Podcasts about comparative agility

In this episode, we chat with Paddy Dhanda—host of the Superpower School podcast and co-founder of The Visual Jam—about the thinking behind the new Communities of Practice Healthcheck. Created in collaboration with Comparative Agility, this team-based assessment helps leaders and members better understand their communities across purpose, engagement, collaboration, leadership, and impact.Paddy shares why traditional “vanity metrics” and how this assessment goes deeper to capture real value. With his signature energy and humor, he also reflects on what it takes to nurture truly collaborative communities that matter.

In this episode, we speak with Si Alhir about the thinking behind the latest Comparative Agility assessment, rooted in the principles of Natural Human Leadership. Si introduces key concepts such as power dynamics, power in motion, and power over time, anchored in a reality-based worldview that contrasts with traditional, ego-based models of leadership. Drawing from his lifelong engagement with The Art of War, Si explores how ancient wisdom can help us navigate modern complexity with agility, resilience, and authenticity.

In this episode, we speak with Avi Schneier, an expert in Scrum@Scale. Avi and Dee explore how the Scrum@Scale framework enables organizations to scale agility effectively by improving cross-team collaboration and executive alignment. He also talks about the upcoming Scrum@Scale Assessment, developed in collaboration with Comparative Agility, which helps organizations identify inefficiencies, uncover growth opportunities, and enhance their scaling strategies.

In this episode, we speak with Joe Krebs, creator of the Agile Kata. Joe shares insights into how the Agile Kata serves as a universal pattern for continuous agile improvement, helping leaders, coaches, and teams foster a culture of scientific thinking and experimentation. He also discusses the Agile Kata Assessment, developed in collaboration with Comparative Agility, and how it enables organizations to evaluate their agility, identify opportunities for growth, and drive meaningful change.

In this episode, we speak with Luiz C. Parzianello, a pioneer of Agile Methods in Brazil and creator of the Framework for Agile Business Ownership™. Luiz shares insights into the Evolutionary Leadership Model and the innovative self-assessment tool he co-created with Comparative Agility, designed to help leaders develop competencies essential for business agility. We explore the model's four leadership dimensions—Connected, Conscious, Coherent, and Consistent—and their 25 practices, offering leaders a clear path for personal growth and self-awareness.

In this special episode, we bid farewell to Simon Hilton, who has expertly guided our podcast, and welcome Dee Rhoda as the new host. With over 15 years in IT and a deep commitment to Agile practices, Dee brings a wealth of experience transforming teams and supporting Scrum frameworks. As a certified ScrumMaster and Scrum Product Owner, she's passionate about helping teams and organizations succeed through effective Scrum practices. Join us for a reflective conversation on past episodes and an inspiring look at what's next for the Comparative Agility Podcast.

Learning has become a superpower in the modern world we live in. But learning at a deep level is something that is extremely challenging. In this episode we explore the topic of Intentional Mastery and why it matters.Key topics covered in this episode:

Hear the extraordinary journey of a leading Trauma Consultant and how he struggled during his early life against all odds. Mr Ansar Mahmood shares life lessons that are applicable to all of us. Key topics covered in this episode:

Discover the superpower of embracing your identity and uniqueness. In this episode we delve into the problem of pigeonholing that plagues our society, where the world expects people to meet their expectations. Discover why your uniqueness is important and why you should be proud of your identity. Get to know the importance of healing your traumas and balancing your day remembering about the inner child that everyone has. Key topics covered in this episode:

In this episode, we discuss what tools you need to peak your career. While possessing the necessary skills and expertise is undoubtedly crucial in any professional setting, this episode unravels the truth that skills alone may not guarantee career progression. Key topics covered in this episode:

In this episode we delve into the journey of a fighter pilot. Dominic shares important life lessons, such as the importance of perseverance and how sticking to what we believe is the key to success. Discover how you can use a fighter pilot mindset to succeed at work. Dominic TeichDom “Slice” Teich brings his fighter pilot background and applies them to guide pilots, athletes, business owners, and students with afterburner techniques that American fighter pilots use to ensure mission completion. As an Amazon best-selling author, business owner, entrepreneur, civilian and military instructor pilot, he knows that busy individuals and teams struggle with information overload.  Since 2002, “Slice” has guided hundreds of students toward their goals. His blueprint is called Single Seat Mindset; an impactful group of 40+ fighter pilot guides with a combined experience of 700+ years. They share proven formulas and life advice to the insider circle community to ensure success and big goal achievement all while avoiding overwhelm, overload, and flameout. They dive deep into the productivity world to provide guidance through short, impactful steps.You won't find any other cutting-edge community like ours as we provide unique life experiences learned in the 3rd dimension.SingleSeatMindset.com

Get ready for an eye-opening conversation in this episode as we explore the groundbreaking concept of Time Intelligence and its potential to revolutionise the way we work. In the episode Helen Beedham (award-winning author) shares insights from her book The Future of Time: How ‘re-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing.We share research on cultural norms and traits that define time-intelligent organisations. Together, we dive into practical strategies and real-life success stories of companies that have transformed their work culture by embracing innovative approaches to working hours, meeting schedules, and team dynamics. Don't miss this captivating episode that will empower you to rethink time management and unlock the secrets to productivity, well-being, and a harmonious work-life balance.Helen Beedham (Award-winning author)Helen Beedham, MA Cantab, helps business and HR leaders create ‘time-intelligent' organisations that gain a better return on the time their employees invest in work. She is an organisational expert, speaker, host of The Business of Being Brilliant podcast and Business Book Award-winning author of the Amazon bestseller The Future of Time: how ‘re-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing. Helen runs workshops to develop ‘time intelligent' teams, coaches people on transformative time management practices, and gives talks on productivity, diversity and wellbeing topics. She comments on the future of work at conferences, industry panels and client events and is regularly featured in national, business and HR press including the FT, Financial News, Forbes, FastCompany, theHRDirector and HR Review. Helen has over 25 years' experience in corporate workplaces and professional careers with expertise in organisation and team effectiveness, HR, Diversity & Inclusion, culture change, people management and time management.

In this episode we delve deep into the fascinating world of habit formation and transformation. Join us as we explore the science, psychology, and practical strategies behind creating and sustaining powerful habits that can positively impact every aspect of your life. From building a regular exercise routine and healthy eating habits to fostering productive work habits and cultivating a positive mindset, we'll cover a wide range of topics to help you understand the mechanics of habit formation. You'll discover effective techniques for breaking bad habits, overcoming obstacles, and developing sustainable practices that align with your goals and aspirations.Blaine OelkersBlaine Oelkers is a TEDx Speaker and leading authority in personal implementation and consistency. He is America's only Chief Results Officer®. He's a habit master with documented streaks of 1,810 days in a row and counting! As a top LinkedIn Connector he has over 27,000 1st level connections. Blaine graduated from Purdue University and Stanford University's Social Entrepreneurship Program. He is powered by Selfluence, a personal development and training company. He is excited to share with you ways you can take control of your life by taking control of yourself.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chiefresultsofficer/Email: blaine@selfluence.com

We delve into the concept of developing a professional edge. We discuss a practical framework to help you build your professional edge by looking at our Inside Edge, Outside Edge, and Leading Edge. Additionally, we touch upon the power of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) in understanding and shaping our subjective experiences, enabling personal growth and fostering collaborative relationships. Don't miss this insightful episode packed with valuable insights for building your professional edge.Kerry Nickols (Chief Mischief Maker & NLP Master Practitioner)Kerry worked within Banking in the Financial Services industry sector. Throughout her career she worked in the front office, middle office Finance, Legal, Operations and Technology. It's fair to say she knows her way around a Corporate environment. She now inspires leaders to reach their fullest potential. She is an award-winning leader through her work in diversity and inclusion. With more than 20 years' hands-on experience working in the financial services industry she understands these challenges and opportunities facing leaders in the Age of Digital. Her internationally-focused work designing and implementing bespoke leadership and coaching programmes has afforded her the opportunity to learn what the difference is that makes the difference for people and organisations. She is a mischievous explorer of hearts and minds and enables growth and positive change.Website: KEPAGAEmail: kerry@kepaga.comLinkedIn

As the world becomes more interconnected and projects become more complex, collaboration has become a critical factor in the success of any team. Whether you're working on a software development project or launching a new business venture, the ability to work together effectively is essential. In the context of agile teams, collaboration plays an especially important role in ensuring that the team can deliver high-quality results in a timely and efficient manner. In this episode, we'll explore the concept of collaboration and its importance for agile teams. We'll delve into the benefits of collaboration, the challenges that teams often face when trying to work together, and some strategies for fostering effective collaboration in your own team. Brandi OlsonBrandi Olson is a best-selling author, organizational agility expert, and the founder of Real Work Done, a consultancy serving leaders through agile transformation, organizational strategy and team design, and executive coaching. She has spent two decades consulting with organizations — from nonprofits to universities to global companies like 3M and Mayo Clinics. An expert in organizational learning and change, she teaches leaders how to solve problems and adapt fast with high-performing teams. A sought-after speaker on agility and high-performing teams, Brandi lives in Minnesota with her two kids, four chickens, and one dog.LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3l7jQwCpdboliEmail: hello@realworkdone.com

This week, Jorgen Hesselberg discusses the efficacy of assessments in helping to guide an agile journey. Assessments are a tool to help coaches coach and to answer the question of where are we in our journey toward being more agile.  Jorgen last appeared in SPaMCAST 557 in 2019 (http://bit.ly/2MiBw4K). Jorgen Hesselberg is the author of Unlocking Agility and co-founder of Comparative Agility, a leading agile assessment, and continuous improvement platform. A proven thought leader of numerous successful enterprise transformation efforts since 2009, Jorgen provides strategic guidance, executive counsel, and coaching to some of the world's most respected companies, both as an internal change agent and an external consultant. He has trained thousands of people on agile and Scrum, disruptive innovation, and enterprise transformation strategy. Contact Information Email: jorgen@comparativeagility.com  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jhesselberg  Comparative Agility:  https://www.comparativeagility.com/product/ Re-read Saturday News! Chapters 14 and 15 of Badass Agile Coaching: The Journey from Beginner to Mastery and Beyond are titled Badass Role-Based Coaching and Context-Based Coaching. Written by Jennifer Fields, the chapters explore role-based and context-based coaching dynamics. The two chapters are intertwined; I view roles as a specialized type of context. Jennifer presents several scenarios in both chapters on how she would approach coaching events for different roles and contexts. Week 1: Badass Role-Based Coaching and Context-Based Coaching - http://bit.ly/3IjYEfU  A quick advertisement: Controlling work entry requires preparation, knowledge, and building to establish a path to control work entry (magic wands are normally not available), which is why Jeremy Willets and I have developed a work entry workshop. Interested? Please email us at tcagley@tomcagley.com or willetsjm@gmail.com   Next SPaMCAST In the next Software Process and Measurement Cast, we continue our journey into the use of flow metrics to plan work. Next week we will tackle something more complex. We will also return to the QA corner with the regular version of Mr. Barriault's column.  

Er du på jakt etter gode tips til hvordan du skal klare å skape gode ideer og utvikling på arbeidsplassen din, så finner du dem her! Blant annet får du vite hvorfor det er viktig med fritid på jobben, hva kaffemaskina kan bety for innovasjon - og hvorfor det ligger godt til rette for mye bra utvikling nå som flere av oss jobber digitalt.Dette er en bonusepisode med lyd hentet fra SINTEFs direktesendte temadag om den hybride arbeidshverdagen. Opptaket av hele den sendingen kan du se på YouTube: https://youtu.be/W6N1OIT8rDcGjester:Jørgen Hesselberg, Co-Founder av Comparative Agility.Anders Haugeto, Founder av Iterate.Rasmus Ulfsnes, forsker i SINTEF Digital.Programleder: Aksel Faanes Persson.Musikk: Ooyy – Come 2gether (Epidemic Sound) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Agile Uprising board member Chris Murman welcomes our good friend and all-around wise wizard Bob Galen to talk about his new book titled Extraordinarily Badass Coaching: The Journey From Beginner To Mastery and Beyond. If you want an e-copy (Mobi, Epub, and PDF) the best way to get it is on Leanpub. Here's a coupon code for a discounted copy. In the pod, we discuss how we got where we are with the role of Agile Coach, the struggles people find in the role, and what an improvement in the work could mean for teams.  Bob mentions the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel a few times in the recording. More information can be found here: http://whatisagilecoaching.org/agile-coaching-growth-wheel/ https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Article/agile-coaching-growth-wheel Also, Mark Summers and Bob have collaborated with Comparative Agility to create an Agile Coaching PI (Personal Improvement) assessment that is free. It's a wonderful learning and development tool for agile coaches   Finally, you can also download a free copy of Agile Reflections for Agile Coaches e-book from Leanpub here by setting the slider to $0. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review, a rating, or leave comments on iTunes, Stitcher, or your podcasting platform of choice. It really helps others find us.  Much thanks to the artist Krebs from Machine Man Records who provided us with our outro music free of charge!  If you like what you heard, check out these links to find more music you might enjoy! If you'd like to join the discussion and share your stories,  please jump into the fray at our Discord Server! We at the Agile Uprising are committed to being totally free.  However, if you'd like to contribute and help us defray hosting and production costs we do have a Patreon.  Who knows, you might even get some surprises in the mail!

Welcome to the New Year! In this special episode of the ACN, we talk with members of the Supporting Agile Adoption Initiative about their unique perspective on hybrid work trends with companies. Plus, what the data tells us about the effectiveness of hybrid work, work-life balance, and other advice to help make this way of work successful in your business.  Joining the episode are  Hendrik Esser of Ericsson,  Eric Abelen of ING,  Darja Smite of Blekinge Institute of Technology, Jutta Eckstein of IT communication, Jorgen Hesselberg of Comparative Agility, Jens Coldewey of Improuv,  Marcin Floryan of Spotify, and Ray Arell of Agile Alliance.  (00:00) Introduction(02:25)  Meet the Supporting Agile Adoption Initiative members(13:40)  Hybrid Work(50:52)  Wrap upThis podcast is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.  If you want more information about the Agile Coaching Network.  Please go to AgileCoachingNetwork.org   Also, become a member of our nonprofit!  It supports our show and helps to build a great Agile community. Support the show (https://www.agilealliance.org/membership-pricing/)

The Product Owner PI is the newest capability from Comparative Agility that a Scrum Alliance volunteer group has developed. This assessment is a way for Product Owners to improve their career through continuous improvement.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

In this episode, Richard interviews Jorgen Hesselberg, a co-founder of Comparative Agility and the author of Unlocking Agility: An Insiders’ Guide to Agile Enterprise Transformation. He tells us how luck is not necessarily a product of coincidence and how your team can truly become an architect of its own luck. Read the transcript of the episode at https://kasperowski.com/podcast-64-jorgen-hesselberg/

In this episode I talk with Matt Haubrich, the Head of Business Analytics at Comparative Agility, about the new Impact Matrix feature that has just released. We talk about how this view can help Agile Transformations better understand the journey each Agile team is on in the organisation and how to better guide them into helping themselves but also helping each other.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

Welcome to the New Year!  In this special episode of the ACN, we are talking with members of the Supporting Agile Adoption Initiative about their perspective on Agile as it gains or loses momentum within companies.  We also explore how Agile moves forward as it hits its 20th anniversary as a mindset and set of methodologies.    Joining the episode are  Hendrik Esser of Ericsson,  Eric Abelen of ING,  Bjarte Bogsnes of Equinor, Jutta Eckstein of IT communication, Jorgen Hesselberg of Comparative Agility, Jens Coldewey of Improuv,  Marcin Floryan of Spotify,  John Buck of Governance Alive, and Ray Arell of Agile Alliance.  (00:00) Introduction(01:28)  What each member learned in 2020(16:11)  Waves in Agile(30:25)  Agile at 20 and what is next(49:52) Wrap upThis podcast is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.  If you want more information about the Agile Coaching Network.  Please go to AgileCoachingNetwork.org   Also, become a member of our nonprofit!  It supports our show and helps to build a great Agile community. Support the show (https://www.agilealliance.org/membership-pricing/)

This month I was lucky enough to talk with Valerio Zanini. The CEO of 5D Vision, Author of the 5D Product Framework and the book “Deliver Great Products That Customers Love” Why is this important? Successfully delivering a product that customers love and recommend takes more than just cutting code. Product delivery must be done in a continual and iterative cycle to create validated learning and a deep relationship with the customers you are serving. Here is What You Will Learn The 5D framework that guides you through customer research, all the way through to delivery and learning so you can reinvest that learning back into your product and customer. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's Continuous Improvement journey. About Valerio Zanini After many years of product innovation for companies large and small, our founder, Valerio Zanini, decided to bring his expertise to a new level, challenge himself, and help you solve your biggest problems. Over the span of a career, Valerio built digital products for Fortune 500 companies like Cisco and Capital One; helped several small and medium businesses reinvent their online business strategy; and co-founded Goozex.com, the leading online trading platform for trading of digital media. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This month I was lucky enough to talk with Maria Matarelli and Nic Sementa. They are the authors of the Agile Marketing Academy and believe that marketing can and should keep pace with continual delivery of product. Why is this important? DONE does not stop at production. Some development teams can believe the responsibility of shipping value stops with production, but good communication with customers is necessary. Change is happening faster. Product messaging needs to change with market trends. Be the fast follower and learn about your customers first. Here is What You Will Learn Moving from a sale to a success mindset. Focus less on sales but also on how you can attract those who may not be ready to buy now but ready to buy soon. The four-phase cycle to transform your marketing. Discover the test and learn method that rapidly track the effectiveness of your value proposition in the market. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's Continuous Improvement journey. About Maria Mattarelli Maria Matarelli is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) who travels the world on one-way tickets consulting and training companies on reaching true agility. In addition to applications of Agile in IT, Maria and her team have been applying Agile to the Marketing realm with incredible results. After founding the Agile Marketing Academy, Maria and a team of experienced trainers are dedicated to bringing Agile outside the normal applications. About Nic Sementa As a serial entrepreneur, Nic Sementa has co-founded a series of companies including nationally distributed college magazine Boosh, a community based artist incubator RGB Lounge, and crowd funding consulting company Minion Werks. With a strong background in advertising and sales, Nic has helped many companies turn small marketing budgets into breakthrough results. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This month I was lucky enough to talk with Steve Morlidge to talk about the Beyond Budgeting. He is an expert in Beyond Budgeting, a financial method that searches for a lot of the same anti fragile outcomes as the Agile manifesto. Why is this important? Yearly budgets are inefficient and wasteful. Trying the forecast your budget for the year is like trying to forecast your roadmap for the year. It will most likely change with new information, so moving to “just enough” planning is less wasteful. Yearly budgeting encourages bad behaviour. Forcing people to allocate dollars before they know what they need it ends up with them asking for too much at the beginning and madly spending before the EOFY. Here is What You Will Learn The six pillars of change. Understand the six pillars that will support your organisation to this more Agile financial method. The Beyond Budgeting iterative method. See the cycle that manages failure within boundaries and allow for a greater opportunity for growth and learning. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's Continuous Improvement journey. About Steve Morlidge Steve Morelidge is the author of ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting: A New Operating System for Organisations' and ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting' in 2018. As well as being the Development Director for CatchBull, he currently a member of the Beyond Budgeting Institute's core team. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This month I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with Peter Moreno to talk about the Agile Leadership Framework. This framework combines Agile principles with Integral Theory to equip leaders with a more wholistic view of the world and empower their teams to succeed. Why is this important? Great leaders empower the team. While there is a lot said about the development team in Agile, there is still a need for great leaders to create positive environments for teams to thrive. Leaders need a wholistic and integrated view to lead through change. Change is pervasive, so if a leader is to be effective, then they need to consider how decisions and events affect all levels of their organisation. Here is What You Will Learn The Four domains of an Agile leader. Understand the four levels that every Agile leader must inhabit to serve their team and deliver results. The behaviors of successful Agile leaders. More than just theory, the Agile Leaders framework gives clear behaviours that leaders can engage in to improve their organisation. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's journey of Inspired Teams. About Peter Moreno Peter Moreno is an Agile coach and the founder of the Integral Agile Institute. His interest in bringing a more authentic approach to leadership inspired him to develop the Agile Leadership framework. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This month I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with Johanna Rothman and Mark Kilby , the authors of the book “From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver”. Distributed agile teams have a terrible reputation. They don't deliver “on time,” and too often, they don't deliver what the customer needs. However, most agile teams have at least one remote team member. And, agile approaches are here to stay. Why is this important? Distributed teams are becoming more normal. With the global nature of business and the recent need to be remote because of pandemic, businesses need to be remote friendly to survive and attract the best talent. Distributed teams need to be intentional. Sometimes culture and work practices evolve organically in an organisation, but in distributed teams it needs to be intentional and maintained to avoid isolation and misalignment. Here is What You Will Learn How important collaboration and communication is to any team. Making a team distributed will amplify the collaboration and communication skills of the team, so understand how well your team has formed first. The eight principles of distributed agile teams. Drive clarity and communication by seeing the main pitfalls that Agile distributed teams fall into and how they can be avoided. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's journey of Inspired Team --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This week on the show, Dan Neumann is joined by Jorgen Hesselberg! Jorgen is the author of the new book, Unlocking Agility: An Insider’s Guide to Agile Enterprise Transformation, as well as the co-founder of Comparative Agility — a leading Agile assessment and continuous improvement program.   This episode will be focused on data-driven continuous improvement. Jorgen shares the main reasons to use data to drive continuous improvement, some of the main ways to gather data (and why these methods are used), and important pieces to keep in mind when implementing changes to your team and organization through the data you collect.   Jorgen has a lot to say about this topic as a co-founder of a leading Agile assessment and continuous improvement program so you definitely don’t want to miss his insights and key takeaways!   Key Takeaways Why use data for continuous improvement? Data can help guide you and your teams by asking better questions as well as shining a light where there otherwise would be darkness Helps you reflect on what you’re doing and what you can do better; data helps guide these conversations Optimizes workflow by making the feedback loop faster so you can take action more quickly and therefore see results faster As a change leader, data can help you find out where you can be of most use to help your teams What are some ways to gather data for continuous improvement? And why are these methods used? Objective data (defects in production, trends, etc.) Surveys, even though very subjective, can also be very useful because they can hit some important patterns of ways of working (i.e. psychological safety was discovered through a survey) and highlight other points that wouldn’t naturally come up in conversations because they create anonymity and give everyone an equal voice Structured interviews Gathering data — whether it’s through structured interviews, subjective data, or collecting data electronically — helps to shorten feedback loops What is important to keep in mind when using data for continuous improvement? Subjective, objective, and quantitative data are all great — as long as the data helps you and your team ask better questions, that is the main goal As a coach or change leader, it is important to ask meaningful questions that highlight the issues and challenges your teams are facing and to give them a voice Don’t implement changes all at once that you have gathered from the data because you and your teams will become overwhelmed and end up making no changes (i.e. because you are diluting the focus and creating confusion; people don’t have time to adjust too many different things at once) An important facet to making change based off data is to change at a rate where you can see it ripple through the organization Combine subjective data with objective data Measure technical debt simply by asking your developers Listen to data early on and refresh it periodically to stay ahead of the curve Don’t continually ask your developers how they’re doing — they’ll get annoyed! Understand what ‘normal’ benchmarks are for your niche Data isn’t going to give you answers but it is going to help you ask better questions Use data for information, not evaluation   Mentioned in this Episode: Jorgen Hesselberg Unlocking Agility: An Insider's Guide to Agile Enterprise Transformation, by Jorgen Hesselberg Comparative Agility The Agile Manifesto “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” by Amy Edmonson Mood Marbles Daniel H. Pink Books Strava Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 58: “How to Get Past the Two-Week Shelf Life of Your New Year’s Resolution”   Jorgen Hesselberg’s Book Pick: Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, by Nicholas A. Christakis   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!

High Performance Teams This month I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with Richard Kasperowski, the author of two books, High-Performance Teams: The Foundations and The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness. We talked about his framework for high performance teams and how it brings a practical set of behaviours to some concepts we have talked about previously. Why is this important Teams need the tools to effectively communicate at speed. Helping teams establish a set of communication tools and emotional intelligence establishes a trust-based environment. Teams and Culture drive your organisation Trust based environments allow team members to devote all their energies to customer value and improved business performance. Here is What You'll Learn What a great team looks like. We have teams all around us but the best ones all have a few things in common. Team Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Safety. Why these two concepts are so important for teams to be cohesive and drive real value in and out of the organisation. The six building blocks of High Performance Teams. Learn the six distinctive areas that your team can focus on to build rapport and trust through explicit behaviours. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's journey of Inspired Teams. About Richard Kasperowski Richard Kasperowski is an author, teacher, speaker, and coach focused on team building and high-performance teams. Richard is the author of two books, High-Performance Teams: The Foundations and The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness, as well as the forthcoming book High-Performance Teams: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety and Emotional Intelligence. He leads clients in building great teams that get great results using the Core Protocols, Agile, and Open Space Technology. Richard created and teaches the class Agile Software Development at Harvard University. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This month I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with Dr. Steven B. Wolff, Author of “Inspired Teams” to talk about how modern teams require a mastery of Emotional Intelligence to be effective in today's work environment. Why is this important Teams are more than just a sum of individuals. Team cultures have needs that exist greater than the sum of their parts and need tools to enable them to be effective as autonomous groups. Teams and Culture drive your organisation Teams and knowledge work are becoming more autonomous. By empowering them with Emotional Intelligence we create a culture of resilience and excellence. Here is What You'll Learn The Need for a Emotional Intelligence at the team level. Understand the shifts in team culture and the business landscape that requires teams to navigate emotions around uncertainty and failure. The difference between Team Emotional Intelligence and Individual Emotional Intelligence. Many people are familiar with Emotional Intelligence but we lay out how Team Emotional Intelligence differs in ways you might not expect. The Four Quadrants of Inspired Teams Learn the four key areas to help uplift the Emotional Intelligence of your teams to deal with uncertainty and change. How Team Emotional Intelligence can bring agility to any team. Understand how Inspired Teams blends with Agile concepts so any team to adopt it without the need for frameworks like Scrum etc. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's journey of Inspired Teams. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

This month I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with Jorgen Hesselberg, the Co Founder of Comparative Agility to talk about how to grow and sustain Continuous Improvement in your organisation. Why is this important Change is no longer optional 52% of Fortune 500 companies have disappeared because of digital disruption. If you want to survive in modern business, then adaption is a key skill to master. People and Culture drive your organisation Teams and knowledge work are becoming more autonomous. By empowering them with a culture of learning and managed risk taking you supercharge their ability to adapt to the market. Here is What You'll Learn The Need for a Change Culture Understand the shifts in team culture and the business landscape that requires the ability to navigate change at pace. The 6 Step Process For Continuous Improvement We lay out the exact process you can follow to create real change driven by data, people and leadership. The Pillars of Agile Transformation Understand the pillars and which ones are necessary for your Agile teams to operate at a high performance level. Psychological Safety Learn how to create the culture where people feel empowered to raise imperfections and turn them into improvements. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

An exclusive interview with the Supporting Agile Adoption Initiative at their yearly meeting in Stockholm, Sweden.   Attendees included Hendrik Esser of Ericsson,  Eric Abelen of ING,  Bjarte Bogsnes of Equinor, Jutta Eckstein of IT communication, Jorgen Hesselberg of Comparative Agility, Jens Coldewey of Improuv,  Marcin Floryan of Spotify,  John Buck of Governance Alive, Elena Vassilieva of Ericsson, and Ray Arell of Agile Alliance.  We talk about organizational design in Agile companies to promote higher contextual awareness and coordination between parts within companies.  We also talk about sustainability and how development teams can help innovate and create a  sustainable future.      (00:00) Introduction(02:35) What is the Supporting Agile Adoption Initiative (07:47) Organizational Design and Octopus Structures(36:31) Sustainability(46:54) Wrap upThis podcast is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Support the show (https://www.agilealliance.org/membership-pricing/)

Join host Dee Rhoda on the Comparative Agility Podcast as she engages with world-renowned thought leaders, uncovering insights and strategies to drive continuous improvement and agility.

SPaMCAST 557 features our interview with Jorgen Hesselberg.  We talked about his book Unlocking Agility,  assessing agility, and whether leadership and structure lead culture when adopting an agile mindset.  It is a thought-provoking and fun interview. Jorgen’s irrepressible nature shines through even when tackling tough topics!  Jorgens Bio: “Jorgen Hesselberg is the author of Unlocking Agility and co-founder of Comparative Agility, a leading agile assessment, and continuous improvement platform. A proven thought leader of numerous successful enterprise transformation efforts since 2009, Jorgen provides strategic guidance, executive counsel, and coaching to some of the world’s most respected companies both as an internal change agent and an external consultant. He has trained thousands of people on agile and Scrum, disruptive innovation, and enterprise transformation strategy.” Contact Information Email: jorgen@comparativeagility.com  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jhesselberg  Comparative Agility:  https://www.comparativeagility.com/product/   Re-Read Saturday News Chapter 14 continues the discussion of cognitive biases and heuristics.  In Chapter 14 of Thinking, Fast and Slow we explore the representative heuristic.     Remember, if you do not have a favorite, dog-eared copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow, please buy a copy.  Using the links in this blog entry helps support the blog and its alter-ego, The Software Process and Measurement Cast. Buy a copy on Amazon,  It’s time to get reading!   The installments: Week 1: Logistics and Introduction – http://bit.ly/2UL4D6h Week 2: The Characters Of The Story – http://bit.ly/2PwItyX Week 3: Attention and Effort – http://bit.ly/2H45x5A Week 4: The Lazy Controller – http://bit.ly/2LE3MQQ Week 5: The Associative Machine – http://bit.ly/2JQgp8I Week 6: Cognitive Ease – http://bit.ly/2VTuqVu Week 7: Norms, Surprises, and Causes – http://bit.ly/2Molok2 Week 8: A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions - http://bit.ly/2XOjOcx  Week 9: How Judgement Happens and Answering An Easier Question - http://bit.ly/2XBPaX3  Week 10:  Law of Small Numbers - http://bit.ly/2JcjxtI  Week 11: Anchors - http://bit.ly/30iMgUu  Week 12: The Science of Availability - http://bit.ly/30tW6TN  Week 13: Availability, Emotion, and Risk - http://bit.ly/2GmOkTT  Week 14: Tom W’s Speciality - http://bit.ly/2YxKSA8    Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 558 will feature our essay Story Points – Leave Them, Don’t Love Them.  I use them when needed but I am becoming less enamored with story points every day.   We will also return to the QA Corner and spend some time with Jeremy Berriault.  

Jorgen Hesselberg, cofounder of Comparative Agility, and Steven Wolff, partner in Group Emotional Intelligence Partners, sat down with us to talk about their Agile2018 presentation on "Emotional Intelligence as a Performance Multiplier." Emotional intelligence has a profound affect not just on team dynamics but also on organizational culture. In his research Hesselberg has found that culture is often on the list of factors for team performance - but what is culture? Says Wolff, "When you can affect the rules of behavior - the norms - you can change the patterns of behavior that you see and feel - which is the culture." Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego. The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility. Podcast library: www.agileamped.com Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/

“Agile is not something you become, Agile is something you become more of.” For organizations that are engaged in Agile Transformation, it is often very challenging to get a sense of where you are with respect to successfully adopting a new way of working. Comparative Agility is a tool that has been designed to help Agile coaches and organizations get a deeper understanding of their progress towards Agile transformation. In this interview, Jorgen Hesselberg, co-founder of Comparative Agility, and I discuss how the tool has evolved since it was created in 2008 and how it is now being used by coaches and organizations to not only understand how their transformation is going, but how they are doing compared to others within their vertical, as well. We also talk about the work that Comparative Agility has been doing with the Scrum Alliance and how the tool has been extended to include things like Security and DevOps, in addition to discussing Jorgen’s book “Unlocking Agility.” If you’d like to check out Comparative Agility, you can find it here: https://www.comparativeagility.com If you’d like to read “Unlocking Agility”, you can find it here: https://amzn.to/2setHly Contacting Jorgen Email: jorgen@comparativeagility.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/jhesselberg

During the 2018 North American Global Scrum Gathering in Minneapolis, (https://bit.ly/2LOd5ZD) I had a chance to interview the Interim Co-CEOs of the Scrum Alliance: Shannon Carter, Renata Lerch, and Angie Stecovich. In addition to their new roles, they also serve as VP of Education, VP of Global Marketing and Communications, and Sr. Director of Finance, respectively. Shannon, Renata, and Angie explain how their roles have changed at the Scrum Alliance and how being part of an agile leadership team has prepared them for this. They also speak about all the new things happening at the Scrum Alliance. During the interview, they share details about a number of new initiatives at the Scrum Alliance (including how the certifications offered by the Scrum Alliance have changed over the last year and continue to evolve) as well as new benefits being offered to Certified Scrum Professionals (like free access to Comparative Agility (https://www.comparativeagility.com), an online assessment tool that can be used to help organizations develop their agile capabilities). By far, the biggest announcement the Scrum Alliance made during the 2018 North American Global Scrum Gathering was the partnership with Jeff Sutherland and Scrum Inc. to form a new organization called Scrum at Scale (https://www.scrumatscale.com) that is focused on helping large organizations transform to Agile. If you’d like to check out an interview with Jeff on the partnership, you can find it here: http://drunkenpm.blogspot.com/2018/04/jeff-sutherland-at-2018-global-scrum.html For more on the Scrum Alliance: https://www.scrumalliance.org

Please checkout out this exciting interview with author of Essential Scrum, Ken Rubin. Ken is a distinguished author, speaker, and Agile instructor. He has worked with many of the nation's top companies, and he joins us in this episode to tackle some of the tough questions facing teams as they adopt Agile.If you haven't already read Ken's great book, please pick up a copy of Essential Scrum on Amazon today!  You can also read Ken's blog and learn more about his services through his website innolution.com.I hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to subscribe in iTunes. Do you have a question that you would like answered in an upcoming podcast? Please send your question to: coach@agileinstructor.com.All Things Agile - Episode 011 - Ken Rubin InterviewTranscript:Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast – your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast in iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr.Ronnie: Hello everyone and welcome to All Things Agile. I’m very excited to announce that Ken Rubin is our guest today on the show. Ken is a noted author of Essential Scrum as well as being a public speaker and Agile instructor. Before we begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and we accept no legal liability. So let’s get started! First off, Ken, thank you so much for joining us on this episode.  I am really glad to have you on this show. I’ve given the audience just a quick introduction, but can you please take a few minutes and explain a little bit more about yourself, both personally and professionally? We really want to get a chance to know you.Ken: Sure! So my background is software engineering. My degrees are all in computer science and I’ve had a typical path through most software companies. I’ve been a developer, project manager, VP of Engineering at a number of companies both large and small. I’ve done 10 startup companies in my career, and I’ve taken two of those public on the NASDAQ. I did my 2 year stint with IBM in the mid-1990s. I’ve helped companies and I worked with 130 people; we ran around North America building large distributed object systems and if anybody’s old enough to remember, I came out of the Small Talk world. Back in the late-1980s, I helped bring Small Talk out of the research labs at Xerox PARC, and I worked with a startup company that was a spin-off of Xerox PARC called Barclay System. We were the early market object technology folks.  So we brought Small Talk and object technology to the market.I’ve been doing Agile since the early-1990s. Scrum, formally, since 2000. In those days, I worked for a startup company in Colorado called Genomica. It was a 90 person engineering team, and they let the VP of engineering go. I ended up inheriting the engineering team which wasn’t functioning all that well and we transitioned everybody over to Scrum. And that ended up working out much better for us. And I’ve been using Scrum ever since, about 14 years. These days, I spend my time out either doing Scrum training classes and Kanban training classes or doing coaching. And, I hope that in our discussion today I can go over a number of examples that I had the benefit of seeing a lot of different companies and what’s working and what isn’t working.Ronnie: Thank you for the introduction Ken. I’m really looking forward to the insights you can provide us based on your considerable experience. The first question I’d liked to ask you, regarding your book Essential Scrum, is in regards to the dedication and introduction. It really got me thinking about the importance of relationships and software. I also started thinking about how relationships or soft-skills play into the success of Scrum. What is your insight or your advice on how relationships affect Agile teams?Ken: It’s a good question to start with. To me, the unit of capacity in Agile is the team. Even the Agile Manifesto calls that out – individuals and interactions over processes and tools. It really is about the team. So how they interact with each other, how they perform is of outmost importance. The relationships among the members of the teams is critical. If you’re going to have self-organizing teams, they have to have trust in one another. That’s one of the characteristics that, for me, distinguishes a group from a team. Group, simply being a bunch of people that I threw together with a common label. And honestly, the only thing they have in common are the T-shirts they printed out that have the name of the group on it.A team is a group that’s gone through the stages. Sort of the top most stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. And if you can make a real investment to turn a group into a team, first, they had to figure out these soft skills issues: how to work well together? Otherwise, they would never become a high performing team, and they would constantly be at odds with one another. So one of management’s responsibility is to help put the right people on the team, but once they’re there, it’s the soft skills that help bring these members together, that help them work well and function well. In most Scrum classes, there’s an exercise: the Yes – And, vs the Yes – But exercise. And the intent behind that – it’s actually an exercise that borrowed from improvisational comedy training and the idea is to try and help teams understand how to work well together, how to form those relationships, how to take one person’s idea, build on top of it and not be in a Yes – But style passive-aggressive cutting things down: ‘Yeah, I heard what you said; it seems like a good idea but let me now tell you why it sucks.’ That’s not a foundation for building a high performance team. If the soft skills are not addressed, then likely you won’t have a style of organizing teams which are the unit of capacity in doing Agile and for that reason, you’ll likely fail.Ronnie: I definitely agree. What came to my mind is the book ‘Speed of Trust’ by Stephen Covey. It describes how trust is a major factor and how people fill in the gaps in communication and that with a high trust environment, the team is able to move more quickly.Ken: I think it’s really important. How we disagree is as important as how we do agree. At no point would I ever suggest that team members shouldn’t disagree, or shouldn’t have a vigorous debate. They should do it though in a very proactive way; in a way that’s reinforcing their ability to come up with an innovative solution, not inhibiting that ability. So if they don’t have the skills to work with each other and challenge each other, then very likely that the best achieved is mediocrity.Ronnie: Excellent point! And I think that leads into our next question: There is a quote in your book that I love, which is that one of the benefits of Scrum is that it really exposes existing issues. I couldn’t agree more. It’s been my experience that Scrum really sheds light on underlying problems or processes that are actually bottlenecks. One of the challenges that I’ve seen is that sometimes the personalities and procedures that were in place before adopting Agile may be discovered to be part of the concerns. Some of the potential personalities involved may even be in leadership roles. So one question I would like to ask you is, how does an organization work on improving their adoption of Agile when much of the legacy culture, leadership style and procedures are still in place?Ken: This is actually a critical question and how people respond in this situation, to me is one of the tell-tell signs as to whether they’ll be successful – let me give you a specific example. Some years ago, I was giving a management presentation during lunchtime in front of my boss. So we budgeted 90 minutes, brought in food, the management team. So senior management and director level people and some VPs are in the room and I made the following comment; I said – by the end of your Sprint, you should get the work done and you should have zero known defects on what you just built. And I also mentioned that people that have historically been members of the testing team should be fully integrated in with developers in a single team. They should work together collaboratively with zero defects to get things done.Immediately this lady in the back of the room raised her hand. She said ‘This won’t work here’. I said ‘Why not? What part of that?’ She said ‘I manage the QA team’. She goes ‘You just told me that I should assign my people on to the Scrum team.’ Yes, right – we work collaboratively that way. She said ‘Yeah, well here’s the problem. You also said that at the end of every Scrum we should have zero known defects and the reason that won’t work is because we compensate our testers based on the number of defects they find.’ So she’s saying basically that’s not very motivating if you’re one of my testers because you’re going to make less money if you do that.Now, what she says next is the tell-tell sign for me as to whether a company has a hope of being successful with Agile. Here’s what she didn’t say. She did not say ‘Well, in that case, I’m just not going to assign my people out on to the Scrum teams. I’m not going to do that, I’ll just keep them together’. Meaning, I see the impediment. Agile has shone a bright light on where we have an impediment. And rather than address the impediment head on, instead what I’ll do is I’ll alter the definition of Agile so that that impediment doesn’t exist. Now, companies that are bolted to that approach will probably fail and fail quickly with Agile. Instead, what she actually said was ‘I think I’m going to have a conversation with the VP of HR and the VP of Engineering so that we can discuss how we’re going to change the compensation plan for our testers’. Now, we have in place people that understand that the current process, the current compensation system is at odds with them being successful with Agile. And rather than run away from the problem, hide when the impediment gets exposed, we’re willing to address it head on. So my advice – if you don’t have the executives trained or understanding these key points, you’re likely to have a problem. By the way, her next comment – I mentioned other things; I don’t pull people off of Scrum teams to work on your pet projects. Another person raised her hand and said ‘I do that all the time – what else shouldn’t I do?’At least in an environment like that, they’re willing to entertain it. So my approach to trying to address the problem is the leadership requires the proper kind of training and coaching principally on core Agile principles. That’s where I try to focus with them. So if I can get 60-90 minutes with them over lunchtime, that’s a good start. Not as good as having them in a multi-day class, but they’re not willing to make that commitment usually. So get 60-90 minutes, help them to understand that core Agile principles and hopefully they can align their behavior with how we’re going to do agility downstream, cause if they don’t, we will have a serious disconnect and companies with a better experience at that will likely fail in their attempt to use Agile, because of that disconnect. It’s a critical question and either they’re going to understand what we’re trying to do and embrace it, or they’re not and these companies are going to have a hard time. Ronnie: I love that example! One of the approaches that I’ve seen previously is that the director VPs and executive teams actually complete certified Scrum Master training. I believe that really helped them understand the vision and what Agile teams actually need.Ken: I find it beneficial when people like that, people with high level titles actually attend the classes. Part of the benefit is not just their understanding, which is profound, but a second benefit as well. You know, for example – in one class, I was talking about how teams should give range answers to questions as a way of communicating uncertainty. Range answers to planning questions, like ‘When will you be done?’ Give a range answer: between X number of sprints and Y number of sprints. And in this one class, an engineer stood up and said ‘Yeah, but my management is never going to accept a range answer’. And there’s only one person in this class – it was a large class – and the only person in this class wearing a suit was the general manager of the whole division. He then stood up, turned around and said ‘Well, I’m the guy asking the questions and I’m telling you I’m willing to accept a range answer and I’d like to talk to you about how we can keep range answers within one calendar quarter – but yes, a range answer will be acceptable’.That pretty much addresses the whole point right there. People are looking at each other, are like ‘Okay – he is the guy who’s asking questions and he just said he’s willing to do it and I guess we can actually move on here under the assumption we can provide range answers’. So getting the senior execs in a classroom, I think it’s a high priority – but it doesn’t happen nearly as frequently as it should. Occasionally, I’ll get the luxury of having a one day – and rarely, but it does happen – a two day class with leadership. I would say one of every four classes I do, we have that hour to 90 minutes lunchtime conversation. Which is precisely an hour to 90 minutes good, not as good as a half a day or a day or two would. Ronnie: Great answer! Leading to my third question which is adaptive vs. predictive, which is referenced in your book. One of the examples that came to my mind was release planning. Could you please take a moment to explain to our listeners adaptive vs. predictive and perhaps how it might apply to release planning?Ken: Be happy to. A lot of folks, when they think of Waterfall, they think predictive. Predictive up front water. In Waterfall, we have to put together the full requirements document on the first day, when we have the worst possible knowledge we’ll ever have about that project. So to a certain stage, you have to predict. If you’re being rude, you’d say you’d have to guess what all the requirements are. A lot of people didn’t think of Agile as adaptive – more just in time. So if you imagine like these two being on either sides of a teeter totter or a see-saw, what I’d like to suggest is that if you’re overly aggressive in either dimension, overly predictive or overly adaptive, you’re probably going to be unhappy.If you’re overly predictive, you’re probably just going to dip down into the guessing pool. There’s a part of you who might say ‘You couldn’t possible know that – not on the first day, not when you have the worst possible knowledge you’ll ever have!’ At this point, you’re just guessing, and that seems dangerous. On the other hand, if you’re fully adapted and you’ll do everything just in time, which in the context of release planning would mean no upfront planning whatsoever, my guess is that’s going to feel chaotic. Agile isn’t about everything done and adapted just in time. It’s about finding balance; balance between up-front work, predictive work and downstream adaptive work. And where you set that balance point will be different for different types of projects or products, different companies.So let’s buy into the fact that it’s a misperception to believe that Agile is anti-upfront planning. Because, of course, that’s simply not true. Agile is anti-waste. And if you do too much planning upfront, then you’re going to inject too much unnecessary planning inventory into the system that’ll have to be reworked or thrown out when something goes wrong. So the principle here is upfront planning should be helpful, just not excessive. In the spirit of just enough, just in time. But there’s nothing in there that says ‘avoid upfront planning’ so release planning – if you very specifically look at that, if you define what it means, in today’s world release planning is becoming a harder term to use because in the past, a release typically was performed after multiple sprints of work were completed. So in that scenario, a release was larger than a sprint. But what about the teams that release every sprint?You can argue ‘Well, isn’t sprint planning the same as release planning?’ Or what about teams that do continuous delivery or continuous deployment. They can release every feature as it become available during this sprint. You can even argue that in that context, a release smaller than the sprint. So let’s change the term just for a moment. Let’s call it longer term planning. And people might say ‘Well, longer than what?’ Well, longer than a sprint. Even if you release every sprint, or even if you release multiple times during the sprint, there’s still a benefit to looking out at a horizon that’s larger than a single sprint. We might be using milestone releases along the path to a bigger goal. And so release planning, is really trying to plan to that large goal.Okay, that presents certain issues. Here you are at on the first day of the project – what if that longer goal is 6 months out? Or even longer? Can you actually give any kind of accurate answer that early on? And the answer is that you’re going to get asked the questions. And we all know what the questions are. Questions like ‘When will you be done?’ or ‘How many of those features do you think will be available 6 months or 9 months from now?’ And ‘What’s all this going to cost?’Now, these seem like fair questions to ask. And for us, trying to be in a position to answer them, we need to figure out what realistically we can do. And the good news is we can do some things. And the way we’ll address it is, much like I was suggesting earlier, we give range answers. In release planning, the smart approach is always give a range answer to questions. If they ask, ‘When will you be done?’ – stating a specific date is likely going to be overly precise. On the first day of the project you cannot be that precise, you don’t have good enough information. But I can always be accurate by giving a range. You just have to give a sensible range. If I tell you it’s going to take 4-7 sprints to get this done; that expresses one level of uncertainty. If I said it’s going to take 4-29 sprints; that would express a completely different level of uncertainty.At a certain point, I know I can always be accurate, but it could be ridiculous. Yeah, it’s going to take between now and 3 years from now – yeah, but that’s not very helpful. So we try to give range answers that are accurate, that are reasonably actionable by the people who hear them. They can make a business decision – ‘Should I do this, should I not do it?’ So we have to do some amount of upfront planning to be in a position to answer those questions. Typically, at the release planning level, we try to work with medium-sized stories. Not epics that tend to be too big, but use more portfolio level planning, but with some people might call features or even themes so we try to generate a first pass at those, input high level size estimates on them and then based on a team’s history velocity, or a forecasted velocity, we try to give a rough estimate. And we try to simplify the problem. If someone says ‘Well, my release is going to be 2 years out’, I don’t think that’s a reasonable timeframe to be planning. Especially because there’s likely very important increments along that path that we can plan first. Rule number one is always try to turn a big problem into a small one in planning. And always give range answers. So I do think by balancing upfront, predictive work, sort of adjusted time adaptive work, we can do reasonable release planning. With a very important caveat. We update the release plan every sprint. Release planning is not a one time at the very beginning activity. Yes, I did do it early on because I probably got asked some questions I had to address. But I update my release with every single sprint as I acquire better knowledge. That’s how I tend to approach it.Ronnie: Perfect answer. Our next question is also from Essential Scrum which is in regards to idle work vs. idle workers. I’ve seen this come up countless times and it can be very frustrating on me. I often see management focused on idle workers. For example ‘Why is this person only at X percentage of utilization and rather than a team mindset of why is there work being idle?’ Could you please take a few minutes and explain idle work vs. idle workers for the audience? Ken: I will. To me, this is a critical topic, and I cover it in all of my classes because it lays a foundational principle that I need. The way I try to explain it to folks is this way: the largest cost in software product development is the people. Once we buy hardware and whatever software people need to do their job, the real cost of any software organization is the cost of the people that are hired, which is why budget almost always equals headcount. Everybody is interested in eliminating waste, but the issue of course, is that within organizations there are multiple forms of waste. And these types of waste typically trade off, meaning it’s usually impossible to simultaneously eliminate all forms of waste. So what people tend to do is they go after the waste they can see. And since we said the largest cost in software product development is people, then a visible obvious form of waste would be underutilization of people. Meaning, if I hire someone to do testing and I pay them 100% salary, there’s an expectation that that person is going to test 100% of the time. And by the way, my management probably measures me on how busy I keep that tester, so they assume that the tester reports to me. If I hire that individual in, pay them 100% salary and assign them to a project, and that project requires 60% of their time, if I were to stop there, it would give the appearance of a 40% underutilization of my tester. And I’ll look bad to my management because I’m paying this person 100% salary, but the individual’s only working 60% of the time. Okay, that won’t do.So to solve the problem, I’m going to do the obvious. I’m probably going to assign that person to a second project, which will lead them up 30%. Okay, I now have them at 90% utilization – but there’s still a 10% underutilization – well, it worked so well for 2 projects, let’s try 3. Okay, clever me. I’ve now eliminated idle tester waste. I’ve driven underutilization of my tester to 0. They’re 100% utilized. So I have eliminated that form of waste. The question, of course, is what just went the other way? Meaning, we said sometimes waste trades off – as one goes down, the other goes up. Well, here’s the problem. The idle workers weren’t waste that was causing the most economic advantage. Here’s the problem: as we keep people that busy, chances are they’re going to need to start blocking work. As an obvious example, I’ve assigned that person to work on 3 separate teams. It’s very likely, at any point in time, that person’s blocking two teams. They’re working on one of the projects and the other two are waiting. That means, the work is now idle.So what you end up seeing is this inventory that’s building up all over product development. Inventory being blocked work sitting in queues, waiting to get done. And the problem is that blocked work, that inventory, is causing huge economic damage. And people don’t focus on it because that’s an invisible form of waste, hard to see in our inventory and product development because typically, it’s bits out on the disk, code out on a server in best cases. Whereas inventory in other cases tends to be more visible. So they go after the visible ways which is idle workers and they ignore the kind of invisible ways. The people are still 100% busy, so it looks like the system is working at capacity. The problem is that if you examine what happens in large companies, at scale, if you look at how work flows across their organization, across the system, the collection of teams they put together to get the job done, what you often find is up to 90% of the time, the work is blocked.Imagine you took a stopwatch out of your pocket when a customer asks you to work on a feature and you agree to do it. If you click the stopwatch at that point and time starts running, you don’t get to click the stopwatch again until you’ve actually delivered the features to the customer. And so, what I’m saying, from click to click on that stopwatch, in a lot of organizations that I visit, up to 90% of the time or more the work isn’t moving. And that’s causing severe economic damage and the reason I say that is it’s injecting a cost of delay. The work could have been done faster and delivered to customers faster and delivering work faster generates revenue today; revenue today is worth more than revenue tomorrow because revenue today generates money and money is a time battle. When you compare the cost of delay, of idle work, against maybe a little bit of underutilization of the workers you realize that you’re working on the wrong thing.In organization, it’s all about the idle work, but that’s exactly the opposite of what most companies do. Most organizations attempt to optimize the utilization of their people, and by doing so, they inject a lot of delay into how long it takes to get the work done and that delay has a real cost. And they don’t quantify it, so they don’t really see the impact of that. So you focus on the idle work, you don’t worry about the idle workers. You’re trying to achieve what I call ‘fast, flexible flow’. To very quickly flow the work across to your teams in a fast and flexible way. You subordinate other decisions to that, which means ‘I don’t really care how idle or how occupied or how utilized your workers are, but I do care about is how quickly you can pull the work across your organization in a high quality way.’ Though in a sense, most organizations are focused in the wrong place. They’re watching the workers when they should be watching the work. That’s the concept here.Ronnie: Well, unfortunately I’ve seen that happen many times, and especially with the example regarding QA. It is such a common practice to do just what you described – when one person is placed on multiple teams to boost utilization numbers. That practice actually injects more project risk because if the person is working on team A, B and C – if team A hits a major bump in the road, there’s no margin to absorb it. Work simply becomes blocked in the other teams, it can really cause havoc. I love your answer which forces the organization to ask better questions.Ken: It’s a good example. I’ll leave you with one analogy for the listeners. And I know it’s the extreme analogy, so don’t get upset because it’s just extreme, but it’ll illustrate the point. Isn’t it true we pay firefighters to be idle most of the time? If you think about it, you really don’t want to keep your firefighters 100% utilized, because if you do, then the next fire that breaks out, very likely structures will burn and people might die. And as citizens, we deem that to be unacceptable. So we actually pay firefighters to be idle most of the time. Why? Because when you need them, you need them. And you need them now and any cost of delay associated with that work is unacceptable because the ramifications are too great. But I’m not saying you should pay people to sit around and be idle on your software project. But I’m suggesting the fallout – if there’s a certain skillset that when you need it, you need it; and any delay in it becoming available blocks your work and there is significant cost of delay in the blockage, you might want to seriously rethink the strategy of trying to keep everybody at 100%. Ronnie: Very true, I love that example. There are tons of questions that I would love to ask you, but I definitely want to respect your time. With that said, my final question is in reference to Validated Learning, which is mentioned in your book, Essential Scrum. I’m a huge fan of Validated Learning and the Lean Startup by Eric Ries, which I highly recommend. We may have some audience members that are not yet familiar with the concept and how it might apply to their team. Can you please take a few minutes and explain to our listeners Validated Learning? Ken: Sure. Lean Startup is a very good book and does leverage core Agile principles and a lot of the terminology, which is why I’ve used it in the Essential Scrum book, because it very nicely captures a category of principles that are fundamental to Agile. And the way to think about Validated Learning is you should validate important assumptions fast. It’s dangerous to make an important assumption and have it live long in an invalidated state. Because if I make an assumption and I don’t go out and get it validated, I start building things or making other decisions on top of that assumption and if a long time later I finally validate or attempt to validate the original assumption, what if I determine the original assumption was wrong? Now, I’m likely sitting on a problem that is much, much larger than it needs to be. So most people are familiar with the techniques of performing validated learning, prototype, concept study, experiment – meaning that validated learning is the act of buying information when you’re presented with a high degree of uncertainty, and therefore you made an assumption, if you were certain about something – you wouldn’t have to make an assumption, you’d just make the correct decision. But in the presence of a high degree of uncertainty, you have to make these assumptions and then what you have to do is go buy knowledge, buy information to validate your learning, meaning to be able to confirm or refute the hypothesis that you stated, the assumption that you made is correct or it isn’t.You just have to do that fast. So, in Agile, if you think about a learning block – you make an assumption, then we build something, then we get feedback on what we built, then we inspect and adapt, the goal is to go through that loop very very quickly. So in Agile the third part of this Validate Learning is that you have to organize the flow of your work to get fast feedback. In a sense, you say ‘What is the next most important thing I can learn?’ and then go learn it. And then validate your learning. And if you learn that you’re going the wrong way, take what you learn, plant your foot and alter your direction. Take the learning that you have and maybe go to a better place based on that. So Validated Learning has two superior economic characteristics. One – it prunes a bad path quickly. If you’re going down the wrong path, which you don’t want to do, is keep running down that path very fast. You’d like to determine you’re on the wrong path quicker so that you can then pivot over to a new path. That’s economically valuable. The second economic characteristic – it helps your exploit an emergent opportunity faster. What you don’t want to do is learn late in a project: ‘Wow – there’s a much better way we could’ve done this’. When it’s likely to do anything about it in this release and maybe in the future. Maybe we’re so far down committed on the path we’re on that even though we all now agree there’s a much better way of doing it, we actually can’t exploit it. By validating your learning sooner, you’re able to them exploit those opportunities sooner and end up in a much better place.So this is a critical concept. It applies in startup companies, it applies in well-established companies; they’re building the next generation product that’s been there for 10 years. You have to validate your learning, validate the important assumptions fast and you organize the flow of your work to get that fast effect.Ronnie: Thank you so much, Ken, for being such a great guest on our show. I’d love to give the listeners an opportunity to learn more about your services and how they may be able to contact you. Can you please take a few minutes to expound upon that?Ken: I appreciate that. I have a website, it’s innolution.com and on there I have a blog that I talk about a lot of these topics and I also have a lot of my presentations that I give at conferences so, if anybody’s interested feel free – you can go down and look at presentations on portfolio management, on what I call Essential Scrum and a variety of other topics, the most recent being risk management. So by all means, feel free to have a look at that. Mike Cohen and I also have developed a tool called Comparative Agility. It’s a free survey that you can take which at the end tells you how Agile your team is by comparing you with close to 13,000 other people who have already taken the survey – so there’s a number of resources out there. Also, I do offer training and coaching, so if your company might have an interest, feel free to contact me. All my information is on my website.Ronnie: Thank you so much for joining us today Ken and for your great insight and advice.Ken: I appreciate you hosting me and I wish everybody the best of luck with their application of Agile! Thank you for listening to All Things Agile! We look forward to you subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving a kind review. Thanks and God bless!