Podcast appearances and mentions of esther derby

Tired of “What went well?” and “What didn’t”? Brian Milner is here to help you cook up retrospectives that actually get your team thinking, collaborating, and improving. From creative themes to actionable frameworks, this is your behind-the-scenes guide to better retros. Overview Do your retrospectives feel more “check-the-box” than game-changing? Brian Milner shares his full recipe for planning and facilitating retrospectives that actually matter. Whether your team is stuck in repetition, tuning out, or phoning it in, Brian’s step-by-step approach will show you how to bring structure, creativity, and energy back into the room. Brian walks you through the five essential components of a retrospective, including how to match formats to your team’s personality, align activities with Agile's three pillars (transparency, inspection, and adaptation), and spark meaningful change with every session. References and resources mentioned in the show: Stranger Things Retrospective Download Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen Retromat Blog: Overcoming Four Common Problems with Retrospectives by Mike Cohn Blog: Does a Scrum Team Need a Retrospective Every Sprint? By Mike Cohn #139 The Retrospective Reset with Cort Sharp Retrospectives Repair Guide Better Retrospectives Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We are back for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast, like we always do. And I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. Today we have with us, me, just me. Now, before you get frustrated with that or think we're copping out in some way, this is intentional. I wanted to have an episode to myself because and working through all this stuff around retrospectives, I thought that it might be good to take an episode here. And I kind of thought of it sort of like a cooking episode, right? Like if you watch a cooking show, you know, Gordon Ramsay show or something, they'll walk you through how they make something. And it's from start to finish. They show you the ingredients. They show you how everything's put together. And then you see this beautiful dish at the end. Well, I've often compared the way that you can format a retrospective to a little bit like a meal, because a meal has different courses in it. And a retrospective should have these themed areas or repeatable sections of it. And so I thought of it a little bit like making a meal. So I thought I'd just walk you through a little bit step by step. what I'm thinking here and how I would go about doing it. this is, you know, we're cooking up something special here. It's a kind of a recipe here that's, you know, equal parts creative and effective. It's a way to try to keep your retrospectives interesting, but also keep them to be solid and where you can have an actual outcome that comes from this. And you actually make definitive changes here with your team as a result. So there's a couple of retrospective courses that I have coming out where I go into detail about all these things, but I wanted to take an episode where I could walk you through and just have you kind of peer over my shoulder a little bit about how I might do this if I was going to create a retrospective for a team. So first starters, I think we have to understand that there is a menu to follow, right? And I kind of use this menu metaphor because one of the great things about when you go out and you have a meal at a nice restaurant is there's a repeatable pattern to it. You kind of expect that they're gonna bring you a drink first and then maybe you have, if it's a really fancy restaurant, maybe you have appetizers first or hors d'oeuvres even before appetizers, then you maybe have appetizers or not. Then you have a main course and maybe you have a salad even before the main course and then you have a a meal, and then you have some kind of a dessert afterwards, maybe even some kind of a cocktail at the end of the meal or coffee at the end of the meal. But there's sort of a pattern to it. And regardless of what restaurant you go to, you kind of repeat that same pattern. Now, I know that there's times you'll be, this is where the metaphor kind of breaks down a little bit, I get it. You may not have the same pieces every time. And what we're going to be talking about here as a retrospective pattern is that, yes, you should sort of follow the same pattern. You can't really get to, let's say, dessert. You can't just skip and go to dessert, right? You've got to go through this journey of the other sections so that you can end up at dessert and really fully appreciate it, right, and get the most out of it. So that's where this metaphor is a little bit of a, starts to break down a little tiny bit. But. I want to talk about here first why retrospectives matter and why they often go stale. I think they often go stale for a lot of reasons, but one of the chief reasons I've encountered when I work with teams is that the Scrum Master on the team really only has a small amount of formats and styles that they have to work with. They have a small little set in their toolbox. And they may even rotate through a few of them. But at the end of the day, it's kind of a small toolbox. There's only a few tools in there. And if I'm a team, if I'm a member of that team, you can imagine how I might get bored. And I might think this is not really worthwhile if I'm showing up every single time and I'm hearing the same exact questions. What did I do? What do we do well? What do we not do so well? Do I have any roadblocks? If I'm just asked that same thing every time, then I might not feel like this is a very worthwhile thing. Or I might get to the point where I feel like, gosh, I've answered the same question, you know, three sprints in a row. I just, got nothing more for you Scrum Master. I just, I can't dig any deeper. I've given you everything and it just feels like this is the, you know, groundhog day. We're doing the same thing over and over again, but nothing's really changing. So. I think it's important that we be able to switch things up, but it's not change just for change sake. That's why I think that having a structure of some kind can give you that pattern to fall back on that can make it effective, but then also can provide variety, can make it something that changes over time as you do this with your team. Doesn't mean that you can't ever repeat a format that you've used. I don't think that's a bad thing. I just wouldn't want to repeat the same, just handful, small little number of them over and over again. That's going to get repetitive and it's going to make people a little frustrated. The other thing is I think you have to match these to the personality of your team. Your team might be more outgoing or they might be more introverted. You might have people who prefer activities or little more, you know, kind of quiet activities or some that are more verbal, you know, require more discussion. That's really an individual thing for your team. So I think you have to think as you go through this, what's going to work for these people, right? For this set of individuals that I am working with. You know, I always say there's kind of a first commandment for Scrum Masters, know thy team. And I think that's really something that's important for us to grasp onto is we have to know our team. can't coach to the average. Right? We have to coach to the individual, to what we have on our team, because your team is unique. That set of individuals has never come together anywhere else in the world. Right? Those personalities. And what you want is to find out how to make that set of people work well together. Right? How do they work best together? Not how does every other team in the world work best or how does the average team work best? How does your team work best? Right? So with all of this is sort of setting this and saying that there should be a pattern. I do want to give the hat tip here and say that the Esther Derby Dinah Larson book on retrospectives is one I strongly recommend. In fact, pretty much my whole career as a trainer, I have said, when people say if there's one book, if I'm to be a Scrum Master, if there's one book that you would say would be really impactful to me from pretty much day one, I have pointed to that book. It's called Agile Retrospectives, Esther Derby, Dinah Larson. And in that book, they lay out a pattern of kind of five phases that go through it. I'm going to distill it down because to me, it's sort of the three middle ones that are the most important. I will talk about the two on the ends here as well and kind of put that on top of these three. But sometimes I find people find it easier if they just remember what I'm gonna teach you here about the three that are in the middle. So in Scrum Master classes, we will talk often about how there's these three pillars of the Agile process or three pillars of empiricism. Empiricism says that we learn through experience. Well, I always say in class, it's not enough to just do the wrong thing over and over again. I gain a lot of experience by doing the wrong thing over and over, but I don't learn from it. And the three pillars are what's needed to make sure you learn from them. And I'm sure you've heard these before, but if you haven't, transparency, inspection, adaptation. Those are the three. Transparency meaning we're not going to be clouded about how we do the work. We're going to be very transparent, open about it. We're going to try to reveal how we work best as much as possible. Inspection, that we're going to actually take time and pause and try to figure out not just what happened, that would be transparency, right? What's the reality of what just happened? But inspecting says, why did this happen? Right? What's the root cause of it? I don't want to just deal with the symptoms, right? If we just try to cure the symptoms over and over again, we still have the same disease, we still have the same illness, and we're not really getting to the root cause. So inspection says, we're going to take time out to actually get to the root cause. And then adaptation, the last one, is probably the most important step here, because if you figure out what's wrong, but you don't ever do anything about it, well, we're doomed to have the same exact discussion again. So adaptation says, now that you know what the problem is, what are you going to try different? We may not even know exactly what the right thing to do is, but we got to try something. What we know for certain is what we did didn't work. That's the one thing we absolutely can't do again, is exactly what we did. We've got to try something new so that we move on, right? So that we find out more information and get closer to whatever our final solution is. So transparency, inspection, adaptation, those three actually serve as a good guideline or three phases you can think about for your retrospectives. There needs to be a transparency phase where you try to figure out what happened this last sprint. there needs to be an inspection phase where now that we know what happened, we got to ask the question, why did it happen? And we need to get to the root cause of why it happened. Now that we know what that is, then we have to move on to adaptation to say, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to take this knowledge we just gained and actually make a change? So we need activities around all three. And what I'm saying here to you is that can serve as your menu. I can do lots of different activities that would match these three areas. Now, I do, again, want to go back to the Esther Derby, Dinah Larson book, because their five phases adds one on the beginning, one on the end, which I actually do think are very helpful. The first one is kind of opening the retrospective. It's a way of trying to just start to get voices in the room. And this is something I will often do as well. Just a quick, quick exercise to just get people to start talking. And that's one of the ways you can start to get a quieter group to get involved is throw them something really easy to respond to right out of the gate. And then the last one is to close the retrospective. Closing the retrospective is a great way to then try to sum it all up and say, well, here's the takeaways, here's the things we're going to do about it, and we're going to move forward from here. Opening the retrospective to that introduction can also then review what you talked about at the end of the last. retrospective. You can say, here are the things that we decided, and let's talk about what's been done about them before you start to inspect the current retrospective. So given that, right, I know I'm going fast here, but you can rewind and listen back to this if you need to. But if you think about that, that you have these kind of phased approaches, and think of it like a menu, right? There's different courses to my menu. Well, I'm not going to serve the same meal every time. That would be boring. So I got to find out different things I can serve for each course of my retrospective. Now, here's where it gets interesting, right? Because there are lots of tools out there. And there's a website that I often recommend called RetroMAT. RetroMAT is a great site where you can go to, and it has those five phases. You can kind of scroll through different exercises for each of the five phases. they sort of have, you you can kind of mix and match and create your own menu based off of that. And doing that is absolutely free. Now they have paid things there as well. They're not a sponsor. I don't get any kickbacks or anything from them. But they have some paid activities as well as far as having things like Mural and Miro templates that you can use if you want to do that as well. So there's lots of things you can do there to thank them for what they put together. But there are times when Maybe you're trying to fit this to your team specifically, or you've grown tired of the exercises that you're used to, and you want to find some new dynamic to add into your retrospective. So what I'm going to do is kind of walk you through what I would do if I wanted to take some kind of a theme and create a new retrospective that's themed around a certain topic. Now I will say that this theme is gonna go just in one of our sections. So it's not going to go throughout it. I'm not gonna be that creative here with you on it, because I don't think you need to be. I don't think you need to have this, it's not like a theme to party, right? You can just take the theme and use it in one of the sections. So what would I do for something like this? Well, I'd start with, as I said, some way to kind of open the retrospective. And I like to have little quick activities as I said, that just get voices in the room. an example of things I've done in the past. Ask the team a quick question like, if this last sprint were a song title, what song title would you use to describe this last sprint? And people can use whatever kind of music they like, right? It doesn't matter. They can just call it any songs that they're familiar with. Or do movie titles. I've had a lot of fun in the past doing that with teams where I'll say, hey, shout out a movie title that might represent this last sprint. You just want to find something quick that people can shout out like one or two word answers, right? Or a small sentence in the case of a song title or movie title or something like that. But something that they can tie it into, right? And it doesn't have to be anything that makes perfect sense, right? It can be kind of crazy. It can be... You know, if this last sprint were a flavor of Starburst or, you know, an color, what color would it be and why? And just have people, you know, shout out whatever they think the answer would be. They might have to be a little creative with their answers when they do that. But that's okay. You're just giving them an opportunity to have a few voices start to enter the conversation. Don't force anyone, right? Don't force anyone to shout out, but give them an opportunity to. So I'm going to open the retrospective with some kind of fun, quick exercise like that. Probably won't take more than five minutes, okay? Then I want to move into that transparency section. And the way I frame transparency is what actually happened this last sprint? What was the reality of what happened this last sprint? So here's where I'm going to inject a themed kind of approach. And I just, I go through a couple of examples in our courses where I talk about doing this, but I picked a different one here for this podcast episode that I've put together right before this recording to try to walk you through a little bit of how I did this. So I tried to pick something that was a little more relevant to today. I know that this is popular and people are looking forward to the next season, which is about to come out. sometime soon, I know they've been shooting it, but I picked the theme, Stranger Things. And I just thought, what if my team, you know, had, I knew there were some people on my team really into Stranger Things, or what if I just knew they were aware of it, they knew what it was, and I wanted to have a theme built around this. So here's how easy it is to do this. I went to chat GPT, and I asked it to give me some, you know, putting together a retrospective that I want to theme it around stranger things. And give me some major themes from Stranger Things that might align to Some different ways of collecting information around what actually happened this last sprint. And. They gave me a long list of different things. And I read through these and kind of tweaked them, talked back and forth with it a little bit, kind of refined. And I distilled it down to five sort of themes or categories I thought would be fun and would kind of challenge the group to think along different lines of thought. So here's what I came up with with Chat GPT's help. My first category. I called running up that hill. And what I put for the prompt for this one is what felt like an uphill battle this sprint? Now just think about that, right? In traditional sprints, there's lots of things that are just, I'm essentially asking what was the obstacles? What were the hurdles in this sprint? But I'm getting them to think about it in little different way by saying, what was an uphill battle in this sprint? And even that subtle rewording, of that prompt can trigger people's brains to work in a different way and get them to think along different lines. If I just ask over and over again, you know, what was a blocker of this sprint or what blockers do we encounter this sprint? If I use those same words over and over, I get sort of immunized against them and I can't really think about anything new. But just phrasing it that little slightly different way, what felt like an uphill battle this sprint I think can really trigger some new ways of thinking. So that was my first category. The second one that I came up with, big theme here in Stranger Things, was the upside down. And I related it this way to say, what is completely upside down right now? What is the opposite of what it should be right now? Now here, I'm trying to get them to think about things that are not really going well, right? Things that are going the opposite direction that they should, and it's upside down from what should be the normal. Right? And again, we're just thinking along this theme of stranger things and I'm tricking their brains a little bit into thinking along a different line, right? To examine it from a different point of view. My third category that I thought would be fun was I titled Vecna's Curse. And what I prompted here for this one was what haunted the team this sprint or kept coming back up to bite us. And The idea here is to get them to think about things that were maybe decisions we wish we had made differently. These could have been decisions in the past. It didn't have to be a decision from this sprint. But what are those things that we felt kind of like was like Vecna's curse? It was just something that kept rearing its ugly head. And it was just a struggle for us to get around. My fourth one, just to have a little fun. I call the fourth one Surfer Boy Pizza. And what I put as a prompt on this one was, where did we bring the chill? Where did we bring the creative spin to a tough solution during the sprint? So here I'm wanting to celebrate good things, right? And I'm asking that in a funny way. So it brings some humor to it, puts them in a better mood, and also gets them to think along a maybe a little bit of a different line in this area to think, all right, well, what do we get really creative about? What do we have to be really creative about in this sprint? What kind of tough solutions did we really conquer? Did we really nail in this sprint? And I'm just theming around that loose theme of that surfer boy pizza from the last season. And then the last one, I couldn't have categories here without mentioning Hellfire Club. So the last one was Hellfire Club. And the prompt I put for it was, where could we bring more of kind of that Hellfire Club vibe, planning, teamwork, shared adventure, right? Just the fun. Where could we put more of that vibe into our team and to how we operate? Now, this is getting them to think about something that might otherwise be a little bit of a uncomfortable thing to think about, right? Because Now we're getting into interpersonal dynamics. We're getting into how the team actually works and fits together. And that's why I chose this theme, because I wanted it to be just kind of a, even maybe a sneaky back doorway of getting their brains to start to examine, yeah, what would have made this more fun? Or what would have made this, how could we have, I've asked often in retrospectives, what would it take for us to be the team that everyone else wishes they were on? Well, That's what I'm asking here, essentially. So I've got my five themes. And I even then went forward and created and kind of get some images for each one of those, like icons for each one of those things. Just created a board and mural for this and put each of those things up. Had a big block space next to each one where people could put Post-it notes. So what I would do here in the retrospective is I'd introduce this. I'd give them the prompts for each of the section and say, all right, let's take a few minutes. Everyone can add Post-its to any of these sections, but try to think through several of them and put several of them up here on the screen or physical board if we're in the same space. But take a few moments here to think through each category and see if there's anything that you can think of that you would add to each area. So we take, I don't know, five, 10 minutes to do that. normally time that, I just see when it starts to slow down. And there's generally a point there where you can kind of intuitively feel it and feel like, you know, the group's ready to move on. So whenever that time comes, I'll call a halt to it and I'll say, all right, now that we've done this, I want us to try to narrow down what's on the board. So let's give you each three votes. And I do this usually with dot voting or something along that line. where they have three dots they can place on three different sticky notes across all five categories. And what I tell them is find the three that are the most important of all the things here, what are the three that are most important and put your vote on those top three. And by doing this, having the team vote on it, then we surface the most important three out of the entire group, right? It's not to say we ignore the others, but we're going to try, we can't focus on everything in our time that we have. So, whether our top three, and then I start with the first one, right? So right now, all we've done is kind of the introduction of the sprint. We've done a transparency section. Now we move into the inspection. Now there's lots of different things you can do here, but what I put together for this retrospective was taking them through sort of a five whys activity. So I would take that first one, I'd have them examine it and look at it and say, all right, let's ask the question why five times for this one. Why did this happen? whatever they answer, then we say, all right, well, why did that happen then? And we ask why, it doesn't have to technically be five times, but you need to ask it enough to where you get down to something that you can say, yeah, that's definitely the root cause, right? That's what's underneath all this. All that followed it, all that came afterwards was all stuff that came as a result of us making that decision. So once we have our root cause, we can repeat that again for the other two. if we have time, but if we're starting to run out of time, I kind of watch my time box there. And once I realize we need to move into solutioning, then we'll move on into the adaptation portion. In adaptation, we just take each single one, and we kind of repeat this process of getting possible answers across the team. So for the number one issue that you guys identified, here's our root cause. Let's take some post-its here. or let's take some suggestions of what we might possibly do to counteract this in the next sprint. So we get those things that come up. Then we'll talk through each one, and we'll try to build consensus as a team as to the most important step to take. So for each item, I want what's the one most important thing to do. So we'll identify that, again, as time allows, I want to at least do the most important thing. If we have time for more than that, great, we'll get to the second and third. But I think it's so important to just, whatever the biggest, most important thing is, make sure you have an action item for that thing. And here's where I just caution you. It doesn't have to be, hey, we've knocked it out. We've cleared it. We've solved it in the next sprint. It just has to be that we've taken a step towards solving it, right? What's the old phrase, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Well, the same thing goes for our teams. And this is oftentimes why teams get stuck, is they just feel paralyzed. Hey, there's nothing we can do about this. It's such a huge issue. Well, that's not true. What's the next step you can take? So take the next step. Make sure that the team understands what it is. And make sure we understand who is going to be responsible for that. And do that for as many as you can get through. Then get to the closing the retrospective part of it. Kind of wrap up. Remind them, here's the journey we've taken, here's what we've uncovered, and here's what we're gonna do differently for next time. And now those items, they should go straight into your next sprint backlog, not product backlog, sprint backlog, right? They don't need to be prioritized because the product owner has been with you, they should have been with you in this meeting, it's the entire Scrum team. So the product owner has weighed in as well. This has been a team collective decision. So now those items should go into your sprint backlog, and you should do something about them in this next sprint. That's the whole concept of the Kaizen comes first, right? The good change should happen before we do anything else so we can get the benefit of it over a longer period of time. So that's kind of the idea here. And I wanted to give you that kind of really quick flyby to help you kind of see how to go about doing something like this, right? And I just picked one theme. I just picked Stranger Things because I thought it would be fun to work on. I thought it would be a fun kind of theme. And it might be fun for a team I was working with. But maybe that's not something that aligns to your team. Maybe your team has a bunch of people who are really into cricket. Well, do a cricket-themed one. Maybe you have a team that's around the Academy Awards time. And everyone's talking about, and now people don't do this as much anymore, but. Maybe they're all talking about who's going to Oscars this year or something. Well, do an Oscar-themed one. Or it can be around anything. Do it around award shows in general. It doesn't have to be just Oscars, but do it around any kind of award show. And you can pick up different themes. Again, if you're stuck, ask your favorite large language model and see what it comes up with. It's not all going to be gems that comes from that, but you can pick and choose and refine it, which is exactly what I did with my five themes for this. So I hope you see how easy it is to do that. It doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to be extremely creative to do this. You can make use of the tools that you have available to you. And as a Scrum Master, you can keep this fresh. You can tailor this to the team that you have. What is your team really into? What's the theme that they would really resonate with? Choose that. Go with that. Create a theme around that and see what they think about it. Afterwards, ask them, hey, did this work all right? Did you like this? I hope that's been useful to you. If you like this and you want to hear more like this, come to our website to mountngoatsoftware.com and check out our courses that we're launching actually this week, Better Retrospectives and the Retrospective Repair Guide. Those are the two that we really want to have you kind of think about. Come to our site, find out more about them. Better Retrospectives is all about just the expert level retrospectives course really gets into the heart of a lot of these issues at a very, very deep level. The retrospectives repair guide is taking the 10 most asked questions that we have about retrospectives at Mountain Goat Software and giving you really deep dives on how to solution those, how to problem solve those top 10 issues. And the great news for you is if you're listening to this in real time, right, when we've launched this, We're launching this as a two-for-one special. We'll not have that special again. So it's $99 that you get both of those courses. You don't have to pick and choose from them. You can give $99. They're prerecorded. You can watch them at your own pace. This is for people who want this knowledge, who want these answers. And I know when I was a Scrum Master starting out, there was a lot of, I followed a kind of the pattern that Mike established with his sprint repair guide. I bought that when I was coming up as a scrum master because I needed answers to some of the questions that he had in that scrum repair guide. Well, take a look at the 10 that we have for our retrospective repair guide. Maybe you'll find one of those things that's really tripping you up and maybe just getting the answer to one of those is going to be worth the money for you. I encourage you to go to our site, check it out. Don't miss this. It's a limited time cart that's opened. It's only going to be open for a week. So if you're listening to this when we launch it, don't delay, don't wait until next week. If you hear this next week, then you're running out of time. So make sure that you take advantage of the time that you have here so that you can get these two courses, two for the price of one here at our launch. Again, we won't do that again. So I hope you found this to be useful. It's just a little taste of the kind of thing that's in those courses for you. And if retrospectives are something that you're struggling with, or if retrospectives are something that you just feel like, man, it really could be more. It really could deliver more for my team. Check out these two courses. I really think they're gonna help a lot of teams out there. That's why we put them together. So that'll wrap it up. I hope you've enjoyed this and we'll talk to you next time. on another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast.

Global Agile Summit Preview: Transforming Conflict into Opportunity, Leadership Lessons for Agile Teams with Eagan Rackley In this BONUS Global Agile Summit preview episode, we sit down with Eagan Rackley, the track host for the developer track at the Global Agile Summit. With over 24 years of experience spanning game development, enterprise architecture, graphics, and highly parallel programming, Eagan shares his journey from viewing leadership as control to seeing leadership as a collaborative space for problem-solving. We explore how to transform conflict into opportunity, align cross-functional teams, and lead effectively both with and without formal authority. The Moment That Changed Everything "The obstacle is the path." When Eagan's small experimentation-focused team merged with marketing, tensions flared and conflict erupted. Both sides believed "they don't get it" and adopted a defensive "protect the castle" mentality. The situation devolved into heated exchanges until an agile coach offered a perspective-shifting insight: they were all on the same team.  This moment fundamentally reshaped Eagan's view of leadership. He realized that effective leadership isn't about knowing all the answers or controlling people—it's about creating space for collaboration and helping people solve problems together. The best leaders don't fix everything themselves; they empower their teams to find solutions collectively. Empowering Teams Through Permission and Alignment "It's about getting people to feel that they have permission to do what needs to be done." When teams feel something is happening to them, they often disengage and resist. Eagan explains that people feel powerless primarily when incentives are misaligned. The key to gaining buy-in is shifting the narrative from "this is happening to me" to "we can do this together."  Leaders should focus on removing tension and finding ways to incorporate seemingly contradictory goals. By giving people permission to take action and aligning their incentives, leaders can transform resistance into engagement and ownership. Turning Conflict into Alignment "We need to accept that we have different perspectives and different ways to see success." Cross-functional teams naturally experience tension due to differing priorities and success metrics. Eagan shares how his team transformed their marketing conflict by asking questions that made both sides feel heard and understood. They established a shared way of working that respected everyone's needs. He recommends three powerful questions to align teams: "Why do we exist as a team, and why does it matter?" - This helps everyone see the whole picture and builds shared purpose. "What is our desired outcome, and when have we achieved it?" - This focuses on outcomes rather than tasks and encourages thinking from different disciplinary perspectives. By acknowledging different perspectives and naming conflicts openly, teams can move from resentment to motivation and investment in shared goals. Conflict as a Tool for Transformation "Conflict is information. Conflict is data." Eagan's relationship with conflict transformed when he began seeing it as valuable information rather than something to avoid. Conflict provides clarity between people and highlights areas needing attention. He shares how, after years in leadership, he intentionally stepped back into an individual contributor role to learn a new industry. This experience reinforced his belief in the power of approaching conflict with the mindset that "we're on the same team, we can solve this together." This perspective shift embodies what makes Agile so powerful—moving from focusing on products to prioritizing people. In this segment, we refer to the book Shift: From Product to People, by Michael Dougherty, and Pete Oliver-Krueger, who've been guests on the podcast before. And we also refer to the Ratatouille Principle, which reminds us that great ideas can come from anywhere! Leading Without Authority "You lead with trust, not knowledge." When Eagan returned to an engineering role in a new industry, he experienced the challenge of having no built-in credibility or authority. This taught him valuable lessons about bottom-up leadership. He discovered that effective influence comes from building trust first, not from demonstrating knowledge.  He recommends validating people's frustrations, listening authentically, and sometimes allowing people to learn through their own experiences. This approach recognizes that leadership isn't confined to formal roles—we're all leaders in different contexts. Resources for Your Leadership Journey Eagan recommends several resources for those wanting to deepen their leadership skills: "Management 3.0" by Jurgen Appelo "Agile Retrospectives" by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen The "Change by Attraction" podcast The Value of the Global Agile Summit The Global Agile Summit offers a unique environment where transformative "aha!" moments happen. It's not just about learning new techniques but about fundamentally changing how we think about work, leadership, and collaboration. Eagan believes these perspective shifts are what make the summit so valuable. About Eagan Rackley Eagan Rackley is the track host for the developer track at the Global Agile Summit and a seasoned software engineer and Agile leader with 24+ years of experience spanning game development, enterprise architecture, graphics, and highly parallel programming. A passionate problem-solver, he excels in building collaborative teams, driving innovation, and turning conflict into opportunity. He thrives on creating software that empowers people and transforms ideas into impact. You can link with Eagan Rackley on LinkedIn.

A release of one of our favorites from about this time 5 years ago… just as relevant today! Chris Murman and Colleen Johnson sit down with Esther Derby to discuss Esther's book 7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change.  (With a special guest appearance by Izzie, the french bulldog.) Topics include: Getting unstuck… gaining fresh perspectives… embracing change… addressing "fatigue".. seeing the system Enjoy! About the Agile Uprising If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review, a rating, or leave comments on iTunes, Stitcher or your podcasting platform of choice. It really helps others find us.  Much thanks to the artist  from  who provided us our outro music free-of-charge!  If you like what you heard,     to find more music you might enjoy! If you'd like to join the discussion and share your stories,  please jump into the fray at our  We at the Agile Uprising are committed to being totally free.  However, if you'd like to contribute and help us defray hosting and production costs we do have a .  Who knows, you might even get some surprises in the mail!  

In this episode of #AgileWay podcast I have a conversation with Esther Derby and David Horowitz about Retrospectives, how the whole concept changed with online teams and how on the other hand it is about the same core principles. Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, and David Horowitz just published a second edition of the Agile Retrospective book, so if that topic was interesting, check the new book edition. #agile #retrospective #teams #learning #improvement 

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Mike Guiler to continue their discussion of Norman Kerth's book Project Retrospectives. In this episode, they dive deep into chapters 6, 7, and 8, analyzing some of the exercises and techniques described in the book and the immense value of learning to plan retrospectives for them to be fruitful. They close this conversation by addressing “postmortem” retrospectives and the importance of unpacking a failed project.   Key Takeaways Chapter 6: Exercises and Techniques: There are many ways to facilitate retrospectives and this chapter describes several intentional exercises meant to shake things up. Norm addresses three essential parts of a retrospective: the readying, the past, and the future. The readying is meant to allow team members to prepare and bring forward relevant topics. Teams often want to save time in retrospectives by skipping them or shortening their length. They do that because they find them ineffective and do not see the value in investing time and energy. A Scrum Master must invest in making retrospectives into a much more impactful event for the team. About facilitating better retrospectives: Retrospectives need to take a longer time (three hours). There needs to be “emotional freedom” in the group's atmosphere to facilitate and enable members to participate; it's crucial to be aware of different personalities and how they engage with others. The topic's sensitivity during the retrospective needs to be considered. The postmortem retrospectives: When a project fails: Be conscientious about not injecting your perspective; sometimes, it can do more harm. An idea must be presented along with its benefits, strategy, and plan, including the costs and reasons why it is helpful to implement it.   Mentioned in this Episode: Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews, by Norman L. Kerth Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Esther Derby and Diane Larsen   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!  

This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences. In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Esther Derby and David Horowitz about the second edition of the Agile Retrospectives book. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3WGRQkg Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter Upcoming Events: InfoQ Dev Summit Boston (June 24-25, 2024) Actionable insights on today's critical dev priorities. devsummit.infoq.com/conference/boston2024 InfoQ Dev Summit Munich (Sept 26-27, 2024) Practical learnings from senior software practitioners navigating Generative AI, security, modern web applications, and more. devsummit.infoq.com/conference/munich2024 QCon San Francisco (November 18-22, 2024) Get practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies. qconsf.com/ QCon London (April 7-9, 2025) Discover new ideas and insights from senior practitioners driving change and innovation in software development. qconlondon.com/ The InfoQ Podcasts: Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts: - The InfoQ Podcast www.infoq.com/podcasts/ - Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture - Generally AI Follow InfoQ: - Mastodon: techhub.social/@infoq - Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq - Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 - Instagram: @infoqdotcom - Youtube: www.youtube.com/infoq Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development. - Join a community of experts. - Increase your visibility. - Grow your career. www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq

Welcome to another exciting episode of "Becoming a Scrum Master"! In this episode, host Ryan Ripley is joined by the renowned Esther Derby, a pivotal figure in the agile community and author of "Seven Rules for Positive, Productive Change" and the upcoming second edition of "Agile Retrospectives". Join us as Esther shares her rich journey in the world of Scrum and Agile methodologies. 

SummaryThis conversation explores the concept of empathy and its importance in various contexts. Esther Derby gives valuable insights into defining empathy, the possibility of having too much empathy, and practical tips for practicing empathy. The conversation also delves into the role of empathy in product design, overcoming barriers to empathy, and effective communication. Additionally, it highlights the importance of creating a safe environment for empathy and discusses the challenges and benefits of empathy in virtual settings.TakeawaysEmpathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.Having too much empathy can lead to over-indexing on others' emotions and neglecting one's own needs.Practicing empathy involves actively listening, asking open-ended questions, and seeking to understand others' perspectives.Empathy plays a crucial role in product design, customer satisfaction, and effective communication.7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Resultshttps://a.co/d/iUONUbZCheck out our sponsors:www.wiserbees.comwww.xebia.comwww.scrummatch.comwww.masteringagility.orgHosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Today's post is the audio companion to the Virtual not Distant monthly newsletter, which you can sign up to here. Every month, Pilar shares with readers articles she's come across on the web, books she's read (or is reading) and podcast episodes she's listened to. And today, she's joined by Marcus Wermuth, who is an Engineering Leader specialising in virtual leadership.| Marcus is back on this show, this time talking about his recent professional transition: laying himself off from his job as Head of Engineering. This has been a very difficult decision to take, but he's followed his own principles, and stayed true to his identity as servant leader. Coffee Break Articles: First off, check out Marcus' article on “laying himself off”, If you are interested in hearing another conversation about how to strike the balance between transparency and discretion, check out episode 69 of the Management Café. 18.30 MINS Deutsche Bank's 3-day-a-week return-to-office policy has been met with fierce criticism by staff who say there isn't enough space for everyone via Business Insider The title says it all, but worth looking at some of the detail to understand the risks of mandatory planning looks like. Right to disconnect: Implementation and impact at company level Recent research shows that having laws about the right to disconnect is not enough to prevent employees feeling like they have to be constantly available. Company culture and in-house companies are needed too. 10 Ways to Build Better Relationships Working Remotely A blog post that could have been a short ebook. A thoughtful article with specific advice on how to build relationships . Are Enterprise Social Platforms All Talk? Past guest Wietske Van Osch has just released research into why enterprise social networks need to be run differently to the social networks employees might be used to, for employees and the organisation to get the most out of them. Gifts and Greats for True Feedback via Mark Kilby A very useful post to guide us through formulating feedback on other people's work, and how to structure it. Listening Recommendations: Podcast: The Rich Roll Podcast Episode: #815 CHARLES DUHIGG: HOW TO UNLOCK THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF CONNECTION Date: 22 February 2024 An interview with journalist/writer Charles Duhigg, talking about building strong relationships. Podcast: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin Long-form Interviews with a range of guests, from a range of industries. Podcast: Collaboration Superpowers Episode: Agile Retrospectives 2.0 with Esther Derby, Diana Larsen & David Horowitz Date: 5 March 2022 Lisette Sutherland talks to the authors of the new edition of Agile Retrospectives 2.0. Pilar hasn't listened to it yet, but highly recommends it - she's a great fan of David Horowitz, who guested on this show back in 2017, in episode 129 on Building a Distributed Business. Podcast: Sliced Bread Episode: Fitness Trackers (UK link, but look for it in your podcast app) 29 Feb 2023 Book Recommendations: Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson Collabor(h)ate: How to build incredible collaborative relationships at work (even if you'd rather work alone) by Deb Mashek PhD Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman Can't Hurt Me by David Goggings Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens You can connect with Marcus Wermuth on LinkedIn and check out his website: www.marcuswermuth.com Other episodes with Marcus: WLP291 Starting a New Role Remotely WLP219 OnBoarding (or Integration) in Remote Teams and Organisations WLP188 - From Maker to Manager in a Distributed Company SIgn up to the Virtual not Distant's newsletter here: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/newsletter  

In this episode of the Collaboration Superpowers podcast, we hosted esteemed guests David Horowitz, Esther Derby, and Diana Larsen. The conversation dived into the essence of conducting a successful remote agile retrospective, highlighting the importance of clear goals, structured feedback, and the engagement of all team members. Our guests shared common pitfalls in organizing retrospectives, such as lack of preparation and inadequate follow-up on action items. They reflected on their journey of writing and updating their seminal book on agile retrospectives, noting the adjustments made in the second edition to address changes in the agile landscape and incorporate new learnings. For more stories of remote teams doing great things, visit https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com.

In this episode originally published on the Agile for Humans podcast, Professional Scrum Trainer Ryan Ripley is joined by the renowned Esther Derby, a pivotal figure in the agile community and author of "Seven Rules for Positive, Productive Change" and the upcoming second edition of "Agile Retrospectives". Join us as Esther shares her rich journey in the world of Scrum and Agile.

Michael Schmidt: When Comfort Stagnates Progress For An Agile Team, The Problem Avoidance Anti-pattern 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. In this episode, Michael recounts his experience in a company where he went against his instincts due to comfort. The software development environment prioritized being busy over progress. Goal setting and sprint planning were undervalued, and negative behaviors like gossiping prevailed. Michael's attempts to offer help were met with resistance, as the team downplayed any possible issues. This anti-pattern of avoiding talking about problems hindered growth. Through perseverance, Michael learned the importance of trusting his intuition and initiating small, positive changes to build trust and overcome the fear, or dislike to discuss obstacles and problems. Featured Book Of The Week: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby In this episode, Michael shares his favorite Agile book, Esther Derby's and Diana Larsen's “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great". He emphasizes that every practice should have a purpose, instilling a profound sense of understanding. Michael highlights the true objective of retrospectives - not just for change, but for personal reflection. Establishing a routine for reflection minimizes change risks, providing a safe space for experimentation and learning from new approaches. The book's insights resonate with Michael, underlining the importance of intentionality in Agile practices.   [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 Michael Schmidt Michael a Berlin-based Agile Coach for teams, roles and organisations around software based product development. Michael invented "the taskboard" on his own, which ignited his working agile by conviction some 13 years ago. You can link with Michael Schmidt on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Schmidt on Twitter. 

On today's episode, Dave, William and Steven have a conversation with the esteemed Esther Derby about the various roles that we take on as Team Members and Leaders when we're responsible for the team's results ORRR for the team's growth. Plus, an update straight out of the Bronx by our very own Michael Nunez about babies, software and otherwise, and the long road to 100. Regardless if you're Pair Programming, Mentoring the team, Mob programming, or Reviewing Code, these nine roles described by Champion, Kiel & McLendon really sum up ways that we can help our teammates. The roles include: Counselor, Coach, Parther Facilitator, Teacher, Modeler Reflective Observer, Technical adviser, Hands-on Expert. ^ Growth, Results > References: 6 Rules for Change (Esther Derby) - soon to be 7 rules! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDyoUdVHwbg 9 Consulting Roles (Kiel, McLendon) https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-Role-Statements-from-the-Consulting-Role-Grid-Champion-Kiel-Mclendon-1990_fig3_281781473

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In this episode we speak with Esther Derby The Managing Complexity capability that helps organizations assess their leadership approach in three critical domains.By understanding their team's performance in these domains, organizations can identify areas for improvement and adopt a more effective leadership style suited to today's complex business environment. Esther Derby is one of the world's most respected thought leaders in agile ways of working. With four decades of experience in leading, observing, and experiencing organizational change, Esther Derby works with a diverse range of organizations, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Her approach, informed by both experience and research, prioritizes both the human element and a deep understanding of complex adaptive systems. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

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When leaders decided to make a change, they hope it will improve performance. But, while it may do so, there's almost always a dip. Maybe a small dip, but sometimes a large one. When that happens, the first impulse is to make another change. And then you've got churn.Sorry this episode is late!  I had a bad cold and wasn't up to recording.  

Bio Lyssa Adkins is a coach, facilitator, teacher and inspirer. Her current focus is improving the performance of top leadership teams through insightful facilitation and organization systems coaching. Making difficult decisions faster and with clear alignment, unknotting challenging multi-department impediments, creating the conditions for smooth organizational delivery, helping leaders take up the “Agile transformation” that is theirs to make…this is where she thrives and helps thrive. Her Agile community focus is amplifying women's voices, which is why she is a founder of the TENWOMENSTRONG #WomeninAgile programs. She has been pleased to serve the emergence of Agile Coaching as a profession. In 2010, she co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. Since 2011, she has been a member of the ICAgile working committee that defines the learning objectives for Agile Facilitation and Coaching and she assesses candidates for the ICAgile-Expert in Agile Coaching competence-based certification. She has also served the Scrum Alliance as an application reviewer for the Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) designation. She is the author of Coaching Agile Teams which, as a top ranking Agile book, was released as an audiobook in its 10th year. She likes to explore facilitating intense conflict, societal change, organizational change, the benefits and costs of being human in the workplace, agile coaching, agile transformation, adult human development, human systems dynamics, the role of nature, and books of all sorts. She tends toward a balance of the provocative and practical. Lyssa holds an alphabet soup of certifications: ICAgile Expert in Agile Coaching (ICE-AC), Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coach Emeritus (CEC-E), International Coach Federation Professional Certified Coach (PCC), Organization and Relationship Systems Certified Coach (ORSCC) and Certified Integral Facilitator (IF).  She is also a trained Co-Active Coach and Leader. Social media/ website(s): LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyssaadkins/ Twitter: @LyssaAdkins Lyssa's Website: https://lyssaadkins.com/ Interview Highlights Timestamp 05:35 How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? 08:00 Coaching leaders – Lyssa's 5Cs 21:05 Agile Mastery 24:55 Using agile to author a book 30:52 TENWOMENSTRONG 37:50 Expanding leaderfulness Books/Resources Mentioned InspireMe! card deck Lyssa's 5&5 Podcast: Essential Shifts for Leading in Turbulent Times https://lyssaadkins.com/55-with-lyssa-adkins-season-three/ Listen on Spotify Apple or your favourite podcast platform  One-on-One Leadership Coaching & Mentoring TENWOMENSTRONG: Influence & Impact in the Agile World plus other great programs 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): Hello everyone. It's my absolute honour to introduce my guest for this episode, she is no other than the legendary Lyssa Adkins herself. We met at the Agile Coach Conference in Amsterdam and she graciously agreed to be my guest. Lyssa is renowned for her groundbreaking work in defining the Agile coaching discipline and she is known for her book as well, that is titled Coaching Agile Teams. She is also one of the original founders of the Agile Coaching Institute. In this conversation, Lyssa talked about some things that are currently on her mind, and a little bit more about her work that she is currently doing which is focused on coaching the leadership teams in organisations. Without further ado, my conversation with Lyssa. Ula Ojiaku So, Lyssa, thank you so much for being a guest here on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Lyssa Adkins You're welcome. I took a little peek at your previous guests and I'm like, oh wow, there have been some really amazing people on this podcast. So I'm hoping that this goes well for you and me and all the people who listen to it. Ula Ojiaku I have no doubts, Lyssa. It's a known fact that I'm a big Lyssa Adkins fan. So for me, this is like a dream come true. I am speaking, well, virtually, face to face, with someone that I absolutely admire and it was a pleasure meeting you as well at the March Agile Coach Conference back in Amsterdam. So do you want to tell us a bit about yourself so we can know how your journey has brought you this way? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I sure will. I think that the thing to know about me is that the places where I find out that I am not a match for what's going on in my environment is the thing that propels me forward. So I'm thinking about the things I've been learning about recently, and they are things like trauma informed coaching, how to deal with grief and loss and suffering. And this is all because, you know, we're sort of in a time where these things are up and I don't have the skills for it. And so, you know, as you mentioned, those things like, you know, I like to sing and all this work and I've just, I was realising that these are the places where I find in myself that I'm just not capable to meet the complexity of the world around me. And so I try to do something different. One of those things in meeting the complexity of the world around me is that we've just bought a collaboration space property in Portugal. So that's a little bit about what's happening in my life and my home and my work. And my adult daughter is going to go move there with her partner and they're going to be the full-time caretakers of it. So that's a whole new thing that's just opened up for us and will allow us to do some really deep and wonderful work with people. Ula Ojiaku So are you planning to do some sort of retreats there as well? Because you said it's a collaborative working space? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. So people who have programs, and want to bring people to the property, it's a beautiful property, on more than an acre of land and beautiful, mature fruit trees and all of this and lovely property. And so people who want to do deep work with their groups or people who want to come and co-work together, you know, just to be in the same spot, you know, they don't even have to be from the same company necessarily. So that's something that's happening now, more in the world. And we just want to create this as a space for people to really get in touch with the fullness of what's going on in their work, in their life, and ask themselves some really different questions and perhaps even start to generate a completely new way of forward. Ula Ojiaku Interesting, given the world we're in now with the whole change caused by COVID 19, it means that we can remotely work from almost anywhere in the world. So that is something I think is very relevant to the times we're in and the opportunity to as well, do the deep work you're talking about. So we will put the links to more details on this in the show notes of this episode, but can we then go, because we are also interested in knowing about you Lyssa, you know, the person who is Lyssa Adkins? Lyssa Adkins Oh, I'm someone who is, on a daily basis, confounded by the world and by the difficulties we're in. I find myself experiencing a significant amount of grief about the things that are falling away in our society, and my outlook on where we're headed is that things are going to continue to fall away. And so a really big question I'm sitting in, I guess, two questions I'm sitting in for myself right now are, one is, you know, who do I want to be as a leader while things are collapsing? And the second question I'm sitting in is, it's so funny, because I just drew this Inspire Me card right before we got here. And I was thinking about this question. This is a card deck that I created with my husband and another agile coach, Deb Preuss, years and years ago. And so for the people who are listening to the audio version, it's a picture of someone driving like into fog and they can't see much, and the question is from Peter Senge and it's this, How can we stop going faster while our ability to see further ahead is decreasing? And I think that's a really big question for me, as a leader in the world, like how can we get off the crazy merry-go-round we have created because we can't expect the same level of performance we did before. We can't expect that things are going to remain certain and stable, actually, I'm pretty sure they're not. So I, you know, who is Lyssa Adkins is someone who sits in these big questions, and for like months and months and months, like a really long time, I sit in these big questions and, according to the strengths binder, my top two strengths are connectedness and futuristic. So that's where my mind tends to move a lot of the time. And what I'm realising as I'm working with leaders is that they hang on to all those things that aren't going well. And that compounds the problem that, that makes it so, now our nervous systems are on high alert, in addition to the thing that's going the way we didn't want it to go. Ula Ojiaku What could be those things that actually lead us down that path of holding on to things when we should be letting go? Lyssa Adkins Well, so there are three broad areas I'm talking to leaders about right now, and I've created them sort of like little bumper stickers so we can remind ourselves of them. And the first is upgrade your complexity of mind. The second is downshift your nervous system. And the third one is expand your team's core capabilities, core competencies. Five Cs for short, because there are five of them. We remember them. So, I mean, so your question is squarely in the bumper sticker of upgrade your complexity of mind, right. So when we upgrade our complexity of mind, this isn't requiring a new skill or a new model or a new whatever best, it's definitely not a new best practice, what it is, is being able to take in so much more information, especially contradictory and competing information, which is happening to us anyway. But to be able to bring on a deeper level of meaning-making about all of that. And in part of what is required, there is not necessarily to stop going fast, but what's required there is to start listening and bringing in different essence energies that allow you to make different kinds of decisions. Because I see leaders right now making the same kinds of decisions over and over, and we're just trying harder. We're just trying harder at the things that don't match the world, where supply chains are failing, where we're having multiple climate disasters at the same time where, you know, we can just keep going on and on about the things that are walking our world. Ula Ojiaku Are you able to also talk about the other two, you know, you said, downshifting our nervous system, I couldn't get the C, and then upskilling your team's competency as well. Those other two. Lyssa Adkins Sure. Let's just touch on those briefly. So downshifting your nervous system is actually one of the key capabilities for having a more complex mind, because what happens to us is that when we encounter something that is a threat of some sort and a threat can be to our sense of identity, to our ego, to our intellect, those are all very related. You know, a threat can be that there's just, you know, now a global supply chain meltdown, and all of a sudden, as an executive, I'm going, oh my God, what do I do? You know, I mean, it's like deer in headlights moment. Like now I'm at the edge of my meaning-making and I don't know what to do and what happens is that our bodies respond and our bodies respond, according to something called neuroception. It's a type of perception, but it's based on your biology, it's based on your actual, your animal body, this thing that you, that you are in, this animal body, responds to these threats in the world before you have cognitively realised them. And so what it does is a very smart thing. It floods your body with all kinds of anxiety hormones, you know, adrenaline, all of these. Yeah. Right. And it gets you ready to take some immediate action because your body does not know that the idea that feels like a threat to you is not the same thing as a sabre tooth tiger chasing you. Your body actually doesn't know that, right. Now, good news is that we have this amazing prefrontal cortex. Human beings get the luxury of a prefrontal cortex where all our executive functions, reside and work. And we can recognise when the animal of our body has taken over and flooded our body with these stress hormones, and we can go, okay, I have the ability to interrupt these. There are really easy ways to interrupt it, actually, and to bring back online those executive functions, because that's the important thing. Things like decision making, critical thinking, empathy, logic, they all leave the building when your body is getting ready to have you run or freeze or fight. Right. And so what I'm noticing is that this happens in really subtle ways on leadership teams and people don't know that their body has been hijacked. They don't know it's happening, but I can, because I'm working with teams, leadership teams on sort of like the pattern level of their interaction. I can sit there and go, huh? It looks like she's hijacked, and I can watch this interaction, and a couple minutes later. Oh, he is too. Well, there's a third. And so, pretty soon you have an entire executive team operating without their executive functions online and no one is recognising it. So part of what I think is important for us to do in this particular time we're in, when things are incredibly stressful and our ways of coping don't necessarily work in the complexity that we're in. One of the things that's important is learning about our nervous systems, because it's actually super easy to interrupt this whole process of your lizard brain getting hijacked. It's super easy, but people don't know to do it. And people feel a little bit embarrassed about it. They're like, oh, well this is like my thing I have to deal with. No, actually it's a group thing. So that's maybe a little more than an introduction to the idea of downshifting your nervous system, but that's the idea there that I've just really gotten clear about how much people are operating, not at their best. Ula Ojiaku And then what about upskilling your team's competency? The third one. Could you tell us a bit about that? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. I think executive teams, as I watch them work and as I interact with them to help them work better together, I notice that they have the same, this might be a little bit unfortunate to hear, but they have the same sort of mediocre conversations that delivery teams have. And by mediocre, I mean, they don't have a high level of competence in conflict, in collaboration and creativity and communication, and definitely not in change. Because all they keep doing is driving, driving, driving, driving. They keep moving through these very surface level conversations and making decisions from there. And we're basically getting the same results we've been getting, you know, we're not going anywhere new and we're not able to take in the fullness of the context we are now in, which is something human beings have never encountered before. So as I work with executive teams, I'm like, okay, great, you've got your key result, great, fantastic. Those key results happen through a series of conversations, decisions, work sessions. In those work sessions, the way that is happening is through these five core competencies, communication, collaboration, creativity, conflict, and change. And then to the core of that is actually the intelligence that resides and how the relationship system is working. So if we can focus on that, then those five core competencies increase. Then we have much more effective working sessions and decisions. Then we meet our goals. So it's like working from the core out. Ula Ojiaku It's really an interesting framework. I don't think this is yet out in the world or in any of the materials you've released to us yet. So I hope to learn more about it at some point in time. Is there anywhere that I could actually…? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I've just now realised there is somewhere. So I created a keynote around this last year, and it's one of the keynotes I give publicly and to make myself get clear about the contents of the keynote, I made myself record my own podcast, which is called the 5 & 5, five minutes a day, five days a week. And it's all around this topic of the five essential shifts for leading in turbulent times. And so we can absolutely provide that link in the show notes. So that definitely gives people, a flavour, in five minute bites, of these things we're talking about. Upgrade your complexity of mind, downshift your nervous system, and expand your team's five core competencies. Ula Ojiaku That's awesome Lyssa, we'll definitely have that in the show notes. Now I'm curious, in working with, you know, the leaders that you do, how do you go about setting the intention for the engagements and how do you measure the progress towards meeting that set intention? Lyssa Adkins That's a really good question, and I have to say, I have not found a secret sauce that I'm happy with here yet, because most executives and executive teams don't know that they're in over their heads in a way that they certainly are in over their heads. They keep thinking that if we just apply the same things we've been doing, we're going to get out of this mess. They keep thinking normal is going to come back. They keep thinking, well, maybe normal won't come back, but we'll just keep going. And I don't know that we're going to be able to just keep going, I don't know how much longer we'll be able to keep going, because we are absolutely encountering, now, the limits to growth that were predicted back in the 1970s, you know, so everything that we've predicated our business world on, the idea that growth is good, growth is what we go for, you know, and we always have to have this sort of sterling impression of our service and we can never let anyone down. Well, we're going to start letting people down. We are absolutely approaching limits to growth. We're not going to be able to keep growing as we were before. And so I think that what is going on is that I move into executive teams starting with this idea that I'm going to help them develop their leadership. And it usually is around a goal that the organisation has. So for example, the organisation will have a goal that, hey, we're going to expand threefold in the next year, which means we have got to make ourselves, leaders, capable of creating leaders. And we've got to do that at the next two layers down as well. So now, so that's a phrase that people understand. We now, as leaders, our job is to create leaders and we now realise that we're not very good at that. So that's one way that people think, oh yeah, maybe I need some leadership development help. And it could be around any kind of crisis. That's also a certain time that people will, executive teams will say, yeah, I guess we should look at the way we're working, but pretty infrequently, you know. So, I'm now sitting at the crossroads, wondering where is the greatest impact for me as a practitioner? Is it working with an entire executive team or is it working with those two people on the executive team that are really ready to level up? And so I'm actually in the process of expanding my one-on-one leadership coaching for the latter half of this year, because I want to just really find out and, you know, have a sense at least of how is the return on investment for them and me? You know, where is the greatest impact, basically? Ula Ojiaku That's really interesting. And I would be keen to know what the evaluation is at the end of the year, when you've… because it seems like it's an experiment to understand where are you going to make the most impact? One of the things that you are renowned for is the fact that you made some breakthrough contributions, you know, in the field of agile coaching, you, co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute in 2010, and you wrote the book, which is still helping, you know, lots of people, agile coaches and other people who, you know, play servant leadership roles in organisations that are in their journey towards embracing agile ways of working and mindset, coaching agile teams. What led you to that? If you don't mind, if we could take a walk down memory lane, what led you to writing the book and coaching, and co-founding the Agile Coaching Institute? Lyssa Adkins So I love this trip down memory lane, and actually it's not totally in the past, because as you say that book is still doing its work in the world, even though it is now 12 years old, it's still selling as much as it ever did, and so right now I'm actually recording what we call a guided study and practice group that we're going to open for ongoing admission. And it's sitting inside of this really beautiful community called Agile Mastery, so like it's the lessons from me, which are something like a book club on steroids. So we're taking just a section of the book at a time, a metabolisable section, there's field work that people are doing in between each session and they're interacting with each other on it, and they're helping each other learn. There are accountability conversations that are going on. And so that sort of action learning cycle takes place to help people really use what's in that book. Because what I kept hearing is like, gosh, I've read this book four times and I can't believe I'm still discovering something new, or like I've had this book for 10 years, I just opened it again, like, oh my gosh, how did I not see this before? So there's a lot in it, it's really sort of dense actually. So there's a way in which, although my personal practice is now with leadership teams, I am still very much involved with people who are working with delivery teams and the portfolio level and that sort of thing through helping people use what's in that book well, and where that book came from was my identity crisis. I mean, so we started this podcast by saying, well tell me a little bit about you and I'm like, well, I'm someone who, you know, grows by realising I'm totally in over my head and I don't know how to deal with this. And so instead of doing the same stuff I did before, like, what skill do I need to get? And what I love about people in the agile community is that's a very common mindset. You know, what I think is not so common is allowing the identity crises in and allowing them to inform us and allowing those crises to break us down, which is what I did. I allowed the identity crisis to break me down. And I started writing about that on this little blog called The road from project manager to agile coach. And so this is in 2008 or something like that. And so that's what eventually led to the book. I, you know, gave a talk at a Scrum gathering, my very first Scrum gathering. My very first public speaking thing called The road from project manager to agile coach. And talking about that, now the things I do as an agile coach now that I would have never done as a plan driven project manager, like I would've thought were stupid or ridiculous, or like magical thinking or just wouldn't work, you know, and of course they worked beautifully. So you know, from that point, I got asked to write the book, you know, and I had no intentions of writing a book and actually resisted it for a while, and kept getting all these sort of messages in the phone with people saying, gosh, that's good, you should write that down. And eventually, got in the place where the Coaching Agile Teams book just galloped its way into the world through me, it just, it was, it took one calendar year to write it and really, I didn't start writing it until May and it got turned in in November. I mean, so it just moved through very quickly. Ula Ojiaku Wow. Is there anything, because, you know, knowing what you now know, that you would do differently about the process of authoring a book and the messaging in it? Lyssa Adkins I think I would use the same process of authoring the book, and I think it's probably worth saying a little bit about what that is, because I actually went and found some mentors, people who've written books and said, so, you know, I don't know how to do this, you know, what's your advice? And so some of, the main process I used was agile. And so I had an outline of the book that had come to me over like a six month period of time before I turned in, before I finally decided to, well, I guess I'll go ahead and turn in this book proposal. It seems like I already have it written. And I, at the time we were in a Facebook group, I sent that out to the group and I said, put these in business value order. You know, and they put it in a business value order about 90% of the way I would have. And so I started writing the book in business value order. And when I met the publisher in August and the book was due in November, he said, I guess you probably want an extension. You know, cause you surely the book's not going to be ready in November. I'm like, hmm, yeah, it is. He's like, well, how can you be so sure. I'm like, well, I'm writing it in business value order. I mean, so I'm writing the chapters that are most useful to people. So if we get to November 1st and something's not written, it's just not going to be in the book because it's the lowest value content anyway. He was like, wow, really? And he still didn't believe me that I would make the deadline, but I did, November 1st. So, you know, so I think that's an important thing. What was, what was important then, and I think it's probably even more important now is timing. You know, I had the sense that the content of the book was important, and that the sooner it got out there, the better, and that was more important than it being great or amazing, definitely not perfect, definitely more important than being perfect, that's something that I struggle with all the time. So it turned out though that my husband quit his job, retired a little bit early and he became the proofreader of the book and he and I were in this amazing cycle for the last few months of the book. And it all got written, every chapter. Ula Ojiaku Wow. That's amazing and inspiring. So what about the mentors? What was their inputs in addition to, you know, telling you how, their own process for writing? Did you also get their input to, you know, proofreading and suggesting? Lyssa Adkins We got a lot of people's input to the book. The book went out for review to about 12 people, and there were some really useful things that came back from that, and that affected how it, how it rolled out eventually. But one of my mentors was a guy named Lee Devin, and he's written a few books, but the one he's most known for in the agile world is called Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work is what that book is, and when we got together, he gave me two pieces of advice. He said, don't let your writer and your editor be in the room at the same time. And so what he meant by that is, your job when you are getting content out is just to write and don't even worry about spelling or punctuation or anything. And don't judge it, just get it out, come back in another time with the editor, who's got the red pen. It's like, oh, I don't like that language, this is not even a well-formed idea, punctuation, whatever. Now, to the extent that I can do that, the book flowed very beautifully. I can't tell you that I could do it all the time because I am so critical. Most of us are so critical of ourselves that we are writing and editing at the same time and what that, what that means is that our ideas die before they get to be born. And so the other thing that he recommended as a practice, which I did religiously, was before you start writing content for the day or whatever session you were, open a Word document and just start typing whatever is in your mind. And what you're doing there is you're trying to get your fingers and your body to move as fast as your mind. And so you're literally sort of warming up, you know, like a pianist would warm up or like someone playing soccer would warm up, so you're literally warming up this whole mind body instrument because the mind moves so fast. And it turns out, of course, that through that stream of consciousness writing, there were some real gems in there that got pulled into the book, but usually it was just a bunch of junk, you know, and I only, I set a timer for only five minutes. It didn't take a long time to do it, but the times that I didn't do it, the writing was not as good. Ula Ojiaku It's almost like, you know, priming a pump, because when you're speaking, I'm thinking of an ancient well, where you'd have the manual pump, you know, you'd have some prime it before the water starts flowing and you get into the zone and interestingly, that's also what, so Marie Forleo, she's more of a, she has a podcast as well and a course, I mean, what's it called, but the key thing is she said, interestingly, she said the same thing about, you know, just typing or writing and not minding whether it's quality or quantity and at a point in time, you know, you'd get flowing. Lyssa Adkins Yeah, exactly. There are all of these beautiful books of writing prompts too, you know, I mean, there's just, you're making me realise I need to start writing more. I think I've let the well go dry a little bit. Yeah. Thank you for the reminder. Ula Ojiaku Could we talk about your organisation, because there is your TENWOMENSTRONG Program. Is that still on? And if so, can you tell us about it? What's the vision behind, your putting that organisation together and how is it going right now? Lyssa Adkins Yeah. So I am a co-leader and a contributor to TENWOMENSTRONG. It's actually an organisation owned by Carolyn Dragon and Carolyn, and I've known each other for more than a dozen years. We were in a really intense year-long leadership program together in 2010. And so she had this program and this company, TENWOMENSTRONG, and about the time that I sold Agile Coaching Institute in 2017, you know, she would, she said, I'm going to put myself on your calendar every six weeks just for us to have coffee, and I want to hear that you're doing nothing but singing and gardening and whatever you want to do, and that you're actually taking a break because it had been, you know, about a decade of really intense work, following my mission to help professionalise the discipline of agile coaching, you know, and working with so many people on having, you know, such a focus on that for so long and, you know, and it totally worked because now dozens of people are carrying that forward, you know? So my role in sort of, again, priming the pump, we're back to this metaphor, right? So my role along with Michael Spayd, like our role together, priming the pump for agile coaching you know, was done, it was done. And the next question is, well, what do I do next? And so Carolyn, true to her word, we got together every six weeks. What a great friend in that, in that following year, while I was busy transitioning Agile Coaching Institute to its new owner, but not really having a new mission for myself. And she was telling me about the impact of this program she has called TENWOMENSTRONG, and it's basically a program to help women reconnect with their purpose, and go through this process of discovering who I am authentically, you know, what are all of my creativities, especially the ones that I've forgotten about or that I think aren't wanted in my work world or in other parts of my world. And then what's the creative expression I'm here to bring. And so, at the time I had been looking around the agile world and going like, where are the women? I mean, I kept looking and going, like, there are plenty of us at these conferences, there are plenty of us at these meetups there, you know, like there's plenty of women in the agile world, but when you ask, you know, who are the people who I should read, you would get a list of men's names predominantly. Maybe my name would be in there and maybe Esther Derby and maybe a few others, but just, just a few. And so, as Carolyn was telling me the impact of this program, where she'd been running it inside of corporations and publicly, all of a sudden out of my mouth, I was like, oh my gosh, we need that for women in agile. And so we started, I think it was probably in 2019 with virtual and in-person programs, maybe it was 2018. So and then we did those for a few years and then the pandemic hit, and it was a real reassessment of what we wanted to do. And it was also Carolyn's decision, which I thought was a very brilliant business decision, to pull back, because people had enough on their plates, you know, another constant self-improvement like this whole sort of constant self improvement thing we do is another trap, you know? And so she did things that supported women in her circles, women who've been through her program that she attracted through various free offerings. She did things to support them, but not to add anything that would, you know, just contribute to the stress of the moment, they were under enough stress. And so now, as it is, she's now starting to bring back more programs, but she's doing them shorter duration. And so the one that I'm contributing to TENWOMENSTRONG right now is called Influence and Impact in the Agile World and it's a workshop where women come and they share with each other, the places where they're not having the influence and impact they wanted, and they don't know why, they've tried all different kinds of things, and so it's a workshop to take, you know, to create community about that, to actually be vulnerable and say that to other people, and to know that you're going to be received. And then we go through some different steps that allow the women to have some insight about their specific situation and they leave with an idea of what they want to try next. So those are the types of things that she's doing there, couple of other programs, but that's the one that I'm leading with her. Ula Ojiaku Now, based on what we've talked about so far, what are the books you would say have influenced your thinking and, you know, your approach as a coach, as a professional? Lyssa Adkins Well the books that have influenced my development as a coach and a professional are the ones that are written by the people who are in the coaching schools I went to. So, Co-Active Coaching is one, and then there's just a new book out now that encapsulates what I learned in organisation and relationship systems coaching, and that book is called Systems Inspired Leadership. It encapsulates the coaching approach, but talks about it from a leadership perspective, so it marries those two worlds for me. And then there's the whole genre of learning about Zen Buddhism, which I think has been a really important contribution to my ability to be a good coach. And so Pema Chödrön is someone I read there. There are many, many others, but she's the one that comes to mind right now because she has books that are called, well, hang on, what are they called? Get a load of these titles. The Places That Scare You, Comfortable With Uncertainty, Welcoming the Unwelcome, The Wisdom of No Escape - those are just some of her books. So what she helps me do, is actually what we talked about at the beginning, upgrade my own complexity of mind to work with what actually is happening and not ignore it, or try to bypass it. Downshift my nervous system, and then expand my ability to see the web of the relationship system to expand those five core competencies in myself and in my interactions with other people. So I think that for me, that's an essential piece of learning and, I would say, not so much learning, but leaderfullness, expanding my own leaderfullness, and ability to be in the world and with the world as it is. Ula Ojiaku That's a new word for me, leaderfullness. It's almost like… Lyssa Adkins Yeah, it's a funny word, right. I think I picked it up from the Coaches Training Institute. They used to, have said that for years and years, but I think it conveys something really important, which is that leadership is not even primarily anymore about knowing better or doing more or any of these things that we promoted and we lauded leaders for, you know, leadership is about working with the world as it is and bringing to every moment, your authentic leaderfullness, you are full up with leadership. You are a full up, it's like a fully embodied way of expressing leadership and expressing our ability to take in what's really happening, to slow our minds down, to not be hijacked by the situation, to ask some deeper questions, and to look squarely in the face of the things that we don't want. Ula Ojiaku Awesome. Are there things that you'd like the audience to know in terms of what you're doing currently? Lyssa Adkins Yeah, I would direct people to lyssaadkins.com for what I'm doing currently, and of course you have to know how to spell it. L Y S S A A D K I N S.com. I know it'll be in the show notes too. The thing I think I want people to know is that something really exciting is just now starting, and I'm part of starting it. And I would say it's going to be, the kickoff or the beginning of a worldwide movement in the agile community, all centered around the question, if it's no accident that agile has emerged at exactly this time, what is its role in the planetary challenges and the paradigm shifts we are currently experiencing? That question, both enlivens me and haunts me. I've been holding that question for a long time and the first thing I know that is related to that question that's going to be moving out into the world will happen at Agile 2022 in Nashville in late July. And I am the moderator of a panel, essentially about what is Agile's bigger role and the panellists are all using agile in ways that help make our current situation better, help try to fend us off from the worst of the impacts of our previous behaviour. So there are people who, for example, are working in climate change, they're working and bringing agile into helping democracies arise. They're bringing agile into pulling girls out of poverty and the only option for themselves is sex trafficking, for example. All right. So these are some of the leaders who are going to be speaking about how, what they've been doing to investigate this question of like, if we agilists have something that's useful and we know how to do and be a different sort of person, have a different sort of skills, like what can we add to the people who are already doing this really important work on the planet right now. So I'm really excited to find out how that conversation goes. We're hoping to see that the sparks from that panel fly all over the world and ignite these conversations and agile communities all over the world, because I think we do have a role, and I think we have something that's so different and so useful, and I don't think we need to force it on anyone, but I think we're good at experiments, you know, so like why don't we run some experiments, go find out, like would what you know, as an agilest be useful for an organisation who's responding to climate disasters, for example. Ula Ojiaku That's inspiring. What one thing would you like to leave the audience with? Lyssa Adkins You know, there's a quote, I don't even know where it came from that I say to myself all the time and I think that's what I want to leave the audience with. For those of you listening, first of all, thank you for your attention. I know that is the most precious thing we have. So what I'll leave you with is this. It will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. Ula Ojiaku That's a great one. Thank you so much Lyssa for your time, it's been an insightful conversation. Lyssa Adkins My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I've really enjoyed this exploration and I've found some new ideas too 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! 

Eine Retrospektive - Das heißt, eine Rückschau auf einen Zeitraum in dem Arbeit passiert ist. Dies ist ein so gängiges Vorgehen und eine übliche Technik, dass sie heute, selbst in klassischen Arbeitsumfeldern häufig angewendet wird. Es lässt sich gar von einem agilen Klassiker sprechen. Geprägt wurde dieser insbesondere von den Autoren Esther Derby und Diana Larson. Doch was macht eine Retrospektive aus? Welche Schritte gilt es durchzuführen und worauf kann geachtet werden? In dieser Folge widmet sich Rafael Kasprzak dem klassischen 5-stufigen Ablauf einer Retrospektive. Er stellt dir die fünf Schritte kurz vor und gibt dir Tipps, worauf du dabei achten kannst. Gestalte mit uns die kommenden Folgen! Sende uns gerne Feedback, Ideen und Themenvorschläge zu. Kontaktiere uns gerne über: podcast@wibas.com Autor(en): Rafael Kasprzak Kontakt: www.wibas.com Quellen: Derby, Esther; Larsen, Diana (2018): Agile Retrospektiven: Übungen und Praktiken, die die Motivation und Produktivität von Teams deutlich steigern. Vahlen

Why don't ppl want to change?   I hear this question a lot.  The assumption behind the question is clear: the impediments to change exist within people. But there's often friction in the context....situations that counter-motivate change.  I find it more useful to ask: "How to reduce the friction for people to change?"I'll talk about some of the sources of friction, and what you can do about them, in this episode.For more on the adoption of antiseptic practices (ad other really interesting ideas about change, see Slow Ideas, by Atul Gawande. 

Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to share the best gift books for the Scrum masters in your life. Overview We all have those books on our bookshelves that we’ve had for years and still refer back to time and time again, or that new title that we’ve just read that blows our mind with the way it makes a new concept more relatable. Julie Chickering is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Today on the show, Julie joins Brian to discuss the most valuable books they’ve read, the lessons they’ve learned from them, and the best ones for giving to the Scrum Master in your life this holiday season. Listen now to discover: [01:06] - Today, Brian and Julie Chickering will be sharing the most valuable books we’ve read. [02:10] - Julie shares how a book called Two Beats Ahead is helping her learn to let go of her creations. [04:00] - Julie shares an interesting story of how Beyoncé invited musicians in for collaboration and how that opened her mind to learning from her community. [05:07] - Brian shares why Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larson is his #1 book recommendation for Scrum Masters. [06:29] - Julie shares why she’s also a fan of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great for the mix-and-mash recipe for creating menu selections. [08:06] - Julie shares why The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups insight into the three main things that make high-performing teams high-performing is her favorite book to give to the leaders on her list. [10:36] - Brian shares the three things from Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that align with Scrum. [12:34] - Julie shares how she learned to flip the script, start with the hard topics in a conversation, and finish with the positive from Daniel Pink, as included in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. [15:53] - Brian shares why Dan Pink’s books are most enjoyable via audio. [16:15] - Julie shares how a podcast interview with author Scott Sonenshein led her to his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, which helps teams unlock their potential to achieve more. [17:11] - Brian shares Frédéric Laloux's concept of the different colors of organizations as laid out in his book called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness and how we can better enable change in organizations. [18:57] - Julie shares a book she recommends in Scrum Master class that’s great for sports fans called The Captain Class by Sam Walker, which walks the reader through what makes great sports teams great. [22:15] - Brian shares why sports analogies are great for teaching Scrum. [23:28] - Julie shares how even the Rolling Stones delve deep into figuring out how to improve. [24:30] - Why retrospectives are a great tool for improving the outcome of any mission. [28:25] - Brian shares why we still need to adjust to the current climate, even when the goal remains the same. [30:11] - Brian shares books by recent guests on the show, including Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick, Strategise by Roman Pichler and Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins. Listen in next time when Scott Dunn will be on the show. References and resources mentioned in the show Two Beats Ahead by Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle DRIVE by Daniel Pink | Animated Core Message Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined by Scott Sonenshein Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux The Captain Class by Sam Walker Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick Strategise by Roman Pichler Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa, Adkins Mountain Goat Software Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we'd love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you'd like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Please share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode's presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

Julie Chickering sits down with Brian to share the best gift books for the Scrum masters in your life. Overview We all have those books on our bookshelves that we’ve had for years and still refer back to time and time again, or that new title that we’ve just read that blows our mind with the way it makes a new concept more relatable. Julie Chickering is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Today on the show, Julie joins Brian to discuss the most valuable books they’ve read, the lessons they’ve learned from them, and the best ones for giving to the Scrum Master in your life this holiday season. Listen now to discover: [01:06] - Today, Brian and Julie Chickering will be sharing the most valuable books we’ve read. [02:10] - Julie shares how a book called Two Beats Ahead is helping her learn to let go of her creations. [04:00] - Julie shares an interesting story of how Beyoncé invited musicians in for collaboration and how that opened her mind to learning from her community. [05:07] - Brian shares why Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larson is his #1 book recommendation for Scrum Masters. [06:29] - Julie shares why she’s also a fan of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great for the mix-and-mash recipe for creating menu selections. [08:06] - Julie shares why The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups insight into the three main things that make high-performing teams high-performing is her favorite book to give to the leaders on her list. [10:36] - Brian shares the three things from Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us that align with Scrum. [12:34] - Julie shares how she learned to flip the script, start with the hard topics in a conversation, and finish with the positive from Daniel Pink, as included in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. [15:53] - Brian shares why Dan Pink’s books are most enjoyable via audio. [16:15] - Julie shares how a podcast interview with author Scott Sonenshein led her to his book called Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined, which helps teams unlock their potential to achieve more. [17:11] - Brian shares Frédéric Laloux's concept of the different colors of organizations as laid out in his book called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness and how we can better enable change in organizations. [18:57] - Julie shares a book she recommends in Scrum Master class that’s great for sports fans called The Captain Class by Sam Walker, which walks the reader through what makes great sports teams great. [22:15] - Brian shares why sports analogies are great for teaching Scrum. [23:28] - Julie shares how even the Rolling Stones delve deep into figuring out how to improve. [24:30] - Why retrospectives are a great tool for improving the outcome of any mission. [28:25] - Brian shares why we still need to adjust to the current climate, even when the goal remains the same. [30:11] - Brian shares books by recent guests on the show, including Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick, Strategise by Roman Pichler and Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa Adkins. Listen in next time when Scott Dunn will be on the show. References and resources mentioned in the show Two Beats Ahead by Panos A. Panay and R. Michael Hendrix Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle DRIVE by Daniel Pink | Animated Core Message Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined by Scott Sonenshein Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux The Captain Class by Sam Walker Lead Without Blame: Building Resilient Learning Teams by Tricia Broderick Strategise by Roman Pichler Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)) by Lyssa, Adkins Mountain Goat Software Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we'd love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you'd like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Please share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode's presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP).

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. Shahin was working with a group of Scrum Masters. As he started to observe the work of the Scrum Masters, he observed a pattern that he could not understand. The team lacked energy. In an effort to help the team, and the Scrum Master, Shahin and the Scrum Master started to do some small changes to the meetings and Scrum ceremonies, but the needle didn't move. Eventually the Scrum Master left the organization. Later on, Shahin met some of the team members and learned the real pattern that had been going on in that team, a dark pattern that we must be aware of! Listen in to learn what the pattern was, and how you can be ready for it!  Featured Book of the Week: Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen The book Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen is a book that Shahin still goes back to even after having read it many years ago. It's a book that can help starting Scrum Masters to be ready to host great Retrospectives for their teams, especially when they don't yet have a large number of tools to use in those ceremonies.  In this segment, we also refer to The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. A book that Shahin describes as a story telling book that brings a perspective of the whole organization performance, a perspective that we don't often have as a Scrum Master  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 Shahin Sheidaei Shahin Sheidaei is an Agile, Lean and Success Coach,International Speaker, Transformation Expert, and Entrepreneur.   Shahin is a passionate organizational designer focusing on organizational performance, and is also founder and principal coach at Elevate Change Inc. You can link with Shahin Sheidaei on LinkedIn and connect with Shahin Sheidaei on Twitter.

You may think someone else needs to change. But approaching that topic is a delicate matter. If they haven't invited your input, your advice is likely to cause a rupture, especially when hierarchy is involved. 

Changing the paradigms—beliefs and assumptions about how things work—can be powerful in changing systems. But how can you do that?  Sometimes it as simple as shifting what people focus on.   If you are interested in learning more about the SEEM model, drop me an email and I'll send you a copy of the paper where I first published it.  esther at estherderby dot com.

Systems reflect the beliefs and assumptions of the ppl & societies who create them. Changing those beliefs is a powerful way to change a system. So, it follows, if we want to change management, we need to look at the beliefs and assumptions behind the dominant system of management. Donella Meadow's Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

How can we possibly narrow down the hundreds of Agile books to a single list of five that every ScrumMaster should read? Like this: Essential Scrum by Ken Rubin Succeeding With Agile by Mike Cohn Scrum The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half The Time by Jeff Sutherland The Elements of Scrum by Chris Sims & Hillary Louise Johnson Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen

What is management?  Is it simply getting people to work hard? Is it supervision? Is it extracting maximum labor and value? Or something else? Join Chris, Austin, and Esther Derby as they not only discuss ways to rethink management but also discuss ways to nurture positive change in management, organizations, and teams.  FYI: Video and show notes to be posted here in a day or so.

Even when you have a big idea, you get there with little steps. This isn't always satisfying to people who are in a hurry. It is understandable that people want big results and want them fast. But it doesn't work that way. You have to cross the zone.

Facilitating a retrospective is one tough cookie to crumble. But you don't have to panic so much, because our hosts today, Vivek Khattri and Joe Ziadeh, will be giving you the information you need to successfully facilitate a retrospective. In this episode of The Agile Coach, Vivek and Joe will be exploring Esther Derby and Diana Larson's five stages of a retrospective and will be explaining them to you with their own flair.HIGHLIGHTSIntroduction to the 5 stages of a retrospectiveStage 1: Set the stageStage 2: Gather dataStage 3: Generate insightStage 4: Decide what to doStage 5: Close the retrospectiveQUOTESJoe: “Very first stage. And number one thing they call out, set the stage, if you show up panicked, if you're freaking out, they're going to be freaked out.”Joe: “Next step, gathering the data, now look, if they have a bunch of data, great, have them bring in the data and then look at the data.”Joe: “Now, we're going to go from just having data to gathering insights. So there's a difference between data and wisdom. Data is just information, wisdom, or the insights that you gather from that data.”Joe: “Your job isn't to have the answer. Your job as a facilitator is to help them process through the framework. It's to help work them through the process so that they can solve these problems on their own.”Joe: “The next stage is deciding what to do. So you take a list of all these experiments and you vote on them again.”Joe: “Make sure that you celebrate. Let these people know that they accomplished something. And then document the experiments. Don't just do all of this work and say that was really great. And then walk out of this room and let all the experiments fall on the floor.”Learn more about Vivek in the link below:Vivek Khattri: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivekkhattri/If you enjoy The Agile Coach and interested in learning more, you can check us out in the Link below:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-coach-llc

Full video interview available here: https://youtu.be/oJbZF1yiWvg  Guest Bio: Aino Vonge Corry (born 1971 in Aarhus, Denmark) is an independent consultant, who sometimes works as an agile coach. After gaining her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2001 she spent the next 10 years failing to choose between being a researcher/teacher in academia, and being a teacher/facilitator in industry. She eventually squared the circle by starting her own company, Metadeveloper, which develops developers by teaching CS, teaching how to teach CS, inviting speakers to IT conferences, and facilitating software development in various ways. She has facilitated retrospectives and other meetings for the past 15 years during which time she has made all the mistakes possible in that field. Aino has lived in Stockholm, Lund, and Cambridge, but she is now back in Aarhus, Denmark, where she lives with her family, and a growing collection of plush cephalopods.   Social Media/ Website LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/aino-vonge-corry-9a23801 Twitter: @apaipi Website: https://metadeveloper.com   Books/ Resources Retrospectives Antipatterns by Aino Corry https://www.amazon.co.uk/Retrospectives-Antipatterns-Aino-Corry/dp/013682336X Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coaching-Agile-Teams-ScrumMasters-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321637704 Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larsen, Esther Derby https://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/0977616649 Retrospectives for Organisational Change by Echstein https://www.amazon.com/Retrospectives-Organizational-Change-Agile-Approach-ebook/dp/B07NS796KY Fearless Change Patterns by Linda Rysen https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Change-Patterns-Introducing-Ideas-ebook/dp/B0054RGYNQ Prime Directive by Norm Kirk https://retrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=The_Prime_Directive   Full Interview Transcript Ula Ojiaku: Many thanks Aino for making the time for this conversation and for being my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Aino Corry:  And thank you for inviting me, Ula. It was great to have you in the course, you had a lot of good questions. And that's how we met. And I've been looking very much forward to this day. Ula Ojiaku: So could you tell us a bit about yourself, you know, who is Aino Corry? Aino Corry: Yeah, so Aino Corry is 50 years old, she lives in Denmark, she's got three children. And she, she's always wanted to teach. Actually when I was in primary and secondary school, I wasn't so happy with mathematics teaching, so I decided after school, I wanted to be a mathematics teacher in secondary school. Actually, I thought about it and I thought I didn't really like school. So maybe I should be a teacher in high school instead. And so I decided to try to go to university to study mathematics to become a high school teacher. But then I had to do some programming in the mathematics course. And I really, really fell in love with that. So I changed subject to computer science. And then I did my Master's degree with a focus on design patterns, which was very new at the time. And when I finished, I wanted to continue working with design patterns. And that's why I applied for a Ph.D. I applied for a Ph.D., actually, just to prolong my university studies to make more of the fun thing that I've done. And then when I finished, I thought, I wanted to be a researcher and a teacher and I had a job at the university as an assistant professor. Aino Corry: And then I decided that I wanted to go out in industry instead, because I, I had a child already, and I wanted to have another child. And I really, I was dead poor, so I wanted to earn a lot of money, so I went down industry to get some money. And that worked, I got some money. And after a few years there, I went back to university to do some research and some teaching, because they had a research project, which was interesting. It was when Bluetooth was quite young and was about programming pervasive computing devices, what you would call IoT today, yes. And then I was there for a few years, and then went back to the industry, and was there for a few years. And then I went back to university. And then I did my research in how to teach computer science and how people learn. So that was also interesting. But then I wanted to stop again because then I was full-time at university and I also did some consulting in the IT industry. So I thought I would go back to the industry. Aino Corry: And then I thought, Naah, I want to do something else. I want to be my own boss, I don't want to work that much anymore. I had three children at the time. So I decided to be an independent IT consultant, thinking that then I would work less, that was a huge mistake. I, I like having my own company, but I wouldn't say that I work less because if you have a job and you have a boss, you can tell your boss ‘Oh, it's too much. I don't want to do that much. And please take some of the tasks away from me.' But when you're your own boss, and you're a time optimist, like I can be, you think ‘I can do that. And I can do that.' And especially now with COVID, it's even worse because at least prior to this, I had to calculate time in to get from one meeting to another, you know, from one client to another from one country to another. But now I can actually I can work with clients in four different countries in a day. And I've actually, one week I spoke at six different conferences in one week. So normally I would only be at one conference. So it's actually made me a little bit confused and looking very much forward to actually spending time on trains and planes and cars again, Ula Ojiaku: To have the downtime… Aino Corry:  Yes, I thought I'd never miss that, but I do, so I guess I guess that's my career. Ula Ojiaku:  Great. Now, just a little bit more about your research you did on teaching, on how to teach computer science. Now I would expect there would be an intersection of you know, disciplines; it wouldn't just be computer science itself. Was there an element of maybe psychology (of), you know, how people learn and all that? Aino Corry: Yeah, it was a lot of that it was about, well, the psychological aspects of how people react to different, being in different situations, and being spoken to in different ways. And there was something that I don't think maybe you call it neurology but thinking about how to model the brain in order to make it remember what you're saying. And just something like what does it actually mean to learn something? And in Danish, the word for teaching and learning is the same word, but in English teaching and learning are two different words. And that's actually a subtle difference, which is a big difference, which makes it maybe even harder for me as a Dane to start thinking about this because you think about it as the same process. Aino Corry: But it's two very different processes. And one of the biggest things that I learned when I started doing research and teaching, and that was after having taught for 16 years or something like that, the thing that I learned was that I was so immensely focused on how to condense this book into presentations and assignments so that the students could listen to me and do the assignments. I didn't think enough about the relation between the student and the material. So I was thinking more about the relation between me and the material, and me and the student. So the really important thing is that, when you have any sort of conversation with people, it's a student, or it's a presentation that you're doing, what you want to do is that you want to change their brains really, right. But you can't see the change in the brains. So you need to figure out how can I, how can I assess that they've changed the brain? So, the first thing you have to do is think about what is it actually that you want them to be able to do differently? Do you want them to say something else? Do you want them to be able to program, to design, to facilitate, what is it that you want them to do? Because then you can set up? What is the assessment? How do you assess what they can do? Do they actually have to look at the design at an oral exam? Do they have to process some words in a written exam? What is it that you want them to do? And then when you know what you want them to do to assess it, then you can figure out what is it that you want them to do while training do you want them to do the same when you're training them, that they have to do in the assessment. Aino Corry: So that the exam is actually what they have been doing for the past hour, month, year, instead of examining something completely different than what they have been doing. And then when you know all that, then you start thinking about okay, so what material do I need for them to read? And that's, that's actually the last thing. And prior to this, I would take a book and I would think, this is the thing that I want to put in their brains. And then at the exam, I would ask them, do you understand that? Can you explain that, but maybe they never explained it during the course, maybe they just did exercises or something like that. So that was one of the most surprising things is I guess, maybe it's neurology, maybe it's psychology, it's definitely different. It's lending, from different fields. And, and you can say that the computer science part of it is actually the least part. But the interesting part about computer science and teaching computer science or natural sciences is that it's mostly not so much about discussing things. It's more about being able to understand things and relate things and apply things. Now, I guess well, you can say that all issues, all subjects are like that. But with the natural sciences, it's much more about understanding the world, changing the world. So yeah, I think it's very interesting, but also trying to explain difficult subjects to people. How do you actually do that? Ula Ojiaku: So you've already mentioned that you, you know, started your business because you wanted to be an independent, and then you realized, oh, well, there are other things because as a business owner, you probably would do all the other admin tasks that someone else would have in person. Yeah. Now, am I right? In the understanding, you still run, you know, your business, which is the meta developer, right? Do you have employees right now? Aino Corry: No, I don't, and I don't want to. And I've had a lot of people asking me over the years if I want to employ somebody and I, I did try once for just a small gig that I needed a helping hand and I employed that person and that person was not a problem, but all the extra paperwork, with taxes and insurances, and what do I know. So if I'm working with people, now they have their own company, and then they can send me an invoice and then I can pay them like that because I really want to be independent and five, no six years ago, my family and I, we moved to Cambridge in the UK for a year. And it was so easy for me, I could just do it because even though I had to really work a lot less because I didn't have my network in England and I had three kids who had to move to a different country so I had to focus on them. I could just do it, I could just work less and not make any money or almost no money. Because I didn't, I wasn't responsible to anybody, I was only responsible to myself. That gives me the freedom that I want to have. And during COVID I lost everything in my book. My calendar just was empty. Wow. And I didn't know how to continue with the company. But I only had to worry about myself. I didn't have to worry about anybody that I employed. So that was nice. Ula Ojiaku: Yes, I completely agree. I mean, it would be a lot of responsibility, having other people's livelihood as well as yours to think about that. Yeah,  Aino Corry: Especially. I mean, this is such a fluid thing. It's difficult to promise anything. Ula Ojiaku: Now, but hopefully, with the, you know, lockdown restrictions on I mean, unfortunately, we're still not out, you know of the red and unfortunately, many lives have been lost, and many people have been affected but it seems like there is light at the end of the tunnel with the (covid) vaccination (roll-out) and all that. So would you say your calendar is filling up again? Aino Corry: Yes, it actually became overfilled, yeah during COVID. Because my book came out. So I had hoped that when my book came out, I would travel everywhere in the world and sign my books. Unfortunately, that couldn't happen because of COVID. But that's the least of the things that could happen to people during COVID. I've been very lucky. But my book came up... Ula Ojiaku: Retrospectives Antipatterns… Aino Corry: Yes. and, and that meant that there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to me about retrospectives, which was why I wrote the book. So that was great. So I don't know if it had filled up as easily without the book, but it definitely helped, I think. But I'm looking so much forward to getting out and speaking at conferences again. I taught at the university yesterday, and I will again tomorrow. And that was in real life. It was so nice, people were laughing and we were clapping. And we were like doing icebreaker exercises where we were standing up and moving towards each other. And it was really nice. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah, I mean, nothing can ever replace that, you know, face-to-face in-person interaction. Whilst we're grateful for technology, you know, for bridging the gap, you know, but once in a while, it's definitely important. Yeah. Great. Now, so since you've shown us your book, Retrospectives Antipatterns. And you've talked about it briefly, why don't we delve into that a bit. And for the audience who are listening either (via) audio or video only, there will be the links to the, you know, to the book, and other resources that we touch on in the show notes. So what you said people were, you know, asking you lots of questions about retrospectives, and asking for advice, which was one of the motivations for writing the book. Could you tell us the story behind that? Aino Corry: I love to tell the story behind the book. Thank you for asking, Ula. So I started facilitating Retrospectives because Linda Rising gave me a book by Norman Kerth called Project Retrospectives. And then I started facilitating them. And then Diana Larsen and Esther Derby wrote a book about Agile Retrospectives - Making Good Teams Great, which condensed all the retrospective activities into smaller bite-sized ones that you can use after each sprint. And I facilitated retrospectives at in the time I worked for a company called Trifle, inside Trifle with the customers. When I went back to university, I facilitated retrospectives there. And I just really, really liked it. I even facilitated retrospectives with my family and myself, and everybody basically who couldn't get away. And I, I got a lot of experience. And then once I was at a conference that I'd been part of organizing the conference and inviting speakers and what I do at these conferences is that if a speaker gets sick, or can't be there, then I fill in with a presentation. So they came to me and asked me is ‘Could you fill in with a presentation? Just 20 minutes?' ‘Okay, I said, When do you want it?' And they said ‘In 20 minutes, and we would want it to be a new talk, could you do that?' I was like, how can I? How can I prepare a new talk in 20 minutes for a 20-minute talk? And then I thought the only thing that I really, really know about that I can talk about for lengths, are all the mistakes that I'm continuously making when facilitating retrospectives So I thought this is definitely something I can talk about. So I just, I just, I think I drew some pictures, or I found some pictures online. And then I just spoke out from those I, I spoke about three different things that I called Antipatterns for Retrospectives, things that often go wrong for me and how to solve it. So not just explaining the problems, but also how to get out of the problem situation. And they really liked it. And then I started giving that talk. And I extended it to 45 minutes to an hour, I extended it to a day. And people kept asking me, ‘Where can we read more about this?' And I said you can't really because it's, it's in my head. And then somebody said ‘Maybe we you should write a book.' And so I thought I'm not going to write a book, I already did my Ph.D. dissertation, and I'm not doing that again. Not the best part of it for me. But then I started just writing, you know, first, it was just a few Word documents that I shared with people in my retrospective network. And they gave me feedback on that. And then I started a Leanpub book. And it turned out people wanted to buy the Leanpub book. So I thought, well, maybe I should add some more chapters. And then I thought it would be interesting to see if there's any publishers who would like to publish it. Aino Corry: And luckily, I have a very good network in IT, so I asked a lot of people who are already authors and, and Martin Fowler introduced me to somebody from Pearson, Greg Dench, and he, he read my book, the PDF that I sent from Leanpub, and he said that they thought they'd like to publish it. And there was a lot of back and forth and back and forth. And could you change the title? Because Antipatterns sounds so depressing and negative? And I said, but it is an Antipatterns, so I cannot. And then those things about I want this octopus, this big octopus? Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes. Aino Corry: Well, it looks a little bit like a children's book, are you sure you want it to look like a children's book and I said actually, I'm, I'm really like a child myself. So I want it to be me. And then I said, and it has to be printed in color. Because I want all these Antipatterns to have not just a name, but also a picture. Because with Antipatterns, what you do is that you create an awareness, so I described, this is the context you're in, this is what normally happens, but that's the Antipattern solution. That's actually another good solution that gives you these drawbacks. But then you have the refactored solution, which gives you these benefits. And I want the patterns as well as Antipatterns, it sort of enables you to have a discussion and a higher level of extraction. So you can say, for instance, with patterns, you can say, then I use the observed or I implemented composite, and then you don't have to explain all the nitty gritty details. And it's the same with these Antipatterns. So instead of saying, ‘Well, we tried to vote, but then some people held up their vote, and I allowed them to do so. But maybe I could have done it differently', you can just say, well, then I ended in political votes. And there's also the name and then the picture because for some people, the name is easy to remember, but for other people, the picture. Ula Ojiaku: The pictures, yes. Aino Corry: I definitely am very visual. So I, I really remember pictures like that. And graphs, it really helps me understand I love UML, and when I work with architecture, it's very important for me to be able to draw these things. So that's how the book came about. And there were other publishers who didn't want it because they thought it was not technical enough or they didn't like the Antipatterns in the title or they thought it was too negative, but Pearson wanted it, so that's great. I'm very grateful for that. Ula Ojiaku: That's fantastic. Again, we'll have the link to the book in the show notes. And I mean, so I do identify with, you know, the things you said or where you kind of held your ground and in terms of how the book was meant to look for pictures. And if it's playful, it's easier to absorb. There is the saying in English, you know, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Definitely. And in that way, you're kind of trying to cater for different people with different learning styles, because there are some of us who can read you know, but pictures kind of makes it, breaks it up and kind of, you know, conveys the message even more effectively in some instances. On that note though, are you, do you already have an audio version of it? Or do you think it would bode well as an audio version? Aino Corry: Yeah, that's a bit embarrassing, Ula, because I have narrated, I think five of the chapters. But then I stopped, but I will narrate it. I am doing it and it will happen, hopefully, yeah, but it turns out it's much more difficult to make an audiobook than you think I want to narrate it myself. I agree. Have you tried it? Ula Ojiaku: Well, no, just with, you know, starting the podcast and you know, kind of speaking, there is a whole lot to it. So I can imagine trying to bring a book to life, you know, kind of enunciating, and there'll be some places you need to emphasize. That's why I've never done it yet. But I can imagine. Aino Corry: Yeah, well, I could have hired an actor to do it, but I wanted it to be me, because it's my experience. It's, it's my voice that should be in this book. And then so I'm Danish and English is my second language. I normally think, Okay, I'm pretty good at English, I can speak fluent English, people understand what I'm saying I can express myself and the book is written in English. But then when you start recording it, and you'll listen to it afterwards, you make so many mistakes, or at least I do. So I have to repeat that again. So it just takes a lot longer than I thought, but it will be there, it's my plan. Ula Ojiaku: We'll be looking out for it, definitely, yeah. Okay, so, in your view, what are Retrospectives, and why are they important? Aino Corry: Well Retrospectives is a way for a team to set time aside to reflect on where they are, inspect, you'd say, and learn from, that, appreciate what happened, and see how can we improve going forward, the way that we communicate, the way that we work, the way that we program or design, or whatever we do. It's simply taking time aside to appreciate and inspect and then adapt to the situation. In a sense, it's the core of Agile, right, inspecting and adapting. And for a team to have regular Retrospectives, I think it's so important. Sometimes they'll think we don't have anything to talk about, we don't have any problems. But there's always something that can be improved, even if it's a small thing. And having those regular Retrospectives helps you remember, to continue to improve in all different aspects, but also, I think Retrospectives is a way to gain trust between team members, it's not the only thing you need to gain trust, but that sharing thing that showing, “Okay, that didn't go very well”, or “I need to learn this”, or “I got stuck with this”. But also, “I was really happy about this”, ”this made me so energetic, and really optimistic about these things”. It helps people understand each other as human beings and as sort of parts of the machinery or parts of the system, that's the team or even the organization. So I think it's important in all aspects. And for everybody. Ula Ojiaku: It's interesting, your definition of what a retrospective is, and I'd never really thought about it as a way for team members to, you know, build trust with themselves, so thanks for mentioning it, that really stood out for me, do you have any examples in your experience where, you know, this happened where there was maybe little or no trust and, you know, subsequently through the Retrospectives the team, started having more trust towards themselves? Aino Corry: I would like to say yes, but I have to say that when I realized in the retrospective that there's not enough trust, it is something that you have to work with also between the Retrospectives in a sense if there is not enough trust to share anything, then, then the retrospective will not be trust-building in itself, but it can help you reveal that there is not enough trust, and then you can start working with it, and to me trust is sort of the equation between relationships and that you can rely on people that you rely on people and you have a relationship. So if you have a relationship, if you know a little bit about each other as human beings, it makes it easy for you to trust people. And also if you can rely on other people, for instance, if they say, ‘Oh, I'll do this', then they'll do it. Or they'll say they can't do it, that's part of the trust as well. And if you understand, if you learn at the retrospective that there isn't enough trust, the retrospective can become a waste of time. Aino Corry: Because if they don't want to share the things that are really difficult, then you will just talk about the meal in the canteen, or whether we should have a meeting that's two hours long, or one hour long, or something like that, which is not really changing anything. It's usually things about how to give feedback or whether the code reviews can be done in this way or the other and whether we need to learn something more. So, but you can definitely be aware that there's trust issues that you can work on outside the retrospective, but then I think another important thing is that if they have already sufficient trust to be able to share things, then I've heard from a lot of people that it can, it can feel almost like team therapy to have a retrospective because they don't have to think about it, they can sort of relax and let the facilitator carry the conversation forward sometimes. And then if it can help them say, now, we talk about this, Now perhaps we've talked enough about this, now we should talk about this or could you see this from the other side, which is something that I sometimes do as well. So it can be a little bit conflict handling as well to be a facilitator to say what did you hear him say right now? Or can you imagine what his day was like yesterday or something like that? So it can be therapeutic if you want to, but that depends on the facilitator. You can also have a retrospective facilitator, which is perfectly fine, but only wants to talk about how we can improve the way that we actually design things, the architecture we make, the meetings we have, it can still be helpful, doesn't have to be therapy, but it can. Ula Ojiaku: Yeah. In running the retrospectives I would assume, I would imagine, there would be some sort of advanced preparation from a facilitative perspective. Now, would you when you get asked to do this by you know, other organizations and teams? Do you normally have a point person and you'd get the brief in terms of what they're trying to achieve from the point person, and that would set the agenda? So have you always found yourself sticking to the agenda? Or have you ever had to kind of flex depending on what you sense the team needs? Aino Corry: Yeah, I've definitely had to change my agenda. So if I get invited to facilitate a retrospective, I talk to the one who sponsors me to ask them why, why have you reached out? Do you already have Retrospectives? If you have Retrospectives, why do you need an external facilitator? What normally works for you in retrospective? What doesn't work? Is there any conflict? I should know about it? Is there anybody who's really quiet? Anybody who's really a loudmouth? Is there anything that can help me plan this retrospective in the right way? Then sometimes they say, oh, we'd really, really like this retrospective to focus on how they can learn as a team, or we'd really like this to focus on their communication with other teams. And then in some, sometimes I'll say, okay, so, so we'll say that's the theme for the retrospective. And then I'll let people know that that's a theme for the retrospective. But other times, if it's a new group, then I'll probably encourage that sponsor to allow me to make some, just a generic retrospective. So for a new group who has to work together, maybe he or she will allow me to create a futurespective for them, which is the kind of retrospective where you imagine that you're in the future, looking back at what happened. And then they say, okay, then we, then somebody got fired, or this didn't work, or the users hated it. Aino Corry: And the way that I have this futurespective, with the new team is that then I get to understand and they get to understand about each other. What do they hope and what do they feel will happen in this project, and then we can have action points, which will allow them to get the things that they hope and avoid the things that they fear. So sometimes I'll let the sponsor know, well, actually, we should do it a little bit different way. And sometimes I'll say, that's fine, we'll focus on that. But it is often so that you need to have an extra agenda when you prepare for a retrospective, at least a little bit. Because sometimes you suddenly end up in a situation where you have somebody who's speaking all the time or somebody who's really quiet. And then all the plenary discussions that you decided on, you can't have those because plenary discussions are not very nice if you have like a big difference in how much people wants to speak. And then you have to divide them into smaller groups, or you have to change it in writing. Or you have to make round robins where everybody takes turns in saying something, so just as an example. But it could also be that you notice that all the things that they're talking about are problematic, turns out to be things that we think are sort of out of their hands, not really something they can do anything about. And then if you spend all the time discussing things that you can't change, then it's just like a session where you're just complaining about everything. And in those cases, I sometimes get out the soup exercise that I learned from Diana Larsen where you make the three circles, things the team can do, things the team can influence, and then you have the soup outside. And then I say well out of all these problems that you're complaining about, how many of these are things you can do something about, how many of these things you can influence, how many of these things are in the soup, and for the things in the soup, you might just have to accept that this is the world we live in, like Corona right now. Yeah, It's what it is. Ula Ojiaku: Amazing. So, so what would you say would be, from what you've observed, I'm sure you've had a spectrum of or a continuum of teams from what you'd consider high performing to maybe people… I mean, a team that's still up and coming. What would be your view of the characteristics of a high-performing team? Aino Corry: Yeah, that's a good question. In my experience, it's not so much the individual's skill set that makes a high-performing team, an individual with the highest skill set can do a lot on its own. But if we talk about a high-performing team, it's about a team that can communicate, it's about a team where you feel there's psychological safety to say when you're stuck, or when you need help. Because if you're only working on what you want, first and foremost, and only helping other people, if you really have to, then it's not really high performing, and things will clot up and it'll be slow. One of the symptoms that I see in teams that are high-performing is that they're laughing together. So I evaluate sometimes teams based on how much they laugh, and not how much they laugh over each other, but how much they laugh together. And how, yeah, I think, I think it's a good litmus test. Because if they laugh together, then it makes them happier for each other, because the laughter starts, you know, all the happiness hormones in your brain and sensing around your body. So if you laugh together with somebody, you like them a bit more. And if you like them a bit more, you might trust them a bit more. And if you trust them a bit more, you might reach out and ask for help. Or you might offer help, when you see that somebody needs it. And if you are in an environment where you will you think that you can work freely, and you can speak freely, and you feel nice, then you're much more efficient together with other people. So that's what I see in high-performing teams. Ula Ojiaku: I mean, everything you've said because I was going to ask you to define for the benefit of the audience who might not be familiar with the term what psychological safety is? So would you say, you know, it's pretty much what you've broken down, you know, how much they laugh together, how safe they feel in asking for help, and, you know, yeah, being able to work together. Aino Corry: Yeah, I think that Gitte Klitgaard has, has taught me one of the most important things about psychological safety. And that is that it's actually not about being comfortable all the time, but it's about feeling comfortable about being uncomfortable. So even if you're saying something, which doesn't feel nice, you should still feel comfortable about it. And I think that's an interesting difference. So it's not just about making everybody feel good all the time and not having problems and only laughing and talking about positive things. That's not psychological safety. It's being okay to say I have a down day, or it's being okay to say that I don't understand what you're saying, or I feel negative, or I'm worried about this, or I don't think that this was done well enough, we could do it differently, that to me is psychological safety. Ula Ojiaku: Would you say that psychological safety, you know, having an environment that encourages the sense of psychological safety, is that only up to the team to foster? (If not) So who else would be involved, in your view? Aino Corry: I think that there's a culture in an organization and there can definitely be a culture of organizational safety and there can be a culture of non-psychological safety. And if, if the management is also showing that they're comfortable with saying uncomfortable things, I think that helps. If they're comfortable with saying, ‘Oh, we didn't do very well about that, or I made a mistake, or, if they're okay with telling people to do things differently, instead of making it really awkward or being very angry about it. That's, that's brilliant. And I remember one of the great managers, I had once that I made a huge mistake, that was really embarrassing. And when I noticed it, I felt so bad. I was beating myself up about it, but I had to tell my manager, and I had to come forward and say I messed up completely. And the way that he reacted was just wonderful. He said, ‘Well, we'll have to look into that. We'll have to figure out how we can change the process so that that doesn't happen again.' Because of course, I mean, I probably could have avoided that mistake if I thought about things in a different way. But what he said was that we should have a process where you know, that you should do this at this point in time, that should help you, support you. And I thought that was one of the things that created psychological safety for me because now I felt much safer about saying that I had a problem or made something wrong. Ula Ojiaku: In facilitating retrospectives, because you mentioned earlier that if there was anything you could talk about at length, you know, without needing preparation, it would be about the mistakes you've made in facilitating retrospectives. And hence, maybe they could also be some of you know, lead to some of the Antipatterns, could you share some of these Retrospective Antipatterns that you've observed? Aino Corry: So one of the Retrospective Antipatterns that I see most often or that I ran into most often myself is the one that I called Prime Directive Ignorance. So the Prime Directive is what Norman Kerth wrote about retrospectives. There was a longer text that states ‘everybody did the best they could at all times, and remember that before you enter a retrospective', but the problem is that, at least in some of the organizations that I've worked in with some of the people that have worked, they thought it was a bit ridiculous to expect that everybody did the best they could all the time. And to really believe that they couldn't have done any better, because they knew that somebody was slacking. They knew that somebody was being lazy. They also knew that they themselves didn't do the best they could. Aino Corry: So how could they really, genuinely believe that? So sometimes I've had retrospectives where I didn't, I didn't state that, I didn't say it out loud, I didn't state in an email or the invitation, I didn't say remember, this retrospective is not about finding a scapegoat or naming and blaming, it's about figuring out how we as a system of people can move on better together. And then I've had some awful retrospectives where some people had been made scapegoats, and they got really sad, and some of them left the retrospectives because they didn't feel safe. And then, and I think some of them may never have entered a retrospective again because it really ruined it for them because in their head now, the retrospective is a free for all, just sending arrows towards somebody, some poor person and shaming them and blaming them. So I think that the Prime Directive Ignorance Antipattern is one of the most important ones and the refactored solution, obviously, in the Prime Directive Ignorance is not to ignore the prime directive. So remember to bring it, put it on the poster in the wall, say it out loud, write it in the email, you can do it with your own words, it doesn't have to be in Kerth's words, if you like your own words better. But just make sure that people try to do that. Because the thing that Norman Kerth wanted to achieve with this was that people had the mindset of everybody did the best they could. But it's difficult to have that mindset. We're probably all brought up with our parents asking who left the milk out on the morning table? Who broke that vase, who started that fight, right? We're always trying to find a scapegoat and punish them. Although it's not very constructive, not even with children, and not even with grownups either to find that, it's, it's better to figure out how can they play? And where can they play so that they don't break the vase? How can we remind people to put milk into the refrigerator? Instead of saying you're stupid, you're forgetful, you're lazy, right. But I also appreciate that it might be a bit naive, that you might think, okay, but they could have just done a little better. But helping them out with processes, I think it's a good idea. Ula Ojiaku: With reference to the Prime Directive, you know, one of my mentors said something to me that also stuck which is that, you know, most people come to work wanting to do their best job, but sometimes it's the system that restricts them. So if we, like you said, you know, kind of move away from trying to find a scapegoat or someone to point the finger at, you know, to blame for what's going wrong, can we look at how we can shape the system in such a way that those things, you know, it would be hard to fall into those mistakes because the system is already shaped in a way that would help them focus on the right behaviours and practices and not fall into the wrong undesired ones? Yeah. Amazing. Any other Antipatterns you'd like to share? Aino Corry: Yeah, I think that the other one I'd like to share is one that I am becoming more and more aware of how important it is with so many people starting to facilitate retrospectives, because so many people are understanding how powerful it is. A lot of people who maybe aren't, let's say fully dressed, not very experienced in facilitating retrospectives are being thrown into facilitating retrospectives, by people thinking that it's easy. And it's not easy. It's really, really hard. It's hard to do it right. It's easy to understand, but it's difficult to do, it's like that one minute to learn, a lifetime to master. And a lot of people become disillusioned. So one of my retrospective anti-patterns is called the disillusioned facilitator. Because a lot of people are thrown into this role of oh, you can start facilitating retrospectives next week. And then they, maybe they hear something in a podcast like this, oh, this is an activity, you should definitely try it, or they read it online, and then they do it. But then probably they haven't done it before. They're doing it in real life the first time and they might be a bit, not really sure about it, not really having the heart in it. And people can feel that right away. And then they won't put their heart into it either, and then it will fall to the ground, you won't get what you expect to get out of it. So, I always encourage people when they start facilitating to try doing it in a sandbox, first, try out the activities with somebody that you trust and know, maybe you have some other people who want to learn how to facilitate retrospectives, and then you can try these activities out with them. Because explaining these activities can be difficult, coming up with examples that make people understand what they should do can be difficult. But also, really understanding what is the expected outcome, as we talked about right in the beginning Ula, the learning goals, what is it actually that you want to achieve? You're not doing the activity to do the activity, you're doing the activity to achieve something, to figure out what it is you want to achieve makes it easier to perform the right way. So with the disillusioned facilitator what I'm trying to say is, don't worry, you're doing your best the prime directive holds for you as well. Try it out with people, start with things that you're absolutely sure of, take boring activities for a start if you understand how to explain them. And if you understand what the expected outcome is. And we remember to debrief after the exercises to make sure that the people in the retrospective understand what they just got out of it. Because sometimes if you go just from one activity to the other, maybe they're wondering, why did we do that? Why did we spend half an hour on that? They don't understand that actually, what we got out of it was sharing this experience, or perhaps seeing the weight, how many people thought this or something like that? Ula Ojiaku Yeah, never assume, I guess is the cardinal rule there, don't assume, explain why you're doing what you're doing. You're carrying them along on a journey. And you have to (do so) like a good tour guide. This is what I, I tell the teams I coach or some of the coaches that I'm coaching: you're a tour guide, so you have to, you know you're saying ‘this is the destination we're going (to)' and as we get to some notable, you know, attraction points, call it out to them, because you can't assume that everyone is following. Aino Corry No, no Ula Ojiaku Amazing. Now what books, in addition to yours, can someone who wants to learn more about retrospectives and activities, ideas for activities to run during retrospectives? What books would you recommend to them? Aino Corry Well, the interesting thing about retrospectives is that there's a lot of different books that apply. Like when we talked about teaching computer science, it's not just computer science. It's also psychology, ethnography, neurology, things like that. And when you want to become a good retrospective facilitator, you also have to look at other things. You have to look at books about body language. A book that I keep returning to is the book Coaching Agile Teams (by) Lyssa Adkins. It's not necessarily about retrospectives, there is a little bit about that in there, but Coaching Agile Teams is about all the different ways of thinking about helping people coming from this place to this place. And that's actually what retrospectives is about. But also Jutta Eckstein has written the book Retrospectives for Organizational Change. And I think that's important as well to think about retrospectives in a different setting because then you might see that okay, so these retrospectives that you have been asked to do every sprint for a team, maybe that's actually something you can use for the whole organization to help a change or something like that. So I think sort of not just talking about the retrospective books, but other books in general about coaching or communication are very important. Ula Ojiaku: Fantastic. So are you on social media? And how can the audience who would want to get in touch with you do so? Aino Corry: Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I think Aino Corry, just that link, and I'm on Twitter with my name, @apaipi. I'm also on Instagram, but I never use it. So that's the best place to reach me. And it's really easy to Google me because as with you, we probably have very unique names. Ula Ojiaku: Yes, yes, definitely. Aino Corry: And I have to say, Ula, thank you for that thing from the coaching that you said about pointing out the different parts of the landscape in the journey that people might not have noticed. I think that's a very, very good analogy that I'll use in my retrospective teaching as well. Ula Ojiaku: You're very welcome for that. Thank you for that. Thank you. You're welcome. Any final words before we just wrap this whole thing up? Aino Corry: Yeah, make sure you have something that you enjoy every day in your life. Ula Ojiaku: Amazing. Thanks again Aino.

In this episode of #AgileWay Podcast I have a conversation with Esther Derby, one of the most influential voices within the agile communities when it comes to developing organizations, coaching teams, and transforming management. Esther is an author of several books, the latest is called 7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results. Today we are going to talk about how organizations change. This podcast is sponsored by “Emergence” Journal of Business Agility. Four times a year, it brings together a curated selection of exclusive stories by great thinkers and practitioners from around the globe. Subscribe for Emergence Journal and get a 10% discount using "agileprague" promo code.

We are launching a new video series about Agile Coaching. Every week, Ryan Ripley, Todd Miller, and guest agile coaches will discuss how to effectively work with teams and coach them to greater levels of success. Today's Topic: Agile Coaching and Middle Management with Esther Derby Let us know what you think about this episode in the comments. Leave your questions and don't forget to smash that LIKE and SUBSCRIBE button. Buy Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems - https://amzn.to/3fMpH5a Join Ryan and Todd in a Professional Scrum Master course: https://www.scrum.org/agile-humans And make sure you subscribe to the channel! DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide, I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge for you! Thank you for supporting the channel so we can continue to provide you with free content each week! FTC DISCLAIMER: This video is not sponsored by anyone. Sharing Scrum knowledge to help you grow as a Scrum Practitioner and to solve complex problems. #scrum #agile #scrummasterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are launching a new video series about Agile Coaching. Every week, Ryan Ripley, Todd Miller, and guest agile coaches will discuss how to effectively work with teams and coach them to greater levels of success. Today's Topic: Why it is So Hard to Change with Esther Derby Let us know what you think about this episode in the comments. Leave your questions and don't forget to smash that LIKE and SUBSCRIBE button. Buy Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems - https://amzn.to/3fMpH5a Join Ryan and Todd in a Professional Scrum Master course: https://www.scrum.org/agile-humans And make sure you subscribe to the channel! DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide, I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge for you! Thank you for supporting the channel so we can continue to provide you with free content each week! FTC DISCLAIMER: This video is not sponsored by anyone. Sharing Scrum knowledge to help you grow as a Scrum Practitioner and to solve complex problems. #scrum #agile #scrummasterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are your teams repeating the same dysfunctional behaviour patterns? Learn how to spot this and address it.

Esther Derby is a prominent voice in the Agile community and author of the defacto book on Agile Retrospectives by the same name. Check out the full show notes at TheAgileWire.com YouTube: https://youtu.be/XeEoW4VNl9k Twitter: @AgileWire

In this episode you can hear Esther Derby and Andrei talk about how a leader can be anyone regardless of title and appointment, how sometimes big actions cause big disturbances and how small micro changes can have big macro results. Show notes on https://techieleadership.com/show44

As an Organizational Dynamics Expert, Consultant, and Author, Esther Derby talks about the fact that organizations should not strive to become well-oiled machines and that in order to be listened to, you must listen to others. Every few weeks as part of The Heartbeat, I ask one question to a founder, CEO, or business owner… Read the full article

(@donaldegray)  joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss Wardley Maps, decision making at the leadership level, and how to visualize changes in your organization.Don Grayand Mike Coon (@mikeonitstuff) [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Don Gray[/featured-image]  is a friend and mentor to me and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don  with more than 30 years in IT, Mike is interested in sharing the lessons he’s learned in Business, Technology, and Life at his website MikeOnItStuff. Through observation, questioning, coaching and consultation,he helps executives, managers, and teams identify their values, articulate their vision, set their strategy and incorporate continuous learning and improvement into their daily activities.Mike Doing a map of the things a company or director are doing – even a crappy whiteboard map showing only the biggest rocks – really adds clarity to decision making and approach to improvement. — Mike Coon (@mikeonitstuff) July 20, 2018 [callout] Ryan Ripley is teaming up with Professional Scrum Trainer, Todd Miller to teach the Advanced Scrum Master (PSM-II) course this year. Whether you are a CSM or a PSM, this Advanced Scrum Master Course is the next step on the Scrum master journey, created and present by trainers from scrum.org – The Home of Scrum. Indianapolis, IN on October 3-4 Denver, CO on October 17-18 Washington D.C. on December 6-7 Tampa, FL on December 11-12 [/callout] In this episode you'll discover: What are Wardley Maps and how can you use them in your work Methods to visualize the progression of a product in a complex world How to use these methods to help guide management level decision making Links from the show: YouTube video – Wardley Maps Part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp_rOUnufog YouTube video – Wardley Maps Part 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLpI8PjbbYQ How to Support the Show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute that were discussed during this episode: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Techwell events – use the code AGILEDEV when you sign up for Agile Dev East in Orlando, FL November 5th – 10th. Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon [callout]This pocket guide is the one book to read for everyone who wants to learn about Scrum. The book covers all roles, rules and the main principles underpinning Scrum, and is based on the Scrum Guide Edition 2013. A broader context to this fundamental description of Scrum is given by describing the past and the future of Scrum. The author, Gunther Verheyen, has created a concise, yet complete and passionate reference about Scrum. The book demonstrates his core view that Scrum is about a journey, a journey of discovery and fun. He designed the book to be a helpful guide on that journey. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment 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. The post AFH 100: Using Wardley Maps to Drive Improvement appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(@donaldegray) Barry Tandy (@BarryTandy) and Amitai Schleier (@schmonz) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss mindsets, frameworks, manifestos, and how to humanize the world of work.Don Gray [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Don Gray[/featured-image]  is a friend and mentor to me and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don Barry is an agile coach on a journey filled with meaningful relationships and experiences… some of them life changing, all of them making a difference. He is a coach at Agile42 and prides himself on being able to build and maintain successful long-term relationships and through those relationships being able to follow a passion of working closely with people systems and the dynamics that make up those systems. As a Scrum Master, he is focused on solving many different problems that his teams encounter. 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. [callout] Ryan Ripley is teaming up with Professional Scrum Trainer, Todd Miller to teach the PSM-II this year. Whether you are a CSM or a PSM-I, this Advanced Scrum Master Course is the next step on the Scrum master journey, created and present by trainers from scrum.org – The Home of Scrum. Indianapolis, IN on October 3-4 Denver, CO on October 17-18 Johannesburg, South Africa on November 15-16 Washington D.C. on December 6-7 Tampa, FL on December 11-12 [/callout] In this episode you'll discover: Combining the thinking and doing of agile It’s the age of the knowledge worker…what now? The importance of meeting people where they are at and helping them move forward Links from the show: Slack by Tom Demarco – https://amzn.to/2PK0nxM Manifesto of Agile Software Development – http://agilemanifesto.org/ Christopher Avery’s Responsibility Process – https://ryanripley.com/leadershipgift 5 things I learned teaching Scrum to Millennials by Steve Porter – https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/5-things-learned-teaching-millennials How to Support the Show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute that were discussed during this episode: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Techwell events – use the code AGILEDEV when you sign up for Agile Dev East in Orlando, FL November 5th – 10th. Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon [callout]This pocket guide is the one book to read for everyone who wants to learn about Scrum. The book covers all roles, rules and the main principles underpinning Scrum, and is based on the Scrum Guide Edition 2013. A broader context to this fundamental description of Scrum is given by describing the past and the future of Scrum. The author, Gunther Verheyen, has created a concise, yet complete and passionate reference about Scrum. The book demonstrates his core view that Scrum is about a journey, a journey of discovery and fun. He designed the book to be a helpful guide on that journey. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment 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. The post AFH 098: Humanizing the World of Work appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(@estherderby) and(@agilefaye) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss an agile mindset and learning in the workplace.Esther Derby Faye Thompson [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Esther Derby on Learning[/featured-image] In this episode you'll discover: Why learning is difficult in the workplace How management and team members can support learning When agile coaches can model learning for maximum impact Sometimes we just have to say, “I don’t know, let’s try an experiment.” Links from the show: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schultz – https://amzn.to/2KL5omE Mindset by Carol Dweck – https://amzn.to/2MHoafl Mindset Ted Talk – https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve Linda Rising Keynote – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdNo7meJH7Y How to support the show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute to the show: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon Book of the Week: [callout]After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Related Episode: 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. Help promote the show on iTunes: 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! The post AFH 096: An Agile Mindset of Learning and Growth appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(@estherderby)(@donaldegray), and Faye Thompson (@agilefaye) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss their upcoming workshop Coaching Beyond the Team in Columbus, Ohio April 3rd – 5th, 2018.Esther Derby  Don Gray  [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Esther Derby and Don Gray – Coaching Beyond the Team[/featured-image] Esther is an expert in organizational dynamics and a leading thinker in bringing agility to organizations, management, and teams. She co-authored “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” and “Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management“. Esther is sought after trainer and speaker. is a friend and mentor to me and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don Faye has more than eighteen years of project delivery experience and is currently a senior agile consultant with CareWorks Tech. Focusing on agile methodologies and continuous improvement, she has had a positive impact in the financial services, healthcare, advertising, and automotive industries. Faye is passionate about using innovative solutions to drive business value and helps work groups transform into highly engaged and energized teams. In this episode you'll discover: How the Coaching Beyond the Team workshop can improve your agile practices Why context is critical to understanding the problem you’re trying to solve Which models and practices to use depending on the situation Why local problems are often systemic of larger organizational issues Links from the show: Coaching Beyond the Team Workshop – Columbus, OH – April 3rd – 5th Use the code – HUMANS – for $100 off the workshop price! How to support the show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute to the show: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon Book of the Week: [callout]In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Related Episode: 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. Help promote the show on iTunes: 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 audiobooks. I have three to recommend: Agile and Lean Program Management by Johanna Rothman The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Rolling Rocks Downhill: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Entertaining Way to Learn Agile and Lean by Clark Ching 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 among more than 180,000 audio programs. It's that easy. Go to Audibletrial.com/agile and get started today. Enjoy! The post AFH 088: Coaching Beyond the Team with Esther Derby and Don Gray appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jochen (Joe) Krebs speaks with Esther Derby about retrospectives, culture and organizational design. Esther is a veteran in the agile community and author of two books; Agile Retrospectives and Behind Closed Doors. They explored the importance of retrospectives in the agile process as well as potential pitfalls. If you are interested in retrospectives and how effective leaders spread great cultures, this episode is for you.

Don Gray (@donaldegray), Faye Thompson (@agilefaye), Joanne Perold (@joperold), Barry Tandy (@barrytandy), Regina Martins (@gianamar), Oz Chihwayi (@ozchihwayi), and Karl Fuchs (@karlofuchs) joined Ryan Ripley (@RyanRipley) to discuss agile coaching at Agile Africa 2017. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Agile Africa 2017[/featured-image]  is a friend and mentor to me, and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including: CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don Faye has more than eighteen years of project delivery experience and is currently a senior agile consultant with CareWorks Tech. Focusing on agile methodologies and continuous improvement, she has had a positive impact in the financial services, healthcare, advertising, and automotive industries. Faye is passionate about using innovative solutions to drive business value and helps work groups transform into highly engaged and energized teams. Jo is passionate about helping teams and people grow and improve. As a coach/trainer at Agile42, she loves helping teams and organizations implement and improve their agile practices. Jo has worked for more than a decade in the software industry in all areas of software development, and is interested in both people and process improvement and continuously learning and finding better ways to solve problems. She is a Certified Scrum Trainer and when not thinking about scrum she enjoys reading, good food, good wine and the occasional good whiskey. Barry is an agile coach on a journey filled with meaningful relationships and experiences… some of them life changing, all of them making a difference. He is a coach at Driven Alliance and prides himself on being able to build and maintain successful long-term relationships and through those relationships being able to follow a passion of working closely with people systems and the dynamics that make up those systems. As a Scrum Master, he is focused on solving many different problems that his teams encounter. Regina aims for continuous improvement in her personal and professional lives and her daily mantra is to be a better version of herself today than she was yesterday. She has been a Scrum Master since 2010 and more recently an Agile Coach with Agile 42. Regina gets energized when she is involved in building self-organizing teams and facilitating these teams to deliver value to business stakeholders. She is a Certified Scrum Professional, Certified Scrum Master, and is an avid Kanban practitioner. Oz has over 15 years of working in the delivery, testing, and maintenance of systems, He seeks to identify and solve the right problems while realizing value. Oz loves to share experiences and is an advocate for collaboration in teams and organizations. He currently works as a software tester in Johannesburg, South Africa with House of Test. A life learner and explorer, he believes thinking is his strongest skill in his bag of many and varied tricks. A regular long run keeps him grounded. Karl is an Electronic Engineer by trade with a natural ability to sense risk and a talent to find the most productive and optimal configuration for managing complex situations. He enjoys challenges and responsibility in a technical/technological stimulating environment that offers opportunities for providing total solutions, independent thought, and creative problem-solving. Karl brings lean and kanban to the forefront of his coaching as he seeks ways for his teams to find flow. In this episode you'll discover: The wonderful agile community in South Africa Links from the show: Agile Africa 2017 Conference Growing Agile Joburg Center for Software Engineering [callout]This innovative text is designed to improve thinking skills through the application of 30 critical thinking principles—Metathoughts. These specialized tools and techniques are useful for approaching all forms of study, inquiry, and problem solving. Levy applies Metathoughts to a diverse array of issues in contemporary clinical, social, and cross-cultural psychology: identifying strengths and weaknesses in various schools of thought, defining and explaining psychological phenomena, evaluating the accuracy and usefulness of research studies, reducing logical flaws and personal biases, and improving the search for creative solutions. The Metathoughts are brought to life with practical examples, clinical vignettes, illustrations, anecdotes, thought-provoking exercises, useful antidotes, and contemporary social problems and issues. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment 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! Techwell's Agile Dev East is *the* premier event covering the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AGILEDEV to receive up to $200 off any registration package over $800. Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You'll notice that I'm speaking there again this year. Attendees will have a chance to participate in my Aligning Toward Business Agility–360° of Freedom Leadership Summit presentation, along with my half day sessions on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions, as well as Rethinking Your Retrospectives. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando – November 5-10, for this great event. The post AFH 077: Agile Africa 2017 appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Esther Derby (@estherderby), Tim Ottinger (@tottinge), Allen Holub (@allenholub), and Zach Bonaker (@zachbonaker) joined Ryan Ripley (@RyanRipley) to discuss the past, present, and future of Scrum. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]A High Performing Scrum Team[/featured-image] Esther is an expert in organizational dynamics and a leading thinker in bringing agility to organizations, management, and teams. She co-authored “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” and “Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management“. Esther is sought after trainer and speaker. Tim is committed to understanding and improving the art of software from the angle of “thinking for a living.” He is a programmer, author, trainer and globally recognized coach with over 35 years of real software development experience. His style is practical and hands-on, steeped in both Agile and classic traditions. Tim rapidly communicates concepts and practices, and is recognized for his compassionate and patient approach to working with individuals and has a sincere interest in helping people reach their goals. 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. Zach is a self-described “benevolent trouble-maker” and seeks to foster servant leadership that cultivates growth, learning, and discovery. He is a systems thinker who shares his thoughts on his blog – Agile Out Loud. Zach is great at pushing agile thinking forward and has authored many popular posts on next generation agile theories and practices. In this episode you'll discover: Impediments to adopting Scrum Management’s role on agile and scrum teams Why scrum may not be the right framework for you Links from the show: The Scrum Guide [callout]Great management is difficult to see as it occurs. It’s possible to see the results of great management, but it’s not easy to see how managers achieve those results. Great management happens in one-on-one meetings and with other managers—all in private. It’s hard to learn management by example when you can’t see it. You can learn to be a better manager—even a great manager—with this guide. You’ll follow along as Sam, a manager just brought on board, learns the ropes and deals with his new team over the course of his first eight weeks on the job. From scheduling and managing resources to helping team members grow and prosper, you’ll be there as Sam makes it happen. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment 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! Techwell's Agile Dev East is *the* premier event covering the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AGILEDEV to receive up to $200 off any registration package over $800. Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You'll notice that I'm speaking there again this year. Attendees will have a chance to participate in my Aligning Toward Business Agility–360° of Freedom Leadership Summit presentation, along with my half day sessions on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions, as well as Rethinking Your Retrospectives. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando – November 5-10, for this great event. The post AFH 074: The Past, Present, and Future of Scrum appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marian Willeke (@mhwilleke) and Don Gray (@donaldegray) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss industrial learning, how small experiments can lead to big changes, and how to structure workshops for the greatest possible impact. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Marian Willeke Presenting on Learning[/featured-image] Marian is passionate about ensuring effective learning experiences are created to improve people’s lives. She seeks to foster a learning mindset whether working with academic programs or corporate teams. She has many great resources available at mhwilleke.com and truly believes that our potential for agility is limited only by our capacity for learning. is a friend and mentor to me, and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including: CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don In this episode you'll discover: How to foster a learning environment in your organization Key considerations for putting together a workshop Why being aware of bias is critical to adult learning Links from the show: Learning as a Habit template from Marian Marian’s Learning Development Framework Coaching Beyond the Team with Don Gray and Esther Derby AYE Library – Articles and Papers Galore! [callout]From Sharon L. Bowman, the author of the best-selling Ten-Minute Trainer, comes the dynamic new book, Training from the BACK of the Room! This innovative resource introduces 65 training strategies that are guaranteed to deliver outstanding training results no matter what the topic, group, or learning environment. Now, trainers can replace the traditional “Trainers talk; learners listen” paradigm with a radical new model for designing and delivering instruction: “When learners talk and teach, they learn.” Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]How do you help your teams learn? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.[/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 SQE Training, a Techwell Company. Software Testing Training Weeks offers four courses that can help agile team members understand what makes testing in an agile environment different: Agile Tester Certification: Learn what makes agile testing different while exploring common agile testing processes in an interactive workshop setting. For both novice and experienced software testers, developers expected to test within agile teams, and Test/QA managers. https://well.tc/womx Agile Test Automation—ICAgile: Explore the many ways automation supports agile testing activities with real-world, vendor-neutral examples, approaches, and tools. For agile team members involved in testing, analysis, and deployment. Product owners and managers will gain important insights into the benefits and trade-offs related to agile test automation. https://well.tc/womf Fundamentals of Agile Certification—ICAgile: Learn the fundamentals of agile development and how to effectively plan and develop software using agile principles. For developers, test/QA professionals, project managers, business analysts, and more. https://well.tc/womg Test Improvement for Agile: Get the tools and skills needed to plan for and conduct a structured assessment and improvement initiative. For managers, product owners, scrum masters, and more. https://well.tc/womd To learn more about SQE Training and these courses please visit https://well.tc/17AFHW and be sure to use the discount code 17AFHW for $250 any individual course or agile testing bundle purchase before March 15, 2017. Enjoy! The post AFH 051: Industrial Learning with Marian Willeke and Don Gray [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Denning (@stevedenning) and Don Gray (@donaldegray) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss the current state of agile and how an agile mindset trumps processes and tools. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Steve Denning Presenting about Leadership and Management[/featured-image] Steve is the author 8 books including The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management. He’s a former director of the World Bank. Steve is a contributor to Forbes Magazine, and leads The Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy. is a friend and mentor to me, and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including: CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don In this episode you'll discover: Agile as a mindset vs Agile as a set of tools and processes What the only valid purpose of an organization is… Why it’s important for every person in an organization to have line of sight to the customer Links from the show: Learn more about Steve at stevedenning.com Steve Denning’s resignation from the BOD of the Scrum Alliance HBR.org Embracing Agile What’s Missing in the Agile Manifesto:  Mindset [callout]Scale collaboration, not process. If you're trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you've heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone’s collaboration. With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts on the Scrum Alliance and their role in the agile community? 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 Agile Dev East. Techwell’s Agile Dev East is *the* premier event that covers the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AGILE16 to receive $200 off their conference registration fee. Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You’ll notice that I’m speaking there this year. Attendees will have a chance to see my Business of Agile presentation, along with my half day session on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando, Florida – November 13th – 18th for this great event. The post AFH 049: The State of Agile with Steve Denning [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don Gray (@donaldegray) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss agile thinking, models, and frameworks. Of course we didn’t cover any of those topics…but we meant to. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Don Gray Conducting a Coaching Session – Copyright Don Gray[/featured-image] is a friend and mentor to me, and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including: CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS.Don Don was recently the Leadership Track Chairman for the Agile 2016 Conference. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby. In this episode you'll discover: What to do when you don’t know what to do How looking in unusual places can lead to great coaching insights Models and frameworks that help teams understand their behaviors Where new agile coaches can go to get started and leveled up Links from the show: Coaching Beyond the Team Workshop with Don Gray and Esther Derby – September 13th & 14th in Costa Mesa, CA Coaching Models and Kitchen Utensils by Don Gray Verifying Models by Don Gray Agile Coaching Institute [callout]Psychologist Eugene Kennedy and psychiatrist Sara C. Charles have brought this already popular book up to date with the medical and psychological advances over the past ten years. This book continues to provide counselors with all the essential tools they need to respond to people’s problems with intelligence and compassion. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What do you do when you don’t know what to do? 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 Agile Dev East. Techwell’s Agile Dev East is *the* premier event that covers the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AFH16 to receive $200 off their conference registration fee. Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You’ll notice that I’m speaking there this year. Attendees will have a chance to see my Business of Agile presentation, along with my half day session on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando, Florida – November 13th – 18th for this great event. The post AFH 044: Agile Thinking with Don Gray [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.