Podcasts about is agile

Is Agile still relevant in today’s fast-paced world? Brian and Joshua Kerievsky reveal the four game-changing principles of Modern Agile that prioritize safety, empowerment, and continuous value delivery. Overview In this episode, Brian Milner sits down with Joshua Kerievsky, a pioneer in the Agile community and the creator of Modern Agile. They discuss how Agile practices have evolved, the critical role of safety and empowerment, and how to deliver value continuously in today’s fast-paced world. Don’t miss these insights into creating better teams, products, and results through simplicity and experimentation. References and resources mentioned in the show: Joshua Kerievsky Industrial Logic Joy of Agility by Joshua Kerievsky Modern Agile #33 Mob Programming with Woody Zuill #51: The Secrets of Team Safety with Julie Chickering Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Experimentation Matter: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Innovation by Stefan H. Thomke Agile For Leaders Mike Cohn’s Better User Stories Course Accurate Agile Planning Course Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Joshua Kerievsky is the founder and CEO of Industrial Logic and author of Joy of Agility. An early pioneer of Extreme Programming, Lean Software Development, and Lean Startup, Joshua is passionate about helping people achieve genuine agility through principle-based approaches like Modern Agile. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back. And this is another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm here as I always am. I am Brian Milner and today I am joined by Joshua Kerievsky and really excited to have Joshua here with us. Welcome in Joshua. Joshua Kerievsky (00:16) Thank you so much, Brian. Happy to be here. Brian (00:19) Very excited for Joshua to be here. Joshua's been around for a while. He's been doing this for a long time. He said, you know, when we were talking before, and he's been involved with Agile before, it was called Agile. And, you know, that probably tells you all you need to know there. But a couple other things here about him, just so that you kind of can place him a little bit. His company is Industrial Logic, Inc. and he's the CEO and founder of that company. He has a book called Joy of Agility that's out there that I highly recommend. It's a really great book. And he's also closely associated with something that maybe you've been aware of, maybe you've heard of, maybe you haven't, but something called Modern Agile. And that's what I thought we'd focus on here for our discussion is really to try to understand a little bit about it. especially for those of you, maybe you haven't heard of it, haven't been around it before. So... Why don't we start there, Joshua? Tell us a little bit about what was the need that was trying to be filled with something like modern Agile. Joshua Kerievsky (01:19) Well, it goes back to a conference I attended in Prague back in around 2015. And I was giving a speech, a keynote speech there, and that ended. And then I went and said, well, I'm going to go join the OpenSpace. And I was just looking at what people were talking about at the OpenSpace. And at that point in time, I had already been experimenting with a ton of stuff that just kind of different from what we had been doing 10 years earlier or even later than that. I mean, just this was new things that we were doing, whether it was continuous deployment or ideas from lean startup or ideas from the pop and dykes and lean concepts applied to agility or just a lot of things that were just different. And none of the sessions I was seeing in the open space seemed to be talking about any of that stuff, like giving up story points or moving away from sprints until continuous flow. just nothing was being talked about. So I just said, well, I'm going to host a session, and I'll call it, I don't know, a modern Agile. And so that's as far as I got in terms of thinking about the name. I just wanted to run a session where we could talk about, there's a lot of new things we're doing that kind of display some of the older ideas. And they're very useful, I found. So the session ended up getting a lot of attention. 60, 70 people showed up there. So we had a big group. And it was well received. People were fascinated by the stuff that they weren't aware of. And so I then repeated this open space event in Berkeley. Like a month later, was Agile Open Door Cal in Berkeley was running and did it again. And again, there was tremendous interest. in this, so much so that I decided to write a blog and wrote the blog and started getting more conversations happening. And that sort of began the movement of describing this thing called Modern Agile. And it took a few twists and turns in the beginning, but it wasn't sort of, I guess, if anything, I felt like Agile needed to be a little more simple. in terms of what we were explaining, because it was starting to get very complex with frameworks, enterprise frameworks coming along like safe and just too many moving parts. And so what ended up happening is I wrote some things and people started to notice, there's kind of like four things there that are really valuable. One of them was The names changed a little bit over time. But anyway, what ended up was four principles emerged. And that really became modern Agile. Brian (03:58) That's awesome. just for listeners here, I've pitched attending conferences in the past. If you've listened to this podcast, you've heard me say that, and I'll create things come out of that. And here's an example, right? This is something that was open space discussion. Open space, if you're not familiar with that, at conferences, can, if there's an open space day or a couple of days, then anyone can present any topic they want. And whoever shows up is who shows up. And this one got a lot of attention. And a movement grew from this open space topic, which is awesome. So let's talk. You mentioned there's four principles here. And I like the distinction here we're making also between the frameworks and the practices versus the cultural aspects or the philosophy behind it. And returning to those roots a little bit more from what Agile originally was. So you mentioned there's kind of four areas of this. Let's walk our way through those. I know the first one, or one of the first ones here is make people awesome. So help us understand, what do you mean by make people awesome? Joshua Kerievsky (04:59) Probably the most controversial of principles, because you'll get people coming along saying, wait a minute, people are already awesome. What are you talking about? And it comes from my, I'm a big fan of Kathy Sierra. And her blog was incredible. And her book, she wrote a book called Badass, Making Users Awesome. And in her book, she was really wonderfully clear about Brian (05:07) You Joshua Kerievsky (05:24) that teams that build products ought to focus on the user of the products more than the product itself. In other words, she would say, don't try to create the world's best camera. Try to create the world's best photographers. Big subtle difference there. Like that is focusing so much on empowering the users, making them awesome at their work or whatever they're doing, whether it's art or accounting or whatever, whatever your product does, how can you give them something that elevates their skills, that gets them to a point of awesomeness faster? And that's what she was talking about. So I thought, what a wonderful message. And initially, I used language like make users awesome. you know, having been an entrepreneur myself and created products and sold them and You learn a heck of a lot when you make your own product. And we've made several products over the years at Industrial Logic, probably the most successful of which was our e-learning software. And that has taught me so many, so many lessons. One of them is you have to serve an ecosystem of people. You can't just make your main user awesome. What about the person who's buying the software? How do you make them awesome in terms of helping them buy something that's going to get used? If they buy your e-learning and they never use it, they've wasted a lot of money. So we've got to make sure that their reputation is intact because they made an excellent investment and it got used and it got into valuable, it created value in the company. So how do I make the buyer awesome? How do I make the person that like rolls out the licenses to people awesome? How do I make their experience awesome? How do I make my colleagues awesome so that we love what we're doing and really enjoy working together? So it kind of morphed from make users awesome to make people awesome. And it's so expanded. If anything, we set the bar higher. And all of the principles of modern agile are like unachievable. They're all kind of high bars, right? But they're the goal that we go towards. So that really is it. It's about creating Brian (07:23) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (07:35) you know, wonderful, you know, the in Great Britain, they use awesome kind of sarcastically sometimes, right? They'll say, well, that's awesome. You know, and so for them, it would be brilliant. You know, I thought of making an English version. We have many translations of modern agile, and I thought of making an English version, which would be a proper British English version, make people brilliant. But it's meant to be to empower folks to give them something. And it's so it is. Brian (07:43) Ha You Joshua Kerievsky (08:04) It does have a product focus in the sense of we're typically building a system or a product that someone's going to use and it's going to give them skills they didn't have before or abilities they didn't have before that are going to be very valuable. Brian (08:18) Yeah, I love that. And there's a sort of a servant nature to that servant leaders, not servant leadership as much, but servant nature of I'm serving these people and how do I, how do I serve them in a way that really empowers them? Kind of reminds me of like, you know, the, the great principle with, with dev ops of just, know, if I can, if I can empower the developers to be able to do these things on their own. And so they don't need someone else to come and check the box and do everything for them. You're making them awesome. You're empowering them to be more than they were otherwise. Joshua Kerievsky (08:54) Yes, yes, absolutely. I I think we've seen a history in the software field of a lot of tools coming along and helping. It's not just tools, it's also methods as well. I mean, I'm entirely grateful to the Agile software development movement because it helped nudge everything towards a far better way of working and to make us more awesome at our craft. yeah, you have to have a North Star though. If you're going to build something, You have to know, what are we going for here? What are we shooting for? And with Cathy's influence, again, it's not so much make the greatest product in the world. It's, that focus on the users, the people who are going to be using the work, using the product. Brian (09:34) That's really good. Let's talk about the second one then on my list here, the make safety a prerequisite. What was the point here behind this principle? Joshua Kerievsky (09:40) Yes. So starting probably around 2011 or so, I could not stand going to the Agile Conference anymore. It had just become too commercial and too filled with just people hocking stuff. And it just was bothering me too much. I couldn't go. So I ended up going to South by Southwest, which is an Brian (09:54) You Joshua Kerievsky (10:09) Enormous conference tens of thousands of people show up So it'd be 20,000 30,000 40,000 people showing up for these for this event, which is musical film technology just it's just wild and I came across this book by Charles Duhigg called the power of habit. He was there that year and In that book. Well, first of all that particular year was 2012 that I went my first year there it poured The rain, it was every day, it was unusual for that time, but it was just like pouring rain. So what could you do? I bought some books and I was sitting there in my room reading them. And I'm reading this book, The Power of Habit, and I come across this chapter called The Ballad of Paul O'Neill. Now who the heck's Paul O'Neill? Well, it turns out Paul O'Neill is this incredible guy, a complete business maverick. He ended up becoming the treasury secretary under Bush and not. in 2000 for a short period of time, but that's another story. And he ran Alcoa for about 13 or 14 years. And so the Ballot of Paul O'Neill is very much about what he did at Alcoa to turn the company around. And in essence, you could say he made safety a prerequisite. That safety was his guiding light in turning that company around, which meant left people empowered to do all kinds of things. So it went way beyond safety, but started there. And it's an incredible story. I've written about it in Joy of Agility. I got so into Paul O'Neill that I ended up interviewing his main lieutenant. And then I got a chance to interview him a couple of times. the man's a genius. He passed away a few years back. Absolute genius. this concept of safety started to really pull at me in the sense that I felt, first of all, extreme programming, and I'm a big practitioner of extreme programming, brings a tremendous amount of safety to software development. It may not be as explicit in saying safety, safety, safety. When you look at extreme programming, doesn't really talk about safety, but it's implicit. And these days, Kent Beck's much more vocal about, you One of his missions is to make software development safer for geeks. But safety to me is almost like I found my home. Like safety was something that, what I learned through Paul O'Neill was that it's a doorway to excellence. And he transformed a hundred year old company with safety. I would complain about companies we were working with that were 25 years old and had an embedded culture. Like, how are we gonna change this company? But safety started to be this thing that I hadn't really thought enough about, and making it explicit opened up a lot of doors, right? And I became very interested in the work of Amy Edmondson, who's extremely famous today, but back then she was not so famous. And huge fan of hers. I, you know, I can email her and she'll email me back and she wrote a nice thing about my book. So. She has done some incredible work there. And so when we talk about safety in modern agile, it's psychological safety. It's financial safety. It's any of the safeties. There are many safeties that we could talk about. And it looks at all of them, right? It's brand safety, software safety in terms of security. you know, of the software and on and on and on. So make safety prerequisite is vast and big in terms of what we're trying to do there. Making it a prerequisite means it's not an afterthought and it's not a priority that shifts with the winds. It is permanent. It is something that we know we have to have in place. And it's very, very hard to achieve. Just like make people awesome is hard to achieve. Boy, is make safety a prerequisite difficult. Brian (13:43) Hmm. Yeah, I love Amy Edmondson's work as well. I'm just kind of curious. does the safety kind of inclusive of things like quality as well? Do you intend that to be part of what you mean by safety? Joshua Kerievsky (14:11) Well, mean, to the extent that it makes it safer to do good software development. So if bugs are happening all the time, you can't make people awesome, typically if you don't have quality. If you have really poor quality, nobody's being made awesome. They're experiencing all kinds of problems with your product. So make people awesome and make safety a prerequisite are very much tied together. That is, there is no real excellence without safety. You could think you're having an excellent experience, so that all of a sudden there's a major problem, and boy, are you unhappy. So they really go hand in hand. You could have the most incredible restaurant, and then one day you've got food poisoning happening. Great, no one's come to your restaurant. So you will not make anyone awesome if you don't make safety a prerequisite, and quality is part of that. Brian (14:57) Awesome. Well, let's move on to the next one then, because the next category is one that just resonates with me a lot. Experiment and learn rapidly. What was kind of the thought behind this one? Joshua Kerievsky (15:06) Yeah, and this is one where it that's shorthand, if you will, because you can only fit so many words on a wheel there. But it's important to know that that really means experiment rapidly and learn rapidly. And that comes a lot out of it in the influences of something like Lean Startup. I'm a huge fan of that book and of Eric's work, Eric Reese's work. Brian (15:13) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (15:29) And the fact that we can experiment rapidly and learn rapidly rather than just building everything and then learning slowly. Right? How can we do cheap experiments quickly to decide what's important to work on and what isn't? Let's not build stuff nobody wants. Let's find more time with our customers and understand their needs better so we can build the right things that make them awesome. In other words, and a lot of these are interconnected. In many respects, modern Agile is a Venn diagram. ideally want all four principles to be overlapping. And right there in that middle is where you really want to be. Not easy. But experimenting, learning rapidly, yeah. So challenge yourself to find ways to do quick, cheap, useful experiments. You can do lot of unuseful experiments. Amazon experienced that. There's a story in my book about how Amazon had to start just shepherding the experiments a little more and having some better criteria. Because you could do an endless array of experiments and not get anywhere. There's a wonderful book called Experimentation Matters by a Harvard business professor. Wonderful book as well. But I love experimentation and learning. And I see it as critical to building great products. So that's that principle there. Brian (16:46) Yeah, there's a real difference, I think, in organizations that put value on that learning process. if you see it as a valuable thing, that we invest time to gain knowledge, then that really can truly make an impact when you go forward. I know I've talked about this in classes sometimes where people will say, isn't it a little bit selfish from the organization to try to always just figure out what's going to sell the best? or what's going to work the best in advance of putting something out. My response is always, well, yes, there is a benefit to the business, but there's a benefit to the customer as well because they would rather you work on things that they care more about. Joshua Kerievsky (17:24) That's right. Yeah. I mean, we once put out an experimental product to a large automotive company. And we were really excited about it. We had a whole list of features we wanted to add to it. But we were like, you know what? Let's just get this primitive version kind of in their hands just to see what happens. it turned out that we learned very rapidly that they couldn't run the software at all. There was some proxy. that was preventing communication with our servers from their environment. So it was like, excellent. We learned really quickly that instead of those fancy new features we want to add to this thing, we're going to fix the proxy problem. And to me, that's the nature of evolutionary design is that we create something, get it out there quickly, and learn from it rapidly and evolve it. So it goes hand in hand with that as well. Brian (18:11) That's awesome. Well, there's one category left then, and that is deliver value continuously. So what was the genesis of that? Thinking about delivering value continuously. Joshua Kerievsky (18:19) So that was heavily influenced by my own journey into continuous delivery and continuous deployment and that whole world. We got into that very early. I was lucky enough to catch a video by Timothy Fritz, who he worked with Eric at IMBU. And he coined the term continuous deployment. And that video is actually no longer on the Brian (18:43) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (18:44) But this was something that I became enamored of was doing continuous deployment. And we started doing it at Industrial Logic with our own e-learning software back in about 2010. And by the time you get to like 2015, it's like, hey folks, there's this thing where you can do a little bit of work and ship it immediately to production in a very safe way, a safe deployment pipeline. It's friggin' awesome. But the principle doesn't just apply to that because this modern agile is not just about software development. It's how can I work in a way that gets value in front of people as fast as possible? So for example, if I'm working on a proposal, great, I'm not going to work for two weeks and then show you something. I'm going to put something together, a skeleton, I'm going to show it to you and say, what do you think? Does this add value? Where would we improve this? Blah, blah, Again, going hand in hand with evolutionary design. continuous delivery of value is something that is a way of working. With artists that I work with, they'll do a quick sketch or two or three sketches of something first before we start settling in on which one do we like the best and how do we want to craft and refine that. So there's a way of working in which you're delivering value much more finely grained and approaching continuously instead of in bigger batches. Brian (20:05) Yeah. I love the connection there between artists as well, because I've got a background in music, and I'm thinking about how when you go to write a song or create a new work like that, you start off with the roughest of demo tapes, and you move from there to increasingly more sophisticated versions of it until you finally have the finished product. But no one thinks that's strange or thinks that's weird in any way. But you're right. Sometimes there's this attitude or kind of I think in some organizations of, we can't let anyone see that until it's absolutely finished, until it's done. Joshua Kerievsky (20:39) Yeah, yeah, and that maybe that's that there's some fear there, you know, because they don't want to be thought of as, you know, being lesser because they put something rough in front of someone. Whereas I view it as a, you know, to me, it's a sign of weakness when you when you only send something polished because you haven't had the courage or the sense of safety to put something rough where we can make better decisions together early on. So. There's a lot of learning, I think, around that. But it's a challenging principle of its own, deliver value continuously. And people would say, well, what does value mean? Value is one of those words where it's unclear, because you could improve the internal design of a software system. Is that value? It probably is. But you've got to be able to quantify it or prove that it's going to help make things more graceful in terms of flowing features out. yeah, quantifying, communicating what the value is. is important. I'm also a big fan of maximizing the amount of work not done, as it says in the manifesto. So how can we do less and deliver more sooner? Our motto in industrial logic now is better software sooner. And a lot of these principles go straight into that. that drives it. Brian (21:38) Yeah. That's really great. Yeah, I love these four principles and I think that they really represent a lot. There's a lot that's baked into each one of these things. And I'm sure as you kind of put this together with the community and started to talk more about it, I'm sure there were some challenges. I'm sure people came up to you and said, well, what about and how about this? Is there anything now looking back on this that you'd say, gosh, we really... really didn't quite cover this or, know, this is maybe I could fudge it and squeeze it in this area, but you know, there's this other thing that I really think would be important to kind of mention here as well. Joshua Kerievsky (22:28) Well, you know, it's funny, because I thought I was going to write a book. I started collecting stories. I love telling stories, and I find stories to be a great way to help educate people. Not the only way, right? But as part of some of the workshops I give, you tell a story. Hopefully it's a story that's sticky, that sticks in the person's brain. And over the years, I collected stories like that, stories of agility. I thought I'd be writing a book about modern agile when I started writing Joy of Agility. Gradually, as I wrote more and more stories, they didn't quite fit into all those four principles. And I think the lesson I learned there was that I was starting to talk about what pure Agile means, the word Agile. What does it really mean to be Agile? Whereas modern Agile is really almost in the context of product development, of building services or products for people. Whereas Agile itself is even more pure. And so the... the book itself got into the difference between quickness and hurrying, which you can relate to this. You could say experiment and learn rapidly. Well, OK, maybe we shouldn't rush it. Don't rush. Be quick, but don't hurry is one of the mantras in Joy of Agility. So adapting, right? Adapting, we talk about adapting all the time. So to be agile, you need to be able to adapt quickly. These four principles in modern agile don't say anything about adapting. Brian (23:46) Ha Joshua Kerievsky (23:48) So that's kind of implied, but it's not there. So it's a different lens on agility. If anything, I'd say the make people awesome principles are not meant to. It created some dislike, I'd say, from some people. It could have been called empower people, potentially, although a lot of people really love make people awesome. I don't know so much what I'd change there. I'd say we have a .org. So it's a modernagile.org is a website. There's a pretty large Slack community, which, know, four or 5,000 people on that. We don't certify anyone in modern agile, so there's no certifications, but it's something that is neutral in the sense that whether you practice Scrum or Kanban or Safe or whatever, these principles can influence you. And, you know, but again, this all came out of like, when I went to that open space conference in Prague, I had no idea I was going to talk about modern agile. You know, it was not like a predetermined thing. It was just like, my God, they're not talking about the modern ways we're doing stuff. So, and I always encourage people to, you know, keep pushing the limits and keep modernizing. I said to my own company the other day, our wonderful ways of working that we've been doing now for years that have evolved, they're probably antiquated as of today. You know, with generative AI, what would we do differently? Let's have a perspective on our own work as it needs to be modernized constantly. So the term modern in modern agile means always be modernizing, always be looking. Okay, I've had people say, well, Josh, some things don't need to be modernized. There's things that are just evergreen. They're classic. I'm like, absolutely. I'm not changing evolutionary design anytime soon. I find it to be quite useful in so many contexts. So yes, there's the evergreen stuff. And then there's the stuff where you can, indeed, discover a better way. The manifesto itself says, we are discovering better ways of working. Great. Keep that going. Keep modernizing and looking for easier, simpler, quick, easy grace. as the dictionary definition of Agile says, how can we work with quick, easy grace? That's always going to be improving, hopefully. Brian (26:12) Love that, yeah. And you're right, I mean, think there's some, to some people I think that there's, I guess at times an attitude of, you this is all new stuff or this is a brand new concept and something they don't really see the connection backwards in time to how these things are all built on other ideas that have been progressive over the years. So the idea of, yeah, this is, you know, we're, we're not saying that certain ideas are bad because now we're trying to modernize them. We're just saying we're trying to apply that same principle forward into kind of the context of today, which I don't see anyone should have a problem with that. Joshua Kerievsky (26:48) That's right. That's right. Well, and if you are experimenting and learning rapidly with your own process, which I highly encourage, chances are the way you work today will be different than it was yesterday. You will be exploring, like we use discovery trees today. We didn't use them before. Years ago, no one knew what a story map was. There wasn't such a thing as a story map. Now we have story maps. There's constant improvement happening. And you've got to be open-minded and willing to try new things and drop old stuff. We thought sprints and iterations and extreme programming was absolutely fundamentally part of the way to work. Then we started experimenting with dropping them and turned out, wow, this is pretty cool. We like this. It works pretty darn well for our purposes. That came through experimentation. some of our experiments were terrible, just terrible. It's not an experiment if you already know the outcome. keep pushing the limits of what can make you happier and more joyful at work in terms of producing great stuff. Brian (27:46) Awesome. That's great stuff. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on, Joshua. This is great stuff. just, you know, we'll put all the links to the books mentioned and everything else in our show notes for everybody. But as Joshua said, you can go to modernagile.org and find out more about this if you'd like to. You'll find information there about Joshua himself or his company again is Industrial Logic, Inc. And, you know, his book again, just to mention that, Joy of Agility. We were talking how some people get that title a little mixed up or whatever, but it's just the three words, joy of agility. So just look out for that book. I think you'll find it a rich resource for you. Joshua, thanks so much for coming on. Joshua Kerievsky (28:25) Thank you, Brian. Thanks to you. Thanks to Mountain Goat and the folks there. And I really appreciate chatting with you. It was really wonderful.

Why can you never seem to find enough time to make progress on the non-urgent but important priorities that can move you closer to the ideal of the deep life? In this episode, Cal reviews three common “time destroyers,” and for each offers solutions to fight back. He then takes questions and calls from his listeners and ends with a discussion of Amazon and the bureaucracy mailbox.  Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here's the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo Video from today's episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia Deep Dive: Your Time [3:43]   - Is Agile compatible with slow productivity? [34:20] - How can I better structure my days as a master's student with a job? [36:37] - How often and in what medium should I check my calendar? [42:43] - On days when I have no time, does reading for 20 minutes actually do anything? [46:52] - Will slow productivity make me less ambitious? [52:16] - CALL: Different types of Deep Work [58:04]  CASE STUDY:  A teacher's shutdown ritual [1:03:55]  CAL REACTS: A Bureaucracy Mailbox [1:10:24]  Links: Buy Cal's latest book, “Slow Productivity” at calnewport.com/slowGet a signed copy of Cal's “Slow Productivity” at peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/Cal's monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba?aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/ceo-andy-jassy-latest-update-on-amazon-return-to-office-manager-team-ratio Thanks to our Sponsors:  drinklmnt.com/deepgreenlight.com/deepexpressvpn.com/deepshopify.com/deep Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for the slow productivity music, and Mark Miles for mastering. 

In unserer neuen Episode den UX und Usability Podcast nehmen wir euch mit auf eine Reise durch die Welt der User Experience. Wir plaudern über die 'Mensch und Computer' Konferenz mit unserem Vizepräsidenten Thomas Jackstädt und diskutieren darüber, ob agiles Arbeiten wirklich vorbei ist Wir haben in dieser Episode Jule Jensen zu Gast. Sie teilt ihren inspirierenden Weg vom Studium zur UX/UI-Designerin bei Governikus und gibt wertvolle Tipps für Berufseinsteiger*innen. Außerdem stellen wir euch das FigProxy-Plugin vor, das Figma mit echter Hardware verbindet, und beleuchten die Single Ease Question (SEQ). Eine Folge voller wertvoller Insights, Trends und Inspirationen – unbedingt reinhören! ZEITSTEMPEL [00:00:00] Begrüßung und Einleitung [00:00:29] Interview mit Thomas Jackstädt über die 'Mensch und Computer' Konferenz [00:07:11] Diskussion: Ist agiles Arbeiten vorbei? Insights von Jeff Gothelf [00:10:05] Infos zur Mitgliederversammlung der German UPA am 19. September [00:10:53] Update zum AI-Pin von Humane – Ein UX-Flop? [00:15:20] Karriere-Tipps von Ariana von Scherenburg für angehende UX-Designer [00:17:00] Ankündigung der Weiterbildungsmesse am 26. September [00:17:45] Deep Dive: Die Single Ease Question (SEQ) mit Jeff Sauro und Jim Lewis [00:20:38] Vorstellung des FigProxy Plugins – Figma trifft Hardware [00:21:35] Interview mit Jule Jensen über ihren Einstieg ins UX/UI Design [00:50:03] Kurzinterview mit Sabine Berghaus von Siemens über den Einstieg in die UX-Branche* [00:51:37] Abschluss und Verabschiedung Informationen zu den Gästen

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

It's The End Of The Roles As We Know Them, And I Feel Fine... Are you still hung up on what to call people? Have you been a victim of a recent layoff because of your title? Is Agile broken or is your company broken? Have you read step 3 of The Agile 12 Step Program? Get with it and get this done today. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Dive into the world of startups, burnout, and the alchemy of building antifragile teams with Jesse Riley on this episode of the Mob Mentality Show! Unpack mobbing/pairing in startups and small companies, where knowledge spreading and the bus factor is a game-changer. Discover how avoiding the knowledge bottleneck of one person can help your startup thrive undue pressure. Explore the critical role of vacations in startups, the impact of stressed-out devs, and the art of hiring developer zero. Learn the significance of errors/bugs in a startup and why startups are somewhat analogous to safety-critical systems. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of feedback loops, integration needs, and unit testing in the startup ecosystem. Discover how Lean/XP developers provide a competitive advantage for an org, seamlessly sliding into any team like a well-trained Navy Seal. Unearth the insightful Kanban/no-estimates story where "all stories are 1s" and weigh-in on the solution to the inverse semantic diffusion problem. As we reflect on nearly two decades of Agile, question its future, and ponder if it's over, we explore the Agile Industrial Complex and distinguish between the marketing term and the true philosophy. Is "Agile" in need of improvement, or are we entering a new era of iterative practices? Cap off the episode by delving into the art of mentoring new devs and CTOs alike. Gain insights into guiding the next generation in the ever-evolving landscape of software development. Tune in for a riveting conversation that unveils the magic of mobbing, the resilience of antifragile teams, and the secrets to sustaining success in the startup ecosystem. Subscribe now for your weekly dose of wisdom and actionable insights. Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/LCXbrmwbTX4 

Is Agile losing favour? Is it declining in popularity? I don't know. I don't fully think so. I think we're failing to meet our brand promise though. I think that we're not as efficient, not as fast, not as productive, not as progressive as we thought we were. A lot of Agile in practice that I see in organizations is simply falling back to the same mistakes that we used to make with traditional project management. Now, I'm not necessarily talking about the difference between Agile and waterfall here. I'm talking about the difference between the Scrum Master Agile Coach roles, the implementation of Agile or Scrum itself, and traditional means of managing projects. JOIN THE FORGE***Summer cohort starting in July! Click here to discover more: https://badassagile.com/the-forge Become Badass with my NEW FREE Mini-Course.  Go to https://badassagile.com and look for “Becoming Badass” Want to recession-proof your leadership? Check out my new course – The New Leadership https://newleader.badassagile.com Don't Miss Out on Our New FREE Community Click here to join now! https://learning.fusechamber.com/offers/7zrAfCY7 WANT TO GROW AN AGILE BUSINESS?Check out my new premium podcast – “The Badass Agile Entrepreneur”. https://learning.fusechamber.com/#podcast/ We're also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me: https://www.youtube.com/c/BadassAgile Check out the new online magazine about the future of agility: https://www.theagilehorizon.com Looking for your first Scrum Master job?  We help make the transition easier: https://www.agilesidekick.co Follow on CLUBHOUSE: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/badass-agile Don't forget to join us in the Badass Agile Listener Lounge on Facebook for member exclusives, livestreams and previews! https://www.facebook.com/groups/badasslistenerlounge/ Follow The LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/badass-agile Our mission is to create an elite tribe of leaders who focus on who they need to become in order to lead and inspire, and to be the best agile podcast and resource for effective mindset and leadership game. Contact us (contact@badassagile.com) for elite-level performance and agile coaching, speaking engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.

Grab a comfy seat and a hot cup of joe, because it's time for some coffee talk with Nick & KBall! Special guest Thomas Eckert joins the party and brings a bunch of questions for us to discuss. Who wins in a fist fight: Tailwind CSS people or “real” CSS people? Is Agile overrated? What's the longest bug you've ever chased? How about some underrated libraries/packages that people should know about? And more!

Grab a comfy seat and a hot cup of joe, because it's time for some coffee talk with Nick & KBall! Special guest Thomas Eckert joins the party and brings a bunch of questions for us to discuss. Who wins in a fist fight: Tailwind CSS people or “real” CSS people? Is Agile overrated? What's the longest bug you've ever chased? How about some underrated libraries/packages that people should know about? And more!

John Miller joins Brian to talk about Agile in the classroom. Overview Agile classrooms help students develop skills that will serve them long after they've left the classroom. John Miller is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and the Chief Empowerment Officer for Agile Classrooms. Today on the show, John joins Brian to share how he started introducing the Agile framework to educators. He walks us through how Agile classrooms help students solve complex problems while developing decision-making skills. He'll share how converting to an Agile classroom creates deeper, more fulfilling student and teacher relationships and the steps teachers can take to make their classroom an Agile classroom. Listen now to discover: [01:27] - Brian introduces John Miller and explains how, as a CEC, he's reached the highest rung on the Scrum Alliance certification ladder. [03:33] - How John got started with bringing Agile to the classroom. [06:09] - The collaboration between John and the educators to achieve the goal of creating a self-managing classroom. [09:45] - John shares how he went from thinking he'd ruined one class's education to watching them become one of the best self-managing groups he's ever seen. [12:16] - How children's lack of preconceived notions about how things are supposed to work helps them create teams that work. [13:48] - How an Agile classroom empowers students of all levels and learning abilities. [14:36] - The five levels of choice in an Agile classroom. [15:44] - John shares the objective of Agile classrooms to help students solve complex problems by developing choice-making skills. [17:55] - Brian shares that "Scrum is a sports analogy." [19:33] - Dark Scrum vs. Bright Scrum. John shares the formula he created using Ron Jeffries' term Dark Scrum. [24:06] - Is Agile dead, or are people just doing it wrong? [25:13] - John shares the levels of classrooms where Agile works best. Plus, which one did he work with that made him more nervous than high-level CEOs? [27:12] - John explains how the different dynamics lead to different success outcomes for incorporating Scrum into the classroom. [28:42] - What size classrooms achieve the most benefits from working with Scrum? [29:44] - John shares the steps teachers can take to make their classroom an Agile classroom. [31:20] - How converting to an Agile classroom creates deeper, more fulfilling teacher-student relationships. [31:53] - How Agile in the classroom acts as a bridge to industry and a life skills primer. References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Agile Classrooms Dark Scrum Agile Manifesto McGregor's Theory 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. John Miller is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and the Chief Empowerment Officer for Agile Classrooms. Since 2012, John's mission through Agile Classrooms has been to help educators take a more innovative and creative approach to guiding faculty, managing their schools, and teaching students.

John Miller joins Brian to talk about Agile in the classroom. Overview Agile classrooms help students develop skills that will serve them long after they've left the classroom. John Miller is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and the Chief Empowerment Officer for Agile Classrooms. Today on the show, John joins Brian to share how he started introducing the Agile framework to educators. He walks us through how Agile classrooms help students solve complex problems while developing decision-making skills. He'll share how converting to an Agile classroom creates deeper, more fulfilling student and teacher relationships and the steps teachers can take to make their classroom an Agile classroom. Listen now to discover: [01:27] - Brian introduces John Miller and explains how, as a CEC, he's reached the highest rung on the Scrum Alliance certification ladder. [03:33] - How John got started with bringing Agile to the classroom. [06:09] - The collaboration between John and the educators to achieve the goal of creating a self-managing classroom. [09:45] - John shares how he went from thinking he'd ruined one class's education to watching them become one of the best self-managing groups he's ever seen. [12:16] - How children's lack of preconceived notions about how things are supposed to work helps them create teams that work. [13:48] - How an Agile classroom empowers students of all levels and learning abilities. [14:36] - The five levels of choice in an Agile classroom. [15:44] - John shares the objective of Agile classrooms to help students solve complex problems by developing choice-making skills. [17:55] - Brian shares that "Scrum is a sports analogy." [19:33] - Dark Scrum vs. Bright Scrum. John shares the formula he created using Ron Jeffries' term Dark Scrum. [24:06] - Is Agile dead, or are people just doing it wrong? [25:13] - John shares the levels of classrooms where Agile works best. Plus, which one did he work with that made him more nervous than high-level CEOs? [27:12] - John explains how the different dynamics lead to different success outcomes for incorporating Scrum into the classroom. [28:42] - What size classrooms achieve the most benefits from working with Scrum? [29:44] - John shares the steps teachers can take to make their classroom an Agile classroom. [31:20] - How converting to an Agile classroom creates deeper, more fulfilling teacher-student relationships. [31:53] - How Agile in the classroom acts as a bridge to industry and a life skills primer. References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Agile Classrooms Dark Scrum Agile Manifesto McGregor's Theory 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. John Miller is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and the Chief Empowerment Officer for Agile Classrooms. Since 2012, John's mission through Agile Classrooms has been to help educators take a more innovative and creative approach to guiding faculty, managing their schools, and teaching students.

Tanner Jones, your host and Vice President of Business Development at Consultwebs, welcomes you to another episode of the LAWsome Podcast by Consultwebs.   In today's episode, Tanner is accompanied by Matt Smyers, former attorney who brings over a decade of experience in legal marketing to his role at Consultwebs as Senior Digital Advertising Advisor.   Matt helps law firms and clients connect through strategic planning and execution of legal digital advertising campaigns using a variety of platforms, including Google Ads, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, and virtually any other paid advertising.   Key Takeaways: 00:17 Introduction  01:02 What is Agile marketing for law firms? 02:17 Is Agile marketing effective for your firm? 04:00 Waterfall versus Agile  06:37 Most relevant changes a law firm can expect from Agile 08:03 Benefits of Agile marketing for law firms 09:48 Opportunities and challenges of partnering with an Agile agency 12:55 Example of how Agile works at Consultwebs  14:43 Final advice(s) for law firms 17:10 Closing thoughts    Best way to contact Matt Smyers:  msmyers@consultwebs.com  https://www.consultwebs.com/about-us/our-team/matt-smyers    Discover More About the Podcast and Consultwebs: Subscribe to the LAWsome Podcast by Consultwebs on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify   Visit the LAWsome website   Follow Consultwebs on social for legal marketing updates: Facebook Instagram Twitter Linkedin YouTube   Learn more about Consultwebs at the links below. Law Firm Marketing Agency Services  Law Firm SEO Law Firm Web Design  Law Firm PPC  Law Firm Social Media  Law Firm Email Marketing Law Firm Digital Marketing    Consultwebs 8601 Six Forks Rd #400, Raleigh, NC 27615 (800) 872-6590 https://www.consultwebs.com  https://www.google.com/maps?cid=13646648339910389351

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... Product Mastery Now with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode:  Today we are talking about when to use or not to use Agile for your product projects. Products need to get released quickly and correctly, creating more value for customers. Is Agile the answer? Maybe, but the details matter. To explore the topic with us, Mark Madsen is here to share his experience. He has built and led project organizations in a variety of companies, including Lego, Saab, and Danfoss. He has seen the conditions needed for Agile to work well and when it doesn't.

When to use Agile and when to consider other options – for product managers Today we are talking about when to use or not to use Agile for your product projects. Products need to get released quickly and correctly, creating more value for customers. Is Agile the answer? Maybe, but the details matter. To explore […]

02:00 - Ada's performance, stories and metrics around. Size of the impact AI has in this space, as covered by Tradeshift.05:35 - Working with AI/ML teams.14:40 - Assessing how much data is needed for an AI project.18:45 - Data risks.24:25 - Is Agile good for AI teams?27:30 - How much does UX matter in e-Invoicing and ML/Data projects?36:35 - How can projects get derailed or fail? What should we watch out for.40:05 - Funny fails.41:50 - AI principles.References:Lloyd's Linkedin ProfileTradeshift's Ada technologyTradeshift's surpass of $1 trillion in transactions processed on their platform.  

12:50 - Is the Turing test still relevant?21:30 - Why it's important to use methodologies in AI projects and what are some best practices out there fit for AI projects.28:00 - Falsehoods of methodologies in AI projects.35:00 - Is Agile a good framework for AI/ML projects/products?40:10 - How can projects get derailed or fail if you don't have a plan in place.44:20 - The best compliment one can get after building an AI project or system.47:25 - Is DL the end of AI?References:CPMAI methodologyCognilytica's Voice Assistant Benchmark 1.0 and 2.0AI Today podcast show with Alexandra Petrus as guestAI Today podcast show 

Josh Mauldin shows us how resolving conflict not only makes us better humans, but better designers. He challenges us to approach conflict with a growth mindset and the question, "What can I learn from this?" to help us become less anti-conflict and more pro-resolution. He articulates the difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict and teaches us why healthy conflict is good and even worth pursuing. He reminds us that it all comes back to empathy which does not mean agreeing with someone, but making an active effort to understand where they're coming from. He also reveals how embracing conflict is the catalyst for building the best teams, the best products, and the best you. How Long Have you Been Thinking About Conflict Resolution? (4:38) Has Team Conflict Increased Since We've Gone Remote? (9:48) How Can We See Past the Emoji's? (13:53) What Does Your Conflict Resolution Framework Look Like? (18:54) How Does Your Cranky Conclusions Approach Work? (20:53) Conflict Resolution for Leaders (28:14) How Do You Address Conflict with Your Leadership? (32:08) What's the Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Conflict? (35:10) How Does Healthy Conflict Create Better Products? (38:28) Is Agile a Double-Edged Sword When it Comes to Team Conflict? (41:20) Design Superpower? (46:13) What's Your Design Kryptonite? (47:08) UX Superhero Name (47:57) Habit of Success (48:36) Invincible Tool or Resource (49:26) Best Advice (54:11) Connect & Keep Up (55:44) Check out the detailed show notes including mentioned links, transcript and Eli Jorgensen's astonishing superhero artwork at userdefenders.com/077 This episode is made possible by Editor X. Editor X gives you a wide workspace with total CSS control powered by smooth drag & drop on a platform where every tiny detail has been carefully considered. That means you can let your creativity run wild and build your most creative sites yet. I can keep trying to describe it to you, but you should really go see it for yourself. Visit userdefenders.com/EditorX and discover a new standard in web design

Episode Summary: In this episode, Raymond and I explore: If it's possible for organisations to be 100% agile, Why a human-centred approach to product design is key How one can get started with their agile journey... and much more.   Guest Bio: Raymond Chike has over 15 years diversified experience in the Financial, Retail, Utilities, Energy, Consulting and Charity sectors. Proven record as a problem solver and aggressive commitment to continuous learning. Bringing together Human, Digital and Physical Interactions while enjoy working with businesses create innovative solutions, products and services. By recognising customer needs, validating new product and service concepts, assisting teams in developing mvp, and assisting organisations in transitioning to adopting new ways of working in a holistic human-centric way.   Raymond's Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chykeray/   Design Thinking Squad Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Design-Thinking-Squad-Gloucestershire/   URLs and Resources Mentioned Books/ Articles: User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton The Startup Way by Eric Reis Lean Startup by Eric Reis Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden Impact Mapping by Gojko Adzic Raymond's LinkedIn post on relationship between Design Thinking, Lean and Agile: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/activity:6505691705440894976/   Interview Transcript  Ula: 00:26 Hey everyone! How are you doing today? Can you believe it? We're nearly at the end of Season 1 of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast and this is our 9th episode. A massive thank you and shout out to all of you who have taken the time to listen, support, to write, to encourage… I am very, very grateful. It never ceases to amaze me that you guys are listening from all over the world; from places and countries like New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, France, South Africa, Canada, USA, Brazil, Switzerland, Norway… of course United Kingdom where we live and many other places where I've not mentioned. I do appreciate the engagement – thank you so much. Keep it coming and keep getting in touch. Now, in the course of launching the podcast, I've also had a number of you get in touch with me to say, ‘Hey, we really are interested in this ‘Agile' thing. How can we learn more about it? How do we get started?' And for some of you, you've had some sort of Agile initiatives going on in your organization and you don't know how you can make this better, make it work because it's not working as well as it should. Well, if you fall into any of these categories, today's episode is for you. I'm pleased to introduce my guest. He is nobody else other than Raymond Chike. A seasoned Agile Innovation professional with over 15 years of diversified experience in multiple sectors – Financial, Retail, Utilities, Energy, Consulting and Charity. And he is a big proponent of design thinking and basically blending agile, lean start up thinking, UX design and design thinking to provide a rounded and human-centered way of working. You just have to listen to this episode! So without further ado, my conversation with Raymond. Enjoy! Ula: 03:04 Raymond, thanks for making the time for this conversation. It's great to have you on the show. Raymond: 03:09 You're welcome. I'm excited as well Ula: 03:11 Great. Now let's kick off. We want to know who Raymond is as an individual. Can you tell us a bit about yourself, and how your life experience has led you to choosing a career as an agile professional? Raymond: 03:25 My story is one of those I'm passionate about telling people. So, I'm a native of Nigeria, back in Africa. And I think the whole journey started off as me looking at the whole world in perspective. And I thought to myself, I want to see how things get done in the Western world – United Kingdom and America and all that. That led me to journey into the UK. So, on coming here, I found my first contract was more of an IT security administrators service contract or something like that. And along the line, I started noticing that I was good at connecting the business and the technology. Little did I know that that was what business analysis was. Then, business analysis became popular, but already I'd found out I was naturally a Business Analyst. But then I thought, ‘Okay, let's go on that journey.' And while in the journey of a Business Analyst, I started realizing that things took too long to happen. So, people are building (a) project and before the project finishes, in two years, the world has moved on. And I said, what is the best way of doing things quicker. I mean, that was where agile started coming up in my mentality. Then I thought, ‘Alright, I think I've got an agile mindset as well.' So, I think I'll take a perspective from a natural point. So, professionally, that's how I found my way/ journey into the Agile world. I live in the UK, permanently now for 14 years, 15 years or so. I've got (a) family, as well. So, my primary location is around Southwest of Cheltenham, but most of my consultancy has been around London, and I travel around anyway. I think. Yeah, that's me in a nutshell, and that's my passion. And, then yeah. Ula: 05:11 That's quite an interesting story. It's funny, because we all start off one way, but the thing about us as humans is that there are things about yourself, you know, your natural inclinations or giftings, or things you're really good at, you wouldn't know until you actually get started. So, it's interesting you recognised the knack (i.e. abilities) and probably people around you also recognise the knack whilst working as an IT Security Specialist, that you also had the ability to connect business with technology. Just out of curiosity, what was your educational background? Raymond: 05:46 Yeah, I graduated with a first degree in Electrical/ Electronics Engineering. Ula: 05:50 Oh, okay. Raymond: 05:51 And… yeah, that is me really. I haven't furthered anyway in terms of educational academia. I've surrounded myself with lots of training and certifications… I've gone, I mean… I don't know if I have enough time to start to name them. But, that's my educational background anyway. Ula: 06:11 I mean, education is not necessarily having more degrees or as many degrees as a thermometer. I'm also Nigerian and I also got my first degree - funnily also in Electronic Engineering. Raymond: 06: 21 Really? Ula: 06:22 Yeah, yeah. Raymond: 06:23 What a coincidence! Ula: 06:26 From your profile, I can see that you are quite big on marrying agile thinking with lean, UX design and design thinking. I'm a big fan of that, because it's really about focusing on what value you're bringing to the customer, whether it's internal or external, and ruthlessly eliminating anything that the customer does not value and is not willing to pay for. So, what are your thoughts on marrying design thinking with lean methodologies? Raymond: 06:56 My thoughts are certain in the sense that it must be married. Looking at the world we live in now, (we're) in an adaptive world. I think the most important service to me is customer service. At the heart of every product, at the heart of everything we do, if we can't link it to customer service, then we just building what we think we like, yeah? And before you can build something for a customer, I always look at it in this perspective, you have to design that thing, you have to then build it, and you have to engage with the people to use the product. And that's the heart of Human Centered Design, or rather you can call it Customer Centric way of doing something. So, that is me thinking about how you bring together the human perspective, and link it with the digital and the physical interaction. Now, this is where you need to combine a whole lot of techniques and thinking and I always say it this way, ‘Agile is not a way of working, agile is a way of thinking than the way working.' Because your behavior modification cannot change if your mind is not transformed. So, at the center and the heart of agile, is the thinking. The same applies to design; at the center and heart of design is thinking - Design Thinking, Agile Thinking. So, call it this way: Design Thinking, Lean Thinking, and Agile Thinking. And to marry them is - Design Thinking makes you get to the heart of the customer. Like, ‘What is the problem you're about to solve? What is the pain point? Empathy. What is this? Why are we doing this thing? What is the problem? The pain point; you empathise with the customer. Now, at that point of empathy - this is where you begin to think about Lean. Where Lean thinks, ‘All right, I think I've empathised (with) this problem and I understand this thing – I feel I understand it.' Then, what's the barest minimum I can test to see it's working? This is where Lean Thinking comes in, right? So, then when you use the Lean Thinking and it works or you get good feedback (you say), ‘Okay, okay. I think we now see a way this is gonna work.'  ‘Okay, let's produce it in some sort of scale now and still get feedback and learn.' This is where you now bring in the principles on Agile, like the Scrum, and the Kanban, or the Extreme Programming, or SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). Then you now want to say, ‘Okay, this thing is getting bigger now; we're about to blow up now', so you want to scale. You scale the product, you engage with the people, then you might… So this is the journey of a product from its inception of human-centric pain point up to the development, and this is how I marry Design Thinking, Lean Thinking and Agile Thinking. Ula: 09:41 Wow, (I've) never really heard it put this way. But it does make sense and I do agree. So, would you say that Design Thinking is the same thing as User Experience design? Raymond: 09:51 It's an interesting conversation but it's not the same. But what I usually say - Design Thinking is a big umbrella. Like, you'd say, Agile thinking. So if you… Like, what you've asked me now is like, ‘Is Agile thinking the same as Scrum Master?' It's like, ‘Oh no, Scrum Master sits under Agile.' That's the same question. Design Thinking involves a lot of skills. Ula: 10:16 Yes Raymond: 10:17 Now, it depends on the way you want to go with it. If you want to do a short design… bear in mind it's a (way of) thinking. Ula: 10:23 Yeah Raymond: 10:23 If you now want to bring it to reality, in terms of skill you might want to map it to, say, a researcher can be involved. A researcher... Now does that mean you cannot be a researcher? You can be (one) but in a professional office, maybe there's a (dedicated) researcher. Okay, UX design - alright, what makes you think you're not a UX designer? Okay, I want to develop an app. I can just sketch something on paper with a wireframe and I've got some understanding of UX concepts. Now, that's my minimum viable (product). Maybe I need a professional UX designer to a prototype for me. Okay, then you need a UX (designer) it might be - depends on the product. If my product is around…  (say,) building a bottle, I don't need a UX designer for a bottle. I might just go get a fabricator to make a bottle, you see what I mean? So regardless of the product, the principles stand. But when you talk about the product you want to do maybe a web design, then the skill set comes into play. That is why the UX design now is a skill. Yeah, that's a connection. So, it's like Agile - is Agile the same as… product owner? No, within agile umbrella, we might need a product owner, we will need a scrum master. Okay, maybe we don't need an engineer really. Okay, okay. While you're developing an agile product, what if the product is a pharmaceutical product? Do you need a developer? No, you need the scientist. So, you see the point. So, the takeaway, because when we talk about Lean agile, people just focus straight ‘Oh! (We're building a) website, app?' Ula: 11:49 Software development… Raymond: 11:50 But… it's not about websites. It's not about apps, not about it. What if it is a pharmaceutical company developing a prosthetic leg or pharmaceutical company developing a fake eyeball, what do you say then, you know? So, I try to get people away from products first, think about the human-centric way of connecting digital and physical interaction, then I think everything will fit into place. Ula: 12:15 It's interesting how you've highlighted the fact that there are general principles underpinning Agile thinking or Design thinking and the principles are separate from the products. Now the products could vary, the principles remain pretty much the same. But now depends on the context - which you can now adapt it (the principles) to the context of the product or service probably that you're providing to the end user or the customer. Am I right? Raymond: 12:44 That's right, well-articulated. Ula: 12:47 Okay, well, thanks. That's interesting. You said that there is this misconception that agile is about the things people do. Now, based on what you're saying that agile is first a mindset so and the International Consortium for Agile, or the ICAgile organization, they said on their website, it's about first being agile, before you do agile. Raymond: 13:11 That's right. Ula: 13:12 So, what would you say are the steps then, towards being agile and when would you know that you are truly agile from a ‘being' standpoint? Raymond: 13:24 Okay, I think the best way to say (it is) this way: there is nobody that's 100% agile. Ula: 13:30 Hmm! Interesting. Yeah. Raymond: 15:31 Definitely, nobody, nobody. Because why I say that is, if you are 100% agile, it's like… if you say yes, I am 100% agile, it does not marry up with the name agile itself, because agile itself means changing. So, you say you're 100% changing. So, I am 100% changing, so you're still changing. So, what agile, what I try to say about agile is (it's) about how we're learning that's Agile. So, (it) automatically tells you, you are constantly learning. So, have you learnt? No, you are constantly learning. So, the thing at the core of Agile is a mindset, your mind has to be ready. That's the height of it is your mindset knows that things must change. The principles and the values lie within and the practices follow and the tools and processes that help it. So, but you need to get at the heart of it that it… So basically, the world, is ruled by companies who learn faster. That's it. So, how are you learning faster? That's why agile comes in. So, are you… if Facebook comes tomorrow and said, ‘We are now agile; we are the best agile (practitioners)', that's wrong, because they're still going to have challenges that come up tomorrow that they'd have to think and say, ‘Guys, what's the next solution here?' Ula: 14:46 True Raymond: 14:46 This is where I feel agile is just, agile in itself is even a part of a product. As I've just explained Lean, design thinking, lean and agile… all that stuff. So, it's a complete mindset shift. But we there yet? We're not always going to be there in terms of 100%. But we are on a journey. Ula: 15:06 Yeah Raymond: 15:06 So, we're on a journey… we're not definitely going to be ‘there'. So, to answer your question, I don't think anybody's 100% agile. But I guess the thing is, to what degree of Agile are you? To what degree of learning or what degree of flexibility? What degree do you apply the principles better? I think that's the key message. And I mean, the only way to answer that is more of your outcomes, really? So, when you check into your outcomes, you know if you are really, truly agile and how responsive you are to the market and how adaptive you are. Ula: 15:41 Well put. So you said, yes, no one is 100% agile. You're constantly learning and that's probably why agile and lean - they're complimentary because lean is also about continuous improvements and focusing on improving processes to achieve certain goals. What would you say about the frameworks then? Is it possible to purely apply one framework in an organization's operating context, to the exclusion of others? Raymond: 16:13 Great question. I think you will do yourself a favor to mix them up. I always tell people this … if you study Scrum, the next thing… they (people in organisations) call me and say, ‘I'm doing Scrum', (and the person) goes on saying ‘I'm writing user stories.' And I say, ‘Okay, but I'm sorry, user story is Extreme Programming. So, you're already mixing it up, right? Then you get people who are doing Scrum. Then they go, ‘Oh, our Jira board is a Scrumban board.' So, what's that about? Ula: 16:41 It's a Kanban board… yeah… Raymond: 16:42 So, what I tell people is this: I'm not dogmatic about any (framework). If you bring any framework tomorrow and call it… ‘Jump' … whatever you want to call it. My question to you (would be), ‘Is it solving human problems? Are we inspecting and adapting faster? Is it prioritizing collaboration over ‘blah'…? Is it prioritizing responding to change over following a plan? Is it tied to the principle?' (If the answer is) ‘Yes', that's it! I don't want to know what else you call the name. I mean, I was in a conference the other day and I said to someone, ‘Look, let's be honest.' (If) she goes to Facebook now, (and) I go to Netflix (and) ask them what (agile framework/ methodology) they're following, they probably would not tell you anything. Probably tell you, ‘I don't know what's Scrum - we just inspect and adapt quickly. We just learn fast. We have a system that helps us learn fast.' That's it. No one is gonna tell you, ‘Do three weeks sprint, do four weeks sprint… do one thing or the other…' It depends on the product. Depends on the product. Some people do one-week sprint. Some companies do one-week sprint, two weeks sprint, three weeks sprint. Some pharmaceutical companies do one-week experimentation. I've seen companies do design sprint zero, then go on and do one-week sprint. The thing is, where are you learning fast? How are you learning fast? And agile is just (a means to) the end game; it's the building of the product. Remember, I said design thinking? Where is the place (for empathy in Agile)? …No agile principle talks about empathy. Nothing like that. Ula: 18:05 No Raymond: 18:06 They (some agile frameworks) just tell you, ‘Sprint planning - boom, boom, boom, go!' But, how do I know the product to build? I mean, this was what inspired me to (write) my last post where I said… I did post something on LinkedIn the other day. (That's one of) the key things that I was trying to say to the team. I read that from a book called The Startup Way by Eric Ries. This is the same guy who … Eric Ries is The Lean Startup guy. So, here is Toyota (for example). Toyota known for all the things they do around production and lean and all that stuff. But yet someone in Toyota could say he thinks there's a missing part. And that is because they are good at creating things. But they don't have a system that tells them on (how to) discover what to produce. Scrum does not help you discover what to produce, you know… Kanban does not help you discover what to produce. They just help you produce but they don't help you discover. So, this is why I say, I'm not precious about any framework, as long as that framework can help me easily inspect and adapt. That is my key (requirement)… and it's transparent. That's my own, I don't really cherish… I'm not gonna say I'm a SAFe man (or it) must be SAFe. (Nor would I say) it must be Scrum, or it must be Kanban. But then, does it mean I haven't gone on training for all of them? I have – I'm not hung up on frameworks. (I've gone on training for every one of them) because I want to know what I'm talking about. I want to learn because I'm also an aggressive learner. So, I want to know what you're talking about. But then I always ask myself the question, what is the “why” you're doing this? Why are you doing it? If it connects with (the agile) principles – yes. If it doesn't… hmmm… I'll pick and choose what I want from it and throw the rest away. As simple as that. That's my view on all frameworks, really. Ula: 19:48 Makes perfect sense, actually. Raymond: 19:51 You don't want to be hung up around frameworks really. Going into this conversation the other day, someone talked about (the) product owner (role) and I said, ‘Listen, I've done a Product Owner course for Scrum. And that is not up to 2% of what it takes to be a Product Manager.' It's not! If you think you've done a Scrum course, on product ownership, and you think you are now a product owner? I'm sorry, it's not (the case). Because the Product Management (responsibility) is a big piece - from design, to engagement, to development. So, there you have several of those sideline courses, you have to go to; to understand the market, to understand the proposition, to understand business model presentation, Lean Canvas…, then, you know what I mean? Where goes all the certifications and frameworks again? It's all about just learning. Just see it all as learning; adding that to your toolbox. You know, focus on the human-centric problem you want to solve. Ula: 20:44 I quite resonate with what you said. As in likening these frameworks, the concepts - to look at them as tools in a toolbox. You pick the one that most appropriately suits the work and the organization you are in - in my opinion. I'd like to know what you think about this. But I also think it is possible that a team, an organization you know, or even within a project, it could evolve in such a way that the tools that you're using… or the practices and the tools and processes that you're using to try to accomplish an outcome might need to change midway. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that what you start with is what you end with at the end of the project. What do you think about that? Raymond: 21:30 Yes, I mean, it is. I've worked with several big companies trying to do agile or are doing agile. I've seen it. I've got the scars on my back. I know what I'm am saying. It's very painful when you see people who want to fix it (an ill-fitting framework) into their hole. I say to them, ‘You have to be pragmatic.' Like this consultant… I don't remember his name again. But he said, ‘Agile has a way of making people drop their smart brains at home and come to work.'  If you come to work, (that) you do agile doesn't mean you're not smart - you're smart. Just know that you're smart. Look around the process, see how it's going to work well for you. If it's not working, find another way it's going to work. Remember, the principles still apply. Keep the principles at your forefront. We're talking real stuff here, yeah? So how do we make Kanban work for us? How do we make Scrum work for us? Okay, yes. Okay. How do we draw funds, investment? Because we need seed funding to do this experiment and prove to our manager it works. Okay, you want to start up something now? You're starting small? You're (i.e. Ula is, for example) not going out now opening an office and buying a podcast device of 10 grand or 20 grands? You're being lean here; trying to make sure you're experimenting here, right? Ula: 22:39 Exactly, you have to know if someone wants… Raymond: 22:41 You (Ula) are applying the same principles. You've got the mindset; you've got the mindset. That why you're doing what you're doing right now. And it's the same principle applied at a scale. Ula: 22:49 Thanks! You mentioned something that you've had scars on your back as a contractor working with teams and organizations. Is there any one you wish to share? Raymond: 22:58 I think for me, the behavior is the same. What I can say is, every company wants to be agile; that's the market drive - just get that right. Every company wants to be agile. In fact, you can almost sell anything to any company now in the name of Agile. Ula: 23:12 It's a buzzword, right? Raymond: 23:14 Yes. But then I always say this, ‘If I get in there, how can I add value to you?' So, you get in there, you stumble on arguments. Now one coach prefers SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), another Coach tell you Scrum, another coach tells you Kanban is the way. Then I always challenge them by saying… When I come in with design thinking mentality, they look at me like, ‘where does this guy come from? Who are you? We are agile.' I say, ‘yes, but how do you draw funds from the manager to tell him you're agile?' They'll say ‘Hmm! That is a Product Manager's responsibility.' I say, ‘Oh really? I thought that's still under Agile, because a  Scrum Product Owner course teaches them (i.e. the Product Managers) how to draw money? Is it a “no”? Okay'. You see, when you find that a… That's what you see in companies. I think what we need to start to understand is…  I tell people, ‘Guide yourself with mentors', experience is key as well, you know. My experience, tells me that many companies are still on the journey, and I said agile is a journey. My gauge tells me every company now knows: there's no argument we have to be agile. So, we've crossed that stage. They know that we have to be adaptive. They know that now. The challenge many companies are facing now is, ‘How?' They now know, but it's the ‘how' now. (My) advice is, based on my experience, there is no pattern. All I can say is, as long as you have these three pillars in the mindset of what you do; the design thinking, lean thinking, agile thinking… I always wrap it up by saying (you must have) almost an entrepreneurial mindset as well. Ula: 24:46 Oh yeah. Raymond: 24:47 That will help. A bit of that will very, very help (i.e. help very much). The reason why I say entrepreneurial mindset is because then you're thinking differently. You are not there sitting down in a company waiting for your salary every month and just go home. You're inspired to say, ‘What problem are we solving? What customer problem are we solving out there? How can we be fruitful?' Now you're thinking entrepreneurial. I think that drive will start to send a different message to company structures; you start inspire people to work, in fact inspire people for new products. And because people love working agile, when you put agile in any office, (for example) Kanban, people love it. Why? Because it is liberating. Ula: 25:27 It is. The transparency... Raymond: 25:28 It has that way of making… The transparency! People love it. That's the key to (the) successful companies we see these days everywhere. We don't know how they succeed. But this is the principle they've been applying years ago when it was not branded anything. Now is becoming branded, whatever we call it now. Ula: 25:44 Yeah, I mean, it's interesting… Yeah… it helps to put a name to something but it's more about not enshrining it and kind of stifling the spirit of what that thing is meant to mean (therefore) losing the value. Raymond: 26:00 Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Ula: 26:02 Now, you mentioned the book, The Startup Way and I assume that you might have read some other books. If you were to gift or recommend, say two or three more books that have greatly shaped your thinking; your agile, lean, design thinking - which ones would you recommend? Raymond: 26:21 Wow, there are key ones, I think, if you want to be different. If you want to be ‘agile- different', like I mean, set yourself apart. You need to have a hold of this set of books, you know. I would say go for The Startup Way (by Eric Ries), Lean Startup (book by Eric Ries), Lean UX, Impact Mapping by Gojko, User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton. These would get you started. Ula: 26:47 Okay Raymond: 26:48 These are books I've seen that stood the test of time when it comes to this whole ‘game' of Agile. You, kind of… They will set you apart in your Agile thinking. Someone is going to be like, ‘You just became holy again in agile.' I'm telling you. With every page you read in this book, you'll probably read them again and again and you'll be wondering, ‘Where have I been in this world?' Ula: 27:11 Kind of reminds me, there are some books that I have read yet across different disciplines - although I tend to read more of business and self-improvement books. And there are some that are out there, which I'dd read quickly and I'll make a mental note to read them again at a slower pace. However, I also have a lot queued up. Raymond: 27:31 I have so many books but I buy physical books. Ula: 27:33 Yeah Raymond: 27:34 The kind of books I buy are around technology, innovation, entrepreneur… Ula: 27:38 So, there might be other professionals out there or people who want to make a headway into the lean, agile world as consultants or contractors. Now you said you came from Nigeria to the UK, so how did you get your first agile related role? Raymond: 28:00 Yeah, I think it's more of the experience first - in the four walls of the company, that's it I mean, there are two levels I call it like I do some private coaching and training for people who want to get into like a fundamental business analyst role. Then maybe progress to an agile role. But I would say, most of these things... As I said, the first thing is the mind. I always say this, it's difficult to teach you agile, (if) you don't understand Agile, it's difficult. So, I think what I tend to do is… there is a level of experience I hope you'd have experienced in the four walls of a company, deep problems. Then you can do some training or in most cases, enlightening yourself with some of these books. Read them, be sure you understand what they're saying. I always say understand why people use Agile. Don't understand Agile. Just understand why and relate it to your real world. Bring it home. Always bring it home because… How we bring it home? I tell people, look at the things you use from day to day. When you started using WhatsApp, it's not what it is now. WhatsApp started with just a message. There was no video, there was no record, there was no that whole thing. So, there were messages then later. This is agile. They were changing things, giving people what they want, changing it again, adding this, moving the colors. Now, connect Agile to your daily world. Then when you get to the company, it just starts to make sense. Because the companies you might get into, they are also as confused as you think you are. So, I guess the most important thing is passion. Get that passion in your mind. If you are agile, it would come out of your mind(set) and the way you talk, people will now know it's agile. But if you don't have it in your mind, as a project you (need to) change your mind(set). I always teach people this. Look at your life as well. You want to look for a house or a project you want to work on or you want to buy a new car. You thought you wanted to buy a Volvo. Suddenly, as you started going (car shopping), you find out that you don't like a Volvo. You decided to change it (the desired car) into Mercedes, why? Your requirements are changing even as a human - you haven't even gone a month and you've changed three decisions already. So, that is the adaptive behavior the world is (aiming) at. The system can manage it. What technique will manage this changing requirement every day, yet give the business (its desired) business outcomes, give customer, customer satisfaction. This is… my coaching to people is always (to) connect it with your day-to-day life first - make sense (of it). Then every other thing people are talking about can be reality now. Then, you can do the training, you can do the coaching, you can do the workshops, and they all begin to join dots together. I do workshops as well but then that's more… my training and workshops are more experiential. I bring case studies into the room and by time you go out, you understand what it means. Yeah, that's the way I look at it, really. Ula: 31:04 So, are these workshops public? Raymond: 31:06 At the moment, the organisations I consult with – I run them with them. But then I do them public, but that is once in a while. My plan this year is to have some public sessions, but I haven't put them in the calendar yet. I'm still trying to work out what customers want. I'm still going through a design thinking phase around it because I feel I don't want to just produce what I like; I want to see what people really want. And see where I can do something barest minimum that can help satisfy the need. So, say I'm at that stage where I'm a bit lean about it as well. But then I'm also willing to do anything on demand. If there's a certain group of people that come together and say, ‘I want to learn this thing. We're 10 of us, we are 20.' I do things like that sometimes. I did one in Cardiff last year (2018). A group of people came together - 12 of them - said they wanted to understand Business Analysis, how it links to agile and all that stuff. So, I did a bespoke material for them and I went and delivered it for a full one day. So, things like that I can do as well. But as I said, there is no one public (course) at the moment . Ula: 32:14 Okay, fantastic. Once you have finalized your calendar for some public training or workshop events, where would be the best place for (finding) this info? Raymond: 32:25 I think professionally, the best way to get me is LinkedIn. Ula: 32:27 Okay Raymond: 32:29 So, Raymond Chike, LinkedIn, that's the best way to get me professionally. Ula: 32:34 I'll put your LinkedIn profile URL in the shownotes. Raymond: 32:38 Yes. I have a meetup group in Gloucestershire called the Design Thinking Squad.   Ula: 32:43 Okay. Do you have a URL for that? Is it on Meetup? Raymond: 32:47 It's on meetup as well as, a group called Design Thinking Squad Gloucestershire. We did a Design Thinking Crash Course which is only about  2-3 hours. If I get a demand for it, I will arrange something. Ula: 32:59 So, anyone who's interested who probably is listening to this episode that wants to get in touch with you, the best would be your LinkedIn (profile). Okay. Wow, the time does fly when you're having fun. I've enjoyed the conversation. Raymond. Thank you so, so much for making the time. Raymond: 33:17 You are welcome. Ula: 33:18 Do you have any last word for the audience, before we wrap up? Raymond: 44:45 Yeah, I've enjoyed this conversation. Thank you as well for making this happen. I know it's been busy for me to really get the time around it but finally we made it work. We have been very adaptive and true to the nature of agile. I'd say to the listeners out there, keep your dreams alive. And… there's always a way around everything. Keep in touch. And, as I always say, the future belongs to those who learn faster. Ula: 33:54 Thanks a lot Raymond. Raymond: 33:56 Thank you so much.

In Episode 34 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Graeme McDermott, Chief Data Officer at Tempcover, where they discuss one of the most debated topics in the industry right now; how hands-on should a data leader be, which includes; Defining what we mean by “hands-on” The two types of Data Leader: Hands-on V Agent of Change Why being hands-on will get you buy-in and credibility from D&A teams The benefits of remaining hands-on The role that scale plays in making the decision Why the industry needed that agent of change What areas outside of “technical" or “strategic” should Data Leaders focus on The relationship between Data Maturity & Data Leadership How to quantify "better questions" and why we need to ask them Why Data Literacy is a journey and not a destination Why context is important to provide solutions Utilising nudge theory and the 5 Why’s How to develop diverse friendly recruitment practices Is Agile fit for purpose in Data & Analytics How much time is split between being hands-on versus strategic

Robert Annis, Business & Organization Psychology Consultant and John Coleman chat about Agile, value, and organizational agility. Then they discuss the killer question...Is Agile dead? Well, is it? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/xagility/message

On this episode, I'm interviewing an Agile Delivery Lead Attia Jamil who's been working in the Agile space for the last 8yrs and in Project Management for 16 years. ‍ We hear all about Attia's experience working in two very different ways of working starting with the more traditional Waterfall projects through to the present day and working with Agile teams. ‍ I also ask her questions the following: ‍ "Can Project Managers be Agile?" " Is it time to ditch the title Project Manager?' "Is Agile misunderstood?" ‍ Plus lot's more. ‍ For more tips and approaches to improve your project management and productivity visiting my blog or follow me on Instagram

AGILE FUNDAMENTALS & BEYOND asks the questions that everybody wants answered. This episode asks the question "Is Agile the same as Scrum?" Featuring our Agile experts: David Lowe, Jim Wyllie and Jiten Vara. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive our free guides and other bonus content at https://scrumandkanban.co.uk/ (scrumandkanban.co.uk)

In this episode: (00:39) Is Agile killing or helping innovation?(15:20) Is there value in determining metrics based on cycle time? What metrics are other organizations using to provide leadership visibility into team performance? (26:17) What practical techniques can help improve the cohesiveness of a team in an Agile environment? (37:00) Has there been much success in introducing Agile and practicing Agile in K-12 classrooms?(39:38) What are you reading?(43:13) Wrap up.Support the show (https://www.agilealliance.org/membership-pricing/)

Is Agile a framework or a philosophy? Is DevOps simply a product of an imperfect world? These are the kind of questions we’re tackling on the podcast today when we meet Sergio, CTO of Zaizi. In a world where customer service is everything we look at how data can drive better government services for you and me, and the cultural hurdles that need to be overcome!

In this episode of Old Fox Young Fox, we talk to Dan Millbank about becoming agile. What is Agile? What makes it so successful? Can it be applied to areas outside of technology firms? Topics covered What is Agile anyway? Why is the tech world so excited about "becoming Agile"? Is Agile only for building software? Could Agile be applied to Government? What are some of the drawbacks of Agile working? What is a Lean enterprise approach? About our guest Dan Millbank is an Agile Software Coach, who specialises in delivery of projects spanning public sector to high-speed start-ups. He lives in the South East of the UK. Contacting our guest https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielmillbank/ (LinkedIn: )https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielmillbank/ This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp Support this podcast

Have you ever been involved in a discussion on Agile and thought to yourself, "What a bunch of BS" ? That was the genesis of our latest episode. And let me tell you, there was passionate disagreement. Is Agile simply a clever repackaging of existing lean principles sold with slick marketing by sleazy consultants? Is it mostly about the books and the boards and the training programs consultants use to sell unending services? Is it a gimmicky thing that is a whole lot of nothing new? Is it, in fact, a bunch of bullsh*t? Phil, Shashi and Bill join me for this conversation and we cover a couple of key topics: - Where did the modern interpretation of "Agile" originate? - How is the concept of Agile misused by enterprises? - Are consultants to blame for the hype around Agile practices? - How does a practitioner move past the hype and nonsense? Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube. Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube Channel! Check out more business and technology topics at www.consultantssayingthings.com

What would you do if after starting a new job as Head of Product you'd learn that your product management team is perceived as passive, not innovative and even not the voice of the user? I discuss with Luca Criscuolo, Head of Product & Delivery in Outfittery how he assessed and identified issues and how he transformed his organization from feature builders to a true product management team and strategy contributors. There is lots of learnings and wisdom on leadership, team organization, and role of product management. Enjoy and share!Detailed notes, list of books and links to resources mentioned: https://productramble.com/transforming-product-management-team-and-the-organization-with-luca-criscuolo/(00:01:15) Assessing product management team(00:10:00) Identifying problems & root causes(00:18:33) What Luca changed(00:23:04) Revolution or evolution?(00:25:35) What went wrong and learnings(00:28:00) Change management(00:33:26) Outcomes of the experiment(00:41:13) Books that Luca recommends(00:43:08) Is Agile necessary?(00:46:24) Say hi to Luca(00:47:13) Please share! Say Hi to Luca: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucacriscuolo/What would you like next episodes to be about? Let me know: podcast@productramble.com or your social medium of choicePlease help! Share with one friend today - this helps others discover the podcast.Music credits:The Pyre Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Podcast For Project Managers. Table of Contents 00:35 … Meet Steve Kraus 01:27 … Defining Agile / Waterfall 04:38 … How to know which one is working for you? 05:40 … Is Agile right for me? 06:35 … Are PM careers still in demand? 10:00 … In demand skill sets 14:10 … A scrum master story 19:00 … Where are you more comfortable? 23:29 … Getting the skills to make the transition 25:55 … Move on, Move up, or Move in? 28:09 … Wrap Up NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  Every other week we get together to discuss what you have told us matters to you as a professional project manager.  It's our chance to meet with some of the experts in the field, get inside their heads, and see what has worked for them.  It's a place to share ideas and philosophies, all with the purpose of improving our own game. I'm your host, Nick Walker, and with me are the two guys who make this podcast happen, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  And Andy, we're fortunate enough to have an Agile expert in the house. ANDY CROWE:  And this is going to be a really interesting slice that we're taking on Agile.  We're going to be looking at it a little bit differently than traditionally. NICK WALKER:  Well, let's meet our nontraditional guest; all right?  As a Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scaled Agile Coach, Steve Kraus has more than 15 years' experience assisting organizations in transitioning to the Agile mindset.  As the CIO of a mid-sized company, he led the conversion of their Waterfall-based software construction efforts to an Agile approach.  He served as a senior consultant at Deloitte Consulting, as well as a senior principal with Daugherty Business Solutions.  He's currently engaged at a major local insurance company, assisting them with Agile training, coaching, and planning, as they begin their Agile journey.  Steve, it's a privilege to have you with us. STEVE KRAUS:  Thanks. NICK WALKER:  Now, we should probably start off by defining our terms just a little bit.  Waterfall?  Agile?  Let's get into that just a little bit.  What is Agile, and what is the difference between that and Waterfall? STEVE KRAUS:  Right.  So since the pyramids were built, people have been applying kind of traditional project management approaches; right?  So kind of the classic PMI, PMP certification.  The iron triangle, you know, scope, cost, resources, quality.  How do you make those tradeoffs; right?  And then how do you manage a project using a very structured approach to completion?  That's kind of classic what people call Waterfall; right? Agile, you know, a lot of folks got together probably in 2002 in a hotel room, literally, and said this ain't working for us.  We're seeing a lot of projects that are running over.  Almost all of them.  Many projects fail.  So a lot of money wasted.  And they said, you know, is there – and by the way, one thing we saw a lot of and they saw a lot of was IT kind of getting a black eye.  So I'm an IT person.  I'm not in construction. BILL YATES:  Right. STEVE KRAUS:  I'm not building a Mercedes Benz.  I'm building software.  So IT almost got a bad reputation.  It's like projects always run over.  Projects never do what they're supposed to do.  The end result of the project isn't really all that useful or that much value.  And so Agile kind of said, let's flip that whole thing on its head.  It's about value delivery.  The goal is not to finish on-time, on-budget.  The goal is to deliver something of value.  It may not be the entire thing we originally aimed at.  So scope is flexible; right?  Resources are flexible. The second thing Agile kind of brought into the picture was saying, you know, those traditional approaches of let's design it, let's build it, let's test it, right, and then a big bang delivery at the end; right?  No, let's deliver little pieces of value, and then even change direction based on those pieces.  So love that.  Hate that.

The Podcast For Project Managers. Table of Contents 00:35 … Meet Steve Kraus 01:27 … Defining Agile / Waterfall 04:38 … How to know which one is working for you? 05:40 … Is Agile right for me? 06:35 … Are PM careers still in demand? 10:00 … In demand skill sets 14:10 … A scrum […] The post Episode 66 – Is Agile Right For me? appeared first on PMP Certification Exam Prep & Training - Velociteach.

What technologies are important for your business? Is Agile right for your team? Are traditional models still relevant? Find out on The Takeover with Matt Johnson! Understand today's digital landscape and close the gap between tradition and innovation. Join us every Wednesday as Matt sits with Industry giants and business gurus to find out what works and what doesn't. We'll cover topics on R&D, Leadership development strategies, personal branding, tech that sucks vs tech that works, and way more! In today's episode, Matt shares his journey in the development of his marketing firm and how The Takeover was born. You won't want to miss it. For more on The Takeover and behind the scenes content, visit www.thetakeoverpodcast.com.

00:16 – Welcome to “I Rolled a Natural 20 For My Agility Check” …we mean, “Greater Than Code!” 01:31 – Background and Superpower; Empathy 09:08 – Cross-Cultural Communication Dynamics Women in Agile (https://www.agilealliance.org/events/women-in-agile-2018/) 15:48 – Biases, Understanding Dynamics, and Facilitating as an Ally @jessitron (https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/902935755533807616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E902935755533807616&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greaterthancode.com%2F2017%2F09%2F20%2F047-communicating-across-boundaries-with-declan-whelan%2F) "To have biases is to be human. It's not a bad thing." @dwhelan @greaterthancode 21:02 – Being Authentic 25:31 – Is Agile something that you are or something that you do? 35:37 – Adopting Practices Across Teams “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson @jessitron (https://twitter.com/jessitron/status/902949956889313280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E902949956889313280&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.greaterthancode.com%2F2017%2F09%2F20%2F047-communicating-across-boundaries-with-declan-whelan%2F) People love consistency. Ask, what are the benefits? then strive for common outcomes, not common practices. @dwhelan@greaterthancode 41:57 – Technical Debt and Technical Health: How do we amplify what we want? Code Climate (https://codeclimate.com/) Reflections: Jessica: Strive for common outcomes; not common practices. Coraline: Some situations should be taken as a promise for a conversation. Janelle: Ask for permission. Sam: Identifying and clarifying outcomes that we want. Declan: Figure out how you can have effective conversations with your teams. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode). To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Declan Whelan.

De Agile coaches en Scrum Masters zijn niet aan te slepen. Bedrijven die veel met software doen, zoals banken en verzekeraars schakelen massaal over op Agile werken. Is Agile werken interessant voor jouw organisatie? En wat betekent de ontwikkeling naar Agile Werken voor jouw organisatie en jouw medewerkers? In de studio hebben we Rini van Solingen. Rini is hoogleraar aan de TU Delft, Chief Technology Officer van Prowareness schrijver van enkele boeken zoals De kracht van Scrum en De Bijenherder. Mooie quote van Rini om je naar de podcast te lokken: “Meestal organiseer je een team om werk het werk doen, maar het gaat er juist om dat je een team organiseert dat goed werkt”.

The Hatchet Inn, Bristol, UK Geoff and Paul find Nigel in a Bristol pub and wax lyrical about Geoff's question, "Is Agile the new 'alternative'?" and delve into the history of the waterfall approach. In part two, the guys get more reflective on their own choices during their school years and how that may have formed who they are now. A little philosophical compared to the usual!

In this episode of AgileNEXT, Bill Wagner, Senior Content Developer at Microsoft, joins Daniel and Stephen and talks to us about Agile and the Agile ecosystem. Some topics include: Is Agile too process focused today? Using Agile on a massive worldwide open-source project Agile outside of IT Building the open-source nonprofit Humanitarian Toolbox AgileNEXT