Podcast appearances and mentions of kurt bittner

In this episode, Thomas Betts talks with Kurt Bittner and Pierre Pureur about continuous architecture. The discussion covers the role of a software architect, the importance of documenting architectural decisions, and why you need a minimum viable architecture for any minimum viable product. Read a transcript of this interview: https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/continuous-architecture/ Subscribe to the Software Architects' Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter Upcoming Events: QCon London (April 8-10, 2024) Discover new ideas and insights from senior practitioners driving change and innovation in software development. https://qconlondon.com/ InfoQ Dev Summit Boston (June 24-25, 2024) Actionable insights on today's critical dev priorities. https://devsummit.infoq.com/ QCon San Francisco (November 18-22, 2024) Get practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies. https://qconsf.com/ The InfoQ Podcasts: Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts: - The InfoQ Podcast https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/ - Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture - Generally AI Podcast www.infoq.com/generally-ai-podcast/ Follow InfoQ: - Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@infoq - Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ - LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq - Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 - Instagram: @infoqdotcom - Youtube: www.youtube.com/infoq Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development. - Join a community of experts. - Increase your visibility. - Grow your career. https://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq

00:00 Intro 00:21 Why Read "Unlocking Business Agility" 06:04 Goals suck in organizations 8:06 Outcomes over Outputs 10:38 Enable empowerment with outcomes 13:05 Separating the signal from the noise 18:00 Dealing with transparency - facts are friendly - how fascinating 26:03 Suffering is a prerequisite for learning and growth 29:28 Move all projects to red until proven otherwise 30:38 Is EMB only for software and Scrum? 34:57 Scrum is an instance of EBM 36:33 Unrealized Value 38:22 More ways to connect with Patricia Kong, Todd Miller, Kurt Bittner and Ryan Ripley 42:14 Outro Book - Unlocking Business Agility with Evidence-Based Management: Satisfy Customers and Improve Organizational Effectiveness - https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Business-Agility-Evidence-Based-Management/dp/013824457X EBM Guide - https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management-guide When your metrics are not what you want, "GOOD". Jocko Willink's - https://www.google.com/search?q=jocko+willink+good+short&oq=jocko+willink+good+short&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRifBTIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBdIBCjEyMjcwajBqMTWoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c1294a93,vid:fAnaTtoYDXs,st:0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with us at the following places: Wisconsin Agility Training: https://wisconsinagility.com/training Advising: https://wisconsinagility.com/advising Merch: https://wisconsinagility.com/merch Jeff Bubolz Jeff Bubolz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbubolz/ Jeff Bubolz Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffBubolz Chad Beier Chad Beier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadbeier/ Agile Songs YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@agilesongs Agile Songs Shorts: https://www.youtube.com/@agilesongs/shorts Agile Songs Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileSongs The Agile Wire Web: https://theagilewire.com Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0YKEHJtcJXZ55ohsUOvklI Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-agile-wire/id1455057621 Agile Wire Clips: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLl0ryedF7y7HWTsbur4ysdpUcY7tniSG Agile Wire Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileWire Make sure you subscribe to the channel! #Scrum #Agile #ProfessionalScrum #Kanban #BusinessAgility

For questions or requests that you would like us to check on, please drop a message on LinkedIn or join the Mastering Agility Discord community! Participate as an audience member Mastering Agility Mural Mastering Agility merch Sander Dur Sander Dur is a Professional Scrum Trainer at Scrum.org, podcast host of Mastering Agility, Professional Scrum Master and Lead Agile Consultant, and trainer at Xebia. Besides this, he's an avid writer for predominantly Serious Scrum on Medium.com. Sander has a major passion for the human side in complex domains. Ensuring a high level of psychological safety, therefore, is a critical part of his work. Organizations in complex domains can only survive when innovating. Innovation can only take place with the right balance between low social friction and high intellectual friction. While most organizations now understand how to apply Agile frameworks, they struggle with the delivery of value. Psychological safety is the next step in this evolution and Sander has a huge drive to help organizations reach that step. Sander is enthusiastic, open-minded, and ambitious. He finds interpersonal relationships and intrinsic motivations very important in team dynamics. Besides his work, Sander loves to spend time with his family, enjoys sports and eating healthy, barbecuing, riding his motorcycle, and traveling. Jim Sammons My passion is helping people to: Do more of the right work (and less of the wrong work). Create more actual teams than just groups of people who work together. Learning how to improve themselves, their team, and their organization incrementally. Understand that less, not more, is usually part of the answer to some of the hardest questions we all face. See their workplaces, teams, and their sphere of influence as something that is evolving, which requires an evolution of all of its parts to adapt. Throughout my career, I have worked with clients of all sizes, industries, and technologies.  Whether it's leading a transformative strategy at a Fortune 100 or helping a new startup understand its unique value proposition the common focus I bring to each role is “making people better.” Contact us at: Masteringagility.org https://xebia.com/academy/nl/trainers/sander-dur https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessammons/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanderdur/ 

In this episode, guest host Patricia Kong is joined by Kurt Bittner from Scrum.org and Professional Scrum Trainer Laurens Bonnema from Xebia. They talk about Evidence-Based Management (EBM) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), and the importance of focusing on outcomes and delivering value. They discuss:- The importance of feedback loops- Measuring and setting goals in business using outcome-oriented metrics- The differences between EBM and OKRs- How to combine EBM and OKRs in decision making-More!

In this episode, Patricia Kong, Kurt Bittner, Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller discuss  topics in their new book - Unlocking Business Agility with Evidence-Based Management: Satisfy Customers and Improve Organizational Effectiveness. They discuss Evidence-Based Management, , using EBM for agile transformations, the importance of setting expectations, goal setting, prioritizing effectiveness over activity and more!The book is available for shipping to the US and pre-order for the e-book here. You can use the code SCRUMORG for 35% off at InformIT

Bio Dave West is the Product Owner and CEO at Scrum.org. In this capacity, he engages with partners, and the community to drive Scrum.org's strategy and the overall market position of Scrum. Prior to joining Ken Schwaber and the team at Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture. As a member of the company's executive management team was also instrumental in growing Tasktop from a services business into a VC backed product business with a team of almost 100. As one of the foremost industry experts on software development and deployment, West has helped advance many modern software development processes, including the Unified process and Agile methods. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports. He also is the co-author of two books, The Nexus Framework For Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then he served as vice president, research director at Forrester Research, where he worked with leading IT organisations and solutions providers to define, drive and advance Agile-based methodology and tool breakthroughs in the enterprise. Email –  Dave.west@scrum.org Twitter - @davidjwest LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjustinwest   Interview Highlights Growing up with dyslexia 03:10 & 10:20 Water-Scrum-Fall 07:40 Psychological safety 15:40 Lilian the rockstar - 'who have you helped today?' 18:55 Is 'project' a taboo word? 21:53 'Humble and Kind' - not just for country music 44:30 Books ·         Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design by Dave West, Brett McLaughlin and Gary Pollice https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Object-Oriented-Analysis-Design/dp/0596008678/ ·         The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum by Dave West, Kurt Bittner and Patricia Kong https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nexus-Framework-Scaling-Scrum-Continuously/dp/0134682661 ·         ARTICLE: Why Kindness Matters by Dave West https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-kindness-matters ·         Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L Friedman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thank-You-Being-Late-Accelerations/dp/0141985755 ·         Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrum-Pocket-Companion-Practice-Publishing/dp/9087537204 ·         The Professional Scrum Series by various authors https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+professional+scrum+series&crid=1WVNY1VHR0QAQ&sprefix=professional+scrum+series ·         Zombie Scrum by Christiaan Verijs, Johannes Schartau and Barry Overeem https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zombie-Scrum-Survival-Guide-Professional/dp/0136523269 ·         The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations (The Professional Scrum Series) by Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner, Laurens Bonnema, foreword by Dave West https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Agile-Leader-Growing-Organizations-dp-0137591519/dp/0137591519/ Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. It's my honour to introduce my guest for this episode. He is Dave West. Dave is the CEO of Scrum.org and prior to joining Scrum.org as CEO, he led the development of the Rational Unified Process, also known as RUP with IBM. He was also Chief Product Officer for Tasktop Technologies and Managing Director of the Americas at Ivar Jacobson Consulting. He is a widely published author of several articles and research reports, as well as the books The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. In this conversation, Dave talked about growing up in the council estates, being raised by his grandparents who were of great positive influence in his life, especially his grandmother. He also talked about navigating the challenges of being dyslexic, especially as a student in secondary school with the silver lining being that he got introduced to computers. Dave also gave his perspective on one of the ongoing “agile wars” quote unquote, on the concept of projects and whether they still have a place in agile or not. Without further ado ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dave, I am sure you would find it very, very interesting, relevant and insightful. Thanks again for listening. Ula Ojiaku So we have on this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, Dave West, who is the CEO of Scrum.org. Dave, it's a pleasure to have you on this show, thank you for making the time. Dave West Oh, well, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad we've finally managed to make the time to do this. It's great to talk to you. Ula Ojiaku Yes, well, the honour is mine. Let's start by talking about, you know, getting to know about the man, Dave. Can you, you know, tell us a bit about that? Dave West Yeah, I'll try not to bore your audience. So I was brought up on a council estate in a little town called Market Harborough, just outside Leicester. I lived with my grandparents, and which has definitely, my grandmother's definitely shaped who I am, I think, which is fantastic. So I got into computers, sort of a little bit by accident. I'm dyslexic and I found school, particularly secondary school, very challenging. I don't know if any of your audiences had a similar experience, but, you know, I went from a very protected environment and secondary school is a, oh my gosh, it's like an experience that could scare any human being. And so my dyslexia really was a challenge there and there was a teacher at secondary school called Phil Smith. He drove a sports car, he was sort of like that young, you know those teachers that you remember from school that are the good looking young ones. And he ran a computer lab and it had, you know, RS236, it had these really old computers, well, now we would look at them, they were brand new at the time, computers and some BBC model As and some other things. And I helped him and he gave me a lot of time in the lab and it was my sort of like escape. So I got very into computing and helped him and helped other teachers who were rubbish, I'm not going to lie, with computing. So that allowed me then, you know, I went through, managed to survive school, went to a further education college called Charles Keene where I studied, well I did a computing course, so not traditional A'levels and all of that. And then got into Huddersfield that was a poly at the time, became a University whilst I was there. And I think that that gave me a great opportunity, it was a fantastic university, it was a very practical course. My dyslexia became less of an issue because of, you know, word processing and I'd be honest and, you know, the ability for it to read back, even though it was an awful read back, it was like listening to say, you know, to like an old fashioned Stephen Hawking, you know, sort of, and then got me a job at Commercial Union, which then led to me doing a Masters, which then led me to move to London, all this sort of stuff. The adventure was great. The thing about, I guess, my journey is that it, I was driven at a certain point, I became very driven by the need to improve the way in which we delivered software development at that time, and that led me through my Masters and, you know, Object-Oriented and then to a company called Rational Software where I became the Product Manager for RUP, the Rational Unified Process. Now for the agilists listening, they're probably like, oh, boo hiss, and that's totally legit. It was in fact, that's when I first met Ken Schwaber and he told me I was an idiot, which turns out he was right. Ken Schwaber the creator (of Scrum), who I work for now. Anyways. Ula Ojiaku I mean, who wouldn't know Ken Schwaber if you're a self-respecting agilist.  Sorry, go on please. Dave West Yeah, he's an interesting character for sure. Anyway, so I was the RUP Product Manager and I realised I went to this large insurance company in the Midwest and it's a huge organisation and I met this lady and she said, I'm a use case. I said, what do you do? She said, I'm a use case specifier, and meet my friend, she's a use case realiser and I'm like, oh, no, that's not the intent. And so I realised that there was this process that I loved, and I still definitely love elements of it, but was fundamentally flawed in terms of helping actually people to work together to work on complex problems and solve them. So that, you know, and I'd written a book and I'd done some other things on the way to this point, but this point really did make me realise that I was going wrong, which was a little scary because RUP was incredibly popular at that time, and so then that led me to work with Ivar Jacobson, tried to bring in Scrum to the unified process, spent more time with Ken Schwaber who'd finally realised I may still be an idiot, but I was an idiot that was willing to listen to him. Then I ended up at Forrester Research, running the application development practice, I became a research director there, which was super interesting, because I spent a lot of time looking at organisations, and I realised a really fundamental problem that I think probably will resonate with many that are listening to this podcast, that people were doing Scrum yeah, Scrum was incredibly popular and people were doing Scrum, but they were doing it in an industrial context. It was more like Water-Scrum-Fall. And I coined that term in a research document, which got picked up by the, InfoQ and all these magazines, it became this sort of ‘thing' – Water-Scrum-Fall. You know, they were doing Scrum, but they only liked to plan once a year, and there's a huge planning sort of routine that they did. They were doing Scrum, but they rarely released because the customers really don't want it - it's incredibly hard and dangerous and things can go horribly wrong. And so they were doing Scrum, but they weren't really doing Scrum, you know. And so that was super interesting. And I got an opportunity to do a number of workshops and presentations on the, sort of like the solution to this Water-Scrum-Fall problem with Ken, I invited him and we did this very entertaining roadshow, which I'm surprised we weren't arrested during it, but we were, it was a really interesting experience. I then decided like any good practitioner, I had to do a Startup. So I went to Tasktop working with Mik Kersten and the gang at Tasktop, and the great thing about Tasktop was it was a massive fire hose of doing Scrum, trying to make payroll, learning about everything around delivering a product in a market that wasn't really there and that we had to build. And it was just fantastic working with a lot of OEMs, a lot of partners and looking at, and then we got funding. We grew to five teams. I was running product and engineering. And Ken was continually talking to me through this time, and mentoring me, coaching me, but I realised he was also interviewing me. So he then said to me, one day, Dave, I don't want to be the CEO of Scrum.org anymore. I'd like you to be, when can you start? Ken doesn't take no for an answer, and I think that's part of the success of Scrum. I think that his persistence, his tenacity, his, you know, sort of energy around this, was the reason why Scrum, part of the reason him and Jeff, you know, had different skills, but definitely both had that in common, was successful. So I then came and joined about seven years ago Scrum.org, to run Scrum.org and it's an amazing organisation Ula Ojiaku And if I may just go back a bit to what you said about your time in secondary school, you said you were dyslexic and apart from the fact that you discovered computers, you had a horrible experience. What made it horrible for you? Dave West I think it was, you know, there's no support network, there's nobody checking in on you, particularly at secondary school. At primary school, you have a teacher that you're in the same room, you've sort of got that, you're with the same kids, but you go, you know, you, you go from one lesson to another lesson, to another lesson and if you're a little bit, well for me, you know, reading and writing was incredibly difficult. I could read and write at that point. I was about nine and a half, 10 when I finally broke through, thanks to an amazing teacher that worked with my primary school. And, but I was way, way behind. I was slower. I, you know, and teachers didn't really, it was almost as though, and I'm sure education's very different now, and both my children are dyslexic and they go to a special school that's designed around this, so I know that it's different for them, but the teaching was very much delivery without inspection and adaption of the outcome, you know, just to make it a bit agile for a second. So you go through all this stuff and I wasn't able to write all the stuff down fast enough. I certainly wasn't able to process it, so because of that, it was pretty awful. I always felt that I was stupid, I was, you know, and obviously I relied on humour and I was a big lad, so I didn't have any bullying issues, but it was very, very challenging. And I found that I could be good at something with computers. And I sort of got it, I understood how to write, you know, BASIC very quickly and maybe even a little Assembly. I knew how to configure machines, it just seemed natural, it certainly helped my confidence, which, you know, maybe I'm a little too confident now, but definitely had an impact on my future life. Ula Ojiaku That's awesome, and I'm sure there are people who would be encouraged by what you've just said, so I wanted to begin there. Thanks for sharing. Now, what about, what do you do when you're not working? Dave West What do I do when I'm not working? Well, I'm a, that's a hard question. Gosh. So I have a nine year old and a six year old, and two boys, so, you know, sometimes I'm refereeing wrestling matches, you know, I'm definitely dealing with having children, I was late to life having children. I'm 52 and I have a nine year old and a six year old. I thought that, you know, a single lifestyle, a bachelor lifestyle in Boston and, you know, loving my work, writing books, you know, doing this traveling the world was going to be survive, and then I met the most amazing girl and, who persuaded me that I needed to have children, and I thought, well, I really like you, so I'd better. And it's been an incredible adventure with these children. They've taught me so much, the most important thing I think they've taught me is patience. And it's making me a better human being, and many of those traits, just to bring it back to Agile for a second, are things that we need to build better into the way that we turn up at work because you know, the project, I think it was called Aristotle, the Google big project where they looked at the successful teams, they found a number of traits, but one of those traits that was so important was psychological safety, right? And that requires you to attend every interaction with a mindfulness, not of doing things that you want to do to yourself, which is that sort of golden rule, but that platinum rule, do unto others as they want be done unto. And, and I think that is so, so important and crucial, and it's something that I aspire to, I don't always succeed every day as a human being, you know, whether it's at the checkout at the supermarket or whether it's waiting in line, particularly at the moment in an airport, and it's just, you know, something that I think in an agile team is so important because that safety is so, so required to create that environment where transparency happens, to create that environment where you can have those honest conversations about what's happening next, or what's happened previously where you're running those retrospectives, where you're trying to really plan when there is not enough knowledge to plan. You know, those sort of things require that kind of environment to be successful. So, you know, though, yes, I spend my life either working or really spending it with my children at the moment because of the age they're at, I think it's helping me, the time I'm spending with my children is helping me be a better human being and be a better Agilist.  Ula Ojiaku There's something you said, you know, about psychological safety and being kind, it just reminded me that, you know, of that, the need for also to be respectful of people, because when you are kind and you're showing people respect, they would, that brings down the barriers and makes them, you know, more inclined to be open and to participate. What do you think about that? Would you say there's a link between respect and kindness, I know we're being philosophical right now… Dave West Well actually, yes, but no, it's incredibly practical as well. I think that kindness, so I've written quite a lot about kindness, because it's a trait that we, as a community, our professional Scrum trainer community, manifests and lives. It's something that we actually interview for when you join our community, and the reason why we do that, isn't because we're a bunch of hippies that just like kumbaya, want everybody to hold hands and be nice to each other, I mean, that would be great as well and who doesn't like a good rendition of kumbaya, it's a great song, but it's because we believe that kindness, ultimately, is beneficial to both parties, particularly the person that's being kind, because it creates, not only does it create levels of karma, but it creates that transparency, it creates that opportunity to learn that you may not get, if you go in in a very confrontational way and people don't intentionally be confrontational, but it's so easy for it to happen. You know, it's so easy for you to question, because, you know, somebody says something you're like, well, I don't agree with that, and that instantly creates an environment or a connection that is, you know, confrontational, you're in this position, it spirals, blah, blah, blah. So, but you can, instead of saying, I don't agree with that say, hey, well, that's interesting, let me have a look into that, and you're inquisitive. And if you try to approach everything with that sort of like kindness model, and I don't mean always being nice. Nice is different to kind, nice is like faking, I think, sometimes, you know, it's funny, you don't have to be kind to be nice, but you have to be nice to be kind if you understand what I mean. So you can fake niceness, niceness is part of being kind. So, you know, if you approach it in the right way, where you care about people and you care about what they're bringing to the table and you care about the environment that they're in, whether it's just simple things like checking in more frequently, you know, whether it's actually making time in this very scheduled life that we live now with zoom call after zoom call, to check in with the team, or the person that you're talking to, to see how are they turning up today? How has their day been? And I think that's, you know, super, super important. The other important element of kindness that comes out is this helping others element, you know, my gran, God rest her soul, Lilian, she was a rockstar on so many levels. And she used to say to me, when I came home from school, particularly from elementary school or primary school, I think we call it in England, right? She'd say things like, not what have you done today, I mean, sometimes she said that, but she'd say, who have you helped? Who have you helped? I'd be like uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and she said it enough that I realised it's important, you know, it's important that you spend time with others, help them in their tasks, you know, because I think you can learn so much and build those relationships, build that safety that is so, so important to really develop. We work in complex environments, right, that's the whole point of agility. Complex environments require people to collaborate, they require people to look at things in different ways. They really benefit from diversity, diversity of mind, diversity of experience, diversity of skill. And you bring that together, but you can only bring all these different parts together when you have an environment that allows for it, and traditional project management techniques, fabulous as they were for building bridges and tunnels and everything like that, didn't allow that, they don't encourage that. They encourage people to be focused, to be efficient, to be managing to that model. And I think we have to step away from that and work in a slightly different way where kindness, psychological safety, trust, respect, use the word respect. And I think it's, you know, obviously it's a Scrum value, but it's crucial to effectively allowing independent people with diverse perspectives to work together in an effective way. And to be honest society doesn't have enough of that in general. I think we've definitely moved away from respect and trust. We don't trust in our governments, we don't trust in our institutions, we don't trust in our fellow human beings and we've become very much focused on ourselves and our individual needs. And the reality is there's no such thing as a self-made person, you're only there because of the success of previous generations. As you drive to work on a car, on a road that has been built by others, that's been funded by others, you know, so this idea that you are in it alone, you know, is completely wrong, and I think sometimes we bring that to the work and it creates an environment that is not as successful. Ula Ojiaku True, true. No, thanks for that, Dave. I completely agree. Now there are people back to this project program that feel like, you know, the word project in agile is a taboo, almost a swear word. What's your perspective on this? Dave West I don't think it's a swear word, I don't think it's taboo. I think, you know, Mik's book is a fabulous book and he's a fabulous person, but he was using it to emphasise the fact that, you know, that we have become too focused on this, you know, investment paradigm, this organisation paradigm, this structural paradigm of the project and that, ultimately, the idea of a product, this idea of a cohesive set of capabilities that's packaged in some way that has a clear boundary, that has a clear set of customers, that has some clear value, is a much better way of aligning your people and your investments. And so he was emphasising that, and obviously he emphasised the idea of value streams being the mechanism that we deliver value in this construct to these people in this packaging of products, and it's a great book and I recommend everybody should read it. Ula Ojiaku I have mine here. Dave West No, that's good. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the development of the book a little, working with Mik, providing a lot of feedback and I think it's a great book. However, the idea of a project doesn't go away and all of that work that we did, that organisations that I respect deeply like the PMI and, you know, that even, dare I say, things like Prince2, all of that work, isn't wrong. It's just, we need to look at it from a different lens. The idea that complex work is there changes certain things, the fact that requirements and understandings and appreciation of what we're doing emerges over time, that is just a truth, and that was true of projects as well. We just need to build in the mechanisms to be better able to deal with that. The fact that we would invest hundreds, if not thousands of hours planning things that ultimately fell apart when some underlying assumption changed and then we'd create a change order to deal with the chaos that that created need to be, we need to step away from those ideas. Do we still have projects? I think yes, sometimes you will have something that has a, you know, put a man on, or hopefully it's not a man, hopefully it's a woman, but a woman on Mars. I don't trust men on, I think it'd be much more successful if it was a woman, but, anyway, or person. Men get old, they don't grow up, right? Isn't that the saying, but anyway, so putting that person on Mars is a project, right? It has a definitive, you know, plan, it has an end goal that's very clearly underside. It's very likely that we're going to build a series of products to support that, you know, there is, I don't think we need to get tied up so much on the words, project and product. However, we really need to step back a little bit and look at, okay, you know, like treating people as resources, breaking up teams and reforming teams continuously, treating people as fungible or whatever that is, they're just unrealistic. It's not nothing to do with project or product, they're just silly, you just can't deal with this. The fact that teams take time to form, you know, the fact that, you know, the most successful agile teams I've ever seen are teams that have a clear line of sight to the customer, clear understanding of what they're trying to do for that customer, have guardrails, have an enabling management structure that provides support to deliver that value to that customer. As long as you think about those things and you don't get so tied up with the dance or the routine of project management that you forget that, then I'm not concerned. You know, there's this big thing about, oh, should project managers be Scrum masters? I don't know, it depends on the project manager. Sometimes project managers make very good product owners because they take real clear ownership of the outcomes and the value that's trying to be delivered. Sometimes, you know, they make great Scrum masters because they care very much about the flow of work, the team dynamics, the service to the organisation, the service to the business, and they want to act in that way. And sometimes you just want to get stuff done and work in a team, as a developer on that increment. You know, I don't know, you know, people are like, oh, because, and I think this is the fundamental problem, and you've got me onto my soapbox here and I apologise, but the thing that I see over and over again is the use of agile in an industrial, mass production oil and mass production way of thinking about the world. So what they do is that it isn't agile or project management that's at fault. It's the paradigm that's driving the use of agile or the use of project management. You can do agile in a very waterfall way, don't get me wrong or a very industrial way, I almost don't want to use the word waterfall, but this idea of, you know, maximizing efficiency. I mean, gosh, the word velocity has been as synonymous of agile forever when ultimately it's got nothing to do with agility, you know, it's a useful mechanism for a team to help them run a retrospective sometimes. But it isn't a mechanism that you use to plan, you know, the capacity of your organisation and all this sort of idea,  what they're trying to do always is use an industrial, you know, sort of mindset in an agile context, in a context that doesn't support an industrial mindset or a traditional mindset. And that drives me mad because I see agility being used to deliver work rather than value, I see agility basically being missed, sort of like, almost jimmied in with a crowbar into these massive projects and programs where you've got fixed scope, fixed budgets at the start. They don't actually know what they're trying to achieve, but you've got all these contracts in place that describe all this stuff, very detailed up front. And then they say, we're going to use agile to do it, and you're like, okay, what are we, you know, what happens if the first sprint uncovers the fact that the product goal was fundamentally flawed? Oh well, we can't change that because the contract says, well, hang on a minute, what are we in this business for? Are we actually trying to deliver value to customers and help them solve a particular problem to deliver? Or are we trying to do something else? And they're like, no, we're trying to deliver on the contract. Oh, but isn't the contract a mechanism that describes that? Maybe, but that's not why we're here. And that's when it starts getting, going wrong, I think,  that industrial mindset that I just want, tell me what to do, give me a job, let me sit down, just give me that change order and I will start work. It's just wrong. And for certain types of project, and certain types of product and certain types of problem, you know, it probably works really well if we're building the 17th bridge or we're, you know, doing those sort of things. But the reality is in the digital age, that most knowledge workers, who are the people that really benefit from agile the most, that aren't working in that way, they're working with very changeable environments, very changeable customer understanding very, you know, it's a little bit more complex. Ula Ojiaku True, true. And what you're saying reminds me of my conversation with Dave Snowden, he's known for his work on complexity theory, Cynefin, and if it's in a complex adaptive environment, you know, you need to be agile, but if it's a complicated problem or a simple problem, so complicated is really about, you know, breaking it down into a series of simple problems but it's still sequential and predictable, you could use, you know, the traditional waterfall method, because nothing is going to change, it's really putting all those pieces together to get to a known end state, and so I am of the same mindset as you, in terms of it's all about the context and understanding what exactly are you trying to achieve, what's of value to the customer and how much of it do we know and how much learning do we have to do as we get there. Dave West Exactly. I'm obviously not anywhere near as smart as somebody like a Dave Snowden who just, I think he has forgotten more things than I've ever understood, but yeah, I mean he's an amazing thought leader in this space, but the challenge and he talks a little bit about this sometimes, or I think he does, is that we don't always know what's complicated or complex or the amount of unknown. And this is, you know, this is the classic sort of entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs aren't necessarily working in complexity, they're working in unknown. But the nature of complex unknown is really tricky because you may discover that something that you thought was known is not known, and then you then have to change how you approach it. So the reason in Scrum, what we do is we deliver frequently and that, ultimately, and we deliver the most valuable things or the things that will give us the most value, thus that uncovers those misunderstandings early in the process. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, completely true. And just to build on what you said in terms of understanding or realising that your product goal was wrong, you're working on the wrong thing. Sometimes you might have to also kind of say goodbye to the project or pull the plug. It depends. Dave West Yeah. And that's incredibly hard, sorry, just to lean into that. It's very hard because you've got people that are there and you've invested time, you know, there's the sort of classic fallacy of sunk costs, all that stuff, but the reality is it's not a fallacy of psychological sort of like sunk energy. You've invested all this time and money and effort and motion to get where you're at and then you're realising it's wrong. It's incredibly hard to step away from that. And so what you do, and you see this with startups all the time is, you know, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, but you don't really pivot, what you're doing actually is trying to find a way to get all that investment that you've spent to be useful to deliver some value, you know, and whether it's repackaging or whatever, so that you can say, oh, that's okay when actually, and you can spend as much time doing that as you did the original thing, and now you are even worse, in a worse situation and it's hard. Ula Ojiaku Yes. Completely agree. So there's something you said about, you know, you gave an example of people doing, if I will use your term, Water-Scrum-Fall, in their delivery. And sometimes, you know, they go into detailed requirements, you know, specification, and this is, and they write an iron-clad contract that would, you know, kind of specify all these requirements have to be met, and whilst from the delivery perspective, in terms of the teams who actually do the work, it's they are, they get it, they want to be agile, but it's always these constraints. And whenever we, as an agile coach, you know, you go into the root of the matter. It's the typical root causes of why there is this inflexibility it's either, you know, the leadership and/or, you know, the business or their clients not wanting, you know, having that traditional expectations, any advice on how to effectively deal with this sort of blocker? Dave West I think it's very difficult, particularly when it's like outsourced or you've got, you know, that sort of it's contract-based as opposed to internal in terms of commitments. So it's not budgeted it's actually contracted. And when, when that happens it's very difficult, because you know, you've got the deal because you know how to do stuff and you've done it before, and you've got all that experience with the customer of course, so it's well, because you've done it before and you've invested all this experience, you must tell us exactly what it is that we are going to do. And the reality is the customer themselves doesn't know what they want, really. And until you actually get into the process, it's very difficult. I think one of the big things that's going to happen over the next few years, and we're starting to see some of this with things like Beyond Budgeting, the new procurement contract models that the US is, is perpetuating with 18F and the work of the central government. It would sort of stop during the previous administration, but it's now back, you know, how do you do agile contract management, what does it mean? Speaking from personal use, you know, of external companies to do work for Scrum.org, we pay for sprints. We define a clear product goal that we evaluate continuously, that's measurable. We, you know, we have a product owner from Scrum.org embedded in the Scrum team, even if the Scrum team or in the Scrum team, so of course, if the product owner, they are part of the Scrum team, but even if the Scrum team is predominantly a third party. So we do things like that to, and because you can't just fund one sprint at a time. It's very, you know, these people have got to pay mortgages and you know, they've got payroll to hit, so you have to negotiate a number of sprints that you would do it that allows them the flexibility to manage those constraints whilst being realistic, that at the end of a sprint review, you may discover so much stuff, or even during a sprint, that questions everything, and requires a fundamentally, you know, shifting of the backlog, maybe a change to the backlog, assuming that the objective and the product goal is still valid. You know, so putting those things in place, having those honest conversations and partnership conversations with the client is crucial. And the, you know, service companies that serve Scrum.org are a little bit luckier because we actually come at that from a, we know that we don't know what we want, whereas most clients, it's a lot harder to get them to say that. We know what we'd like to achieve, so the other thing that's important and I think that OKRs are maybe part of this, we have a thing called EBM, Evidence Based Management, which is a sort of like an agile version of OKRs. The OKRs and if defining the outcomes that you're trying to achieve and how you're going to measure them up front, validating them continuously, because it's possible you're wrong, but it's a much less of a scary prospect than not describing anything at all, or just having some very highfaluting goal. So getting very clear and precise in what you're trying to achieve and actually investing the time up front to work out what that means, and getting everybody on the same page around that can really help solve those problems long term, because you build to that, and that ultimately becomes the true north that everybody's working to. So when you have those moments of oh, that's not what we thought then, you know, that's okay, because you are validating against at least something, you have some level of structure in all of this. Ula Ojiaku So let's get to some other questions. What books have you, you know, read that you would say have kind of impacted the way your outlook on, or view on the subject of agile agility or anything else, what would you recommend to the audience? Dave West So the books that really changed my life around thinking about this in a different way, there was a few. The one that actually has nothing to do with agile that made me step back from the way I was looking at the world was Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman. That book really sort of like reinforced the fact that the world is incredibly complex and is, you know, he's famous for The World is Flat, you know, the sort of like global supply chain thing, which we are all very aware of and it's fundamentally having a huge impact now on prices and inflation and the like because of, you know, it's been such a mess over the last two and a half years. So that changed my outlook with respect to the world that I'm living in, which I thought was quite interesting. In terms of straight agility, you know, I'll be honest, there's Scrum – A Pocket Guide that taught me professional Scrum, that's Gunther Verheyen's book that I'd never really thought about Scrum in that way. And then I have to plug the series, The Professional Scrum Series from Addison, well, it's Pearson now, sorry. There are some great books in there, Zombie Scrum is absolutely fabulous. And actually, coming out on the 17th of June is a new book about leadership, The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations. I just read that, so I did not remember it, but it's by three people I adore, Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner and Laurens Bonnema. They're awesome, you know, had lots of leadership positions, written a great book. I wrote an inspired forward just in case anybody's checking that, you know, that confidence thing certainly came back after middle school, right. But that's a really interesting book that talks about the issue that you highlighted earlier, that leadership needs, we've spent a lot, we've spent 25 years teaching Scrum to teams. We need to spend the next, probably 60 years, teaching Scrum to leaders and trying to help, and it's not just Scrum, it's agile, hence the reason why this isn't just about Scrum, you know, whether it's Kanban, whether it's Flow, whether it's Spotify Model, whether it's whatever, but the essence of that, you know, empiricism, self-management, you know, the continuous improvement, the importance of discipline, the importance of being customer centric, the value of outcomes and measures against outcomes, the value of community and support networks, you know, all of this stuff is crucial and we need to start putting that thing, you know, whether it's business agility, whether you call it business agility, you know, all organisations, I think the pandemic proved this, need to be more agile in responding to their market, to their customers, to their employers and to the society that they contribute to. We get that. Leadership needs to change, and that's not a, you're wrong and awful, now sort of old leadership bad. No, it's just the reality is the world has changed and the more mindful leaders step back and say, oh, what do I have to do differently? Now, my entire team is remote, my, you know, my work is hard to plan, the fact that we, you know, our funding cycles have changed, our investment models have changed, you know, stepping back a little bit. So this professional, agile leader book I do recommend. Obviously I had the benefit of reading it before it became a book and it's very, very good and fun to read. Ula Ojiaku Awesome, we will put the list of books and links to them in the show notes, so thank you for that. Now, is there anything you'd like to ask you know, of the audience? Dave West Oh gosh, I don't know. I mean, my only sort of like, if it's sort of closing, if we've unfortunately come to the end of our time together and I, you know, I did waffle on, so I apologise for using far too much of it. But I guess the question I, and we talked a little bit about this, but you know, this sort of, there is a propensity in our industry, like every industry, and every moment, and every movement to become very inward looking, to become very like my way is better than every other way, you know. And obviously I'm very into Scrum and I apologise, I accept that I am. But I'm not arrogant enough to believe that it is the only way of solving complex problems. I'm also not arrogant to believe that it is sufficient. You know, I love the work of the Lean UX, Agile UX, we loved it so much we worked with Jeff and Josh to build a class together. I love the work of Daniel Vacanti and in professional Kanban and the Kanban community in general, I love, you know, I love the work of the professional coaching organisations and what they're really doing to help me be a better human being dare I say. You know, the point is, as you sit at this moment in time, you as an agile practitioner, have the opportunity to draw on many different disciplines and many different experts to really help to create that environment. That can allow agility to thrive and value to be delivered. And I think the only thing that's getting in the way of you doing that, or the only thing that was getting in the way of me doing that, and it still does sometimes is uberous arrogance and just a lack of, I don't know, not willing, not being willing to step out of my comfort zone and accept that my predefined ideas and my experience, my diversity that I bring isn't necessarily always right and to be more humble and to be more kind. I know it's a country song, you know, humble and kind, right, which I'm, you know, obviously I live in America, so I have to like country music, it's mandatory, but if you can be a little bit kinder and to do what my gran asks, right? Not what did you do today, but who did you help? What did you learn? How are you going to be better tomorrow? If we can do all of those things, then not only are our projects and teams and products better, but our lives better, and maybe society could be a little bit better. Ula Ojiaku Those are great words, Dave, thank you so much for those. One last thing, are you on social media? How can people get in touch with you? Dave West Well you could always dave.west@scrum.org if you want to ping me on this thing called email. If you are under 30, it's this thing that old people like, it's called email. If you're younger and cooler, I do not have a TikTok account, I don't totally know what it is. My son says we need it. I'm not a totally sure that we do, but it's not about clocks as well, who knew that, what was all that about? Ula Ojiaku Well, just like Apple isn't the fruit… Dave West Isn't about fruit, how annoying is that as well? Anyway, and so many misconceptions in the world, right. Anyway, but, and M&Ms aren't Smarties, I know I get it. But anyway, sorry, David J. West is my Twitter handle, you know, but, you know, whatever, LinkedIn, you can always find me on LinkedIn, just do Dave West Scrum.org and you will find me on LinkedIn. Love connecting, love talking about this stuff, maybe a little too much. You know another saying that my gran used to say, “you've got two ears and one mouth, shame you never used it like that, David”. I was like, yes, gran, I know, yeah. She also didn't by the way, just for the record anyway. Ula Ojiaku Oh gosh, your grandma Lilian sounds like she was one awesome woman. Dave West Rockstar, rockstar. Ula Ojiaku Well, thank you so much, Dave. It's been a pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed having this conversation with you, actually more learning from you and I hope sometime you'll be back again for another conversation. Dave West I would love that. Thank you for your audience. Thank you for taking the time today. I appreciate it. Let's stay in touch and I hope that we'll see maybe in person again soon. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, that will be wonderful.

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Kurt Bittner guest hosts and has Professional Scrum Trainers Peter Goetz and Thomas Schissler on to talk about the relationship between software architecture and Agile Teams. They discuss common misconceptions Agile teams have about software architecture, the role of the Product Owner in software architecture and more!

Joining us to kick off our series on Agile Leadership is returning guest Kurt Bittner, co-author of the Professional Agile Leader!  We discuss the satisfaction gap as it relates to transformation, how facts are friendly, and how your customers dont care about your revenue or operational expense, among many other topics.  Enjoy! The Professional Agile Leader on Amazon If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review, a rating, or leave comments on iTunes, Stitcher or your podcasting platform of choice. It really helps others find us.  Much thanks to the artist Krebs from Machine Man Records who provided us our outro music free-of-charge!  If you like what you heard, check out these links to find more music you might enjoy! If you'd like to join the discussion and share your stories,  please jump into the fray at our Discord Server! We at the Agile Uprising are committed to being totally free.  However, if you'd like to contribute and help us defray hosting and production costs we do have a Patreon.  Who knows, you might even get some surprises in the mail!

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Kurt Bittner, PST Ron Eringa and PST Laurens Bonnema come together again to join host Dave West for a discussion on some of the topics in the new book, The Professional Agile Leader, including hierarchy and shifts to more flat, agile organizations. 

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Kurt Bittner, PST Ron Eringa and PST Laurens Bonnema come together again to join host Dave West for a discussion on some of the topics in the new book, The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations, including the Dual Operating Model, Culture, self-management, bottom up intelligence and more!

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community podcast, Kurt Bittner, PST Ron Eringa and PST Laurens Bonnema join host Dave West for a discussion on some of the topics in the new book, The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations, including:- The difference between traditional leadership and agile leadership- Self-managing teams- Leadership styles- The notion of giving control to the people who work with you- Ideas around trust- More!

“Empiricism is at the heart of agility. The fundamental foundation of agility starts with some assertion about value. Every sprint or iteration is really an experiment about value." Kurt Bittner is the author and editor of many books on agile product development, including co-authoring the recent “Professional Agile Leader” book. In this episode, we started our conversation discussing the common misconception of Agile in the modern day and Kurt emphasized that empiricism should be at the heart of agility, especially for solving complex problems. Kurt then explained the importance of aligning company's direction and goals using outcomes instead of using activities or outputs. In the latter half of the episode, we discussed the concept of a self-managing team, what characteristics and attributes it has, and the important role of catalytic leadership in such teams. Kurt also explained how to measure the self-management spectrum of a team by measuring decision latency and shared some advice on how to reduce decision-making dependencies in organizations. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:08] Empiricism in Agility - [00:09:35] Going in the Right Direction - [00:16:17] Agile for Complex Problems - [00:22:18] Self-Managing Team - [00:26:26] Leadership vs Management - [00:32:40] Decision Latency and Dependencies - [00:35:18] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:47:50] _____ Kurt Bittner's Bio Kurt Bittner has been delivering working products in short, feedback-driven cycles for nearly 40 years, and has helped many organizations do the same. He is the author or editor of many books on agile product development, including Mastering Professional Scrum, The Zombie Scrum Survival Guide, The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum, The Professional Scrum Team, and Professional Agile Leadership, as well as The Guide to Evidence-Based Management, and The Nexus Guide. Follow Kurt: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-bittner-882b203/ Twitter – @ksbittner Blog – https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog?uid=330 The Professional Agile Leader Website – https://theprofessionalagileleader.com Our Sponsors DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ. Skills Matter is the global community and events platform for software professionals. It is an easier way for technologists to grow their careers by connecting you and your peers with the best-in-class tech industry experts and communities. You get on-demand access to their latest content, thought leadership insights as well as the exciting schedule of tech events running across all time zones. Head on over to skillsmatter.com to become part of the tech community that matters most to you - it's free to join and easy to keep up with the latest tech trends. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/98.

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted 2022.gotopia.techRead the full transcription of this interview herePierre Pureur - Co-Author of "Continuous Architecture" & "Continuous Architecture in Practice"Kurt Bittner - Co Author of "The Professional Scrum Team" & Enterprise Solutions at Scrup.orgDESCRIPTIONWhat is continuous architecture and how does it fit in today's world? Has the role of a software architect changed over the last few years, and what are the main skills you need to be good at architecting software?Pierre Pureur, co-author of “Continuous Architecture in Practice,” and Kurt Bittner, Enterprise Solution at Scrum.org, give an overview of what software architects — or those who dream of becoming one — should consider across each of these questions.RECOMMENDED BOOKSPierre Pureur, M. Erder & E. Woods • Continuous Architecture in PracticePierre Pureur & Murat Erder • Continuous ArchitectureKurt Bittner, P. Götz & U. Schirmer • The Professional Scrum TeamKurt Bittner, P. Kong & D. West • The Nexus Framework for Scaling ScrumKurt Bittner & Ian Spence • Use Case ModelingKurt Bittner & Ian Spence • Managing Iterative Software Development ProjectsSimon Brown • Software Architecture for Developers Vol. 2George Fairbanks • Just Enough Software ArchitectureGene Kim • The Unicorn ProjectMark Seemann • Code That Fits in Your HeadTwitterLinkedInFacebookLooking for a unique learning experience?Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at gotopia.techSUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily.Discovery MattersA collection of stories and insights on matters of discovery that advance life...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Health, Wellness & Performance Catalyst w/ Dr. Brad CooperLooking for a catalyst to optimize your health, wellness & performance? You've found it!!Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify The New Arab VoiceA podcast from The New Arab, a leading English-language website based in London...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Tired of not achieving Organizational outcomes and don't know how to improve that?...this show is for you. In this episode Host James Gifford talks with Scrum.org's Patrica Kong and Kurt Bittner about Evidence Based Management. Learn more about defining value and setting goals in both the near- and long-term. More Info Evidence Based Management: https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management https://www.scrum.org/resources/evidence-based-management-guide https://www.scrum.org/courses/professional-agile-leadershiptm-evidence-based-managementtm-training   If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a review, a rating, or leave comments on iTunes, Stitcher or your podcasting platform of choice. It really helps others find us.  Much thanks to the artist Krebs from Machine Man Records who provided us our outro music free-of-charge!  If you like what you heard, check out these links to find more music you might enjoy! If you'd like to join the discussion and share your stories,  please jump into the fray at our Discord Server! We at the Agile Uprising are committed to being totally free.  However, if you'd like to contribute and help us defray hosting and production costs we do have a Patreon.  Who knows, you might even get some surprises in the mail!

Today we're going to be talking about recent advancements by Scrum.org  that include a new Professional Agile Leadership – Evidence-Based Management (PAL-EBM) training course and about  Evidence-Based Management (EBM) itself.EBM is a framework that was created in 2014 as an Agile approach to help leaders guide their teams toward continuously improving customer outcomes, organizational capabilities,  and leading to positive business results.With me to talk about EBM and the new course are Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner who work in enterprise agility at Scrum.org 

In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner from Scrum.org discuss changes made to the Nexus Guide in January 2021 based on the most recent 2020 Scrum Guide update with Jesse Houwing and Simon Flossmann, Professional Scrum Trainers and Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS) Course Stewards.

This week on the podcast, your hosts, Dan Neumann and Sam Falco, will be exploring the Nexus Framework. Joining them is Kurt Bittner, Patricia Kong of Scrum.org! In their roles at Scrum.org, Kurt is the Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, Patricia is the Product Owner of Enterprise Solutions, and Dave West is the CEO. Together with Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org, they are co-authors of the book, The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum: Continuously Delivering an Integrated Product with Multiple Scrum Teams, which is also the topic of today’s episode!   Together, Kurt and Patricia provide a thorough introduction to the Nexus Framework and take a deep dive into some of the facets of it. They explain many of the whys and the hows around it, debunk some of the common misconceptions, and share how they resolve some of the common problems that sometimes pop up.   Key Takeaways What is the Nexus Framework? It aims to address the main problem of how to coordinate across multiple teams delivering one product When you start to scale up the number of teams involved, questions arise, which Nexus helps to address Its main focus is on teams and the products Nexus aims to help the organizational change problem (regardless of the practices being introduced) It helps people apply Scrum in a larger context and addresses scaling-specific issues Can you implement Nexus without Scrum? What happens if you implement the framework without doing Scrum well? There are lots of ways to fall down with Scrum — Nexus won’t make or break it You should learn how to do Scrum well before implementing Nexus If a set of teams isn’t doing Scrum well, there are scaling techniques that you can apply How the Nexus Framework works: Multiple teams work to build one integrated increment at every sprint (usually three to nine teams) There’s one Product Owner with one product backlog There is a Nexus sprint backlog, which is a representation of and transparency around the dependencies that the teams might face Teams still have their daily Scrums but there is a Nexus daily Scrum before that so the unit can come truly come together, understand the current issues, and properly plan ahead There is only one Nexus sprint review as opposed to the individual sprint reviews you would see in Scrum (because of the emphasis on the integrated product) After the review, you have the Nexus retrospective where the appropriate people come together to address the current issues and find solutions There is also the Nexus sprint goal, which is a culmination of what the teams are doing as a Nexus for the sprint There’s a new role called the Nexus Integration Team, which consists of a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, and Nexus Integration Team members to ensure the integration of the Nexus With no Product Owner hierarchy, how does one Product Owner handle multiple teams vs. single team Scrum? Understanding that they’re not looking for different job titles; it’s about a role Clear communication about autonomy “One Santa, many elves” i.e. there may be one person that is responsible for the product being successful but they can have lots of help Make sure that the teams understand what the goal that is being worked towards is   Mentioned in this Episode: Kurt Bittner Patricia Kong Scrum.org The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum: Continuously Delivering an Integrated Product with Multiple Scrum Teams, by Kurt Bittner, Patricia Kong, and Dave West Ken Schwaber Scaling Scrum with Nexus (Scrum.org) Nexus Framework Poster (Scrum.org) Evidence-Based Management Mike Rother   Want to Learn More or Get in Touch? Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com! Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Welcome to episode 13 on the Agile Atelier podcast. Today’s topic is Evidence Based Management (EBM), a framework inspired by scrum.org trainers and our guests for today, Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner. Patricia Kong is the Product Owner of the Scrum.org enterprise solutions program which includes the Nexus Framework, Evidence-Based Management, Scrum Studio and Scrum…… Continue reading Episode 13: Evidence Based Management in Agile teams with Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner

Why are Scrum and Management such a great fit? In this special episode Management 3.0 CEO Ralph van Roosmalen and Kurt Bittner, Vice President of Enterprise Solutions at Scrum.org talk Scrum, Management, Agile and what makes them fuse together so well especially when it comes to understanding the role of management within teams. For more, visit www.management30.com.  

In the first episode of our Game of Frameworks series, join Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner from Scrum.Org as they discuss the Nexus scaling framework with us! Nexus Website Patricia's Twitter Kurt's Twitter

(@pmoonk88) and Kurt Bittner (@ksbittner) joined Ryan Ripley (@ryanripley) to discuss Scrum.org’s Nexus Framework.Patricia Kong  [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Scrum.org’s Kurt Bittner and Patricia Kong[/featured-image] In this episode you'll discover: What is the Nexus Famework How Nexus allows you to scale scrum without destroying its soul Why teams need to get good at Scrum FIRST and then worry about scaling Links from the show: GoFundMe for Mike Beedle’s Family:  https://www.gofundme.com/mikebeedlesupport Scrum.org – https://www.scrum.org/ The Nexus Framework – https://www.scrum.org/resources/scaling-scrum How to support the show: Thank you for your support. Here are some of the ways to contribute to the show: Share the show with friends, family, colleagues, and co-workers. Sharing helps get the word out about Agile for Humans Rate us on iTunes and leave an honest review Join the mailing list – Check out the form on the right side of the page Take the survey – totally anonymous and helps us get a better idea of who is listening and what they are interested in Leadership Gift Program Make a donation via Patreon Book of the Week: [callout]The Nexus Framework is the simplest, most effective approach to applying Scrum at scale across multiple teams, sites, and time zones. Created by Scrum.org—the pioneering Scrum training and certification organization founded by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber—Nexus draws on decades of experience to address the unique challenges teams face in coming together, sharing work, and managing and minimizing dependencies. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]Which topic resonated with you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.[/reminder] Related Episode: Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. Help promote the show on iTunes: One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! Agile Dev West conference offers you the perfect opportunity to get away from distractions to immerse yourself and improve your agile skills in hot areas such as agile and lean development, scaled agile development, agile teams and leadership, digital transformation, and more. Agile for Humans listeners use code “AFH18” to receive 10% off their conference registration. Check out the entire program at adcwest.techwell.com. You'll notice that I'm speaking there again this year. Attendees will have a chance to participate in my half-day sessions on advanced scrum topics called Coaching Workshop: Taking Your Scrum to the Next Level, as well as Rethinking Your Retrospectives. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Las Vegas – June 3-8, for this great event. The post AFH 091: Using Nexus to Scale Scrum appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe Krebs speaks with Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner about Nexus. Both, Patricia and Kurt, are with Scrum.org and have recently released a book about Nexus with the title: "The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum: Continously Delivering an Integrated Product with Multiple Scrum Teams". Almost at the same time, the new Nexus Guide was released, too. Two very good reasons to talk more about Nexus.  We talked about language changes in the new Nexus Guide, the role of the Nexus Integration team and most importantly when scaling makes sense in the first place. You will hear about how Nexus differs to some of the known approaches in the industry (e.g. Scrum of Scrum's) and how a framework for scaling can tackle the complexity of large Scrum programs better.  Both authors share the outline of their book and how a fictional company steps through typical challenges when going from a single to a multi-team Scrum.

Jochen (Joe) Krebs speaks with Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner about the new Nexus Guide and their new Book about Nexus. They tackle how Nexus can help for multi-team Scrum and what changes people have to expect in the second edition. They also give insights into the flow and content of their new book about Nexus.

To compete in today's economic environment and deliver superior products to your customers, software organizations have to define and manage requirements in a way that delights customers with high quality and innovation. In order to do that, companies must build the right solution -- the first time. In this podcast, Kurt Bittner, CTO for Ivar Jacobson Consulting, Inc. and author of Use Case Modeling, will talk about how to do that -- how to work with stakeholders to ensure your solution focuses on desired outcomes, rather than the customer's idea of what the solution should be, and how to document the solution as agreements are reached.