindauer (34:58) Thank you. Brian (35:10) Thank you so much. Louria Lindauer (35:10) Thank you.

#114: Is Agile Dead? with Scott Dunn

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2024 40:07

Is Agile really dead, or are we just doing it wrong? Tune in as Brian and Scott dive deep into the controversies and misconceptions surrounding Agile practices and what it really takes to make Agile work in today’s organizations. Overview In this episode, Brian and Agile Mentors Podcast regular, Scott Dunn, tackle the provocative question: "Is Agile Dead?" sparked by recent claims of Agile's high failure rates. They discuss the validity of these claims, the common pitfalls of bad Agile implementations, and the importance of continuous improvement and experimentation in Agile practices. The conversation explores the shortcomings of current training approaches, the crucial role of effective coaching and leadership support, and how to overcome the widespread misconceptions about Agile. Brian and Scott emphasize the need to focus on outcomes and ongoing learning rather than getting bogged down by methodology debates and rigid terminologies. References and resources mentioned in the show: Scott Dunn #93: The Rise of Human Skills and Agile Acumen with Evan Leybourn Are Agile and Scrum Dead? By Mike Cohn Join the Agile Mentors Community Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Scott Dunn is a Certified Enterprise Coach and Scrum Trainer with over 20 years of experience coaching and training companies like NASA, EMC/Dell Technologies, Yahoo!, Technicolor, and eBay to transition to an agile approach using Scrum. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. Welcome back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today, friend of the show, regular, you know him, you love him, Mr. Scott Dunn is with us. Welcome back, Scott. Scott (00:13) That's my new favorite intro ever. So thank you, Brian. Always glad to be and then glad to talk shop. So I appreciate you making me some space so that I get to work with you again. Brian (00:16) Ha ha ha. Yeah, we need like walkout music for you. know, like when the pitcher comes out to the mound, the relief pitcher or the wrestler comes out, you know, or whatever, they play the walkout music. We need walkout music. We wanted to have Scott back because there's a hot topic and this is your hot take alert because this show I'm sure is gonna be full of personal hot takes here on the subject. Scott (00:30) Yeah yeah, there you go. Brian (00:50) And that is, is Agile dead? There has been a lot of talk recently about this in the past few months. There's been a lot of blog posts written, a lot of armchair quarterbacks chiming in and trying to make sense of this. So before we dive in, Scott, I want to give a little bit of background to our listeners in case you're not aware of something that happened, where this came from, right? Because I think that there was In one sense, there's always an undercurrent. There's always people out there who are ready to say Agile's dead, right? And so they're waiting to pounce on anything that would back them up. And there was someone who was very happy to oblige about that. There was a company called Engprax, E -N -G -P -R -A -X. I couldn't find much out about them except they're a consulting company. And they put out an article that was announcing research they had done that said that 260 % higher failure rates for Agile software projects. That's what their study revealed. Yeah, 268%. So let's just start there, right? But the article is very thinly veiled in support. of another competing process, believe it or not, called Impact Engineering that is authored with a book that's just out, believe it or not, by a gentleman named Junade Ali. Now I have no idea, I have never crossed paths with this gentleman. I don't know his philosophy or his, much more about him. I did look him up on LinkedIn. He's been in the business for about 11 years. If I trace back to his first thing, it's about 11 years ago. He currently lists himself as the chief executive officer of a stealth startup. Well, I think I can remove the mask of what that stealth startup is because it is Ingeprax. So he is the head of that company. I found another article that did the research in support of his book. Scott (03:03) Hahaha Brian (03:12) announcing his new process that is a competitor, of course, to Agile. Now, there's been a lot of back and forth. He's tried to defend this and say, you know, the research is solid, but here's the thing I always say, without data, it didn't happen. If you're not showing me the actual methodology, if you're not showing me the scientific research paper behind it that says, here's the methodology of the research, here's how we conducted it, here's the... There are some details that are in the article, one of which is that the research was done over a period of about five days. So it was research over about five days. was interviewing a set of, I'm trying to scroll through and find the numbers. I think it was like 250 or so engineers from the UK and 350 from the US. It's something around those numbers. But it was interviews with engineers over a period of about five days. Scott (03:50) Wow. Brian (04:11) And so the numbers are based on these engineers' recall of what their idea of success was in projects, whether it was an Agile project or not an Agile project, by their definition of whether it was an Agile project or not. He doesn't really describe in the article what success is. So saying that it's 268 % failure, what is a failure? It doesn't really state that plainly. So again, where's the data, right? I'm not going to go on and on about the research and the fact, but I just want to give the background before we dive into it because that article is what now you will see quite a few blog posts and things crossing your desk on LinkedIn that say, wow, look, this new study says 268 % failure rate for agile projects. Well, anytime you see something like that, check the source. You have to check the source. I try to do this in any conference talk I do. I put the links to the sources. And I try to only list data that comes from scientific studies, where you can find the actual research paper and dive into it and get into the nitty gritty of it if you really want to. Otherwise, as I said, it didn't happen. He says in the article, hey, we had PhD people that looked over our work, unnamed PhD people. So you can't even question whether that person was someone legitimate who did it. Just trust him that they were legitimate. So I set that up because I don't mean to take so much time here at start of the episode, but I just wanted to set the foundation. If you weren't aware of that kind of thing or where that came from, you may not even been aware of the background of where that study came from. Scott (05:46) You Brian (06:04) And the fact that the person who kind of sponsored it is got an ulterior motive, right? They're trying to push their own methodology and they're publishing research that they collected, they are publishing, that just so happens to support their foregone conclusion that Agile's bad and their methodology is better. So, but Scott. Scott (06:31) I'm just trying. Brian (06:32) So let's get into the topic because what I really want to get into is, I'm sure you've seen people post things like this and there's been sort of this wave of things in the past year or so of people who are so quick and anxious to say Agile is dead. So what's your general impression there? What have you seen? What have you experienced and how do you respond if someone in class says, hey, is Agile dead? Scott (06:43) Mm Mm I great, great question. So for those listening, I want to just want to affirm that probably a lot of you had experiences like, well, certainly wasn't going great or we're not seeing what we thought and all those things. So part of this, Brian, is I think the ethos of why those things take off like that is I do think there's a general feeling of is this really working for us or not? That's that's fair. So I'm not going to pretend like, it's always goes great. It's, you know, be Pollyanna about that. I remember actually this year. of a CEO, a company saying, Agile absolutely does not work. We're going to go all the way back to just full waterfall. Right. That to me is kind of that harbinger of like, wow, it's built up enough for someone to say that. So a couple of thoughts I have, and I'm going to be pragmatic like you for my friends that are hearing this or maybe thinking this or people at your company are pushing back a bit, is I'm to go back and say, well, okay, let's just say that Agile is dead. So what are you going to do? Are you really going to go back to waterfall? Well, we already know that story. whole reason, for those listening, consider this, whole reason Agile took off was the option A wasn't working and very clearly wasn't working for complex projects like software. Now for this person to come and recommend XYZ, of course, not surprising for all the listeners out there. Obviously, there's a marketplace, there's business. I get it that people are going to pitch and recommend what they do my classic one in our space Brian would be because obviously you I Mike within Mountain Goat are teaching the CSM CSPO and I'll see like 350 page books of get ready for the CSM exam like right the scrum guide itself is I mean how many pages so come on Brian (08:38) You Scott (08:47) And they'll even be like, you know, misrepresentation. So clearly people are doing things in their own self interest. get that. as you as people out there, hear information, I love what you're saying is to just like look into it and really be mindful of what's their angle for some of that. But back to your question, is Agile dead? I would argue that Agile partly done or halfway is dead in the sense that that doesn't work or what I would kind of call Agile theater. Agile hand waving, spread the agile pace. So I've been doing this 18 years, I think, since becoming a Scrum Master. And I was on project delivery before that and managing IT people. So I've seen all the things that weren't working well as a developer, et cetera. And I saw the results of what I got. And I've seen plenty of stories beyond that. But what I see more and more is people who are further away from the beginnings and what they're kind of doing is implementing what's comfortable. And I would agree that doesn't work. in that sense, that Agile is dead. In a follow on the idea of and really kind of putting together realizing is for those out there that your company is the one implementing Agile, who usually gets that? Well, it's probably going to be the PMO. And I'm going to poke a little bit here, certainly for my PMO friends, but as a former PMP working within the PMO, what's the PMO responsible for? So if I go to your typical company, say, hey, we're going to go Agile. That's under the purview of who it's a, it's a, there's going to be a group that's responsible for watching over execution delivery. Who is that? It's a PMO. Think about this. The PMO is not responsible for like learning continuous improvement innovation. They're responsible primarily for, for status reporting, managing to a given date, managing resources, escalating issues, but not necessarily for improving. So they bring in Agile sense of, what do we need to do without maybe understanding it fully and really. How do we just manage this process and not, hey, we're starting off from point A, but we're going to learn and get better as we go across. It's going to stop where they feel like, I think we have a new process that implemented. Does it get the results? You know, I don't know and I don't understand how it works to fix that. So they may not be getting results is what I commonly see. I'm seeing a slew. I can tell you the last several companies just in these last few months we've worked with. We've got to fix our process is not working. Are you agile? Yes. But you look at it and they'd miss a lot of fundamentals. And so now we're kind of resetting a lot of people that are struggling with the same issues everyone's talking about. Visibility, predictability, can we deliver this by the date we gave senior management? And they're not by and large. For those who say agile is dead, one of the other options, people have put together agile manifesto had lots of ideas, lots of other approaches besides scrum, but even if just take scrum. Look, scrum is based on lean. Is lean dead? And scrum is an empirical process. Is empiricism dead? Does that not work? So I kind of come back like, what are your options? Just think about the results you're getting. Whose fault is that? And what are we even basing what we're looking at? The roots of it are all very solid. So yeah, I'm going to push back quite a bit on that, what I've seen. And maybe see some of those same. Results or lack of results for organizations Brian because I know that it doesn't always go great out there and in the marketplace is coming. Try to roll this out. Brian (12:07) Yeah, yeah, there's a, so I have a couple thoughts here. One is just in general, I think you're absolutely right that there's, know, well, just listeners, ask yourself, what percentage of Agile practices out there do you think are doing Agile the right way? Right? And I don't mean like a hundred percent. I just mean they are, they're all in on it. They're trying to do it the right way. I don't know what number you have in your head, I would say, don't know, Scott, what would you say? Scott (12:43) They're doing it right? Brian (12:45) Yeah, they're not perfect, right? But they're committed to doing it right. They're committed to doing it according to what the Agile Manifesto says, that sort of stuff. Scott (12:55) Fairly Fairly smart, right? I'm guessing, my first number that came to mind, you asked, I'd say 10%. That's my, maybe less than that. Brian (13:02) Okay. Yeah, I would bet it's a small thing, right? Now that right there, I think is something that we can talk about. Why is it that small? Right? Why is it that small? And I think that there's a discussion that's a legitimate discussion to be had about, well, maybe the structure that was put in place to spread this and train people up and get them, you know, situated to do this well. has failed. And if that's the case, that's the problem. It's not really that the methodology is bad. It's that we didn't do a good job of explaining it or training people for it. that's a separate discussion. But I think that there's a lot of bad agile out there. And I'll just put it to you this way. If you like to hike or camp or anything like that. If you are an aficionado of that stuff, right? If you occasionally go hiking or camping, I'm fairly certain that you've had some hikes or some camping trips that weren't that great, right? And you can probably recall them and think, wow, that was horrible. Well, imagine if that was your only experience, right? Imagine if that hike or that camping trip was your only experience. And you came back from that and someone said, you tried hiking or you tried camping. What did you think of hiking or camping? That sucked, it was horrible. I never wanna do that again. I don't know why these people are crazy, that do that stuff. I would never do that again. But if you really like it, you know that yeah, there could be some bad experiences, but there's some good experiences too. And if you plan a really nice hike and you've got good weather and everything else, it can be a really great experience. So to base someone's opinion on, well, my experience in one place was that it was terrible. Well, okay, come on, give it another shot, right? I mean, they're not all gonna be perfect. And if you see it in a couple of places, you'll probably understand, now I know what we were doing wrong in that other place because it's clear now, right? So that's one point here. And the other thing I wanted to say is one of the things that they talk about in their Scott (15:17) Right. Brian (15:26) 268 % failure rate article where they announced their research, is they focus a lot on that their methodology does a better job with really clearly documenting requirements before development starts. So Scott already knows where I'm going with this, right? I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding before we even begin this, because what they're saying is, Scott (15:42) boy. Brian (15:55) Yeah, one of the things Agile fails at is clearly documenting all the requirements up front. And my response as an Agile trainer is, duh. Yeah, of course, because we don't try to do that. We actually look at that from a different standpoint and say, you're fooling yourself that you can document all the requirements up front. The example I use in class is, well, We're not manufacturing, right? We don't do manufacturing work. We're not churning out the same thing over and over again. If I was doing that, I could document all the requirements upfront, because I've done it before and I know what it takes to do it. We're closer to research and development. So let me take an extreme research and development situation for you. Imagine I'm inventing the cure to a certain kind of cancer, right? And you come to me before that and say, great. Well, we funded the project to cure that certain kind of cancer. Here's the budget. you know, let's get all the requirements documented upfront before you start inventing that cure to cancer. You'd look at me, I'd look at you like you were crazy because I don't know what all the requirements are going to be before I invent this new way of solving the cancer problem, right? I have to experiment. have to try, I have leads, I have ideas about things I would try and that I think have promise, but I've got to go through trials. I've got to go through tests. And the results of those experiments will then guide where I go next. So I think there's a fundamental fallacy in just the idea of trying to judge whether Agile is successful or not about whether it can capture requirements. Scott (17:34) Yeah, right. And for those who've been around, I'm going to double down on that one, Brian, because I've seen this pushback to, hey, we've got to capture all the requirements up front. But every time I ask a company, things change. company priorities change all the time. If anything, we're suffering from just chaotic, inconsistent, random. I remember an executive once said, I love Agile. I can change my mind all the time now. He meant it. So, and even before Agile, there were statistics that showed that the majority of requirements never see the light of day or are to use. So we already know outside of Agile, it's a fool's game, the customer will know it when they see it. That's why it's complex. I think you're right. We're not doing something like manufacturing. We're trying to experiment and figure those things out. So the idea of bad Agile missing out on requirements, it feels good to say we've captured everything upfront. But I remember my first full Scrum project on my own with the whole company and the CEO saying, you know, I need to see this by October. I'm like, well, you'll see, you'll see something backed over, right? I wouldn't say that now, but this same CEO is so dead set, like, no, it needs to hit the state. He fully changed the look and feel of the whole website application we're building twice during that project. To me, it just tells me like, let's not play the game. Like I can still scope it, but let's accept it's going to change. The other part, when you say about just bad and sense of practices, there's a poll I put on my LinkedIn profile. Somebody might have seen this if you follow me on LinkedIn, but I asked. Brian (18:34) Ha Scott (19:00) You know, is the two day CSM enough to get you the results, your organization you want to see now for those who don't know CSM, obviously the standard, you know, training that people take to understand scrum from the scrum Alliance. there's certainly a lot of other courses, Brian, I know you do the advanced CSM CSP, advanced CSP. And there's more beyond that, but people by and large stop at the CSM. The percentage of it last time I checked was like 99 % of all people trained by the scrum Alliance. taking the CSM and it drops off. The percentage of people when I asked out there in the marketplace, is the CSM enough to get you the results? 95 % said no. So one, for my listeners, I'm to be a little bit of tough love on you. We ourselves might be the ones to blame for this. If we stopped our learning then, if we didn't encourage others at our org to learn and keep pressing in, you don't have the tools you need to be successful. The CSM was not all theirs. There's a slew of Equipping and training out there much less coaching and getting support. So I think there's also some miss on bad Agile. Like we never learned enough. Let's just take the basics of well, we have multiple teams. Well, but yes, the CSM doesn't cover multi team and scaling, so you got to figure that out and you're figuring out based on what you have. done it before you have valid experience and the number of companies who aren't getting coaching anymore. Now they end up just trying to figure out a methodology themselves and that's not their strength. The strength might be in -flight software for airlines. I don't know, it's not methodologies. And they're gonna take their best guess influenced by who? I'm gonna guess the PMO. And now you get this muddy version that yeah, doesn't get results. So I second that on the requirements issue and I second that just the fact that Bad Agile could be our own equipping. I do wanna add on the point about experimentation, encourage those. Brian (20:45) Yeah. Scott (20:48) The metaphor you give about camping is really great. I see a lot of out there in the world for those who are out in the scene, the whole dating scene, and you might be like, these dating apps are terrible. They don't work. Okay. I'm not going to argue they don't work depending on how you use them what's going on out there. But again, what are your options? The world's shifted and here's where we are right now. There's things we can do to do that better, but to simply throw that out, it's like, well, or dieting. Yeah, I tried that diet. It doesn't work. Dieting doesn't work. Well, Brian (20:59) You Scott (21:16) There's a mindset that goes with that. And did you follow up correctly? Did you look into the research underneath that? Even recently, I'm going through my own personal work around like sleep and health. I'm going through Peter Tia's Outlive, which is a fabulous read. But those are both like, here's some data and science, but you need to kind of hack everybody's different. Here's some ideas, try them out, see it works. Same with Scrum. Try these things out. It's not like, I did Scrum and we didn't get amazing results out of the gate. Well, you keep experimenting. It's simply empiricism. So those could be things for those listening, come back to that, look at your education level, look at options and keep learning and growing and try those things out. Cause could be, we didn't do our best to bring that or even on Mountain Good for their friends who listening who've gone through the Mountain Good courses and you have access to agile mentors. There's a community forum, there's a chance to interact, ask questions, there's lean coffee, bring your questions. How many of us actually go and take advantage of those resources? There's tons of knowledge, information, but most of us are just too busy. to get smarter and apply that. So that could be an action for people listening. What's your own next steps to grow and make sure you're doing the best agile out there that you can and you have case studies that you can reference. Could be an opportunity. Brian (22:24) Yeah, such great points. I'll build on your analogy there, or what you talked about with sleep a little bit, and thinking about how, you know, this is one of things I love about Agile, because, you know, if it was, this will maybe highlight the difference between Agile and Scrum a little bit for everyone, if you don't really understand this, right? If I were to say to you, make sure you go to bed at 10, and get up at, you know, six every day, right? You get eight hours, that's eight hours, right? You get hours of sleep, but you gotta be in bed by 10 up at six. Well, some people would hear that go, well, that's ridiculous. That doesn't fit my schedule. I work better at late at night and I'm not an early morning person. And you probably just say that's terrible. That's a terrible idea. But if I said to you, make sure you get enough sleep, right? Then you can apply that and think, okay, well, for me, enough sleep is this. And I know what that means. I know what it means when I get enough sleep. Scott (22:53) Thank you. Brian (23:23) And for me, that means I'm going to bed by 11 or 12 or whatever. Like I know when I need to be in bed and I know when I need to wake up in the morning and that's enough sleep for me. Maybe it's seven hours for me. Maybe it's nine hours for me. Right. That's the difference to me between Agile and Scrum is that Agile, and that's why I take such offense at anything that would say, it's a failure. Well, it's a principle. And if you're going to take exception to it, which one? Which principle or value are you going to call out and say, this is the one I disagree with, this is one I don't think is valid? Because it's not telling you exactly how to do it. It's not telling you what a sustainable pace is, for example. It's not saying only work 40 hours a week. It's saying everyone should work at a sustainable pace, a pace they can maintain indefinitely. And if you disagree with that, if you're going to say, well, that's a failure, Scott (24:05) Right? Mm -hmm. Brian (24:17) I don't think people should be working at a sustainable pace. They should be working at an insustainable pace. Well, I'm going to have an issue with you, right? And I'm going to say, where's your research on that? Like, where would you say that that's, you know, how could you back that up? So that's why I take, I think I'm welcome to people with different ideas, but I want to see the data. I want to see you back it up. And even, you know, something like this project, I want to say, what questions did you ask? You know, if you're just taking a poll of software engineers, how did you phrase the questions? Were they leading in how you phrase them? That kind of stuff can be very, very important and make a big impact on your numbers. So without the data, it didn't happen. Scott (25:01) Absolutely. I think that, well, and to that point, Brian, and I'm going to push a little bit. This word agile might be the most misunderstood word of the last decade or two. I guarantee you. You can ask 10 people and get 10 different versions of the answers. So like, what are we talking about? Let's take a step back and like, it's sense making to have a conversation around that. So for example, I remember this person who supposedly walked in, this is just this year, walked into the Brian (25:14) I agree. Scott (25:31) They're, you know, the head of the PMO, they've been doing agile. came from a large manufacturing company. Everyone recognized the name. Now there's other company that got brought in. Let's do this right. And, you know, has all this agile experience. And I'm actually having a conversation. We're talking about planning and predictability and how to get the teams where we need to. And I mentioned this about Velocity and she said, Velocity has nothing to do with planning. And for those who don't know, one, reach out and talk to us, because we can help you do that. The second thing is, in my mind, I didn't even know how to answer. That is the thing we use for planning is how much does your team get done, and we'll extrapolate what they're going to get done by the certain date. But I remember just feeling like, and you're saying you're walking out with all this Agile experience, and you're heading up the PMO on how we roll out Agile. Thank goodness that CTOs are like, Brian (25:56) Right. Scott (26:16) It has everything to do with planning. And I'm like, thank goodness you straightened that out because I didn't want to say anything. And I'm going to add to that at the leadership level and management level, because management statistically is going to be your biggest inhibitors to continued agility and growth. Management in terms of how we work around here, which is essentially a culture, how we do things around here. That's going to be seven of your 10 reasons you get stuck. When I've polled and asked numerous groups, how much does your leadership understand about Agile on a scale of one to 10? And the numbers I'm constantly getting back are right around 3 .5 to four on a scale of one to 10, right? Which is bad. But here's the flip side is I say, okay, how much does your leadership and management think they understand about Agile? Well, then it basically doubles, right? And even I've people say like on scale of one to 10, they think they're at 12, right? So we have groups who are large influences of how this is going and the stakeholders and what they're asking who. Brian (26:53) Yeah. Scott (27:13) not only don't understand it, but think that they do. So if you're listening to this out there and you're kind of like, yeah, I agree. Yeah, so what do we need to do about this? And again, you have a lot of options, but if you let that hang over us in terms of that's gonna be your constraints, the true agility here, what we're trying out. And we just kind of accept that, yeah, they don't know anymore. It's almost like this gallows humor, ha ha, they don't get it. Yeah, but they're the ones who are like. asking for fixed scope, fixed date, don't understand about iterating, don't understand MVP, don't understand, like show up to the demos and see what we've done to give us feedback. So those are things that undergird this problem that that lack of understanding can be pervasive and yet people think that they do. And I'll go back to another leader who said they understood Agile, but when we went through the survey feedback to help them and work through that, his comment was, I'm tired of this deadline optional culture. Deadline optional. I guarantee that people don't feel like it's optional. If anything, they're feeling a lot of pressure. But when we miss dates, how they interpret it several layers above is like, they just don't care. This is all deadline optional. So I think there's a disconnect from leadership and management side and the knowledge and even those heading up the project management office that we need to kind of check ourselves. Have they gone to training? Do they know? You'd be amazed what that can do when they get on board and really support this. It clears up a lot of stuff at the team level. Brian (28:26) Yeah. Scott (28:36) But back to what said earlier, if all you did was send a few people to the two day course and that's it, yeah, you're probably gonna struggle. Brian (28:44) Yeah, and I support what you were saying about, need to take responsibility as trainers and as the Agile community that maybe this way was not the right way of doing this. And if there's one thing I might take a little bit of exception to now from how it's described in Scrum is, we talk about Scrum Masters being change agents. And I think that may have gotten a little overblown, right? Because I think in a lot of organizations, people look at it as these people who take a two day class are ready to lead our whole company in how we're doing this. And that was never the intention, right? I think the two day class is actually okay for someone to get kicked off and plugged in and being a scrum master on a team with support, right? If that's the only person, you only have two or three scrum masters that have all taken just a two day course and... no one has really a lot of experience, then it's probably not going to do very well. But if you have some base layer scrum masters who are new, and they have some coach layers that are more experienced, even if it's just one, even if you have that one senior person who hasn't just, you wouldn't do that with anything else. There's nowhere else in your company where you'd say, let's just hire a bunch of people who have never done this before and hope that it works. Scott (30:07) you Brian (30:09) You wouldn't do that with programmers, you wouldn't do with testers. You would have some, you want to have some senior people that can help guide and mentor and make sure that it's done the right way. But for some reason, you know, companies just kind of look at it as saying, no, I'll just hire a couple of scrum masters that are brand new and that'll solve it. Scott (30:27) Woo, I mean, can you imagine getting on a plane like, by the way, everyone, welcome on board. Our pilot's never flown before. I could do that, course. And not only that, we're trying to save money around here. So he's actually going to be concurrently helping fly three other planes at the same time, like while they're doing this work. Brian (30:32) But I passed the two day class. Yeah, because most of the flight, you're not doing anything, right? You're just sitting there. So we want to make sure they're still productive so he can fly three planes at once. Scott (30:50) That's a hard one be, exactly. That's yeah, which it's, it's, people might be laughing, but it's similar. Like we're trying to get pointy to point people, things change on that flight. And I see these teams, know, scrum master spread around. I remember a company scrum master on seven teams. Nevermind organizational change agent. This poor soul can't even have the meetings run. and someone bested me like, no, I know someone's on 12 teams as the scrum master. So if management doesn't understand the value of this person, and I like what you're saying. It's a tall order organization changes. And I like the idea of like lead improvement, but we kind of cut it at the knees. had one company this year and sadly we'd helped them get started. When we came back, kind of had some back -channel conversations with people that were disgruntled on the team. So thank goodness they had a safe place to come and ask questions. But the person rolling out Agile, it was kind of knighted to help do this. And she had been through the two day training, I think, but literally as they're giving feedback on what's working, not working, she basically said like, Stop complaining. This is the way we're doing things around here. I'm here to just kind of write the playbook. I think you're the person that should be spearheading how to improve every single sprint. And you're saying, we're done talking. We're complaining. I'm trying to formalize our process here. But basically, booted them out of the working group committee that was how we implement Agile. Now, those are two of the key Agilists there. So think we missed some of that when those examples happened. So my friends are listening. expect that people don't get it, expect that they're optimizing for their own concerns. And that's fine, but we don't stop there. We have to kind of work top down bottoms up on that. And there's lots of options and case studies and stories you can see. And certainly I'll just point again to a resource. If you look at Agile Mentors, there's plenty of experts who gonna, they've been on the interviews, been recorded, take a listen to those and hear some stories, help champion this. As a side note, Brian, just gonna add this in real quick. When we talk about Agile being dead or not, I think if we lead this company, like, I totally agree with Brian Scott, especially Scott. He really is very articulate and well -spoken. I think he's probably one of the best podcast interviewees ever. And they might say something like that, but they might come back and say, I agree with Brian Scott. Agile's not dead. We're just not doing it right. So what can we do about that? We'll look back and say, how are we implementing it? Is there a plan? Are we nudging people along? Expect them to kind of play these things out, but keep in mind, It's most of this company's is a multi -year journey to get those kinds of results, but I'm not going to go back as a takeaway from listeners podcasts and tell my management or leadership, we're not doing Agile right. We should do Agile right. For those who don't already know, they don't care. They don't care that we're doing Agile right. They don't even know what it is. We already talked about their scores. They don't know anyways. I'm not going to pitch any kind of change to what we're doing in terms of Agile being right or wrong. That misses. almost every single time for me. What I will pitch is, hey, leadership, you're frustrated that we're not delivering predictably. You're frustrated we're not getting more innovation. You're frustrated our quality is not where it needs to be. Yes, and here's some things we can do to get it there. Under the covers, what we're doing is improving the way we're doing Agile for more visibility, more clarity, better tracking, all that stuff. Your Scrum Master, whoever's leading this, doggone it, they cannot be just glorified JIRA admins. That's not gonna get you there. So take it back as a thing and think about how you're taking it back to them in terms of what matters for them, what's in it for them in business value. Pitch it that way. And you'd be surprised when you're like, if that's tied to the results, I'm listening. But not this we're doing as a right or wrong. So that could be part of reason it falls on its face when we do try to address the agile being dead is how you're presenting and working with your stakeholders and leadership. Brian (34:37) Yeah, and quite frankly, I don't care what you call it. If we need to make up a new name and your company has had such a bad experience with Agile, make up a new name for it. I mean, say, no, it's this new project. It's the, I don't know, tangerine process. And it's, yeah, you haven't heard of it? Well, boy, it's great. It's this tangerine thing. Right, it's the latest thing. Tomorrow there will be a book on it. Scott (34:59) That's the way you were saying. Yes. Brian (35:07) Amazon, the tangerine process as invented by. And here's my research study showing how it's better than Agile. Right, right, exactly. But you know, it's oftentimes there is kind of a problem with a name. And so like I said, I don't care what it's called. You know, I'll give a shout out here because I had some conversations at the know, couple of conferences that took place over this year. And I was talking with one of my friends, Michael Sahota. Scott (35:14) We interviewed three people and yes, we got the data. Brian (35:37) So shout out Michael if you, if anyone kind of points out, I he's listening, but if he's listening, shout out to you for this. But we were talking about kind of the problem with the training courses and you know, how we fixed that and everything. And, one of the things we were talking about is, you know, if we could, if we could distill it down, if we could just have people lead with one thing, if they could walk away from those courses really embedded with the concept of I'm going to inspect and adapt. I'm going to inspect what I did. and adapt and when something doesn't go well, I'm not just gonna say, nah, I'll just keep doing it the wrong way. No, if it doesn't go the way it needs to, stop, figure out why and then change and try something new. If I could just get a team to do that without knowing all the practices, all the other, right, I don't care if you call each other, know, Scrum Masters or whatever, if you can just get that, then I think you will. naturally evolve into what you need to be for that company. But you got to have that underlying mentality, culture of it's not acceptable when something goes wrong. We have to figure out why and change. Scott (36:36) Mm Absolutely, and I'm with you. I don't care what's called anyways. My reference is a colleague in Southern California, Ben Rodolitz, and he's very big. I just don't use those words anymore. to be honest, it could be actually confusing for people. If they don't know what Agile means and you're using words from Agile, they're going to think they're mapping to what reality is. They're misunderstanding. So maybe we do start with terminology. I'm with you. I'll see my friends. I don't care if you use agile scrum, whatever. I would just say, Hey, we're to try to do something, see how that goes. Well, we're visiting two weeks and take a look at what we got and get, we'd love some feedback. I mean, it's all the same stuff, but we're expecting to not do things right. And learn along the way and not stop. That's the whole process of it. So for some of you that are doing this and feeling like, I think agile's X, we're not seeing results. would, I would take a look and are you breaking any of those fundamentals to begin with? And I think we are quick to say, yeah, but we can't do X, Y, Z Scott. can't have dedicated teams. Brian (37:37) Yeah, yeah. Scott (37:38) We can't actually get the stakeholders into the sprint review. We don't got time for the retro. Well, then we're one, you're not doing that stuff right. But even if you just call it something else in the end, do something, inspect and adapt, right? Learn by experience, try something out. I hear too much of, I don't think that'll work here. Well, do some, find out, do something and see what you get from that. Worst case, you're going to learn. But a lot of people are like, you know, we can't do that. They won't go for that. And we never actually even tried. But I love what you're saying. Maybe. for those out there listening, try a refreshing thing of different words and then, or move away from the language that they think they know and don't fight that fight. Pick the fights you think you can win in advanced stuff to get results and get noticed. And Brian, you might've seen this too. I've seen company after company, when they actually see results, the stakeholders see results, business are real, they don't care what you're doing, do more of that. I've watched them just pivot and like rush in. So maybe we do step away from all these. Brian (38:28) Yeah. Scott (38:34) methodology wars and language issues and just get back to what gets results. Do more of that. Learn as you go and keep them learning, right? Like the brass tax. Brian (38:44) Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm not surprised we went a little over, but I appreciate everyone. I hope we didn't eat into anyone's, know, screw up your walking schedule or anything if you're listening to this while you're walking. But, you know, when Scott and I get on a soapbox, you can just guarantee we're gonna be a little bit over. That's just how it goes. Scott (38:49) Next. You would love it. Brian (39:09) Well, Scott, I really appreciate you coming on, because I think this is a great episode. I really appreciate your views on this, and thank you for making the time. Scott (39:17) Yeah, you bet. And for those listening, honestly, put some feedback. We'd love to see what you think in terms of Agile is dead and continue that conversation. I do think it's gonna be an ongoing conversation. But again, thank you, Brian. My pleasure. Always happy to jump on here. Great to work with you guys.

Kanban Essentials: How and When to Start with Mike Guiler

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2024 23:44

This week, your host, Dan Neumann, welcomes Mike Guiler to discuss a recent course on Kanban Essentials they experienced together. By the end of the classes, they encountered a common feeling in some participants: fear of failing. Often, acquiring new knowledge, embarking on a new journey, or using a new tool can trigger insecurities: What could happen if it is not right? Where do I begin? In this episode, they encourage Agilists to face this first stage of hesitation, analyze the limitations, and consider the best scenarios for using a new tool or enforcing an innovative strategy through implementing Kanban. Key Takeaways Kanban Essentials: Agilists might hesitate to incorporate Kanban into their projects for the first time. It is common to feel insecure and doubt whether it is implemented correctly and how effective it would be. The whole Team has to take ownership of trying Kanban to solve an existing problem. How to start using Kanban? Start Kanban with matters you can control. Make sure you identify the expected result from implementing Kanban and have a way to measure its effectiveness. First, start using Kanban to solve a small problem. After solving it successfully, the Team will earn much more credibility and encouragement to use it to solve a more complicated issue. You can start using your personal Kanban board and convince the entire Team to use it for the whole system. The Problem of Local Optimization: Sometimes, a Team optimizes its work, but this does not translate to the entire organization, resulting in one Team working more effectively when the rest isn't on the same page. There is a need to start small and locally but have the bigger system in mind. Make your work visible. It is crucial to agree on the definition of used terminology (for example, what does a Team define as “done”?). A Team must stop and think about how they are doing what they are doing, and ways to improve it. Mentioned in this Episode: Kanban Essentials Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

team touch essentials kanban agilists agilethought

#107: Transforming Organizational Mindsets with Bernie Maloney

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2024 28:11

Join Brian and Bernie Maloney as they explore the transformative power of mental models, emphasizing the shift from a mechanistic to an organic mindset in Agile organizations. Overview In this episode, Brian and Bernie Maloney discuss the profound impact of mental models on organizational culture. Bernie delves into how our beliefs and assumptions shape our thinking and behavior, particularly within Agile environments. He discusses the importance of transitioning from a mechanistic to an organic mindset, focusing on problem-solving rather than merely delivering solutions. The conversation also highlights the role of psychological safety in fostering a culture of experimentation and learning. Bernie shares valuable resources, including Amy Edmondson's 'The Right Kind of Wrong,' to further explore these concepts. Tune in for insightful strategies for enhancing your organization's agility and effectiveness. Listen Now to Discover: [1:03] - Brian welcomes Certified Scrum Trainer® and Principal at Power By Teams, Bernie Maloney, to the show. [2:15] - Bernie delves into the concept of mental models, sharing the origins of his philosophy of "making new mistakes" developed during his time at Hewlett Packard. [5:55] - Bernie illustrates the power of mental models and belief by sharing a compelling example that brings these concepts to life. [13:46] - Join us for a Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training, where a year of coaching and development with Mike Cohn, Brian, and the Agile Mentors Community of Agile leaders is included with your training. [14:39] - Bernie discusses how applying mental models can enhance the effectiveness of Agile transformations, creating a naturally adaptive and innovative climate. [18:12] - Bernie offers language as a powerful tool to support the shift to a new Mental Model. [23:30] - Bernie demonstrates the use of mental models for product owners through the Mobius Loop, providing actionable guidance and examples [26:27] - Brian shares a big thank you to Bernie for joining him on the show. [26:59] - If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, and like and subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast so you never miss a new episode. [27:27] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. You get a year of free membership to that site by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software, such as CSM, CSPO, or Mike Cohn’s Better User Stories Course. We'd love to see you in one of Mountain Goat Software's classes. You can find the schedule here. References and resources mentioned in the show: Bernie Maloney Power By Teams Mobius Loop The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy Edmondson Agile Teams Learn From Spikes: Time Boxed Research Activities by Mike Cohn Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training Certified ScrumMaster® Training and Scrum Certification Mike Cohn’s Better User Stories Course Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Bernie Maloney is an Agile leadership coach and international speaker, leverages his 25 years of engineering and leadership experience to help teams and organizations unlock their full potential. Known for his engaging workshops and impactful coaching, Bernie believes in making performance breakthroughs both achievable and enjoyable. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We are back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I am with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have a very special guest with me. I have Mr. Bernie Maloney with me. Welcome in, Bernie. I am. Bernie Maloney (00:14) Thanks, Brian. Happy to be here. Brian (00:16) Great. I'm so excited to have Bernie here. Bernie and I have touched base for years over conferences. We've run into each other and had chats and shared our shared passion for Hawaii and other things. But Bernie was speaking at the recent conference and we've gotten into some conversations. I wanted him to come on because I wanted him to, first of all, if you're not familiar with Bernie, sorry, I see, I just want to jump right into it. If you're not familiar with Bernie, Bernie is a CST. He works at a company called Powered by Teams. He teaches classes, Scrum Master product owner classes and leadership classes and other things as well. But he is a principal at Powered by Teams. So just wanted to give you the basics there before we dive into anything. But the topic that we started to talk about that just as a jumping off place for us is a topic. the topic of mental models. So Bernie, why don't you explain to everyone how you define that, mental models. Bernie Maloney (01:23) So, Brian, this is a great topic. I find myself talking about it all the time. And y 'all, I warned Brian, like, he can press play on this, and it might be 15 minutes before he gets a word in edgewise here. It touches on mindset. It touches on a lot of topics. My talk that Brian was referencing at the recent Scrum gathering in New Orleans was make new mistakes, leadership lessons from an Agile success. which goes back to where I really kind of cut my teeth in Agile at Hewlett Packard. See, I'm a mechanical engineer by training. And I cut my teeth in Agile in the consumer PC division at HP about, this is scary to say y 'all, okay, about 27 years ago starting at this point. And some of the fun stuff, it was a bang up enterprise. It was the fastest business in HP's history to hit a billion dollars. And it was just... Brian (02:05) Yeah. Bernie Maloney (02:18) a great proving ground. We had hardware, we had software, we had distributed teams where volume manufacturing was in Asia, engineering was here where I am in Silicon Valley. Go -to -market for Europe was in Grenoble, France. We had high volume. Some of our products had 100 ,000 units in a single model run, with like 200 models in Europe on a quarterly basis at times. So high volume, high mix, tight margins from a business perspective. A lot of technology products want to have 20 % to 30 % gross margins. That's before you start taking off deductions like expenses and salaries and things like that. On a good day, we had 8 % gross margins for Christmas products, maybe 2 % gross margins. We used to refer to it as we were shipping rotting bananas. And like I said, I was there. When I started, we were shipping six products a quarter. We grew to 20. By the time I left after eight years, we were doing 200 products a quarter in Europe alone. Brian (03:04) Ha ha. Bernie Maloney (03:16) hardware, software, distributed teams, high volume, high mix. And we did all that with weekly iterations of a plan. At one point in my career, I was tactically responsible for the delivery of 2 % of HP's top line revenue with zero direct reports. And part of the secret sauce of success in that organization was really that mental model of make new mistakes. So that's where the talk title comes from. And in fact, makenewmistakes .com will point to poweredbyteams .com because I own that domain too. But that mental model really helped the organization thrive and not just survive. We went from like a number one to a number five share. Sorry, from a number five to a number one the other way around. Because the founding executives recognized that in that tide of a market, mistakes were probably going to happen. And so what they did is they established the psychological safety. Wow, look, there's another great topic. Make new mistakes. You knew that if it was an honest mistake, it would be forgiven. Just don't make it again. Get the lesson is one of the things that they said. I can even tell you the story about the weekend I blew a million dollars of HP's money and I was forgiven, but you'll have to come to a conference talk for that. So that was just like a great experience. And... Brian (04:32) Wow. Bernie Maloney (04:39) After that experience, I went on to TVs. Another part of my background is I shipped the very first internet connected TVs. Look it up, the Media Smart 3760 from HP. It shipped even before Apple TV. It bombed. Okay, it was way ahead of its time. But I recognized that that had been such a joyride. And then I recognized some other stuff that really gets into the psychological, the mental aspects of leadership, high performing teams. And I could, Brian, I could talk about that too, but okay. But that kind of got me to recognize that with those skills, the success that I had experienced at HP could probably be replicated. That's kind of been the path that I've been on for the past 15 years is really helping organizations go along that path. So mental models can be really big. Let me give everybody here an example. And so Brian, I'm going to speak to you as a way of illustrating mental models. So imagine you are physically where you are right now. Brian (05:24) Yeah. Bernie Maloney (05:37) but it is 150 years ago, okay? Imagine you're physically where you are right now, but it's 150 years ago. Now, Brian, let me ask you, can man fly? Brian (05:47) boy, you're testing my history knowledge. Bernie Maloney (05:52) Okay, make it 200 years ago, okay? That makes it easier. Okay, cool. Great, now fast forward to the present. Brian, let me ask you, can man fly? Brian (05:54) No, yeah, no. Yes. Bernie Maloney (06:02) What changed? Nothing about the laws of physical reality. It was just your mental model of what for man to fly means. That's the power of belief, okay? And belief limits a whole bunch of stuff in the way that people behave. So you'll hear Agilent talk all the time about, this is all about changing mindset. I'm probably, Brian, gonna give your listeners some ways of. Brian (06:06) invention. Bernie Maloney (06:30) changing mindset as we go through this, but that's going to illustrate the power of mental models. Now, a big one that I like to use that's specific to Agile comes from Gabby Benefield. She's an Agilist out of the UK, and it's called the Mobius Loop. And I think she's got the domain mobiusloop .com. So everybody can imagine a Mobius Loop. Okay. And what I really like about this model for her... Brian (06:32) Sure, yeah, please. Yeah. Bernie Maloney (06:56) i s the right -hand half is what a lot of organizations think Agile is. Build, measure, learn, build, measure, learn. The whole idea of the build trap that we talk about in Agile. It's all about the delivery of a solution. Okay? But the left -hand half is all about the discovery of the problem. Okay? And the discovery of the customer. And that's a part of Agile too that most organizations overlook. So you got to ask why. And it comes down to kind of mental models. So when I was at Persistent, if you go look me up on LinkedIn, you'll find some of my employment history. I was at Persistent for a while. They had a really good mental model. And it's something I still use when I go into a client. And they would talk about there's kind of three eras of a company culture. And so culture is really the environment that an organization lives within. And there's an era. where cultures were formed before the internet. So things like finance and government and mining and manufacturing and oil and gas field developed. I mean, I've had clients in all of these areas. And in that sort of an environment, okay, it was, well, an era. One of the things I'll ask, and Brian, I'll kind of like let you represent the audience. Would you say in general, the people that you work with, the markets that they serve, Are they moving faster and all up into a thumbs up, slower, thumbs down, or about the same, thumbs sideways? Are the markets moving faster, slower, or about the same as they were, say, five or 10 years ago? Brian (08:32) I think everything's moving faster, yeah. Bernie Maloney (08:34) Cool. Okay. Now, how about the technology that your clients use to solve problems for that market? You know, moving faster, thumbs up, slower, thumbs down, or about the same as it was, say, five or 10 years ago. Faster. Yeah, cool. Okay. Now, when things are moving faster, thumbs up for yes, thumbs down for no. Do they always move in a straight line? Brian (08:46) No, faster. No, not always. Bernie Maloney (08:56) Okay, cool. So now things are moving faster, but they're not moving in a straight line. So let me ask you, do most organizations try and plan and predict? Is it possible for you to plan and predict when things are moving faster and they're not moving in a straight line? Is it easier or harder to plan and predict? Brian (09:19) I think it's definitely harder. Bernie Maloney (09:21) Yeah, but organizations are trying to do that, aren't they? And it's because their mental model is as a machine. So organizations born before the internet have a mental model of the entire organizational system being a machine, the industrial age, which you can plan and predict. They treat people like cogs in a machine. In fact, the thing that us Agilists will say is, when you say resources, did you mean people? See, that's... Brian (09:35) Yeah. Bernie Maloney (09:50) That's kind of now we're starting to get into some of the culture aspects of this because language actually forms culture. And so you'll hear Angela say, did you mean people? Like when that whole word of resources comes up. But organizations born before the internet, they've got one culture. Okay, they were born in an era of plan and predict. They've got a mental model of the system being a machine. And your listeners would probably agree most of them struggle with Agile. Okay, now there's another era born in the internet but not the cloud. So some examples like here in Silicon Valley, Cisco, PayPal, okay, lots of us have had exposure to them and lots of us recognize they still struggle with agile because agile wasn't really fully formed and articulated. Then there are organizations that were born in the cloud and so places like Striper Square and I use payments because I've had... clients in finance across all three of these eras. So Stripe or Square, they were born in the cloud where things were almost natively agile because the Agile Manifesto had been published by that point. They just inherently get agile. So these mental models of your organizational system being a machine get reflected in the language. So things like people or resources, it turns them into objects. It enables something I've heard called pencil management. Wear them down to a nub, go get a new one. In fact, if you do the research on where the word resources was first applied to human beings, it might shock some people. So I don't talk about that openly. They'll have to find me privately. I'll be happy to point you out the reference. And once I do, it's like, ooh. But one of the jokes I'll crack. And this is one of the ways that you can start to shift the language. If people call you resources, because you know that turns you into an object, start calling them overhead. Brian (11:23) Yeah. Ha ha ha. Bernie Maloney (11:48) Okay, it can kind of make the difference there. Okay, so, but you know, if things are moving faster and they're harder to plan and predict, that mental model needs to shift. In fact, in agile, we talk about you need to move to sense and respond. When things are moving faster, it's kind of like Gretzky, skate to where the puck is going. You need to sense and respond to the situation. So a better mental model instead of a mechanism is an organism. Because think about organisms, like cut yourself, it heals, okay? It senses and responds. Or like a forest fire comes in, wipes things out, and nature always kind of fills things back in. Sense and respond. This gets reflected in the language. So Brian, do your clients talk about metrics? Brian (12:37) Of course, yes. Bernie Maloney (12:38) Okay, cool. So do they talk about efficiency? Brian (12:41) I would say a lot of businesses will talk about that. Yeah, sure. Bernie Maloney (12:44) Yeah, cool. That's the language of machines. Probably better language is diagnostics instead of metrics. That invokes some of the curiosity. And probably instead of efficiency is effectiveness. One of the things I'll say is scrum is not efficient. It's not about utilization of capacity. It's about the production of value, which is all about effectiveness. See, efficiency or effective. Do you go to your doctor for an efficient treatment? or ineffective treatment, Brian. Brian (13:16) Effective, hopefully. Bernie Maloney (13:17) Awesome. Do you go for blood metrics or blood diagnostics? Brian (13:21) Yeah, diagnostics for sure. Bernie Maloney (13:23) Yeah, so now you're starting to get some hints about how you can start to shift the mental model. What you're really doing with Agile, y 'all, is you're shifting the culture, and culture is hard because it's not visible. The tools, the processes, the practices that folks like Brian and I will teach and coach, they're super visible, they're super valuable, but they're often not enough to start to change things. So, Brian, would you say most of your listeners are familiar? familiar with the language of Tuchman of forming, storming, norming, and performing. Brian (13:56) I'd say there's probably a good percentage, yeah. Bernie Maloney (13:58) Cool. I actually like to draw a Satir curve. So Bruce Tuckman, Virginia Satir, they were contemporaries. They were both just researching human systems. So Virginia did a performance axis on the vertical and a time axis on the horizontal. And the way Virginia described it is you're kind of going along in a certain status quo. And so you're kind of along that baseline. And then a foreign element enters and some change. And then you descend into chaos. And you can't see it. like your performance goes down until you have a transformative idea and then through some practice and integration, you rise to a new status quo. This happens to people all the time when they introduce changes in their life like New Year's resolutions. I'm going to get fit and healthy this year. You know, it's a beach body time. And you start doing it and it's like, this is so hard. You're in chaos. And what human beings want to do is they want to go back to the way things were instead of moving through. OK, this happens when you introduce agile into your organization. You'll hear Agilist talk about this as the Agile antibodies. You introduce it, this is so hard, and people want to go back to the way things were instead of kind of moving through. So the tools, the processes, the practices, they're really good, but they're not powerful enough. You got to start changing the culture. Culture is like what we all swim in, but climate is something that you can start to affect. So climate is a little bit closer in to your team, and you can start talking about these mental models. Like when I was at TiVo, I was hired into TiVo to bring Agile in because I had shipped TVs, I knew about Agile. And I was hired in on, I think I can say this now because we're more than a decade past. Have you all ever streamed anything? Yeah, okay. So TiVo was working on that in like 2009, 2010. I got to see that stuff and I was like, really wish I had taken off for them. But that program... Brian (15:42) yeah. Bernie Maloney (15:54) disbanded, okay, and the culture kind of spread in the organization. And I knew that this was a possibility, so when I brought it in, I made sure I didn't just work with my team that was doing a Skunk Works project, where we were just kind of doing some internal development that we weren't, you know, or stealth is probably a better word these days. So a stealth program inside of TiVo that you couldn't talk about. I knew that... when Agile would spread, it would hit some of this resistance, these antibodies. And so I made a case for bringing in people from outside my team so that it was familiar. And when that program disbanded, it organically spread on the cloud side of TiVo because of some of this stuff. So within your own team, you can kind of create a climate. And then when you start to see results like that, that's going to start attracting kind of the rest of the culture that's there. But these mental models, like shifting from mechanism to organism can really help an organization recognize where their limiting beliefs are about how things go. And it's going to be reflected in language. So if you like dive into anthropology a little bit, you're going to recognize that it's really well established. You can change a culture by starting to change the language. And all of us, okay, if you're observing what's going on in Eastern Ukraine here in 2024, that's what's going on. with the Russian occupation, they're changing the language because that's going to change the culture. That's why they're doing stuff like that. So, and even language starts to shape the mental models that you've got. A good example of something like that was when European, you know, when European explorers is the language I'll use, came to the Americas, the natives didn't really have a language for ship. And so they saw these people coming in floating on the water. And that was the way that they could describe it. So even language kind of gets into a cultural sort of a thing. So these are techniques that you can put into your toolkit. Start shifting the language to start shifting the culture, which can kind of help with the mental models. When you got the mental models, that's where the language starts to come from. If you don't have the mental models, you're probably not going to have the language. And I encourage all the folks I work with, start shifting from the whole idea of mechanism to organism. Okay, Brian, was that 15 minutes? Did I go on for as long as I predicted I would? Brian (18:27) About 15 minutes. Yeah. No, but I think that's a good point. There's a thing that I'll talk about a lot of times in my classes where I would all say, you know, the waterfall paradigm is one that's based on manufacturing. And there's a false understanding of what we're doing as manufacturing and it's not. It's more research and development. So you have to kind of shift the process to be one that's more conducive. to research and development. So that's very much in line with what you're talking about here. I love that. Bernie Maloney (19:01) Yeah. Do you think people would appreciate some book references that can kind of like help you? Okay. So specifically on that whole ethos of experimentalism that you just touched on, Brian, I'm currently going through Amy Edmondson's The Right Kind of Wrong. Really good book. Now, Amy is well known because she helped establish psychological safety as a super important topic in organizations. Brian (19:07) absolutely. Absolutely. Bernie Maloney (19:30) So she was coupled, I think, with Project Aristotle at Google. And in this book, she unpacked some really interesting stuff. She talks about failure, and there's types of failures. There's basic, there's complex, and there's intelligent failures. OK, intelligent failures, they're just native to science. You know things are going to go wrong. You're going to have Thomas Edison, the I Found 1 ,000 Ways. to do a light bulb wrong, sort of. That's like intelligent failure. Basic failure, she breaks down into, let's see, neglect and inattention. And those are the things that you really want to start to squeeze out of a system. With that mental model of a mechanism, I would say a lot of, call it management, tends to think of a lot of failures as basic failures. And that's where blame starts to come into a system. Okay, so now we're back into psychological safety. Okay, where you want to establish, you know, that was an honest mistake. Hence the talk title of make new mistakes. Okay, so you can have processes and procedures that can kind of squeeze out some of those basic failures. Complex in the middle is really interesting to talk about. As I'm getting into the material, she unpacks... Now, complex failures are those chain of events, you know, Brian (20:30) Yeah. Yeah. Bernie Maloney (20:54) This thing and this thing and this thing all had to line up and go wrong at the same time for this catastrophic failure to go on. And in medicine, which is where her original research was, they talk about it as Swiss cheese. And she says, if you go into a lot of medical administrators' offices, you're going to find some model of Swiss cheese there. Because they talk about it's like all the holes have to line up for something to go sideways on you. So complex failures. It's a chain of events, a bunch of little things. And she points out that in the research, these often happen when you have an over -constrained system where there's no slack, where you're trying to operate with, get this, Brian, 100 % efficiency. You're trying to load everybody up. So that is just like, it's not just juice on psychological safety, but like, looking at the whole idea of intelligent failures that we want to encourage versus constraining out basic failures versus working to reduce those complex failures and not just thinking complex failures are basic failures, but they're systemic failures that then might be part of the system, might be part of the mental model that's going on that's there. So super juicy stuff. Brian (22:11) Yeah, yeah, that's really good stuff. I've always loved Amy's work and I feel, you know, silly calling her Amy. But Amy Edmondson's work has always been great. Yeah, Professor Edmondson. She, the work on psychological safety, I think was just amazing. And the examples she used in her research are amazing. And, you know, all the stuff with Project Aristotle. Bernie Maloney (22:20) Okay, Professor Edmondson, yeah. Brian (22:36) I love the concept of psychological. I mean, again, not to make this the topic of our podcast, but, you know, I love the idea that they, they, they found that psychological safety was, so foundational that nothing else mattered. That if you didn't have that, that not no matter what else you layered on top of it, it would not fix the problem that you didn't have psychological safety. Bernie Maloney (22:58) Yep. And that's one of the reasons why I say Agile is actually a social technology more than anything else. I mean, that's why it's people and people over processes and tools. This is really a social technology that we deal in. Brian (23:10) That's a great way to put it. I love that social technology. Awesome. I love that. Bernie Maloney (23:14) So kind of talking about Amy and psychological safety and kind of all these systems that we're talking about, another mental model that I like to give particularly my product owners, going back to that Mobius loop. and like on the right hand side is all about delivery, okay, that's where you give team solutions to build. That's what a lot of organizations do. Versus on the left hand side with discovery, it's all about problems to solve. So I like to encourage my clients to instead of just giving people solutions to build, give them problems to solve. Now, for product owners, if you imagine like an onion that's kind of stretched out left to right, so kind of an odd long little onion. Brian (23:41) Yeah. Bernie Maloney (23:58) and on the far right is your sprint. And then as you go to the left, you're at a release, and further out to the left, you're in roadmap, and way further out into the left, you're into these vague things like vision. So product owners kind of deal with this whole span of things. And in between, product and sprint goals start to make things a little bit more concrete. Okay, and... One of the things I'll do for my product owners is I'll take that Mobius loop and I'll overlay it on a planning onion like that and go, do you get to see how, like what we're talking about here, you're starting out way vague in discovery and you're getting way more concrete as you get into delivery and into the sprint. And really the job of Agile and Scrum is both. It's not just about turn the crank on the machine. In fact, I think it's unfortunate that there's a book title out there of twice. the work in half the time. I actually like to pitch this as more it's about twice the value with half the stress. Okay, now as you imagine that Mobius loop kind of overlaid, one of the things I'll unpack for folks is when you're way out in that vision area, there's a lot of uncertainty that's there, okay? And you're actually going to have to do discovery. You may have to run some experiments. Brian (24:58) Yeah. Bernie Maloney (25:24) Okay, and it's only as you get closer into delivery that you want to get closer to certainty. And really, that's kind of the job of a product owner is squeezing uncertainty out of the system. Initially through discovery of the problem to solve, who to solve it for, what the market is, but it's the job of the whole team in Agile to squeeze that uncertainty out of the system. Brian, I'm sure you've had folks like talk about spikes. You ever have people get wrapped around the axle about like including spikes in their product backlog? Brian (25:48) Yeah, for sure. yeah, for sure. Bernie Maloney (25:54) Cool, the way that I frame that up, okay, so here's a mental model. That's just technical uncertainty that you've uncovered. Great, okay, so now we've got to go squeeze that uncertainty out of the system. So stop getting wrapped around the axle on stuff like this. Just like stop trying to plan and predict things. Instead, kind of get into sense and respond on all of them. And there, I've kind of brought it around full circle for you, Brian, for where we started. Brian (26:09) Yeah, no. No, that's great. That's great stuff. And I love the fact that we can bring it back full circle. Well, this is fascinating. And like you said, we could press play and go on this for another half hour very easily. But we'll be respectful of people's time here and keep it to our normal time length. Bernie, I can't thank you enough for coming on. I really appreciate you sharing your experience with us. And... what you've learned over your years of working in this profession. Bernie Maloney (26:50) Thank you so much for asking me, Brian

#102: Communicating Agile Transformations with McCaul Baggett

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2024 31:15

Join Brian Milner and McCaul Baggett as they explore the power of empathy and storytelling in successful Agile transformations. Learn McCaul's five-step approach to effective communication and discover strategies to overcome common pitfalls in organizational change. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner sits down with McCaul Baggett, Chief Agile Officer at CAVU, to discuss the intricacies of communicating change within organizations. They delve into common pitfalls in Agile transformations and highlight the importance of empathy and storytelling in engaging teams. McCaul shares his five-step approach to effective communication, emphasizing the power of testimonials and spreading awareness. Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical tools for navigating and leading successful Agile transformations. Listen Now to Discover: [1:10] - Join Brian as he welcomes McCaul Baggett, Chief Agile Officer at CAVU and a master of Agile transformation, to delve into the secrets of successful Agile transformation. [3:15] - McCaul emphasizes the critical role of storytelling in engaging and guiding teams through the process of Agile transformation. [5:57] - Brian addresses a common challenge in Agile transformations: navigating the unknown and its impact on team dynamics. [8:01] - McCaul explains how effective communication and a compelling narrative can help teams grasp their value during a transformation. [10:40] - McCaul advocates for going beyond the basic 'why' by incorporating testimonial narratives to create more meaningful connections. [14:39] - Brian suggests using these tools to foster empathy, advocating for their use in both top-down and bottom-up approaches when initiating a transformation. [16:29] - Dive into Mike Cohn's book, Succeeding with Agile, for practical advice on navigating your transformation. Discover strategies for communication, overcoming resistance, and other key aspects of Agile success. [17:54] - Brian inquires about effective ways to connect with and engage resistant individuals within the team. [22:49] - Join McCaul and Brian as they discuss the importance of creating specific best practices that suit the unique needs of this particular team and organization. [28:07] - Brian shares a big thank you to McCaul for joining him on the show. [28:33] - Join Brian in attending Agile conferences to connect with and learn from Agile experts and peers, fostering valuable discussions and insights. [29:53] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. You get a year of free membership into that site by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software, such as CSM or CSPO. We'd love to see you in one of Mountain Goat Software's classes, you can find the schedule here. [30:35] - We invite you to subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast. Do you have feedback or a great idea for an episode of the show? Great! Just send us an email. References and resources mentioned in the show: McCaul Baggett Communicating Change Made Easy with McCaul Bagget and Tom Bullock Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn Agile 2024 Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Certified ScrumMaster® Training and Scrum Certification Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. McCaul Baggett is the Chief Agile Officer at CAVU, specializing in Agile transformations and effective communication strategies. With a focus on empathy, storytelling, and practical tools, McCaul helps organizations navigate change and foster sustainable Agile practices. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors, we're back. This is another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have the one and only Mr. McCaul Baggett with us. Welcome in McCaul. McCaul Baggett (00:13) Hey, thanks Brian, really glad to be here. Brian (00:15) Very excited to have you. For those who aren't familiar with McCaul, McCaul is the chief agile officer at Cavu. He has been working in transformations for quite a long time doing some large-scale transformations at different organizations. One that he is allowed to publicly mention is John Deere, but there's others that he's been a part of as well. You know companies are funny that way. They don't always necessarily want you to publicize things for some reasons. I don't know why. McCaul Baggett (00:43) Yeah. Brian (00:44) We were joking about that earlier. But I wanted to have him call on because we were both at the Agile 2023 conference, and I saw him on the agenda, and it was one of those sessions I didn't get a chance to go to, unfortunately, but really thought it was an interesting topic. I wanted to have him come on and kind of chat with us a little bit about this. So his topic was about communicating change and communicating change in an easy way, you know, kind of making that an easy process. So let me start there with you, McCaul, on this is, what do people get wrong when they're going through a transformation and we make the decision to go through a big change in our organization? What are some of the common pitfalls organizations fall into when they make that decision? McCaul Baggett (01:34) Well, let me start by saying it wasn't me solely that was doing the talk. I did have some partners there with me. And if you look it up, you should definitely speak to them as well or look them up as well. Dana Dismukes is a transformation lead for Dell. Tom Bullock is the chief storyteller for Scrum Inc. And really the academics of the talk came out of Tom's brainchild. But through my work, I got a chance to apply it. And it was precisely because of this very issue, the ch- the- non-working approach that many organizations take to communicating about change. There's a tendency in a lot of change management structures to discuss the need for communication, but as Agilists, we don't inherently do a lot of study of the nature of communication. And so I would say probably the biggest, most common error that people in a transformation of any kind and most close to my experience in Agile transformations make in communicating about change is going about it from a way that is, from the perspective of trying to reassure their teams, their departments that this is something that has leadership endorsement by communicating from the top down. I mean, please forgive the hierarchical metaphor, but getting some senior leader to say, hey, this is gonna be great, you can do it, we're gonna do this. When in fact, the most effective way to communicate to someone, especially someone who's not fully bought in, is by telling them a story of someone who is like them, has experience like them that they can relate to. And that storytelling perspective is what we talk about in this talk, Communicating Change, maybe. Brian (03:16) Yeah, there's a lot just in there to unpack. I mean, just the idea, thinking about, I've talked with a lot of organizations and a lot of people have come through classes and stuff that I've talked with who are going through changes like this, but then they're not really even sure how much their leaders are on board with this. They just, they have some layer of management who says, yeah, this is what we're gonna do, but do the people at the top really feel that way? Do they even know what it is that we're doing? McCaul Baggett (03:34) Sure. I mean, that's even tougher. I would find it hard to even consider it a true transformation if you can't be sure your leaders are bought into it. But you're not wrong. It is stunning how often you get these folks that you run into and they say, my leadership may be willing to do this. I teach a lot of Scrum at Scale. And so we talk a lot about executive Metascrums and executive action teams and prescriptions about how involved the leader should be. And people will sort of stop and say, wait, you want a leader to meet about team obstacles every day? And I say, yeah, or however long those executives are willing to let their teams go without support to removing their obstacles. Like, what is it that they're doing that's more important than clearing the impediments for their teams? But that does tend to be the perspective is, I don't know if my leaders even bought into this change. That's tough. Brian (04:34) Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I think that speaks to some of the fundamental flaws, I think, that people have with transformations before you even get to communicating, right? Just do we know why we're here? Do we know what it is we're trying to do? Those kinds of things. I like to focus on the communication, though, here because communication is such a McCaul Baggett (04:46) Yeah, that's true. Brian (04:56) delicate beast. I mean, it just, you know, when you're trying to speak with another human, even if it's just within your team, you know, it's difficult because we're different personalities and we have different backgrounds and everything else, much less when you're talking about it over an entire organization. I would imagine, and you, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I would imagine that one of the biggest sources of kind of consternation or, you know, anxiety I think when these kinds of things happen is the unknown, just not really understanding how do I fit in and what does this mean for me. McCaul Baggett (05:33) Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Sometimes it's phrased that it's termed what's in it for me. And I think that's the wrong perspective to take. People aren't often necessarily, people are not always looking for some kind of payoff for the transformation. They don't need to know sort of what they get out of it. But I think that you really put your finger on a lot of the reason that we see trepidation with a transformation is because it implies that Brian (05:38) Mmm. McCaul Baggett (06:00) Business as it had been occurring before was not acceptable. What you'd been doing previously was not good enough. And now we need to get you to do it another way. That inherently sort of fundamentally starts with a position of questioning whether or not your position is stable. And that gets, you get some amygdala hijack stuff going on. You get the brain started worrying about existence, not just change. So you're right, contextualizing. Brian (06:26) Yeah. McCaul Baggett (06:29) your communication about this is really important. And I think taking a perspective of empathy and meeting especially resistance in a change environment, a changing environment, meeting resistance with an attempt to understand the perspective really fundamentally underpins any successful communication you're gonna have about change management in general, but communication in particular. Brian (06:52) What do you think about that, McCaul? I mean, if you're a leader in that kind of organization and you recognize this and you see, people are gonna, I'm gonna send people into a little bit of a panic, right? Because you're right, there's no way that I can hear that message, hey, we're gonna do things differently than the way that we've been doing them without kind of self-internalizing, well, that means that something I've been doing has not been acceptable, it's not been good enough, it's not been what the organization needs. How do you communicate that in a way to say, no, it's not you, right? It's kind of a process thing. It's not that you did anything wrong. It's that we found this is a better way of working. McCaul Baggett (07:30) Yeah, so I think starting with that fundamental basis of why this is occurring is really key. But even before you get to the communication about why, it's really important to figure out who it is you're speaking to. So going back to that sort of, that empathy piece, there is a need to get that communication about, okay, it's not that you did anything wrong. and here are the reasons why we're doing it, that is the message we're looking to communicate. But at a communication level, like understanding even how to begin that communication really requires us to take a step back so that we can consider the people we're telling that story to. So just to connect this to the topic that actually came up in the talk about how we do that communication, it's really fundamentally about, and just a quick aside about that talk. So in the Agile 2023 conference, we actually applied for a longer workshop, like 120 minutes, 160 minutes, one of the long time boxes. And they'd come back to us and said, why don't you do one of these 30-minute segments? So we really pared down a lot of the things that we wanted to say. And so to connect back to what really, what emerged was actually, it was actually probably a better talk than if we'd had a longer period of time to do it. We just, we had to cut everything until we could come back with just, Brian (08:36) Yeah. Hahaha. Mm. McCaul Baggett (08:58) the real good nuggets. And what stayed was this. In order to communicate effectively when you're going through any kind of change management process, first of all, having a change management process and a plan for how you're gonna manage that, that's your beginning. But to get a little bit more particular about how we communicate about that change, there is one technique which we agreed was probably the thing to focus on so that it would be most universally helpful. in any stage of a transformation that was going on. And that was creating a, finding a way to create a narrative, a personal narrative that could connect to the various people that you're trying to connect to, right? So to create a testimonial. And so we spent our time in that talk discussing how to really get a useful testimonial. And then once you've... got that how to do something useful with it. And we outline kind of five steps for how to think about this. Brian, tell me if I'm getting too deep or you kind of want to... Okay, cool. And I don't know that these are the only five steps. We try to make it easy to remember. The takeaways that we were trying to give were, you have to be first thoughtful about what it takes to make a compelling testimonial. So this is where I mean, you can't start with why. Brian (10:00) No, no, this is awesome. Go for it. McCaul Baggett (10:21) we're doing this, you have to start with who you're speaking to about why. Because the why shifts. If you're speaking to stakeholders, there's one why. And if you're speaking to the organization, to your employees, to the people that are doing the work, it's not that the why is different, but the way that you talk about it may be different. So once you know what it's going to take to make the testimonial, the next step would be to think about how you can work. how you can set yourself up ahead of time to maximize the potential to make an impact with your audience, to plan. how you're gonna get the story, the testimonial that's gonna resonate. Which is the story that I wanna tell? So fundamentally what we're doing here is we're assuming that, testimonial, this is only one way to communicate, but it's a fairly useful one universally. If you're going to try to get that testimonial, what are the questions that are gonna be useful to the who that you've identified ahead of time? What is the story you need to find to tell? Then step three is actually. having the conversation. So you've already done a lot of pre-work ahead of time before you even begin the process of the discussion. And then once you've started the discussion, once you've got it, using that testimonial, which is typically recorded kind of like this, grounding that in a way that doesn't sound overly positive and really connects with reality, and then using what you've got to spread that awareness as broadly as possible. So five steps. Know, think, get. ground and grow. I don't know if that's a useful mnemonic of any kind, but that's what we came up with. Brian (11:59) That's awesome. No, like I said, easy to remember. Just a few things to kind of keep in mind there. Yeah, I love the concept of telling it as a story, that we're not just, because that makes it much easier for me to see myself then fitting in there. Like we talked about earlier, right? If I have a fear of, oh my gosh, does this mean that I'm gonna lose my job? Does this mean that I'm gonna have to... McCaul Baggett (12:03) Yeah, just five steps. Brian (12:24) now do something that's very different from what I've been trained for or what I'm used to doing or what I wanna do as a career, telling it as a story can kind of allow me to see myself in the story. McCaul Baggett (12:37) You are exactly right. Not only does it allow you to do that, we as humans are wired to do that very thing. We do it all the time. In fact, when you're listening to a podcast like this, you'll often sort of have the sense that you're sitting at the table, thinking through, like you're literally exercising pathways in your brain as if you were participating in the conversation. And that direct involvement allows you to mitigate some of the inherent resistance that you. that you find, that amygdala hijack, that fight or flight response is not present because you're following along in a story, hopefully about a successful element of the transformation. So you really engage that piece right from the very beginning. Brian (13:20) Yeah, I love this and understand to the listeners as well, right? I mean, we're speaking at like a neuroscience level here and trying to understand that, you know, the preparation that needs to be made so that, uh, like McCaul is saying, there's not that amygdala hijack going on of just saying, uh, oh my gosh, I'm panicked. I can't get past this panic. Uh, you know, in my, that's going on in my head that has to be stripped away. That has to be. resolved so that now I can start to learn, now I can start to see and form, like you said, the new pathways. And that is, you know, physically what's going on. We're forming new connections in our brain to say, oh, I've never seen it this way, but let me try to make this connection and see it a different way. McCaul Baggett (14:10) Yeah, not only is it important to do that, we as humans, now I'm stepping a little far beyond my training, so I'll be careful. My understanding is that fight or flight response really lives in an entirely different system, in the limbic system of the brain, much earlier part of the brain. And in order to engage the neocortex at all, or in any significant way to create those Brian (14:21) Ha ha ha. McCaul Baggett (14:39) pathways to be able to see a perspective of the other than our own, we have to kind of dampen that limbic response, that fight or flight. Will I, won't I have a means to feed myself beyond this space? Am I safe before we can start to begin that conversation, to begin that connection with someone we want to connect to? Brian (14:59) Absolutely. And I think this applies not only, I mean, we started in kind of approaching this from sort of a high level top down, like you said earlier. But I think it applies even if you're a Scrum Master, or maybe you're part of a small group in the organization. Maybe you are in an organization that's not agile in any way, but you've gotten permission to have a pilot, to just have a pilot team. McCaul Baggett (15:08) Sure. Brian (15:28) and your desire is to grow this in the organization, or maybe they're doing it poorly and you wanted to have one pilot team that does it the right way so you can start to spread this out to other places. All this applies, I think, to you as well because you're gonna be communicating this and you're gonna encounter the same resistances, right? You're gonna have the same kind of skepticism. You're gonna have the same kind of possibility have someone have amygdala hijacks going on thinking, Oh my God, what's this guy doing? What's this woman doing? Why is she trying to make these big changes in the organization? Is she gonna try to change my job? Yeah, am I under threat? So while we started top down, I think it applies bottom up as well. They're all principles I think we have to think through before we even start to try to communicate with this. McCaul Baggett (16:05) Yeah, am I under threat? Oh, absolutely. I mean, any good scrum master is gonna be thinking and hopefully practicing their ability to deal with any tense conversation. And so that limbic engagement, that epinephrine and adrenaline start coursing through the brain. And you can see it in many people when you're looking at group dynamics, regardless of large or small group dynamics, but any group. that shutdown of the ability to really process new information and assimilate it, you have to start by working past the threat. You have to get people beyond that sort of defensive place before the conversation can even begin. Yeah, I agree. Brian (17:01) Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, in how we're talking about this, I kind of had this one scenario in mind I wanted to kind of run by you because I know I've encountered this before. I know, you know, I've encountered this in classes before. So I'm curious kind of how this communication approach would kind of adjust for this kind of individual. But what about the person who just sort of is crossing their arms McCaul Baggett (17:11) Sure, hit me. Brian (17:28) And they kind of take the approach of, ah, this is a fad. It's not so much as an active, hey, I'm gonna really counteract you and go against you to try to dispreview, but I'm just gonna, you know, I'm not budging. I'm gonna stay here, because I know this is a fad and it's gonna change eventually back to the way I wanna do things. So you do whatever you wanna do, but you know, I'm not gonna get on board with you because. I've seen lots of things come and go on this is just another McCaul Baggett (17:59) I think that takes a couple of forms. Certainly some of those, and particularly when I've been asked by an organization to come and do training, you get a lot more of those because, nope, they didn't raise their hand to come and join a public class or something. I think there's really two significant flavors of that engagement. One is, as you described, someone who's just sort of like passively waiting for this to sort of blow on by. And that's a lot more tricky than the one that's actively pushing back. By far, I prefer someone who's willing to stand up and say, this is not going to work here and here are the reasons why. Because to come into the space of someone who is not choosing that engagement is inherently threatening. So you've picked a very challenging person to get through to, um, because directly calling them out and being like, Hey, Brian, you've been really quiet. What do you think of what's going on? when they were not inclined to share that, sort of already starts to engage that, am I prepared to risk saying out loud what I think is gonna happen? And it also, it could inherit, it could just by the nature of asking them to speak out loud that they don't believe in what's going on around them, sets them apart from the rest of the group and could mean that makes them something of a target if they don't feel like their culture is a safe place to speak. So, That is your problem Often I have found that a testimonial based approach, one where you can tell someone's stories about someone in a similar position, not stories about why this is going to work from a leadership position, but a testimonial based communication campaign is one of the best ways to reach folks just like this. You don't need to directly address them. You don't need to confront them. It's fine. If you're not, if you're not buying this, that's okay. Why don't I tell you about where it's happened elsewhere? And frankly, that thing is one of the things that training in person used to be so great for, because you could stand away and kind of watch these people who weren't necessarily bought in, sit back and just study what was going on in front of them. It wasn't being forced on them. They could just sort of watch their teams and you'd do something silly like. Brian (19:58) Yeah. McCaul Baggett (20:17) play any number of the Agile games that are meant to demonstrate things like small batch processing or teaming, right? Team dynamics and that joy that human collaboration and competition can bring in a really small scale in a very short amount of time and like a magic trick you could be like was that fun? Was folding these paper airplanes and throwing them across the room fun? And they'd be like yeah it was fun it's paper airplanes whatever I'm not working and then you could take a step back and say okay Was it fun because you just love folding paper airplanes or was it fun because you were making connections with people that you don't get to do in your daily job? And just sort of, again, the story here is, look what's over there. Look what this says about the nature of communication. It's not testimonial based per se, but it is lighting that fire, that inspiration that I always loved about training. And it's not just in person, but it really... I do miss that about in-person training because you could really connect really well. Brian (21:19) Yeah, I mean, we're talking about communication in general and we can't escape the Agile Manifesto comment about it. It's best done in person face to face, right? So it doesn't mean you can't in another way, it just means it's best that way and it works easiest that way, right? Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, I just wanted to just, go ahead. McCaul Baggett (21:28) That's right. That's right. I'm sorry. Not to go too far off topic, though, but to that very point, we see this request of many executives later, the return to the office movement being another form of, is that the best way to communicate? Yeah, it is. Is it the only way to communicate? Should we be seeking that to the detriment of our work forces at scale? And there are many reasons that people are choosing to encourage their. employees to come back to the office. But I think part of that is because leadership is also far easier in person. So we're missing some opportunities for leadership to understand how to lead remote teams and may have caused that sort of same challenge. Anyway, another topic. Brian (22:23) No, no, I agree. And I think that part of that as well is just kind of the general whole. I've talked about this a couple of times in the podcast where we, we seem to be stuck in a cycle of trying to find out what is the way to do something versus what is the way for this team, for this organization to do something. There's lots of data out there that we can get, can inform us. Just like if I'm a product owner. There's lots of data that can inform me about the market, but ultimately I've got to make the call about what's right for us to do next. Same thing with the organization, same thing with the team. What's going to work in this instance? McCaul Baggett (23:03) Absolutely. It's probably one of the biggest challenges that I think, uh, when we see transformations, not even transformations, when we see an agile, um, enthusiast really go off track and good. I did it for sure when I was a new scrum master. Like this is how the scrum guide says we're supposed to do things and we're not doing these particular things. We need to do scrum the right way. that sort of the willingness to take a step back and say, well, there are a lot of better practices. Is there a best practice in our case that is true? Actually, the challenge is not, is there a better practice in all cases? And almost certainly not, but there may be a better practice in our case, even a best practice in our case, but you have to be willing to let go of the dogma of this is the way it's meant to be, and instead seeking, seeking to be informed by these, yes, science-based studied practices. It is better to be in person, but let's not fire all our remote employees. Let's, let's figure out another way or let's make teams that can figure out other ways to do it. Brian (24:11) Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we're in an interesting time, I think, as far as that's concerned, because like you said, it's the dogma, I think, of pragmatism and what's gonna work best in this scenario. Yeah, I struggle a lot in classes, even, when people will bring up certain topics, to ever say always, that this is always, it should always be this way. McCaul Baggett (24:22) Yes. Yes. Brian (24:36) Because I don't know, I frequently will say things like, my experience has been, what I have seen is this, but that's just my experience. And that's a limited set of experiences. You have to line that up against what you've experienced and what your organization is going through and say, hey, does this sound similar? Are we seeing those same things? Are we not seeing those same things? There are best practices. There are some things that we could say, yes, this... And a lot of situations will work best in this way, but not all. And that's where it takes experience. That's where it takes somebody who's been there before to know. McCaul Baggett (25:16) Well, yeah, and a lot of this grew up in a very particular environment, right? So Agile practices, many of the ones that we've adopted, grew up through software, and through software in North America. So one of the things that I've been passionate about, and one of the reasons that I've pursued the career that I have is because a lot of the Agile community looks like you and me, right? So if you take into account not only are these the, quote, Brian (25:29) Ha ha. McCaul Baggett (25:43) but it's for teams that tend to look like you and me, tend to live in North America, and tend to be working on software. And that's such a narrow area that we're foolish to assume that such a thing as best practices have been codified yet. Brian (25:58) Yeah, no, and please, for the listeners, don't get me wrong because if you listen to the show, you know I'm a geek for the data. And I love being able to have really hard scientific data that you can look at and say, hey, studies show that this is how you do this, but you gotta be cautious about asking, was that a rigorous scientific actual study or was this just an internet sampling? McCaul Baggett (26:13) Yes. Brian (26:26) That's not a scientific study. That's just kind of gathering people together and saying, hey, if this group of people who choose to respond to this, what do they think about something versus something else? But you're absolutely right. You have to understand the basis of where this comes from. And the basis of where we get a lot of our stuff is people who look like you and me, who have been working in the software industry for kind of the time we've been working in the software industry. So things have changed. McCaul Baggett (26:50) Yeah. Brian (26:53) cultures change, cultures bring different dynamics into things. And what works for my team of five, six developers based here in Dallas, Texas, is going to be very different from my team that I have five people in India and three people here, or even all the team is in India, or all the team is in Malaysia, or all the team is in Saudi Arabia or Ireland. I've worked with teams all over Israel. McCaul Baggett (27:09) Yes. Brian (27:23) You work with teams in different cultures and you have to understand what the playbook I used for that last team ain't gonna work for this next one because they're different people. McCaul Baggett (27:32) I heard the term coined radical pragmatism. It was, JJ Sutherland said it. And it was, it is precisely what we should be shooting for. Radical pragmatism informed by the best data, informed by the best science, and then immediately thrown away when it's not applicable to the situation we're in. Yes, these are the ladder, the rungs, the steps to head in the direction we need to be headed, probably, but let's evaluate them for ourselves and reevaluate. Brian (28:02) Yeah, if you're gonna go buy a car, you're gonna do your research, you're gonna figure out what gets the best gas mileage, blah, right, all this stuff. But then you're gonna get on the line, you're gonna test drive and go, I just like the way this feels. Ha, ha, ha. McCaul Baggett (28:12) That's right, test drive the car, yes, for sure. Brian (28:16) Awesome. Well, this has been a great conversation. I really have enjoyed having you on, McCaul. And yeah, thank you for kind of sharing kind of some of the wisdom in there from the talk. I know we, you know, the talk was not long and we have not long to kind of dissect stuff here in our podcast, but I appreciate you making time to share with us. McCaul Baggett (28:36) Absolutely, Brian, this is a pleasure. And if you ever need somebody to shoot the breeze with again, give me a call. Brian (28:42) I will take you up on that. McCaul Baggett (28:43) Thanks.

#101: Fostering Sustainable Change with Leor Herzfeld

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2024 31:06

Join Brian as he discusses the crucial elements of sustainable agility with Leor Herzfeld, Agile Coach and CEO of Integral Agile. Dive into the human side of sustainability and discover the 14 dimensions essential for creating a culture that truly engages. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner sits down with Leor Herzfeld to unpack the concept of sustainable agility from a deeply human perspective. They explore why external changes often fail and how a focus on individual health—encompassing safety, autonomy, mastery, purpose, and accountability—can lead to genuine, lasting transformation within organizations. Leor shares practical tools for leaders looking to foster an environment that supports continuous agile practices and nurtures employee engagement. Listen in as they discuss how to achieve a resilient and thriving workplace. Listen Now to Discover: [1:01] - Join Brian as he explores the vital role of sustainability in Agile methodologies with expert guest, CEO of Integral Agile and author of the upcoming book Reimagine Transformation, Leor Herzfeld. [2:09] - Leor delves into the meaning of human sustainability, explaining its significance and impact. [4:33] - Brian discusses the inherent resistance to change, noting that even positive transformations require adjustments. [5:22] - Leor poses the shift from thinking about only the holistic, healthy Agile culture and team to focusing on a healthy individual. [7:14] - Brian and Leor explore what sustainability and sustainable pace practices entail in real-world scenarios. [10:03] - Leor examines the reasons behind employees' lack of engagement in their organizations and work environments. [11:49] - Leor discusses 14 key aspects of individual health that are essential for creating a sustainable and healthy environment at both individual and organizational levels. [14:03] - Leor shares a tool to assess the Agile health of your team or organization. [14:53] - Enhance your team's performance with Mountain Goat Software’s specialized private training, including exclusive classes for leaders that accommodate their busy schedules. Dive into training that promises to elevate your team and organizational health, ensuring success across the board. You can email the Mountain Goat Software team for detailed information. [16:43] - Leor shares how he measures the sustainability and health of the teams and organizations he works with. [18:46] - Brian highlights a frequent issue encountered in classes: Agile teams feeling unsupported by their organization's culture. [22:27] - Leor delves into the evolving landscape of the Agile world, exploring how shifts can foster greater organizational support and, thereby, sustainable environments. [28:58] - Brian shares a big thank you to Leor for joining him on the show. [29:52] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. You get a year of free membership into that site by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software, where we get right into the good stuff and have some deep discussions. We'd love to see you in one of Mountain Goat Software's classes. You can find the schedule here. [30:17] - We invite you to subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast. If you have feedback or a great idea for an episode of the show, send us an email. We can’t wait to hear! References and resources mentioned in the show: Leor Herzfeld Integral Agile Integral Agile Health and Happiness Assessment Reimagine Transformation by Leor Herzfeld, David Hersey, Ben Williams, and Julio Pizarro Organizational Transformation: A Case Study For Creating A Cross-Functional Team Of Teams (Art) Aligned To A Value Stream Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink Agile For Leaders Mountain Goat Software’s Private Training Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Leor Herzfeld is an Agile Coach and creator of the Integral Agile Approach, combines his artistic and scientific expertise to drive transformative changes in the financial and educational sectors. He is dedicated to developing advanced collaboration tools that enhance organizational design and enable seamless workflows, drawing from his unique blend of artistic vision and scientific insight. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're here for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I am with you as always, Brian Milner. And with me today, I have Mr. Leor Herzfeld with us. Welcome in, Leor. Leor Herzfeld (00:13) Thank you, Brian. Happy to be here. Brian (00:16) Excited to have Leor with us. Leor is somebody who we kind of cross -passed at the Agile 2023 conference this last year. And he had a talk there that was really, really interesting. And we wanted to have him on for a while now to kind of share some of the insights from that talk with us here on the podcast. So his topic was called sustainable agility. But we were talking about this before he had. So Leor, I'll kind of turn this over to you. Help us understand, because it sounds like that's maybe, that might be a little misleading into what we're really talking about. So what are we really talking about? Leor Herzfeld (00:56) Well, yes, so it's misleading from the perspective of sustainability with regards to the buzzword that it is today, right? So we think about, you know, are we being ecologically responsible and so on and so forth. But in fact, this is sustainability from a more human perspective. So what happens typically when the coach or scrum master leaves the team? Oftentimes things fall apart, right? When that kind of protective presence leaves. the gains that were made tend to erode. Now, why is that the case? Often it's the case because whatever change they've put in place was external. It was a process -oriented change and it's not something that really penetrated into the hearts and minds of the people there. Brian (01:44) Yeah. Yeah. I make an argument there as well. Cause I know this is something that, uh, like Lisa Adkins will, will mention is that, you know, if that, if that coach that leaves and there's a vacuum and a hole, and now they're kind of lost, that coach didn't really do a great job because part of our role is to create that capability so that they don't depend on the coach. Right. Um, so yeah. Leor Herzfeld (02:10) Yeah, and you know, I'm going to go ahead and take the coaches side here, which is a rare point of view for me. Don't get me wrong. I love coaches and I love agile. But I often think, you know, sometimes coaches might be coming at the situation from, you know, a lack of empathy. You know, they're very process oriented and I've heard many coaches blame the client for, you know, not listening to them where. Brian (02:16) Hahaha. Leor Herzfeld (02:36) you know, as a coach myself, someone who's been a coach for 15 years, I've always felt like it's my responsibility to connect empathically with the person because what are we doing when we're coming in to bring in a massive change? And in essence, Agile is asking people to think backwards, right? It's thinking from the perspective, whether we're talking about, you know, the definition of success is no longer output, it's now outcome. or we're not going to do right to left planning, they're going to say, oh, when's something going to be done? And we're going to say, well, I don't have a baseline for how your teams are performing yet. So let me get back to you in about a month after we'll establish what the team's velocity and throughput is. And that's a terrifying thing for people to hear who are accustomed to doing things a particular way for five, 10, 15 years. So when coaches come in and they're just like, well, here's the process and it must be done this way, why aren't you listening to me? You know, that's where I sometimes take exception with how coaches approach it. I see it as a personal responsibility as a coach to understand the intrinsic motivations of every individual with whom I encounter and really help them get that I understand that you're taking a risk. I understand that you've spent, you've gotten where you are today in terms of your career. You've gotten here by doing these things. And I'm now asking you to throw that out the window and do things differently. Brian (04:02) Yeah, it's tough. I mean, the change in itself, anytime we go through change, it's hard and there's resistance to any kind of change that we encounter in our lives. You know, even changes that we would seek out, you know, like getting married or having a kid or anything like that, you know, like it's, we, we, we, uh, we enter into those changes very willingly, but it doesn't mean that every aspect of that change is something that we embrace wholeheartedly, you know, uh, There's adjustment periods and there's just something that you got to get used to when you go through those. And I agree with you. I think the organizations are the same way, the people in those organizations. So I love this approach. I love kind of thinking about it from the human perspective and kind of the impact it makes there. So let's go further into it. So if we're talking about kind of the human aspect of this, help us understand that a little bit more. Leor Herzfeld (04:56) Right. So this is something that, you know, that integral agile, this is my company, we've created the integral agile approach. It's intention. So when I say I'm having empathy for coaches here, agile talks about how important the mindset is. And they talk about how important it is to create a healthy agile culture. But if you Google how to create a healthy agile culture or how to cultivate a healthy mindset, there isn't anything that someone can have a look at. and say, oh, I'll just do that then. And the reasons for that are, of course, is it varies place by place. And it's ethereal, right? It's a very difficult thing to codify. We've tried to do that anyway. So the basis of the talk I gave at Agile 2023 was about, if we're talking about sustainable agility, the individuals. So Agile often talks about healthy teams. But I never hear it talking about healthy individuals. And is it possible to have a healthy team if the individuals who make them up are themselves not healthy? Brian (06:05) Yeah, that's a very, very good point. And by the way, I got to just stop down here because I got so excited with our topic that I kind of skipped over really giving Leor a proper introduction. I'd said that we cross paths from Agile 2023, but you just reminded me that I didn't really introduce you. Leor is the CEO of a company called Integral Agile. And their philosophy is trying to work to have Agile deliver the results that it promises, which is, again, we were talking a little bit before we started about how that's just not always the case. We see, in fact, it's often not the case. There's a lot of circumstances where organizations are just not getting the promise that they thought they were going to get with Agile. There is a book that is not out yet, but is coming out that Leor is going to have out in a bit called Reimagine. transformation. And so be on the lookout for that. That's going to be a really, really important book, I know. So sustainable from a human perspective, sustainable is the person healthy, is the person working in a way that they can kind of keep that up over a long period of time. There was an interesting thing I came across actually on this that I don't know if you've. encountered this or not, but I know when the whole agile concept of working at a sustainable pace, before that even came up, I think it was from the XP team, when they had originally started to deal with this whole concept of sustainability, their original kind of approach was about, when they started, they actually quoted it as something like, people shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week. And they started from that perspective of we got to limit all this because we're having all these people work nights and weekends. And so let's just say people shouldn't work more than 40 hours a week. But that adjusted over time and it changed it to sustainable because what they realized was, well, for some people, sustainable is less than 40 hours. For other people, it's more than 40 hours. So who are we to say, you know, Hey, this is what sustainable is for you. You've got to find your own sustainable pace. Leor Herzfeld (08:31) Yeah, and sustainable pace is a part of it. But you know, if we're talking about so you you, you also may have seen, you know, the Gallup State of Work poll that came out last year. And we've heard about quiet quitting. And, you know, you just have to see now, especially with with Gen Z coming into the marketplace, and, you know, they've got a completely different mindset and they have different expectations at work. They have expectations that are valid. They have expectations around psychological safety, diversity, equity, inclusion. There are things that organizations are struggling to adapt to because there's been this kind of like, you're going to come here and work and you hear people being called resources and that makes us cringe. But there's this old school mindset. And again, I really want to respond to this with empathy and not make like where we are in the world today. This is a slice of human history. And it's very easy to look at, you know, to try and make things wrong, whether it's like there's a mismatch in culture, you know, boomers versus Gen Z versus, you know, millennials, Gen X, whatever. We've got different cultures. We've got different mindsets and we need to figure out a way to come together. So something like... Let's not work 40 hours a week is important, right? But it's not sufficient to say, okay, well, we now have a healthy individual. Brian (09:55) Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot more that goes into it, right? There's, I mean, that is part of it, obviously, because you don't want to have burnout and everything else, but I love you bringing up the point about quiet quitting and engagement. You know, there's clearly, you know, lots of organizations deal with this issue of engagement and having a disengaged workforce and trying to have engagement initiatives and raise the level of engagement of employees and all that kind of stuff. So it's clearly a recognized problem. It's clearly something that organizations struggle with and have experimented and tried to find solutions to. So from your perspective, what do you think about that? Why do you feel like organizations are having such a big issue with engagement with their employees? Leor Herzfeld (10:44) I think people don't feel valued. They feel like they're fungible parts in the machine. But more so than that, they lack a connection to purpose. So most folks operating in an organization don't know what the organizational purpose is. And if they haven't done their own personal development work, they probably don't know what their own personal purpose is. So they're in there to get a paycheck. And there's this kind of adversarial relationship. I would think most people kind of hate work, right? And again, maybe this is me just being utopic, but I really feel like it doesn't have to be that way, right? And there's this idea of, you know, even in any, something like a retrospective, we don't have time to do the retrospective. So like, you know, oh my God, if we're gonna try to really get down to a human level and try to connect with our people and see what motivates them intrinsically, Like who has time to spend on that? But wow, if you spend the time on that, what do you get? What's your return on investment there? If you can actually help a person connect to what they're passionate about and then how what they're passionate about can contribute to the organizational purpose, which might mean changing their role, right? It's like sticky icky and people don't want to touch it. Brian (12:08) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, uh, you know, if you were in a professional athlete of some kind and you played whatever game your sport, you know, has, and you just went from game to game to game and never stopped in between to watch the game film or analyze your, your, you know, uh, swing or, you know, right. You got to have that, those moments to stop and be critical, uh, so that you can then say, all right, well, this didn't work as well as we should have, but. Let's try something new. Let's try a different way of approaching. Leor Herzfeld (12:41) Right. So this is what we came up with. I've got, you know, I'm curious to hear if anyone has any feedback, but so far these have felt, they've gotten pretty good feedback. So we came up with 14 dimensions of individual health that we feel need to be addressed in one way or another. So I've got safety. I love Daniel Pink. So we've got autonomy, mastery and purpose. Personal growth, right? Brian (13:08) Yep, I'm with you. Leor Herzfeld (13:11) Person needs to feel like they're learning something or they're gonna get bored. Career growth, if there's no path for them to grow in their career, then they're gonna look for work elsewhere. Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, right, very important. Play. Things don't have to be so damn serious all the time. We can have a little bit of fun at work, people. It's not dangerous. You need healthy relationships with your coworkers. Accountability. Brian (13:31) Ha ha ha. Leor Herzfeld (13:41) Um, and accountability is something that, that is not intrinsic to a lot of people. It's something that often needs to be taught and it's about showing up with integrity. Um, doing what you say you're going to do by when you're saying, by when you say you're going to do it, you know, being your word. And a lot of that comes from, and this is one of the reasons why I love scrum is it creates that accountability to the sprint goal. Hopefully in a way that is, you know, inspirational and not, um, command and control, um, mentoring. People need mentors. Achievement. This is another area where I feel modern Agile for very good reasons is missing something. So we look at performance at the team level. Absolutely makes sense. Let's not look at performance at the individual level. This can create an anti -pattern where we're now saying, well, you're better than you and that's not what this, but there needs to be some kind of an empirical feedback mechanism for an individual. understand how they're improving and that's not something I've seen thus far. Physical health, so there's your 40 hours a week and perhaps some other things and finally mental. Brian (14:43) Yeah. Yeah. Those are good. Yeah, I'm just trying to think through. And I don't think I can't, off the top of my head, I can't think of something I would add to that list. That's a really good list. Leor Herzfeld (15:06) I'm sure it'll grow. So the talk that I gave only had 12, so we've added two. So I'm sure it'll continue to grow. But like everything else, you know, perfect is the enemy of good. So, you know, what we've created here is, so we've got the list of 14 items, and then we've got this kind of shoe -hawry journey of, you know, are you even on the journey? So there's actually... Brian (15:11) Hahaha. Leor Herzfeld (15:31) tool for this on the Integral Agile website where you could go in and there's four questions for each one and if you answer at the first one, it's something like, let's take autonomy for example, the first one might say, I'm told what to do all the time. And then there's a journey from there. So it's not like you have safety or you don't have safety, you can have a little bit of safety, have a little bit of autonomy. So we created this beginner master, beginner practitioner master journey. And we've tried to set master it, you know, the objective is to get to the practitioner portion of it. We've tried to set master as like a really unattainable thing at work. Just to, you know, and if anyone gets there, it's amazing. But just to indicate that like our objective is to be practicing these things. We want general health, not expertise in every dimension. Brian (16:11) Ha ha. So is it kind of a, do you take kind of a survey approach with an organization that you have everyone in the organization kind of rate this and then get an overall score or how do you measure it? Leor Herzfeld (16:32) Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So where I propose this for various different enterprises. You start, so this is applicable anywhere, right? This is applicable to leaders. This is not just applicable to team members. Leaders are feeling all of these things and oftentimes in more dire ways than team members might be. But if we were gonna deploy this across the organization to get a pulse on what's actually happening, we would do this on a team by team basis. So from an individual perspective, the results will be all over the place. Every team's answers are going to have some patterns. that align based on the team's individual culture. Then if we go to the team of teams area, again, so we're gonna see things, a little bit of difference, because different teams, one team might have a stronger scrum master, and therefore their culture is a little, they might feel more psychological safety or more autonomy. So that'll let you know, right? This gives you like a real big indicator of how agile you are, because agile teams will tend to score a little bit higher on some of these. on some of these results. Anything that's happening at the team of teams level that's consistent is telling you that you've got a systemic problem in that team of teams level. And then of course, you raise it from there to the organization or to the enterprise. So the hope is where you see in an organization something lacking, these are not terribly difficult things to remediate and the remediations for them may or may not be agile. Brian (18:06) Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, I'm just, I'm fascinated by this concept and, and, and I, I like how you broke it down on different levels because you're absolutely right. I'm just sitting here trying to process it through as you're talking through it. And yeah, I can think of scenarios I've been in where we felt like the team has been great or we have a certain level of, like you said, safety or something within a team. But then we feel sort of like the organization is not listening to us or the organization has a different set of values. cultural values than the team does. That is something that I encounter quite a lot in classes too. I hear a lot of people who will say that, that our team is doing all that we can, but we feel like our organization is in a different place culturally and how do we make an impact there? How do we change that? So how would you handle that? What would you say to the teams like that, that feel like we're doing pretty well on our team, but our culture and our organization is just not. kind of in alignment with where we are. Leor Herzfeld (19:13) Yeah, so the trick with culture is it's very difficult to see. So this is another tool that we came up with something we call the Integral Cultural Map. So in any organization, in any given area in an organization, there's going to be one of three dominant cultures. There's going to be a risk averse, you know, rules and roles kind of a culture. Right. So that culture is going to be, you know, rife with red tape. making sure that we do things the right way. There's a process for the process for the process. And then the next kind of culture that we see is achievement oriented. This culture is gonna be very exciting. There's gonna be a lot of innovation going on. We're gonna be like results, results, results, bottom line. But the pitfall, so let me go back. Let me make sure that I talk about the healthy and unhealthy versions of these cultures. So the healthy element to the risk averse culture is obviously, you know, Brian (19:46) Right. Leor Herzfeld (20:10) we're gonna be very safe, lowercase s. So you're not gonna get a lot of dings by compliance in an environment like that. However, the rate of progress is probably gonna be pretty slow. And achieving oriented culture, very exciting, lots of great innovation, but the dark side to that might be very individualistic in terms of, you could have political infighting, you could have leaders, Brian (20:14) Yeah. Leor Herzfeld (20:40) not wanting to relinquish their own little fiefdom if it means, you know, if it's indicated that it makes sense from like some value stream mapping diagram, it makes sense to kind of break things up and create cross -functional teams. They'll say, no, no, no, I want to hold onto my teams. You know, so you'll get that as one of the dark sides of the achievement -oriented culture. And then you get what Agilists love is the people -centric culture. And that culture is going to be very much about ensuring that we have... health and morale. But the pitfall of that culture is it abandons achievement. So, you know, you might have people coming out of a meeting where everyone feels great about the conversation that took place, but nothing was actually accomplished. So there's a fourth level to this. And this is, I'm kind of like talking about something that's inside of integral theory. This is the levels portion of integral theory, if people are familiar. Then there's an integration of all three. And one of the things we try to espouse is, you need control, you need achievement, and you need morale. You have to have all three, but you don't necessarily have to have all three in every area of your enterprise. So if you have an objective that says, I want to make 10 million more dollars, but the culture of the area that is in control of achieving that objective is either we care about our people's morale or we care about making sure that nothing breaks, you're unlikely to meet that objective. So a different tool that we have that reveals these invisible cultural value schemes. And of course, the thing that creates the culture in any area of the enterprise is its immediate leader, which is why you'll see the enterprise itself might have, you know, let's say an achievement oriented culture, but then a particular organization might be very people oriented and another organization might be very, you know, rule, role, risk averse. Brian (22:36) Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah, I mean, I see exactly what you mean. And I see how those things kind of interact with each other. So tell us a little bit about, because I know you have this book that's going to be coming out. And you described it really before we got on about how it's sort of your theory there at Integral Agile. So re -imagine transformation. What are you trying to capture? with this forthcoming book. Leor Herzfeld (23:09) So it's really taking this thing that we've worked on for the last five years, this integral Agile approach, and breaking it down into a series of tools that people can use. Again, Agile's been very good to me, and I like it very much. I think that it's a little bit sick right now. We've seen there's been like Capital One just declared, hey, we're good, let's get rid of our coaches and scrum masters. And... I, the shine is definitely, I don't want to go so far as to say it's become a dirty word because it hasn't, um, and the industry is still growing, but the, the luster has gone off it. And that's because it's failing to the deliver the results it promises. So after people have been through a transformation two, three, four times, I've dealt with this myself, right? I'm, I'm coming to a team and they've had, you know, three coaches before and they're like, well, it hasn't worked before. Why is it going to work with you? Um, and it's almost like, I used to joke, you know, it's like, um, bad, you know, significant other syndrome. Like the person, like you're dating someone and their last three significant others, you know, treated them like garbage and they're like, they've got that trauma built up. Um, so we're just trying to help everybody with this book. The reasons why agile fails when it fails is because it's only addressing half the problem. It's addressing what you can see. Um, so what we wanted to add into it is how do we take the elements that we can't see and how do we add them back in? not from a, this is an important thing, let's do this perspective, but literally in every single element of everything you do, how do you add it in if you're giving a one -to -one? How do you add it in during sprint planning or during backlog refinement? When you're thinking about OKRs, how can we think about it from these internal and external perspectives? And the thing that we've been challenged by, that we feel pretty good about now, but it took us a really long time to get here, is how can we describe these internal processes that quite frankly many business people have no appetite for whatsoever. How can we put it in a way where they will want to give it the attention it deserves? Because if it's not given the attention it deserves, these invisible blocks, whether they're cultural elements or values mismatches or, you know. people just hate their job, right? People are not aligned with purpose. How can we do this in a way that's visible, that's simple, and that people will actually want to buy? So that's the objective of... Brian (25:47) I think that's an awesome take because I know one of the things that we try to do in our classes and one of the things I hear from people who come through classes a lot is just, you know, there's a lot of discussion in sort of a lofty, high ideals, wouldn't this be great if things worked in this way? But, you know, a lot of times people don't really understand, all right, well, that's the way it should be in totality. But here's what I'm dealing with on a day -to -day basis. I've got OKRs. I've got all the stuff that I've got to do. How does that change what I do on a day -to -day basis? So I think that's really wonderful. I think that's a really needed aspect of that is, you know, kind of in the practicality, how does this play out on, you know, just what we typically do on a regular basis as a business. Leor Herzfeld (26:38) Yeah. I mean, if it's not practical, who cares? You know, I'm a giant nerd. I love getting into theorizing and thinking about all of these things at the end of all of that conversation. If I can't say, try this, here's the way to try it. If I can't explain a concept to you in 15 minutes in a way that you can use it, I failed. Brian (26:41) Right. Yeah. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Well, this is fascinating stuff. And we're going to put a lot of links in our show notes for this episode so that you can get in touch with Leor if you want to find out some more about this or maybe find out about the book that's coming out. Maybe get on a list to be able to buy that once it's available. Also, so you can get in touch with this company at Integral Agile. But this is fascinating stuff. I really appreciate Leor, you taking the time to come on and help us understand this a little bit. Leor Herzfeld (27:36) Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. And I'll also note that on our site, the majority of these elements are just right there. So a lot of the stuff, the models, the diagrams, how you can actually do these things, we wanted to give that away. So we're just looking to, in a general sense, well, now we're looking to bring Agile back from the brink. I mean, I hope it's not the brink, but we want this to work. And the reason why my company exists, Brian (28:00) Ha ha. Leor Herzfeld (28:06) is we want to make people's lives better. Our objective is to make people's lives better at work. The first time I ever worked with a Scrum team, the difference in the way they showed up at work, the way they spoke to each other, it was night and day. They're laughing, they're happy. And I think about it, a colleague of mine once said, I'm tired of doing this agile thing. I don't need to help whatever bank make an extra $5 million. And I'm like, dude, that's not what we're doing. I mean, sure, it's a knock -on effect of what we're doing, but every life that we touch where that person feels lighter, feels more able to express themselves, we spend the majority of our times at work. And if that time is misery, then you go home drained, dejected, and you bring that energy with you to your friends, to your family, to your children. If that time is something that, you know, okay, joyful, could be, I like to think so, but even just not painful, it has an effect. So that's what inspires me and that's why we're here. Brian (29:15) That's awesome. I'm right there with you. Completely agree. It is important. It is important how you show up and what you do at work. It's kind of one of the things I say to people sometimes is both things can be true at the same time. It's fine. Yes, we do help from a business perspective. We're helping people be more efficient with their business and get more from less. And... really achieve higher levels of success. But at the same time, we're also helping people to have more fun at work and to enjoy their time at work, not be miserable with their time at work. Leor Herzfeld (29:54) Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, I, you know, that's a good point you're bringing up. I know we're just about out of time, but I, you know, I don't want the message to get lost that this is like some touchy feely kind of a thing. Um, this is the way, if you want that 300 % boost in throughput, you need this to get there. You're not going to do it by throwing new process at the situation. Brian (30:17) And I'm geeky enough to just have to repeat that phrase again. This is the way. All right. Well, thanks again, Leor. I appreciate you coming on. And we'll make sure people can get in touch with you. Leor Herzfeld (30:22) I love it. Awesome, thank you, Brian.

#98: Coaching the Coaches with Vinnie Gill

world power discover training coaching explore speech coaches svp references agile data science scrum certified scrum master agilists

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2024 33:32

Join Brian and Agile coaching expert Vinnie Gills as they tackle the complexities of being an Agile coach and working with and among teams. Discover key strategies for overcoming conflicts and enhancing teamwork within the coaching community. Overview In this insightful episode, Brian and Vinnie Gill dive deep into the often overlooked challenges that arise in Agile coaching. They discuss the common pain points and conflicts that can disrupt professional relationships and share effective strategies for creating a more cohesive and supportive coaching environment. Listeners will gain valuable insights into recognizing and leveraging personal and collective strengths and weaknesses, ensuring that Agile coaches not only preach transformative practices but also embody them in their interactions. Tune in to learn how to foster strong, productive relationships within your Agile coaching community. Listen Now to Discover: [1:10] - Brian welcomes business agility coach and speaker Vinnie Gill. [8:07] - Vinnie unpacks the reasons behind the high number of reports about challenging Agilists, highlighting the traits that contribute to their tough demeanor. [10:12] - Vinnie emphasizes the critical importance of 'starting with why' to forge stronger and more effective working relationships. [13:58] - Vinnie talks about the importance of coaches applying their own methods to themselves, sharing a real-life example of this practice in action. [17:14] - Brian invites listeners to deepen their coaching skills by joining him or Lance Dacy in an Advanced Certified ScrumMaster®. [18:49] - Vinnie explains the counterproductive coaching anti-archetypes she has encountered, shedding light on common pitfalls to avoid in coaching roles. [20:03] - Brian describes how Mountain Goat Software approaches empathy as a team of individuals. [22:15] - Discover how Vinnie takes empathy further by recommending the addition of compassion to enhance team interactions and support. [23:43] - Explore with Brian the critical role of deliberately designing a team's social contract to enhance collaboration and team dynamics. [27:00] - Vinnie delves into how understanding and leveraging both our strengths and weaknesses can lead to greater personal and professional growth. [27:31] - Vinnie underscores the critical need for mental health and self-care among agile coaches to safeguard against burnout and maintain peak performance. [31:28] - Brian shares a big thank you to Vinnie for joining him on the show. [32:00] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. You get a year of free membership into that site by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software, such as Advanced Certified ScrumMaster®. We'd love to see you in one of Mountain Goat Software's classes, you can find the schedule here. [32:20] - We invite you to subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast. Do you have feedback or a great idea for an episode of the show? Great! Just send us an email. References and resources mentioned in the show: Vinnie Gill Vinnie’s Agile 2023 Speech #54 Unlocking Agile’s Power in the World of Data Science with Lance Dacy #89: Transformational One-on-Ones with Avipaul Bhandari Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Certified ScrumMaster® Training and Scrum Certification Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Vinnie Gill is an experienced agile coach with a diverse background that spans continents and industries—from mining and finance to education and the public sector. With over 20 years in project and business management roles and a commitment to transformative education and agile practices, she excels at leading organizational change and fostering growth at the enterprise level.

PPP 413 | Meeting Goblins and How to Deal With Them, with Rich Maltzman and Jim Stewart

People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2024 55:29

Summary In this episode, Andy interviews Rich Maltzman and Jim Stewart about their book Great Meetings Build Great Teams: A Guide for Project Leaders and Agilists. They discuss the common reasons why people dislike meetings, such as lack of purpose and poor facilitation. They introduce the concept of 'meeting goblins,' which are negative personalities that emerge during meetings, and provide strategies for dealing with them. The conversation also covers the challenges and best practices of virtual meetings, as well as the benefits and potential pitfalls of agile ceremonies like daily standups. The conversation focuses on the importance of effective meetings in building great teams. Rich and Jim share their experiences and strategies for running successful meetings, including setting ground rules, timekeeping, and using technology like AI for meeting summaries. They also discuss the impact of cultural differences on meetings and provide tips for managing diverse teams. The conversation concludes by emphasizing the link between great meetings and great teams, highlighting the role of meetings in fostering collaboration, building relationships, and achieving project goals. Sound Bites "Meetings are a fact of life, often complained about but also often tolerated." "Connection before context. Before you start right into the meeting, make sure you have a little bit of social interaction." "Goblins are personalities that come out during meetings, and it's up to the meeting facilitator to recognize and address them." "Great meetings aren't just about agendas and facilitation techniques; they're about showing that you care about the project and the team." "Rosie the Reticent is the quiet version of Nadia the Naysayer." "Decision latency is one of the biggest reasons for project failures, so it's crucial to have the right people at meetings." "Understanding national, regional, and organizational cultures is important for effective meetings." Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:17 Start of Interview 02:28 Why Do People Hate Meetings 05:06 Meeting Goblins 16:03 Virtual Meetings 19:50 Connection Before Context 20:53 Advantages and Warnings: Agile Standups 27:29 How Culture Impacts Meetings 34:42 When Too Many People Are Invited 41:53 AI and Meetings 47:38 The Link Between Great Meetings and Great Teams 51:26 Interview Wrap Up 52:00 Andy Comments After the Interview 54:16 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Rich, Jim, and their book here: Jim on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/jimstewartpmp/ Rich on LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/exclaim/ Their book on Amazon: click here If you'd like more on this subject, here are some episodes to check out: Episodes 72 and 246, with meeting researcher Steven Rogelberg Episode 245, with meeting guru J. Elise Keith AI for Project Managers and Leaders With the constant stream of AI news, it's sometimes hard to grasp how these advancements can benefit us as project managers and leaders in our day-to-day work. That's why I developed our e-learning course: AI Made Simple: A Practical Guide to Using AI in Your Everyday Work. This self-guided course is designed for project managers and leaders aiming to harness AI's potential to enhance your work, streamline your workflow, and boost your productivity. Go to ai.i-leadonline.com to learn more and join us. The feedback from the program has been fantastic. Take this opportunity to unlock the potential of AI for your team and projects. Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills The following music was used for this episode: Music: The Fantastical Ferret by Tim Kulig License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Energetic & Drive Indie Rock YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S30Oxdmi1dg License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

From The Archives: Jeff Sutherland on Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time with Scrum

Agile Innovation Leaders

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2024 49:48

Bio Dr. Jeff Sutherland is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum, the most widely used Agile framework across the globe. Originally used for software development, Jeff has also pioneered the application of the framework to multiple industries and disciplines. Today, Scrum is applied to solve complex projects in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Scrum companies consistently respond to market demand, to get results and drive performance at speeds they never thought possible. Jeff is committed to developing the Agile leadership practices that allow Scrum to scale across an enterprise. Dr. Sutherland is the chairman and founder of Scrum Inc. He is a signatory of the Agile manifesto and coauthor of the Scrum Guide and the creator Scrum@Scale. Jeff continues to teach, create new curriculum in the Agile Education Program and share best practices with organizations around the globe. He is the founder of Scrum Inc. and coauthor of, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, that has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Social Media: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeffsutherland Twitter: @jeffsutherland Website: Scrum Inc https://scruminc.com Books/ Articles: The Scrum Guide by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber http://www.scrumguides.org/index.html Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Scrum Fieldbook by JJ Sutherland Agile Competitors and Virtual Organisations by Steven Goldman, Roger Nagel and Kenneth Preiss https://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Competitors-Virtual-Organizations-Engineering/dp/0471286508 Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster Moving World by John P. Kotter Leading Change by John P. Kotter Process Dynamics, Modeling and Control by Babatunde A. Ogunnaike and Harmon W. Ray A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game by Jeff Sutherland, James Coplien, Mark den Hollander, et al Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: Hello everyone, my guest today is Dr Jeff Sutherland. He is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum, the most widely used Agile Framework across the globe. Originally used for Software Development, Jeff has also pioneered the application of the framework to multiple industries and disciplines. Today, Scrum is applied to deliver complex projects in startups and Fortune 100 companies. Dr Jeff Sutherland is the Chairman and Founder of Scrum Inc. He is a signatory of the Agile Manifesto and co-author of the Scrum Guide and the creator of Scrum at Scale. Jeff continues to teach, create new curriculum in the Agile education programme and share best practices with organisations around the globe. He has authored and co-authored a number of books which include Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time – which has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. In this episode, Dr Sutherland shares the backstory of how he and Ken Schwaber developed the Scrum framework. I was pleasantly surprised and proud to learn that one of the inspirations behind the current Scrum framework we now have was the work of Prof Babatunde Ogunnike, given my Nigerian heritage. Dr Sutherland also talked about the importance of Agile Leadership and his current focus on helping organisations fix bad Scrum implementations. I'm sure you'll uncover some useful nuggets in this episode. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dr Sutherland. Ula Ojiaku: Thank you, Dr. Sutherland, for joining us on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you here. Jeff Sutherland: Glad to be here. Looking forward to it. Ula Ojiaku: Fantastic. So could you tell us about yourself? Jeff Sutherland: Well, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. And I always felt that I would go to West Point of the United States Military Academy, even at a very young age. And I finally made it there. I spent four years there. And I went on to a program where a certain number of cadets could join the Air Force. And I told the Air Force, if they made me a fighter pilot, I would move into the Air Force, which I did. I spent 11 years as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. And most of the operational aspects of Scrum actually come from that training. My last tour in the Air Force was actually at the US Air Force Academy, I was a professor of mathematics. And I had gone to Stanford University in preparation for that position. And I had worked closely with the, at the time he was Head of the Department of Psychiatry, became the Dean of Stanford who had studied under my father-in-law, he had become an MD under my father-in-law, who was a brilliant physician. And I was working on research papers with him, both at Stanford and at the Air Force Academy. And I asked him for guidance. And I said, I'm thinking about, given all the work we've done in the medical area. Starting in Stanford, I'm thinking maybe becoming a doctor - become an MD. And he strongly recommended against that he said, ‘you'll just go backwards in your career, what you need to do is you build on everything you've done so far. And what you have is your fighter pilot experience, your experience as a statistician, and a mathematician, you want to build on that.' So, I had already started into a doctoral program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, which was not far from the Air Force Academy. And so, I talked to my department Chairman there who offered me a position in the department running a large research grant, funded by the National Cancer Institute and so, I decided to exit the Airforce and join the medical school. While I was finishing up my doctoral degree. And as soon as my doctorate was finished, I became a professor of Radiology, preventive medicine and biometrics. I was a joint across multiple departments. And I was doing mathematical research on modeling, particularly the human cell on a supercomputer, (to) determine what caused cancer. And to do that required extensive mathematical research as well as the medical research. But at the end of the day, what we found was for any complex adaptive system, like a human cell, or a person or a team, they go through different states. And they're moved from one state to the next by some kind of intervention. And so, if you understand what causes those changes… turned out in the case of cancer, there were four different states that led to a tumor. And in every state, there were certain interventions, and if you knew what they were, you could prevent them and prevent cancer. Or you could even, to my surprise, take a cancer cell and make it go backward into a normal cell. So, this fundamental understanding is the theory behind Scrum. So, while I'm doing this all at the medical school, a large banking company came by and said, ‘you know, over the medical school, you guys have all the knowledge about the technologies; the new technology, we're using (for) banking, you're using for research.' And they said, ‘you guys have all the knowledge but we have all the money and they made me an offer to come join the bank' Ula Ojiaku: [Laughs]You couldn't refuse Jeff Sutherland: Not just me, it was my family. So, I wind up as Vice President for Advanced Systems, which was effectively was the CTO for 150 banks that we were running across North America. Each was, you know, a dozen, 50, 100 branches. And of course, we were mainly doing the software, installation and support to run the banking operation, which is largely computer stuff – (this) is what banks run off. And as we're building these systems with hundreds and hundreds of developers, one of the first things I noticed is that all the projects were late. And I look at what they're doing. And they're using this process where they spend, you know, six months defining requirements, and then they put all the requirements into a Gantt chart. And then they, they plan on taking six months to build something, but it's never done. Because as soon as they start testing that they find there's all kinds of things that are broken. So, virtually every single project of the bank is late. So, as a head of technology, one day I walked into the CEO's office and I said, ‘Ron, have you noticed all your projects are late?' He said, ‘Yes'. He says, ‘Every morning at least five CIOs or CEOs of the banks, they call me up.' And he says, ‘they scream at me.' I said, ‘wow', I said, ‘You know, it's going to get worse, not better. Because these guys are using this, these Gantt Charts.' And I showed him one. And then being a mathematician, I mathematically proved that every project would be late at the bank. And he was stunned. And he said, ‘what should I do?' I said, ‘we need a completely different operating system in the bank.' This is back in 1983. ‘Let's take one business unit. Let's take the one that's losing the most money, okay, the worst business unit' Ula Ojiaku: They have nothing to lose then. Jeff Sutherland: And it was the automated teller division that was rolling out cash machines all over North America. It was a new technology and they had a ton of problems. So, I said, ‘let's take that unit and every one, sales, market, support, installation, we're going to split them down into small teams. And we're going to have Product Marketing come in on Monday with a backlog prioritized by business value. And at the end of the week, on Friday, we're going to deploy to 150 banks.' ‘And I'm going to train them how to land a project every week, just like I trained fighter pilots to land aircraft. I'm going to give them a burndown chart, we're going to throw away the Gantt Chart, I'm going to give them a burndown chart to show them how to land the project.' So, he said, ‘Well, that's gonna be a big headache.' I said, ‘look, the bank needs to be fixed.' He said, ‘Okay, you got it.' So, I took that unit. I told them, ‘I know it's gonna take several weeks,' today we call them sprints, ‘for you to be successful.' Because as new pilots, trained to land, these high-performance jets, they tend to come in high and then they have to come around and try to land again, they over and over, they practice until they can nail it. And it took them six weeks, six sprints to actually nail the end of the week (and) deploy (to) 150 banks. But within six months, it became… it went from the worst business unit in the bank to the most profitable business unit in the bank. And the senior management said, ‘you know, Jeff, here's another 20 million dollars to throw at whatever that thing you're doing it's the most profitable thing in the bank, we're gonna put more money in that. So that was the first prototype of what we call today Scrum at Scale. Now, I've been CTO of 11, or CTO or CEO of 11 different companies. And for the next 10 years, I prototyped that model and advanced technology teams until in 1993, at a company called Easel Corporation, we found that because of the tooling we were building and selling to customers, we needed to build the tool with what today we call Agile Practice. Ula Ojiaku: Yes Jeff Sutherland: And we need to train the customer to use the tool by having teams do an agile practice. So, in order to train our customers properly in 1993, we actually had to formalize what I've been prototyping for 10 years. And we wrote it down and at the time we were reading this paper, we're going through 1000 papers in the journals I, you know, I had done many new technology. And, in every one of them, you have to read everything that's ever been done so that you can go beyond. You can use everything that's been done, but then you go beyond, okay? Ula Ojiaku: Yeah Jeff Sutherland: So, it's a tremendous amount of research to launch new technology. And at about the 300th paper in our file, it was a paper out of the Harvard Business Review, which really surprised me, by two Japanese Business School professors, Professors Takeuchi and Nonaka. And in there, they described the best teams in the world. They were lean hardware teams that reminded them of a game of rugby, they said, ‘we're going to call what they're doing Scrum Project Management.' So, I said to the team, ‘we need a name for this thing that we're going to train our customers in, and let's call it Scrum.' And off we went. So, for the next two years, we were actually using Scrum within Easel deploying products. But it was not public, to the general industry. And Easel got acquired by a larger company. And at that time, I felt that this needed to be rolled out into the industry because we had benchmarked it with the best tooling in the world from the leading productivity company, and showed that it was… that (it) went 10 times faster. The quality was 10 times better, which is what you need for a new technology innovation. And so, I felt it was ready to go to the industry as a whole. So, I called up an old friend, Ken Schwaber. And he was a CEO of a traditional Project Management software company, a waterfall (methodology). He sold these methodologies with 303 ring binders, a software package that would make Gantt Charts. So, I said, ‘Ken, I want you to come up and see the Scrum, because it actually works and that stuff you're selling doesn't work – it makes projects late.' And he agreed to come in, he actually came up, he met with me. He stayed for two weeks inside the company, working, observing the Scrum team. And at the end of those two weeks, he said, ‘Jeff, you're right. This really works - it's pretty much the way I run my company.' He said, ‘if I ran my company with a Gantt Chart, we would have been bankrupt a long time ago.' So, I said, ‘well, why don't you sell something to work that works instead of inflicting more damage on the industry?' So, he said so we said ‘okay, how (do) we do it?' I said, ‘it needs to be open source, it needs to be free.' Ken felt we needed to take the engineering practices, many of which appear today in extreme programming… Ula Ojiaku: Yes Jeff Sutherland: …and let Kent Beck (creator of eXtreme Programming, XP) run with them because Kent had been sending me emails, ‘Jeff, send me every...', he had been following the development of Scrum, ‘…send me everything on Scrum, I'm building a new process. I want to use anything that you've done before and not try to reinvent anything.' So, he (Ken Schwaber) said, ‘let Kent take the engineering practices, we'll focus on the team process itself.' And we agreed to write the first paper on this to present at a big conference later that year. And writing that paper was quite interesting. Ken visited DuPont Chemical Corporation, the leading Chemical Process Engineers there that they had hired out of academia to stop chemical plants from blowing up. And when Ken met with them, they said, describe what we were doing in the software domain. They said, ‘you know, well, that process that traditional project management is a Predictive Process Control System. We have that in the chemical industry.' ‘But it's only useful if the variation in the process running is less than 4%.' They said, ‘do you have less than 4% change in requirements while you're building software?' Ken says, ‘no, of course not! It's over 50%!' And they started laughing at him. They said, ‘your project's going to be exploding all over the place.' ‘Because every chemical plant that has blown up has been somebody applying a predictive control system to a system that has high variability. You need to completely retrain industry to use Empirical Process Control, which will stop your projects from blowing up. And they said, here it is, here's the book, they had the standard reference book for Chemical Process Engineering. And in there, there's a chapter on Empirical Process Control, which is based on transparency, inspection, and adapting to what's happening in real time. Okay, so those are the three pillars of Scrum that are today at the base of the Scrum guide. Ula Ojiaku: Do you still remember the title of the book that the chemical engineers recommended to Mr. Schwaber by any chance? Jeff Sutherland: Yeah, so I have a, when I do training, I have a slide that has a picture of the book (Process Dynamics, Modelling and Control). It's written by Ogunnaike and Ray. But that is the root of the change that's gone on in the industry. And so then from 1995, forward, Ken and I started working together, I was still CTO of companies. And I would get him to come in as a consultant and work with me. And we'd implement and enhance the Scrum implementations in company after company after company. Until 2001, of course, Scrum was expanding but Extreme Programming in 2001, was actually the most widely deployed. They were only two widely-deployed agile processes at the time of Scrum and Extreme Programming. Extreme Programming was the biggest. And so, the Agile Manifesto meeting was convened. And it had 17 people there, but three of them were Scrum guys - that had started up Scrum, implemented it in companies, four of them were the founders of Extreme Programming. And the other 10 were experts who have written books on adaptive software development or, you know, lightweight processes, so, industry experts. And we, we talked for a day and everybody explained what they were doing and there was a lot of arguments and debate. And at the end of the day, we agreed because of this book, Agile Competitors, a book about 100 hardware companies - lean hardware companies, that have taken Lean to the next level, by involving the customer in the creation of the product. And we said, ‘we think that we all need to run under one umbrella. And we should call that Agile.' Ula Ojiaku: So, did you actually use the word umbrella in your (statement)? Oh, okay. Jeff Sutherland: Often, people use that right? Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes Jeff Sutherland: Because at the time, we had Agile and Extreme Programming, and now everybody's trying to come up with their own flavor, right? All under the same umbrella of ‘Agile'. And that caused the both Scrum and Extreme Programming started to expand even more, and then other kinds of processes also. But Scrum rapidly began to take dominant market share, Scrum today is about 80% of what people call Agile. The reason being, number one, it was a technology that was invented and created to be 10 times better. So, it was a traditional new technology developed based on massive amounts of research. So, it worked. But number two, it also scaled it worked very well for many teams. I mean, there are many companies today like Amazon that have thousands of Scrum teams. And Extreme Programming was really more towards one team. And (reason number) three, you could distribute it across the world. So, some of the highest performing teams are actually dozens of teams or hundreds across multiple continents. And because of those three characteristics, it's (Scrum has) dominated the market. So that brings us to in 2006, I was asked by a Venture Capital firm to help them implement Scrum in their companies, they felt that Scrum was a strategic advantage for investment. And not only that, they figured out that it should be implemented everywhere they implemented it within the venture group, everybody doing Scrum. And their goal was to double their return on investment compared to any other venture capital firm. They pretty much have done that by using Scrum, but then they said, ‘Jeff, you know, we're hiring you as a consultant into our companies. And you're a CTO of a healthcare company right now. And we don't want to build a healthcare company, we want to build a Scrum company.' ‘So, why don't you create Scrum Inc. right here in the venture group? We'll support it, we'll do the administrative support. We'll write you a check - whatever you want.' So, I said, ‘well, I'm not going to take any money because I don't need it. I understand how that works. If the venture capital firm owns your company, then (in the) long term, you're essentially their slave for several years. So, I'm not taking any money. But I will create the company within the venture group. If you provide the administrative support, I'll give you 10% of the revenue and you can do all the finances and all that kind of stuff. So, that's the way Scrum Inc. was started to enable an investment firm to launch or support or invest in many dozens of Scrum companies. Ula Ojiaku: That's awesome Jeff Sutherland: And today, we're on the sixth round of investment at OpenView Venture Partners, which was the company the six round is 525 million. There's a spin out from OpenView that I'm working with, that has around this year, 25 million. And over the years, just co-investing with the venture group I have my own investment fund of 50 million. So, we have $570 million, right this year 2021 that we're putting into Scrum companies. Agile companies, preferably Scrum. Ula Ojiaku: Now when you say Scrum companies is it that they facilitate the (Scrum) training and offer consulting services in Scrum or is it that those companies operate and you know, do what they do by adopting Scrum processes? Jeff Sutherland: Today, Scrum Inc sometimes help some of those companies, but in general, those companies are independently implementing Scrum in their organizations. Ula Ojiaku: Right Jeff Sutherland: And okay, some of them may come to Scrum training, maybe not. But since Scrum is so widely deployed in the industry, Scrum Inc, is only one of 1000 companies doing Scrum training and that sort of stuff. So, they have a wide variety, wide area of where they can get training and also many of the startups, they already know Scrum before they started the company. They are already Agile. So, what we're interested in is to find the company that understands Agile and has the right team players, particularly at the executive level, to actually execute on it. Ula Ojiaku: No matter what the product or services (are)… Jeff Sutherland: Products or services, a lot of them are software tooling companies, but some of them are way beyond that, right? So, turns out that during COVID… COVID was a watershed. The companies that were not agile, they either went bankrupt, or they were crippled. That meant all the Agile companies that could really do this, started grabbing all the market share. And so, many of our companies, their stock price was headed for the moon during COVID. While the non-agile companies were flatlined, or are going out of business, and so the year of COVID was the best business year in the history of venture capital because of Agility. So, as a result, I'm spending half my time really working, investing in companies, and half of my time, working with Scrum (Inc.) and supporting them, helping them move forward. Ula Ojiaku: That's a very impressive resume and career story really Dr. Sutherland. I have a few questions: as you were speaking, you've called Scrum in this conversation, a process, a tooling, the technology. And you know, so for some hardcore Agilists, some people will say, you know, Agile is all about the mindset for you, what would you say that Scrum is it all of these things you've called it or would it be, you know, or it's something (else)...? Jeff Sutherland: So, certainly the (Agile) mindset is important. But from an investment point of view, if the organization can't deliver real value, quickly, agile is just a bunch of nonsense. And we have a huge amount of nonsense out there. In fact, the Standish group has been publishing for decades. 58% of Agile teams are late over budget with unhappy customers. So, when you get these hardcore Agilist, that are talking about mindset, you have to figure out ‘are they in the 42% that actually can do it or are they in the 58% that are crippled?' My major work with Scrum Inc. today is to try to get to fix the bad Scrum out there. That is the biggest problem in the Agile community. People picking up pieces of things, people picking up ideas, and then putting together and then it doesn't work. That is going to that's going to be really bad for agile in the future. If 58% of it continues not to work. So, what we found, I mean, it was really interesting. Several years ago, the senior executive (of) one of the biggest Japanese companies flew to Boston wanted meet with me. And he said to me, ‘the training is not working in Japan for Scrum.' He said, ‘I spent 10 years with Google, in Silicon Valley. So, I know what it looks like what actually works. And I can tell you, it's not working in Japan, because the training is… it's not the training of the Scrum that is high performing. And in fact, our company is 20% owned by Toyota, and we are going to be the trainers of Toyota. And we cannot deliver the training that's currently being given to Toyota, it will not work, it will not fly. And we want to create a company called Scrum Inc. Japan. And we're a multibillion-dollar company, we're ready to invest whatever it takes to make that happen.' To give them the kind of training that will produce the teams that Takeuchi and Nonaka were writing about in the first paper on Scrum. And as we work with them to figure out what needs to be in that training, we found that the Scrum Guide was only 25% of the training. Another 25% was basic Lean concepts and tooling, right? Because the original Scrum paper was all about Lean hardware companies. So Lean is fundamental to Scrum. If you don't understand it, you can't do it. And then third, there are certain patterns of performance that we've developed over the years, we spent 10 years writing a book on patterns - Scrum patterns. And there's about a dozen of those patterns that have to be implemented to get a high performing team. And finally, scaling to multiple teams. It turns out, right about this time I started working with the Japanese, I was at a conference with the Agile Leadership from Intel. And they told me that they'd introduced Scaling Frameworks into Intel division, some of which had more than 500 Scrum teams in the divisions and the Scaling Frameworks had slowed them down. And it made the senior executives furious and they threw them all out and they said, we did not want to hear the word Scrum at Intel anymore. But you guys need to go twice as fast as you're going now. So, they came to me, they said, ‘we're desperate. We have to go twice as fast. We can't even use the word “Scrum”. What should we do?' And they blamed me, they said, ‘Sutherland you're responsible you caused problem, you need to fix it.' So, I started writing down how to do what today we call Scrum at Scale. And everybody, you know, most of those people in the industry were implementing IT scaling frameworks. They were all upset. ‘Why are you writing down another framework?' Well, it's because those IT frameworks do not enable the organization to show Business Agility, and win in the market. And in the best companies in the world, they're being thrown out. So, I've had to write down how do you add, how do you go to hundreds and thousands of Scrum teams - and never slow down as you're adding more and more teams. You know, every team you add is as fast as the first team when you start. Yeah, that's what Scrum at Scale is all about. So, there's two primary things that I'm focused on today. One is to fix all this bad Scrum. Second is to fix the scaling problem. Because it turns out that if you look at the latest surveys from Forbes magazine, and the Scrum Alliance on successful Agile transformations - I learned recently, that almost every company in the world of any significance is going through an Agile transformation or continuing transformation they'd already started years ago. And 53% of them do not meet management expectations. And the MIT Sloan Business Review did an analysis of what happens if an agile transformation fails, and 67% of those companies go out of business. So, this is becoming really serious, right? To be successful today, if you're competing in any significant way, you have to be agile. And number two, if you try to be agile and fail, you have a 67% chance going out of business. And the failure rate is 53%. So, this is the problem that we're wrestling with. And half of that 53% failure is due to the bad Scrum we talked about, but the other half is due because of the leadership not being Agile. Ula Ojiaku: I was just going to say, as you said something about the leadership not being agile. In my experience, you know, as an agile coach in some organizations whilst the teams would embrace you know, Scrum and embrace Agility - the practices and the processes and everything. There's a limit to, you know, how much they can get done… Jeff Sutherland: Absolutely… Ula Ojiaku: …if the leadership are not on board. So… Jeff Sutherland: …you hit this glass ceiling. So, I've been, you know, giving presentations on Agile Transformations around the world. And I can remember multiple times I've had 300 people in the room, say, and I say okay, ‘How many of you are agile, in Agile transformations or continuing the ones you'd started?' Of course, everybody raises their hand. ‘How many of you have waterfall traditional management that expects you to deliver all the old Gantt Chart reports that we always got, and don't understand what you're doing?' There's 300 people in the room and 297 people raised their hand. I said, ‘you need to give your leadership the book by Professor Kotter called Accelerate.' Professor Kotter is one of the leading change experts of the world. Ula Ojiaku: And he also, yeah, He also wrote ‘Leading Change' as well - the book, yes. Jeff Sutherland: And in that book, he says, if the leadership of the Agile part of the organization is traditional in their mindset and requirements, the Agile Transformation will eventually fail 100% of the time. Ula Ojiaku: Those are sobering statistics in terms of, you know, the failure rate and how much of you know the success hinges on business agility and the leadership being agile as well and taking the time to know and care what it means. Yeah. Jeff Sutherland: And what's happening is that the Agile Leadership today, if you look at some of the companies that have been most successful during COVID, one of them is John Deere Corporation, the biggest farm equipment manufacturer in the world, probably the oldest. Their stock price went up more than Amazon during COVID. And the board of directors gave their Agile Leadership, the Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, the highest award in the Corporation for producing that result. So that's another reason I'm trying to communicate to Agile people. The success and survival of your company depends on you. You think your management's going to save you but no, if they are old-style people, they are going to run that company out of business. And you need to either save it before it goes out of business or run to another company before bad things happen. Ula Ojiaku: It's impressive that, you know, John Deere being a farm equipment manufacturer… I think they were ahead of the curve you know, (compared to some of their contemporaries in that industry as well) and embraced agile ways of working. Do you know how their Agile Leadership were able to quantify their contributions to the company? Jeff Sutherland: John Deere started to get Agile more than 10 years ago. So, they've been at it a long time. But in recent years, they really started to build… build internally… Agile leadership, you know, based on my work and they started applying that across the company. I mean, the major focus has not been software actually – it's been in other parts of the company. What has to happen to run a company that's building tractors? Well, there's all kinds of things that have to happen, you know - purchasing, there's legal, there's acquiring all the pieces, it's putting them together at the assembly line, you know, software is a piece of it. You know, that's probably the easiest piece to fix with Agile, it's the rest of the company that's the challenge. They have started doing that really well which is reflected in their stock price. Ula Ojiaku: Amazing. So, you said something about you know, you're out to fix a couple of things, the problem with bad Scrum out there. And, you know, the problem with scaling agile. Jeff Sutherland: Right Ula Ojiaku: So, with respect to the first one, the point about bad Scrum, what in your experience would be the root cause of bad Scrum implementations in organizations? Jeff Sutherland: There're about 11 things, that if you fix them, the team will go twice as fast. And it's multiplicative. So, you know, we have extensive data on, you know, really big companies. What's the difference between the fastest team and the slowest teams? The fastest teams are 2000 times faster than the slowest teams. So why is that? Well, first, the team has to be small. The optimal team size is four or five people. If you have a 10-person team, that's going to take at least 50% longer to get anything done. If you go out, look at the team size, you'll see companies have even not only ten-people teams, they have 15 people in a team, 25 people in a team, okay? Those teams are never gonna meet Agile performance. Second, the backlog needs to be really ready in a sense of small, it's clearly understood, it's properly prioritized. So, you need somebody managing that backlog that can get it right, because we have extensive data for multiple case studies showing the team's production doubles immediately. As soon as you get that backlog right. So you go into many companies, you'll see, there's still arguing about what's the top priority, right? Or everything's top priority. That's just gonna create a massive mess. Third, teams are constantly interrupted. You know, the only teams I know that aren't interrupted are people… these teams and defense contractors working on top secret stuff. And they work in a locked room, the door, it says ‘no managers can enter' and they don't get interrupted. But for the rest of us, there's always somebody coming in wanting something else done. And there's a way to manage that using a pattern we call the interrupt buffer. And if you don't have that pattern implemented properly, you're gonna go half as fast. If you're lucky, you might go half as fast. Ula Ojiaku: And what do you say the Scrum Master has a part to play in making sure the interrupt buffer is there and it's enforced? Jeff Sutherland: The scrum master needs to set this all up. Fifth, in high performing teams, we see this pattern called swarming, where multiple people are working on a story together. That increases the process efficiency, which doubles the performance of the team. So, if people are specialists working independently, that team is going to be really slow. So I'm up to number five, there are six more things, but you probably want to go through them. It's very clear, what makes agile teams suck, we know exactly why. And it needs to be fixed. So, I appeal to anyone listening to this help fix bad agile, it's hurting us all. Ula Ojiaku: Thank you for sharing that. Would this be in any of any of your books or in any of your articles that you've written? Jeff Sutherland: Yeah, it's everywhere and (in) everything I've written, but the best summary, it's the red book Scrum … Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work and Half the Time And we've had people pick, pick this up. A CEO in Kenya came to New York to one of my courses, he said, ‘Jeff, I just read your book. And I'm CEO with three new energy startups in Kenya. And my teams implemented that, and they're going… they're doing three times the work and a third of the time. So, your book is too conservative.' He says to me, this guy, he only read the book, he had no training. So, this book is enough to really get off on the right foot. And if you're having problems, it's enough to fix things. In fact, recently before COVID when we could get everybody together, we had an Apple employee in the class and she said, Jeff, do you know why Apple always meet its states? I said, no, you know, Apple is really secretive. They don't tell anybody anything. She says ‘it's because they do Scrum by the book.' So, I said, ‘What book?' She says, ‘The Red Book - Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work and Half the Time - they do it exactly by the book.' So, again, my message to the Agilists out there: Apple is winning. They are the most valuable company in the world. And it's because they do Scrum exactly by that book. So, you probably should read it. Ula Ojiaku: Definitely. So going by the book, would you say there's any wriggle room for adapting to one's context, or is it about you know, going, ‘check- we've done page 123…' Jeff Sutherland: Well, the whole thing about adapting is fundamental to Scrum. So, one of the things I'm constantly doing in my talks, training, is I'm going back to before Scrum and reading a paper from the leading researchers on complex adaptive systems, in which they mathematically proved, you model things on the computer, that systems evolve more quickly, if they have more degrees of freedom, up until you hit a boundary where the system goes into a chaotic state. So, from the very beginning in Scrum, maximizing the freedom and the decision capability of the team has been fundamental. And we talked about this as self-organization. Now, unfortunately, that term has been so misused, misunderstood that we had to take self-organization out of the Scrum guide. And what we inserted was self-managing. And we put next to it goals, okay, the theme is self-managing to achieve a goal. And to make that happen, they need a commitment to do that. And so, this is one of the fundamental things for Agile teams that work that they have that self-managing commitment to achieve a goal. And the teams that are not working, they're fuzzy about that, right. So, we want the maximum degree of adaptation, the thing that they don't want to change is the basic structure that's in the red book, if they change that, it has the control mechanisms to allow the maximum degree of self-organization - not to go off the rails. Ula Ojiaku: Right. Jeff Sutherland: So, we see a lot of Agilists, ‘oh, you know, let's just tweak the framework this way or that way.' And then the self-organization takes a team off the rails, and then they fall into that 58% that can't deliver, they're late, they're over budget, the customers aren't happy. And so, this is the really one of the hardest things to communicate to people. There're certain things that you absolutely have to be disciplined about. You have to be more disciplined to get a great Agile team than in all ways of working. And that discipline is what allows the maximum degree of self-organization and self-determination, right? So, understanding those two things together, you know, it makes it makes people's brain explode, right? It's hard. Ula Ojiaku: But it works. Jeff Sutherland: But it works right. Ula Ojiaku: You've already mentioned a lot of books in the course of this interview session, and these would be in the show notes. So, would there be anything any final word of advice you'd have for the leaders that would be listening to this podcast in terms of their transformation journey? Jeff Sutherland: So, one of the things we did to Scrum at Scale is that the difference between that and most of the other scaling frameworks is that it's all about the leadership. So, we need an operating leadership team, that is a Scrum team that needs a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, backlog. And its objective is to improve the Agile implementation of the organization. On the prioritization side, we need a leadership team that, led by a Chief Product Owner, that is prioritizing backlog across the organization. So, you know, I've had the Chief Product Owner of Hewlett Packard in my course, he had a $200 billion portfolio. He learned from that class. Says this class is pretty good.' He said, ‘In just one slide I figured out how to get $20 billion more a year with no additional resources'. Just by understanding how to work the framework right? At the $200 billion level. Ula Ojiaku: And you're talking about the Scrum at Scale course, right? Jeff Sutherland: No, this was a product owner course. Product Owner course. He came to it. We're now doing a Scrum at Scale… we're actually doing a Chief Product Owner course. So, a Product Owners at Scale course which it has been really well received by the leading Agile Practitioners. (They) really like that because they need to work more in the large than in the small often. Ula Ojiaku: Definitely. That means this available on the Scrum Inc site? Jeff Sutherland: Yes. Ula Ojiaku: Okay. Jeff Sutherland: So, one of the things I would recommend I would really recommend is the Scrum Field Book. It's a bunch of case studies for organizations, large and small, that have tried to take the whole organization to Scrum. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Sutherland - it's been a great pleasure having you and hopefully we could have a you know, follow up conversation sometime. Jeff Sutherland: Yes. Thanks for inviting me and glad to do it again. Ula Ojiaku: That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com. Also share with friends and leave a review. This would help others find the show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com. Till next time, take care and God bless!

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Making Sense of Co-Pilots, Agents, and Changes in AI with Snehal Talati

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2024 45:14

Keeping up with what is happening in AI is no small task. You probably know some folks who spend a lot of free time learning how to bend (insert AI flavor of the week) to their will, there are folks who are preaching to anyone who will listen about all the amazing things that are right around the corner, and then there are the folks who just periodically peek over their shoulder and say “Yeah, um… let me know when you've got this bit actually working.” And then there are people like Snehal Talati. I met Snehal last year at the Scrum Gathering and we did a podcast about http://aiagile.org, the community he started to bring Agilists together to ensure that the intersection between the Agile space and AI happens in an intentional and thoughtful way. It's been 8 months since that podcast was posted and that's like 20 years in the AI space. So Snehal is back to share what's been happening in AI and Agile. and to talk about the free course he built for the Scrum Alliance to help folks get started. During our conversation, Snehal gives an update on some of the newer changes and challenges in AI and he also offers real-life examples of how AI is becoming a powerful part of his personal productivity. If you'd like to check out the Scrum Alliance's AI course, that is here: • AI & Agility: A Comprehensive Introduction: https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Course/ai-agility-comprehensive-introduction AI Links to get you started: • AI Agile: https://www.aiagile.org/ • Agile GPT: https://www.agilegpt.com/ • ChatGPT: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt CONTACTING SNEHAL • Web: https://www.boostaro.com • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/snehal-talati-124a38b6/

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Encouraging accountability as a key driver for results with Mike Guiler, Jim Beale, and Mariano Oliveti

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2024 38:30

This week, your host, Justin Thatil, is joined by three of his colleagues, Mike Guiler, Jim Beale, and Mariano Oliveti. In this episode, they explore the topic of accountability in Agile Teams and organizations. These four Agilists share their insights and experience on the role of accountability while explaining the value of tools such as OKRs and KPIs and the influence of a true leader in encouraging Teams by involving them in the whole process, trusting them, and enabling them to be self-directed and reliant. Key Takeaways Why is accountability so important? How do we keep accountability in an organization? Accountability is needed to identify who will be in charge of each task. Accountability should start at the top but needs to be emphasized at all levels of the organization. OKR (Objectives and key results) is a goal-setting framework that assists in keeping the Team accountable and provides a way to measure the outcomes. KPIs are key performance indicators that also contribute to keeping accountability. KPIs measure a team's performance to ensure they are on track to meet their project objectives. Leaders encourage accountability in Teams. If a leader is willing to engage with a Team, he will share goals with them and the journey to achieve them. Leaders need to value the involvement of every member and encourage self-driven work. Keeping people informed of the “why” motivates them, while the “what” will only give them tasks. A good leader holds his Team accountable and empowers them to make decisions. Overall, a leader trusts his Team. Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

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DevOps: Creating Safety and Value with Mariano Oliveti and Erica Menendez

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2024 31:04

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Mariano Oliveti and Erica Menendez to discuss DevOps, mainly how it contributes to creating safety and providing feedback during an Agile product journey. In this episode, they share their knowledge about how DevOps eases the work and ensures value delivery. Listen to this conversation among Agilists for actionable suggestions and amazing real-life examples of Agile Teams benefiting from DevOps. Key Takeaways The problems DevOps can help to solve: DevOps can help solve inefficiencies such as the ones resulting from introducing a lot of bugs into the code or when there is a lack of Team Collaboration. DevOps helps to break down the silos. DevOps is a real time saver. Opportunities that DevOps gives: DevOps provides the opportunity for automation, testing early, and keeping a repeatable and reliable process that will work. DevOps ensures that, at the end of the day, the result is a product that was built in an efficient way. Employees working with DevOps are generally happier and more satisfied with their work, especially when automation makes their tasks easier to achieve and grants them the time to invest in the things that really matter. Applying DevOps infrastructure allows us to scale in a repeatable manner. DevOps is also a way to find what is wrong even before the customer does. Starting with DevOps is free. Begin with what you have and grow from there. Big changes are rough! The more you work with DevOps, the better you will get at it. Mentioned in this Episode: ACF Coaching Certification Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

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Choosing Your (Product) Career - Gabrielle Hayes | 2406

Project Management Happy Hour

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2024 35:23

In this podcast conversation, we discuss what it truly means to “choose your own career” in the product management field as well as how to stay on that path as your most authentic self. Gabrielle has a drive for helping others see themselves to the roles that most align to their life and we hope this discussion will open new eyes to what it means to be in the product management field for new and developing Agilists. About the Featured Guest Gabrielle Hayes is a pioneer who transforms the product development industry by unlocking the untapped potential of professionals through empowerment and teaching how to harness a growth mindset. Her mission is to guide product professionals towards unlocking their full potential, fostering unshakable confidence, and achieving the lives they aspire to lead - in the career they love. Follow Gabrielle Hayes on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielleahayes/ ) The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host: Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive. Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. You can also follow Emily on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilylint/). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

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(S4) E036 Victor Nwadu on Sustainable Transformation

Agile Innovation Leaders

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 3, 2024 43:52

Bio Victor is a Lean/AGILE Strategy and Transformation Consultant, helping organisations in emergent environments navigate the path to a successful future via "Agile Ways Of Working". This usually involves developing and implementing Lean/Agile Strategies for these organisations, coaching & mentoring Senior Leaders, Managers and Teams in attaining the Agile Mindset that allows them to achieve high performance. Experiencing this evolutionary journey with clients from traditional ways of working to successfully achieving full Agility is his career passion. With a career path spanning over 30 years, starting as an accountant and Business Analyst, Scrum Master to being an Agile Coach today. His best skill amongst many is as a motivator and his work ethic is all around making work fun. Other passion outside work include helping Africa as a whole achieve Agility – Victor is the creator of the A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S Agile Culture Model and also an amateur chef, gastronome and suffering Chelsea FC fan. Victor lives in England with his family, 3 dogs and 12 fish. Interview Highlights 01:40 & 08:00 Childhood bereavement 04:00 The importance of adapting 09:45 A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S model 14:50 Using local language 20:00 WakandAGILITY 22:25 Sustainable transformation 29:00 Transformation buzzword 32:15 The importance of timing Social Media · LinkedIn: Victor NWADU | LinkedIn · Email: victor@wakandagility.com · Medium: Victor Nwadu – Medium · Twitter: @wakandagility Books & Resources · The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: Goldratt, Eliyahu M · Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet: Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders L. David Marquet · The Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations: James Surowiecki, Erik Singer · WakandAGILITY.com: Enabling Agility for Africa: Agile Training, Support and Networking | Wakandagility · The A.P.I.A.M. – R.A.T.S. MODEL | LinkedIn Episode Transcript Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku So I have with me here Victor Nwadu, who is an agility strategist, Agile coach, everything-in-between, maestro. Victor, it's an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much. Victor Nwadu Thank you, Ula, thank you for having me. Thank you. Ula Ojiaku So let, just tell us, Victor, about your background. What are the things that you've experienced, that have shaped you into who you are today and how you've ended up to where you are professionally? Victor Nwadu I mean, just cutting to the flow, I'm from Nigeria. I'm also, like all Nigerians, educated in Nigeria and then for some, you know, reason found myself here in the UK. If I wanted to pick on anything that has, you know, brought me to where I am and what has driven me to who I am today, I think it's just, it's my childhood, right. I was born to working class parents that, you know, Catholic people that worked hard for everything they've got. And as a Nigerian, you are told, it's instilled in you from a very young age, what the benefit of hard work is. Unfortunately, I was traumatised at the age of 13 by the death of my mum. So, and yeah, left with five siblings and my dad was broken by the course of events, but, you know, at that young age getting to where I am, having to, you know, do what I had to do to get to school and all that and still have these five siblings with me as well. Ula Ojiaku Because you're the first. Victor Nwadu Yes, I'm the first. You know how it is, especially when you're Igbo, right, you're expected to be strong and do it. Ula Ojiaku Di-Okpara (First Born) Victor Nwadu Di-Okpara, you say, that kind of thing, you know, so, yeah. But thank God for today and I find myself here today talking to powerful people like yourself. And I mean, I think that that has made me stronger, and I miss my mum terribly, but if I look back, to be honest with you, the course of events in one's life really defines, helps one define one's destiny. And that's how, you know, so I believe that what I went through in life has made me stronger, you know? So, yeah. I came to the UK, became an accountant, funnily enough, I did what we need to do. Then I find myself being a BA then a, after systems accounting, because I loved computers and all that, you know, then find myself doing, I don't know if you know what SAP is, so I did that for a while. Met a chap, a BA guy that I was doing his invoice, I saw how much was earning and I said, what, Jesus, I mean, tell me what to do, man. I then became a BA from that, then became, at that time, luckily, Scrum was just coming into the industry and, you know, we, I found myself doing something called an Agile BA, that's how I got into Agile. Then became a Scrum Master, became an Agile coach, and the rest is history. So that's basically it in a nutshell. Ula Ojiaku That's interesting, that you started off as an accountant and now you're an agile coach. I mean, I'm not throwing stones. I started off as an Electronic Engineer and I'm an agile coach, but yeah, it's all about, what I'm trying to also tell young people, including my children, that what you start off with doesn't necessarily mean that that's the career you're going to have for your whole life, you know, there is a whole lot of options, but it's just about starting somewhere. Victor Nwadu Especially now, I say the same thing to my kids, especially my son. You need to be in a state of mind where you need to adapt. A lot of paradigm shifts are happening underneath us and, you know, you need to be ready, and you need to be ready to go and adapt to the present circumstances. Otherwise, you know, and this is why we do what we do. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, and I think it starts with a mindset as well, you know, just having that Agile mindset, not to flog it, but agility starts first with the mind. What's your take on it? Because things are changing to be able to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world. Victor Nwadu Exactly. I mean, so we are living in exciting times, like you know already, agility was born out of the times that we're living in. It all started with the internet and outsourcing and all that, the world becoming a small village and all that. Then, we then have this digital thing going on and the information age and that brought yourselves all sorts of fantastic things. Things are, because we are utilising and leveraging the power of technology, we find out that we don't need to do certain things. Unfortunately, some jobs have to go, but then new ones are coming in. So all these things started happening, and again, it's affecting generations right now. If you were Generation X like me, you would've seen at least three more generations in your time when these changes are happening. It's crazy. So we now have, how do we survive? You know, you survive by adapting. If you don't adapt, you become obsolete, extinct, and that has tailored it to the industry, and the way we work. And even now talking to you, I'm working from home, I have a home office, you know, and that makes it even more fantastic because I can work anywhere in the world. Right. So what it does now is that it creates a bigger competition, right, where anybody can apply for any job anywhere in the world. It also helps the earth, and I don't want to go into that working from home debate, but that's all these things that are happening are as the consequences of the various paradigm shifts that are happening. So we need to adapt, like you said, in the mind, our mind needs to be open to change. And we need to put ourself in a place where we leverage all the advantages of those changes for our own benefits and so yeah. Ula Ojiaku Well said Victor. I mean, I completely associate with what you've said so far and the changes that are happening, especially with technology. For example, the recent one that's making waves is like AI, you know, so we're now in, someone said we're in the knowledge, information age, but now it's something like augmented age. So it's not just about the information, but it's also about being able to leverage, you know, technology like AI to still do productive work. But it still ties back with being adaptable, being able to learn and unlearn, to remain creative because machines are not taking over anytime soon. Victor Nwadu They can't take over the creative aspect and we need to automate and become, the competitive edge now is about who does things quicker, who gets to the market quicker and who get to the customer quicker? Who satisfies the customer in terms of the value threshold. So yeah, that's what we are, you know, we're creative, but we'll still be the same, but if you don't have creative guys in your design and engineering design, or software design, you're still going to fall back into that obsolete group of people that don't change or are not changing as quickly as it should. So yeah, I agree totally with that. Yeah. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. I know we went off into a rabbit hole, but I did want to just take you a little bit back to what you said earlier when you were talking about the things that happened to you that shaped you into who you are. And you mentioned your mum's death at 13, you know, I'm really sorry about that, and I can't imagine how tough it would be because my son just turned 13 and I can't imagine the difficulty it must be, well, you did say it must have been for you. You said events in one's life defines one's destiny. Can I, so my twist would be, because the same thing could happen to two different people and you have two different outcomes. So could there be something about how they react to it as well? Victor Nwadu Yeah, obviously. I mean, the way people react is the key, right. Yeah. So one person could react, have reacted, okay, fine. You hit the ground, I mean, you fall and you cry, and you get traumatised. Then you kind of rebuild yourself and stand up and keep going. And some people, it's just like a tough man's thing, right? It's a storming it and all that. So people stay in that trough, they never, some teams just stay there, they never rise above, you know, so some people, not because it's their fault, maybe their environment, maybe because resources that are not there to guide them, to help them stand up, you know? Yeah. We're not the same. So, yeah, I just happened to be who I'm hopefully strong enough to have been able to lead myself from that trough. Ula Ojiaku Well, you inspire me and I know that you are an inspiration to many other people as well, so thank you for sharing your story. So you did put together this model, agile culture model A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S. Can you tell us a bit about that? Victor Nwadu Actually, I have a little of pause on that. So it's something that, you know, that's been on my mind, the pet project, purely because, you know, some people are saying, are you trying to create another agile, and no, it's not. It's just like a clarion call to people that are coming to Africa and the Middle East to engage in a transformation process. We're looking at the way Agile is, when the forefathers of agile went to Utah to dream up this fantastic thing. I'm sorry, they were not thinking about Africa, they were thinking from their own Western perspective, right. And then we Africans, Agilists and change leaders from Africa, we know that things we've learned from what the manifesto and the principles have taught us, are not that straightforward in from where we come from. So it manifests itself with many of my colleagues in the West that have gone to Africa and met these challenges and have complained. And I say, yes, it's because we are totally different, mindset is different, the Western mindset is totally different. So I've kind of modelled it more to Africa and the Middle East, and mainly to Nigeria and South Africa because that's where I got most of my data from. And it's A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S it's actually Agile Practice in Africa and the Middle East. Okay. And the R.A.T.S, I get lots of stick from my friends, the R.A.T.S is just when I kind of listed out the main things, main factors, some of them not that bad, some of them, the bad ones, it just, the best way I could figure it out to make, to create a soundbite was, it came out as R.A.T.S. So you have your religious intrusion, the R is religious intrusion, the A is an age respect paradox, and the T, obviously time. The other one is secrecy cults, and the fifth one, which I've added on later on was language, the leverage language and that kind of stuff, right? So the religious one is the effect of religion in the way we work. If you go to any African or if you go to Nigeria today now, you will see, say for example, people doing their standup. The standup, daily standup is, that's supposed to take an average of 15 minutes. They will give an average of five minutes for prayers and, you know, the way we pray, evangelistic sometimes things more than that. And imagine a Muslim guy in that scene. You know, imagine a Western guy, a Western agile coach and like woah, really? You know, so you have that aspect of it. You also have the age respect paradox. So it's a paradox because yes, while people in the West understand age and respect, in Africa and in the Middle East we take it up a notch or two. You know, where sometimes actually the negative aspect is that somebody that is older than you now thinks because he's older, you cannot allocate well as part of a member of the team, you feel, oh, it's an insult for you to tell them what to do, which is wrong and very crude, but it happens, it happens. So we have that and we also have the African Time, so it's not fair to call it African because the French do it. It's not labelled an such connotative when the French do it… Ula Ojiaku I've been to different countries. They do it. I'm not going to name it, name them. Victor Nwadu Yeah. So, exactly. So the way it's been made to feel as if some kind of, like we, Nigerians and Africans started it. I don't really like it, but, you know, that has become something that of note and something that has kind of embedded itself in our culture and our behaviours. Yes, the French do it, but is in social circles, however, we've kind of brought it into professional, our professional lives, where we lack that discipline for some reason of keeping exactly to time. And that itself, obviously as you and I know, has an effect on cost of delay and all that kind of stuff. Ula Ojiaku And morale as well. Victor Nwadu The fourth one is secrecy cult. For some reason, we don't share knowledge. And I'm happy, agile is, has brought the fact that we need, when we bring transformation into an organisation, part of it is making the organisation at the end of the day, a learning organisation, where we collaborate and collaboration means we have to share knowledge, we have to share, you know, for us to win. Okay? So, yes, so for some reason in Africa, that doesn't take place as much as we would love to see that. The last I've put there is language, so this one is very important for me because, and Sophie Oluwole that's one of the, she's late now, but she's one of the people that have kind of been evangelising the need for us Africans to get rid of the Western language, like English or French. We should start teaching our kids chemistry, maths and everything, the academic learning journeys should start with our local language. It's easier on the brain, it's less stressful, and they learn. Then we can learn English later on, or however, we shouldn't waste time to learn a foreign language, then start learning the basics of academia, right. So if you look at it, it's timeframe itself is a waste in terms of agile thinking, right? So for me, I brought it into an agile space because you find out that, I have worked across global teams, right? And when, as an agile coach, you give teams freedom to please, create and design within yourself with your local language. Only come to me when you, you know, when you need to, when you need me. And then you'll normally find a language champion that will do the translation or whatever. And so you find out that it's easy, the engagement is easier, and they're loving you for giving them that freedom. So I've been bringing it to Africa to be the way we work in Africa so that we as teams are, we don't become too stressed or thinking of how we sound when we speak English. When we are designing, we are talking about, and when we are in an agile space, we are talking about and discussing with our local language, we are free, and you find out the mind is less stressed. So these ideas just keep flowing, the brainstorming session is fantastic, lively, because you don't have to, oh, let me think of how I'm going to put, structure this, my idea in English before I have to speak, it just comes out, like it's easier. So I think we have more benefits if we trace ourselves back into our local language, especially if the team is regional and everybody there is speaking the same language. Ula Ojiaku I was going to get there, so it seemed like you read my mind. I was going to say, but what if the team, because in Nigeria there are over 200 languages or 200 ethnic groups, since we've started off with Nigeria, you know, what happens? Because you might still have to go to a shared common language. Victor Nwadu That's a very good question. So, but the thing is, like most African, especially in India, places like India and even in the Middle East, we have a kind of broken English, we have a local slang anyway, that's a kind of, it's mixed with English, like in Africa, Pidgin, we call it Pidgin, it's a mixture of Creole and Hausa, Wazobia, that kind of thing going on there with English, everybody already speaks that language. Why don't we use that? So that's a tie breaker anyway, that, why don't we use that, you know? So yeah. So, but basically, when you go to places like Enugu or Kaduna, you tend to be of that particular region. But if we have a thought person there that's from other place, let's use our local vernacular to break that ice in terms of the way we speak and communicate. So that's my answer to that. Ula Ojiaku Okay. And where you have someone, if there's only maybe one person who's not of the culture, not from that country, doesn't know it, where does inclusion come in here? Victor Nwadu It's highly unlikely, but however if it happens, because in the small village that we have now, the global village that we have, I normally would have a language champion, somebody that's, you know, you should be able to find some kind of, somebody within the, just like your Agile champion, the team. You find somebody that can translate, right? Otherwise, I've developed all sorts of apps right now, where you can use something as Google translates. So when you, when you want to give important meetings and you want to write, you just do the one in English, then translate it to their local language and just send it out. Everybody will understand and they'll come back to you. So, yeah. But it's very rare, very, very rare, to find a place where the English language and French has not touched on this planet, or Spanish. So when that happens, you just, we just use tools that, simple tools are available to us, Google translate, use an Agile champion to kind of leverage and that, kind of make that disability or handicap a non-existence or minimise the impact of it in the way we communicate. Ula Ojiaku On a slightly off tangent point in terms of languages, Mandarin is also like going up there, you can't ignore that. So what have you been working on lately as you've talked about the A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S model, why you came up with it and how, in a little way, how it could be used, but what else have you been working on lately that you'd like to share with the world? Victor Nwadu Apart from work and all that, I give a lot to my people. I have tried to empower a lot of people, so I've created this WakandAGILITY group where we, it's a global support thing where we kind of give masterclasses to people that are coming into the industries from masters and Agile coaches already there, but want to, you know, so I kind of hold these master classes for free actually, because, I am looking at the scope of how we can kind of create, make sure that as Africa develops and becomes more hungry, resource hungry, we have the resources on the ground to accommodate those requests, right? Ula Ojiaku So skilled manpower, you mean? Victor Nwadu Exactly. We don't have it. So, and now to train up, agile training is expensive. So that's my own way of giving back. But apart from that, I've been working with people, great people, great change analysts, internationally based people like, I don't know if you know her, Mary Laniyan, she's based in the UK and we have a lovely woman that did African something sometime ago that invited me to Lagos Abiodun Osoba. We also, in fact, I think we have somebody, her name is Anu Gopal, she's even a powerhouse in agile affairs, I think one of those, yeah. I also have Etopa Suley from Canada. You know, all these guys who come together in the last Agile 20 something, we came off with the whole government manifesto for Nigeria. That was our presentation, it's fantastic, right? It is there on the internet right now, so yeah, so it's people like this I'm working with, we came up with the manifesto for good governance for Nigeria and many other projects like that. So yeah, that's what I spend my time doing behind the scenes, apart from work and spending time with my family. Ula Ojiaku That's really awesome, and I'm sure some of the listeners would want to know more about it. So we'll make sure the links are in the chat. Do you still do run these sessions? Victor Nwadu Yes, I do. It's keeping with the requests. I have a lot of requests, and you know. Ula Ojiaku So there is a question I have for you with respect to transformation, because as an Agile coach, I would expect that you've been involved in a number of transformation efforts with organisations in involving leaders and teams. Can there be a sustainable transformation without vision or strategy? Victor Nwadu So, it's possible for you to have a transformation, well a transformation, it's possible for that to just happen once, right? So it's like a rider, you know, you are told to ride through one end of the Serengeti to the other with dangerous animals and valleys and all that. With a horse, no compass. And you don't have a compass, you have a map or maybe don't have a map, you just know just face there, you get to the end, right? And you don't have a compass. You don't know the health of the horse and you just got on that horse. And yet, it is probable that you may be able to get to the end. But how sustainable is that? That is why the word sustainable that you use is very important. How sustainable is that for us to now create some kind of tourist pamphlet for other people to come behind us to use? It's exactly the same way. So it's probably, it's very, very probable for you to run this kind of transformation rather than just win with one team or whatever, then where's the playbook for those coming behind you, if you want to kind of multiply that, accelerate it within the organisation. So that's why sustainability is important. You know, how sustainable is that? How can we we create a model, or a playbook for us to use as an organisation for our own peculiar transformation, right? That's why it's important for us to have vision. I mean, you know, we need to have a strategy, you know, so the vision itself, first of all is the what and the why we are doing it, and all that kind of stuff. Then the strategy, the Agile strategy is very important. The Agile strategy itself is the vision plus how we're going to do it. Under it, in a timeframe, and how we're going to fulfil the objective required to actualise that vision, right? And with regard to the scope, timeline, course and the organisational culture. So that's the strategy. We need to have all that. When you have that and you place it, and you can start to kind of base it under the kind of, your playbook of entry, the change itself and the exit, then you have something to go with, you know? So, yeah, that's basically how it works. You cannot have a sustainable transformation without a clear vision, without a realistic strategy that kind of makes sure that all these aspects of the scope itself, the objective, the goals, and then taking into consideration the culture I dealt with, you know, you cannot have a, what is known as transformation, a sustainable one without having a transformation strategy. So that's it. Ula Ojiaku You may have touched on this, but I'll say, just going back to your Serengeti Crossing analogy. I mean if you are crossing, or the person has been assigned a horse cross, that it's important to say why are we crossing the Serengeti? Because it might be that if you evaluate the why it might be better for you to stay where you are and don't put yourself and other people in danger and waste resources crossing, just for crossing's sake. Victor Nwadu Yeah. I mean, all these things will come in when we are laying out the strategy and, you know, we will have the vision, somebody comes, you know. I have to say transformation is sexy nowadays. So the metaphor is dealing with the, the Serengeti itself is the transformation, what we assume to be all the wahala inside the transformation. Ula Ojiaku What is wahala? Beause not everyone understands what wahala is? Victor Nwadu Wahala means all the troubles in life, all the challenges you meet in everything. So we need to first of all understand that nowadays transformation is sexy. Where many organisations, I heard a rumour that many leaders engaged in these big companies engaged transformation purely for the benefit of their PE ratio in the stock exchange. It's a rumour, I haven't confirmed it, but I don't know how to confirm it, but I do know that it's very sexy to say your organisation is carrying out its transformation. Everybody wants to be a saviour, that's what we're doing. So that is part of the big problem and the challenges that we face as change leaders in the transformation, because the success of the transformation depends on the leaders and the person at the top. How committed they are to it. So the commitment of that leader is tasked from the top. If they don't have the buy in, if they're not convinced about it, they're just doing it for show, when push comes to shove, and it will happen, the challenges will come and hit you. Cultural challenges, personality challenges, the ego of leaders or middle managers, and you'll hit them as you already know. How committed is the leader at the top to come down and say guys, and create that space for us to be able to make this transformation happen? Because as the ultimate impediment remover, that person should be able to have the time, to have the commitment to come down to the team level, to the whatever program level, whatever, and be able to remove that impediment for that to happen. So if this leader or sets of leaders or whoever is given the mandate to commission a transformation doesn't have total commitment or is not bought in, is not doing it for some show or for some reason, it's not going to work. Ula Ojiaku Very true. Do you have any anonymised stories of your experience in guiding organisations in enterprise agility or transformation journey. Because one thing you've said, you know, transformation is sexy, it's really a buzzword. And if you ask two people, and they could be in the same leadership team, you know, C-suite team, what is transformation? And they'll give you different answers. It's just a buzzword, which means different things to different people. But do you have any story underpinning, you know, what you have said about leadership being key? Victor Nwadu If I give you all the stories, you're not going to leave here, right. However, I want to make a few things very, very clear that just standing in most organisations, that starts their transformation journey with a few teams, as you would expect. When they succeed in that they then call it an enterprise wide transformation. Where you take a few teams to delivering some funky, sexy, innovative products, that is not enterprise wide transformation, that's not business transformation or business agility, right. It is you showing that, and delivering a particular product as quickly to the customer, whatever works using agile ways of working. So there's that misconception there, that's the number one misconception that people think, oh, when we succeed with a few teams, yeah, we have, no, we haven't, because you still need to scale it, you know, to the entire enterprise, to non-IT enterprise to both upstream and downstream and all that. It is when your organisation as a whole, no matter how tall it is, can have a transparent view of where everything is, when an organisation can adapt to news in the market very quickly, when an organisation can innovate, it has the people they have been enabled to, to have a different idea, different mindset towards failure and seeing failure as a learning bridge, all those kind of mindset things, but happening in very large scale so that the organisation becomes a learning organisation, everybody's learning, we have a lot of COPs (Community of Practices), you know, that's when you say a transformation has been successful, that's when you can actually say the organisation has transisted from a traditional stoic, siloed set up to where we have open collaboration, and the cultures, mindsets and the culture have been changed in that the mindset of people that lead and those that make things happen is one, and they have this adaptive way of behaving. When something happens in the market, nothing shocks them. Even when it does, you have some, I understand some people even have an anti-disruptive, you know, when you come up with an idea in your organisation and you go back and you go out to the market and sell it, you become disruptive, you disrupt the market. However, some organisations as well are having anti-disruption strategies. If somebody else comes, how quickly can we respond? So those are the kind of things that shows that organisation has actually transisted from those traditional ways of working to an agile way of working. However, the other aspect I want to draw to our attention is about timing, when we are thinking of transformation. So for me, my advice is first of all, number one, to get the top person involved in it. Timing is very, very important. You need to have time for this transformation, to start this transformation. The time when you start transformation is very important. You don't want to start it when you have disruption in the market, things will not happen normal way, and it's better for you to do transformation in peace time, what I call peace time, before some major disruption, so that you can leverage what you've learned from that transformation in that, when that disruption happens. Timing is very important when you're carrying out a major transformation in your organisation, okay? You need to have committed leaders, leaders that are really committed to the cause, they're not just doing it for show and leaders should be able to come down and do Gemba walks, and see that what is actually happening in the kitchen is what their executive information system is relayed to them, right? There needs to be complete transparency from the top to bottom. So that we are sure that what the developers and the guys creating all our products are doing is exactly tied to the revision and objective of the executive. So that's part of it. And for me it's common sensical things that we already know. However, when we have transparency, this transparency increases trust. And it needs to start with the leader, he needs to show transparency by example, right? So it increases trust, and trust enables organisation-wide collaboration, right? So when teams start collaborating, teams that were locked in silos start collaborating, we start seeing silo breaking, and when you start breaking the silo, you start seeing aggregates, paradigm shifts happening. And that is when you now then see that almighty cultural change emerge. So it comes from, and transparency, it comes from transparency leading to trust, and trust leading to collaboration that breaks down silos. And when that thing happens, you start having all this shift because we now trust each other. There are no more silos, then the cultural shift that people say is hard to do, it is, however, if you follow this, if you allow this thing to flow the way I just listed, it'll flow in its normal cadence, right, without having to have unnecessary, you know It's not easy to have a cultural, don't get me wrong, when we are as change analysts and change agents, it's not easy for cultural change. No matter where we are in the world, people don't like change as a result. However, it starts with common sensical things like the leader taking the first step, the leader coming into, sometimes when you have a Gemba walk, you come into a meeting and you, like, for example, in some recent, not recent, about two years ago, where the leader came into a meeting or for an impediment that had been there, so kind of a Scrum of Scrum meeting, that had been a feature type impediment, and had been there for quite a while. And he came in and after they've had the conversation, he just raised his hand and everybody was surprised to see him and just said, what is it? And he kind of listed back to him, you know, this impediment that I've been there for roughly about almost a month was dealt with within two days. That is one of the major advantages where you have the leader there, and you need to ask yourself a question, what was causing the impediment delay? The verification of the impediments and the delay of the action of impediments before the leader came in. Middle management, also cultural things, bureaucracy, my space, your space, so the person at the top comes in and slashes through. If you have leaders that are prepared to do that, that have the time to do that, transformation will take its normal course without unfortunate circumstances happening. Ula Ojiaku You've said a lot of things in this time and space and they make sense to me, but is it possible, because you said transformation is ideal when done in peace time. How can you, it's almost like saying you time the markets. Because there are other people, many organisations that have admitted, for example, the Covid, the pandemic accelerated their transformation per se. Victor Nwadu Accelerated, but many of them died. You know, yes we have unforeseen circumstances that you cannot help that, right? Aliens landing on the planet and disrupting the world, you cannot help that, right? But I was saying that if you are given a time to select, so it's better for you to do it now before any, covid is part of it, but you also have market disruptions as well, right? So the best time would be when you think just kind of stability, because it starts from a small team, then expand. So you want to make sure that team is not distracted by bigger factors that may be beyond the help, the beyond the reach of the remediating powers of the leaders in the organisations, right. So that's given, if you are given, you know, if you can help it. If you can't help it, start it as quickly as possible, but you know, it's better to have it started in peace time. Ula Ojiaku Awesome, thanks Victor. I can see that you are quite passionate about what you are saying. So what books have you recommended to people about this topic or anything else and why? Victor Nwadu I have many books. The main book, that for me has kind of created powerful insights in the way I do my work, the way I even see life. One of them, the top one is The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. Then the other one is Turn the…. Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet. We'll put it in the links. You know, I use that a lot. And it's just leadership should be, you know, it should be about enabling, self-managing, self-organising team. I mean, in the way we work nowadays, you can't know everything. And that was what the point he was trying to say that as a captain, yeah, he's supposed to know how they work, but the details, there are experts that is within his reach, there are the guys that are the experts, so enable them to do the thing and you just deal with it. And the third one will be this one. I just read this book, it's called The Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki. He was saying that data shows that if you take, if you ask people to solve a problem and a group of people from just non-experts, and you get the experts to predict that same problem, the crowd will be, the answer will be closer to the reality than the experts themselves. Why, I don't know, maybe it aggregates knowledge of the crowd coming together rather than experts, and the other point he was making also, is how the HiPPO opinion (HiPPO: Highest Paid Personality), like when you have a team of engineers and the manager comes in that meeting and you ask a question of how do you think we can do this and he gives his opinion first, his opinion is going to skew the answers of everybody else. So this is why it's important, where you have a meeting and some HiPPOs are there, let them be still, let us hear the opinions of the team, the ordinary members of the team before if they need to give their opinion, right? Otherwise we just have a skewed opinion and that opinion will not be the best for that particular question. So that is another very good book. Ula Ojiaku Thank you. So there are three books. The Goal, Turn That Ship Around, The Wisdom of the Crowds. So how can the audience find you or contact you? Victor Nwadu You can get me at wakandagility.com, you can get me at victor@wakandagility.com. You can get me at LinkedIn, Victor Nwadu, you just type it there, you'll see m there. Ula Ojiaku Any ask for the audience, or any final words, Victor? Victor Nwadu Final last words, yes, Agile is real. Agile is here. And so be inspired, be prepared, be Agile. First of all, you be inspired to change, to have that mindset to adapt to your present circumstances. You know, be prepared for future disruptions, for anything, and be Agile, right? That's it. Then you will definitely succeed. You will definitely live longer. You will definitely transcend all the challenges, all the Covid 19 time, even aliens coming to this world or whatnot. Ula Ojiaku So can we hold you to, to account for it? Can we take it to the bank and say Victor said if we're inspired, prepared, and agile… Victor Nwadu It will help. I mean, from my experience in life, it'll help if you're inspired, you have to be inspired. People that are not driven cannot achieve much. You need to be passionate about what you do. And then you need to be prepared. You need to be prepared by having the skillset, challenge yourself to learn, constantly learning. Then be agile, all those things that we do, your mindset, the way you think, you know, having agile ways of doing things, you know, having a different mindset towards failure. When you fail, it doesn't mean you have, you know, you've done anything bad or the end of the world, failure is a sign that that option is not going to work and you've learned something new, you pivot and try a new one. So if we have that kind of mindset, we'll be innovating every year, every six months, every three months. If we have a different attitude towards failure, so be inspired, be prepared, be Agile. Ula Ojiaku Thank you so much, Victor. It's been a pleasure having this conversation Victor Nwadu It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Ula. Ula Ojiaku The pleasure is mine. That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!

092 - Goblins in the room! Managing meeting misbehaviors, with Rich Maltzman

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2024 61:45

Meetings. Love them or hate them, they are core to what we do as project leaders. We need to pull people together (real or virtually) to discuss, plan, check-in, and get things done. But as we know, when we get people together, sometimes their misbehaviors - “goblins” - tag along, too! Being able to manage effective meetings can make or break us as PMs. And learning how to manage these misbehaviors in meetings can make or break each meeting. Fortunately, we have help! This episode we are joined by Rich Maltzman of Boston University. Rich and his colleague Jim Steward wrote the book, “Great Meetings Build Great Teams: A Guide for Project Leaders and Agilists.” In this book, Rich and Jim write about these “meeting goblins” - how to identify them, and how to respond effectively to keep your meeting on track. Join us and learn how to tame the meeting goblins! You can find Rich's book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Meetings-Build-Teams-Agilists/dp/1637424752/ And check out the website here: http://projectmeetings.us You can connect directly with Rich and his co-author, Jim on linked in here: Rich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/exclaim/ Jim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimstewartpmp/ And if you would like to study project management with Rich at Boston University, you can read about their globally respected program here: https://www.bu.edu/met/programs/project-management/ About our amazing guest, Rich Maltzman Rich considers himself a ‘pracademic' – and is now Master Lecturer at Boston University, an author, and a consultant, providing clients with a deep learning experience and improved results. He had a 40-year career in telecom, mainly in engineering and project management. At the University level, his focus is always on converting weaknesses into strengths while teaching clients/students how to apply learned skills to everyday situations. Rich co-founded EarthPM, LLC, a company devoted to integrating sustainability thinking into project management. His integration of a holistic, global view of project management has resulted in international consulting and speaking engagements in which the focus is the long-term success of projects, with an eye towards ecological and social systems. His blog at the projectmanagement.com site has become very popular. A co-author of seven books on project leadership, Rich is a former VP of Professional Development for PMI Mass Bay (the Boston area PMI Chapter), and was on the Review Committee for the 7th Edition PMBOK® Guide, helping to assure that sustainability thinking finally made it into the Standard and the Body of Knowledge. JOIN THE HAPPY HOUR! Get access to all podcasts, PDU certificates, bonus content, exclusive member Q&A webinars and more from our membership! https://pmhappyhour.com/membership STUMP THE PM'S! We love to hear about your tough PM issues, so please hit us up at podcast@pmhappyhour.com or on Linkedin and we'll see if we can help you. If we use your question, we'll send you a PM Happy Hour coaster you can enjoy at your next happy hour.

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#79: Navigating Agile Trends and Challenges in 2024 with Lance Dacy

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 3, 2024 42:23

Join Brian and his guest Lance Dacy as they dive into the trends and challenges awaiting the Agile community in 2024 and the importance of adapting Agile principles to the hyper-competitive world of product development. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian sits down with Lance Dacy to take a deep dive into the anticipated trends and challenges awaiting the Agile community in 2024. The duo explores the ongoing debate between remote and in-person work, the imperative need for innovation in leadership and management, and the intricacies of forward-thinking strategies as we work toward building organizations tailored for the future. Join Brian and Lance as they navigate the complex intersection of Agile principles, organizational leadership, and the ever-evolving landscape of the business world in 2024. Listen Now to Discover: [01:17] - Brian Milner has Lance Dacy on the show today for the traditional discussion of looking ahead at trends and upcoming developments in the Agile and Scrum space for 2024. [02:10] - Remote vs. in-person work—opening the discussion with this hot-button topic and the evolving debate. [03:31] - Lance offers his insights on organizations' adaptive strategies, what we learned during the pandemic, and the potential benefits and drawbacks of remote work. [05:58] - The loss of collaboration and learning when in a remote environment. [07:22] - The hybrid work solution. [07:36] - Brian shares a study favoring in-office productivity. [09:50] - Lance shares his personal work-at-home challenges and the importance of aligning work environments with individual personalities and preferences. [11:32] - The importance of accommodating individual preferences and working styles, and the need for organizations to match their environments to employees rather than requiring employees to adapt. [12:58] - The challenges faced by managers and leaders in making decisions about remote work, and the importance of flexibility in work hours. [15:20] - Brian raises concern about layoffs in the Agile area during tough economic times, questioning if it's the right strategy for long-term success. [16:23] - Lance emphasizes the need for understanding Agile rather than blindly applying it, suggesting the Agile industry may be bloated and encouraging a focus on culture and effective coaching. [17:23] - Mountain Goat Software, is the sponsor for this podcast. Whether you’re looking to get Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training or want to take an Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (ACSM) class, click here to see what we have to offer. [19:33] - Leadership and management innovation—Brian and Lance discuss the need for organizations to prioritize human-centric management AND leadership innovation, citing Gary Hamel's concept of building organizations fit for the future. [23:25] - Lance discusses the devaluation of the human element in organizations. [24:31] - Brian and Lance share their insight into the devaluation of developers, and the need for discussion on the trajectory of Agile in the face of such challenges. [25:55] - Lance highlights the need to educate leaders and managers on the criticality of Agile budgeting alongside project management to align expectations. [27:40] - Lance addresses the challenge in achieving true Agility, and why coaches offer such a long-term ROI. [28:10] - The importance of educating leaders on the value of coaching, psychological safety, and the need for a neutral perspective in fostering organizational improvement. [29:15] - Brian predicts a continued emphasis on cost-cutting in 2024 due to economic uncertainty. [29:57] - Brian expresses his concern about the long-term negative impact of eliminating coaching roles. [31:34] - Lance anticipates a cultural shift that might make it difficult for companies to attract talent if they don’t embrace more human-focused values that empower individuals. [32:59] - Lance urges Agile coaches to adapt to a changing paradigm and discusses the challenge for leaders and managers to shed bureaucratic structures and implement an effective strategy for embracing these principles. [34:17] - Brian urges a reevaluation of Agile's focus, emphasizing transparency and adaptability over rigid structures and roles. [34:48] - Brian stresses Agile's strength in handling unexpected challenges and calls on Agilists to emphasize the fundamental principles to demonstrate Agile's value effectively. [35:40] - The need for new thought leaders in leadership, management, and organizational design to guide Agile practitioners in effectively leveraging data and scaling Agile practices. [36:30] - The importance of evolving beyond rigid practices to embrace Agile's adaptability. Lance uses the analogy of professional sports to illustrate the importance of adaptability, discipline, and rigor in responding to dynamic situations. [38:03] - Not doom and gloom but a chance for growth and adaptation—Brian expresses optimism and excitement for the upcoming year, seeing it as an opportunity for renewed focus and bringing value to organizations in the evolving world of product development. [40:20] - Brian extends his thanks to Lance Dacy for being on the show. And don’t forget to share your thoughts and ideas on upcoming trends in the Agile Mentors Community. [41:09] - Please send feedback and ideas for upcoming shows to podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com. And don’t forget to share and subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. [41:14] - Happy New Year to everyone, Brian expresses excitement for the journey ahead in 2024, meeting more listeners at in-person events, and sharing more insights on future episodes of the Agile Mentors Podcast. References and resources mentioned in the show: #63: The Interplay Between Data Science and Agile with Lance Dacy #30: How to Get the Best Out of the New Year with Lance Dacy #76: Navigating Neurodiversity for High-Performing Teams with Susan Fitzell Humanocracy Certified ScrumMaster Training and Scrum Certification Certified Scrum Product Owner Training Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® #4: The Developer Role in Scrum with Sherman Gomberg DFW Scrum (Dallas, TX) | Meetup Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lance Dacy is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®. Lance brings a great personality and servant's heart to his workshops. He loves seeing people walk away with tangible and practical things they can do with their teams straight away.

Is this Agile? with Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2023 34:46

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil discuss Agility: How do you know if you truly are in an Agile environment? In this episode, they explore the meaning of Agile and the different features that make this framework unique, including Creativity, Teamwork, Mindset, Continuous Learning, and Psychological Safety. Key Takeaways Does Scrum allow creativity? The Scrum framework was designed for complex situations where creativity is necessary since there is no “one right way” to solve a problem. What does it really mean to be Agile? Agile: Able to move quickly and easily. In the Agile framework, this is a constant guideline; the decisions must flow quickly and easily. Autonomy is crucially important. Teams need to be self-sufficient to deliver value. Inspecting and adapting the plan is necessary since a budget needs to be respected. Agile Teams deliver value throughout the process. Agile is about an actual team working on an actual problem (thinkers and doers are not working separately on finding solutions). Agile mindset vs a fixed mindset: Agilists learn by doing rather than over-analyzing before taking action. Every Agilist is part of a Team working towards a goal, not a solo player. By attending their daily Scrum, you can tell if a team is only Agile by name. They always work as a team rather than as individuals doing their jobs. Alignment! What is really the Team's approach? What is the business opportunity the Team is trying to reach? Effectively managing budgets can enable Agility Continuous improvement: There is no lifetime commitment to a particular decision. Instead, adjustments are made according to the needs. Value progress over an attempt to design for perfection Encourage ongoing learning Psychological safety needs to be modeled within the Team, and a context of continuous improvement allows space for speaking up and accepting failures to readjust the course of action. Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

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Letting Go of Pure Agile w Andy Jordan

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2023 35:21

Agile is going through a lot of changes right now. The changes aren't so much in what it is and how it works - that seems to be a bit stable at the moment. The changes stem more from how adopters feel about it, their ideas about much agile they need, what they need to achieve it, and what kind of support they want getting there. As the space works through these growing pains, many Agilists respond to discomfort they way they (unfortunately) have since the very beginning, by pointing figures at each other and saying “OM%G! CAN YOU BELIEVE THOSE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE AGILE?” It is a sad but true thing that baked deep into the culture of the agile community is this idea that the best way to prove that you are good enough, smart enough and doggone it, people like you is by calling out the people who you think are not good enough, smart enough and doggone it… you get the idea. In response to one of these incidents that showed up in his LinkedIn Feed, Andy Jordan posted an article called “Letting Go of Pure Agile” (https://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/893794/letting-go-of--pure--agile), making the case that whether or not you are truly Lean, or doing Scrum “right”, or whatever, doesn't matter because the business cares about results and that is what we should all be focused on. I reached out to Andy to ask for an interview with the hope that we could dig a little deeper into his concerns over the purists, finding the right tools for the job, the current state of agile and project management, and, of course, how AI is impacting us. (It was also just great getting to catch up with him.) Andy, Mark Price-Perry, and I used to do workshops for PMI on Redefining your PMO. If you are curious about that you can learn more here: https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/294895/pmxpo-2015--why-you-need-to-consider-redefining-the-pmo Andy's Article: Letting Go of Pure Agile: https://www.projectmanagement.com/articles/893794/letting-go-of--pure--agile Contacting Andy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyjordan/ ProjectManagement.com: https://www.projectmanagement.com/profile/andyjordan/ Web: https://www.roffensian.com

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The Future of Agile with Misi Eyetsemitan

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2023 30:39

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Misi Eyetsemitan. In this episode, they discuss the future of Agile, the advantages and challenges they see, and how far the Agile Methodology has come in the last two decades since its origins when it was created to achieve better and more efficient software development. Listen to this episode and learn more about where Agile is going. Key Takeaways The Agile Manifesto was not created rigidly but was open for future updates. Agile evolves powered by the problems that exist today. The execution of Agile will remain applicable in the future. In the future, Agilists will have to revisit the basics of Agile. Future Agilists will have to know why they have chosen Agile and why they are leveraging Agile. Agile is never the solution but brings organizations to the solutions they seek. Agile requires to have a transformative mindset. What are some challenges in the future of Agile? It will depend on the response of the Agilists. Agile is not a one-size-fits-all kind of methodology. The principles of Agile can be applied in various ways to tackle different problems. Measuring the value an Agile Team delivers is still a challenge. The key is to keep the focus on value. There are many ways to quantify value delivery. It is difficult for organizations and Teams to identify the metrics to measure what success looks like. The future of the diversity of Agile Teams: Agile Teams will continue to be more diverse. Diversity will also be needed to solve more complex issues. Mentioned in this Episode: Learn more about Systemic Coaching Check the courses offered by the International Federation of Coaches Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

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Seamless Value Flow with Lizmeth Rodriguez and Justin Thatil

Manage This - The Project Management Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2023 36:18

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by two AgileThought colleagues, Justin Thatil, the show's cohost, and Lizmeth Rodriguez. They discuss the topic of how to achieve a seamless Value Flow, one of the SAFe principles, and the general importance of flow in a system. These three expert Agilists also assess the differences between Kanban and SAFe, especially regarding their approach to scaling. Key Takeaways Principles of SAFe: Make value flow without interruptions. Value has to move efficiently from start to finish. What are the differences between Kanban and SAFe? SAFe is a detailed plan for working with big companies using Agile methods. Kanban is a simple way to make work run smoothly and always find ways to do things better. Kanban is not as strict as SAFe. SAFe and Kanban approach scaling at Agile differently. SAFe is a framework for large-scale Agile adoption, while Kanban is a more flexible methodology that can be adapted to various contexts and scales. According to SAFe there are 8 flow accelerators: 1. Visualize and limit WIP. 2. Address bottlenecks. 3. Minimize handoffs and dependencies. 4. Get faster feedback. 5. Work in smaller batches. 6. Reduce queue length. 7. Optimize time “in the zone.” 8. Remediate legacy policies and practices. Mentioned in this Episode: Learn more about Measuring Flow with Flow Metrics Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability: An Introduction, Daniel S. Vacanti The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism, Hubert Joly Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

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Episode 186 – Mastering Effective Meetings: Strategies for Project Success

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2023

The podcast by project managers for project managers. Mastering effective meetings is essential for project managers, as successful meetings contribute significantly to project success. Rich Maltzman and Jim Stewart say we should apply the same strategic mindset to meetings as we do to projects, and they offer insights to enhance your facilitation skills to conduct successful meetings. Table of Contents 03:07 … Great Meetings Build Great Teams04:30 … Criteria for a Good Meeting05:44 … Allow Humor to Influence Meetings06:46 … Making a Sad Meeting Better08:32 … Why People are Attending a Meeting09:55 … Project Manage Meetings13:27 … A Meeting Planning Mindset15:12 … Don't Worry about Being Liked17:06 … Kevin and Kyle18:12 … Dealing with Conflict in a Meeting21:12 … Goa the Garrulous23:16 … Pat the Passive-Aggressive25:56 … The Fear of Forage28:29 … Risk Register29:45 … Virtual Meeting Success34:01 … Get in Touch35:00 … Closing JIM STEWART: If you blow the meeting, you get to make first impressions once. So the level of planning should be commensurate with the meeting. WENDY GROUNDS: You're listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers. I'm Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio are Bill Yates and our sound guy Danny Brewer. You can catch us wherever you listen to podcasts. One of the apps that we've come across is Podurama. It's a free app for podcast lovers, and we are also there. If you want to listen to us, take a listen on Podurama. You'll find a link to them on our transcript. We love having you join us twice a month to be motivated and inspired by project stories, leadership lessons, and advice from industry experts. One little thing to mention is we got an email from Feedspot, which is a content reader that helps people keep up with their websites. And they told me that we are one of the Top 30 podcasts for managers on the web. So we were very excited to hear that. Shout out to Feedspot. Thank you for voting for us. And we have some industry experts joining us today. We're very excited to bring you Jim Stewart, as well as a previous guest, Rich Maltzman. Since 2003, Jim has been the principal of JP Stewart Consulting, and he's a certified PMP, and he possesses multiple agile certifications. He is a longtime member of the Project Management Institute and served for several years on the board of the local chapter. With Rich Maltzman, he also is the co-author of the book “How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning Meetings” and its update, “Great Meetings Build Great Teams: A Guide for Project Leaders and Agilists.” Rich Maltzman also has his PMP. He has been an engineer since 1978 and a project management supervisor since 1988, including a two-year assignment in the Netherlands. Rich is also focused on consulting and teaching, and has developed curricula and taught at several universities. But we're very excited about their book “Great Meetings Build Great Teams,” and that's what we're talking about today. BILL YATES: Yes. This is a key to success for project managers is being able to successfully facilitate effective meetings. So this is going to be a great conversation. Plus, just reading through the book, there are so many familiar names and concepts that are there. They make reference to Andy Crowe and the “Alpha Project Management Study” in his book. They make reference to Alan Zucker, our instructor, who's fabulous, and some of the blogs and research that he's done. And they also talk a bit about Wayne Turmel and virtual meetings. We had him on Episode 64. Wayne was terrific. And also Carole Osterweil. She was on number 90, Episode 90 with us, talking about facing uncertainty. So lot of familiar folks that are being referenced here, and we look forward to talking about having more effective meetings. WENDY GROUNDS: Hi, Rich; and hi, Jim. Thank you so much for being with us today.

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Balancing Culture With the Need to Produce Results

LeadingAgile SoundNotes: an Agile Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2023 54:30

Why are so many Agile coaches and ScrumMasters getting laid off? Is it because Agile is disappearing? Or is it because they've gotten so dogmatic about the rules and ceremonies surrounding Agile that they're more of a burden then they are valuable? In our latest episode of SoundNotes, Mike Cottmeyer and Dave Prior explore the how to balance the competing priorities of the Agilists and the leaders they're trying to help so that everyone can get back succeeding with Agile. Contacting Mike Cottmeyer If you'd like to contact Mike, you can reach him at: LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cottmeyer/ Twitter: twitter.com/mcottmeyer Email: mike@leadingagile.com Contacting Dave Prior If you'd like to contact Dave, you can reach him at: LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo Twitter: twitter.com/mrsungo Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com If you have a question you'd like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to dave.prior@leadingagile.com Interested in CSM or CSPO Training? You can find all the details at www.leadingagile.com/scrum-training/

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Great Meetings Build Great Teams

The Everyday PM: Project Management Principles for Your Everyday Life

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 15, 2023 40:13

Are you a project leader or an agilist looking to improve your team's meetings? Look no further than the book "Great Meetings Build Great Teams: A Guide for Project Leaders and Agilists." This resource is packed with practical tips and insights on how to run effective meetings that drive collaboration and results. Whether you're new to leading teams or a seasoned pro, you'll find valuable strategies to help you build stronger, more productive teams. In the book, you'll learn about the key elements of successful meetings, including setting clear objectives, creating an inclusive environment, and fostering open communication. The podcast episode features interviews with experts in the field, who share their own experiences and advice on how to make the most of your team's meetings. So why wait? Check out "Great Meetings Build Great Teams" today and start improving your team's meetings for better results and happier team members. Happy reading (and listening)! Enjoyed this conversation? Definitely reach out to Jim and Rich to chat more about their professional experiences and publications. Leave your thoughts in the comments section below! --- Follow Our Hosts on LinkedIn: Ann Campea, MSPM, MPH, PMP, CSM Host and Founder of The Everyday PM An authentic leader who is well-versed in the launching of product and physical retail spaces, data system implementation and upgrades, onboarding of new employees, training, championing new process improvement initiatives, and building a solid project management community. Jim Stewart, PMP, IC-Agile Coach Principal of JP Stewart Consulting LLC Jim is a certified PMP® and possesses multiple Agile certifications including IC-Agile coach and Certified Scrum Product Owner. Jim is a long-time member of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and served for several years on the board of the local chapter. He has, for many years, taught and developed courseware for PMP® classes and co-developed an Agile 101 online course. Rich Maltzman, PMP Master Lecturer at Boston University, Co-Founder and Principal of EarthPM, LLC As a Master Lecturer at Boston University, Rich develops and delivers courses for graduate students that help them achieve positive change in their careers and in the world. He has over 40 years of industry experience 30 of which is in Project Leadership, including the global PMO of Nokia, with a PMP certification and a passion for sustainability integration. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theeverydaypm/support

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Transitioning from Scrum Master to Agile Coach with Adam Miner

The Agile Coach Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2023 23:22

In this episode of The Agile Coach, host Vivek is joined back again by Adam Miner, an experienced Agile Coach with a background as a Scrum Master. He has worked in various roles in the Agile space, including coaching and mentoring teams in Agile practices. Adam has a deep understanding of the Agile mindset and values and is skilled in facilitating change and driving organizational agility.Adam shares his experience transitioning from a Scrum Master role to an Agile Coach role. He emphasizes the importance of developing the skill of influencing people through organic trust and respect. Adam believes that the ability to influence is crucial for both Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches. He also highlights the value of understanding the Agile mindset and principles, rather than focusing solely on specific frameworks or certifications. Adam discusses the challenges of working with leadership and management teams, particularly in overcoming resistance to change. He emphasizes the need for Agile Coaches to balance their knowledge of Agile practices with strong interpersonal and leadership skills. Adam encourages new Agilists to be opportunistic and step out of their comfort zones to gain experience. He also advises seeking guidance from experienced professionals in the desired role.HIGHLIGHT QUOTES"The most effective skill in an Agile environment is the ability to influence people through organic trust and respect.""If you understand the mindset of agility and take the values and principles to heart, you can apply them to any process or situation.""It's difficult to convince leadership that changing the way they think is necessary to achieve different results.""The best coaches have a delicate balance of training and coaching, combining Agile knowledge with strong interpersonal skills.""The goal for any coach should be to scale Agile leadership and create self-organizing teams."Get to know Adam and what he's up to:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-miner-77793129/Connect with Vivek and Pabitra to find out more about what they're up to:Vivek's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivekkhattri/Pabitra's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pabitrakhanal/The Agile Coach LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc/Agile Coach Website: https://theagilecoach.com/If you enjoy The Agile Coach and are interested in learning more, you can check us out at our website https://theagilecoach.com/

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What is Rolling Wave Planning? with Eric Landes

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2023 29:03

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Eric Landes to explore the ways in that Rolling Wave Planning can help organizations in their Agile journey. In this episode, Dan and Eric explore the meaning of rolling wave planning and how it can help you respond to changes when delivering projects with high amounts of uncertainty. Key Takeaways What is Rolling Wave Planning? It consists in planning a piece that is known and understood at the present moment and rolling the other parts into the future. Not planning at all is a misunderstanding of what Agility is. Rolling wave planning involves looking into the future where everyone can see the plan and how it is adjusting. Rolling Wave Planning and its connection to stakeholder management: Rolling Wave Planning in a large organizations equals to multiple teams and even numerous product lines. Agilists plan things and make informed decisions. A programmed increment mechanism is similar to rolling wave planning. Getting started with a Rolling Wave: It is not enough to just bring people together and start. You need to do something before sprinting. Can you deliver value in every Sprint? The best practice is to do some planning, but not too much, when looking ahead at how that value is going to be delivered. It is essential not to over-plan for the future; there are many aspects you are not going to be able to predict. Making sure you don't get lost in the Rolling Wave: Use some of the constructs within Scrum; first of all, identify your definition of done, and what risks you should mitigate. Keep the alignment with organizational goals. Mentioned in this Episode: Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win, by Jocko Willink Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

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#52: The Birth of Agile: How 17 Adventurous Techies Changed the World with Jim Highsmith

Agile in Action with Bill Raymond

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2023 33:20

Join Brian and Agile pioneer Jim Highsmith as they dive into the riveting saga of 17 tech rebels who defied convention, unleashed their passions, and revolutionized the world of software development. Overview In this episode of the "Agile Mentors" podcast, Brian sits down with Agile pioneer Jim Highsmith to share how 17 tech rebels reshaped the software landscape. Jim shares captivating stories from his time working with NASA and Nike to the collaboration of 17 nonconformists that led to the Agile Manifesto and transformed the software industry. Listen in for a behind-the-scenes look at the circumstances that led to the birth of Agile and how camaraderie, collaboration, and a human-centric approach sparked a wildfire of support for the Agile movement. Tune in to this episode for insights, lessons, and a glimpse into the future of Agile from an industry legend. Listen Now to Discover: [01:10] - Brian introduces Jim Highsmith, a renowned figure in the Agile community. Jim is an experienced software developer, writer, and storyteller. His latest book, "Wild West to Agile," has become a sensation in the industry, earning the top spot as a new release on Amazon. He also co-authored the Agile Manifesto and the Declaration of Interdependence for Project Leaders, co-founded the Agile Alliance, and served as the first president of the Agile Leadership Network. [03:57] - Jim recounts his journey working on the NASA Apollo program and how the constant advancements in technology shaped the course of the Apollo project, offering valuable insights into the era's challenges and adaptability. [08:47] - Jim shares a fascinating story from his time at Nike, where outdated requirements left a project stagnant for 18 months. [10:34] - How waterfall methodologies left companies trapped and projects taking too long and costing too much. [11:53] - Setting the stage for the revolutionary Agile movement. [13:16] - A problem so painful leadership was on board to find a solution. [14:48] - A message from our sponsor: Mountain Goat Software has courses from Certified Scrum Master Training and Scrum Certification to Certified Scrum Product Owner Training that equips you with the sought-after skills valued by top-notch teams. Visit the Mountain Goat website for all the details. [15:40] -Jim reveals the connections and common ground that started the manifesto meeting. [18:21] - An agenda-free meeting with 17 nonconformist experts seeking common ground and how an encounter with Steve Mellor led to an unexpected alignment of intent. [21:01] - 17 individuals, each with nonconformist perspectives, agree. [21:17] - Why did 17 audacious techies revolutionize the world? And what lessons can we learn from their experience for the future? [23:39] - Where Agile's lasting impact lies and what keeps it at the forefront of change. [24:39] - Putting aside competition for collaboration and cooperation that led to change. [25:30] - What keeps Agile at the forefront of change? Brian shares a nugget of wisdom from Jim's book about Agilists. [26:38] - Finally, a language that spoke to us all!—how the Agile movement shattered the notion of interchangeable cogs and embraced our humanity, sparking a wildfire of support. [27:59] - Jim shares his thoughts on where he thinks the Agile movement is headed and why he thinks the agility of organizations and people will be a definite advantage in the future. [29:56] - Brian mentions his high recommendation for listeners to pick up Jim’s book, Wild West to Agile: Adventures in Software Development Evolution and Revolution. [31:38] - There are a ton of podcasts out there; thank you for taking the time to listen to this one. And don’t forget to subscribe to the “Agile Mentors” Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. [32:05] - If you've considered taking a CSM or CSPO class, check us out at Mountain Goat Software. Or join the conversation in our Agile Mentors Community. [32:32] - If you have feedback for the show or topics for future episodes, email us by clicking here, and I'll get back to you ASAP. References and resources mentioned in the show: Jim Highsmith Jim Highsmith on LinkedIn Wild West to Agile Agile Manifesto Agile Alliance Agile Leadership Network Certified Scrum Master Training and Scrum Certification Certified Scrum Product Owner Training Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the "Agile Mentors" Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Jim Highsmith is an experienced software developer, writer, storyteller, and industry pioneer recognized for his instrumental role in the birth of the Agile movement. His latest book, "Wild West to Agile," has become a sensation in the industry, earning the top spot as a new release on Amazon. Jim continues to inspire and guide Agile enthusiasts worldwide through his insightful stories and expertise.

AI Transformation and Agile Leadership

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2023 35:33

Agilists are ideal candidates to run complex

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#47: Exploring Lean Thinking in Agile Development with Bob Payne

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2023 37:08

Join Brian and his guest Bob Payne as they discuss the principles of lean thinking and how they apply to Agile methodologies. Overview In this episode of the “Agile Mentors” Podcast, Brian sits down with Bob Payne to discuss the intersection of Agile and lean thinking. As an experienced Agile coach and host of the “Agile Toolkit Podcast,” Bob shares his insights and offers practical tips for implementing lean thinking in your own team. Listen in as they explore the fundamental principles of lean thinking in Agile methodologies. They discuss managing flow, not workers, and the importance of continuous improvement and experimentation to achieve sustainable, high-quality results in your organization and success in today's fast-paced business environment. Listen Now to Discover: [01:23] - Brian welcomes Bob Payne, the Senior Vice President of Training and Coaching at Lithespeed, as well as the host of the “Agile Toolkit Podcast” and the Chairman of the Agile DC Conference. Bob is here to discuss lean systems and lean thinking. [03:57] - Bob explains how lean thinking is connected to Agile methods in knowledge work. [07:30] - Agile methods generate value through teamwork that ultimately ends up in the customer's hands, and lean thinking is the larger circle that encompasses these methods. [08:24] - Lean thinking involves discipline and continuous improvement, which are essential characteristics for any successful team. [10:30] - Lean thinking also considers the sustainability of the workforce—workers are seen as producing value, while management is there to create the system that makes them the most effective. [11:31] - Lean thinking provides inspiration for visual management systems (such as Kanban boards) to track work which is incredibly powerful (and were not invented by Agile methods). [11:47] - Lean didn't just appear out of thin air; it built off of multiple things. [12:17] - Lean principles are foundational, and empiricism is built into lean. [14:34] - Bob shares that visualizing work is crucial to managing it effectively and citing the example of Toyota's electronic boards. [15:52] - Managing the flow of work, not the workers. We aim for cross-functional, self-organizing teams in an Agile team to get the job done. [17:05] - Bob shares an analogy about the workflow in a coffee shop. [17:41] - Bob shares the lean thinking philosophy and discusses the use of on-demand planning and continuous improvement. [19:14] - Brian introduces the sponsor for the podcast, Mountain Goat Software, which offers various training options for Agile methodologies. You can find their training schedule here. [19:46] - The difference between fixing the system and fixing the people in terms of leadership— Brian highlights the importance of a holistic view of the organizational structure to support the work and the workers in lean thinking. [20:36] - Brian shares the importance of limiting work in process within Scrum. He shares his experiences with XP teams and emphasizes the need to identify blockages and fix the source, not (just) the symptom. [23:03] - Bob and Brian discuss how Agile methods often miss local optimization, focusing on fixing bottlenecks instead of making other parts of the process more efficient. [25:23] - Bob shares how the focus on DevOps and better tooling has enabled Agile teams to go faster while maintaining safety (and avoiding burnout). [26:30] - Bob shares a talk called "Project to Product: Practical Realities at Large Scale Enterprises,” Kevin Fisher gave at a DevOps conference about an end-to-end value stream analysis. [27:40] - Bob discusses the need for a shift towards prioritizing rapid building and getting products to market, as Jeff Patton and Marty Cagan advocate. [28:37] - Bottlenecks? What the Scrum Master should focus on. [29:27] -Understanding the theory and philosophy behind Agile rather than just focusing on the practices is important. Brian shares why he believes it's crucial to recognize that the system needs to be fixed, not the worker. [30:49] - Understanding the theory and philosophy behind Agile methodologies rather than just focusing on the practices for more successful teams is essential. [31:18] - Bob talks about how teams should experiment with different ways of doing things and shares the early Agilists were making stuff up and pulling together ideas that worked. He spends the first hour and a half of his classes talking about the history and mindset of Agile and lays out these principles with case studies. [35:24] - Check out Bob Payne’s work on his podcast, “Agile Toolkit Podcast,” and at Lithespeed. [36:08] - Join the Agile Mentors Community to continue the discussion. If you have topics for future episodes, email us by clicking here. And don’t forget to subscribe to the “Agile Mentors” Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. References and resources mentioned in the show: Lithespeed "Agile Toolkit Podcast” Agile DC Conference Project to Product: Practical Realities at Large Scale Enterprises Mountain Goat Software's Advanced Certified Product Owner course Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Bob Payne is an industry-leading Lean+Agile Transformation leader with over 20 years of experience. He is the SVP of Enterprise Transformation at Lithespeed, the host of the “Agile Toolkit Podcast," and the Chair of the Agile DC Conference. With a wealth of practical experience, Bob has been a trusted advisor to executives, teams, and management at leading firms such as Walmart, National Geographic, and Samsung.

#47: Exploring Lean Thinking in Agile Development with Bob Payne

Joekub - agile, life and monkeys

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2023 37:08

Past, present and future with Lyssa Adkins - Episode 48

Play Episode Listen Later May 10, 2023 37:05

In this exciting episode of Joekub, we had the pleasure of interviewing the renowned Agile coach, trainer, and author, Lyssa Adkins. We discussed her book, "Coaching Agile Teams," which is known for its dense, insightful content that provides value to agile coaches even years after they first read it. We also delved into how AI is currently affecting the Agile coaching discipline and how Agile coaches can use technology to enhance their practice. Lastly Lyssa paints a picture of how Agile methods are perfectly suited to tackle the uncertainty we face in our future. The next step in agile coaching may be in solving the world's problems, not just building the next products or services. Lyssa's positive outlook on the future of Agile coaching and her deep knowledge and passion for the field made for a fascinating and inspiring interview. Tune in to Joekub to hear Lyssa Adkins share her valuable insights and wisdom! Links discussed in the interview LyssaAdkins.com Coaching Agile Teams: Kindle, Audiobook, Paperback The two 12-week programs: Coaching Agile Teams Guided Study & Practice Group (new one starting in late June) What else? Feels like I'm forgetting something here. Agilists and Planetary Challenges Collection site for stories - AgilityImpact.org Agility Impact Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/agility-impact/ More stories on Joanne's Wick'd Wisdom podcast - https://www.get-wicked.com/wicked-wisdom --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joekub/message

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Unlocking the potential of military veterans as agilists

Agile in Action with Bill Raymond

Play Episode Listen Later May 2, 2023 27:02

E29: Interview: Trond Hjorteland on a radical approach to organizational transformation

Oddly Influenced

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 10, 2023 44:40

Open Systems Theory (OST) is an approach to organizational transformation that dates back to the late 1940s. It's been applied a fair amount, but hasn't gotten much mindshare in the software world. It has similarities to Agile, but leans into self-organization in a much more thoroughgoing way.For example, in an OST organization, teams aren't given a product backlog, they create it themselves.if a team decides they need to slow the pace of delivery to learn new things or to spend more time refactoring, their decision is final.pay is based on skills, not productivity, so as to encourage multi-skilled people.team work is organized so that there are career paths within the team, rather than advancement depending on leaving a team and rising up in a hierarchy.OST is even more radical at the levels above the team. Unlike scaled-agile approaches like SAFe or LeSS, OST changes the jobs of the people higher in the org chart just as much – or more? – than people at the leaves of the tree. Specifically, the shift is from order-giving to coordination at different timescales. Individual "leaf" teams are responsible for the short term, the next level up is responsible for the medium term and external partners, and the CxO levels focus on the long term.This episode is an interview with Trond Hjorteland, who – after experience with Agile – did an impressively deep dive into OST.SourcesAs noted in the podcast, there's not much accessible documentation about OST. However, Trond and his merry band of (mostly) Agilists have begun work on a new site. Trond has also written "Thriving with complexity using open sociotechnical systems design", originally published in InfoQ. Trond's blog.Trond is on Mastodon at @trondhjort.Image creditThe image is from the cover of the Marvel Comics graphic novel Captain Marvel, Vol. 1: Higher, Further, Faster, More.

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S3E1 - Coaching Skills for Leaders

The Career Transition Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 5, 2023 63:22

In this episode you will guide people into action rather than micromanage them. If you feel like your team never listens to you then this is for you. If you feel like you're unable to persuade leadership, this is for you too.Here are 3 takeaways:1. How to be seen as a guide instead of a micromanager2. Adding "coaching" skills to your toolbox and earn respect at the leadership table3. Learn the difference between coaching and managingI also answer FAQ from my communityIf you'd like to dive deeper and work more closely with me to achieve similar results as my clients, I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a DM so we can schedule a virtual coffee. You can find me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadabuhendiIf you'd like to learn more about me, visit: https://www.nadabuhendi.com/about/. To learn more about Damon, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damonbpoole/ and check out his website at: https://facilitivity.comGet Damon's book Professional Coaching for Agilists: https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Coaching-Agilists-Damon-Poole-ebook/dp/B08JGQ2BC4

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Helping Middle Managers Thrive in Agile Transformations - Kathy Marshak | 2302

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2023 35:27

During our 2022 conversation, SAFe Fellow Kathy Marshak and Emily Lint sat down to discuss Middle Management in the agile space. Where do they belong? How do you bring them on the Agile journey with you? And, most importantly, how do we as Agilists help them thrive in these new ways of working. Take a listen to learn more! About the Featured Guest Kathy Marshak is a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Fellow, Business Agility Transformation Coach, and instructor with Icon Agility Services, Inc. She is passionate about guiding people through the cultural, organizational, and process changes required to increase business agility. Kathy has been applying SAFe since 2013 and working incrementally and iteratively since the mid-1990s. Follow Kathy Marshak on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathy-marshak-agility/) Reference(s) The Community Round Table (https://communityroundtable.com/) The Community Club (https://www.community.club/) The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile. This will get you entered to a monthly drawing for a goodie bag of Women In Agile Org swag! About our Host Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive. Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. You can also follow Emily on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-lint-802b2b88/). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Merry Agile Christmas! with Misi Eyetsemitan, Andrea Floyd, Kristan Chavious, Phillip Lisenba, Justin Thatil, Sidney Giovani, and Olu Soyele.

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 16, 2022 36:53

This week, Agile Santa (Dan Neumann) is the host of the Christmas Special Episode and he is accompanied by a special Elf (Misi Eyetsemitan) and by a fun group of Agile colleagues: Andrea Floyd, Kristan Chavious, Phillip Lisenba, Justin Thatil, Giovani Botarelli, and Olu Soyele. In this episode, they are making profound Agile wishes for us all. Key Takeaways ● Misi wishes organizations to find that the answers they are seeking have always been within them. ● Andrea wishes for curiosity for everyone on her Team, a curious perspective promotes learning and growth. ● Olu appreciates the blessings of this year; he shares his gratitude and he wishes his Team to keep on with their continuous learning and expand even more their Agile mindset. ● Kris hopes for everyone to have the courage to be more transparent about what they think without fearing the repercussions that might follow. ○ Experimentation is a better way to encourage people to innovate instead of telling them to do something different. ○ To be innovative you have to be courageous. ○ Innovation grows in a safe environment. ● Philip is thankful for his family and their health, for his work at Agile Thought, and for the opportunities to continuously improve. ○ Philip wishes for more people to adopt Agile Methodologies across the board, not just in their work but also in their personal lives. ● Giovani asks Agile Santa to replace the command and control mindset with a more Agile mindset. ○ Effective communication is the way to spread the Agile way. ● Justin has two wishes, one is for Agilists to be the source of change and growth and for everyone to keep gratitude always in mind. ○ Gratitude changes attitude. ○ As global citizens, we need to be conscious and aware of the impact that social media has on our society and how our view of reality is being altered by it. Mentioned in this Episode: How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, Maria Ressa | CEO of Rappler The age of surveillance capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power: Barack Obama's Books of 2019, by Shoshana Zuboff | American author, Harvard professor Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Badass Unscripted – Don't Quiet Quit…Do THIS Instead

Badass Agile

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2022 9:14

It's not the quitting part I have a problem with; it's the quiet part. You absolutely should insist on a sustainable, balanced life. Agilists are supposed to be good at this. You must reclaim your time – no one will do it for you. But how? Easy. Stop focusing on the “things you must do”. Meetings, admin, various tasks, and responding to emails. Focus on the top 3 high-value items to deliver. To make it easier, rank all of the things you (think) you are accountable for this week. Top to bottom, no ties. Now, draw a line under the top three. Those are the items you guarantee you will finish this week. Everything below the line – you probably won't get to. This is a far more effective strategy than disengaging in conversation and negotiation. It's not the way of the badass to simply quiet quit. ***JOIN THE FORGE*** Sign up for an upcoming info session about our online leadership immersion experience. https://event.webinarjam.com/register/2/98ol1c7 Or click here to discover more: https://badassagile.com/the-forge/ ****** ***WANT TO GROW AN AGILE BUSINESS?*** Check out my new premium podcast – “The Badass Agile Entrepreneur”. https://learning.fusechamber.com/#podcast/ We're also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me: https://www.youtube.com/c/BadassAgile Check out the new online magazine about the future of agility: https://www.theagilehorizon.com Looking for your first Scrum Master job? We help make the transition easier: https://www.agilesidekick.co ****** Follow on CLUBHOUSE: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/badass-agile Don't forget to join us in the Badass Agile Listener Lounge on Facebook for member exclusives, livestreams and previews! https://www.facebook.com/groups/badasslistenerlounge/ Follow The LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/badass-agile ****** Our mission is to create an elite tribe of leaders who focus on who they need to become in order to lead and inspire, and to be the best agile podcast and resource for effective mindset and leadership game. Contact us (contact@badassagile.com) for elite-level performance and agile coaching, speaking engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.

Badass Unscripted – Don’t Quiet Quit…Do THIS Instead

Badass Agile

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2022 9:14

It's not the quitting part I have a problem with; it's the quiet part. You absolutely should insist on a sustainable, balanced life. Agilists are supposed to be good at this. You must reclaim your time - no one will do it for you. But how? Easy. Stop focusing on the "things you must do". Meetings, admin, various tasks, and responding to emails. Focus on the top 3 high-value items to deliver. To make it easier, rank all of the things you (think) you are accountable for this week. Top to bottom, no ties. Now, draw a line under the top three. Those are the items you guarantee you will finish this week. Everything below the line - you probably won't get to. This is a far more effective strategy than disengaging in conversation and negotiation. It's not the way of the badass to simply quiet quit. ***JOIN THE FORGE*** Sign up for an upcoming info session about our online leadership immersion experience. https://event.webinarjam.com/register/2/98ol1c7 Or click here to discover more: https://badassagile.com/the-forge/ ****** ***WANT TO GROW AN AGILE BUSINESS?*** Check out my new premium podcast - "The Badass Agile Entrepreneur". https://learning.fusechamber.com/#podcast/ We're also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me: https://www.youtube.com/c/BadassAgile Check out the new online magazine about the future of agility: https://www.theagilehorizon.com Looking for your first Scrum Master job? We help make the transition easier: https://www.agilesidekick.co ****** Follow on CLUBHOUSE: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/badass-agile Don't forget to join us in the Badass Agile Listener Lounge on Facebook for member exclusives, livestreams and previews! https://www.facebook.com/groups/badasslistenerlounge/ Follow The LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/badass-agile ****** Our mission is to create an elite tribe of leaders who focus on who they need to become in order to lead and inspire, and to be the best agile podcast and resource for effective mindset and leadership game. Contact us (contact@badassagile.com) for elite-level performance and agile coaching, speaking engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.

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What are some blind spots agilists can use to be more influential?

Appfire Presents: The BEST Project Portfolio Management Show by Appfire

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2022 9:35

"What are some blind spots agilists can use to be more influential?" Find out in this episode of Appfire Presents: The Best Project Portfolio Management Show by Appfire. Tracy Walton, Director of Agile Services at ISOS Technology, joins Appfire's own Kerry O'Shea Gorgone to talk about three blind spots every agilist can use to be more influential. We get into how thinking and feeling affect influence, why the ability to be influenced is key to influencing others, and open vs. closed communication. Website: https://www.isostech.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyjwalton/ About The Show: The BEST Project Portfolio Management Show by Appfire covers everything you ever wanted to know about PPM by talking with project management experts who've seen it all. And every episode is 10 minutes or less, so you can get back to changing the world, one project at a time. Appfire.com

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(S2)E013: Jeff Sutherland on Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time with Scrum

Agile Innovation Leaders

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2021 49:48

Bio Dr. Jeff Sutherland is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum, the most widely used Agile framework across the globe. Originally used for software development, Jeff has also pioneered the application of the framework to multiple industries and disciplines. Today, Scrum is applied to solve complex projects in start-ups and Fortune 100 companies. Scrum companies consistently respond to market demand, to get results and drive performance at speeds they never thought possible. Jeff is committed to developing the Agile leadership practices that allow Scrum to scale across an enterprise. Dr. Sutherland is the chairman and founder of Scrum Inc. He is a signatory of the Agile manifesto and coauthor of the Scrum Guide and the creator Scrum@Scale. Jeff continues to teach, create new curriculum in the Agile Education Program and share best practices with organizations around the globe. He is the founder of Scrum Inc. and coauthor of, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, that has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Social Media: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeffsutherland Twitter: @jeffsutherland Website: Scrum Inc https://scruminc.com Books/ Articles: The Scrum Guide by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber http://www.scrumguides.org/index.html Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Scrum Fieldbook by JJ Sutherland Agile Competitors and Virtual Organisations by Steven Goldman, Roger Nagel and Kenneth Preiss https://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Competitors-Virtual-Organizations-Engineering/dp/0471286508 Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster Moving World by John P. Kotter Leading Change by John P. Kotter Process Dynamics, Modeling and Control by Babatunde A. Ogunnaike and Harmon W. Ray A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game by Jeff Sutherland, James Coplien, Mark den Hollander, et al Interview Transcript Introduction Ula Ojiaku: Hello everyone, my guest today is Dr Jeff Sutherland. He is the inventor and co-creator of Scrum, the most widely used Agile Framework across the globe. Originally used for Software Development, Jeff has also pioneered the application of the framework to multiple industries and disciplines. Today, Scrum is applied to deliver complex projects in startups and Fortune 100 companies. Dr Jeff Sutherland is the Chairman and Founder of Scrum Inc. He is a signatory of the Agile Manifesto and co-author of the Scrum Guide and the creator of Scrum at Scale. Jeff continues to teach, create new curriculum in the Agile education programme and share best practices with organisations around the globe. He has authored and co-authored a number of books which include Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time – which has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. In this episode, Dr Sutherland shares the backstory of how he and Ken Schwaber developed the Scrum framework. I was pleasantly surprised and proud to learn that one of the inspirations behind the current Scrum framework we now have was the work of Prof Babatunde Ogunnike, given my Nigerian heritage. Dr Sutherland also talked about the importance of Agile Leadership and his current focus on helping organisations fix bad Scrum implementations. I'm sure you'll uncover some useful nuggets in this episode. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dr Sutherland. Ula Ojiaku: Thank you, Dr. Sutherland, for joining us on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. It's a great pleasure to have you here. Jeff Sutherland: Glad to be here. Looking forward to it. Ula Ojiaku: Fantastic. So could you tell us about yourself? Jeff Sutherland: Well, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. And I always felt that I would go to West Point of the United States Military Academy, even at a very young age. And I finally made it there. I spent four years there. And I went on to a program where a certain number of cadets could join the Air Force. And I told the Air Force, if they made me a fighter pilot, I would move into the Air Force, which I did. I spent 11 years as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. And most of the operational aspects of Scrum actually come from that training. My last tour in the Air Force was actually at the US Air Force Academy, I was a professor of mathematics. And I had gone to Stanford University in preparation for that position. And I had worked closely with the, at the time he was Head of the Department of Psychiatry, became the Dean of Stanford who had studied under my father-in-law, he had become an MD under my father-in-law, who was a brilliant physician. And I was working on research papers with him, both at Stanford and at the Air Force Academy. And I asked him for guidance. And I said, I'm thinking about, given all the work we've done in the medical area. Starting in Stanford, I'm thinking maybe becoming a doctor - become an MD. And he strongly recommended against that he said, ‘you'll just go backwards in your career, what you need to do is you build on everything you've done so far. And what you have is your fighter pilot experience, your experience as a statistician, and a mathematician, you want to build on that.' So, I had already started into a doctoral program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, which was not far from the Air Force Academy. And so, I talked to my department Chairman there who offered me a position in the department running a large research grant, funded by the National Cancer Institute and so, I decided to exit the Airforce and join the medical school. While I was finishing up my doctoral degree. And as soon as my doctorate was finished, I became a professor of Radiology, preventive medicine and biometrics. I was a joint across multiple departments. And I was doing mathematical research on modeling, particularly the human cell on a supercomputer, (to) determine what caused cancer. And to do that required extensive mathematical research as well as the medical research. But at the end of the day, what we found was for any complex adaptive system, like a human cell, or a person or a team, they go through different states. And they're moved from one state to the next by some kind of intervention. And so, if you understand what causes those changes… turned out in the case of cancer, there were four different states that led to a tumor. And in every state, there were certain interventions, and if you knew what they were, you could prevent them and prevent cancer. Or you could even, to my surprise, take a cancer cell and make it go backward into a normal cell. So, this fundamental understanding is the theory behind Scrum. So, while I'm doing this all at the medical school, a large banking company came by and said, ‘you know, over the medical school, you guys have all the knowledge about the technologies; the new technology, we're using (for) banking, you're using for research.' And they said, ‘you guys have all the knowledge but we have all the money and they made me an offer to come join the bank' [Laughs]. Ula Ojiaku: [Laughs]You couldn't refuse Jeff Sutherland: Not just me, it was my family. So, I wind up as Vice President for Advanced Systems, which was effectively was the CTO for 150 banks that we were running across North America. Each was, you know, a dozen, 50, 100 branches. And of course, we were mainly doing the software, installation and support to run the banking operation, which is largely computer stuff – (this) is what banks run off. And as we're building these systems with hundreds and hundreds of developers, one of the first things I noticed is that all the projects were late. And I look at what they're doing. And they're using this process where they spend, you know, six months defining requirements, and then they put all the requirements into a Gantt chart. And then they, they plan on taking six months to build something, but it's never done. Because as soon as they start testing that they find there's all kinds of things that are broken. So, virtually every single project of the bank is late. So, as a head of technology, one day I walked into the CEO's office and I said, ‘Ron, have you noticed all your projects are late?' He said, ‘Yes'. He says, ‘Every morning at least five CIOs or CEOs of the banks, they call me up.' And he says, ‘they scream at me.' I said, ‘wow', I said, ‘You know, it's going to get worse, not better. Because these guys are using this, these Gantt Charts.' And I showed him one. And then being a mathematician, I mathematically proved that every project would be late at the bank. And he was stunned. And he said, ‘what should I do?' I said, ‘we need a completely different operating system in the bank.' This is back in 1983. ‘Let's take one business unit. Let's take the one that's losing the most money, okay, the worst business unit' Ula Ojiaku: They have nothing to lose then. Jeff Sutherland: And it was the automated teller division that was rolling out cash machines all over North America. It was a new technology and they had a ton of problems. So, I said, ‘let's take that unit and every one, sales, market, support, installation, we're going to split them down into small teams. And we're going to have Product Marketing come in on Monday with a backlog prioritized by business value. And at the end of the week, on Friday, we're going to deploy to 150 banks.' ‘And I'm going to train them how to land a project every week, just like I trained fighter pilots to land aircraft. I'm going to give them a burndown chart, we're going to throw away the Gantt Chart, I'm going to give them a burndown chart to show them how to land the project.' So, he said, ‘Well, that's gonna be a big headache.' I said, ‘look, the bank needs to be fixed.' He said, ‘Okay, you got it.' So, I took that unit. I told them, ‘I know it's gonna take several weeks,' today we call them sprints, ‘for you to be successful.' Because as new pilots, trained to land, these high-performance jets, they tend to come in high and then they have to come around and try to land again, they over and over, they practice until they can nail it. And it took them six weeks, six sprints to actually nail the end of the week (and) deploy (to) 150 banks. But within six months, it became… it went from the worst business unit in the bank to the most profitable business unit in the bank. And the senior management said, ‘you know, Jeff, here's another 20 million dollars to throw at whatever that thing you're doing [chuckles] it's the most profitable thing in the bank, we're gonna put more money in that [Laughs]. So that was the first prototype of what we call today Scrum at Scale. Now, I've been CTO of 11, or CTO or CEO of 11 different companies. And for the next 10 years, I prototyped that model and advanced technology teams until in 1993, at a company called Easel Corporation, we found that because of the tooling we were building and selling to customers, we needed to build the tool with what today we call Agile Practice. Ula Ojiaku: Yes Jeff Sutherland: And we need to train the customer to use the tool by having teams do an agile practice. So, in order to train our customers properly in 1993, we actually had to formalize what I've been prototyping for 10 years. And we wrote it down and at the time we were reading this paper, we're going through 1000 papers in the journals I, you know, I had done many new technology. And, in every one of them, you have to read everything that's ever been done so that you can go beyond. You can use everything that's been done, but then you go beyond, okay? Ula Ojiaku: Yeah Jeff Sutherland: So, it's a tremendous amount of research to launch new technology. And at about the 300th paper in our file, it was a paper out of the Harvard Business Review, which really surprised me, by two Japanese Business School professors, Professors Takeuchi and Nonaka. And in there, they described the best teams in the world. They were lean hardware teams that reminded them of a game of rugby, they said, ‘we're going to call what they're doing Scrum Project Management.' So, I said to the team, ‘we need a name for this thing that we're going to train our customers in, and let's call it Scrum.' And off we went. So, for the next two years, we were actually using Scrum within Easel deploying products. But it was not public, to the general industry. And Easel got acquired by a larger company. And at that time, I felt that this needed to be rolled out into the industry because we had benchmarked it with the best tooling in the world from the leading productivity company, and showed that it was… that (it) went 10 times faster [chuckles]. The quality was 10 times better, which is what you need for a new technology innovation. And so, I felt it was ready to go to the industry as a whole. So, I called up an old friend, Ken Schwaber. And he was a CEO of a traditional Project Management software company, a waterfall (methodology). He sold these methodologies with 303 ring binders, a software package that would make Gantt Charts [chuckles]. So, I said, ‘Ken, I want you to come up and see the Scrum, because it actually works and that stuff you're selling doesn't work – it makes projects late.' And he agreed to come in, he actually came up, he met with me. He stayed for two weeks inside the company, working, observing the Scrum team. And at the end of those two weeks, he said, ‘Jeff, you're right. This really works - it's pretty much the way I run my company.' He said, ‘if I ran my company with a Gantt Chart, we would have been bankrupt a long time ago.' So, I said, ‘well, why don't you sell something to work that works instead of inflicting more damage on the industry?' So, he said so we said ‘okay, how (do) we do it?' I said, ‘it needs to be open source, it needs to be free.' Ken felt we needed to take the engineering practices, many of which appear today in extreme programming… Ula Ojiaku: Yes Jeff Sutherland: …and let Kent Beck (creator of eXtreme Programming, XP) run with them because Kent had been sending me emails, ‘Jeff, send me every...', he had been following the development of Scrum, ‘…send me everything on Scrum, I'm building a new process. I want to use anything that you've done before and not try to reinvent anything.' So, he (Ken Schwaber) said, ‘let Kent take the engineering practices, we'll focus on the team process itself.' And we agreed to write the first paper on this to present at a big conference later that year. And writing that paper was quite interesting. Ken visited DuPont Chemical Corporation, the leading Chemical Process Engineers there that they had hired out of academia to stop chemical plants from blowing up. And when Ken met with them, they said, describe what we were doing in the software domain. They said, ‘you know, well, that process that traditional project management is a Predictive Process Control System. We have that in the chemical industry.' ‘But it's only useful if the variation in the process running is less than 4%.' They said, ‘do you have less than 4% change in requirements while you're building software?' Ken says, ‘no, of course not! It's over 50%!' And they started laughing at him. They said, ‘your project's going to be exploding all over the place.' ‘Because every chemical plant that has blown up has been somebody applying a predictive control system to a system that has high variability. You need to completely retrain industry to use Empirical Process Control, which will stop your projects from blowing up. And they said, here it is, here's the book, they had the standard reference book for Chemical Process Engineering. And in there, there's a chapter on Empirical Process Control, which is based on transparency, inspection, and adapting to what's happening in real time. Okay, so those are the three pillars of Scrum that are today at the base of the Scrum guide. Ula Ojiaku: Do you still remember the title of the book that the chemical engineers recommended to Mr. Schwaber by any chance? Jeff Sutherland: Yeah, so I have a, when I do training, I have a slide that has a picture of the book (Process Dynamics, Modelling and Control). It's written by Ogunnaike and Ray. But that is the root of the change that's gone on in the industry. And so then from 1995, forward, Ken and I started working together, I was still CTO of companies. And I would get him to come in as a consultant and work with me. And we'd implement and enhance the Scrum implementations in company after company after company. Until 2001, of course, Scrum was expanding but Extreme Programming in 2001, was actually the most widely deployed. They were only two widely-deployed agile processes at the time of Scrum and Extreme Programming. Extreme Programming was the biggest. And so, the Agile Manifesto meeting was convened. And it had 17 people there, but three of them were Scrum guys - that had started up Scrum, implemented it in companies, four of them were the founders of Extreme Programming. And the other 10 were experts who have written books on adaptive software development or, you know, lightweight processes, so, industry experts. And we, we talked for a day and everybody explained what they were doing and there was a lot of arguments and debate. And at the end of the day, we agreed because of this book, Agile Competitors, a book about 100 hardware companies - lean hardware companies, that have taken Lean to the next level, by involving the customer in the creation of the product. And we said, ‘we think that we all need to run under one umbrella. And we should call that Agile.' Ula Ojiaku: So, did you actually use the word umbrella in your (statement)? Oh, okay. Jeff Sutherland: Often, people use that right? Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes Jeff Sutherland: Because at the time, we had Agile and Extreme Programming, and now everybody's trying to come up with their own flavor, right? All under the same umbrella of ‘Agile'. And that caused the both Scrum and Extreme Programming started to expand even more, and then other kinds of processes also. But Scrum rapidly began to take dominant market share, Scrum today is about 80% of what people call Agile. The reason being, number one, it was a technology that was invented and created to be 10 times better. So, it was a traditional new technology developed based on massive amounts of research. So, it worked. But number two, it also scaled it worked very well for many teams. I mean, there are many companies today like Amazon that have thousands of Scrum teams. And Extreme Programming was really more towards one team. And (reason number) three, you could distribute it across the world. So, some of the highest performing teams are actually dozens of teams or hundreds across multiple continents. And because of those three characteristics, it's (Scrum has) dominated the market. So that brings us to in 2006, I was asked by a Venture Capital firm to help them implement Scrum in their companies, they felt that Scrum was a strategic advantage for investment. And not only that, they figured out that it should be implemented everywhere they implemented it within the venture group, everybody doing Scrum. And their goal was to double their return on investment compared to any other venture capital firm. They pretty much have done that by using Scrum, but then they said, ‘Jeff, you know, we're hiring you as a consultant into our companies. And you're a CTO of a healthcare company right now. And we don't want to build a healthcare company, we want to build a Scrum company.' ‘So, why don't you create Scrum Inc. right here in the venture group? We'll support it, we'll do the administrative support. We'll write you a check - whatever you want.' So, I said, ‘well, I'm not going to take any money because I don't need it [chuckles]. I understand how that works. If the venture capital firm owns your company, then (in the) long term, you're essentially their slave for several years. So, I'm not taking any money. But I will create the company within the venture group. If you provide the administrative support, I'll give you 10% of the revenue and you can do all the finances and all that kind of stuff. So, that's the way Scrum Inc. was started to enable an investment firm to launch or support or invest in many dozens of Scrum companies. Ula Ojiaku: That's awesome Jeff Sutherland: And today, we're on the sixth round of investment at OpenView Venture Partners, which was the company the six round is 525 million. There's a spin out from OpenView that I'm working with, that has around this year, 25 million. And over the years, just co-investing with the venture group I have my own investment fund of 50 million. So, we have $570 million, right this year 2021 that we're putting into Scrum companies. Agile companies, preferably Scrum. Ula Ojiaku: Now when you say Scrum companies is it that they facilitate the (Scrum) training and offer consulting services in Scrum or is it that those companies operate and you know, do what they do by adopting Scrum processes? Jeff Sutherland: Today, Scrum Inc sometimes help some of those companies, but in general, those companies are independently implementing Scrum in their organizations. Ula Ojiaku: Right Jeff Sutherland: And okay, some of them may come to Scrum training, maybe not. But since Scrum is so widely deployed in the industry, Scrum Inc, is only one of 1000 companies doing Scrum training and that sort of stuff. So, they have a wide variety, wide area of where they can get training and also many of the startups, they already know Scrum before they started the company. They are already Agile. So, what we're interested in is to find the company that understands Agile and has the right team players, particularly at the executive level, to actually execute on it. Ula Ojiaku: No matter what the product or services (are)… Jeff Sutherland: Products or services, a lot of them are software tooling companies, but some of them are way beyond that, right? So, turns out that during COVID… COVID was a watershed. The companies that were not agile, they either went bankrupt, or they were crippled. That meant all the Agile companies that could really do this, started grabbing all the market share. And so, many of our companies, their stock price was headed for the moon during COVID [laughs]. While the non-agile companies were flatlined, or are going out of business, and so the year of COVID was the best business year in the history of venture capital because of Agility. So, as a result, I'm spending half my time really working, investing in companies, and half of my time, working with Scrum (Inc.) and supporting them, helping them move forward. Ula Ojiaku: That's a very impressive resume and career story really Dr. Sutherland. I have a few questions: as you were speaking, you've called Scrum in this conversation, a process, a tooling, the technology. And you know, so for some hardcore Agilists, some people will say, you know, Agile is all about the mindset for you, what would you say that Scrum is it all of these things you've called it or would it be, you know, or it's something (else)...? Jeff Sutherland: So, certainly the (Agile) mindset is important. But from an investment point of view, if the organization can't deliver real value, quickly, agile is just a bunch of nonsense. And we have a huge amount of nonsense out there. In fact, the Standish group has been publishing for decades. 58% of Agile teams are late over budget with unhappy customers. So, when you get these hardcore Agilist, that are talking about mindset, you have to figure out ‘are they in the 42% that actually can do it or are they in the 58% that are crippled?' My major work with Scrum Inc. today is to try to get to fix the bad Scrum out there. That is the biggest problem in the Agile community. People picking up pieces of things, people picking up ideas, and then putting together and then it doesn't work (laugh). That is going to that's going to be really bad for agile in the future. If 58% of it continues not to work. So, what we found, I mean, it was really interesting. Several years ago, the senior executive (of) one of the biggest Japanese companies flew to Boston wanted meet with me. And he said to me, ‘the training is not working in Japan for Scrum.' He said, ‘I spent 10 years with Google, in Silicon Valley. So, I know what it looks like what actually works. And I can tell you, it's not working in Japan, because the training is… it's not the training of the Scrum that is high performing. And in fact, our company is 20% owned by Toyota, and we are going to be the trainers of Toyota. And we cannot deliver the training that's currently being given to Toyota, it will not work, it will not fly. And we want to create a company called Scrum Inc. Japan. And we're a multibillion-dollar company, we're ready to invest whatever it takes to make that happen.' To give them the kind of training that will produce the teams that Takeuchi and Nonaka were writing about in the first paper on Scrum. And as we work with them to figure out what needs to be in that training, we found that the Scrum Guide was only 25% of the training. Another 25% was basic Lean concepts and tooling, right? Because the original Scrum paper was all about Lean hardware companies. So Lean is fundamental to Scrum. If you don't understand it, you can't do it. And then third, there are certain patterns of performance that we've developed over the years, we spent 10 years writing a book on patterns - Scrum patterns. And there's about a dozen of those patterns that have to be implemented to get a high performing team. And finally, scaling to multiple teams. It turns out, right about this time I started working with the Japanese, I was at a conference with the Agile Leadership from Intel. And they told me that they'd introduced Scaling Frameworks into Intel division, some of which had more than 500 Scrum teams in the divisions and the Scaling Frameworks had slowed them down. And it made the senior executives furious and they threw them all out and they said, we did not want to hear the word Scrum at Intel anymore. But you guys need to go twice as fast as you're going now. So, they came to me, they said, ‘we're desperate. We have to go twice as fast. We can't even use the word “Scrum”. What should we do?' And they blamed me, they said, ‘Sutherland you're responsible [Laugh] you caused problem, you need to fix it.' So, I started writing down how to do what today we call Scrum at Scale. And everybody, you know, most of those people in the industry were implementing IT scaling frameworks. They were all upset. ‘Why are you writing down another framework?' Well, it's because those IT frameworks do not enable the organization to show Business Agility, and win in the market. And in the best companies in the world, they're being thrown out. So, I've had to write down how do you add, how do you go to hundreds and thousands of Scrum teams - and never slow down as you're adding more and more teams. You know, every team you add is as fast as the first team when you start. Yeah, that's what Scrum at Scale is all about. So, there's two primary things that I'm focused on today. One is to fix all this bad Scrum. Second is to fix the scaling problem. Because it turns out that if you look at the latest surveys from Forbes magazine, and the Scrum Alliance on successful Agile transformations - I learned recently, that almost every company in the world of any significance is going through an Agile transformation or continuing transformation they'd already started years ago. And 53% of them do not meet management expectations. And the MIT Sloan Business Review did an analysis of what happens if an agile transformation fails, and 67% of those companies go out of business. So, this is becoming really serious, right? To be successful today, if you're competing in any significant way, you have to be agile. And number two, if you try to be agile and fail, you have a 67% chance going out of business. And the failure rate is 53%. So, this is the problem that we're wrestling with. And half of that 53% failure is due to the bad Scrum we talked about, but the other half is due because of the leadership not being Agile. Ula Ojiaku: I was just going to say, as you said something about the leadership not being agile. In my experience, you know, as an agile coach in some organizations whilst the teams would embrace you know, Scrum and embrace Agility - the practices and the processes and everything. There's a limit to, you know, how much they can get done… Jeff Sutherland: Absolutely… Ula Ojiaku: …if the leadership are not on board. So… Jeff Sutherland: …you hit this glass ceiling. So, I've been, you know, giving presentations on Agile Transformations around the world. And I can remember multiple times I've had 300 people in the room, say, and I say okay, ‘How many of you are agile, in Agile transformations or continuing the ones you'd started?' Of course, everybody raises their hand. ‘How many of you have waterfall traditional management that expects you to deliver all the old (laugh) Gantt Chart reports that we always got, and don't understand what you're doing?' There's 300 people in the room and 297 people raised their hand. I said, ‘you need to give your leadership the book by Professor Kotter called Accelerate.' Professor Kotter is one of the leading change experts of the world. Ula Ojiaku: And he also, yeah, He also wrote ‘Leading Change' as well - the book, yes. Jeff Sutherland: And in that book, he says, if the leadership of the Agile part of the organization is traditional in their mindset and requirements, the Agile Transformation will eventually fail 100% of the time. Ula Ojiaku: Those are sobering statistics in terms of, you know, the failure rate and how much of you know the success hinges on business agility and the leadership being agile as well and taking the time to know and care what it means. Yeah. Jeff Sutherland: And what's happening is that the Agile Leadership today, if you look at some of the companies that have been most successful during COVID, one of them is John Deere Corporation, the biggest farm equipment manufacturer in the world, probably the oldest. Their stock price went up more than Amazon during COVID. And the board of directors gave their Agile Leadership, the Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, the highest award in the Corporation for producing that result. So that's another reason I'm trying to communicate to Agile people. The success and survival of your company depends on you. You think your management's going to save you but no, if they are old-style people, they are going to run that company out of business. And you need to either save it before it goes out of business or run to another company before bad things happen. Ula Ojiaku: It's impressive that, you know, John Deere being a farm equipment manufacturer… I think they were ahead of the curve you know, (compared to some of their contemporaries in that industry as well) and embraced agile ways of working. Do you know how their Agile Leadership were able to quantify their contributions to the company? Jeff Sutherland: John Deere started to get Agile more than 10 years ago. So, they've been at it a long time. But in recent years, they really started to build… build internally… Agile leadership, you know, based on my work and they started applying that across the company. I mean, the major focus has not been software actually – it's been in other parts of the company. What has to happen to run a company that's building tractors? [chuckles]. Well, there's all kinds of things that have to happen, you know - purchasing, there's legal [Laugh], there's acquiring all the pieces, it's putting them together at the assembly line, you know, software is a piece of it. You know, that's probably the easiest piece to fix with Agile, it's the rest of the company that's the challenge. They have started doing that really well which is reflected in their stock price. Ula Ojiaku: Amazing. So, you said something about you know, you're out to fix a couple of things, the problem with bad Scrum out there. And, you know, the problem with scaling agile. Jeff Sutherland: Right Ula Ojiaku: So, with respect to the first one, the point about bad Scrum, what in your experience would be the root cause of bad Scrum implementations in organizations? Jeff Sutherland: There're about 11 things, that if you fix them, the team will go twice as fast. And it's multiplicative. So, you know, we have extensive data on, you know, really big companies. What's the difference between the fastest team and the slowest teams? The fastest teams are 2000 times faster than the slowest teams. So why is that? Well, first, the team has to be small. The optimal team size is four or five people. If you have a 10-person team, that's going to take at least 50% longer to get anything done. If you go out, look at the team size, you'll see companies have even not only ten-people teams, they have 15 people in a team, 25 people in a team, okay? Those teams are never gonna meet Agile performance. Second, the backlog needs to be really ready in a sense of small, it's clearly understood, it's properly prioritized. So, you need somebody managing that backlog that can get it right, because we have extensive data for multiple case studies showing the team's production doubles immediately. As soon as you get that backlog right. So you go into many companies, you'll see, there's still arguing about what's the top priority, right? Or everything's top priority. That's just gonna create a massive mess. Third, teams are constantly interrupted. You know, the only teams I know that aren't interrupted are people… these teams and defense contractors working on top secret stuff. And they work in a locked room, [Laughs] the door, it says ‘no managers can enter', [Laugh] and they don't get interrupted. But for the rest of us, there's always somebody coming in wanting something else done. And there's a way to manage that using a pattern we call the interrupt buffer. And if you don't have that pattern implemented properly, you're gonna go half as fast. If you're lucky, you might go half as fast. Ula Ojiaku: And what do you say the Scrum Master has a part to play in making sure the interrupt buffer is there and it's enforced? Jeff Sutherland: The scrum master needs to set this all up. Fifth, in high performing teams, we see this pattern called swarming, where multiple people are working on a story together. That increases the process efficiency, which doubles the performance of the team. So, if people are specialists working independently, that team is going to be really slow. So I'm up to number five, there are six more things, but you probably want to go through them. It's very clear, what makes agile teams suck, we know exactly why. And it needs to be fixed. So, I appeal to anyone listening to this help [Laugh] fix bad agile, it's hurting us all. Ula Ojiaku: Thank you for sharing that. Would this be in any of any of your books or in any of your articles that you've written? Jeff Sutherland: Yeah, it's everywhere and (in) everything I've written, but the best summary, it's the red book Scrum … Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work and Half the Time And we've had people pick, pick this up. A CEO in Kenya came to New York to one of my courses, he said, ‘Jeff, I just read your book. And I'm CEO with three new energy startups in Kenya. And my teams implemented that, and they're going… they're doing three times the work and a third of the time. So, your book is too conservative.' He says to me, this guy, he only read the book, he had no training. So, this book is enough to really get off on the right foot. And if you're having problems, it's enough to fix things. In fact, recently before COVID when we could get everybody together, we had an Apple employee in the class and she said, Jeff, do you know why Apple always meet its states? I said, no, you know, Apple is really secretive. They don't tell anybody anything. She says ‘it's because they do Scrum by the book.' So, I said, ‘What book?' She says, ‘The Red Book - Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work and Half the Time - they do it exactly by the book.' So, again, my message to the Agilists out there: Apple is winning. They are the most valuable company in the world. And it's because they do Scrum exactly by that book. So, you probably should read it. Ula Ojiaku: Definitely. So going by the book, would you say there's any wriggle room for adapting to one's context, or is it about you know, going, ‘check- we've done page 123…' Jeff Sutherland: Well, the whole thing about adapting is fundamental to Scrum. So, one of the things I'm constantly doing in my talks, training, is I'm going back to before Scrum and reading a paper from the leading researchers on complex adaptive systems, in which they mathematically proved, you model things on the computer, that systems evolve more quickly, if they have more degrees of freedom, up until you hit a boundary where the system goes into a chaotic state. So, from the very beginning in Scrum, maximizing the freedom and the decision capability of the team has been fundamental. And we talked about this as self-organization. Now, unfortunately, that term has been so misused, misunderstood that we had to take self-organization out of the Scrum guide. And what we inserted was self-managing. And we put next to it goals, okay, the theme is self-managing to achieve a goal. And to make that happen, they need a commitment to do that. And so, this is one of the fundamental things for Agile teams that work that they have that self-managing commitment to achieve a goal. And the teams that are not working, they're fuzzy about that, right. So, we want the maximum degree of adaptation, the thing that they don't want to change is the basic structure that's in the red book, if they change that, it has the control mechanisms to allow the maximum degree of self-organization - not to go off the rails. Ula Ojiaku: Right. Jeff Sutherland: So, we see a lot of Agilists, ‘oh, you know, let's just tweak the framework this way or that way.' And then the self-organization takes a team off the rails, and then they fall into that 58% that can't deliver, they're late, they're over budget, the customers aren't happy. And so, this is the really one of the hardest things to communicate to people. There're certain things that you absolutely have to be disciplined about. You have to be more disciplined to get a great Agile team than in all ways of working. And that discipline is what allows the maximum degree of self-organization and self-determination, [Laugh] right? So, understanding those two things together, you know, it makes it makes people's brain explode, [Laugh] right? It's hard. Ula Ojiaku: But it works. Jeff Sutherland: But it works right. [Laugh] Ula Ojiaku: You've already mentioned a lot of books in the course of this interview session, and these would be in the show notes. So, would there be anything any final word of advice you'd have for the leaders that would be listening to this podcast in terms of their transformation journey? Jeff Sutherland: So, one of the things we did to Scrum at Scale is that the difference between that and most of the other scaling frameworks is that it's all about the leadership. So, we need an operating leadership team, that is a Scrum team that needs a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, backlog. And its objective is to improve the Agile implementation of the organization. On the prioritization side, we need a leadership team that, led by a Chief Product Owner, that is prioritizing backlog across the organization. So, you know, I've had the Chief Product Owner of Hewlett Packard in my course, he had a $200 billion portfolio. He learned from that class. Says this class is pretty good.' He said, ‘In just one slide I figured out how to get $20 billion more a year with no additional resources' [Laugh]. Just by understanding how to work the framework right? At the $200 billion level. Ula Ojiaku: And you're talking about the Scrum at Scale course, right? Jeff Sutherland: No, this was a product owner course. Product Owner course. He came to it. We're now doing a Scrum at Scale… we're actually doing a Chief Product Owner course. So, a Product Owners at Scale course which it has been really well received by the leading Agile Practitioners. (They) really like that because they need to work more in the large than in the small often. Ula Ojiaku: Definitely. That means this available on the Scrum Inc site? Jeff Sutherland: Yes. Ula Ojiaku: Okay. Jeff Sutherland: So, one of the things I would recommend I would really recommend is the Scrum Field Book. It's a bunch of case studies for organizations, large and small, that have tried to take the whole organization to Scrum. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Sutherland - it's been a great pleasure having you and hopefully we could have a you know, follow up conversation sometime. Jeff Sutherland: Yes. Thanks for inviting me and glad to do it again. Ula Ojiaku: That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com. Also share with friends and leave a review. This would help others find the show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com. Till next time, take care and God bless! PROMOTION: Sign up for a free month's trial with Amazon Music to get unlimited, ad-free access to 75 million songs, podcasts in HD here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/music/unlimited?tag=agileinnovati-21 * * By clicking "Sign up and pay," you agree to the Terms of Use and authorize Amazon to charge your default card, or another card £7.99 per month after your trial. Your subscription renews automatically until cancelled. Cancel renewal anytime by visiting Your Amazon Music Settings.

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BONUS: Why Experience is the Agile 3.0 | Jurgen Appelo

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2021 35:06

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes. About Jurgen Appelo Jurgen describes himself as “the creative networker”. But sometimes he's a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, illustrator, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, freethinker, or… Dutch guy. Inc.com has called him a Top 50 Leadership Expert and a Top 100 Leadership Speaker. He's also one of the most influential Agilists, thanks to his work on Agile Management with his book Management 3.0

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Ep. 18 | Mastering Agile Retrospectives (feat. Diana Larson)

The Agile Coach Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2021 53:04

The 12th principle of the Agile Manifesto reads as follows: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” This principle has traditionally been observed through what are called retrospectives. In many cases, the true intentions of the retrospective are lost as we approach them as nothing more than meetings we hold because we‘ve been told they're necessary. We show up, make a list of what we did and what we can do better and go on with the same ole routine spring after sprint. However, a meeting is just a meeting and a list is just a list without intentionality and further action. The purpose of a retrospective is to bring your team together, be transparent with one another so that you can align your goals, and make concrete decisions regarding how your next sprint can be even better than the last. Today we sit down with author, speaker, and professional Agile leader, Diana Larson and deep dive into Agile retrospectives, discussing topics such as the purpose of a retrospective, the 5-step retrospective framework and how to make good retrospectives great. Our Speaker: Diana Larson When it comes to Agile retrospectives, Diana Larson literally helped write the book. Her publication, “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” is world-renowned and has helped countless Agile leaders fully embrace the power that the 12th Agile principle has to offer. Presently, Diana dedicates her time to the company she co-founded: The Agile Fluency Project. Here, her goal is to help new and experienced Agilists make the most of Agile practices within the needs of their businesses and teams. In her free time, Diana enjoys staying connected with the Agile community, speaking at meet-ups and going on podcasts like the one you're hearing today! We are proud to welcome Diana Larson. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theagilecoach/support

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Professional Coaching for Agilists

Agile Book Club

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2021 61:17

Get the book.What is a Product Coach?Join our Slack group.Support the show (http://patreon.com/agilebookclub)

AgileConnex with Dawn Nicole McIlwain

Agile Chicago Style Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 2, 2021 49:29

Dawn Nicole McIlwain has created a Social Media platform for Agilists. She joins Rick, Mike and Matt to talk about how it is helping the Agile community come together, without the 'noise' that other Social Media platforms distract us with.

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SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Ivana Gancheva on Learning to see the Big Picture of Agile Organizations

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 26, 2020 33:35

For Christmas week 2020, we have a special treat for you. Yves Hanoulle and I interview great Agilists and Scrum Masters that you will probably not hear from in your local Agile conference. These are people that are really pushing the state of the practice, and we want to bring their forward-looking, and hopeful ideas to you in our Christmas Special Week for 2020. One of the things that is clear from this interview is how the role of community is important in our journey as Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches. Ivana shares how she got started with Agile, and how the community helped her learn where to focus and improve her skills and knowledge. Learning about our personal Prime Directive Ivana calls on us to reflect, and learn about what our personal Prime Directive is, and based on that develop our Agile practice. Ivana shares that her prime directive is about focusing on the “bigger picture” and the culture and leadership context she works within. We also talk about what that “bigger picture” is like in practice. From understanding the type of business we are working in, to mapping out the relationships and influencers within the organization. Ivana always tries to create a mental map of what influences the people she works with in her context. Continuous Improvement, the missing lesson in Agile Ivana’s experience has helped her understand that many teams get focused on the “tool” or “process” of Agile, and forget that ultimately we are trying to build the habit of continuously getting better at what we do. In this segment, we talk about the importance of double-loop learning for Agilists as well as Solution Focused Coaching. We also discuss the book Crucial Conversations, and some key lessons we can take from that approach. Learning about the big picture, a perspective to take on as an Agile Coach and Scrum Master Ivana’s focus on the “bigger picture” has also come thanks to the book Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar Schein. The book influenced Ivana’s perspective when working with organizations, and she still goes back to that book, and its particular way of defining and describing organizations. Finally, Ivana leaves us with the idea that we should be learning and sharing as a community. Just like she did in this incredibly insightful podcast episode! About Ivana Gancheva Ivana is passionate about working with people not titles. She works with companies from various sectors to help improve their organisational culture and well-being by helping them become learning and growing organisations. She coaches and mentors decision makers, C-level corporate executives, leaders, product managers, who have the passion and the intent to disrupt the status quo, and enable genuine growth. You can link with Ivana Gancheva on LinkedIn and connect with Ivana Gancheva on Twitter.

SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Learning to speak freely as an engine of improvement for Agile teams | Yogini Moodley

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2020 26:43

For Christmas week 2020, we have a special treat for you. Yves Hanoulle and I interview great Agilists and Scrum Masters that you will probably not hear from in your local Agile conference. These are people that are really pushing the state of the practice, and we want to bring their forward-looking, and hopeful ideas to you in our Christmas Special Week for 2020. When Yogini took on her Scrum Master journey, she noticed that there was more friction in the team. Curious, she looked into the reasons for that friction. After all, they had just left Waterfall-like ways of working behind. What was causing that friction? Was it Agile? As she looked more into it, she found that Agile had something to do with it, but the real reason for the friction between team members was that they were, for the first time, honestly discussing the problems they were facing. They were no longer apathetic, and that was visible in the level of friction between them. Another side effect of Agile adoption, Yogini noticed, was that the team was much more productive, “they did more in a month, than I thought was possible in six!” Yogini shares. A key lesson for Agile teams: speak freely This story led to a key lesson for Yogini. Agile teams improve and transform their ways of working when they speak freely and aren’t afraid to tackle tough conversations. When teams finally take on the difficult topics that are impeding their progress, they often fail to reach consensus. However, as Yogini reminds us, that’s no reason not to act. “Buy-in does not imply consensus!” She reminds us. Retrospectives as the engine of growth and learning Retrospectives are the aspect of Agile methodologies that Yogini wants to highlight as key for teams and individuals working in an Agile environment. And in that spirit, Yogini recommends Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby as the book for all agilists to read and learn from. In the spirit of self-improvement, Yogini mentions and recommends the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. She reminds us that part of the Scrum Master’s responsibility is to improve herself, otherwise improvements elsewhere are less likely to happen. The Christmas Agile Message from Yogini Moodley Yogini asks us, in this festive season, to take time to reflect, and practice being mindful of what we do, say and feel. The challenge she leaves us with: “think about the habits you have at the moment, and what you’d like to leave behind, in 2020” Merry Christmas friends! About Yogini Moodley Yogini is a certified Scrum Master and agile practitioner, with extensive experience in the financial services industry, in roles that encompass both business and technology. She is passionate about enriching the lives of people and nurturing and growing teams to deliver value to their customers, and an active member of the agile community locally and globally. You can link with Yogini Moodley on LinkedIn and connect with Yogini Moodley on Twitter. You can also find out more about Yogini Moodley’s company at their website.

SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Marton ‘Meza’ Meszaros on the essence of Agile

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2020 26:57

For Christmas week 2020, we have a special treat for you. Yves Hanoulle and I interview great Agilists and Scrum Masters that you will probably not hear from in your local Agile conference. These are people that are really pushing the state of the practice, and we want to bring their forward-looking, and hopeful ideas to you in our Christmas Special Week for 2020. Meza started as a programmer, but not with Agile. During one of his projects, he had to work with a custom language in an embedded system, and that led him to discover Extreme Programming and Unit Testing, but that was not yet the start of his Agile journey. That came later and for totally different reasons. Leading Teams, and the need for Agile As Meza took on more responsibilities, he understood that supporting teams in their work is a different problem than solving a technical challenge. He started reading more, and learning more about Agile to make sense of it, and finally had that “trigger” moment that helped him understand why Agile is so important. As a team leader, he recognized that he needed to focus on enabling the team’s success, instead of telling the team what to work on. That led to Meza starting to learn even more, and applying Agile in his work. The problem with Agile adoption: shaping the people to the process, instead of the other way around As Meza worked with more teams, he understood that his approach needed to change. Early on, he focused on the process, and helping teams adopt the process. But later, and after many challenges, he understood that the focus on helping teams (and using the process as a tool), requires a significantly different perspective: the process and the tools need to be shaped to fit the people, not the other way around. After all, Agile (and the Agile processes) are supposed to be there to enable better communication, collaboration, and a trustful environment. The books that Meza still reads even today Combining his knowledge, and experience has been a thread in his career, and Meza shares a book that helps with exactly that: take advantage of multiple processes he learn3ed during his career: Scrum and Kanban, making the best of both by Henri Kniberg is the first book he mentions. But there’s a second book. As a programmer, Meza understood early on that the technical conditions set up for the team are critical for their success, so he mentions a book that helped him as a programmer: Release It! By Michael Nygard, a book that explores how to create systems that run longer, with fewer failures, and recover better when bad things happen. The essence of Agile by Marton Meza Meszaros In this final words on this episode, Meza shares what he considers the essence of Agile: to build trust, and how the trust-building processes are at the core of everything Agile. About Marton ‘Meza’ Meszaros You can link with Marton ‘Meza’ Meszaros on LinkedIn and connect with Marton ‘Meza’ Meszaros on Twitter.

SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Retaining the purpose for your Agile adoption | Katrina Clokie

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 22, 2020 28:19

For Christmas week 2020, we have a special treat for you. Yves Hanoulle and I interview great Agilists and Scrum Masters that you will probably not hear from in your local Agile conference. These are people that are really pushing the state of the practice, and we want to bring their forward-looking, and hopeful ideas to you in our Christmas Special Week for 2020. Katrina is the author of A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps, a book that offers direction and advice relevant to anyone involved in testing in a DevOps environment. She started her Agile transition after a long stint within a waterfall organization, and she shares some of the most contrasting changes she experienced when moving to an Agile organization. Ultimately, she reminds us, the Agile approach is much closer to the final purpose: solving a problem for a customer out there. And she reminds us that we should try to keep that purpose front and center at all times. Learning to be persuasive: a key lesson for Scrum Masters and all agile practitioners When we dive into Katrina’s most important lesson learned in her Agile journey, we discuss the need to bring our best persuasive game with us. We discuss some of the reasons why the ability to persuade others is so important, for example testers will often be outnumbered in an Agile team, and their ideas are less likely to be followed if they can’t “bring others along”. In this segment, we refer to a key book for all wanting to learn more about influencing colleagues and building collaborative relationships: How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Books for Agilists and Agile leaders The books that Katrina chose to recommend remind us that often we need to express our leadership abilities, and we can do that only if we cultivate those through reading and practice. We talk about Lara Hogan’s Resilient Management, The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier, and Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren et al. About Katrina Clokie Katrina is an accomplished and experienced IT leader. She is a regular keynote at international conferences where the main themes include leadership, knowledge sharing, and communicating change. In 2017 Katrina published her first book, A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps. Katrina was a finalist for the Inspiring Individual of the Year Award at the 2018 New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards. You can link with Katrina Clokie on LinkedIn and connect with Katrina Clokie on Twitter.

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SPECIAL XMAS BONUS: Rashina Hoda on using Scrum, Kanban and Agile in academic research

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2020 18:24

For Christmas week 2020, we have a special treat for you. Yves Hanoulle and I interview great Agilists and Scrum Masters that you will probably not hear from in your local Agile conference. These are people that are really pushing the state of the practice, and we want to bring their forward-looking, and hopeful ideas to you in our Christmas Special Week for 2020. When Rashina first got introduced to Agile, she was mesmerized. It was a way of looking at software that focused on people instead of only on the technical aspects of the work to be done. The key lesson for Agilists, Rashina’s view When we asked Rashina about the most important lesson learned while learning Agile, she shared that it was the ability to deal with, and thrive in uncertainty. The year of 2020 is a great backdrop to illustrate this lesson, and we discuss some of those aspects. Rashina then explains what she has learned from Agile that she now applies in her work as a researcher. In this segment, we refer to Rashina’s work, and her website. The reference book for agilists Agile Retrospectives by Diana and Esther, is the reference book that Rashina refers to. As she puts it: “of all the different practices, Retrospective reflection is the one that brings it back home.” And I totally agree, however, she also refers to the New New Product Development Game. A foundational paper that illustrated the power of self-organization in product development. We discuss what aspects from that paper we can learn from and apply to our work as Scrum Masters. Inspiring others If you want to know more about Rashina and her work you can visit her website, and listen to her TED Talk on Agile Nations. This is the last message, the inspiring message that Rashina leaves for us: “thing big. Agile is already wide spread, but we can learn from it and apply it to more and more challenges.” What an inspiring interview! Merry Christmas everybody! About Rashina Hoda Rashina is an Associate Professor and the Associate Dean (Academic Workforce) in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia. She’s been studying people and how they become agile for over a decade. My PhD research explained how agile teams self-organize through the informal roles they play. Rashina has written and spoken extensively on agile transformations, agile project management, customer collaboration, team practices, reflective practices, and culture, with over 70 publications on these topics. In 2017, Rashina’s Theory of Becoming Agile received the distinguished paper award at the prestigious International Conference on Software Engineering. But she has also applied the theory to a wider societal context and coined the idea of “Agile Nations” captured as a TEDxAuckland talk. You can link with Rashina Hoda on LinkedIn and connect with Rashina Hoda on Twitter.

Ep. 6 | Deconstructing Srumban & Going From Control to Trust (feat. Andrew Stellman)

The Agile Coach Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2020 63:58

The secret to any good relationship is trust. Trust is not just what holds a relationship together, but it's also what propels it forward and allows it to grow in a way that is satisfying to all parties. It's easy to convince ourselves that a company is just a building; that it's simply mechanical. However, a company should be thought of more so as one big relationship because it's made up of people. It's not just a building, it's a business owner, a manager, a team leader, an employee. All of these people come together and form relationships as they work towards a common goal. When you stop thinking about a company as a machine in need of oil and rather as people with relationships in need of trust, that's when things will begin to take off. Scrumban is a combination of Scrum and Kanban, two distinct methods of mixing trust with efficient product-delivery. In today's podcast, we sit down with Agilist, Andrew Stellman and take a closer look at the proper implementation of Scrumban and how it relates to transitioning a company from a culture of control to one of trust. Andrew Stellman earned a degree in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon, but although he started out as a humble software developer, he has since come to develop a generation of Agilists through his work as a product manager, consultant and O'Reilly published author. Some of his literary works include, "Beautiful Teams," "Learning Agile," "Applied Software Project Management," "Head First Agile," "Head First PMP," and "Head First C#". He's worked with both small and large, 80+ person teams and served as the Vice President of Goldman Sachs for five years. We are proud to introduce Andrew Stellman. To connect with Andrew, visit his website Stellman-Greene.com or find him on LinkedIn and Twitter @AndrewStellman. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theagilecoach/support

049: Ways a PMO Can Support Agile Projects

PMO Strategies

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2020 34:30

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! NOTE: For the very best experience, listen to this episode on your favorite podcast provider here. This episode is sponsored by Revolutionize Project Delivery through Agile Portfolio Management Download this whitepaper to respond faster to changing priorities, deliver strategic projects more quickly and accurately plan capacity through an Agile approach to portfolio management. .fusion-button.button-1 {border-radius:2px;}DOWNLOAD NOW Show Notes: Hey there, IMPACT Driver! In this episode, we talk about the very real issues organizations and PMs and Agilists are facing as we figure out how to deliver on our organization’s strategy. We tackle the big “us and them” conversations that are happening in companies around the world and talked about ways to move past the methodology wars to solving the real business problems we are there to address. And yes…that’s the punchline…sometimes it’s easy to lose focus on the real reason we are all gainfully employed in our organizations. We are there at the behest of the business to serve the business needs and help the organization deliver on its strategy. That could play out in a lot of ways in each organization, but the goal is to spend our energy focusing on the outcomes we are striving to achieve in our organizations instead of getting caught up in outputs. Check out this week’s podcast episode to learn: why both the Agile and PMO camps are right and wrong how to find common ground to move forward productively how to get straight on the terminology for more effective conversations services a PMO can provide to support Agile projects benefits of Agile that high-IMPACT PMOs love (and can leverage) If you love this podcast, please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. .fusion-button.button-2 {border-radius:2px;}READ THE TRANSCRIPT Revolutionize Project Delivery through Agile Portfolio Management Download this whitepaper to respond faster to changing priorities, deliver strategic projects more quickly and accurately plan capacity through an Agile approach to portfolio management. .fusion-button.button-3 {border-radius:2px;}DOWNLOAD NOW Thanks for taking the time to check out the podcast! I welcome your feedback and insights! I'd love to know what you think and if you love it, please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast player. .fusion-button.button-4 {border-radius:2px;}GET NOTIFIED ABOUT NEW EPISODES .fusion-button.button-5 {border-radius:2px;}TELL US WHAT YOU'D LIKE TO HEAR ON THE PODCAST Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts. See you online! Warmly, .fusion-button.button-6 {border-radius:2px;}CLICK HERE TO GET PDU REPORTING INSTRUCTIONS

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038: 3 Techniques to Move Past the Agile vs. PM Discussion

PMO Strategies

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2020 17:46

PMI Talent Triangle: Strategic and Business Management Master these 3 techniques for a productive path forward with Agile and traditional PM. Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! NOTE: For the very best experience, listen to this episode on your favorite podcast provider here. This episode is sponsored by: Agile Organizations Need Modern Governance Structures Download this Forrester research report to learn the importance for Agile enterprise PMOs to provide a macro view of performance. .fusion-button.button-143 {border-radius:2px;}DOWNLOAD NOW Show Notes: Hey there, IMPACT Driver! Before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that the IMPACT Inner Circle Membership has undergone a big upgrade to make your learning and development super easy! If you want to access our hundreds of training and development resources, plus templates, tools, and guidance to help you make a bigger IMPACT in your organization, you can click the button below to learn more now! Okay. Let’s dive into today’s episode! In this episode, we talk about the very real issues organizations and PMs and Agilists are facing as we figure out how to deliver on our organization’s strategy. We tackle the big “us and them” conversations that are happening in companies around the world and talked about ways to move past the methodology wars to solving the real business problems we are there to address. And yes…that’s the punchline…sometimes it’s easy to lose focus on the real reason we are all gainfully employed in our organizations. We are there at the behest of the business to serve the business needs and help the organization deliver on their strategy. That could play out in a lot of ways in each organization, but the goal is to spend our energy focusing on the outcomes we are striving to achieve in our organizations instead of getting caught up in outputs. Check out this week’s podcast episode to learn: how to stop the methodology war discussion the keys to moving past the noise toward productivity what you SHOULD assume the critical focus area you must shift the power of flexibility in achieving your shared goals If you love this podcast, please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. .fusion-button.button-144 {border-radius:2px;}READ THE TRANSCRIPTAgile Organizations Need Modern Governance Structures Download this Forrester research report to learn the importance for Agile enterprise PMOs to provide a macro view of performance. .fusion-button.button-145 {border-radius:2px;}DOWNLOAD NOW Thanks for taking the time to check out the podcast! I welcome your feedback and insights! I'd love to know what you think and if you love it, please leave a rating and review in your favorite podcast player. .fusion-button.button-146 {border-radius:2px;}GET NOTIFIED ABOUT NEW EPISODES .fusion-button.button-147 {border-radius:2px;}TELL US WHAT YOU'D LIKE TO HEAR ON THE PODCAST Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts. See you online! Warmly, .fusion-button.button-148 {border-radius:2px;}CLICK HERE TO GET PDU REPORTING INSTRUCTIONS

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The missing piece to Agile change and development. A chat with a Agile methodology coach who got curious in the understanding behind Quality of Mind

Quality of Mind-Transforming Business

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2020 40:49

This podcast series explores a game-changing understanding of the human mind that can increase the performance, resourcefulness and well-being in any business or organisation. In this episode Piers chats with Frans Rensen, an experienced Agile methodology coach. Frans after many years in the commercial world recently came across this understanding of the mind, and it has transformed how he sees what it is to be, and do, Agile methodology, and much more! In this episode we discuss: The missing piece to Agile change and development that Agilists doesn't know they are missing! The importance of understanding separate realities in organisations The importance of realisations based learning as compared to process, cognition, and intellect How this understanding has impacted people in areas beyond just Agile development How an organisation could be even more effective with only half the people it currently has! Curious - want to know more? Fran's profile on Linkedin Click here to find out more about Quality of Mind . What the principles behind Quality of Mind - podcast episode Check out this podcast: Dramatic Shifts in Productivity, Mental Wellbeing & Purpose from Just 3 Days....An interview. Piers Thurston regularly writes about Quality of Mind on Linkedin and has a large collection of articles and posts.

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The Power of Volunteering w Reese Schmit

Conferencia Agile Spain 2018

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2020 24:55

It’s the start of a brand new year! And one of the best things you can do for yourself and your career is to start volunteering for a professional organization. By offering a little of your time, you can find a path into a community of passionate PMs and Agilists who can provide support, coaching and mentoring to you as you progress in your career. In this episode of the podcast Agile Coach, Reese Schmit shares her story of how she got involved in helping out with Burning Flipside (an Austin, TX-based Burning Man event), how that led her to start volunteering for local Agile and User Groups and how that led her to become part of the team of folks who plan and run the Scrum Gathering. In the interview, Reese shares her experience of volunteering and how that work has not only helped her create valuable experiences for others but has also helped her develop a wide network of seasoned professionals in the Agile space and all the benefits that can provide. I have talked about this in previous podcasts but volunteering is one of the best investments you can make in your career. It is about giving back to your professional community, but it is also about finding the group of people who might be able to help you land your next gig. So why not start off 2020 by reaching out to a local group, PMI, the Scrum Alliance or the Agile Alliance and find a way to invest in yourself by giving back to the community. Here are some links to help you get started: Volunteering for PMI https://www.pmi.org/membership/volunteer/opportunities Volunteering for the Scrum Alliance https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-involved Volunteering for the Agile Alliance https://www.agilealliance.org/the-alliance/volunteer-signup/ Meetup.com is a great place to start searching for local professional groups who could probably use your help. https://www.meetup.com Contacting Reese LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reeseschmit/ Email: reeseschmit@gmail.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/reesendesist

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We are the Leaders we have been Waiting For - Lyssa Adkins

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2019 51:16

Si quieres ver el vídeo con slides: https://youtu.be/Q1eyMP1ldKQ If we Agilists value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, why do processes and tools so often run the show? In this keynote, Lyssa offers two good reasons why she thinks this is so and shows the way out with some solid, but not well known, human technologies. Using eye-opening adult human development models, this keynote lays out the challenging terrain we need to traverse?—?which is for us to get good at helping people in organizations develop their mental capabilities, not just change their mind-sets. When this happens, we will be able to help organizations do more than just “talk the talk” about valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools (as well as fully living into all of the other Agile values). It’s a big challenge but we are up for it! It turns out that our community at large is on the leading edge of adult human development and, if we can develop ourselves, we can help others do the same. It’s our time. We are the leaders we have been waiting for. Lyssa will show you why this is so, give you some food-for-thought about your own development and offer practical ways to help develop others so that the full promise of Agile comes true more often.

leaders agile lyssa adkins agilists

The Future of Agile

Agile Uprising Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2018 65:01

In this week's episode Jay Hrcsko gathered up some Coalition contributors to discuss what they see as the future of agile! Jay is joined by Georgina Hughes, David Sabine, and Johanna Rothman as they discuss the future of agile methodologies, roles, frameworks, and the role of the agile coach...and just a hint: they don't always agree! Enjoy! Guests: Georgina Hughes: Georgina Hughes is an agile enthusiast from London where she’s actively engaged in the large community of agile practitioners. She took a diversion during her education from psychology into computer science, and has made a u-turn during her career back to psychology in order to support management in understanding that there is no difference between a software developer and a business person. She is currently studying with Barefoot Coaching to become an accredited member of the International Coaching Federation. Georgie's upcoming speaking engagement: Troublemakers, Misfits, and Disruptors, how does one with with Agilists. https://www.meetup.com/ScrumEvent/events/256257177/ *** David Sabine: David’s career highlights the intersections of business, technology, the fine arts, and education. He is a Scrum Trainer, executive consultant, Product developer, Executive Director of Ontario Scrum Community®, a TEDx alumnus, Musician, and proud father of two daughters. *** Johanna Rothman: Known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” Johanna offers frank advice for your tough problems. She has an extensive career in project and program management, none of which were waterfall. She’s the author of 14 books, with more on the way. Her current book in progress is From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver. Her most recent finished book is Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver. www.jrothman.com Book I mentioned: https://leanpub.com/geographicallydistributedagileteams/ Other books: https://www.jrothman.com/books/ Influential Agile Leader (I didn’t mention, but should have): https://www.influentialagileleader.com/

executive director product tedx musician deliver measure coalition agile misfits disruptors estimate international coaching federation troublemakers from chaos johanna rothman agilists barefoot coaching pragmatic manager david sabine jay hrcsko

Sam Guckenheimer - DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018

Agile Toolkit Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2018 29:02

Bob chats with Microsoft Azure DevOps Product Owner and author of Agile Software Engineering with Visual Studio, Sam Guckenheimer, at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018. Connect with Sam and Bob on Twitter. Transcript Sam Guckenheimer ‑ DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 Bob Payne: "The Agile Toolkit." [music] Bob: Hi, I'm your host Bob Payne. I'm here at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 with Sam Guckenheimer. Welcome, Sam. Sam Guckenheimer: Thank you, Bob. It's great to be here. Bob: It's the first time we're really chatting. We chatted a tiny bit last night. My colleague Sanjiv Augustine said you were instrumental in hosting The Agile leadership network when it formed and came up with the declaration of Interdependence. How did that end up coming about? Sam: Well, that was no what 14 years ago or something like that. [laughter] Sam: What we saw was at that time that this was of course way pre‑DevOps. The Agile community had fractured into many groups saying "More agile than thou." That seemed stupid. Bob: That fracturing has continued and remains as stupid today or... [laughs] Sam: Yes. Unfortunately, the fracturing has continued and it hasn't gotten less stupid. That was the reason for trying to get the interdependence declaration together to get these leading lights from what was then the Agile community working together. In the meantime, the pure Agile has largely been eclipsed by DevOps. As you see something like this DevOps Enterprise Summit going on its fifth year roughly doubling every year in scale. I'm here now. Still there. [laughter] Bob: There are a number of things that I found at this conference that I haven't been able to make a ton of sessions because we have a booth. I've found that I haven't really learned, maybe this is my own fault, anything at the Agile conferences for probably about 10 years. It wasn't any substantially interesting information. Sam: That's correct. I last keynoted at the Agile conference in 2014. That's probably the last time I've been there. It got kind of stale. The energy in innovation, in practice I think has really shifted to DevOps. That's come about, because the DevOps' definition of Dunn is not potentially shippable and promotes... [crosstalk] Bob: It's captured a value, enlargement value. Sam: It's live in production with Telemetry that is demonstrating the value delivered. Going from a world where you were effectively stopping at an intermediate activity that didn't reach the customer or end‑user to go to one where you have to reach the end‑customer and you have to measure the value delivered, is much, much more powerful for all the stakeholders, for the business, for the people involved. It's much more satisfying. You disintermediate the development to customer relationship. You think of things as one engineering discipline, not as silos post the Scrums, so to speak. Bob: Certainly there were a number of great Agile teams and organizations that fully believed that Dunn meant in the hands of customers and delivering whatever goal, that... [crosstalk] Sam: I do not mean to bash anyone. I certainly think there great Agile teams. A lot of what we do today has its roots in extreme programming, but things like XP at the time, had this notion of, for example, pair programming. We have largely, as a community, moved to the notion of a pull request as a virtual pair programming. We have moved from the idea of onsite customer to measuring customer impact, which isn't to say onsite customer is a bad idea, it's a great idea, it's a rarely achievable one. All of these seeds that were planted back then in the late '80s by the early Agilists were important seeds. The garden where I think they're really bearing fruit now is in this DevOps community. Bob: The other thing that I think is probably the next wave that we will see in organizations that are not already there, certainly, many organizations have already integrated business into this flow. Without that DevOps is necessary but not sufficient to actually change the outcomes that businesses are seeing. That's the next frontier for those companies that we're not sort of born in the world of IT as the fundamental driver of business outcomes. Sam: That's correct. DevOps is the flip side of the coin from digital transformation. Digital transformation is the business term for taking your business model and turning it into one that can improve continuously in an Internet‑powered age. DevOps is the shorthand for the technical practices that enable that. Bob: I see way too many organizations mistaking a DevOps transformation for digital transformation. They're fundamentally doing the DevOps practices, but they're not backing up into the initial value proposition to begin with. That will sort itself out. Sam: This is a common thing of confusing means and ends. The ends are things around growing the business customer, acquisition customer, engagement customer, employee delight, all of these measures of happiness and success. The practices are ways of getting there. The goal is to focus however on those end results. The clear sign of dysfunction is when you see people measuring the inputs, not the outputs. Bob: If Deming or [inaudible 7:33] came back and saw that Toyota was doing the same practices it was doing 75 years ago they would drop dead after having just come back to life. [laughs] In real systems the practices and the processes are never the ends. They are all in service of maximizing flow... [crosstalk] Sam: Exactly. If you think about the evolution, the practices today are different because the constraints are different. One of the overriding constraints was for example infrastructure availability. You get all of the stuff around how to manage and schedule the infra. Today with the public cloud that constraint is gone. It's a classic example of, in Eliyahu Goldratt terms, elevating the constraint or removing the bottleneck. Then you see the constraint shifting. As you're adopting these practices what happens is you have a continual shift of the constraint, and you have the next one to attack the next bowling pin to knock down. [crosstalk] Sam: Right. What DevOps says has basically taught us as well. You can remove infrastructure a constraint by using the cloud. You can focus on the value delivered to the customer and measure it so you can have both qualitative and quantitative view of that. You can take the quality game and shift it left and right so that quality does not become this big testing bottleneck in the middle. It can become part of the pull request flow. It can happen before code merges. Then you can in production gradually expose value to more and more of users so that the blast radius is something that's flexible, so you don't have the constraint of saying, "I need to master my MTBF in order to release." You can say, "I need to maximize my ability to recover and may have the shortest time to recover, so that by controlling the blast radius and being able to recover quickly I can experimentally by increasing the rate of experimentation I can deliver and measure value delivered on a cycle that was never possible in the old days." It wasn't possible before we had the Internet, it wasn't possible before it hit the public cloud, it wasn't possible before we had these practices of high‑quality, highly‑rugged automation that we do today. Bob: Yeah it has been a sea change since I did Fortran on punch cards [laughs] . Sam: There have been many sea changes yes. Mike Pearson gave a great talk yesterday, borrowing from Carlota Perez on the structure of industrial revolutions, and postulates that we're at the point of disruption from the period of adoption to the period of dispersion. That would account for a lot of the changes that we're seeing, and it would account for a lot of the anxiety that you see among people who are saying, "How do I learn fast enough? How do I catch up fast enough? How do I get ahead?" At the same time, what you see very clearly reflected in company success, company's market gap, and company's ability to innovate and pivot, is that the ones who have mastered the go‑fast‑without‑breaking‑things‑and‑adjust‑course‑as‑you‑go, are the ones that are winning in pretty much every sector. Bob: I love Mark Schwartz's analogy of the battle of the Russians with Napoleon, and the speed of decision‑making being fundamentally out of sync with the reality of the battle. Sam: Exactly, that was also true on Omaha beach in Normandy, that was true in Vietnam, that's been true in pretty much every military conflict, that the degree of autonomy and speed of innovation has determined the outcome in the end, and people who are great at enabling the next war instead of fighting the last ones, are the victors. The latest example decide or...I don't know if that's politically correct to go there, but you see it now in... Bob: [laughs] That have been substantially politically correct on this podcast [laughs] . Sam: You see this in cyber. The Russian budget for cyber is less than the cost of an F‑35. Bob: No one could argue that the F‑35 is more costly than it needs to be but it's... [laughs] . [crosstalk] Sam: Who cares? The point is, they're not trying to win the manned aerial dogfight. They are extending the notion of total war to a new battlefield and they've been very successful, but finding the place where there are no defenses and where it's possible to innovate quickly and it's proven to work. You could also argue that as David Sanger does in "The Perfect Weapon", that the US started this cyber‑war arms race. In any event, we've not follow through on the consequences of what we started. The military analogies, they turn some people off, but they have their value. We are, and the rest of society also, in a place where we need to be winning the future, not the past. Bob: It's actually one of the analogies I quite often use when I'm talking to people that are OK with the military analogies. The OODA loop, the Boyd loop of observe‑orient‑decide‑act. The team that can turn that loop the fastest, whether it's Amazon, Netflix, or a manned‑aerial dogfight, or a cyber‑attack, is going to win. Sam: Exactly. In our world, the OODA loop results in some kind of software or service delivered. One of the things we know from measuring it is that about a third of the time, we get the results we'd want, a third of the time, we get opposite result from what we hypothesized, and about a third of the time, it makes no difference. The implication of that is that you want to be able as quickly as possible, to double down on the successful third and fail fast or pivot away from the other two thirds, which means that you need to make the OODA loop as short as possible, which is what Boyd talked about in his idea of aircraft design and aerial battle. That's exactly true in how we develop and that means not just using small batches which Agile taught us. That means not just breaking down the silos, but it means really focusing on time to remediate and focusing on quality to the left so that you have clean delivery and you have the mechanism in production to control exposure and to go faster and wider as you need to. Bob: You mentioned the one‑third, one‑third, one‑third, I know that was a study that came out in Microsoft. Actually... [crosstalk] Sam: Ronick O' Harvey was behind that. Ronny is now a technical fellow, he wasn't back then. He basically took a very large sample of "improvements" that were delivered. Let's measure, are these really improving, what we wanted? The result was a third of the time, in other words, I've confirmed the others' change is bad, unless is great. That was quantitative demonstration of that. I don't know if he published that before he did a stand for PhD or after, but it was a famous study and it holds up. Bob: I also very much like this idea of very small batches, because without the small batches, it's hard to get attribution of what improved the customer experience and what was neutral or negative, because you're conflating way too many changes if the batch is large. Sam: That's why the pull request flows becomes successful, because you can make the pull request a batch that is a few lines of change, it's possible to have a human‑code review on it, and it's possible to have extensive automation on it. Again, an example of a practice that wouldn't have been possible pre‑cloud is when we do pull requests, we run the build‑in automation on them with typically 80‑some thousand tests before asking for the human‑code review. Human eyes are only focused on those things that automation has said looked good already. As opposed to the way things were done, pre‑cloud in the XP pair programming model, where human eyes were first defense. That was very appropriate given the constraints at the time. The constraints of today are different. Bob: That was certainly one aspect of pairing. The other is just as the design discipline getting the collaborative design quite often yields better results, but... [crosstalk] Sam: I totally think that people should collaborate on design. I'm totally for that. I'm not trying to.. Bob: I totally get the point about the quality. Is automation...we want lazy engineers [laughs] . We want engineers focusing on creative thought, rather than repetitive action. Sam: Exactly. Another example of that that's possible these days, is you want a very high reuse, an open source. If you can solve a problem with 30 lines of code and reuse thousands, that's much better than creating 3000 lines of codes that need to be maintained. In effect, we want to reward people for writing less code, which again turns on it's head, one of those classic input matrix and myths of, "Well, how much code did you write? How busy were you? How many hours did you put in?" As opposed to, "What result did you achieve?" Bob: What are some DevOps practices that have really changed Microsoft fundamentally? I know you've got a couple of talks related to that here at the conference. Sam: I bucket our lessons learned, usually in five groups. One is how we focus on value delivered to the customer, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and let that drive the way we think about what we're delivering and how we measure that. Two is how we apply production‑first mindset. Our CEO tends to call this a live‑site culture, in other words, you build it, you test it, you run it, you secure it, you troubleshoot it, you improve it with responsibility residing in you, the creating team, not getting fragmented across these Silos. Three is the idea of team autonomy and enterprise alignment that you want to let teams at the level of the feature crew Scrum, cream squad, whatever your favorite term is, you want to let these small feature crews work autonomously on their stuff, and control what they are taking into the next sprint or what items they're doing next. You want them to support their stuff in production and you want the mechanisms to align their work up to the common business results, so that they know which needles they need to move by the work that they do and they know how to view those gauges. The fourth is shifting quality left and right so that you can get a signal in the pipeline of green meaning green and red meaning red, and in production, you can see continually what is happening with every changes, you expand its exposure. Fifth finally is using cloud to make infrastructure‑flexible resource. That's how I bucket it. I did one talk yesterday with my friend Ellen Smith about how we moved our DevOps' ass. It's really a story about eight years of taking what's started as a non‑premise product and turning it into a cloud service and on‑premise product. That was an attempt to myth‑bust the idea that if you're going to the cloud, you need to start in the cloud and throw everything away. It was an attempt to say, "Here's a proof instance where we had a business, pre‑cloud, with on‑prem product. We preserve that and made it better, and use the same codebase to go the cloud where the cloud is making the on‑prem better." Of course the cloud's the majority of usage and the fastest growing now, but it wasn't a throwaway, which of that story. The other one which is similar, which I'm doing tomorrow, is a talk about Windows' journey to DevOps. Windows division is the extreme case of scale and legacy, and they have successfully moved to DevOps. There were a bunch of bumps along the way. For example, to get Windows to be able to use Git at their scale, we needed to fix the Git, and that took three attempts. Bob: Really? Sam: Yes. When we started doing something like a Git clone of the main Windows repo, took 12 hours. That was if the network didn't burp, or your laptop didn't go to sleep, or nothing else wrong happened. If any of those things did happen, then the whole operation needed to start over. Bob: Need to start again, yeah. Sam: That now takes a couple minutes. We did a series of 300x or better improvements in Git performance with what is now open‑sourced as the virtual file system for Git. Windows motivated all of that to be able to support their scale of codebase, which was hundreds of times larger than anything else anyone was using. Bob: That's interesting. I did not know that you guys were major contributors to the Git. Sam: We're one of the top two. We're the largest open‑source contributor of any company, have been for about two years now. Git is a project where we have been very heavily in, and virtual file system is one of the latest aspects of that. Come to the talk tomorrow. Bob: OK, I may. What time is it? Sam: 11:25, I think? 11 something. The times here are weird. All these weird five‑minute increments. Bob: [laughs] . It is five‑minute increments and three hours off, because I'm an East Coast person. Are you out of... [crosstalk] Sam: Along Seattle. Bob: Thank you so much, Sam. This has been great. Is there any one thing you'd like to close off with that you're interested in? Sam: Yeah. There's something that I'd like to make our listener aware of, and that is I curate a website. The short link to it is aka.ms/DevOps. It's, DevOps and Microsoft. What I try to do is to put up our experience reports there, not the high‑level marketing level stuff, but like, "How did you actually do the change in testing? How did you go to no downtime deployments? How did you start using service reliability engineering? Etc." There're about 50 articles up there, but half of them with good video. They're just stories about how we work. I love people to use that as a... Bob: As a resource? Sam: ...open resource. Bob: Thank you very much. It was very nice meeting you and chatting. Sam: Thanks a lot, Bob. Bob: Thanks. The Agile Toolkit Podcast is brought to you by LightSpeed. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed today's show. If you'd like to give feedback or be on the show, you can ping me on Twitter. I am @AgileToolkit. You can also reach me at Bob.Payne@lithespeed.com. For more free resources, transcripts to the show, and information about our services, head over to LightSpeed.com. Thanks for listening. [music]

Special Edition: Inside the Apollo 13 Studio – The Agile Roundtable Part II

Agile After Dark

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2018 55:05

We welcome back our special guests and the Agile After Dark Apollo 13 Studio Audience to ask some questions that aren't really about Agile, but we wind up talking about Agile anyway. That's just how Agilists role. It's a fun look at some of the personal perspectives of our guests all while Greg continues to try and find his way back to the heartland.

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Growing Up Agile - 2nd Gen Agilists

growing up agile agilists

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2018 26:21

We’ve reached a stage in the evolution of work where some of the folks now entering the workforce were raised by professional Agile practitioners. This might not seem like a big deal, but consider that this is a generation that will not have to go through the process of unlearning all the dysfunctional practices that most of us had to let go of. These are folks who have been working in an agile way their whole lives and, because it is native to them, they are free from the cognitive dissonance most of us face when we move to a more Agile state. In this interview I am joined by Bria Johnson and Blake Halvorson. Both of them were raised by seasoned Agile practitioners. Bria and Blake used Agile throughout their schooling and entered the workforce already deep with knowledge of how it works. During the interview, we explore how they came to Agile, how they employed it in school, and how they’ve used it since leaving school. For me, one of the most powerful parts of the interview was when Bria and Blake explained how they approached their schoolwork in college. Their seemingly simple approach is so massively different from the way I managed my work in school—it left me very envious. Contacting Bria and Blake If you’d like to reach out to Bria or Blake with follow up questions, here is how you can reach them: Bria Johnson https://www.linkedin.com/in/bria-johnson-csm-cspo-48175931/ Blake Halvorson https://www.linkedin.com/in/blake-halvorson-csm-cspo-6b401a90/

Round Table Roulette - Agile2017 Edition

roundtable wonder woman roulette agilists

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2017 32:35

What happens when you get a handful of Agilists together and ask them random questions on the fly? A lot of fun – and insights. Who's the better ScrumMaster: Batman or Wonder Woman? What drink makes for the best retrospectives? What one piece of advice would you offer a Product Owner? Listen in and see how you stack up with our panel – Neville Poole, Chris Murman and Claire Moss. Hosted by Howard Sublett. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Volunteering At Agile 2017

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2017 23:03

If you are involved with Agile, the biggest event of the year is the conference hosted each summer by the Agile Alliance. Agile 2017 (https://www.agilealliance.org/agile2017/) kicks off on Sunday, August 6, 2017 and that means 2,500 Agilists will be descending on Orlando ready to pick up new techniques, share what they’ve learned and catch up with thought leaders and practitioners in the Agile space. The conference is MASSIVE and it would not be possible without the Purple Shirt People who volunteer at the conference. In exchange for getting to attend the conference, the folks in the purple shirts are the ones who can help you navigate the week. Whether you are a first timer wondering where to go, or a seasoned veteran giving a talk, we all depend on the generosity of the folks who give their time to help make the conference happen. In this podcast, Becky Hartman and Sarah Klarich share some details about volunteering at the conference, how it works, what you get in exchange for giving your time and how you can get more involved. If you are new to the conference, Becky and Sarah also share some tips on how to make it through the week and what to not miss. SHOW NOTES 00:10 Podcast Begins 00:47 Background on Sarah and Becky 01:33 Getting involved with volunteering at the Agile Conference 02:58 How many people will be expected at Agile 2017 03:30 How many people are part of the Volunteer Team at Agile 2017 03:52 The time commitment and getting to see sessions at Agile 2017 05:13 The type of work the Purple Shirts are expected to do a the Agile Conference 06:19 The benefits of volunteering at the Agile Conference 10:18 Advice from Becky and Sarah on how to get the most out your week in Orlando 13:15 Tips for volunteers who are extroverts (like Becky) 14:05 Watch the Grandma comments! 14:18 Advice for introverts (like Sarah) 15:05 Get ready for Agile Therapy and some other new events at Agile 2017! 16:36 Dealing with FOMO at Agile 2017 (You can’t see it all - take care of yourself!) 17:40 Finding your conference wingperson 19:44 Sarah and Becky’s must see events at Agile 2017 21:36 How to get on the Agile 2017 Volunteer Wait List (or submit your name for next year)

The Visual Story of Change | Drew Mattison

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2017 9:48

Visualizing work is something that Agilists are quite familiar with, but visualizing outcomes, in particular of large-scale change, is what Drew Mattison from XPLANE sits down with Agile Amped to discuss. Drew shares "the visual story of change" -- a powerful tool that can operate like a visual roadmap of not just the end state, but how to get there. Visualization takes the conversation from "Here's what we should do" to "Here's the work that we're doing." SolutionsIQ's CTO Evan Campbell hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

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Experiencing Agile with Tricia Broderick

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2017 26:42

Too often Agilists make pronouncements to their clients expecting them to be instantly true: no more multitasking, we are now Agile, you are now empowered. As anyone can attest, it’s one thing to say something like this and really another to make it true. Tricia Broderick, a CST with Agile for All, wants people to experience Agile first hand. Tricia uses hands-on experiences and exercises to drive home meaning, with exercises as simple as writing with your non-dominant hand. That shift is more real than simply saying, “Starting today, you’ll write with your non-dominant hand.” What this does is open people up to engage more, and that’s something that can help Agile become more tangible and concrete for people. The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook

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Reinventing the Leader Readiness Checklist | Keely Killpack

Stories Connecting Dots with Markus Andrezak

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2017 11:08

Author of "Change Rx for Healthcare" Keely Killpack shares the three components of overall change management: change readiness, the process of change management, and change adoption. Keely shares her experiences working as a change professional most recently in the healthcare sector, the topic of her book, which offers tools, like the Leader Readiness Checklist, that change agents and Agilists in any industry can use to help leaders effectively manage and lead through change.SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

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Ep. 6: Luke Hohmann - Serious Games / Innovation Games

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 26, 2017 110:58

What have the following things got in common? Weasels, the San Jose public budgeting process, bootstrapping, disposable software, games and mods of games, figure skating, and a Nike sprinter show falling apart after reaching the 100m line? Well, it’s Luke Hohmann they have in common. I learned an awful lot from Luke. Years and years ago I attended one of his Innovation Games trainings and while I really really liked it, it took me years to realise what I really learned. For me, personally, this was the event that finally made me decide to leave the developing world towards the product or business side of the world. This event moved a switch in my head. But what I really realised years later was that I really groked games, game design and above all, I had learned how to facilitate. Luke is so deep into „designing“ his games that never is it by chance if Luke stands, sits, is in the middle of the room, or in a corner or if he even tears apart some game thing that hangs on the wall. Even designing the simple name tags in the beginning of a class is transformed into a designed game, when Luke does it. But Luke got carried away by the games he found. He bootstrapped an enterprise software company that produced a platform for playing a serious games framework at massive scale. Several thousand payers do not bother him. Scaling world wide also does not bother him. No problem seems to be deep for him to tackle. And this then led Luke to extend his activities to facilitating public budgeting rounds, which he started in San Jose. Also, he applies his framework to education. Who knows what’s next? This interview really is a rollercoaster all over the place and also contains really personal stories on why Luke chose the path he chose and what led him. You can see from the show notes how far and deep we went. I’d really urge you to listen to the end. The interview gets even better as longer as we sat together. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did and you learn much as I learned! Chapters 0:03:00 What are Serious Games, Innovation Games? 0:23:30 Applying Innovation Games 0:48:24 Scaling Innovation Games in several dimensions & Luke, The Entrepreneur 0:59:04 Personal Choices & the power of collaboration in wicked problems 1:32:22 Concepts - self application of games, disposable software, extrinsic vs. intrinsic quality, strategy frameworks as the next tipping point Chapter Notes 0:03:00 Chapter one: What are Serious Games, Innovation Games? What are Serious Games? „You play a serious game not for pleasure but to have a business outcome. Innovation games are a collection of different games as we have different business problems to solve. A game has four components: (1) It has a goal, something you want to achieve. (2) It has a set of resources and rules and interactions, (3) it has a space or a field of play (4) a way to keep score Why Luke calls games frameworks nowadays. 10:52 The role of fun (or not) in Serious Games; Facilitating Games; (Designing) Games as a way to give permission 17:15 Details matter: A pencil without an eraser „If you want me to engage in the act of design, then don’t give me a pencil without an eraser. 18:20 Explaining the „Speed Boat“ game as an example, how it can be applied (e.g. as a technique for team retrospectives or identifying improvement potential in products. Games have the potential to de-personalize feedback and critique and thus make feedback more acceptable and actionable 0:23:30 Chapter 2: Applying Innovation Games 23:30 Scrum as a game and changing the rules of a game; Modding games is great and the goal; When you learn innovation games, you learn modding them 28:23 Modding Monopoly as an example why modding makes sense 31:18 Innovation games as a way to discover why and intent and why you don’t send bug reports to Richard Stallmann 34:12 Scaling organisations w/ Innovation games „It’s not the picture on the wall that drives behaviour, but it’s the picture in the head that drives behaviour. That means: You gotta change the picture in the head before you change the picture on the wall.“ 35:42 Using the „Buy a feature“ game to discuss portfolios „Any performing executive team will always have more ideas than it is able to fund. So the question becomes „how to pick?“. So McKinsey has the following rules and you want to listen to McKinsey and not Agilists. McKinsey says: pass one - do ROI. Get rid of the projects that are not attractive for ROI - that’s easy. But you still gonna have too many. The second pass: Look at the passion and interests of the team. Now, how do we get to the passion and the interest of this team? Well, we have this game!“ 39:28 Explaining great experiences is hard: „Reading about riding a bike is not riding a bike“ 41:58 - An example of shrinking a portfolio of 38 projects to 6 „There is no way a human being can keep and compare 45 things in his head. I will do better then I put them on the board“ 0:48:24 Chapter 3: Scaling Innovation Games in several dimensions & Luke, The Entrepreneur 48:24 Scaling games to gigantic size: (1) Scaling for magnitude of the problem. From market research to internal use to use in agile organisations (2) Scaling the number of participants: From few in person to several thousand online (3) Scaling in industry, e.g. the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich) „Really, is my Scaling Agile book that I’m supposed to follow really more than 400 pages?“ „You’re reading these books on Agile and they’re anything but. It’s like I’m reading the top ten books on Agile and they outweigh me“ 55:16 Entrepreneurship - building an enterprise software company without venture capital funding, Adventures of bootstrapping. 0:59:04 Chapter 4: Personal Choices & the power of collaboration in wicked problems 59:04 Getting personal - choices in life: Figure skating as first exercise in latching onto something without compromise. The way of the weasel. Latching onto something and sticking to it. Not chasing the easy way, but the only way possible. „So, yeah, I thought: I’m gonna live like a weasel for a rest of my life“ 65:01 The power of collaboration - „I really do believe - and it’s not just Luke, it’s also my team and people like you in our network - we really do believe that collaborating teams are the best hope we have for solving the problems we face“ „Teams are everywhere, Teams are the foundation of our work in the future“ A list of books (links below): Team of Teams Team Genius The Silo Effect Exponential Organisations The Connected Company 1:06:51 Extending games to public matters, like funding and budgeting decisions for the public: Every Voice engaged foundation 1:11:16 Games in education, on the example of middle school 1:15:16 Not the easiest way to live, but the most satisfying. The Weasel way again. More examples by Luke and Henry Rollins 1:20:56 The importance of the support of others and support in success 1:25:33 „And So I’ve stopped talking to VCs“ and what Luke still learned from VCs 1:32:22 Chapter 5: Concepts - self application of games, disposable software, extrinsic vs. intrinsic quality, strategy frameworks as the next tipping point 1:32:00 Self applying the cure to the Luke’s company so that everyone knows the experience to the companies’ benefit. 1:36:45 Disposable Software 1:39:02 Release quality, intrinsic quality, extrinsic quality 1:39:45 „They improved quality so much that they lost all innovation.“ „You know, the guy who built Flappy Bird, I don’t know if he had green bar automated tests. Did he have an automated production pipeline? CI/CD? No, I doubt it. He was just a kid having some fun. And he built an incredibly high extrinsic quality App. Now, I don’t know about the level of intrinsic quality … and the point is: It doesn’t matter. 1:42:28 Why the ideal Sprinter shoe should fall apart after exactly 100m 1:46:28 Strategy frameworks on the tipping point: The Ansoff Matrix - an early approach on strategy „As we move from physical labor to knowledge work - and we continue to move down knowledge work - these (strategy & problem solving) frameworks are the next tipping point and it’s really fundamental“ Links and Notes Books and resources by Luke Hohmann Innovation Games Beyond Software Architecture Journey of the Software Professional: The sociology of Software Development Blog Post: The role of passion in prioritization Every Voice Engaged foundation Organizations andPeople mentioned and more resources Wirtschaftkammer Österreich WKO Report on the cooperation between who and Conteneo Interview with Henry Rollins as a Joe Rogan Experience Podcast: Books mentioned Annie Dillard - „Living like Weasels" from the book „Teaching a Stone to Talk" Team of Teams Team Genius The Silo Effect Exponential Organisations The Connected Company Reality is broken, Jane McGonigal Gamestorming People mentioned Jane McGonigal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_McGonigal Game Designer Matt Leacock (e.g. Pandemic Board Game) Figure skater Toller Cranston: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toller_Cranston

Agile Politics - Part 1

Agile Chicago Style Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 5, 2016 41:51

It’s no shock that there is turmoil in the populace, after the recent US Presidential Election. But, the fact that Agilists are criticizing each other prompted this 2 part discussion. In this first discussion, Rick, Mike and Sandie talk about how certain demographics have historically been under-represented, and targeted unfairly in politics and our national culture - and how the recent election has brought that normally covert part of the culture into the spotlight. Trying to draw parallels to the Agile world, Rick points out that the corporate world is not immune to the turmoil we’ve see in the nation this month. Tune in to hear how we stitch it all together…

donald trump politics clinton agile scrum xp us presidential election kanban agilists

Mary Connor Talks DocOps - Documentation at the Speed of Agile at Keep Austin Agile 2016