Podcasts about doing twice

"The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time"

Aliona Zapanovici: Overcoming The “bus factor” Problem, Building Resilient Agile Teams Through Knowledge Sharing 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. A recurring issue Aliona observed in teams was the “bus factor,” where key knowledge was held by only a few members. This led to significant bottlenecks when unforeseen absences, such as during COVID or vacations, occurred. The reluctance of specialists to share knowledge, driven by fear of reduced importance, exacerbated the problem and demotivated the team. Aliona emphasizes the importance of knowledge-sharing and personal growth within teams and highlights the use of tools like a skills matrix to promote development and resilience. Self-reflection Question: How does your team approach knowledge-sharing and redundancy? Featured Book of the Week: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland  The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland provided Aliona with the deeper “why” behind the Scrum framework during her early days as a Scrum Master. It shifted her understanding from merely following Scrum practices to grasping their purpose. This book was pivotal in guiding her to explore her own motivations and the true essence of Scrum. [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

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!    

Scrum, you ask. Are we talking here about Rugby? Not at all. My guest on this episode is Rodrigo Quezada. Rod says he grew up with a pretty normal childhood until, during college, he was in a serious automobile accident that effected his ability to easily draw on childhood memories. I leave it to Rod to tell you about this. He went to college and graduated after which he entered the workforce. In 2015 Rod discovered a book entitled “Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” by Jeff Sutherland. I will not attempt here to describe what “Scrum” is. Rod is much more articulate about it than I. What I will say is that the art of Scrum takes creating and enabling teamwork to a new level. Scrum is all about teams working as cohesive units. I personally can see why one can say that using the Scrum model well may be a cause for more efficiency. This episode is to me quite engaging and worth the hearing. I think you will learn more about teamwork and perhaps you will discover a way to enhance how you work on projects. About the Guest: My name is Rodrigo Quezada from Mexico and I currently work as Principal Project Management at AT&T. During high school had a near-death experience at a car accident that compressed most of my childhood memories. They are there and can be retrieved by external triggers yet not by myself. Overall have awareness that had a childhood and within normal parameters as far as I can remember. Started my career path at the century start in procurement and was having a good time yet by 2015 a pivotal event happened when I ran across a book by Jeff Sutherland called Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. As failing at implementing traveled to the USA for training by Scrum.org and a new career path emerged. Implemented in the most empiric and lean way possible which aligns with the pillar of the Scrum system. Began a new undergraduate as computer engineering which was followed by a masters in data science and now a Phd in progress along with several professional certifications and a lot of learning. At this point in time would like to share this out as find it very beneficial to both individuals and organizations as, per the Scrum guide definition, it aims at “adaptive solutions for complex problems”. Ways to connect with Rodrigo: Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/rodrigoquezadareyes About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Thanks for being here. And for listening. We really appreciate it. Today, we get to introduce and interview Rodrigo Quezada. But we're gonna call him Rod and he said, That's okay. He asked me if I preferred Mike or Michael. And I said absolutely. So he's going to call me Mike. And I'm going to call him Rod. And I guess that works out pretty well. Rod has an interesting story to tell both about life in in his childhood and what he's doing now. And he's going to talk to us a lot about Scrum. And I'm not talking about rugby, necessarily. But we'll get to that. Anyway. Rod, I want to welcome you to and thank you for joining us here on unstoppable mindset.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 02:05 Thank you so much for inviting me, Mike. I'm very excited to be here, I think this opportunity to be able to share this out with with the team at large. I'm super excited about it. So then again, thank you. Well, absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 02:19 And you're You're most welcome. And we're really glad that you're here. Rod, by the way, is in Mexico City. So I get to learn new things and refine old things every day. So Mexico City is an hour ahead of us. So it is about 1134 in the morning where I am and it's 12:34pm where he is so he's he's doing this during lunch. So I don't know whether you had lunch? Or we'll have to get through this. So you can go eat lunch, but we'll get there. Sure. Well, let's start by kind of going back and talking like I love to do about you growing up the early rod. So tell us about childhood and kind of what your experiences were like and and a little bit about you growing up?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 03:09 Absolutely. I think of myself as a fairly normal childhood. I however, during college, I had a car accident where most of my memories were, I'm not gonna say wipe out because they're there. They're just word kind of compressed somewhere in my mind. So I'm able to access memories of my childhood as long as somebody else triggers them. And happens a similar situation with music, I'm able to pretty much sing a song as long as the music starts. But as soon as the music ends, I cannot go ahead and play it again. And I cannot sing it. But if the music starts again, I can see it again completely. So it's very similar with my memories from my childhood. So as far as I know, it was a normal, happy childhood childhood. And that's as far as I can go.   Michael Hingson ** 03:58 Yeah. Did you so were you always in Mexico City? Is that where you grew up? Or where did you grow up? Yes,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 04:04 I was born. Yes, I was born and I live in Mexico City. Most of my life. There have been a few projects for work where I have been in the in the US for a couple of it was a couple of weeks and every now and then a couple of months. But but basically that and coming back. Yes. remote work for a long time. But but you based basically in Mexico City. Yes.   Michael Hingson ** 04:27 So you're pretty used to doing remote work already?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 04:31 Yes, actually, I was long before the pandemic that we had the COVID in the year. I believe that was 2020. Right? Before that as communications start to become more accessible. It was becoming much much more easier to talk around people around the globe at a fairly unexpensive way. So because of that it was fairly easy to work from pretty much anywhere. So I had the I guess I was lucky He enough to consider myself a knowledge worker and start doing that since probably say about year 2020 10 When I was working in the automotive industry,   Michael Hingson ** 05:10 what did you do in the automotive industry,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 05:12 I used to be a buyer, which later turned into a global responsibility bility becoming a Category Manager, specifically for rubber, later on adding plastics and gaskets. So I was in charge of global supply in order to make sure our facilities in Mexico in the US had the materials they needed in order for us to assemble the products for for commercial vehicles. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 05:42 Okay. And that kept you busy. What, when you were in college, what was your degree? And what were you studying? Well,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 05:49 my original major was in international business. Back then, by the time that I was just about to select my major, the we start getting some of these agreements like NAFTA, where we were able to start sending goods back and forth, because before that, there was not a lot of trading among at least not along among Mexican other countries. After that, it opened what it is wide open. And now we have globalization is a whole different landscape right now. But back then, there were not as many commercial agreements, and it was pretty trendy. And I thought that was interesting. And it started out in that route.   Michael Hingson ** 06:29 So did you end up getting your bachelor's degree in that?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 06:32 Originally? Yes. And once we unfold the story on Scrum, then everything changed. And I see a very different career path. Yes,   Michael Hingson ** 06:42 I gather and we'll we'll definitely get to that. But so when did you graduate? What year did you graduate from college?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 06:48 That was me in year 2000.   Michael Hingson ** 06:54 That was around the time you had your auto accident?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 06:57 Yeah, like, before I graduated, like it's probably happened somewhere along the lines of 9697.   Michael Hingson ** 07:04 All right, so it was a little bit before you graduated anyway. But yes, that was certainly a major change in your life. Where you were you laid up for a while, or our, how did it affect you other than suppressing memories? Well,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 07:22 I think on the bright side, it allowed me to have a visitor give life a much broader meaning I was I was super grateful that I was able to make it. The heat came in my on my side, I was driving, it was my fault. I started moving forward in order to cross and then a car was coming, and there was no way that he can be avoided. And it was interesting, because I look into this person, that driver, it was I look at her eyes. And it was almost like communication, that it's I think of it out of this world. It was like talking through through without talking if you know what I mean, there was like a moment where I was pretty much saying please, please, I want to I want to still be here a little longer. And I start watching a movie. Before that I start watching a movie of my life, like a lot of kind of pictures in a super fast space. And and that's when I realized that I was just about to no longer be here in this world. And that's when I was like, oh, no, please, I read a Ruby. And that's when I make these super quick communication and eat work and and she seared the wheels. And it still hit me for sure. But not not in my door. If he had been in my door, I would not be fortunate enough to be talking to a and sharing all of this. So once once they helped me realize what happened, I realized how fortunate I am to having a second chance in this life to make the best out of it and and validate and savor as much as possible. Of course, it's not always easy, but but definitely worth attempting to to enjoy it.   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 Well, and it's interesting, I've talked to a number of people who have had major crises in their lives, and have had to, to deal with that. And so many people have said, sort of the same thing, that having a second chance and really having the opportunity to go back and think about it. They realize that the second chance gives them the opportunity to try to do more meaningful things and to be hopefully better people but certainly gives them the opportunity to go off and better value life and what it brings.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 09:39 Yes, fully agree.   Michael Hingson ** 09:41 Yeah. And you know, I'm, of course, I had my own experience with that, needless to say, surviving being in the World Trade Center on September 11. And, and we had discussions about it my wife and I, especially when the press started getting our story and the decision that that I'm made and my wife agreed was that if we could help people move on from September 11, by me doing interviews and, and also, eventually also starting a speaking career. And if we could teach people a little bit more about blindness and disabilities and guide dogs and other things, and it was worthwhile. And I love to tell people now being in large part of keynote speaker traveling the world to speak. It's much more fun to sell philosophy of life than it is to sell computer hardware. So   Rodrigo Quezada ** 10:36 yes, it's   Michael Hingson ** 10:37 a whole lot more fun to do that. So I will always do that if I can. It's much more fun to do computer stuff. So I can't complain a bit. Well, so I'm, well, I'm very much glad that you're here. So we could do this podcast. So I really appreciate it, though, that you have learned to value life more. And that's a good thing to do. But you went into the to the automotive world, and how long were you doing that? I   Rodrigo Quezada ** 11:07 was in that industry for 13 years. Wow. And then what happened? Okay, he gets interesting, I was into project management handling these different kinds of prod projects. And I was looking for ways to be a little bit more productive. So I was doing that. And then I spotted a name, a title of a book that was called doing twice the work in half the time by the author, Jeff Sutherland. And I was like, Oh, this sounds like a book that I need to get into. Right. So I started reading it. And I was a pivotal moment in my life, or at least, yeah, no, it was in many different ways. So I start reading the book. And I was I have, I had almost, I have to try it at least. So I tried to implement it. And I wasn't not being lucky enough to say that I was successful. So I realized I needed additional understanding of it, and then I seek out for training back then, right now is certain it's a bit more accessible to have training online. But back then it was not in like late year 2015. But I was able to find a place called scrum.org that had this workshop. And that was lovely. That sounds about perfect. And so So I did, I traveled to the US got this training. And it was it was amazing that the environment was very energizing. And I was like, oh, gosh, this is so definitely it. And I was able to connect the dots that I was missing prior to just reading the book. And I came back super excited. And I told my boss, I know this is gonna sound really, really weird, but I want to go ahead and implement it even I still not an expert on this, but I want to give it a try. And if you don't mind, we're gonna play roles. And we can make it happen if you're willing to allow me to. And that's the way I started pioneering on using Scrum. So where were you working at the time? Yeah, I was working for Bendix, commercial vehicle systems. Bendix, I was based on Mexico City would enough is here. But eventually, I also got an office in our corporate facility. Back then it was located in Elyria, Ohio, very close to the Cleveland airport, about 30 minutes from there. And now they move over to Avon the corporate move over. So back then I was like, why don't, why don't we don't have a kind of like a team like the scrum team that I can refer to, but I was like, let me make you the product owner. And I'm going to be a little bit of a mix of a developer and a scrum master. Because our organization, I don't know if has changed ever since. But it used to be kind of like a matrix. So the the way the teams were set up, were very dynamic. So it was not a this is a specific team that we can call scrum team. But even then, that was enough raw material where to get started. And it was the most empirical way to do it. I was back then I was even using Excel as a way to visually track the work that was meant to be done.   Michael Hingson ** 14:10 Well, so far, first of all, what did your boss say when you said I want to try to put this into effect and so on? What was your boss's position?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 14:23 He was one of the directors for purchasing and aside of the fact of thinking that I was kind of crazy of doing something so something and nobody else seemed to be doing around us. I think he was more of why not? You already went through this training. So let's let's give it a shot. And interesting enough later on. I don't think I don't know if it was because of me or pretty disconnected. But the company has eventually moved over to using Scrum, which I was super happy when I heard they were about you about then I was at that point in time. I was no longer with the company but but it was I was super excited to hear that they weren't going to do that.   Michael Hingson ** 14:59 So, why Scrum? That is? Why, why that word. Give us a little bit of the origins and kind of maybe start to fill us in a little bit about what this is all about.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 15:14 Absolutely. A scrum comms. Scrum is the framework right? grandslam to atheris, with our Kench, whoever and Jeff Sutherland. So they together created this framework, and they have refine it and make it better and better over time. Were these idea of giving these a specific name, they describe it as referring to the game of rugby, rugby, where the team is very cross functional in that like, you go like here and I go here and we stay in an each position is more alpha, we transition into whatever needs to happen in order to make this work. So that's what they thought this is almost like, like, like doing Scrum when you when you're playing rugby. And that's the reason why they gave his name off a scrum to the framework. And what it happens is that within this framework, you set up yourself in small teams, but each team has everything it needs in order to accomplish its goals. So basically, is a small unit of people 10 or less, usually, that set up a scope and, and become or are allowed to become self organized in order to make everything work.   Michael Hingson ** 16:29 So does that team then work on a specific job a specific function? Or is it more general, kind of trying to understand a little bit about what the framework is and the whole process? Absolutely,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 16:44 the team is meant to be cross functional, because it has to handle the order or has to have all the resources needed to accomplish the goals that are set for for that specific team. Now, there will be times where a project is extremely complex, and one single team is not going to be able to do everything. So that's where you're able to what is called as scale or scaling, which basically means different teams are working on a small portion of a larger goal. But the outputs of the different teams combined allow for these one big thing for a company to be able to go happen. Maybe Maybe if I go ahead and describe how the framework breaks down into its components, that could be helpful to share. Let's do that. Okay, sounds good. So So basically, there's three roles, three artifacts, and five, it has changed names over time, sometimes we call them events, we call them ceremonies, or commitments, I think the most recent way to to frame them. And basically, within a team, you're going to have three roles. And there's going to be a product owner, who is the person in charge of maximizing value for the team. And that is a person that is a bridge between the customers or stakeholders and the team that is actually doing the work. So So that's more related to what we usually think of as a project manager. But this position in the scrum team becomes quite complex. And that's why there's a second role that is created that is called the scrum master. The scrum master accountability is efficiency of the team. So it's more geared towards the inside of the team, which is the communication with the product owner and the auditor role, which is the developer. So when we think of developer, it can pretty much be any function. Because scrum can be used in any industry, although it has a natural, a natural fit with anything related to technology and software and all of that, however, it can be expanded to pretty much any industry. So that will change the scope and therefore the composition of of a team. So for instance, let's say in a non tech kind of team, you could have somebody from marketing and somebody from accounting and somebody from I don't know, some sort of operations and that team combined is going to go and reach a given amount of goals. And and then that's kind of like the three roles of the team. The product owner, the scrum master and developer and the developer are the the people that actually make the work happen. The the go getters, let's think of it that way. And the team works as a cohesive unit, which means there's got to be a clear direction of what needs to be done. The supporting coaching by the scrum master and the team actually making that work happen. Once we transition from the roles to the artifacts, that's where pretty much how the work gets managed. You create what we call a backlog of work or product backlog items within this product backlog which is everything you can build or create or accomplish. Basically your list of goals are Wish List. And so far, I'm not going to find that you want me to elaborate on any of the points that already talked about?   Michael Hingson ** 20:07 No, I think you're, you're doing fine. Let me let me ask you a question though. Typically, in a team environment, there's a team leader, is that the scrum master in this case?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 20:18 Ah, that's a? That's a great question. It's a complicated question, by the way, that's fair, as us as a scrum master and product owner sharing that leadership accountability. But if you think of, if a stakeholder or a customer has a question, Who were they gonna direct their question to, that's gonna be the product owner. So in that classic regard, I think I'm gonna have to lean more towards the product owner would be that lead. However, from a team standpoint, kind of like the leadership tends to gravitate more towards the scrum master, because the scrum master is is willing and able to help the team, figure out or solve, actually understand which which impediments you might have, and find a way to solve them. Now, in a great scenario, when you're coaching as a Scrum Master, you're not trying to solve the problem for the team, you're just trying to help the team being able to solve it by themselves. So it's more of a facilitator. But it's also a leadership role. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 21:22 so if the scrum master is more of a coach and a facilitator, in sort of the typical language of teams, and so on, then what is the product corner person,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 21:38 it's also a leader. But the broker will be more centered around the product itself than than the team or the team efficiency, because that's where the support from the scrum master comes from. So the product owner will be more more related to to figuring out the requirements and needs from the customers slash stakeholders, and translate that into a team in order for the team to work on that value maximizing goal. Okay.   Michael Hingson ** 22:08 All right, well, go ahead and continue sort of the explanation of how the whole the whole process works, then?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 22:14 Absolutely. So from the goals, we go to what are called the artifacts, and there are three, one of them is the product backlog, which is basically your inventory of everything that that we can go ahead and build related to a given product. From there, what you're going to do is that you're going to break him down in a small in a smaller chunk, which is where from everything that we could do, where are we actually going to commit to do and that's when you go into what we call the sprint backlog, which is basically a smaller one, wait a given timeframe in order to be accomplished. And once it is that will usually refer in in traditional project management as deliverable. We call it an increment in Scrum, which is the outcome of work from the team within a given timeframe. Now, that will take us over to the ceremonies because that timeframe happens to be one of those. But before I move over to the events or ceremonies, any any questions you might have regarding the in the artifacts, or the rolls?   Michael Hingson ** 23:20 I don't think so at this point. I'll keep thinking about it. But I'm just fascinated to hear this explanation.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 23:28 Thank you so much. So moving into the ceremonies, there's there's the container for the word, it's called a sprint. And it comes from from racing, right like like a short race called Sprint. So what you're going to do is that you're going to work on something, and it's going to be a month or less, usually in increments of weeks. So usually you're going to use the sprint stuff one week, two weeks, three weeks, or up to four weeks. But no more than four reason being you want to keep it a as a scope of work that is no longer than that. In order for you to make sure you collect feedback, which is one of the I think biggest benefits of using Scrum. You're not working on something for a long time. And then in the end, come back and say a marketplace live, what I got is more of I work in a little something and I collect feedback. And based on that feedback, I'm able to inspect and adapt. So the team is always working on the highest customer priority or value, value or valuable item. So that being said, you set up a cadence of your sprint, which can go from one week up until four. And that's it. Once you have the spring. You start your spring with a sprint planning meeting, which basically do us collectively as a team commit to a given amount of work and therefore an increment or increments by the end of the sprint. Once that happens, you have a daily meeting which too it's wondering it's worth it happens On a daily basis, and it's a meeting where you're going to synchronize with a team, you want to make sure that everybody is working towards the goal, and basically keeping the eyes on the ball. And then by the end, the close to the end of the sprint, you're going to have what is called a sprint review, which is where you showcase the work that has been completed to the customers largest stakeholders. And it's a great place for interaction and collaboration, because basically, you're promising something, then you are showing what you have committed to what you promise, and then you get understanding of the path moving forward. Sometimes the customer know exactly what they want. And sometimes they think they want something but then once they start to seeing that as something they can actually inspect, they might want something different. And that's great timing, because this chrome allows for rapid changes or ongoing changes. So I might go one a given route, but I want to change route. Absolutely, let's do it. And that's what these sessions are for is kind of like a working session where collaborate the team or the scrum team and the people that are going to be using the outcome of the work, meet to review and, and provide feedback to each other. And the last event, once that happens is a what is called a retrospective or retro where basically just the scrum team gathers and understand what are the what is the team doing right? What is the team, that what the team can improve, and basically include those small improvements. And that's where the continuous improvement portion comes in. Because every single sprint, if the team is working properly, the team is growing better and better over time.   Michael Hingson ** 26:44 Well, okay, so this is clearly a very structured organizational process, which I can appreciate. But you said a lot earlier that that what you really got intrigued about and what intrigued you with the the whole idea of Scrum, even before you necessarily knew the name was do twice the work in half the time. So why does this process really increase workflow?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 27:13 Great question. One, one of the answers is because of the communication flow, the fact that you are keeping keeping teams small enough allows every team member to be able to understand each other, if the team is too weak, like when you go to a party, right? If there's too many people in the table, you can talk to a few that are close to you, but you cannot understand what is happening by the end of the table. So it's very similar, because the team is small enough communication flows properly. And therefore you avoid misunderstandings. And you're able to communicate faster and better. Therefore, you become far more productive. The other thing that I think is a part of the answer is the level of autonomy of a scrum team is fairly large. So that allows the team to organize to better suit their own needs, which allows each of the team members to bring in the best of them, and then combine them into the pool of resources. So the fact that everybody is able to work in such a pace, and the team either failing or succeeding as one. I think that's part of the reason why it makes a team so productive. And last but not least, you you every spring, you work towards the goal. So there's no misunderstanding of Yeah, everybody's doing a little something. Now, by the end of the sprint, we're going to show the work that we have completed. So so we keep focused, and we make sure it happens.   Michael Hingson ** 28:46 So it sounds like in any company, where you have a fairly decent number of people, you're going to have a number of different Scrum teams. And each one is is working on a project or maybe a few teams are working on different parts of the same project. But who coordinates all of that. So it sounds like there could be essentially a scrum within a scrum then that you've got somebody who is overseeing what the various teams are doing.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 29:21 Yeah, interesting question that's probably gonna change from from company to company or industry to industry. Think probably should explain that. A Scrum is a framework is meant to work as a whole. I mean, you don't escape roles or escape ceremonies or increments, you use all of those elements. But once you have that basic foundation, which is basically the framework, pretty much the rest of the field is very flexible. It allows for us I was explaining like scaling for instance, if I have a larger project, one team is not going to be able to accomplish everything then we can Scale to two teams or three teams or four teams. Now, if we are to go that route, then yes, your point, we're probably going to need to use as an organization, some additional tools for managing that complexity across different teams. But as long as the teams are not working on the exact same thing, potentially, you're pretty much just setting goals, and letting them go work towards those goals. So so the self organization of the teams allows a lot of flexibility for the organizations as well, they just need to set the goals. And then the teams go work to make those goals happen.   Michael Hingson ** 30:34 Well, let me maybe phrased the question slightly differently, who sets the goals?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 30:41 Well, that's what we usually refer to as the stakeholders, but stakeholder can be pretty much usually is going to be like senior leadership levels, that are saying this is what we need. So depending on the size of the company, that's kind of like which level is setting which goals, but I think is gonna probably cascade down, it's going to be most likely many of these pros is going to be top down. Eventually, if there are some mature Scrum teams, you can actually let them run wild with Can you set up your own goals of what you can actually accomplish and make that kind of proposals bottoms up? That's definitely something that can be done as well.   Michael Hingson ** 31:17 Sure that and I can appreciate that. But in general, what you're saying is that there, there is someone or there is some part of the organization, as you said that the top leadership that essentially stakeholders sets the goals. And that's where the process begins, and then assigns or works with the people below them to decide what team is responsible for what goals?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 31:49 Yes, and that's where the communication takes place between these stakeholders and the product owner, in order to break it down for the team to work in that. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 32:00 Okay. And so, once the goals are assigned, then is it also true that someone keeps the the leadership informed as to how the team is going? Or is the idea you have to trust the team and let them do their job for a month, and not interfere with the dynamic of the team?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 32:25 What I'm saying? Absolutely, yes, I guess potentially, that sometimes that can actually happen, in my experience is more of less ongoing communication between the product owner and the stakeholders, even though we're working on a given set goal for each sprint, yeah, is usually potentially having these communication helps towards the same point in time, good practice to have a roadmap of what you're doing. And eventually the roadmap can as I said, it can change because of what we think of discoveries, right, or validated learning and, and kind of think of, there's an amazing book about that by Eric, oh, gosh, he's like, I almost could swear it's Reyes, it's called the lean startup. And there's something concept that brings that comes from this book called validated learning, which is sometimes and the reason why the scope of this team says is small, is because there's a lot of unknowns when you start a project. So there's things and assumptions that that kind of like could hold true over time. But the more the larger the project, the less likely they are. So you have a certain degree of assumptions, and you want to go try to test them as fast and early as you can. Which leads to a concept that we refer to in this Agile world as your fail fast, which doesn't mean you're trying to intentionally fail. But if you are going to fail, it's better to do it as fast as you can and get your lesson learn and move forward. Because that allows you to experiment a little bit, which pairs well with the empirical nature of this process. And it also helps on the Lean thinking, because you don't want to waste resources. So if a project is going to be canceled six months from now, I rather know what would not let leave that padding to that project and cancel six months from now and cancel it, let's say two weeks after getting started, right. And I'm thinking worst case scenario, right with a project canceled, more often than not, your project is gonna change paths in order to arrive to one that is actually your successful path. So you go from something good to I guess I'm learning this from a title of a book, right? But what kind of going from good to great, right? Because you are understanding your product better as you are building it. And that takes me over to a concept which I think is in the core of everything we're talking, which is the iterative and incremental nature of Scrum. So what you're doing is building a little something, you do an iteration, and then you stop. You inspect and adapt and based on your findings, and Next time around your next iteration is going to build on top of that. So that's what we call the incremental nature because you're always delivering something. And it's always better than the, the version you delivered before. Can   Michael Hingson ** 35:15 you give us an example and tell maybe a story of, of a project and how Scrum, really enhanced getting the project done? Can you actually, is it easy enough to tell an actual story and talk about your experiences with it?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 35:35 Yeah, absolutely. I'm kind of thinking across I know, I'd see for an example is like, oh, gosh, it's been a couple of years. So I mean, I've collecting experiences. Sure. And, yeah, plus the NDAs. Right, what I can and can't share about Sure.   Michael Hingson ** 35:54 When you just sort of in general.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 35:58 Okay, got it. Yeah, well, let me share this example. It happened in one team, where we had these cross functional setup of the team members. So each of them having a speciality or kind of like being a specialist with one thing. And what happened, eventually, when we started doing the work, there were a couple of team members that were doing a lot of work. And there were some of them that we, we see working every now and then. And that makes it kind of complex, because as long as every, you have like two options, right? If you're going to be cross functional allele, everybody, there's a little bit of everything now, that for sure, nobody's going to be as proficient as the specialist. But the whole idea is that we can rely on each other. So for example, if our our programmer gets a stock, and he can get some help from the tester, then the tester gets the program a little bit with some shadowing are helped by the programmer, and then they can both program a little bit. And that's an example of clean Croc cross function. But if you're not able to do that kind of thing, because of whatever risk management policies or even willingness by the team members to go outside of their usual line of work. And that was the case here. There were team members that said, this is what I do, this is what I want to keep doing. So what we end up doing is if if these team members are don't have some tech skills that we need, but there's this other activities that they can do, as long as they don't have to mess up with the complexity, complexity of programming, or managing certain technology tools, what we did was simplify that and create a web application for for low to no code, tech team members to be able to produce work in that application. And that helped because now they can do work in an ongoing basis, as opposed to having to wait until there was some no tech work for them. And that helped the team increases the throughput dramatically, because now different team members could actually be producing work in parallel, kind of like everybody working on something at the same time, and the output was increased significantly. So   Michael Hingson ** 38:14 with those team members that really were not very technically inclined in the process, it sounds like they may not have really embraced the whole scrum idea at the beginning. But what did they think by the end of the project?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 38:30 Well, I think by providing them tools and make their life easier, and they can actually contribute to the whole, I think that that was a pretty amazing experience for us all because it is great if everybody can like go ahead and do different functions, but it's not always possible. So if it is not, how can we think outside of the box and seal provide a solution that allows the team to be more productive? And that's what we did. And it was an amazing experience.   Michael Hingson ** 38:55 And I think that's really the issue here isn't that what you're really promoting is people thinking and innovative in different ways, collectively, so that you are able to fashion and create a solution may be where you didn't think there was one. But by working together by functioning as a team, and by valuing the team, you figured out? Well, we've got to do these additional kinds of tasks to make it possible for everybody to be productive. But that's what it's really all about, isn't it is everybody needs to be involved in the team and be be productive? And the team has to be concerned about that and really work to make that happen.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 39:39 Yes, I'm glad you mentioned that. It's almost like as simple as saving the best for last. The definition of a scrum includes the fact that it is creating adaptive solutions to complex problems. And where it connects very well. What you just mentioned is that it is more of a mindset. It works within a framework. Yes. But but all the pieces working together, it is really about a mindset of problem solving in a way that that, let's say sets up the field in order for you to be very successful. So it is a tool that embraces change and innovation and problem solving, I think to a whole new level, and that's what I think we need in this day and age. Because as we have evolved as a human species, we have also been facing challenges that we didn't have before, like, like, like global warming, and are things that that are like, gosh, how are we going to solve that, right? But we gotta find a solution. Because if we don't, our our, our future is compromised. So how do we manage and handle all these projects, and I think this might not be the only way to do it. But it's definitely one way to do it. And that's the reason what I consider myself such an advocate for Scrum. I think once you do it and understand what it's coming from, you cannot stop using it, I can't.   Michael Hingson ** 41:05 So you use it in, in work and everything that you do, what do you do now? Or are you working for a company now? Or, or what's your current job environment like?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 41:15 Yes, eventually, as I started gravitating towards technology related words and phrasing and things like that, I start exploring into a new career path. And by year 2018, I started a new undergraduate program for computer engineering. And I finished that when in 2020. And then I got into a master's in data science. And about that same timeframe, I was lucky enough to join at&t, where I currently work as a principal project manager working with Scrum teams. And And most recently, I also getting engaged pursuing a PhD in computer science as well. So once I started gravitating towards technology, I realized my passion for it. And that process Grom. And it started ignited me into a very different career path, which is what I currently do.   Michael Hingson ** 42:12 So did you bring scrum to a TNT or was AT and T already embracing that as a concept?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 42:18 Because fine, I think they're really for this specific project is something that was about to get started. So pretty much. There were a few people getting started with it with a project. And then eventually, there was a significant amount of additional of team members that were hired. When I started with them, I started actually as a scrum master. And eventually, by doing the work, I transition over to product owner. So I'm fairly familiar with with with all the roles as I was leaving doing development when I got started on a very empirical way since early 2015. Yes,   Michael Hingson ** 42:56 so as a product owner or as a scrum master. When I mean that, that isn't a full time job as such, that is, you don't just sit in monitor other people, you're directly involved in doing a lot of the work yourself, right?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 43:14 Yes, absolutely. Regardless of the role, yes. Right. And   Michael Hingson ** 43:18 so you are just as much a part of the working team as anyone else. Even though you have the additional responsibilities of being the product owner, the scrum master, which is understandable when a project is done. This is a question I've always found interesting with different kinds of teams, because a lot of times when there is a team effort to do something, when it's all over and it comes time to recognize the teams, the team leader gets recognition and the rest of the team doesn't necessarily get the same amount of visibility. How does that work in a scrum environment? Is it just the project owner, product owner or the scrum master that gets recognized or is is the company or the process such that it's understood that it's really the whole team that needs to get recognized not just one or one or two people,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 44:12 it has to be the whole team if you ask me, because everybody is pushing towards this successful outcome that is a team outcome. So So collaboration and teamwork is is kind of like the glue that binds everything together. So even though the product owner is representing the team and helping the requirements and understanding and communicating with stakeholders, interestingly enough, as we are used to traditional management positions, item kind of think of off meter or scrum master or product owner as we can think of them as managers, however, from my view is almost like not giving yourself that managerial title. In some words, maybe you're doing it but you are so part of a team that is hard to tell apart. I'm kind of like, am I am I like, like overseeing? Or am I actually kind of like silly and bold, but I feel that I'm part of the team. If the scrum team is working properly, you are part of the team. So so it's not like different layers of people managing and people doing even though Yeah, true developers are doing. But you're so close to them that that that line gets kind of blurry, if you know what I mean. It's like, there's no way I could accomplish this by myself, I needed the team to backup whatever I'm supporting as a product owner. And similar thing with with the scrum master, if I'm helping a team become more efficient over time, the team is better than better. And that serves a higher purpose for both the team and the whole organization. Maybe   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 more like viewing yourself as if you will, a senior member of the team in terms of experience or knowledge level subject matter expert that you're bringing to it. But that doesn't make you better, or a a person who is separate from the team. And I think that's a wonderful concept that you're still really part of the team. And it's all about how you best add value to the team. Yes,   Rodrigo Quezada ** 46:06 it's all about maximizing value as a team. Yes.   Michael Hingson ** 46:12 Yeah, that's, that's extremely important. Because in so many teams, in so many job situations, the boss regards themselves as the boss and everybody works for them. The team leaders, the team leader, everybody works for them. But they're not in a sense, as much a part of the team is they really ought to be   Rodrigo Quezada ** 46:33 Yes, true indeed. And actually, that remember that, when they, when they created this framework, they they took away titles, they didn't want to say you're the senior de surgir, the junior dad, because that's more related to a hierarchical kind of structure. They wanted to make it as if you're a developer, you're helping with creating and crafting and adding value to the product. So you are a developer. And that's it, you don't need to have a specific title as you are a QA or you are a software engineer, or you are a site reliability engineer, SRE is like you're part of the team. And that's it, you might have a speciality. And there's something that I almost forgot to mention. Within this world, we're very used to I do one thing, and I do that one thing very well. But there's this concept of a T and are m shaped professional, which basically means you're extremely good at more than one thing. So So you have a broad understanding of several things, but you're good at at one or more things. So in that regard, there's no limit also to your potential as somebody doing the work. So kind of, is kind of like a path to mastery and fulfillment. So if you're doing these just like well, then then eventually that takes you to higher levels. And that in turn, moves over to your personal life. And then suddenly you have a virtuous, virtuous, virtuous cycle. I believe there's a right way to say it, Mike. Yeah, so so it's kind of like, like, it's fun. And then work doesn't feel as well, kind of like the way we think of work, right? Because work becomes far more fun, and you enjoy it. And then you do what you like. And then you happen to do even better, because now you aren't kind of like, completely nursing what you're doing. But aren't   Michael Hingson ** 48:24 scrum master and product owner titles in of themselves? Or how, how is that in the scheme of things different than then having some other kind of title?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 48:37 No, no, that's fair enough. That's where I think Trump is making an exception. We have these two, these two positions that are having kind of like extremely specific accountabilities within the team, because, for example, right, we only want one point of contact with the team to talk to stakeholders, because otherwise it could be 10 people sense from a stakeholder standpoint, right? You want to talk with one person from the team? And that's why it's specific to the scrum I'm sorry, to the product owner. Right.   Michael Hingson ** 49:08 Okay. And, again, I think that gets back to what I said before, which is really, although they are titles, it's really talking more about your level of experience and some of the expertise that you bring to the team.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 49:24 Yes, absolutely. It's a cohesive, cohesive unit of professionals working together, which breaks down silos, right, because you're trying to collectively achieve something opposed to this is my part of the word. And that's the only part I care for. And this is more of approach of this is what we are working towards building together.   Michael Hingson ** 49:43 Right. And that's what teamwork is really all about, or should be really all about. And so often we we tend to really miss the whole point of what the value of the team is, and we pay more lip service to teamwork. then actually doing things to embody it and make it really a part of what we do. I know that when I hired salespeople and worked with salespeople, one of the things that I always said is my job is not to boss you around, because I hired you expecting that you already know what to do and how to do it. But my job is to add value to make you more successful. And it sounds like that is what you're really seeking in the whole scrum process as well. And why you have a scrum master and product owner.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 50:33 Yes, indeed. And previously, you mentioned something about when the project ends. And I think that comes to a different concept that I found extremely interesting, which is, with your teams being kind of like a group of people working together, and the longer they can work together better, they can read each other's mind and, and, and talk to each other without even talking. If you happen to have a team like that, that is happy working together. The other thing that happens is, your cost and time is pretty much fixed. So so the team from a company standpoint has the keeping costs, right. And time is pretty much going going in a pretty linear way. What I'm trying to explain is, the scope is what's changing over time with the team. So you can you can start adding new or different things to the teams. And if one project ends, a new one can begin. As long as you have a problem to solve. You can leverage on on on a scrum team or several Scrum teams in order to make sure you keep addressing the problems that you want to tackle as a as an organization or as a group, right. It doesn't have to be a company always. But we can certainly use companies as a quick reference point for Scrum teams.   Michael Hingson ** 51:47 You mentioned to me in the past that Scrum teams don't in Scrum and doesn't embrace as much some of the traditional tools like Gantt charts and so on, why is that?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 52:00 Correct. The Gantt charts are mainly used within traditional project management when you are considering that all your assumptions are gonna are going to hold true through the whole lifecycle of your project. And therefore your planning is perfect at the beginning. But as soon as US bottlenecks that were not foreseen in time, or, or potentially, let's say technical difficulties that you find along the way. And those were not accounted for in the original Gantt chart. So usually what ends up happening is that the Gantt chart starts to deviate along from the actual planning or actual action in place. So eventually you depart from somewhere very different from where you intended to arrive. So what what is scrum does, there's there's some metrics that are used, usually referred to as velocity, which is very subjective, because it means something different to different teams. So one team have a 50 story points velocity, and our team can have a 500 story points velocity, which might seem that 501 is much faster than the team which 50 points but it's so subjective that from a working standpoint, that one was 50 points can be actually delivering more work to the to the to the organization. But anyway, you can have these kind of like burn downs, or burn up charts that you can use to track sort of metrics of how the team is doing against the planning. But remember, that is based on short spans of time, so no more than four weeks. So even if you're meeting or missing your targets, it just meant to be contained within a small or short timeframe for you to understand, learn, adjust, and do it again. But do it better.   Michael Hingson ** 53:36 If you don't get a project done in the four week time that you originally set based on the scrum rules.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 53:44 That would be a problem. Most of the time, what you do is you break down into small chunks that are achievable within a sprint, we we can think of and then again, this might come back to if I remember correctly, this Eric Ries and the Lean Startup, there's something called an MVP or minimum viable product, which is basically from everything we can do, what is the minimum we can achieve. So if you plan yourself to at least achieve a little something, and then everything you can add on top of that before the sprint is over, I think there's a safe path to always have something to show for you as a team accomplishing something because if you if you kind of lean towards the all or nothing approach, either I believe or everything or I don't have nothing to show, there could be points in time where the risk is high. And you're going to show up to the review saying I didn't complete it my work, right? There's nothing to show. So what I'll probably suggest is, is take the MVP path, always have a little something that is something you can guarantee as a team that you can deliver. And then if you happen to have extra time within your sprint, go build on top of that and add more things to here's what we have completed by the sprint review.   Michael Hingson ** 54:53 So if something doesn't get done in the appropriate time, you really We have two potential reasons for that, that I can think of one is, you made the goal too large, or too, the team isn't functioning nearly as well as it should be. And that's an in both cases, that's something for someone to go back and reevaluate.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 55:20 And that's where the rhetoric comes in. Because every by the end of every sprint, you need to collectively as a team say, Okay, where do we miss? Where do we waste? And what do we knew earlier? What do we need to do a little bit different to fix that in the future? So you're always looking for ways to becoming better and better as a team, which is one of the things that I definitely love about this framework.   Michael Hingson ** 55:41 Yeah. And that was why I asked the question, because, again, it's all about the team making a collective decision or creating a collective understanding. And again, is all about the team. Yes, it is, which then can communicate with the stakeholders and so on. In case it's the stakeholder that screwed up. And the stakeholder hopefully understands what the scrum team is all about. And we'll accept the observations when that happens as well. Yes.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 56:18 And there was something else that you mentioned that it triggered. Yeah, at one point in time, you mentioned about the team recognition. The sprint review is not only between this, the product owner and the stakeholders for the sprint review, you have to have the whole team. So the product owner can be presenting. Yes. But the team is there. So there's kind of like very specific questions about things on the, of how the product was built, or how the product is working, or any What if coming from the either end users, customers or stakeholders. That's where the team can bring in their expertise, because they build it together. Right? So the team has a voice as well within the Sprint Review isn't is not necessarily only a steal your point like like just who is managing the team, it's more off. Here's the whole team that builds together. And any questions, here's a whole team in order to be able to answer as a team.   Michael Hingson ** 57:10 And that's what really makes this such an exciting concept, because it's all about the team. And and hopefully, when the team completes a project, if they really work together, then no one tries to separate the team and put different people from one team on to another team. They allow the team to continue to operate and be a cohesive unit. Yes.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 57:35 And there's one more thing that also Bond's things together, which is one of the pillars of Scrum, which is called transparency. The process is extremely visible to everybody in the organization. So what the team is working on what progress are having, everybody can actually go see. So whether the team is working these working items, which you should refer to, or at least I'm used to referring to them as PBIS, or product backlog items. Everybody can go see what the team is working on and how they're communicating and their evidences of work completed and everything else. So stakeholders don't always have to rely on whatever the product owner says. They can actually go and see what the team is doing. Because the process is extremely transparent to everybody. And for sure, the team as well. So So usually the work is not a sign that work is is kind of taken, right? How can I help? How can I contribute? So I go to the to the sprint backlog, and I grab a working item. And let's say me as a developer, I go work on that. And every now and then it's not, it's not. It's not recommended that it's done. But every now and then even other roles such as a scrum master can go ahead and take a little bit of work, even though it's not recommended can be done. So. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 58:49 Why should more people embrace the scrum concept of doing work?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 58:55 God, gosh, first and foremost, because, aside from the fact that it, it's fosters teamwork, and increases happiness levels on and promotes mastery from team members, which makes it ever more exciting, it helps you deal with that the solutions to complex problems borrowing from the definition of Scrum. So as long as you have complex problems to solve it, what you want to solve is pretty repetitive and fairly and linear and straightforward. Yearning, you're probably not going to need Scrum. But as long as it starts to deviate from something that is that predictable. You can rely on group of professionals working together as a unit in order to tackle together those those problems and come out with adaptive solutions. Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 59:46 If people want to learn more about Scrum and the process, how can they do that?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 59:54 I'll probably say start out with information that is already provided. it on the scrum guide. You look at it as that the scrum guide. It was created by Ken Ken Shriver and Jeff Sutherland, the creators of Scrum. It's out there on the internet. So so I'll probably say start there, because that's the guideline for the whole framework. And   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:16 what is it called   Rodrigo Quezada ** 1:00:18 the scrum guideline, okay. It's even trademarked. But it is open to the public, you don't have to even pay to in order to be able to read or things like that. And it's been translated to different languages as well. So I'll probably say start there, because that's, that's pretty much the epicenter from for the whole framework. However, if you want to learn a little more, there's different books out there and different organizations that can help in the process, including certifications and everything else. Guess one of them, for sure, is this book that started me with Scrum, which is called doing twice the work and half the time by Jeff Sutherland is definitely one of my top recommendations for Scrum. There's also two websites that I think of that are that are scrum.org. And there's other ways to that is called Scrum Alliance. Dot I believe that.com. But if I'm incorrect that.org Both both promote a lot of conversations and best practices on Scrum. So a lot, those are great resources. There's a lot more out there. But those are the ones that come top of mind.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:23 And is there a way if people want to talk to you and kind of get more thoughts from you about all this or just get to meet you? Is there a way for them to do that?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 1:01:32 Yeah, we could probably use LinkedIn for that. I haven't had a lot of civility. But I don't mind if I do because the whole purpose of this podcast was sharing this out loud with more people. I know what I know what up what I want that to be spread out, because I'm definitely a scrum enthusiast. So if there's way that I can help somebody else I'll I'll be happy to. So   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:59 how can they reach you on LinkedIn? What? What do they look for?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 1:02:06 Let me go seek my gosh, would it be okay if I sent it to you, I don't have it handy. Kind of like but but you can look for my name, Rodrigo. Queszada Queszada with a Z and Reyes with a Y in the end. And it's I think it's fairly accessible. Once you're into Lincoln system. Go ahead and spell all that for me. So sure, no problem. Rodrigo says spelled R o d r i g o, my first life name. Last name is Queszada. Which is Q u e z as in Zebra a d as in Daddy a. My other last name it which is Reyes R e y e s   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:51 There we go. So we can search for you on LinkedIn with that. So what are you doing? You're not working?   Rodrigo Quezada ** 1:03:00 Guys, I would rather work I'm usually doing some training. And aside of that, for sure. It's spending time with friends and family. It's a mix of of those. I have these reckless pursuit of understanding and training and eventually I'll find my purpose in life. I'm still in debt that I cannot say I have it. What I always feel I'm getting a little bit closer. So I hope I get there before. Before my end of   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:24 life. There you go. Do you do you have a family? Are you married or anything like that? Yes.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 1:03:28 I'm married. Two kids. Almost 10. Actually, they're just about to be 10. And, yeah, and also two bucks. So So yeah, I think.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:41 Yeah, so So that's six in the family. If you get four more, you can have a scrum team.   Rodrigo Quezada ** 1:03:48 Yeah, getting close. Yeah, keep   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:50 keep working on that. Well, Rod, this has really been very much fun and enjoyable. And I really appreciate you coming on and talking about Scrum. It's a concept I have not been familiar with. But I'm going to go learn more about it. I think it's fascinating. I think there are parts of it that as I listen to you tell it that I have used in the course of my life, although I never understood it and call it Scrum. But I appreciate it. And I think it's an extremely valuable thing. Anything to promote teamwork is always a good thing. So I want to thank you once again for being here. And I want to thank you for li

Startet mit ‘Zusammen mehr Elefant' in die Welt von Scrum ein. Alisa erzählt Maria und Nadja, warum Scrum ein Rhythmus ist, der immer wieder geübt werden muss. In dieser Folge erkunden wir, woher die Rollentrennungen in Scrum stammen, was die Grundlagen von Scrum in Lean sind und warum dieses leichtgewichtige Rahmenwerk spürbar für effektivere Zusammenarbeit sorgt und wie es dabei unterstützt, gute Entscheidungen zu treffen.“ +++ Zitate zur Folge: “Nicht zu große Teams zu haben, ist jetzt nicht nur eine Sache, die wir von Scrum kennen” “So einen Scrum Master können wir doch nach drei Monaten schon wieder abschaffen, ist doch mal wieder gut mit der Verbesserung.” “Mein vergleich wäre, es ist ein Rhythmus und je länger wir Scrum üben, desto besser verstehen wir, was da passiert.” +++ Links zur Folge: Scrum Guide Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time +++ Lean auf gut Deutsch Band 1 Lean auf gut Deutsch Band 2 Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations Reinventing Organisations - Frederic Laloux +++ Fragen, Anregungen oder Themenwünsche? Kontaktiert uns gern via LinkedIn: Alisa Stolze | Nadja Böhlmann | Maria Kühn Musik “Zusammen mehr Elefant Theme Song” von Philipp Körner “Zusammen mehr Elefant” ist eine Produktion von Alisa Stolze, Maria Kühn und Nadja Böhlmann Postproduktion Nadja Böhlmann +++ Bei unseren Buchempfehlungen handelt es sich um einen Werbe- oder einen Affiliate-Link. Wenn du auf diesen Link klickst, etwas kaufst, erhalten wir (je nach Anbieter) eine Provision. Dir entstehen dadurch keine Mehrkosten und du unterstützt unser Podccast-Projekt. Wir danken dir für deinen Support!

Erfahre, wie die Stadtwerke München (SWM) zu einem der führenden Arbeitgeber Münchens aufsteigen will. Johannes Füß unterhält sich mit Christian Mack, Leiter Personalstrategie bei der Stadtwerke München GmbH (SWM), über die innovativen Ansätze und Strategien, die die SWM zu einem Top-Arbeitgebenden macht.Das erwartet Dich:1. Unternehmenskultur bei den Stadtwerken München: Der CEO als Schlüsselfigur in der Kulturgestaltung2. Mitarbeiter:innenbindung: Mehr als Gehalt – Kultur & Entwicklung im Fokus3. Karrierepfade: Flexible Laufbahnen für vielfältige Talente4. Personalentwicklung: Kontinuierliche Förderung als Schlüssel zum Erfolg5. Ideenmanagement: Kreativität und Innovation im Vordergrund___________Über Christian Mack: Christian Mack (Diplom-Psychologe/ M. A. General Management) leitet seit 2020 die Personalstrategie bei den Stadtwerken München. Seine berufliche Passion sind die Themen Unternehmenskultur und -strategie. Vor den Stadtwerken arbeitete er knapp 10 Jahre bei der Deutschen Telekom AG in verschiedenen HR-(Leitungs-)Funktionen. Seine Freizeit verbringt er am liebsten mit seiner Familie in der Natur und wenn es die Zeit erlaubt, mit Triathlon.Christian sucht nach Methoden und Tipps, wie man bestmöglich Blue Collar Worker erreicht!Finde Christian auf LinkedIn und teile ihm Deine Erfahrungen mit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-a-mack/Christians Buchempfehlung:Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time von Jeff Sutherland | https://lnkd.in/e_B87r2jChristians Podcast-Empfehlungen:Handelsblatt Today - Der Finanzpodcast mit News zu Börse, Aktien und Geldanlage | https://lnkd.in/eqFwd-sj (Spotify), https://lnkd.in/eYr6B7Xg (Apple)Dolphins Drive | https://lnkd.in/eNb_Sp6s (Spotify), https://lnkd.in/e4Pbg89S (Apple)___________Über die Stadtwerke München GmbH:Wenn sich über dem Olympiastadion die Sonne erhebt, die erste Tram durch die Straßen gleitet und der Marienplatz langsam zum Leben erwacht, machen sich die Mitarbeitenden der Stadtwerke München GmbH voller Stolz auf den Weg zur Arbeit. Denn ihr Einsatz macht München erst zu dem, was es ist: eine der modernsten und lebenswertesten Städte der Welt. Wie die Isar und das Oktoberfest sind auch die SWM untrennbar mit der pulsierenden Metropole verbunden. Sie stehen für eine nachhaltige Energie- und Wasserversorgung, ein wegweisendes Mobilitätskonzept und attraktive, krisenfeste Jobs in einem aufgeschlossenen, multikulturellen Arbeitsumfeld. Mit Fachkräften aus über 70 Nationen gestalten die SWM das München der Zukunft.Website: https://www.swm.de/Industrie: VersorgungsdienstleistungenUnternehmensgröße: 11.500Hauptsitz: München, DeutschlandGründung: 1998___________Über den Host Johannes Füß:Johannes Füß ist Vice President von EGYM Wellpass, die mit ihrer Firmenfitness den perfekten Corporate Health-Benefit für ein produktives, gesundes und ausgeglichenes Team bietet. Der in München geborene Schokoladen-Liebhaber hat eine große Leidenschaft für die Alpen, das Wandern und Skifahren.Finde Johannes Füß auf LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannes-füß/oder schreibe eine E-Mail an johannes.fuess@egym-wellpass.com__________Der Level Up HR Podcast wird von unseren Freunden von SAWOO produziert – https://w

Dr. Jeff Sutherland is the Founder and Chairman of Scrum Inc. He is credited with being one of the creators of Scrum, which is celebrating its 30 year anniversary in 2023, and is a framework for enabling business agility at scale across an entire organization. Sutherland's mission has always been to spread Scrum around the world to free people from what he calls “the incredible life-draining system they're working under.” His teachings consistently expose the archaic systems that hinder productivity, and he's at the forefront helping the world's biggest organizations make the transition to Agile. To further his efforts, Sutherland is also a co-creator of The Agile Education Program powered by Scrum Inc., a training suite providing the curriculum and educational standards that give individuals and organizations a clear path to implementing Scrum in a way that drives immediate business results. A graduate of West Point, Sutherland served as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War and later spent time conducting cancer research before immersing himself in the world of software development. With his expertise, Jeff has held the role of Chief Technology Officer at eleven different software companies, bringing a wealth of experience to each endeavor. In 1993, Jeff pioneered the concept of Scrum by launching the first Scrum team. While things have changed a lot since then (spoiler alert: those original month-long sprints were far too long), he has continued to play a pivotal role in expanding Scrum's ability to drive Agile transformation at organizations across industries including government, finance, healthcare, higher education, and telecom. Recognizing the transformative power of Scrum, Sutherland co-authored the bestselling book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, and later published A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game. Through his books and extensive knowledge sharing, he has become a respected figure in the Agile community. His passion for fostering energy, focus, clarity, and transparency in project planning and implementation has made scrum a highly sought-after approach for organizations seeking efficient and effective project management. We had a chance to sit down with Sutherland as he reflects on 30 years of Scrum, the new Scrum QuickStart offering and what the future holds for Scrum's biggest possible impact on the world.

BONUS: How I Planned My Wedding With Scrum, and Other Key Agile Adoption Lessons With Julien Déray Julien wrote the book titled "How I Planned My Wedding with Scrum" to apply his knowledge of Scrum to the process of wedding planning. Scrum provided him with a sense of assurance, clarity, and familiarity with the tools he knew best. By deepening his understanding and applying Scrum principles, Julien found that it helped him feel more in control and provided clarity throughout the planning process. Furthermore, working as a team with his parents and family members reinforced the collaborative nature of Scrum. Why Use Scrum for Wedding Planning?  One of the key questions is why Julien chose to use Scrum to organize a wedding—a big-bang event. However, Scrum's structured approach and iterative process lent themselves well to wedding planning. Julien found that giving a crash course on Scrum, defining roles and rules, writing user stories, and using personas to craft experiences allowed for effective planning and communication. Regular calls with the rest of the family and feedback loops enabled them to stay on track and adapt as needed. In the end, Scrum provided a sense of peace of mind and control over the process. The main takeaway was the sense of control and peace of mind that Scrum brought to the team. Key Messages  The book provides an accessible Scrum introduction for a broad audience, including those new to Scrum, and aims to convey the why of Scrum rather than focusing heavily on the how. Even for experienced practitioners, the book provides a fresh perspective on Scrum and agile methodologies. It emphasizes the usefulness and applicability of Scrum in various contexts, including wedding planning. Challenges in Leadership and Management  Julien emphasizes that as an IT community, agile methodologies like Scrum are already well-established. However, the challenge lies in bridging the gap to the rest of the company. Other parts of the organization may not be familiar with the tools and methods used in IT, creating a need for alignment and collaboration. Traditional management approaches, rooted in Taylorism, no longer work effectively in a fast-paced, agile environment. Key Messages for Managers and Scrum Masters  Managers and Scrum Masters are encouraged to trust themselves and leverage the tools they have at their disposal. Understanding the purpose behind their work and proposing ways to bring others along are crucial. Agile is not just a methodology but a holistic philosophy that can drive organizational transformation. During this episode, we refer to the following books: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland Turn The Ship Around! By David L. Marquet, a previous guest on the podcast Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World The Birth of a Chaordic Age" by Dee Hock. The Phoenix Project, by Kim et al. Julien's book is "How I Planned My Wedding with Scrum." And you can find the book on Amazon About Julien Deray Julien is a senior engineering manager at SwissBorg. His journey has moved him from coding to leading fast-paced engineering team. He has a strong focus an agile methods, to facilitate communication and work processes, and to allow people to work better without spending more energy. You can link with Julien Déray on LinkedIn.

This episode originally aired in July 2021.    -------------------------------------------   As many organizations are talking today about becoming “agile” it is important to know what it really means. Dr. Jeff Sutherland (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffsutherland/) is the ideal person to discuss this. He is the chairman and founder of Scrum Inc., a signatory of the Agile manifesto, coauthor of the Scrum Guide and the creator Scrum@Scale. He is also the coauthor of the best selling book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. Today we talk about the misconceptions of Agile, the origins of the Scrum framework, and how his military experience and his work doing scientific computer modeling influenced him. For more resources, sign up for the newsletter at https://www.hardcoresoftskillspodcast.com/  Connect with me via https://www.linkedin.com/in/yadiraycaro/  

En este episodio hablamos de agile, empezando por sus fundamentos: el manifiesto ágil.Textos RecomendadosNivel BasicoRobert C Martin “Clean Agile”. Es una muy buena introducción centrado en los desarrolladores y solo en la gestión de proyecto. El foco esta en Extreme Programming y es una lectura fácil. Recomiendo el Audio Book.Jeff Shutherland “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time”. De el creador de Scrum es un libro básico sobre el proceso SCRUM. Es de muy fácil lectura pero no cubre agile solo Scrum. Recomiendo el Audio BookNivel IntermedioSi ya [tienes los fundamentos de agile, y no me refiero al proceso, si no a los conceptos interiorizados:Geoff Watts “Scrum Mastery” Explicación más detallada de lo que un Scrum Master puede hacer para ayudar a su equipo ir más allá.Geoff Watts “Product Mastery” Lo mismo que el anterior pero centrado en el rol de Product Manager.Nivel AvanzadoLyssa Adkins “Coaching Agile Teams”. Una obra maestra para aquellos que quieran ir más allá. Es denso y con muchos matices que una persona nueva en el campo difícilmente comprendería.Referencias del episodioEventos de la comunidad de MongoDB

En este episodio hablamos de agile, empezando por sus fundamentos: el manifiesto ágil.Textos RecomendadosNivel BasicoRobert C Martin “Clean Agile”. Es una muy buena introducción centrado en los desarrolladores y solo en la gestión de proyecto. El foco esta en Extreme Programming y es una lectura fácil. Recomiendo el Audio Book.Jeff Shutherland “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time”. De el creador de Scrum es un libro básico sobre el proceso SCRUM. Es de muy fácil lectura pero no cubre agile solo Scrum. Recomiendo el Audio BookNivel IntermedioSi ya [tienes los fundamentos de agile, y no me refiero al proceso, si no a los conceptos interiorizados:Geoff Watts “Scrum Mastery” Explicación más detallada de lo que un Scrum Master puede hacer para ayudar a su equipo ir más allá.Geoff Watts “Product Mastery” Lo mismo que el anterior pero centrado en el rol de Product Manager.Nivel AvanzadoLyssa Adkins “Coaching Agile Teams”. Una obra maestra para aquellos que quieran ir más allá. Es denso y con muchos matices que una persona nueva en el campo difícilmente comprendería.Referencias del episodioEventos de la comunidad de MongoDB

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted at GOTO Aarhus.gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview hereLars Kruse - Technology Counselor & Rainmaker at Inc IncMalte Foegen - COO at wibasKlaus Bucka-Lassen - Free Radical at Netcetera & Agile Coach, Trainer & Keynote SpeakerDESCRIPTIONAgile, Lean, and DevOps are more than buzzwords even though they have taken over the world at different times. The processes and technologies they employed have helped improve the entire world, not just the software world. Klaus Bucka-Lassen, Lars Kruse, and Malte Foegen debate the intersection and cross-pollination between the three worlds with a focus on applying them on all levels in practice in large organizations.RECOMMENDED BOOKSJoshua Kerievsky • Joy of AgilityAino Vonge Corry • Retrospectives AntipatternsLee, Wickens, Liu & Boyle • Designing for PeopleStone, Chaparro, Keebler, Chaparro & McConnell • Introduction to Human FactorsDerby, Larsen & Schwaber • Agile RetrospectivesJeff Sutherland • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time-----TwitterLinkedInFacebookLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily

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. Tinatin discusses the importance of the scrum values in a team and how well the team is living those values. She highlights the importance of team health checks to identify inefficiencies, which can often result from a lack of collaboration and trust between team members. Tinatin uses the example of the Spotify Squad health check (mentioned several times here on the podcast) that reveals a lack of trust between developers and testers, and offers tips for identifying a lack of trust in a team, such as monitoring levels of comfort among team members, monitoring communication, and observing meetings for signs of discomfort or silence. Featured Book Of The Week: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland, the author describes how to optimize work through Agile methodology and Scrum principles. In this episode, Tinatin also refers to Scaling Lean and Agile Development by Craig Larman, and Bas Vodde. Bas Vodde has been a previous guest on the podcast. And she also refers to Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age by Roman Pichler.    [IMAGE HERE] Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!   About Tinatin Tabidze Tinatin Tabidze is a Scrum Master currently working in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally she started out as a project manager. She has experience with multiple scrum and kanban teams, working with scaled agile frameworks. You can link with Tinatin Tabidze on LinkedIn. 

Belief and certainty are powerful forces in this world and our guests today are prime examples of this fact. April and Arthur Rodriguez are a powerhouse couple from Texas that started their company only back in April of 2022 and quickly ascended to 80k months. We discuss the keys to their growth, hiring and growth of their team, the importance of culture and growth, and so much more!   Time Stamps:   (0:42) Quick Backstory on April and Arthur (1:35) The Entrepreneurial Journey (7:30) Committing to Getting Help (9:20) Growth and Hiring a Team (16:30) The Importance of Culture and Growth (20:38) Asking How Someone is Doing Twice (21:39) Most Proud of Moment (23:37) Working Together and Overcoming Financial Stress (26:40) Advice April and Arthur Have for Anyone on the Fence (29:15) Future of April and Arthur's Business and Growth (31:47) Where to Find April and Arthur ---------- Follow April and Arthur on Instagram ---------- Learn More About Impact Fitness Coaching Academy,   To Learn More About I.F.C.A. - And How We've Helped More Than 1,700 Fitness Coaches, Experts, and Influencers Grow a 5-35k+ Month Online Fitness Business Without Paid Ads, Complicated Funnels, or Even Having a Large Social Media Following    Click Here→ to VISIT THE IFCA PAGE  ---------- GIVEAWAY!  Leave a rating + review on iTunes, and Have a Chance To Win a $200 Amazon Gift Card + Special Prizes! Winners Announced Monthly on The Episode. Simply leave a review, and send a screenshot to the Fit Biz Podcast Instagram Page!

Bio  Chris Boeckerman is currently Vice President of Research & Development for Fabric & Home Care. Prior to this she was R&D Vice President for P&G Ventures, the company's internal startup studio that partners with entrepreneurs and startups to create new brands and businesses in spaces where the company doesn't play today.   Known as a “change agent” during her 30-year career with Procter & Gamble, Chris co-founded P&G's Lean Innovation movement, known as GrowthWorks, and has specialised in developing dynamic teams worldwide to strengthen the company's innovation capabilities.  Her impressive P&G career also includes more than 20 years in the company's Global Fabric Care business, working to create breakthrough innovations with iconic brands such as Tide, Ariel, Downy, Gain and Bounce.     Chris holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati.  She has been honoured as a YWCA Rising Star, is an active leader in the Girls in STEM program for P&G and across Cincinnati and serves on the Advisory Board for the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative.     Chris resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with her family.    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-boeckerman-06577110/       Interview Highlights  Timestamp  02:12 - Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio  07:07 - Studying engineering in a cooperative education setting  12:25 - R&D Vice President at P&G Ventures  19:38 - Productive failure  37:00 - Co-founding GrowthWorks  44:30 - No one size fits all  53:22 - Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful , committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has    Books/ Resources Mentioned The Lean Startup by Eric Ries https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses/dp/0670921602/  The Startup Way  by Eric Ries https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06Y1G9RVC  The Leader's Guide by Eric Ries https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Leaders-Guide-Audiobook/B07K8WQHYW  New to Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth by David Kidder and Christina Wallace https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Big-Companies-Entrepreneurs-Permanent-ebook/dp/B07FC3C51Z  Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work-Half/dp/1847941109  Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Thousand-Weeks-Embrace-limits/dp/1784704008    Episode Transcript  Ula Ojiaku (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 (Guest Intro): My guest today is Chris Boeckerman. She is the Vice-President of Research and Development with the startup studio for Procter & Gamble that partners with entrepreneurs and startups to create new brands and businesses in spaces where the company doesn't play today. Known as a change agent during her 29 year career with Procter & Gamble, Chris co-founded P & G's lean innovation movement known as GrowthWorks and has specialised in developing dynamic teams worldwide to strengthen the company's innovation capabilities. In this episode, Chris talks about herself and gives us a glimpse into the influences that shaped her into who she is today and how she got into Procter & Gamble and developed her career, as well as her experience setting up GrowthWorks within Procter & Gamble. It was a very insightful conversation. I definitely will be listening to this episode again, because there were lots of gems and I know you will find it useful as well. So thank you again for tuning in and for watching. Without further ado, my conversation with Chris. Enjoy.  Ula Ojiaku  So Chris, thank you so much for making the time to join us on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. It is a great honour to have you here.   Chris Boeckerman  Oh, thank you. Thank you for asking me. It's a wonderful honour to be here.   Ula Ojiaku  Awesome. Now let's get to know you, Chris. Can you tell us about yourself, your background?  Chris Boeckerman  Sure. My name is Chris Boeckerman. I work at Procter & Gamble. I've been here almost 30 years, which is exciting, but going back to the beginning, so I'm actually born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I've never left. And it's kind of funny, when you're born in Cincinnati, many times you don't leave. I've been prepping my parents from the day I got my job at P & G that I would leave and I just, I never. I never left. So it's very fun, but yeah, so I'm born and raised. My family is still here, and yeah, I love it.   Ula Ojiaku  Wow. So you, based on what you said, it seemed like you had expectations growing up that you would leave. So what was it about, you know, the whole set up that made you end up not leaving Cincinnati?  Chris Boeckerman  I don't know that I ever thought I would leave because, like Cincinnati is a great place and a lot of people I know don't leave, but when I got my job at Proctor & Gamble, which is a multinational company, I expected that I might have to, but really no, I, went to grade school in Cincinnati and then high school. And then I ended up going into chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. And I co-oped and ended up, you know, getting this great job at P & G. So that's just kind of how it all happened, which is why I ended up staying in Cincinnati. It's a great place. It's a wonderful place to raise a family. I'm married. My husband works full time, at a company called Turner Construction. And, I have two children, my oldest child is 21 and he's at the University of Dayton doing mechanical engineering. And then my daughter is 17 and she's at a local high school here in Cincinnati. So, and my family and my husband's family, we met at the University of Cincinnati. So I think a lot of those things kind of keep you in a place.   Ula Ojiaku  I can imagine. Well, whilst I didn't grow up in the town I studied, I also graduated with an engineering degree, but it's an electronic engineering degree and I met my husband in the university as well. But that's about, you know, the parallel, I've moved a lot, I've kind of lived everywhere else in the world.  Chris Boeckerman  Well, what I'm happy about is, I'm so happy that I work at P & G, because P & G has introduced the world to me. And so I've been able to travel all over the place and then it sparked that interest in my husband and my family being able to travel. So we definitely, because of P & G we now know it, but I've just never lived anywhere else, that's all.  Ula Ojiaku  And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you travelled when you wanted to. And I can only imagine, because that's not been my experience having family and friends, you know, it makes things easier as a full time working mother, a family person.  Chris Boeckerman  Yes, yes. I don't know how you do it otherwise. So I bow to you, to all my friends. It's difficult, but we all figure it out.   Ula Ojiaku  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's great. So, what do you do, Chris? When you're not working, what would you say you do to recharge yourself?  Chris Boeckerman  Well, I am, as you've already found out, I'm very family oriented. And so, we are a family of SciFi lovers. And so we like movies and shows and things like that. We just celebrated my husband's 50th birthday at Disney at Galaxy's Edge.   Ula Ojiaku  Wow. Happy birthday to him.   Chris Boeckerman  I know, it was great. We both turned 50 this year, so it's a big year. But that was fun. We were able to get my son back from college and my daughter, and we were able to spend a fun long weekend there. We love rollercoasters and so we've organised family vacations around rollercoasters and getting to rollercoasters all over the world. And we all love to golf. And so that's something I picked up later. My husband's a wonderful golfer. And so now we really enjoy that as the kids have gotten older, I can spend more time golfing along with my full-time career, but yeah, so it's a lot of fun. I just really like to be outdoors. I think that's the common theme. I love to read, I love to do, but I love to do it outdoors. So that's my favourite.   Ula Ojiaku  Yeah, that sounds very interesting. The first and the only time I tried golf, I was so horrible at it. I think I gave myself an advisory, you know, just to do it not in public.  Chris Boeckerman  It's not for everybody, it's not for everybody.   Ula Ojiaku  Yeah. Okay. I also got the, when you're talking about yourself, that you studied chemical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. What made you choose that discipline, that line of study?   Chris Boeckerman  Yeah, and that's kind of a funny, it's kind of a funny story. So, my parents didn't get to go to college, but I've known since I can remember that I was going to college. So, they worked their whole life, I'm blue collar raised. The one thing I can tell you is I work hard. That's what, you know, my parents really instilled that in me. And so I really liked chemistry in school, and I was pretty good at maths. And so my counselor was like, oh, chemical engineering. My grandpa was actually a chemical engineer. So it was a familiar term, even though I think it's hard to just understand what engineering is by talking to people. But I did some shadowing and I thought, okay, engineering sounds good. And University of Cincinnati was close by, but they invented cooperative education. So, this kind of go to school, go to work. It helps pay for your school, and what I didn't even realise at the time is I'm a very practical person. And so University of Cincinnati was the best for me because I didn't always love the theory. I could learn it, I got the theory, but I'm an applied learner is what I've learned since then. And so by having a co-op job, I could take the theory, apply it, and then I loved it. And so I got the chance to co-op six quarters at P & G in all different parts of the company. So I got to see how, I got to see the company, the company got to see me. It's really how we hire now is through interns and co-ops. But back then, it was just perfect for me. So I'm so glad I made the choice. Like I said, when your parents don't go to college, I don't think you even realise there's that many opportunities, what all the colleges are. But I just got really lucky and then obviously had to work hard because engineering is extremely difficult, and like I said, I think if I wouldn't have had co-op, I may not have stayed in chemical engineering, but because I had the experience of what I could do with it, I made it through.  Ula Ojiaku  Well done you and it's people like you, that paved the way for people like us women to get more into engineering as well. So the co-op, was it the University of Cincinnati, did the university help you with getting the job with P & G as part of the studies?  Chris Boeckerman  Yeah, it's integrated into a five-year program at the University of Cincinnati. And so you have to co-op to graduate and therefore they have a very structured way of introducing you to many companies, and so they have great relationships with local companies, with national companies. And so, because you know you have to, it's just part of the curriculum, and so they work hard to make sure you get a job. You work hard to make sure you get a job, and then you graduate with experience. So, yeah, I encourage anybody who's going into engineering, even if it's not integrated, like it was at UC, to do internships over the summer. It's a very popular thing to do here in the US so like my son did internships, most of the colleges have support here to be able to do an internship or they have co-op abroad, learning abroad. Any of that I think is amazing.   Ula Ojiaku  Yes, it helps with the balance, you know, to know what reality is and what the theory is of this discipline. Okay. And how did you, you said you made it through, so how was it for you as a student?   Chris Boeckerman  I am the person that you should send anybody to who struggled, because I struggled. You know, in high school I was a straight A student, and I memorised everything. I, like I said before, I know how to work hard. I worked hard, grades were very important to me, but it was more of a memorisation thing in high school. I understood the problem solving up to that point, but then I got into university, and yeah, it was just a whole other ball game. One of the things that I think I just learned about engineering is, in the real world, you never have enough time. You never have enough money to do what you want to do. Well, engineering preps you for that because you walk into a test and there's not enough time to finish the test. You're never going to get the right answer. Right. And it's hard to go through that, but I think it creates this grit and tenacity of like, I just have to keep going now.  And that is, I mean, that's kind of what I learned when I got into the workforce, is that engineers are problem solvers and that experience, that difficult experience through school just preps you for real life. And you know, when you feel like you can't keep going, you're like, I am, let's just, you know, this is the way it is. There's not enough time. There's not enough money. We've got to keep moving.  Ula Ojiaku  Exactly, let's make the most of the situation. So, you were co-opting with P & G, they loved you and they said they wouldn't let you go. And here you are. So how did you get to your current position as the Vice President? You're now for R & D right?  Chris Boeckerman  Right, it's R & D Vice President in a part of the company called P & G Ventures, which I can explain. So I'll try to take 30 years and give you the shortened version of it. So I started with Procter & Gamble and I worked 20 years actually in the part of the business called fabric care, so Tide, Gain, Ariel, Lenor… like I could talk to you about laundry all day long. So I worked there for 20 years. I worked upstream, downstream, consumer facing, technical facing, internal, external. Like, if you're going to stay somewhere for 20 years, you better do it all, and it was a wonderful, great experience. I've always lived in Cincinnati, but I've had teams all over the world, and so, you know, getting to know the cultures and how people work and the diversity, it's just, it's been amazing. You know, even the different brands and the different countries was great. And so I did that for 20 years, loved it, but I had this wonderful boss who said, hey, it's time to go try something else. And so I went into corporate R & D, and I wasn't sure about it because I come from the business and I have a P & L and I know what I'm delivering to the company, but I really trusted her. And she said, this is where you should go. And the minute I met with the leader of that organisation, he convinced me because he said, hey, my goal is that we are tailwinds for the business units. So, we're not off on the side, but we have the time to look internally and externally at all the best practices. And then we become tailwinds for our businesses who don't have time to do that because they're running the business. And I just loved that vision. And you know, P & G, our mission, our purpose at P and G is to improve the lives of consumers every day. I always say I love my job. I don't love it every day, but I do really love my job. I think if anybody tells you, they love it every day, they're just lying, but I really do love my job. And I think it's because my personal mission in life is to nurture and inspire the people in my work, my community, my family, and P & G's mission and purpose to improve the lives of consumers comes together in a great place. And that role in particular, in corporate R & D, it all really came together because, you know, I did feel like it was a mission. So when I got into that organisation, it was when, I like to say Dollar Shave Club had happened to us. So it was something where we stand for irresistibly superior products, and that is what our business model was made of. And this was a new, digital business model and it was new to the world and we were trying to figure it out. And so right as I got into this role, the Chief Technical Officer, Kathy Fish, and the Chief Brand Officer kind of came to me and my boss and said, you know, the world is changing really fast and we need to make sure that we are sustainable in this changing environment. So can you go find out what's happening and figure out, you know, how to make sure that we survive, right. How to make sure that we can live in this changing world.  And so I was like, wow, that is like a very clear work plan. And I have no idea how to do that, right. It was very big, the company is big, it's a hundred thousand people, and you know, but I did what I do and I just went and started talking to everybody. And as I was talking to everybody, there were two very clear themes that came out. One was fear of failure, and the second one was that commercial and technical were working in silos. We weren't really a connected team, and so we just kind of looked around and said, what other industry or what other space is tackling these two issues in this dynamic world? And it was the startup Ecosystem. And so we just went to school. I mean, I, the number of podcasts I looked into, like everything I had to learn. We are lucky enough to be a big company. We were able to get to the likes of like David Kidder from Bionic and Ian Berkowitz and Eric Ries. And I could give you the five names of the people that I would go to, but we were lucky enough to get those experts to come in and counsel us, which, that's one of the things I'm so proud of us to do is we didn't pretend we knew how to do it. Yeah. And that's one of the advice I would give everybody is don't pretend, go seek external help, always, because they're always going to give you a different perspective. But anyway, we just kind of, that's how we got into lean innovation, that's how we got into, hey, there is a different way in which we can, you know, learn quickly, learn fast, fail fast. We kind of learned nobody wants to fail, but if you can fail fast and early, then it's, it feels much more like learning. How fascinating, why did that happen? If you fail later and expensive, that's bad. And so, you know, we were, we had to get to school on it. We had to learn how to do it. And then the organisation I was able to create really was a small organisation that was meant to enable the business unit. So we created a framework that was agile and could kind of meet the business units where they were and helped them to understand this is the framework that you can apply to wherever you're at in this journey, because we were all at a different place in the journey, but we enabled startups inside the company is the easiest way for me to talk about that.  And then I did that and now I got the great opportunity, about two years ago, to come into a part of the company called P & G Ventures, which had actually, they were the first part of the company to kind of work like a startup, and they worked internally and externally to start up, what are the next businesses going to be? So we have 10 existing business units. Their job was, how do you develop the next business unit, which, talk about a high hurdle. Right. But, so I basically got to take the five years of kind of learning and enabling the business units, and I got to apply it to one of the toughest problems, which is how do you create a new business unit in an already very big and successful company?   Ula Ojiaku  That sounds exciting. And the journey so far, it sounds really impressive and exciting. So, given that P & G, you know, already is renowned for, you know, research, the extensive research and development, would you say that you already had that culture where it's okay to fail because not everything in the research would, you know, go on to be commercialised and end up on the shelf, or did you have to also change people's mindsets towards failure to know that if you fail fast it's okay. You know, was there any, from a leadership perspective, did you need to change anything in terms of people's perception?   Chris Boeckerman  Yeah, I mean, we really did, and it's still, you know, it's never perfect inside of an organisation because, you know, it is a large organisation. It was more around though, the speed of learning is what I would say is the biggest difference, was get something out there faster, to let people react. So it was almost and we do, we have a great, behavioural learning mindset now as well, but it was earlier back then. Right. And so I think what happens is, you know, you have your standard, large base qualification tests. That was, you know, the standard process that we had, and it worked well, but the world was shifting. And so it was like, if you were going to need to be more dynamic in how you evolved it, you needed, we needed to follow more of what the lean innovation process would be, which is, you create a quick and early prototype. It doesn't have to be perfect because you're only going to test it with 10 people, get it out to those 10 people and you're going to learn much more, very fast. I always joked, I had this old project or I'm in a project I did a long time ago and I had a bad package, but I knew the product was amazing. And I had this team and the packaging group did not want to place this package. Of course, we all knew it was bad and nobody wanted to look bad, right. And I was like, listen, I promise, I'm going to get the highest level person to say, he knows the package is going to fail. Well, if that's okay, will you let us place this test? Because I've got to find out if the juice is good, right. I've got to find out if the product is good, and I promise when I come back, I'm going to have even better information about what the package needs to do to be amazing. And so, you know, this was what this was way before, but it like, it just took people, you know, a little bit of time. And they needed to be reassured that it wasn't going to come back on them, right. And it's the difference, it's not the qualification test or I'm spending a million dollars, it's a small test, but you just need to make sure you're intentional about that, right. And we did, we learned a ton. We learned that the juice was magical. The product was great, and the package was bad, and this is exactly what we needed from the package. And we wrote up probably the most beautiful package brief ever. So I really think that's the difference, is you had to make sure that there weren't repercussions. You had to take the risk lower. And if you can take the risk lower, then the failure, like I said, it's more of, oh, you learned that, awesome, you learned it fast, you learned it cheap and now we know what to go do. I always used to say in the early days of GrowthWorks, because everybody's polarised by the term failure, which I totally understand, but it was like productive failure is failure that enables you to know fast, cheap, and easy what to go do next. And as long as you do that, that is productive failure. I had these great managers one time who, I was very uptight about a very large test market that was going to get delayed. It was under my charge and I felt very responsible. And as you can tell, I'm very passionate and you can read my emotions on my face. So I walked into my two leaders and they're new too, they don't know me, so I don't have a relationship with them, but they can just tell, I haven't slept for a week and, like, things are bad and, you know, and they kind of looked at me and they said, hey, Chris, is this the worst thing that's ever happened to you at work? And I was like, uh, yeah, like million dollar test market, right. And they're like, oh, okay, we're going to talk to you about that tomorrow. Today, we're going to talk to you about things that have gone wrong in our career, and what we learned from them. And I just, this was a transformative conversation that my leaders, I'm so thankful, took the time because when I found out what went wrong in their history, I was like, that's not even close to what is happening. Put things in perspective, right. They really, they were able to put things in perspective for me, and they were able to help me see you learn more from your mistakes than your successes. Don't make the same mistake twice and make your mistakes, or do your failures as early and as cheap as possible. And you know, this was 10 years before I did GrowthWorks, but that stuck with me and it turned me, it turned me from a micro-managing crazy person, which is what I was doing at that time into a learning leader is what I would say. I learned to then, when things came to me that were surprising, I always try to say, no matter what the data is, I try to say, oh, how fascinating, why do we think that happened? And it's, you know, like the results are awesome, clean, fascinating. Why do we think they're great? Like, why do we think that happened? The results are bad, fascinating, why? Why do we think that happened? And what we learned is if leaders can approach everything that way, then the team moves into a learning mindset and you learn a lot faster. It's hard to do. And I don't do it every day. If my team were here with me, they would be like, we're going to remind Chris on Monday about that. So, you know, nobody can do it all the time, but that learning mindset, which is something P & G has, you know, focused on a lot, it makes all the difference in the world of creating a culture in which people can learn fast, because everything's fascinating and you need to understand why you got good data, just as much as you need to understand why you got bad data. That's just good science.   Ula Ojiaku  I love that term productive failure. I think this is the first time I'm hearing. So do you get to share your failures, you know, after experiments do you get to share that with the rest of the organisation or how does that work?  Chris Boeckerman  Yeah, I mean we try hard. We actually try hard in P & G Ventures, because anybody who's listening, who's done any type of venture, new business building type stuff, you have to shut down more things than you keep going and it's really hard to shut a program down, and so we really try to celebrate when we stopped something as much as we celebrate when we're moving forward, because Kathy Fish had this, she would say to us, she was our past, Chief R & D officer when we were doing GrowthWorks, and she was like, it's so important to shut things down because you need to shut the good things down so that you have people to work on the great things, right. And it's, but I'd say that that's the hardest thing to do. And we just did it this week and I compliment the team and it's so exciting to see it's not all roses all the time, I'm telling you, it's not, this is very hard work.  Everybody's job is hard, but when you have a team that really does the sprint together to get to the bottom of how big is it, how big is the problem? Does P & G have a unique, proprietary gift to solve it? And, you know, they come back and the answer is, hey, we did all the due diligence and we don't think that we should pursue it. It's like, I am so excited that they had the confidence and they gave us the confidence because you just want to be confident in your decision, whether it's to go forward or to not, this world of disruptive innovation is uncertain, right? It is just uncertain. It's hard to live in uncertainty every day. But if you have clarity of, we did the due diligence in the team, like I always used to say in GrowthWorks, I want the teams to shut the programs down, or the teams to be the ones that are driving it forward. But it's hard, it is hard to create a culture where people can be agile enough to move to different programs, and we are in the learning, we don't have it all figured out, but you know, we've been at it for a while, and so it's just really, it's exciting to be part of this organisation at this time, to see how far we've come.   Ula Ojiaku  Wow. So, for them, because you said something about clarity in times of uncertainty and, you know, the teams actually come to you and say, they've done the due diligence, it doesn't meet the criteria. That suggests to me that you've, you know, and you, as a leadership team have taken the time to sit down with them to identify what those clear criteria are. Are you able to share what these are, or at least the process, you know, that made you arrive to those criteria that is open and transparent to everyone that it makes the team, you know, that helps the team to determine if it meets the, it aligns with what P & G is looking for?  Chris Boeckerman  Right. Well, I can share it in general terms, right. And so a lot of people listening into the podcast would understand a funnel, right? You know, you have big, broad ideas in the beginning of the funnel and you're trying to figure out, and that's what this particular project was at, is you're trying to figure out really at that point in time, how big is the problem? It's got to be a problem big enough that P & G will care about it. Right. But the problem itself, that's more of a, how many people have it? How many solutions are out there already? What are the dissatisfiers with the solutions? So you kind of go through the essence of how big is the problem? And could we do something about it? So how big is the problem? Does P & G have a proprietary, unique reason why we should go after this versus somebody else? Do we have the capability and the technology, or do we have the partnerships? We do external scouting, right? So do we have external solutions that look viable? And then you put that together to figure out financially, what do the signals look like? Does it look big enough that it's going to be a business that P & G would care about? Because there are plenty of businesses. I've done this myself, I've fallen in love with the business, I want to do this business, and at the end of the day, it's not going to look attractive to P & G, you, at the end of the day, you are choosing to put resources on different programs at different times, and they have to not compete, that's not a great way of saying it, but they have to be big enough that it's worthy of putting a team on it. So we take a small team, they do that early work, and there's a sprint that you go to it, but it's not the same for everybody. Like it's not hard and fast numbers at this point in time. But it is all around, is the problem big enough? Do we have a reason to think that we can deliver a breakthrough solution? And then, when you put that together financially, does it look good? And so we have, I would say, what we have, the leadership team has determined is, there are some ranges that the teams work within, but what really helped this team in particular, which is something that I think people could value is we really enabled the team to focus, right? So they did this broad, like what are the parts of this problem that we think are interesting? And they did a sprint, they identified those spaces. We were like, great. We love it. Now, with that criteria go run some sprints to figure out quickly, how big is it? Is it growing? What are the gifts we have in the company? What is the quick scouting? And is this something that makes sense for, you know, P & G to create a new brand VR work or not. And they really, they came back and they said, thank you for the focus, we met with them every month after the sprint, we made decisions, but they made the recommendations and then they were like, this one isn't big enough, it's not growing, we're going to stop work on that one, do you agree? They were like, yeah, because you made such a compelling case, how can we not agree? And then the other, you know, the other, we were like, we are still really interested in the other two. Do you have enough time? And do you have the right people to do that? They went after it, they came back and you know, and then it becomes much more of a discussion because it's like, is it really something we should do? Is it something the other businesses have a better, do they already have a brand? It is expensive to create a new brand. So, we have amazing brands in this company. And so, many times it's like, wait, do we need to influence, or do we want to try to influence another brand to really take this on, because it's big and growing. So that's how it, early in the funnel, as we go later in the funnel, it becomes much more of, the first question is, could we do it, the second question is, should we do it? Right. And so the, should we do it is all based on can you create the business? Right, so then you really start pulling in all of the business aspects, the full qualification that we tend to do, transactional learning tests, incubations either in stores or in small markets or in direct to consumer. So you really start to get that behavioural and transactional data giving you the signals that this is a business. Janice Fraser, who was also one of these external experts, she would always say, you know you're ready to scale when you've put the variables together and you know where to pour the money to make it grow, you know where the money should be poured to make it grow. If you don't know where to pour the money, you're not ready to scale. And, you know, those are always, so it's complicated. Business is complicated. The channels are complicated, the platforms are complicated. So, you know, that's when you really have to figure out, do I have, you know, should I invest the big money in this? And I think one of the things that you have when you're doing intrapreneurship, you're creating startups inside the company, is you should be able to get through that funnel faster, if you can get all those parts to come together and that's, you know, that's our goal, that's what we're getting to. In P & G Ventures,  I mean, we have a new opportunity area around safe and effective insect control. And it's a brand called Zevo and it's amazing, right. And so it's nice to have a program that has been through those parts and is really kind of in that space now that we can all look to and, you know, say, all right, how are we looking compared to where they were looking at the time? Because it's like, that uncertainty and clarity, like you said, it is just uncertain space. You don't know, you can't predict a billion dollar brand, you just can't, but what are the things that you can start running after and you can learn fast and you can validate that gives you the signals at all different fidelities and levels to then go, all right, we're going. So anyway, that's the goal.   Ula Ojiaku  So, the listeners might be wondering, especially for those of us who are not so familiar with the intricate, you know, organisation, the way P & G is organised. So, what's GrowthWorks and then, what role did you play in that?   Chris Boeckerman  Perfect. Well, I ended up being able to be the co-founder of GrowthWorks. And GrowthWorks, in a simple term, is, a framework that you can apply to nurture startups inside the company. So, we are a big company and we know how to do big, big programs. Right. As we got into this disruptive world and we were being disrupted and, you know, we were looking for how to become agile, it, you know, it was sort of like we needed to shift how we did our innovation. And so we needed to be able to apply these principles from lean innovation, but in a way that made sense for P & G. So one of the things we learned, you know, very early on and everybody would know is, you know, at the end of the day, our goal is to build a business that we cultivate. We're not trying to sell to somebody. That's a very different aspect of being a startup, in a startup you want to get bought, right. But here we need to create a value creating business. And it is interesting during this time is when, Marc Pritchard, who's our Chief Brand Officer, really started to talk quite a bit about constructive disruption, and it was really important, and I think it's important for any big company to understand as they're doing this, is our job is always to build categories, to build the industry. We don't ever want to take the industry down. We want to build the industry. So we want to be disruptive, but in a building way, and so as we were thinking about that, it was just like, okay, there's probably three components that we were pulling together that you can apply, whether you're doing sustaining innovation, or disruptive innovation.   There's a, how do you learn, right. So it's the build, measure, learn, but how do you handle this, helping an organisation feel okay about sending five prototypes to consumers and not being concerned that it's going to fail. Right. So that is sort of the build, measure, learn loop. We base everything in the consumer love and the consumer need. And so we wrapped that together to kind of give it, this is how P & G applies the lean innovation model. There's also, how do you think about the type of innovation you're doing? And so, like I said, whether it's sustaining, disruptive or anything like that, but visualising that is really important, helping everybody understand, what are the new spaces that we're looking at? Placing lots of bets in these new spaces and knowing the high percentage is going to fail, right. And so, how do you measure progress in this uncertain space? That was a part of the framework as well. And then the last part of the framework was how do you organise to do this work? And I'd say the biggest thing we learned then is yeah, when you're early in the funnel, a small team can make tremendous progress, make it less hierarchical, let the team lead, leaders learn, because this is new. So I used to always joke. I was 20 years in fabric care, right. And so I would be working with an internal startup team in fabric care. And my 20 years of knowledge of fabric care wasn't what was helping the team. I was holding them back because I have all these biases of the past and they needed to go into the future and I needed to learn, so you just have to let the teams lead at that point in time and you have to learn, and be supportive. Then you do get to the point though, where my 20 years of knowledge of fabric care does become important. And that's where every startup runs into as well, is you get it to a certain point, but if you need to industrialise something, that is the core capability the company has, and you can't do that with three people, and you need hierarchy and you need to, so it's like, how do you take the best of both worlds and bring them together? And so that was how we had to figure out how to organise for where you're at and what you need at the time.  And then how do you shift to that when you need to shift it quickly? And so those were the three aspects, how you learn, what is the type of innovation you're going after, and then how do you organise, and that we made it a broad enough framework so that we have 10 business units and P & G Ventures who were at the tip of the sphere of doing this for the company anyway. And we were trying to help the rest of the company, but you wanted to give them that framework and then no matter what they were working on, could they fit themselves into that framework or could the framework enable them? And so we started as two people and our leader, and I was able to grow that organisation to about 25 people across every function of the company, but just a small group, like we just had, you know, 25 people out of a hundred thousand, right. But each of us were a function in the company, but we were one team across all functions. And so that's how we were able to kind of like be like the Navy Seals, we could come in and we could help support the business unit for what they were doing. And then the business unit would take it on. That was the only way we could become sustainable because we weren't, I never wanted to create a 500 person organisation.  Everything I learned about from all my predecessors who've tried this at other companies as well, that just gets to be too heavy. And it doesn't integrate into the entire company because you're reliant on the coaches or the experts versus our job was eventually like when we were about three years in and we kind of knew what we were doing, when we would come in and help train some part of the organisation, we would only do it if they offered up a person that would then take it from us and do the next training. And so, you know, then you start to really get into the fibre of the company to really drive the change. And it's not perfect, right. But it really was able to shift how we did our innovation and the BUs own it, right, the business units own it.   Ula Ojiaku  That's the only way it's going to be sustainable, if there's ownership from them.   Chris Boeckerman  Exactly. And they applied it in different ways, our beauty care business is very different than our fabric care business. So one size fits all was never going to work.   Ula Ojiaku  Oh my gosh, sorry, that was a theme at the conference I spoke at, you know, it was like, no, there's no one size fits all approach.   Chris Boeckerman  I'm very thankful that I had the support around me, and that the company invested to bring external people in, right. One of the people I haven't mentioned yet is Maxine Friedman and she started with Bionic and, you know, now has her own work that she does, but she was my partner day in and day out as we were trying to figure out how to make this change. And without having people like that near me, Karen Hershenson's an internal person that was with me. They're the ones that really helped me see it was more than us. And in order to make it more than us, we had to enable others. We had to give it away. So first we had to figure out what it was. So don't get me wrong. That was not easy. It took us an entire year of really crazy experiments that the business units did. And we were just learning and running and helping and doing everything that we could, but we were pulling together the learnings. We were strategically figuring out what was working and what wasn't working so that we could land within the first year with this framework. Then once we had the framework, then we had something more intentional that we could work with the business units on. And we showed up for free. That was the other thing is, when they called, we showed up, right? Like nobody paid for us, we were helping them, but then they started to pay with their people, and they became the experts who then moved it forward and they moved it forward in different ways, because the external experts were the ones telling us we've seen other companies try this, don't try to mandate, don't force it, help figure out an agile framework that people can fit for what they need. And to this day it still exists. I mean, I'm not on it anymore, there's a small team that's still is working through it and, you know, but the businesses own it. They're the ones who really drive it in the way that they need.   Ula Ojiaku  Wow. I respect your time. I could delve in more. I think, Chris, this is an official invite to have you back sometime, you know, for a sequel to this conversation.   Chris Boeckerman  I would love it. I would love it. This has been so much fun. I really, I have a ton of passion for this type of work and our motto in GrowthWorks was unleash people to unleash growth. I do think P & G has the best people. I think everybody thinks that about their company, but I just really, I believe it, you know, when I was 20 years in fabric care, when I was, you know, 5 years in GrowthWorks, and now in P & G Ventures, that we just have the best people. And as we unleash them, we're growing, and so it's just a ton of fun, so happy to come back.   Ula Ojiaku  Your passion shines through and for you to say P & G has the best people, speaking with you, I am left with no doubt about it because you are a great ambassador for that. So thank you for that. So, in terms of a few more questions, so what books, if you had, because you said you had to go to school to learn more about innovation and you got in coaches. Are there any books that have helped you, you know, in this learning journey?  Chris Boeckerman  Yeah, there's a group of books just on lean innovation that definitely helped. So the Eric Ries, like kind of trilogy of books, I would say is The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, but he also had a small printing of something called, The Leader's Guide, which I think you can only get on audio now. And Janice Fraser, Eric introduced us to Janice and she had a lot of that, that really helps you to figure out how to help an organisation, how to help leaders to bring this to life. So those were really critical. And then David Kidder from Bionic wrote a book called New to Big, and I would say that's a great synopsis of what they taught us. And so, that's a good one to go to. And then there's a Scrum book that, I'm going to have to look up afterwards to give you the actual title, but twice the work and half the time.  Ula Ojiaku  That'll be Jeff Sutherland, Scrum, How to do Twice the Work in Half the Time. Dr Sutherland was my guest a few episodes ago.   Chris Boeckerman  Yes, it was life-changing for me, not necessarily because I became, I did not become a Scrum master. We have people inside the company that have done amazing things, but that was the book where he really articulated the questions that we started to ask, that helped us with teams lead, leaders learn. So he articulated that leaders, you know, should ask, what did you learn? How do you know? What do you need to learn next? And how can I help you as a leader? And, you know, that simple articulation was really great for us. So those are the ones that I kind of went back to again and again, to really figure out how to do lean innovation. I have another book for you just in general to share, and that's called Four Thousand Weeks, and it's a productivity book that somebody had just shared with me and it's by Oliver Burkeman and this, I just really liked because it's made a big impact in my life right now. If you live to be 80, you live 4,000 weeks. So it puts a finite amount of time, which can be scary, but we all know is real. But what I loved about this, it's the first productivity book that I received the message because I'm sure other productivity books have told me this, but it's the first time I was able to openly receive the message that you cannot do it all, so stop trying. You need to be choiceful. You need to be intentional on what it is you want to do and what it is you're going to intentionally not do. And that was just really impactful for me. And I think it can be impactful for a lot of people that really, the quality of your life is based on the choices that you make, and it's part of the reason I'm here because I'm a very busy person, but I just decided, no, I really, this is a passion that I have. I have a unique experience, I would really like to share that with other like-minded people who are on this, you know, what I call rollercoaster journey. It is like high highs and low lows when you are a change agent in big companies, but it's so fulfilling. So that book just had a big impact on me, that I really am in control of my destiny, but I need to make some choices.  Ula Ojiaku  Well, I've made a note of those books and they would be in the show notes of your episode. So thank you for that. Would that be, if the audience wants to get in touch with you, how can they find you?  Chris Boeckerman  The best way is through LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn, and while I would love to talk to everybody in the world, right. The way that I kind of make my choices, like I just said, which is exactly when you reached out to me is, anything that enables P & G and you know, what, what we all have passion for, I make time for, so yeah, so LinkedIn is the best way.   Ula Ojiaku  Definitely. I mean, you're a busy person, so LinkedIn would be the best place. And any final words for the audience so we wrap this up.   Chris Boeckerman  Yeah. I think, you know, I think it just really is, if you can, you follow your passion and people are everything. I just, everybody in the startup world, everybody in a corporate environment will tell you that the team and the people, they make all the difference in the world. And I just have found through my career as well, the more I invest in the people, the better, and so, yeah, I mean, if there's a way that you can ever really drive together your passions and then the ability to kind of bring an amazing team around you, you can do anything. My favourite quote is, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has. It's by Margaret Mead. And I just really, I really believe it. I think, and, in what we've been able to do at P & G, we had the people, the groundswell, and we had the leadership support in, and you need both, but it just really starts with a small group of people that have a lot of passion and are amazing. And so that's what I would focus on.   Ula Ojiaku  Wow. Thank you so much, Chris. This has been an inspiring conversation, more like me learning from you. So I do think, and I know that the audience, the viewers and listeners would also find this episode very useful. So thank you again for your time.   Chris Boeckerman  Oh, thank you very much. And I've listened to all your podcasts now. And so I'm learning a ton from this forum as well. And just thank you for taking the time and doing it. I love your story and I was really happy to be part of it. So thank you.  Ula Ojiaku   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. 

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. At one point in his career, Fred was both the Scrum Master and manager for the teams he supported. As he reflected on the impact of the retrospectives he facilitated, he noticed that even though the retrospectives took place, the same things kept coming up at every retrospective. The retrospectives were helpful for the teams to “vent” their frustrations and talk about what was not working well, however, there was never time to discuss the improvement actions. This anti-pattern helped Fred realize that he needed to change the way he facilitated retrospective meetings, and he put in place a simple rule that ensured the retrospectives were impactful, not just helpful for the team! Featured Book of the Week: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland The book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland, was a critical book for Fred's career and personal development in his understanding and practice of Scrum and Agile. One of the key lessons Fred highlights from the book is the razor sharp focus on delivering something “immediately”, by the use of questions such as “what can we deliver right away?” Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches - Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM's that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome! About Fred Deichler Always leaning on the Scrum values and Agile principles (even before he knew about them), Fred has guided numerous teams through their Agile Journeys over his 20-year career in Technology leadership. Driven by a passion for continual improvement and finding a balance between people, process, and tools. And Fred knows his own journey is just as important. You can link with Fred Deichler on LinkedIn.

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted at GOTO Aarhus.gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview hereLuxshan Ratnaravi - Co-Author of Comic Agilé and Agile Coach at BankdataMikkel Noe-Nygaard - Co-Author of Comic Agilé and UX Design Specialist at VestasMalte Foegen - Chief Operating Officer at wibasDESCRIPTIONIn many cases, agile practices have been introduced in organizations starting bottom-up. There is, however, a new trend where management is trying to be the driver of agility. Join the discussion with Malte Foegen, COO at wibas, Luxshan Ratnaravi, agile coach at Bankdata and Mikkel Noe-Nygaard, UX design specialist at Vestas, to understand what changes have to be implemented in an enterprise for such a top-down approach. And more importantly, can it be successful?RECOMMENDED BOOKSAino Vonge Corry • Retrospectives AntipatternsGamma, Helm, Johnson & Booch • Design Patterns (Gang of Four)Subramaniam & Hunt • Practices of an Agile DeveloperDerby, Larsen & Schwaber • Agile RetrospectivesJeff Sutherland • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the TimeLee, Wickens, Liu & Boyle • Designing for PeopleStone, Chaparro, Keebler, Chaparro & McConnell • Introduction to Human FactorsTwitterLinkedInFacebookLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket: gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily

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. Matthias shares the story of a team that was in trouble with their estimations. Matthias had just joined this team, and noticed that the team was not able to communicate the uncertainty of their estimates. On top of that, this team was working with a very demanding customer, who had pushed the team to “minimize” their estimates! As a Product Owner, Matthias had to help the team get back their confidence, and build trust between team and customer. Listen in to learn how Matthias (as a Product Owner) helped this team work better with this challenging client. Featured Book of the Week: Lean from the Trenches (Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban) by Kniberg Matthias recommends Lean from the Trenches (Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban) by Kniberg, and Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland. However, as he puts it, he's learned the most about the Product Owner role from interacting with his peers, and trying to foster a more collaborative environment. He describes empathy as an essential skill for Product Owners.  How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she's supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!   About Matthias Kostwein Matthias is a Project Manager, turned Programmer, turned PO, turned Client Service Director with a varied background in different industries from Mechanical Engineering to IT Agencies. Throughout all of his journey, Agile has been part of his work life, even before he knew what Scrum was. You can link with Matthias Kostwein on LinkedIn. 

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. Very often teams compare themselves to other teams. Even when successful, the comparison is inevitable, and sometimes even pushed/fostered by stakeholders. Robbie shares a story of a team that got stuck in the comparison of velocity with another team. And even if the team was working great, they were still trying to “achieve” the same number of story points that the other team was doing. Even when asked not to focus on the number, the team worked on getting their velocity higher, and higher, but not because they were working better, just because they were assigning more story points to the same work! In this episode, we discuss this and other anti-patterns that emerge when teams start focusing on the velocity, rather than the impact of the work they have ahead.  Featured Book of the Week: Scrum, the art of doing twice the work in half the time by Sutherland In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time,  by Sutherland Robbie found an inspiring book that helped him find the Scrum Master career. He describes the book as filled with solutions and valuable even for people with significant experience!  How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she's supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta! About Robbie Ross Robbie is an Agile Practice Manager at Jumar Technology with a passion for working with and empowering teams to foster an Agile environment at scale. He's also a Certified Scrum Master, Kanban practitioner and Agile community member helping teams release their genuine potential to deliver value. Quite a career shift since completing a Sports Science degree at University. You can link with Robbie Ross on LinkedIn and connect with Robbie Ross on Twitter. 

This week's short solo show explores a potentially transformational strategy you can put to work in your practice with as little as five minutes a day.   IT genius Jeff Sutherland first explored the value of a short daily team meeting in his book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.   Prav's been a big fan since reading the book shortly after its publication in 2014 and has since made daily scrums (AKA huddles) a feature at his group of practices and marketing agency.    In this episode, Prav looks at the origin of scrum as a software development tool, discussing how it can be adapted to a dental setting to transform the working week and boost business growth.   Enjoy!   In This Episode 00.47 - The daily scrum - an intro 03.00 - Scrum in practice 07.52 - Scrum in dentistry 12.27 - How to scrum 26.14 - In summary   About Prav Solanki Prav Solanki is an entrepreneur and dental marketer who has purchased, developed and exited a successful group of clinics. He is the director of The Fresh dental marketing and growth agency and founder of Leadflo—an advanced lead management system for dental practices.  

Perryn Olson is a disrupter, he does things differently. In his current role, he's serving multiple companies under one-parent umbrella. He's finding a way to manage his marketing department as a consultant to these companies. It's a very different way to approach day-to-day and long-term marketing needs. If your firm has multiple brands or divisions, and many do lately, Perryn has an interesting approach for you and your marketing services. Resources: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Christine Bush, a brand new Agile thinker.   In this episode, Dan and Christine are discussing Agile Transformations. As Lyssa Adkins describes, an Agile Coach is someone who has seen lots of different success and failure patterns over time. Change is never easy, and that is the reason why Dan And Christine are diving deep into the necessary features of a well-conducted Agile transformation.   Key Takeaways What is important when an organization is looking for an Agile Transformation? Transformations have to come from the top and leadership has to be committed to them. The leadership has to be ready to invest in education for the Team members of the organization and to guide them through the Transformation. Transformation cannot be an option. Middle-level managers are key to a successful Transformation, they need to be trained and guided in the process. What is next after the training is over? Agile Coaches are crucial in this stage since the application is a whole different story. Change can be scary. Let's experiment, instead of thinking about it in terms of winning or losing. Keep your eyes on the goal. Are some other roles instrumental when transitioning? There could be a lack of clarity on some roles at the beginning. All Team members are working together to deliver outcomes in short cycles with rapid feedback loops. The business stakeholders help with the requirements but sometimes they get confused by the new events.   “Don't just give them the title, buy them the tool, and expect the Agile process to work.”   Organizations want to be Agile but they don't give them the necessary coaching and facilitation that people need to be successful. Providing support is what enables Teams to become self-organizing and successful. Be patient; small victories can get a long way.   Mentioned in this Episode: “What is Agile Coaching?” by Lyssa Adkins Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, by Jeff Sutherland   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!

Here is a list of the top 6 books every PO should read: Essential Scrum by Ken Rubin User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time - Jeff Patton The Stable Framework by Michael J Berry Product Roadmaps by Bruce McCarthy BONUS Books: Agile Estimating & Planning by Mike Cohn & Getting Things Done by David Allen

In Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Sutherland, Guru found an inspiring book that explains how, and where Scrum can be used, from visual boards for painting a house, to Scrum in education. The book makes Scrum easy to understand, and helps change agents learn how to present the framework to stakeholders and teams. How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she's supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta! About Gurucharan Padki Gurucharan Padki comes with 18 years of experience in the IT industry, of which he has spent more than a decade in the Agile world delivering products, programs and projects with focus on engineering and quality . He has played the role of product owner, scrum master and agile coach in multiple organizations across India and the world driving transformations. You can link with Gurucharan Padki on LinkedIn.

Howard Goldberg is an educator in his 23rd year teaching with 18 of those in Loudoun County Virginia. Currently, he teaches United States History in 7th grade and enjoys every moment of it. His search for trying to find a way to make planning easier and better led to Felipe and usage of Scrum in education. Howard said that using Scrum in his classroom has been an eye opener for what is possible.    Show Links: What Every Team Should Know About Scrum https://www.theebfcshow.com/blog/what-every-lean-project-team-should-know/   Agile Estimating and Planning: Planning Poker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7srp2BzoM   10 Reasons to Use Fibonacci Sequence for Story Points https://www.agilebin.com/blog/10-reasons-to-use-fibonacci-sequence-for-story-points   Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time https://amzn.to/3MKrLbt   Connect with Howard via  Twitter at https://twitter.com/hgoldberg04   Connect with Felipe via Social media at https://thefelipe.bio.link  Subscribe on YouTube to never miss new videos here: https://rb.gy/q5vaht    --- Today's episode is sponsored by Bosch RefinemySite. It's a cloud-based construction platform. Bosch uses Lean principles to enable your entire team, from owners to trade contractors – to plan, communicate, document, and execute in real-time. It's the digital tool that supports the Last Planner System® process and puts it all together in one simple, collaborative ecosystem. Bosch RefinemySite empowers your team, builds trust, creates a culture of responsibility, and enhances communication. Learn more and Try for free at https://www.bosch-refinemysite.us/tryforfree    Today's episode is sponsored by the Lean Construction Institute (LCI). This non-profit organization operates as a catalyst to transform the industry through Lean project delivery using an operating system centered on a common language, fundamental principles, and basic practices. Learn more at https://www.leanconstruction.org   

This interview was recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2021 for GOTO Unscripted.gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview hereAino Vonge Corry - Author of "Retrospectives Antipatterns"Klaus Bucka-Lassen - Agile Midwife, Coach & Trainer at aragostPreben Thorø - CTO at Trifork SwitzerlandDESCRIPTIONLearn the difference between effectiveness and efficiency and whether your team can be agile without knowing it in this Unscripted episode, recorded at GOTO Copenhagen 2021 with Aino Vonge Corry, author of “Retrospective Antipatterns”, Klaus Bucka-Lassen, agile coach and trainer and Preben Thorø, CTO of Trifork.RECOMMENDED BOOKSAino Vonge Corry • Retrospectives AntipatternsGamma, Helm, Johnson & Booch • Design Patterns (Gang of Four)Subramaniam & Hunt • Practices of an Agile DeveloperUncle Bob • Clean AgileDerby, Larsen & Schwaber • Agile RetrospectivesJeff Sutherland • Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the TimeLee, Wickens, Liu & Boyle • Designing for PeopleStone, Chaparro, Keebler, Chaparro & McConnell • Introduction to Human FactorsTwitterLinkedInFacebookLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily.Discovery MattersA collection of stories and insights on matters of discovery that advance life...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: So you want to be a charity entrepreneur. Read these first., published by Mathieu Putz on January 26, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. If you want to start a charity, you need to be learning constantly. You'll inevitably learn by doing, but it will save you a lot of heartache to also learn from others. If you're interested in potentially starting a charity or are already running one and want to continue improving your org, here's what we at Nonlinear think will be useful to read. We don't recommend reading these in order or start to finish. Skim them ruthlessly, jump around to the ones that seem relevant to you, and try to really engage with the ones that are genuinely useful to you. Blog posts Why founding charities is one of the highest impact things one can do Should I start a charity now or later? Great blog post about the benefits of starting something now vs later. How to increase your odds of starting a career in charity entrepreneurship. This post also touches on how to get a low-risk taste of startup life to see if you'll like it. TL;DR - do self-initiated projects with no oversight, ideally recruiting and leading a team of friends/volunteers to help. What traits make a great charity entrepreneur Which jobs will best prepare you to become a charity entrepreneur? Why top performers shouldn't go to university. There are better ways to signal competence Why EAs in particular are good people to start charities Top 13 Tools for NGO Founders. Want to particularly highlight Upwork where it's really easy to hire freelancers for innumerable small tasks that it's not worth hiring a full time person for. Startup Playbook by Sam Altman. Probably the most information dense piece of advice for potential founders. Just replace every mention of “business” with “charity” and “profit” with “impact” to get the most out of this. This is true for most forprofit startup material Paul Graham essays, notably What You'll Wish You'd Known How to Start a Startup Do Things that Don't Scale Charity Entrepreneurship's resource list. Lots of good stuff listed here. A Brief Overview of Recruitment and Retention Research by Animal Advocacy Careers. Blog post reviewing the evidence for different hiring and retention techniques, ordered by evidence base and effect size. I wish all research was done and presented this way. Charity Science's fundraising research. Fundraising is a keystone skill for charity entrepreneurship. Charity Science systematically researched all the major fundraising methods and compared how well they worked. I'd pair this with reading at least one book on fundraising. Fundraising for Dummies is good, though probably not the best. Takeaways from EAF's Hiring Round by Stefan Torges There Are No Walls. Short post about how to see how many options you truly have. Books How to Start a High-Impact Nonprofit by EA's very own Joey Savoie and Patrick Stadler. If you could only read one book, it'd be this one. Managing to Change the World. The best book on management Kat has ever read, and it just so happens to also focus on the particular issues charities face. Peter Wildeford wrote some good notes on it here. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. This is a classic for a reason. How to Make a Minimum Loveable Product. Technically a blog post, but should be read after Lean Startup, so put it in this section. Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street (summary) Atomic Habits by James Clear. How to be productive as an individual. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland. How to be productive as a team. 4-Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss is one of the most instrumentally rational people that Kat has ever encountered. Take his lessons, mix in a little EA epistemology, and cross-apply them to EA. Makebook. Ridiculously practical book about ...

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.

Every member of a squad is of equal value, regardless of their department, seniority, or pay scale. It's important to check egos at the door when forming a squad and embarking on a new project. Those are some of the principles held by Natalie Peters, change and transformation lead at Australian bank NAB.After 20 years working in HR, Natalie began exploring the world of agile project management and human-centred design. In this discussion with Pia and Dan, she debunks some of the common myths around agile, and runs through effective structures, which are typically flatter than more traditional or waterfall management styles.Links Bridges' Transition Model Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time Squadify

This episode is part 2 of my conversation with Michael Faggella-Luby. In the first half of the conversation, we discussed lessons learned in his educational journey, and paused on an extremely critical point: teachers do the very best they can and it's important to remember we work within a system of supports. The second half of our conversation highlights the value of community for teachers and students. We explore how Special Education law has a history in the civil rights movement and equity for all. We wrap up with an optimistic discussion about where the field of Special Education is now and how it can continue to improve. Here are some of the resources Dr. Faggella-Luby shared in this part of our conversation:Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff SutherlandWatership Down by Richard Adams

In this episode we dive into our book review on "Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time" written by Jeff Sutherland. This book, although I.T. centric, has concepts that can easily be applied to how you manage your work and your life. Come find out what we think about it.

In this episode, Tim and Laurie speak to Jo Sayers, fellow co-founder of LearnJam, about how (and why) he uses Agile product development methodologies to develop digital learning products and solutions. We thought it'd be great to have a chat with Jo to find out a bit more about his approach and to see what advice he has for anyone looking to learn more about Agile and how it can be put into practice. In our conversation, we covered: What Agile actually is and what an Agile project looks like. How to manage a backlog and why it's important. What makes a good user story and how to write one. Why we use Agile in our Learning Design projects. The challenges of applying Agile, and some pro tips. LINKS The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time - Jeff Sutherland

Getting things done is a personal productivity methodology that redefines how you approach your life and work with 5 clear steps that apply order to chaos.  After decades of in-the-field research and practice of his productivity methods, David wrote the international best-seller Getting Things Done. Published in over 28 languages, TIME magazine heralded it as “the defining self-help business book of its time.” In 2015, he released a new edition of the book, with new insights, updates, and discoveries about the GTD methodology and its many personal and professional applications.  Today, David Allen is considered the leading authority in the fields of organizational and personal productivity. The David Allen Company, run by David and his wife Kathryn, oversees the certification academy and quality standards for Global Partners offering Getting Things Done courses and coaching around the world. KEY TAKEAWAYS1. You don't have to transform yourself, just redirect the way you think. 2.  Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. 3.  Your head is just a crappy office. Data shows your mind can only hold 4 things until you have to suboptimize your cognitive process. 4. GTD is a way of thinking. It allows us to disengage with our world but in an effective way. 5. The steps to get control of any situation: 1. Identify the issue 2. Decide if you need an actionable plan 3. Specify the next step in the plan. 6. Completion and Creation. Finish what you put in motion and be accountable for what you put in motion.  BOOKSJeff Sutherland - Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time - https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work-Half/dp/038534645XDaniel J. Levitin - Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46114266-successful-aging LINKShttps://gettingthingsdone.com/https://www.instagram.com/gtdtimes/https://www.facebook.com/gettingthingsdonehttps://twitter.com/GTDtimes

Joe Krebs speaks with JJ Sutherland about his new book "The Scrum Field Book - A Masterclass on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results and defining the Future". JJ is also the co-author of the book "Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time" with his father Jeff Sutherland. JJ is an award-winning NPR correspondent and producer with assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, during the Arab Spring and Japan during the Tsunami in 2011. He is also the CEO of Scrum Inc.

Thomas Cox is a lean leadership coach and practitioner who found himself really interested in blockchain. He has focused his efforts on the governance aspect of blockchain because of the influence it has on relationships, resources, and collaboration. He was a former governor candidate, and he has a unique view on leadership lean and blockchain. He brings experience in these three areas and he sees the intersection these components working together so that an organizational culture can be created and sustained. Where to find out more about Thomas Cox:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasbcox/ (LinkedIn ) https://twitter.com/tbcox (Twitter) Email https://tomonleadership.com/ (Tom on Leadership Podcast) Books Mentioned: https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Discipline-Practice-Learning-Organization/dp/0385517254 (The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization) https://www.amazon.com/Machine-That-Changed-World-5-Million-Dollar/dp/0892563508/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1526355179&sr=1-1 (The Machine That Changed the World) https://www.amazon.com/Road-Less-Traveled-Psychology-Anniversary/dp/B00007CI68/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526355297&sr=1-1&keywords=The+road+less+traveled (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Values, and Spiritual Growth) https://www.amazon.com/20-Solution-Redesign-Tomorrows-Organizations/dp/0471132780/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526355353&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=John+Cotter+Leader+and+Management (The 20% Solution: Using Rapid Redesign to Create Tomorrow's Organizations Today) https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/0071392319/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526355439&sr=1-1&keywords=toyota+way (The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer) https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work-Half/dp/038534645X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1526355759&sr=1-1 (Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time) https://www.amazon.com/Governing-Commons-Evolution-Institutions-Collective/dp/1107569788/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=F38Z9N2FDP840T4APQSV (Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action ) https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Virtue-Instincts-Evolution-Cooperation/dp/0140264450/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526358596&sr=1-1&keywords=the+origins+of+virtue+and+human (The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation) Blockchains Mentioned https://bitshares.org/ (https://bitshares.org/) https://steemit.com/ (https://steemit.com/) https://eos.io/ (https://eos.io/)

(@chrismurman) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss Agile from an executive viewpoint and if it’s time to refactor agile.Chris Murman  [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]CHRIS MURMAN AT AGILE COACH CAMP 2017[/featured-image] is constantly in search of ways to make the work we do better. This means bringing a lean focus to the products we make, a holistic approach to agile business processes, or an intense focus on the technologies of tomorrow. You can read his thoughts on agile and software development on his blog. He is a board member of the Agile Uprising and co-hosts the Agile Uprising Podcast.Chris In this episode you'll discover: Why “it depends” is not always a great answer How executives view agile according to a recent survey: Over half of CIOs regard Agile development as “discredited” (53%). Three-quarters (75%) are no longer prepared to defend it. Almost three-quarters (73%) of CIOs think Agile IT has now become an industry in its own right. Half (50%) say they now think of Agile as “an IT fad”. Learnings from the recent Agile Coach Camp in New York Links from the show: Chris Murman’s Thoughts on Refactoring Agile Executive Don’t Think We Are Doing Agile Right The 6point6 white paper referenced on the podcast Agile Coach Camp Agile Uprising [callout]Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear a podcast about the getting started with speaking at technical conferences? — Listen to my conversation with Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schleier, and Jason Tice on episode 32. We discuss how to write a compelling abstract, what track reviewers are looking for in a submission, and how to give yourself the best change of getting selected. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 070: Refactoring Agile with Chris Murman [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Allison Pollard (@allison_pollard) and Barry Forrest (@bforrest30) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss co-presenting at agile conference and advanced team dynamics. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]ALLISON POLLARD, AGILE COACH & CONSULTANT AND PROUD GLASSES WEARER[/featured-image]  is an Agile coach with Improving in Dallas, Texas, Allison Pollard helps people discover their Agile instincts and develop their coaching abilities. Allison is also a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, a foodie, and proud glasses wearer.Allison  As a Principal Consultant with Improving in Dallas, Barry is a web developer, Scrum Master, and Agilest. Barry loves helping make work life better for teams and leaving things in a better state than when he was introduced to the situation. Barry is also an award-winning homebrewer and an avid amateur photographer.Barry In this episode you'll discover: How modes of communication impact team dynamics The importance of co-presenting and the lessons it can bring Why learning communication preferences breeds a stronger culture Links from the show: DiSC Personality Profile Allison’s Blog Site Barry’s Blog Site [callout]Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear a podcast about the getting started with speaking at technical conferences? — Listen to my conversation with Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schleier, and Jason Tice on episode 32. We discuss how to write a compelling abstract, what track reviewers are looking for in a submission, and how to give yourself the best change of getting selected. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 069: Dynamic Teams with Allison Pollard and Barry Forrest appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kim Brainard (@Agilebrain1) and Billie Schuttpelz (@OopslandBillie) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss how our brains work at the AgileIndy Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Billie Schuttpelz presenting at Agile Indy[/featured-image] Kim has over 8 years of Agile experience and 15 years' experience in IT project planning, implementation, and execution. She is skilled in building interaction and collaboration among organisations to drive change, support key business objectives, and maximize value creation across enterprise environments. She recently served as Co-Chair for Scrum Alliance’s Global Gathering 2017 and is very active in the agile community. Billie is a “force of nature,” breaking up the boulders blocking transformation, and building bridges between technical people and business partners. She applies the perspective gained in a 20-year career, including engagements in five countries, to provide dynamic creativity and positive energy to everything she does. Billie's ability to make the impossible seem possible is what powers Agile transformations. Her passion for life shines through, so plan a hallway chat today! In this episode you'll discover: Why speakers looks nervous before their talks How “training from the back of the room” enhances learning The power of giving our brains a break Links from the show: Training from the Back of the Room by Sharon Bowman Connect with Kim on LinkedIn Connect with Billie on LinkedIn [callout]Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear a podcast about the getting started with speaking at technical conferences? — Listen to my conversation with Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schleier, and Jason Tice on episode 32. We discuss how to write a compelling abstract, what track reviewers are looking for in a submission, and how to give yourself the best change of getting selected. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 068: Agile Workshops with Kim Brainard and Bille Schuttpelz appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kalpesh Shah (@AgileBrightSpot) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss his work with Scrum Team at the AgileIndy Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Kalpesh Shah front and center with a few people in the back you may recognize[/featured-image] Kalpesh is the Director of Agile Transformation at IntraEdge Inc., as well as a public speaker, trainer, and coach. He helps organizations transition to the Agile way of working, employs Lean Product Development approaches, and instills a Lean Startup mindset. His latest passion is Culture Hacking via continuous experimentation, which promotes innovative thinking, extends openness, and brings design thinking into teams. In this episode you'll discover: The dangers and risks of turning teams in to backlog lumberjacks Experimenting with the boundaries of Scrum for fun and profit Why engineers needs to see the value of the work they are doing Links from the show: Kalpesh’s Stand-up Poker:  www.standuppoker.com Beyond User Stories: Taking Your Team to the Next Level of Awesome Connect with Kalpesh on linkedin [callout]Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear a podcast about the getting started with speaking at technical conferences? — Listen to my conversation with Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schleier, and Jason Tice on episode 32. We discuss how to write a compelling abstract, what track reviewers are looking for in a submission, and how to give yourself the best change of getting selected. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 067: Backlog Lumberjacks with Kalpesh Shah [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joshua Kerievsky (@joshuakerievsky) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss Modern Agile at the AgileIndy Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Joshua Kerievsky Presenting Modern Agile[/featured-image] Joshua is the founder and CEO of Industrial Logic, a pioneering Extreme Programming/Lean consultancy that radically improves the software development capabilities of organizations around the globe. Today, he leads an effort to modernize Agile by removing outdated practices and leveraging the best of what the software community and other industries have learned about achieving awesome results. Modern agile practitioners work to Make People Awesome, Make Safety A Prerequisite, Experiment & Learn Rapidly and Deliver Value Continuously. Joshua is an international speaker and author of the best-selling, Jolt Cola-award-winning book, Refactoring to Patterns, numerous Agile eLearning courses, and popular articles like Anzeneering, Sufficient Design and Stop Using Story Points. In this episode you'll discover: How Modern Agile has improved on past practices to help make teams awesome Why safety is critical to agility, and how without safety your practices and methodologies are pointless The role that continuous learning plays in an organization Links from the show: Industrial Logic Modern Agile AgileIndy Conference Lean Startup by Eric Ries The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg [callout]Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear a podcast about the getting started with speaking at technical conferences? — Listen to my conversation with Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schleier, and Jason Tice on episode 32. We discuss how to write a compelling abstract, what track reviewers are looking for in a submission, and how to give yourself the best change of getting selected. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 066: Modern Agile with Joshua Kerievsky [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lisa Crispin (@lisacrispin) and Amitai Schleier (@schmonz) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss co-presenting at conferences, co-writing books, and agile testing. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory Co-Presenting a Conference Talk[/featured-image] Lisa is a tester who enjoys sharing her experiences and learning from others. She is the co-author, with Janet Gregory, of More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (Addison-Wesley, 2014) and Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley, 2009). Lisa is a tester on a fabulous agile team. She specializes in showing testers and agile teams how testers can add value and how to guide development with business-facing tests. Amitai is a software development coach, speaker, legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, award winning bad poet, and the creator of the Agile in 3 Minutes podcast. He blogs at schmonz.com and is a frequent guest on Agile for Humans. Amitai has published many of his agile observations and musings in his new book – Agile in 3 Minutes on Lean Pub. In this episode you'll discover: How to get started in conference speaking with co-presenting The joys and techniques of writing a book with a partner What is being observed in the agile testing world today Links from the show: More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams Lisa’s website: lisacrispin.com Self.Conference – May 19th and 20th [callout]Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin pioneered the agile testing discipline with their previous work, Agile Testing. Now, in More Agile Testing, they reflect on all they've learned since. They address crucial emerging issues, share evolved agile practices, and cover key issues agile testers have asked to learn more about. Packed with new examples from real teams, this insightful guide offers detailed information about adapting agile testing for your environment; learning from experience and continually improving your test processes; scaling agile testing across teams; and overcoming the pitfalls of automated testing. You'll find brand-new coverage of agile testing for the enterprise, distributed teams, mobile/embedded systems, regulated environments, data warehouse/BI systems, and DevOps practices. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the getting started with speaking at technical conferences? — Listen to my conversation with Don Gray, Tim Ottinger, Amitai Schleier, and Jason Tice on episode 32. We discuss how to write a compelling abstract, what track reviewers are looking for in a submission, and how to give yourself the best change of getting selected. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 062: Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Allen Holub (@allenholub) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss his Kickstarter project: Agility with Allen: The Whole Caboodle. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Agility with Allen Holub[/featured-image] Allen is a trainer, writer, speaker, and coach who takes a non-tribal view of software development. He is a highly regarded instructor for the University of California, Berkeley, Extension. Allen eschews the dogma that surrounds many of the current agile topics and practices. In this episode you'll discover: Insights in to creating a Kickstarter project How LEAN is at the center of most of the things agilists do Where to go to learn more about Allen’s Kickstarter project Links from the show: Allen’s website:  holub.com Kickstarter: Agility with Allen: The Whole Caboodle Capital C Documentary Allen’s #NoEstimates Keynote [callout]Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry – even to your bosses – but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant – or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days – Jonah – to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast episode with Allen Holub? — Listen to my conversation with Allen on episode 21. We discuss #NoEstimates, #NoManagement and what it truly means for an organization to adopt agility One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 060: Kickstarting Agility with Allen Holub [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Llewellyn Falco (@llewellynfalco) and Amitai Schleier (@schmonz) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss Agile Coaching, types of coaching, hiring coaches, and some #MobProgramming. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Llewellyn Falco[/featured-image] Llewellyn is a professional teacher, speaker, agile programmer, and creator of the Approval Test project. He blogs here, appears on podcasts there, and helps make agile teams awesome everywhere. Llewellyn generously shares his insights on YouTube. Watch his videos, they are great. Seriously. Amitai is a software development coach, speaker, legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, award winning bad poet, and the creator of the Agile in 3 Minutes podcast. He blogs at schmonz.com and is a frequent guest on Agile for Humans. Amitai has published many of his agile observations and musings in his new book – Agile in 3 Minutes on Lean Pub. In this episode you'll discover: How to hire an agile coach Different ways agile coaches work with teams Why you may want to get out to Boston on April 6th and 7th for the Mob Programming Conference Links from the show: Mob Programming Conference Agile in 3 Minutes #32 – Mob by Amitai Schleier The Beer Game AFH Episode 27 on #MobProgramming with Woody Zuill [callout]Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry – even to your bosses – but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant – or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days – Jonah – to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 058: Agile Coaching Strategies with Llewellyn Falco [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Natalie Warnert (@nataliewarnert) and Amitai Schleier (@schmonz) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss #womeninagile, seeking out diversity, capacity vs velocity, #NoEstimates, and more. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Natalie Warnert Presenting at A Conference[/featured-image] Natalie is a writer, speaker, agile coach, and team innovator. She is passionate about the #womeninagile movement and helps foster a welcoming culture where ever she goes. Natalie is an avid reader, a swimmer, and snowboarder. Amitai is a software development coach, speaker, legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, award winning bad poet, and the creator of the Agile in 3 Minutes podcast. He blogs at schmonz.com and is a frequent guest on Agile for Humans. Amitai has published many of his agile observations and musings in his new book – Agile in 3 Minutes on Lean Pub. In this episode you'll discover: How the #womeninagile movement is impacting the agile community Why diversity is critical to your teams success The difference between capacity and velocity and how it changes the value conversation Links from the show: Natalie Warnert’s Blog Site #WomenInAgile Agile Alliance Women in Agile Initiative Agile in 3 Minutes – Manage with Johanna Rothman [callout]Written in a fast-paced thriller style, The Goal, a gripping novel, is transforming management thinking throughout the world. It is a book to recommend to your friends in industry – even to your bosses – but not to your competitors. Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant – or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days – Jonah – to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts about this episode? Please leave them in the comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 056: Women in Agile with Natalie Warnert [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tom Cagley (@TCagley) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss the role and impact of certifications on the Agile movement. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Tom Cagley – Host of the SPaMCAST[/featured-image] Tom is a consultant, practitioner, and thought leader in software methods and metrics, quality assurance, and systems analysis. He is the co-author of Mastering Software Project Management: Best Practices Tools and Techniques. Tom is the host of the excellent Software Process and Measurement Podcast (SPaMCAST). In this episode you'll discover: The benefits of certifications How certifications can create barriers to experimentation and discovery Why continuous learning is critical to growing agile skills Links from the show: Tom’s Blog SPaMCAST on iTunes Scrum Alliance Scrum.Org [callout]Written from the standpoint of a project manager working in a software development organization, this unique guide explains software project management in its entirety, including project acquisition and execution with backward linkages to concepts that play a facilitation role in successful project management. It provides all the guidance, best practices, tools and techniques needed to master software project management and achieve superior results. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your views on certifications and their impact on the agile community? Please leave your comments below.[/reminder] Want to hear about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 055: Agile Certifications with Tom Cagley [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve McConnell (@stevemconstrux) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss #NoEstimates, how estimates help teams collaborate with stakeholders, and what professional estimation looks like on an agile team. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Steve McConnell – CEO of Construx[/featured-image] Steve is the CEO of Construx Software. He is the author of many award winning books including:  Code Complete, Rapid Software Development, and Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art. He blogs at 10x Software Development and widely acknowledged as a thought leader in estimation, software requirements, and software development. In this episode you'll discover: A critical view of #NoEstimates concepts How estimation can help foster collaboration between stakeholders and developers What estimation practices looks like in the context of a Scrum team Strategies you can use to avoid bad estimation practices Links from the show: Steve’s Brain Cast Video on #NoEstimates 1st Response to Steve’s Video by Ron Jeffries Steve’s 17 Theses on Software Estimation Ron Jeffries Response to the 17 Theses On-Demand Training Courses from Steve and Construx [callout]Often referred to as the “black art” because of its complexity and uncertainty, software estimation is not as difficult or puzzling as people think. In fact, generating accurate estimates is straightforward—once you understand the art of creating them. In his highly anticipated book, acclaimed author Steve McConnell unravels the mystery to successful software estimation—distilling academic information and real-world experience into a practical guide for working software professionals. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your views on #NoEstimates and Estimation? Please let us know in comments section below.[/reminder] Want to hear about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 052: Software Estimation with Steve McConnell [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neil Killick (@neil_killick) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss a wide variety of agile ideas including: “Shu-Ha-Ri”, Agile Management, #NoEstimates, and when software is “done”. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Neil Killick Presenting #NoEstimates[/featured-image] Neil is a software delivery coach and manager with experience shipping software in various capacities, domains, and industries. He is one of the key pioneers of #NoEstimates and seeks better ways to slice work, collaborate with stakeholder, and deliver value frequently. Neil blogs at here and is a must read for agile-minded thinkers and experimenters. In this episode you'll discover: Agile as a mindset vs Agile as a set of tools and processes What is “shu-ha-ri” and does it make sense in an agile context? Why #NoEstimates is an important concept that moves agile thinking forward Links from the show: Learn more about Neil at neilkillick.com Neil’s slicking heuristic explained! #NoEstimates isn’t just about estimating [callout]We’re losing tens of billions of dollars a year on broken software, and great new ideas such as agile development and Scrum don’t always pay off. But there’s hope. The nine software development practices in Beyond Legacy Code are designed to solve the problems facing our industry. Discover why these practices work, not just how they work, and dramatically increase the quality and maintainability of any software project. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts on #NoEstimates? Please share your ideas below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 050: Agile Ideas with Neil Killick [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gil Broza (@gilbroza) joined me (@RyanRipley) at The Path to Agility Conference (@cohaainfo) to discuss the agile mindset. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Gil Broza Presenting at The Path to Agility Conference 2016 – Copyright COHAA[/featured-image] Gil is the founder of 3PVantage. He is the author of The Human Side of Agile and The Agile Mindset. Gil is a sought after writer, speaker, and trainer with a passion for delighting customers and valuing the human aspects of agile software development. In this episode you'll discover: How to foster an agile mindset The impediments to adopting an agile mindset What it means to value the human side of agile How change can happen on an agile team I find that when people open their minds, magic happens. –@gilbrozaTweet This Links from the show: Gil’s Keynote Talk from Path to Agility 2016 – Being Agile: Having the Mindset that Delivers The Agile Mindset Book Site [callout]The Agile Mindset is a practical guide to the thinking that makes agile projects work. This book is your compass for the Agile journey. Without prescribing any process, practice, or tool, it will show you how practitioners approach: deciding what to work on, planning and doing the work, engaging people and performing as teams, and working better. Pragmatic and dogma-free, this book will help you understand what it means to be Agile and how to bring others along. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]How do you foster a positive agile mindset? Please share your ideas below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the agile mindset? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 043: The Agile Mindset with Gil Broza [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andy Hunt (@PragmaticAndy), Jared Richardson (@JaredRichardson), and Don Gray (@DonaldEGray) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss the Grows Method for agile adoption. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Andy Hunt Presenting at The Path to Agility Conference 2013 – Copyright COHAA[/featured-image] Andy is one of the 17 authors of the Agile Manifesto. He is the author of 9 books including: The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (with Dave Thomas), Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, and Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World (with Venkat Subramaniam). Andy publishes books with Dave Thomas at the Pragmatic Bookshelf. He blogs at toolshed.com. Jared is an agile coach, blogger, and speaker. He is the founder of Agile Artisians and the author of Ship It! – A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects (with William A. Gwaltney). Don works with executives and managers to build coherent organizational structures, processes, policies, and goals that allows teams to flourish. He co-teaches one of the top coaching workshops offered globally – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby. Don brings both wisdom and humor to his coaching practice. In this episode you'll discover: What is the Grows Method for Agile Adoption How to gradually grow agile in an organization What is essential to be agile How to get alignment between executives and agile teams The point is to ship software. Let’s focus on that, perhaps!?!Tweet This Links from the show: The Grows Method Coaching Beyond the Team – The next session is in Costa Mesa, California. Use discount code “AgileForHumans” to get the friends and family discount. Pragmatic Bookshelf – Use the discount code “AgileForHumans” for 35% off of your next purchase The Business of Agile: Better, Faster, Cheaper – Come see me (Ryan Ripley) present at Agile2016 [callout]The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process–taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics ranging from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What is your go to method to help people adopt agile? Does the Grows Method fill a gap that you’ve seen in your practice? Let’s discuss![/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about craftsmanship? — Listen to my conversation with Ron Quartel about FAST Agile and bringing craftsmanship back to software development on episode 10. We discuss scrum, extreme programming (XP), and the concept of craftsmanship applied to agile software development. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Turn the Ship Around: A True Story of Turning Followers in to Leaders by L. David Marquet Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 042: The Grows Method for Adopting Agile Software Develpoment [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ellen Gottesdiener (@ellengott) joined me (@RyanRipley) at The Path to Agility Conference (@cohaainfo) to discuss the importance of discovery and delivery. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Ellen Gottesdiener Presenting at The Path to Agility Conference 2016 – Copyright COHAA[/featured-image] Ellen is the CEO and founder of EBG Consulting. She is the author of Requirements by Collaboration, The Software Requirements Memory Jogger, and most recently Discover to Deliver (with Mary Gorman). Ellen is a world-renowned writer, speaker, and trainer with a passion for improving agile product ownership. In this episode you'll discover: Why discovery is just as important as delivery The importance of providing context to agile teams How companies are moving towards product centric thinking What team can do to maximize discovery Discovery is just as important as delivery –@ellengottTweet This Links from the show: It’s the Goal, Not the Role by Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman Products, Not Projects Discover to Deliver Book Site and Resources Ellen’s Keynote from the Path to Agility Conference 2016 [callout]Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis is a practical guide for rapidly discovering product needs in your lean/agile project. Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman, leading agile practitioners and consultants, share key concepts, practices, examples, a case study, tips, and powerful planning and analysis tools. This book is for professionals who need to collaboratively conceive, deliver and support software products and systems. You'll learn how to continually discover and deliver high-value products. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which discoveries have enabled you to deliver your products successfully? We’d love to hear your success stories in the comments section.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about product ownership? — Listen to my conversation with Tim Ottinger and Mark Davidson about the role of the Product Owner on episode 22. We discuss #NoEstimates, Product Management, and the concept of “Controlled Disappointment”. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audio books. I have three to recommend: Turn the Ship Around: A True Story of Turning Followers in to Leaders by L. David Marquet Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland The Lean Startup by Eric Ries All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audibletrial.com/agile. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 041: Discover to Deliver with Ellen Gottesdiener [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.