Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations: Recent Episodes
Accenture | SolutionsIQ
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Simon Hayward is an honorary professor at Alliance Manchester Business School in the UK and author of The Agile Leader and Connected Leadership. He is also Global Lead for Leadership and Culture at Accenture’s Talent & Organization/Human Potential practice. In this episode, Hayward outlines challenges before leaders who seek to engage people in radical change – often the case in large-scale agile transformation. COVID has undoubtedly had a hand in worker expectations, and it offers leaders the opportunity to move their business from being just connected to becoming “omni-connected.”
“When organizations combine the digital and technological with the human and cultural, then that combination becomes particularly powerful. And leaders have a disproportionate impact on the way the culture operates and the behaviors in the organization.”
Accenture’s William Rowden hosts.
Learn more:
- Accenture Research "From Always Connected to Omni-Connected" https://www.accenture.com/cr-en/insights/strategy/organizational-culture
Julian Mancia is interested in helping humans get out of their own way, specifically when it comes to business innovation. As a Director of "What If! Innovation," part of Accenture, Mancia is excited by nebulous projects that might terrify others. For example, helping companies break into the competitive snack market or doubling growth in five years. How does he do it? With adaptive strategies.
Accenture’s Allia DeAngelis hosts.
Lisette Zounon is passionate about building quality into everything she does. A quality engineering leader with over 15 years of experience, Zounon is agile at work and at home, whether she’s planning her wedding or helping teams deliver excellent products. Her stories inspire the person in each of us that wants to make the world a better place in big ways (e.g., bringing breast cancer care to rural West Africa) and small (e.g., mentoring a young female professional on the verge of quitting the industry).
Accenture’s Ryan Keawekane hosts.
Learn more:
- https://www.zsquare4thecure.org/
- #UpYourConfidence podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upyourconfidence/id1518304276
The world of work has irreversibly changed. As the CEO for Institute Agility, Neville Poole is actively making space for people-centric work experiences. Physical workplaces now serve to bring people together to do what they cannot do remotely: connect, align on values and be creative. What’s more, people want their work to be meaningful, especially the next generation of workers. Neville shares her experiences both as an executive in Tech as well as a mother of two teenage girls with big dreams.
“This generation places a lot of value on impact… and impact doesn’t mean increase revenue by 20% or work 40 hours a week.”
Accenture’s Ryan Keawekane hosts.
Learn More:
• “Getting to Equal: Gender Parity in the Workplace” with Neville Poole https://open.spotify.com/episode/2mptreWZWjhtiBlYMQdMid?autoplay=true
• https://instituteagility.com/
Agile began in software but has evolved to impact every part of the business. Now business agility is seen as a way for organizations not just to create better products but also to run more effectively overall — regardless of what comes their way. Our guests discuss the evolution to business agility as we see it today.
Jason Novack is the global lead of the Accenture Business Agility practice (formerly Accenture | SolutionsIQ), and Evan Leybourn is the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute. They share what they are seeing in the world both from a business perspective (a greater interest in bringing agility into governance and portfolio management) and a human perspective. As Leybourn puts it, “We spend more time working than any other part of our life … If work isn’t one of the best parts of our life, that’s a waste of human potential.”
Accenture’s William Rowden hosts.
Who do you turn to to celebrate or to commiserate? When Apriel Biggs started her career 15 years ago, she didn’t have a community of agilists who shared her experiences, other Black and Brown people to share her highs and lows with. So Biggs started Blagile, an organization dedicated to elevating Black and Brown voices in agile. In this episode, she shares her journey and the help she got along the way in hopes of inspiring young agilists today.
Accenture’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Learn more:
- Blagile.com
- Reach out to Apriel Biggs if you would like to guest on the Blagile podcast at hello@blagile.com.
Abiodun “Abby” Osoba has tirelessly been creating a community of agilists based primarily out of Lagos, Nigeria, through her commercial and non-profit efforts. Osoba is the founder of the Agile Advisor Africa, co-founder of the Remote Agile Workspace (RAW) as well as one of the creators of the Agile Contracts Manifesto. She shares her journey, her experiences and her vision for business agility in Nigeria and beyond to Africa and the world.
There isn’t a single playbook or recipe for success, but one thing is certain: while scaled agile done well can turn into business agility, they aren’t the same thing. In his new book "The 6 Enablers of Business Agility," Karim Harbott shares his experience helping getting people and clients to think beyond just (software/team-level) agile to business agility. Harbott’s six enablers highlight the multifaceted, holistic approach required for business agility.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Allia DeAngelis hosts.
Learn more:
https://www.6enablers.com/ - karim@karimharbott.com
Self-identified “agile unicorn” Jackie Chambers de Freitas rarely sees others like her in her work as a VP of technology transformation and executive coach. In this episode, she shares how her uniqueness as a Black woman working in agile can be both a boon and a burden. Mixed in with her own challenges are the general challenges involved with bringing business agility to organizations. De Freitas mentions the “dirty little secret in agile”: agilists are champions of change – but change is tough. It can take a toll on your mental health, both those who are changing and those who are helping to change.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Allia DeAngelis hosts.
Facilitation involves “removing obstacles to contribution, connection and equity.” This is at the center of our guest Adam Kahane’s book “Facilitating Breakthrough.” Kahane argues that facilitating isn’t just trying to get people to do things. He discusses what he calls “transformative facilitation” – facilitating in ways that brings in both individual and collective perspectives to move forward together without leading to fragmentation or rigidity.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Allia DeAngelis hosts.
Learn More:
- Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together (https://reospartners.com/facilitating-breakthrough/)
Accenture | SolutionsIQ alumna and former Agile Amped host Leslie Morse is our guest in this episode. Serving as Product Owner for the Professional Scrum Community with Scrum.org has put Morse on a journey to help agilists “drink their own prosecco.” She is finding new ways to improve integrity, empiricism, and what she calls “change fluency” in the agile community. The goal is sense of personal agility that makes us all better able to serve others.
“If we can become fluent in change the same way we are fluent in language, what new might be possible in the world in terms of personal and organizational agility?”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
Learn more
- Seven Transformations of Leadership by David Rooke and William R. Torbert: https://hbr.org/2005/04/seven-transformations-of-leadership
- Women in Agile podcast series: https://womeninagile.org/podcast/
In his book “Agility: How to Navigate the Unknown and Seize Opportunity in a World of Disruption,” Leo Tilman offers a comprehensive definition of the word “agility.” According to Tilman and co-author former NORAD commander General Charles Jacoby, agility is “the organizational capacity to detect, assess and respond to environmental changes in ways that are purposeful, decisive and grounded in a will to win.” In this episode we unpack the loaded definition and discuss how (tactical) agile practices and mindsets as we know them in the industry fundamentally address risk – and how agility can help address other types of risk in the world including global climate change, nationalism, and populism.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
This special episode celebrates the Pride month of June and features the hosts and producer of Agile Amped as the guests. Alalia Lundy (she/her/hers) is a Business Agility Enablement Manager; William Rowden (he/him/his) is a Business Agility Practice Development Associate Director, and Ryan Keawekāne (he/him/his) is a Marketing Associate Manager. We all work at Accenture and also happen to belong to the LGBTQ+ community. We share our stories of being LGBTQ+ in a business environment, some of the “roses and thorns” of our experience, as well as what we are amped about.
Kayton Bhatia is a Senior Leader in Digital Product Management at Kaiser Permanente. For Pride Month, he is sharing his story about bringing his whole self to work. As a gay, Indian man, Bhatia’s path to leadership is anything but typical. Despite changes to laws in both the US (where he lives and works) and India (where he was born and raised), there’s more to do. He offers advice to leaders and LGBTQ professionals and is an example to those who happen to be both of how to live and lead authentically. “I’m quite aware of the weight I’m carrying as if I’m representing several communities.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
Sandy Beky is the founder of two companies whose work, at first blush, seems unrelated. The first is HeHop, a nonprofit that uses blockchain technology to empower victims and witnesses of domestic violence to capture and store tamper-resistant evidence for use in court. The second is Kyosei Solutions Lab, through which Beky helps leaders of France’s biggest companies evolve their mindset and approach to leading organizations. In this episode, we learn how Beky sees her work through both organizations as contributing to a greater whole, to furthering humanity. “Human transformation is what is going to trigger the business transformation.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
Colleen Kirtland is on a learning journey, and in this episode, she shares her passion for and commitment to learning as much as possible from nature. Pointing to many resources and examples of biomimicry, economics, and above all systems thinking, Kirtland invites us to think about creating systems that not just grow linearly but thrive. She argues that “resiliency is built over a very long time,” and the same can be said for agile. “As I’m unpeeling life itself, I’m learning to be a better leader and a better coach of teams…” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. (Stick around until the end for some more insights and fun interaction.)
Learn more: • Jeanine Benyus, biomimicry.org (https://biomimicry.org/janine-benyus/) • Kate Raworth, Donut Economics (https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/) • John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CTLFPNK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) • Mariana Mazzucato, “The Value of Everything” (https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-value-of-everything) • Linda Hogan, Dwellings (https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393322477)
Adam Burden is Accenture’s Chief Software Engineer and a senior managing director leading Technology services for Accenture in North America. In this episode, Burden shares how Cloud helps break barriers to agility. One barrier is legacy systems. While package solutions have become popular in the last few years, Burden says that the “renaissance of custom” today may make it more practical for businesses to customize their legacy systems. The result often is greater agility. “If I want to get more out of Agile, I have to change my culture. And Cloud is … the catalyst that helps to make that happen.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Learn more
• “Breaking the four barriers to Cloud” (https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/cloud/cloud-technology-adoption)
• “Why the renaissance of custom is here to stay” (https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/software-engineering-blog/adam-burden-custom-systems)
What happens if you put $1 billion dollars in the hands of students to invest collaboratively? Luke Hohmann is Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, which wants “to get $1,000 into a million schools so that children are in control of $1 billion or more of capital by 2030.” Hohmann shares stories of how real school students have invested in their schools and communities – with surprising results. It’s all in an effort to help cultivate civic responsibility in youth and grow the next generation of impact investors. As our guest puts it, the circular economy and impact investing “are the mechanisms by which we can make positive change occur through the normal structures of business in a very powerful way."
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. Learn more at firstroot.co.
What does it mean to put customers at the center of everything you do? For Riot Games, the brand behind League of Legends, it means “making it better to be a player.” Our guest Michael Robillard is the Principal of Enterprise Agility for Riot Games, and he shares how business agility unlocks their ability to make good on that promise. One outstanding example of what Robillard calls “customer-centric business agility” happened at the 2018 League of Legends World Championship in South Korea, where a fictitious, VR Kpop group took the real stage to rave reviews from fans around the world.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Ryan Keawekane hosts.
Johanna Rothman, a.k.a. the Pragmatic Manager, is author of 18 books and frequent blogger on the topic of product management and more. Rothman shares with us insights about her latest three-book bundle on “Modern Management Made Easy.” These books are full of “the kinds of questions I keep hearing from my clients.” Each chapter begins with a question followed by a popular myth and then many different options for managing oneself, others, and one’s system to be more effective at work. “We are now in the hard work of trying to help entire organizations change their entire cultures… An Agile approach is not a new lifecycle: it’s a culture change. And managers hold and refine the culture for the organization.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Learn more about Johanna Rothman at jrothman.com.
Diversifying Equity with Agile for Humanity Self-defined Soul Craftswoman April Jefferson applies her experience in coaching, crafting experiences, and conference speaking to help “bring up new voices.” Jefferson shares her story of striving to increase equity of the Black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) community in Agile. One way is the Agile for Humanity group and conference – or, should we say, “unconference.” Jefferson is aware that much of how conferences operate create obstacles for diverse voices to participate. She focuses squarely on “how do I unlock others’ potential?” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Ryan Keawekane hosts. Learn more: • https://www.agileforhumanity.org/conference/ • https://www.agileforhumanity.org/future-search/
Rajesh Nerlikar is chief product advisor at Prodify and the co-author of the book “Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management” with Ben Foster. Nerlikar highlights a few of the ten dysfunctions that the co-authors had seen in their experience advising product management teams. The book focuses on the four core tenets of vision-led product management that strikes a balance between “iterate your way to success” and “game-changing innovation.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Resources
• “Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management” by Rajesh Nerlikar and Ben Foster
• Virtual resources: https://www.prodify.group/resources/book/checklist
• Users Interviews: https://www.userinterviews.com/
Nick Horney is an organizational psychologist and founder of Agility Consulting. He spent 23 years in Special Operations in the U.S. Navy, before building a career in the agile space. Horney joins us to discuss his ideas and experience in leadership agility and anticipating change, focusing on 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. He uses the concepts of “After Action Agility” and the “Leadership Agility Profile 360 Assessment” to gauge how well organizations anticipate and respond to change.
“The whole purpose of doing assessments is not just self-discovery: it’s what do you do with that? How do you convert that into your own individual development plan?”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Chris Murman hosts.
Learn More:
• agilityconsulting.com
• Leadership Agility Profile 360 Assessment (http://agilityconsulting.com/leadership-agility-profile-360-assessment/#:~:text=The%20Leadership%20Agility%20Profile%E2%84%A2,such%20as%20clients%20or%20customers.)
Alicia McLain is a small-business owner, executive leadership coach, public speaker and co-founder of the Agile Coaching Exchange North America. McLain shares her experience speaking on the topic of “Coaching, the Secret Sauce to a Culture of Accountability.” Building on the Agile Coaching Institute’s Coaching Competency Model, she shares what coaching is and is not. McLain highlights how an ICF-certified coach builds accountability into the arc of the conversation by asking powerful questions to help the coachee commit to a change.
“I think the best way to understand coaching… is to get coached.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Keep Learning “Coaching, The Secret Sauce To A Culture of Accountability” (recorded talk) International Coach Academy (ICA) https://coachcampus.com
“The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier https://amzn.to/2JnfIkX
“The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier https://amzn.to/2Rdju5n
Interested in becoming a coach? https://agilekata.com/interested-in-becoming-a-coach/
The International Coach Federation (ICF) - https://coachfederation.org/
More Podcasts with Alicia McLain: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9-things-wildly-successful-agile-coaches-do/id992128516?i=1000493217872
https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/empathy-emotional-intelligence-in-organizational-transformation/id992128516?i=1000415679921
Michael Spayd is the co-founder of The Collective Edge, which seeks to “transform the transformers.” In this episode, Spayd shares some of his thinking behind his new book “Agile Transformation” and reminds us of the difference between organizational transformation and what he calls “a big adoption.” Leaders are key to the chances of success: “If you’re going to transform [your organization], you’re almost certainly the first problem,” because “organizations are designed to get the results that they get.”
Oh, and we take a tangent to consider the connection between quantum physics, integral theory and meditation.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
Learn More: “Agile Transformation” by Michael Spayd - https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Agile-Enterprise-Organizational-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321885317/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1602615915&sr=8-2
All Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL) - https://integrallife.com/five-elements-aqal/
Systemic constellations – https://www.the-collective-edge.com/systemic-consciousness
Quantum Enigma - https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Consciousness/dp/0199753814/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=quantum+enigma&qid=1602616136&sr=8-1
Jim Ewel is one of the earliest advocates for Agile Marketing and is one of the authors of the Agile Marketing Manifesto. His new book “The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing” provides a framework for applying Agile principles and practices to marketing.
Ewel encourages marketers to initially shift their focus away from a process like Scrum or Kanban, and instead begin their Agile journey by developing alignment with the rest of the organization. He walks us through the other five steps and discusses the importance of metrics that matter.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Learn More:
www.agilemarketingmanifesto.org
https://businessagility.institute/learn/agile-marketing-metrics/
Corey Post is a Lean-Agile transformation management consultant with 20+ years of leadership experience developing large solutions, new products, and complex systems. Recently he authored two talks for the Agile2020 conference:
· Use Product Value Streams to Rapidly Deliver Customer Value and Create a Learning Machine
· What You Need to Know About Human-Centered Design and Hearing the Voice of the Customer
Since the conference was canceled, we wanted to invite Post to discuss some key points from his talks including value streams and the importance of customer-centric organizations. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Esther Derby has four decades of experience with organizational change and she’s a well-known author and thought leader in the agile space. Derby chats with us about her latest book: “7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results” While you’ll hear her 7-step guide to problem solving, we particularly dig into her guidance on attending to networks. Accumulating network drama due to widespread layoffs and stress that are affecting our peers is making people less resilient and less supportive of each other. Derby shares her tips for allowing for unstructured conversations and maintenance of our connections in our virtual work environments of today. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Mik Kersten, author of “Projects to Products” and CEO of Tasktop, has seen a reoccurring theme. We go to conferences; we hear about all these fantastic things that can happen when we incorporate lean practices, continuous flow, and feedback. We come back pumped to start changing the way we work because we know it will improve our lives for the better. Then suddenly, the motivation gets drained out of us by all the internal systems in place that effectively prohibit change. Mik has boiled the reasons we face in these situations down to three things: Language differences between business and technology groups Change metrics are non-existent, broken or not relevant between groups Projects are considered cost centers Mik also takes a closer look at the concepts behind his book, including the value of product value streams, persistent teams, and organizing with the intention of reducing the number of dependencies. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Mirco Hering hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility. Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
In a former life, Marc Siles was a senior executive chasing a corporate career – until he had a near burnout experience. Originally from Spain, Siles has been living in Finland for the last 18 years, where he dedicates his passion and energy to enable companies around the globe to accelerate their strategic growth. Siles shares powerful and personal stories about how he identified what matters in his life – his daughter, his family, and his passion for human growth. He offers tips for people who find themselves chasing after what he calls “empty goals” and who are so focused on their professions that they lose touch with their true life vision. “I still focus on business growth, but via human growth… That is the only way to make things sustainable.” Do not miss the story he shares about his grandmother’s imprisonment in Franco’s Spain and how her life’s passion was key to her eventual liberation.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ‘s William Rowden hosts. The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Jeff Gothelf helps organizations build better products and executives build the cultures that build better products. He is the co-author of the award-winning book “Lean UX”, “Sense & Respond”, and his latest, “Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking Work and Let Your Next Job Find You.” After waking up on his 35th birthday in a panic about the second half of his career, Gothelf knew he needed a change. So he created a content platform that brings work to him rather than him having to compete on the corporate ladder. He encourages others to approach the service that you provide and your career as a product. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility. Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
How important is transformative innovation to your company and are you willing to invest in it? John Carter, a product development expert and inventor, shares his advice for how to nurture innovation within an organization.
He believes a governance structure that includes the following is a key to success:
- Governance: Get the right leaders to the table and give them oversight of fragile innovations. They allocate capital from the pool of venture funds.
- Process: Establish a process for receiving and selecting ideas; identify how to transfer ideas into development using clear entrance and exit criteria.
- Finance: Create a specific investment for the strategic innovation portfolio and approve it in the budget year. Make it large enough to start at least three projects.
Carter emphasizes that for true innovation to happen, the employees focused on the project should be moved out of the organization into a protected space, away from everyday distractions and tasks such as Slack, email etc. “The biggest place where innovations fail is transferring out of this protected zone and into the company.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Alicia McLain is the co-founder of Agile Coaching Exchange (ACE) in North America, an organization with an intent to bring coaches together around the mission of building competency and community. She joined us to share more about ACE, as well as the nine things she has seen that wildly successful agile coaches do.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Agile Coaching Exchange: http://agilecoachingexchange.com/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Evan Leybourn is the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute, an international membership body to both champion and support the next generation of organizations. He joins us to discuss the key findings from this year’s Business Agility Report, their annual flagship research study revealing where organizations around the globe are in their business agility journey.
Interestingly, this year’s survey responses were collected in the time period preceding and through the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a unique view into the impact of a global disruption while it was happening.
“Those companies that drop the ball now and don’t start making a difference to their agility, when the next crisis comes - and there will be another crisis - they’re going to be at square one. And those who keep it going, they’re the ones who will not only survive but thrive.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Download 2020 Business Agility Report
Become a member of the Business Agility Institute: businessagility.institute/join/
Accenture | SolutionsIQ is a founding member of the Business Agility Institute.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Bruce Nix is the Director of Business Agility at Vaco Memphis, a talent and solutions firm. He shares with us a wonderful example of agility: pairing up people impacted by the pandemic with non-profits in need of their talent. Listen to this case study that began with two people taking action and hear Nix’s recommendations for organizations as they to emerge from a crisis.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Read case study on Business Agility Institute’s website.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: https://www.solutionsiq.com/podcast/
Connect with us on social media!Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Jardena London’s mission is to help organizations become healthy, productive and fun. She is founder of Souls@Work, a movement to help bring soul back into the workplace. She explains to us the concept of Structural Agility and how it can help businesses achieve true agility and survive the challenges posed by the changing environment.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Read London’s paper on Business Agility Institute’s website: https://businessagility.institute/learn/structural-agility-using-structure-to-enable-the-flow-of-value/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Michael Hamman helps organizations grow their inner capacity for leadership agility. He joined us for this “geek fest” of an episode on the topic of agility and transformation. Hamman delves deep into a discussion on how people must shift their mindset in order to deal with the complexity surrounding them, before a company can reach “outer agility” – the agile practices. He describes his method of working on a perceived problem as a trojan horse for introducing agile concepts into their work processes.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: solutionsiq.com/podcast
Connect with us on social media!Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
In this special episode, we offer a broad overview of portfolio management that uses lean and agile thinking and approaches. Our guides are Evan Campbell and Kat Conner, who together have 50 years of experience in portfolio, budgeting and funding.
“Agile portfolio management is matching limited supply to unlimited demand to maximize business outcomes,” say Campbell and Conner.
You'll hear five parts:
- Introduction to agile portfolio management
- The supply side
- The demand side
- Matching and governance
- Funding and budgeting
This is a deep dive into the topic and it’s the full-length story behind our Agile Portfolio Management video series. Watch and share these 5-minute educational videos with your customers and colleagues and watch the recorded webinar to hear real-world examples from clients and coaches in the trenches at solutionsiq.com/apm.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Complex systems are in a state of continuous failure. Resilience is the ability of the system to maintain its performance characteristics when failures occur. Benefits of resilience include high availability, quality, scalability, and improved business KPIs.
But, high level of resilience is hard to achieve and requires a combination of technical, procedural, and organizational approaches. In this episode, Stas Zvinyatskovsky, a managing director at Accenture, covers what it takes to achieve resilience in software systems.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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The drive for virtual meetings that are efficient and goal-oriented can often cause us to lose sight of the fact that we are people, needing real connection. Without the visual and often unspoken cues that normally surround us, our virtual interactions can be an uninteresting and lonely place. Morgan Legge, a speaker at the 2020 Business Agility Conference, shares three ways to grow meaningful and connected virtual teams and meetings.
“Pandemic work is not virtual work. I encourage people to remember that someday, we won’t be working with our kids and family all around us.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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How do you know that you’re achieving the goals of your change? How do you know that large dashboard of OKRs and metrics will show you what you need to see? It’s not easy. Many organizations tend to measure the results of a long process, rather than the levers that drive the results.
John Carter, product development expert, inventor, and founder and principal of TCGen Inc. shares his predictive metrics expertise using the example of agile at scale. Whether you’re about to begin a big change initiative, or you have one in progress, John Carter will inspire you to take a fresh look at your metrics.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Reach our guest: https://www.tcgen.com/our-team
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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How will agile at scale change in an increasingly virtual world? SAFe Fellow Scott Frost and SPCT Shawn Lowe – both business agility consultants at Accenture | SolutionsIQ - discuss the best approaches and mindset for success in a virtual setting.
While the world has been working virtually for some time, 2020 has pushed us into a new frontier that can be uncomfortable for large-scale transformation and training work. While it’s not business as usual, you can still make sustainable change within your organization. As Frost puts it: “When things change radically, we can survive. We are more adaptable than we thought we were.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
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Sandra Davey is founder of and product coach at Product Space in Australia. She also serves on the board of several Australian companies, including CHOICE. She shares her experience as the board chair for a consumer rights organization that she helped take through an agile transformation:
“The business plan that the board was signing off was full of operational tactical details of when’s and how's rather than why’s and what’s.”
Listen to this episode to get a great perspective into agility from a board of directors’ standpoint. You’ll learn why more agilists should join boards and how to encourage other board members to adopt an agile mindset.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped
Gil Broza is the author of three acclaimed books including his latest “Agile for Non-Software Teams.” It was written to be practical and applicable for the roles “we always forget in transformation,” like marketing and HR.
Each chapter is a step along a personal agile journey and ends with “Here’s what needs to be true until you move on.” Further, rather than prescribing an off-the-shelf agile framework, Broza wants to provide guidance so teams can design their own process, measure progress, and inspect and adapt – an agile approach to an agile journey.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts.
Buy the book: Agilefornonsoftwareteams.com
Keep Listening: https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/agile-amped-podcast/the-agile-mindset-with-gil-broza/
Learn More: 3pvantage.com
William Rowden is an executive coach and consultant here at Accenture | SolutionsIQ. His journey to leading transformation initiatives has piqued his curiosity in org development and adult developmental psychology. For the past few years he has been researching how these two inform each other – and how the focus of an organization’s leaders provides a good indicator for the success or failure of business agility transformation.
He walks us through the different focuses that leaders – and indeed everyone – have: self-centric, group-centric, skill-centric and beyond. Drawing from the work of Robert Keegan, Chris Argyris, Bill Joiner, and more, Rowden provides useful information for agilists for dealing with leaders of many types – do they shoot the messenger or install feedback loops? Do they see agile as a process or a means to an end?
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Bryan Stallings hosts.
Listen to Rowden's previous episode:
Adult Cognitive Development and the Agile Mindset
References:
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Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs, Leadership Agility (2007)
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Susanne R. Cook-Greuter, "Making the case for a developmental perspective," in Industrial and Commercial Training (2004)
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The MAP Institute, "The Leadership Maturity Framework."
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DevOps Research and Assessment, “DevOps Culture: Westrum Organizational Culture”
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Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization (2016)
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William R. Torbert and Steven S. Taylor, "Action Inquiry: Interweaving Multiple Qualities of Attention for Timely Action"
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped
Tony Bonfante is an agile coach who shares his recent experience setting up an internal coaching office at a Fortune 50 corporation. The first step in the process is to fill the roles of coaches with individuals who are called to serve others.
Next, Bonfante teaches the coaches how to really listen to others because “you can’t change someone’s mind if you don’t know what’s in them.” The five levels of listening he walks everyone through are:
- Ignoring – making the conscious choice to either ignore or not ignore others.
- Pretending to listen – using listening signs like nodding and sounds while focusing on something else.
- Selective listening – paying attention to cues such as your name to refocus.
- Comparative listening – filtering what you hear by what matters to you.
- Empathetic listening – truly paying attention and wanting to learn the other’s worldview.
This episode is chock-full of practical guidance, including what kind of coaching stand to take in each domain of the Cynefin framework and more.
Leslie Morse hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped
Jessica Guistolise is an experienced leader, consultant and coach at Accenture SolutionsIQ. For the past few years, Guistolise was part of a dedicated Dojo team at a major US-based insurance company, where she learned how to scale dojo experiences and even virtualize them.
From a few remote teams operating as one to bringing Dojo to a completely distributed team in the Philippines, Guistolise is learning that the benefits of Dojo can still be achieved. It just takes more time. Further, as working from home becomes more normalized, people will see into others’ lives, and that opens the door to build trust even faster.
And a new working agreement structure – and humanity - can help. “It takes practice to not apologize for those very human things” like eating and taking breaks. “It’s a lot easier to shut out life when we’re in the walls of an office.”
Favorite take-aways: Smartest person in the room (SPITR) and “stand up and wiggle.”
Accenture SolutionsIQ’s Ryan Keawekane hosts.
Check out our other podcast on “How to Dojo” also with Jessica Guistolise.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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Melissa Boggs and Howard Sublett, the Chief Scrum Master and Chief Product Owner respectively at the Scrum Alliance, return to tell us about their own organizational transformation. Throughout 2019, the pair completely restructured the organization into cross-functional and community-centric teams that are empowered to deliver on the needs of their specific community.
Hear practical examples of how these changes were implemented, as well as success stories that are emerging as a result of the ongoing transformation.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Emilia Breton hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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This is a special episode. After our blog (with the same title as this podcast) blew up on LinkedIn, the post’s author Evan Campbell was featured on a webinar Q&A hosted by Gene Gendel, organizational design specialist, agile/lean coach and trainer, and consultant. This episode is the audio from that webinar.
Watch the video recording, or read the blog that started it all.
In this episode, Agile coach Joe Fecarotta hosts, interviewing Caro Paduch who is currently leading the agile transformation for Learning & Leadership Development at Accenture. Fecarotta has been coaching Paduch for the last 18 months in a remote setting, as Paduch is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Over the course of such a long relationship at a distance, the pair and the wider team have learned some valuable lessons about remote collaboration and agile coaching, including:
- Patience and flexibility are important.
- Virtual is real too, although because you don’t overlap in person, you may have to force people to open up a little about who they are, their families, and hobbies.
- When people don’t put their video on in a video call, it can be a sign of lack of trust, comfort, and transparency.
And as Paduch puts it, “When [you] start to trust, that’s when the magic happens.” “Personal connection at a distance is so critical,” says Fecarotta.
Accenture SolutionsIQ’s Joe Fecarotta hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped
In addition to both being professional Scrum trainers with Scrum.org, Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller also co-author the new book “Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.”
While the book has scrum masters as its primary audience, the authors know that anybody working on or with the scrum team can get value out of it. They share their stories, failures, and successes over their combined 40 years of experience. The duo agrees that some of the worst Scrum anti-patterns arise when the scrum master fails to act as an effective servant leader.
Gems:
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Todd Miller on meaningful business metrics: “During sprint planning, the idea isn’t just to fill up a plate of work and then everybody disappear and do it, and then if you did all the work, you’re successful.”
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Ryan Ripley on the three aspects of an effective scrum master: “The scrum master has to love their team… want[s] them to be wildly successfully… and finally [has] to have zero tolerance for anything that gets in the way of [the team] being successful.”
Leslie Morse hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped
Agile Transformation is a journey that requires more than implementing a few new meetings into the work week. It’s a continuous learning journey that is built on a desire to deliver real value to customers. However, many efforts to implement Agile within organizations end up being superficial, because they don’t make room for the necessary mindset change.
According to Simon Chesney, the goal of an Agile Transformation needs to be focused on creating a “self-sustaining lean/product development culture”. Chesney is a Lean Enterprise Agile coach currently working on a transformation at one of the world’s largest infrastructure companies, Western Digital.
Chesney believes that authentic change occurs when a learning culture is embodied and empowered by the leadership of the organization. He states that you can observe sustainable change in the care taken throughout the organization to relentlessly improve. Chesney also talks about the transactional competencies, consequential environments and insights needed to sustain Agile cultures.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts from the 2019 Global SAFe Summit in San Diego.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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How much of your core and legacy systems are keeping your organization from seizing market opportunities and differentiating their business? Director of Pivotal Labs Sydney, David Julia, offers advice on how companies can deprecate, modernize and get more value out of monolithic legacy systems that are often where the heart of each business beats. One way is the strangler approach where you iteratively decommission legacy apps and start “to cut bits of your monolithic application off and gracefully retire that.”
Julia also recounts the real-life story of how one team successfully rewrote a legacy health insurance system so complex that a tiny mistake could put millions of dollars at risk. His advice for businesses looking to modernize their legacy systems is “Start small. Build quality into your system. Evolve your systems over time.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Asch hosts at Agile Australia in Sydney.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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Rob Pinna is a 30-year high-tech veteran who is the Chief Product Officer at IronCore Labs. His passion is protecting the privacy of data stored in the cloud.
Pinna says we shouldn’t build software and then make it secure. Instead, you want to bake privacy and security into the technical platform. That way the system is designed so that developers automatically just do the right thing.
The conversation covers how complex it is to both provide security and privacy early and often, as well as deliver at a large enterprise.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile in Charlotte, NC.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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Stacey Ackerman, founder of Agilify Coaching & Training, got her start in marketing and is now blending the two. Like so many, marketers used to think of agile as “a software thing” and lived in a world where, as Ackerman puts it, “everything was an emergency” and there was no prioritization. This is what she calls “hair-on-fire marketing.”
Today, marketers and marketing teams can take small yet purposeful steps toward agility. Ackerman offers traditional antipatterns – blasting all users, sticking to the plan – as well as some enticing marketing takes on agile classics, including:
– Minimally viable persona “to understand our customers in a faster way so this doesn’t become a stage gate and hold up our marketing efforts.”
– Brief briefs
– Customer stories, instead of user stories
– And (above all) prioritization – “if there was anything I would recommend, it would be just that.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.
Resources:
– Martech Today (blogs by Ackerman on agile marketing available)
– “The Agile Marketing Experience” podcast with Alan Annis
– “The Agile Marketer” by Roland Smart
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
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Mark Richards has worked with numerous enterprise customers across most industries in Australia and across the globe. A SAFe Fellow since 2017, Richards is also the author of the blog “The Art of SAFe” and working on a book of the same name.
In this episode, Richards poses the question: How do we raise intentionality and reclaim control through our objectives? He discusses the process of setting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and how they can have a positive influence on business strategy by encouraging reflection and learning.
Mark recommends the following reads on getting started with OKRs:
- Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke
- Measure What Matters by Doerr
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts from the 2019 Global SAFe Summit in San Diego.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
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Jason Hobbs and Skylar Watson share their experiences with mobbing and pair programming from the perspectives of an organizational leader and a practitioner. Their goal is to get leadership more comfortable with the idea of mob programming and reducing work in progress (WIP) to one task.
The common misconception about pairing, according to Hobbs and Watson, is that “people think it’s just two guys with one shovel”. The pair shares their journey of mob-programming being an uncomfortable idea to having leadership support.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2019 in Charlotte, NC.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
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Sarah Traynor is a transformation lead at one of the largest banks in Australia, which has followed the lead of ING in executing a big bang Agile transformation. The scaling effort – involving 9,000 people – was staggered, but the vision and leadership have been clear from the very beginning. Traynor says “engaging people in the story from the onset and being transparent” is very important.
Another major shift for the bank was ensuring everyone was aligned and shared the same values around what it means to lead from where they are in the organization. The bank set 5 new behavioral expectations about leading people:
- Be curious
- Create shared clarity
- Empower others
- Develop people selflessly
- Connect with empathy
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Asch hosts at Agile Australia in Sydney.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped
The struggle to limit work in progress is not a new one. It’s a constant balance between our desire to get more done and avoiding employee burnout. It happens at all levels of the organization. Often strategic initiatives stem from a good place - leadership wants to do the right thing – but, as our guest Eric Willeke puts it, “A single piece of strategic WIP equals hundreds to thousands of pieces of individual WIP.”
As the Founder and a Principal at Elevate.to, he knows how hard it is to be an effective leader who limits his WIP. As a consultant and someone who cares about humanity, he wants to relieve the strain and stress that people suffer from as a result of their work.
Willeke offers three strategies for reducing WIP across an organization and three tactics for getting started. You’ll love the first tactic: “Destroy your backlog.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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Ross Clanton has built his career reshaping architecture and technology strategies for Fortune 50 companies, driving leadership and culture changes necessary to empower transformation.
Clanton discusses his recently published report, The Project to Product Transformation, and some of the lessons he’s learned from enterprise transformations. He goes into detail on the three stages of enterprises (incubate, scale, and optimize), the 4 leadership constraints many organizations commonly deal with, as well as the concept of Dojos that he helped start in his time at Target.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Stas Zvinyatskovsky hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 in Las Vegas.
The Project to Product Transformation
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Scott Prugh is Chief Architect & SVP of Software Development at CSG. He recounts the story of the technical evolution at his organization and the multi-year strides to modernize their application stack as well as mainframe technology.
“One of the things we found was that when you start taking these crazy, really heavy platforms and you start to modernize them, it starts to free up capacity.”
Accenture’s Mirco Hering hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 in Las Vegas.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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The US government is notorious for being a slow-moving bureaucracy that is crazy about controlling every minor detail. Internally, there are often musings that agile will never work within the public sector because the government is a unicorn incompatible with agile principles and values.
But if you get down to it, the government struggles with many of the same issues that private corporations do. This includes things like obtaining leadership buy-in, acquiring funding in a big batch project mindset, maintaining low WIP. Sound familiar?
Ron MacKenzie, an agile coach for the USDA, talks to us about his own journey to agile, how he’s brought his own personal learnings to his teams and leadership and how, ultimately, the government is not that different after all.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at SAFe Summit in San Diego, CA
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped
David J. Bland is a co-author of the newly published “Testing Business Ideas,” and founder of Precoil where he helps companies find product-market fit using lean startup, design thinking and business model innovation practices.
Bland walks us through the book which is a field guide for rapid experimentation in order to reduce risk and increase the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. In addition to experimentation, the publication also tackles team design from three different angles:
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Configuration of cross-functional teams
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Team behaviors such as questioning assumptions and entrepreneurial spirit
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Environment the leaders need to provide for teams to live within
Bland also makes his prediction for where the separate disciplines of Agile, Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Business Model, Lean UX and others: “This is all part of a system and we need to figure out how it all relates instead of adopting it all in isolation within an org. I still think systems thinking is eventually going to come back in a more consumable way.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/
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Paul Nunes is the Global Managing Director of Thought Leadership at Accenture with 33 years working with the consultancy under his belt. He discusses the findings in the book he co-authored with Larry Downes and Omar Abbosh: “Pivot to the Future: Discovering Value and Creating Growth in a Disrupted World”.
Nunes says the big idea in the book is that companies can no longer afford to change through large-scale business transformation, rather we need a new way of creating change within the organization that enables success. He walks us through some fantastic examples and explains how businesses can simultaneously succeed with all three lifecycle stages of a business: the old, the now, and the new.
“The excitement of getting to the new can lead a lot of companies to prematurely abandon the old.”
Accenture’s Keith Pleas hosts at the Boston Innovation Hub.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
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Technical debt can be an emotionally charged topic of discussion between the debt-adverse and the debt-tolerant. Is it an evil that must be eradicated or an unavoidable occurrence that can be leveraged for good? How to handle technical debt can become a point of contention within a team or even across an entire organization.
According to David Brown, an agilist within the innovation center for a 100+-year-old American electric power company, people use the term “technical debt” when they start experiencing bugs or can’t push to production, but by then it’s already too late. Brown suggests that the business and IT come together and create a shared understanding of technical debt - then the teams can ask themselves “what do we consider healthy?” and create the protocols for dealing with technical debt.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse Hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
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The average enterprise is relying upon about 3,500 open source projects to support faster software development. Unfortunately, external suppliers of the code are often chosen based on popularity or familiarity rather than code quality. Vice President at Sonatype and the co-founder of All Day DevOpsDerek Weeks sat down with us to discuss open source as well as the main findings in the 2019 State of the Software Supply Chain Report. The report details the following:
- Where open source components are used in software development and how many of them
- What percentage of components have known security vulnerabilities
- The policies and regulations on a national and international level that may affect how software isdeveloped
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Stephan Lange hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 in Las Vegas.
Download the 2019 State of the Software Supply Chain Report here: https://www.sonatype.com/en-us/2019ssc
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
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Dr. Christina Maslach is a Professor of Psychology and a researcher at the Healthy Workplaces Center at the University of California, Berkeley. She is one of the pioneering researchers on job burnout and is the author of “The Truth About Burnout”.
In this episode, you'll learn the difference between being merely stressed out and the symptoms of burnout: exhaustion, cynicism, and a negative sense of oneself. Dr. Maslach also walks us through the core psychological needs that promote worker motivation and psychological well-being. You’ll also hear how closely they correlate to an Agile workplace.
“It’s a lot about the environment, the job situation you’re in, it’s the other people, it’s the policies, it’s the way the work is structured and whether you have control over it.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Hanna Gnann hosts at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 in Las Vegas.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
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Katherine Radeka is the founder and executive director of the Rapid Learning Cycles Institute and author of the new book “High Velocity Innovation: How to Get Your Best Ideas to Market Faster”. Radeka shares with us some highlights from her book, like organizations need to create “a path of least resistance to innovation” and that innovation is everyone’s responsibility.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Jeff Steinberg hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Co-authors Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais just released their new book “Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow”. Skelton and Pais define four types of teams and they help achieve flow of change and reduce cognitive load for the team members.
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Stream-aligned: More traditionally considered “product teams”
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Enabling: Experts in a specific area
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Complicated-subsystem: Deep skills such as Ph.D. level expertise or years of experience in a niche technology
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Platform: Aiming to build the “thinnest viable platform” using Agile software practices
“We’re not just talking about shapes of the teams and composition, and the structure of the organization, we’re talking about the social dynamics.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Stas Zvinyatskovsky hosts at DevOps Enterprise Summit 2019 in Las Vegas.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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As CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org, Dave West has collected some awesome stories and he regales us with a few in this episode of Agile Amped.
Too often companies attempt to scale agility without a clear purpose and fail both to see true agility and to inspire employees with a compelling purpose. And, West reminds us, “purpose is actionable,” not just something in the mission statement or plastered on the office wall.
The conversations covers frameworks, the American education system, and even conscious capitalism.
“At the heart of everything we’re doing is trying to untap the potential of humanity to deliver amazing value and solve problems – and I think that’s super exciting.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts from 2019 Southern Fried Agile.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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David Marquet, Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 leadership speaker and the bestselling author of “Turn the Ship Around”, discusses his keynote topic at this year’s Southern Fried Agile conference: “Move Your People Up the Ladder of Leadership”.
Marquet emphasizes a “lean back” approach to leadership – giving people the room to lean in and make more decisions on their own. “What we want to do is push the authority for making decisions out to the people who have the information. You get a much more resilient, adaptive, agile organization.”
He gives recommendations for how to hone our leadership skills in everyday life by practicing how to invite feedback and creating a safe environment for receiving it.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile in Charlotte, NC.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Matt Badgley and John Krewson sat down to unpack their presentations at Agile2019: “Live From D.C., It’s Saturday Night: The Agility of SNL” and “Let’s Just Skip High-Performing and Go Straight to Badass!” Badgley and Krewson derive comparisons between sketch comedy and agility and take us backstage to the process of producing a show from concept to cash within a week.
The duo also dives into the topics of the real meanings of high-performing teams, failing fast and leadership.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Chris Murman hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Debbie Brey has worked at Boeing for 35 years, where she is an internal SPCT and Enterprise Transformation Leader. She is currently leading an enterprise-wide initiative to incorporate an Agile way of working into the Boeing culture.
Brey takes us behind the scenes on the massive undertaking of bringing digital transformation to the century-old enterprise. Her program, a subset of a 4,000-5,000 employee IT organization, consists of 234 Agile teams organized into 20 Agile Release Trains and two Solution Trains with a “Super Solution Train” around it. Hear some great insights into the company’s Agile journey as well as some predictions for the future.
“In 5 years, will we be talking about SAFe and Agile? I hope not. I hope it’s just the way we work at Boeing.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the Global SAFe Summit 2019 in San Diego.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Coaches Jessica Guistolise and Greg Adams-Woodford have been running Dojos at their client successfully for a few years. They explain the purpose and basics of a Dojo and share their experiences from the trenches.
Dojo is a place where teams practice - a new physical space where they break down what they’ve done in the past and rebuilding their habits over a six-week period. Additionally, Dojo uses 2.5-day “hyper sprints” that enable teams to deliver real business value more quickly and understand where they’re failing without losing days or weeks.
At its heart, Dojo is about building business capabilities and high-functioning teams. And it is not limited to software development: our guests touch on leadership and portfolio Dojos, and tips for success and pitfalls to avoid.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Pete Young played a key role in leading the transformation of Australia Post’s digital consumer experience. The journey to transformation at this 210-year-old institution began when they focused on fixing one specific problem: 15% of the customer base consistently missing first time delivery of a parcel.
Young also shares how, in two years, focus a single metric resulted in a 7% increase in successful first-time deliveries – a significant impact for an organization with 5 million digital customer accounts. Learn how his team shifted focus from measuring outcomes instead of outputs, the importance of leadership support, and how Young works with the not-so-Agile parts of the enterprise.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Asch hosts at Agile Australia 2019 in Sydney.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Chris Philipsen understands that “playbook” and “Agile” don’t necessarily go together but the title of his Agile2019 talk “A Playbook for an Agile Manager” was chosen on purpose. A consultant at Insight, Philipsen speaks the language of traditional managers who expect a “playbook” for how to effectively manage in an Agile organization as well as the language of Agile.
He and our host, Agile coach Chris Murman at Accenture | SolutionsIQ, vibe on the differences between managing styles as well as personal and interpersonal coaching techniques. Philipsen invokes the McCarthy protocol of requesting to provide feedback and radiating intention – for which he provides many examples. Ultimately, he is more productive, happier and a better agilist for radiating intent for what he hopes to accomplish in a meeting, in a day and in life.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ Chris Murman hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Dan Scalfaro, a key stakeholder at a major healthcare provider, teamed up with Agile coach, Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Emilia Breton, to guide his organization through their transformation. They sat down to give us insights about the process and the major challenges they encountered.
According to Scalfaro, “I thought the DevOps stuff was going to be my challenge. It wasn’t. It was the change management and the people.”
Breton and Scalfaro put the focus on the customer ahead of anything else when improving the process of onboarding new providers, changing “one heart and mind at a time.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Even government agencies experience FOMO. It took the turnaround from an 80-million-dollar big bang failure into an initiation of a couple successful, smaller pilot agile programs within the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for other federal programs to realize that they were missing out.
Richard Cheng has been working on helping the US Government understand and implement the value of Agile. In the many years of working with the government, he’s noticed that the conversation has gone past the point of if Agile is right for government and is on to how do they do Agile better to create more value. He shares his experience and insights with OPM and UCIS and the rest of the federal government.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Have you ever regretted sending an email while angry? Lorraine Aguilar is a certified trainer in Non-Violent Communication (NVC) who teaches us emotional self-management and radical leadership through empathy for yourself and others. “Empathy so that the best ideas rise to the surface and not the strong and dominating personalities.”
Aguilar walks us through her 4 steps of the empathy dojo and uses poignant stories from her own life as examples of applying “radical acts of kindness” to demonstrate leadership.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Author Kristina Podnar helps businesses get smarter, better and faster at creating digital policies and practices that unlock opportunity, liberate employees and increase the bottom line. While many people are intimidated by the word “policy,” Podnar encourages us to think of them as guardrails – “short statements that reflects the organization’s values … so we can create freedom, innovation and creativity.”
Her book “The Power of Digital Policy” is actually a handbook that provides specific ways for people and businesses to balance risk with opportunity. And the best thing is it doesn’t have to be a long and grueling process. With her Agile approach, you can go from zero to done in 5 days.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
Learn more at ThePowerOfDigitalPolicy.com
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Robert Woods, Founder of MindOverProcess, has found that one of the places we should start when bringing Agile change to the entire organization is revising corporate hiring practices.
Woods shares insights about how to improve hiring strategies to onboard the right people who are engaged and more likely to stay. He warns that if you do not have a good onboarding process, “within the first 45 days you could lose up to 20% of your new hires.” This has a large impact on building the persistent high-preforming teams needed to implement lasting change.
Woods also believes that we can experience larger cultural change by starting with “small conscientious adjustments over time” and to be prepared for the long-haul: “like a lifestyle change, cultural changes often take 3-5 years within a company… we don’t want to get into the position where we think a few structural changes are going to make everything all better.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Chris Murman hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Self-described productivity geek Chris Bailey is the author of “Hyperfocus: How to Be More Productive in a World of Distraction”, and his passion and research into productivity resonates with agilists: we are all working to improve how we work and live.
Bailey’s message – bolstered by many statistics – is simple and profound: “The state of our attention reflects the state of our lives.”
He offers practical advice for improving productivity at work while also invoking the deeper yearning that each of us feels to get more out of life in our relationships with others and with ourselves. Mindfulness and meditation are in the mix because, as Bailey puts it, “For every minute you meditate, you get ten minutes back, because you notice that your mind has veered off track.”
Favorite quotes: “On average, we only work on one thing for 40 seconds before we switch to doing something else.” “We can do almost anything for a minute besides focus… Your mind will resist even that one minute…”* “We’re the most creative when we have the least energy, because our minds are less inhibited.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2019 in Washington, D.C.
Find the book:https://alifeofproductivity.com/hyperfocus/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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William Ammerman’s background as an advertising executive, coupled with his post-graduate work in artificial intelligence, gives him a unique perspective on the subject of marketing in the age of AI. He is the author of “The Invisible Brand: Marketing in the Age of Automation, Big Data, and Machine Learning”.
Ammerman wants to make people aware of the potential consequences of our constant connectivity and the emotional relationships we are now beginning to form with machines, and their influence over us.
“An AI agent programmed with the science of persuasion, armed with the details of our personality and behavior profiles, and equipped with mass customization, will be able to learn how to sway our decisions and actions.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Hanna Gnann hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Michael Stump, SAFe fellow and VP of Global Partner Programs at Scaled Agile, advises that agile implementations are not a one-size-fits-all approach. It involves some thinking, and not a copy-paste system. He advocates for experiential learning, making mistakes and using that wisdom as guidance to do better, learning how to apply agile to different situations.
He says, “Creating alignment, creating transparency and having those tough discussions and session points…is really powerful”. Stump subscribes to the belief that you can run the whole company using SAFe as the operating model. He discusses the effect of change management and using that as a platform to learn.
“Organizations are not aligned on the goal”, he says. Then how do you achieve the goal? Getting buy-in from management, together with support and the commitment to be successful. Mistakes are happening either way, to get to the other side, you have to go through it.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Scott Frost hosts at the European SAFe Summit in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Businesses have the long-established expectations of how people should work in development teams, but few know how to hire the right people. This is even more difficult when hiring new leadership to helm an Agile business. Geof Ellingham, Chair of the Agile Business Consortium, speaks with us about a refined, more collaborative approach to hiring business leaders. According to Ellingham, a change is required when hiring a CEO and implementing a co-creative process, removing the antiquated power dynamic, and introducing recruitment that is more genuine.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the 2019 Business Agility Conference in New York City.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Imagine a world where the same approaches that successful startups follow also worked for Fortune 500 companies. With the right organizational structures, it can be a dream come true.
However, IT organizations tend to think that innovation is one install away and the path is littered with failed agile transformations. Changing from a project- to a product-centric approach may address some the major obstacles preventing the nimble startup-like success larger enterprises crave.
Join us as we speak with Dr. Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop and author of “Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework”, as he talks with us about a critical disconnect between business leaders and technologists and how enabling a shift from project to product can make all the difference.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Skip Angel Hosts
Find Skip’s infograph on Twitter.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Shane Harrison, business focused change agent specializing in enterprise-level digital Lean Agile transformations, takes PI planning to the next level. Harrison offers tips and tricks on how to execute with a higher success rate.
He advocates for aligning PI objectives with solid plans; socialization is only successful when the teams understand the context and vision of the plan. He says, “I’m always looking for the teams to get into a state of flow…any interruption to the team disrupts the flow.”
For leadership guests at PI planning, Harrison recommends an “eyes open, ears open, mouth shut” approach – an observation exercise rather than interaction with the teams.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Scott Frost hosts at the European SAFe Summit: The Hague, Netherlands.
Brendon Hernandez remembers clearly when he realized his privilege of being a male, of being treated preferentially over the strong and capable women in his life. An Agile coach in business agility transformations today at Accenture | SolutionsIQ, Hernandez is a passionate ally for diversity and inclusion because of his personal experience.
"As a gay male, I rely on heterosexual women to be an ally in the LGBT space, and in return I am an ally to women, because I have the privilege of being male."
In this episode, our own Leslie Morse guides the discussion through hard topics like privilege and guilt as well as diversity, inclusion and allyship.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
In a world of fake news, where automation is threatening jobs, Josh Kampel remains a techno-optimist. In this episode, the CEO of Techonomy Media shares his views on how organizations can get more value out of technological innovations and disruptions by taking time to understand deeply what they stand for as a company, and what value they provide to their customers and the world at large. Because legacy technological baggage isn’t the only thing keeping big organizations from reaping the benefits of new tech: “It’s [also] culture, people, it’s real estate, it’s infrastructure…”
Kampel shares his views on the successes, struggles, failures and opportunities that companies face today and compare them to what other companies have experienced in the past. Kampel insists that CEOs cannot be the only ones leading the charge to transform organizations: the board needs to get involved, as well as the people who work in the organization and are the living breathing representations of that company’s culture.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Global Managing Director of Innovation Max Furmanov hosts.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Agile Transformation is a collective effort requiring much work and dedication from all levels of the business. It’s no wonder that some people become very attached to it, whether it’s a VP, a coach, a manager, or team member. Carlo Bucciarelli, senior manager at Accenture, reminds us that “this transformation is not your baby.”
Further, he says leaders fall into the trap of forcing top-down changes on their reports, which can create resentment in individuals and team. Because the transformation belongs to everyone in the organization – as well as the trainers, coaches, and consultants providing guidance along the way – empathy, inclusion, a powerful guiding coalition, and tons of humility are all necessary on the path to success.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Henrik Gruber hosts at the Business Agility Conference in Vienna, Austria.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Identifying the biggest pain points in your team can make all the difference in your organization. Janelle Klein, author of “Idea Flow,” discusses how to measure friction to connect managers and engineers using what she calls “the ultimate metric”: the frequency and duration of WTFs.
Klein speaks about the importance of understanding and predictability to create alignment, taking into consideration the human factors in software development. “The hard part really isn’t solving the problems,” she reminds, “it’s identifying the right problems to solve.” This enables managers and engineers to translate the friction experienced during development into explicit risk models for more effective decision-making.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Stas Zvinyatskovsky hosts at Deliver Agile Conference, Nashville
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Clarity of purpose, control without controlling, and designing for flow – these are three capabilities that are essential for Agile leaders to possess, according to Agile trainer and coach, Phil Abernathy. “Empowered teams are more dangerous if there is no clarity…[and are] nothing more than powerful horses pulling in different directions,” says Abernathy. The difference between good companies and great companies is discipline – they are not chaotic. Complex structures will always result in complex processes and inefficient controls because leaders believe in the biggest lie – that multitasking is efficient and effective. The idea is to work on one or two things at the same time, maximum.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Henrik Gruber hosts at the Business Agility Conference in Vienna, Austria.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
“In this Agile space,” says a familiar voice, “we’ve been talking for years about pair programming and pair coaching; basically, this is pair leadership.” The voice belongs to former long-time host of Agile Amped, Howard Sublett, who left his position as Community Lead at Accenture | SolutionsIQ to become the first ever Chief Product Owner of the Scrum Alliance. In this episode, Sublett talks about his experience sharing the responsibility of leading the Scrum Alliance with Chief Scrum Master Melissa Boggs.
“We have a shared responsibility to lead the organization. Neither can be successful without the other.” Sublett and Boggs are “legally co-CEOs” for the non-profit organization so familiar to agilists around the world. The pair is out to experiment and lead in ways never before seen. “Yes, we’re going to make some mistakes but by God we don’t want to make brand new mistakes; we want to make mistakes that no one else have ever made before, because we had the courage to try.” Howard shares his perspective of the future for the Scrum Gathering, including the many global events they are sponsoring.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Roxi Ozolins reprises her role as host on this special episode, after recording “Building an Agile Culture” with Sublett at the beginning of his tenure at the Scrum Alliance.
Learn more:1. Scrum Alliance (www.scrumalliance.org)2. Scrum Gathering Austin (events.scrumalliance.org/austin-2019)
Technical debt can cause critical issues for organizations. Every year an organization does not address these issues brings them closer to ruin. Some businesses even have to shut their doors due to irreconcilable technical debt that conventional solutions alone cannot address.
Arlo Belshee, full-stack Agile developer and technical coach, shares insightful knowledge on building better software, specifically as it pertains to what he calls safeguarding: “a simple, 22-minute practice that allows you to find, fund, and then execute real changes to your process and product.” One of the things that makes fixing technical debt so difficult is that “there is no one problem of technical debt.” Belshee advocates for empowering teams to own problems, to know what’s going on in their part of the system and to work quickly to address these problems.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Stas Zvinyatskovsky hosts at the Deliver: Agile Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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One of our most requested topics to cover recently has been Agile Portfolio Management. We invited Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Brent Barton and Ryn Melberg to explain what is portfolio management and how to use it in an Agile organization.
Traditional portfolio management assumes an infinite supply of knowledge worker’s capacity. It also plans for 100% utilization (which is impossible) using full time equivalents, and part time people introduce a lot of context switching. These are two big problems.
Instead, Barton recommends building teams of people as enduring corporate assets, and then focus on maximizing the return on those assets – what we call return on team. Portfolio management in a traditional sense has the tendency to break up teams, which in turn crushes Agile. Melberg likens this to the cost of infrastructure for tearing down an office building each time a new project is started, yet companies do this to their people all the time.
Tune in to learn how to do portfolio management in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.
Reach Brent Barton at brent.barton@accenture.com or @brentbarton on Twitter.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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With our guests Pia-Maria Thorén and Shannon Ewan we dive into how HR – with strong support from leadership – need to be at the head of the change to business agility.
Thorén is a thought leader in Agile HR and the author of “Agile People – A Radical Approach for HR and Managers (That Leads to Motivated Employees)”. Ewan is an experienced leader, Agile coach, and currently serves as the Managing Director for the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile).
Says Thorén, “HR has a very crucial role when it comes to changing organizations: they work with the deep structures… like performance management, change management, organizational development. They choose the leadership programs that leaders go to… They have so much influence over the whole organization so that change is not possible if HR is not on board.”
The duo offer tips and insights into how people in HR and all across an organization can unlearn and retrain themselves about how people should be treated and should operate in a business agility context.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the 2019 Business Agility Conference in New York City.
Learn more: - Agile People – A Radical Approach for HR and Managers (That Leads to Motivated Employees) - www.agilehrmanifesto.org/ - ICAgile Business Agility Learning Roadmap (icagile.com/Learning-Roadmap/Business-Agility)
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Stephen Parry is a business leader, strategist, change designer and author with a reputation for large-scale global business transformation. He sat down with us for a fascinating deep-dive into addressing transformation in organizations that are often already overburdened.
According to Parry, during an org transformation, leadership tends to lose sight of the strategy, the org structures, and the investments in technology." Traditional leadership is just going down to the mid-management level and making sure they’re hitting the local numbers and trying harder, leaving the top decks with no captain. “
To resolve this problem, senior leaders have to trust the management at the mid level, and in turn middle managers must trust the staff below them. This enables leadership and middle management to perform the critical roles that cannot be done by those below them. Meanwhile, each manager’s reports must strive to “make your managers fantastic”, according to Parry. That calls for a trust strategy across the business. Parry calls this approach “power up” instead of “bottom up.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts.
Hear Stephen Parry speak live at the Business Agility Conference in Vienna, Austria May 20-21, 2019.
Learn more about our guest at https://www.lloydparry.com/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Pioneer in Lean-Agile People Operations (formally known as “HR”) and CEO of Just Leading Solutions LLC, Fabiola Eyholzer uses science and statistics to help level the playing field for women in the business world. The data is compelling and it supports overwhelmingly the truly human characteristics that agile leaders portray: collaboration, communication, transparency and more. In other words, Agile leadership qualities could be described in words that are generally considered “feminine” or things that women excel at.
This isn’t lost to Eyholzer, who believes that diversity of thought is what drives success, and the cross-functional team concept that is deeply ingrained in Agile is evidence. But there is still a long way to go to equality and thus greater diversity of thought, and job hiring practices are an area that needs attention: While women make 53% of the new hires overall, only 3% of the new hires for leadership positions are female.
Eyholzer provides concrete tips for improving your hiring process – from job description to interviewing – so that it can be the gateway toward innovation and growth via diversity of thought.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the 2019 Business Agility Conference in New York City.
Join us at the Women in Agile session at Agile 2019! Register here: https://www.agilealliance.org/events/women-in-agile-2019/
Be part of the Launching New Voices program. 3 mentors and proteges are chosen for the final conference. Sign up as a mentor or protege.
Learn more about Women in Agile:womeninagile.org/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
CSG started out in cable billing and over time has transformed into a media company. With the industry moving so quickly, they couldn’t wait 12-18 months to deliver value to the customers. They needed to ramp up their delivery agility.
Jill Edmunson, Enterprise Portfolio Management leader at CSG, and her colleague Lesa Phillips, an Agile coach and RTE, sat down with Agile Amped to share some fascinating insights into this Agile journey. CSG’s vision statement “make work visible, connect people to our strategy and driving engagement and excitement” is baked into everything they do. Edmunson and Phillips describe some unique forums they’ve implemented to connect strategy to execution in the form of Shark Tanks, Think Tanks and Do Tanks.
You’ll also learn more about engaging all levels of the organization through showcases at PI Planning, CSG Café used for agility training, and how to build connections and partnerships.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the Business Agility Conference in New York City.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
When it comes to procurement in a Lean-Agile context, according to Mirko Kleiner, "It's not rocket science" – but it does deliver compelling business value. Kleiner wears many hats: a thought leader in Lean-Agile procurement, author, co-founder of Flowdays and the list goes on. Lean Agile Procurement, he says, has some simple tenants that any agilist would recognize:
- Bring everyone together for alignment from legal to procurement to the supplier and the business users to form a cross-functional team.- Accept uncertainty.- Empower the team.
The outcomes include a client with a better understanding of what it wants, less re-work or misunderstanding about requirements, and - get this - an average increase of 400% in time-to-market.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the 2019 Business Agility Conference in New York City.
Learn more:
-
Lean Agile Procurement Alliance - https://www.lean-agile-procurement.com/
-
Lean Procurement Canvas – available for free https://www.lean-agile-procurement.com/lean-agile-procurement-approach#lean-procurement-canvas
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Jason Gaulden is the Vice President of Partnerships at America Succeeds and co-author of the groundbreaking report, “The Age of Agility: Education Pathways for the Future of Work.” In his work, Gaulden strives to embed agility into the learning process, both in terms of the technical skillset and the lifelong learning mindset that students need “to succeed in the global economy but contribute to their local community.”
The need for this paradigm shift in education is epitomized in the rapid decline of the value of a college degree, which used to serve as a good proxy for proving that you had the knowledge to get ahead. Going forward, we need to address three major obstacles:
- Students do not enter the workforce of today with all of the technical skillsets and Agile mindset they need to succeed.
- Teachers cannot “relay knowledge they don’t have themselves.”
- The education system needs to be more customized to different learning paths and learning journeys.
These problems are reflected in America Succeeds’ three tenets – Agile students, Agile teachers and Agile education systems.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the Business Agility Conference in New York City.
Learn More:
- Download “The Age of Agility” report (free)
- About America Succeeds
- One Stone School
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Sally Elatta is the president of Agile Transformation, Inc., and founder of AgilityHealth. Elatta shares her story of the growth of her company, what they have on their “culture wall” and the current state of business agility, as well as a taste of the future. The 2018 Business Agility Report revealed that, while team agility and what Elatta calls “team-of-teams agility,” companies are doing really well. But in terms of business agility – particularly as applies to culture, leadership and support functions like HR, finance, marketing and others – the respondents of the 166 organizations who participated in the report collectively rated themselves at the crawl-walk stage. Elatta sees this as a tremendous opportunity for enterprises to strive for more than just Agile transformation, but to reach for business agility. One area that she thinks will see huge shifts and positive changes in the next two or three years? HR.
Some of our favorite quotes from this podcast:- “Be bold, be real, and lead with love.”- “Iʻm allergic to negativity.”- “[As a] young girl from Sudan in Africa, [I] couldn’t have made it in this country if I didn’t believe in the art of the possible.”- “Gone are the days that large companies are eating small. Today, fast companies are eating slow.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQʻs Skip Angel hosts.
Learn more:
- Read the 2018 Business Agility Report - Take the 2019 Business Agility Survey
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Peter Merel has an impressive résumé: XP pioneer, author of the original Wikipedia wiki-engine, and founder of XSCALE Alliance.
XSCALE Alliance follows de-scaling practices and values, where the goal is, among other things, to “enable [self-organizing teams] to self-manage and self-direct.” Merel takes us on a thought-provoking stroll through topics like:
- Frameworks as pattern languages
- A “damning statistic” that may have been overlooked in a recent VersionOne’s State of Agile Survey
- Throughput accounting
- YAGNI – “You aren’t going to need it”
- And – most interestingly to us – descaling in a business agility context
“How can we achieve alignment between lots of these little autonomous teams to be able to build something like a self-organizing value stream, or a self-directing portfolio? That’s really our challenge.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Mattis hosts.
To find out more about XSCALE Alliance, visit:xscalealliance.org/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: instagram.com/agileamped
In honor of International Women’s Day 2019 and Women’s History Month, today’s episode features a female leader we’re proud to call our own. Neville Poole is a woman of color, wife, mother, and a managing director at Accenture | SolutionsIQ.
She remembers a time when, while working as a bank teller, people would stand in line to wait for her white, male colleague to attend to them. One customer even told her manager, “I'm not comfortable sharing my financials with the black girl.” Neville took it in stride, determined not to let anyone stop her from achieving her dreams.
She says that being a woman of color in the male-dominated industry of finance and technology has not always been easy. “Some people just can't get past their own prejudices,” she says, “and I can't change that.” Hear her advice to other women on how to own your space, develop and share your uniqueness with the world. And her advice to men: Be aware that different dynamics apply for women than men, and when you notice it, have a conversation about it.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Roxi Ozolins hosts.
Accenture, a global firm with more than 450,000 employees, is striving to achieve a gender balanced workforce by 2025 – and by 2020, women will account for 25 percent of managing directors worldwide. Learn more about how we’re #GettingToEqual here: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/about/inclusion-diversity/gender-equality
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Sandy Mamoli is an Agile consultant and coach with a focus on organizational culture and leadership. She is also a former Olympian, an international keynote speaker and author of “Creating Great Teams – How Self-Selection Lets People Excel”. Sandy sat down to explain holacracy, which is a way to create a truly self-organizing organization, and shares examples of the method in action.
This episode of Agile Amped is part of a series in partnership with the Business Agility Institute. businessagility.institute/
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Ryn Melberg hosts.
Reach our guest:
Email: Sandy@nomad8.com
Twitter: @smamol
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sandymamoli/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
James Couball and Ashley Wolf share their experience with a massive Continuous Delivery initiative at Oath Inc. - a division of Verizon composed of Yahoo, AOL, and HuffPost. Thousands of systems not doing CD were involved, which was a great forcing function for implementing best practices for technical excellence. Over the years of using an open source approach and mindset to development, they stumbled on inner source (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_source), which applies source principles of code (collaboration, sharing, transparency, etc.) to business practices. Says Wolf, "We didn't try to make inner source, we tried to make better engineering," and inner source helped greatly with that. Couball provides example practices and stories from the trenches, both championing the importance of culture.
Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Reach our guests:
James Couball on Twitter @jcouball
Ashley Wolf on LinkedIn
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
For Chief Technology Officer at Datical Robert Reeves, databases (and its administrators) have traditionally been a challenge for DevOps. That needs to change. Reeves shares how cultural, technical, and personal biases have stymied innovation on the database. In his experience, when organizations get to the hard issues like the database, they get disillusioned with DevOps and are tempted to stop on their journey. His advice: Now is the time to tackle these hard problems, don’t wait to be disrupted.
Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Reach our guest:
Website:
Datical.com
Twitter:
@RobertReeves
@Datical
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Jorgen Hesselberg, cofounder of Comparative Agility, and Steven Wolff, partner in Group Emotional Intelligence Partners, sat down with us to talk about their Agile2018 presentation on "Emotional Intelligence as a Performance Multiplier."
Emotional intelligence has a profound affect not just on team dynamics but also on organizational culture. In his research Hesselberg has found that culture is often on the list of factors for team performance - but what is culture? Says Wolff, "When you can affect the rules of behavior - the norms - you can change the patterns of behavior that you see and feel - which is the culture."
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Our guests Lyssa Adkins and Natalie Warnert sat down to talk about two organizations that are on a mission to give women a voice: Women in Agile and TENWOMENSTRONG.
Women in Agile has grown from its grassroots origins to a non-profit organization with a number of different events and local groups. Their mission is to provide support for more women to build more inclusive conference experiences and provide opportunities to grow in a supportive environment. Read more about our partnership here.
TENWOMENSTRONG aims to bring whole-person development and enrichment programs to the Women In Agile community and to encourage women to lead their life with a purpose.
On the assumption that the Agile community is inclusive, Warnert notes: “It comes from your place of privilege: You don’t have to think about the fact that someone is excluded because you’re automatically included.”
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
How to get involved:
Women in Agile Twitter: @NatalieWarnert @womeninagileorgwww.Nataliewarnert.com www.Womeninagile.org #womeninagile
Ten Women Strong www.Tenwomenstrong.net/agile www.lyssaadkins.com
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
With the right mindset and practices in place, your organization could be "faster than Facebook." But what does that mean? Furthermore, why do most companies fall short of the real promise of business agility?
Stas Zvinyatskovsky, a Managing Director for Accenture and DevOps thought leader, believes the problem is that most organizations are unwilling to make the necessary organizational changes to achieve business agility - they are not willing to pay the true cost of business agility transformation. Zvinyatskovsky shares some insights on why organizations struggle with business agility, the five transformation types that he has identified, what the true cost of business agility transformation is and how the theory of constraints applies to organizations that only transform IT.
Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Reach out to our guest on Twitter - @staszv
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Joe Vallone, a senior consultant at Scaled Agile and an experienced Agile Coach and Trainer, sits down with us to talk innovation accounting. "All companies want to be innovative, but nobody wants to pay for it." The cost, he reminds us, is steep and measured in time not money. After comparing innovations and heavy investments from the past (Post-WWII and the SR21 Blackbird) and the present (Tesla and self-driving cars), Vallone touches on how innovation accounting fits into SAFe 4.6 and emphasizes the importance of leading indicators over traditional lagging indicators like net-present value, which were invented in a time of homogenous systems where variability was predictable.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Mattis hosts at SAFe Summit 2018 in Washington, D.C.
Reach our guest:Email joe.vallone@scaledagile.comTwitter twitter.com/joejv
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Transformation in the Federal Government is often thought of as slow and daunting. However, Chris Palmisano and Greg Pfister have noticed a real push from leadership to adopt Agile principles and it’s showing up in an unlikely place: contracts.
“If that contract is not structured in a way that shows clear alignment on Agile principles with the right support from leadership… it becomes very difficult to correct course and really promote those ideas and principles”.
Like most large organizations, the Federal Government struggles with leadership buy-in. But with an aging workforce being replaced by college graduates who are not trained in non-object-oriented programing languages and are not versed, nor care about, “plan-driven models”– things are on the verge of change.
Adam Mattis hosts at the SAFe Summit 2018 in Washington, D.C.
Reach our guests:Greg Pfister LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/pfisterville/Chris Palmisano LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/chris-palmisano-1a73a01/
Reach our host:Twitter twitter.com/adammattis13
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
David Bland, founder of Precoil, helps both startup founders and enterprise leaders rapidly find product market fit. He sat down to talk about using Lean experiments with Agile teams, and how to fold in design thinking as a new way to look at your backlog.
When considering what to work on, teams should look at: - Desirability – Do people want this? - Viability – Should we be working on this? - Feasibility – Can we do this?
However, most teams focus on “Can we do this?” and not enough on “Do we want this?” or “Should we work on this?” Bland walks us through what a discovery engine for a team looks like, how to include the customer in your feedback loop, and how to run Lean experiments to reduce uncertainty in your backlog.
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
Reach our guest:Email david@precoil.comWebsite precoil.com/Twitter twitter.com/davidjbland
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
“Pragmatic Manager” and author Johanna Rothman sits down to discuss her packed Agile2018 session “Agile and Lean Roadmapping: Incorporating Change at Every Level of Product Planning.” Businesses tend to want to follow a plan even when new information is available. Rothman advises using Minimum Viable Experiments to validate a business hypothesis and letting the results influence plans. To do so, she advocates for delivering on tiny stories (daily, if possible) and using rolling wave planning. She adds, “Resource efficiency is the greatest threat to knowledge work… I really like flow efficiency, where the entire team works together to produce the product."
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Author of “DevOps for the Modern Enterprise” Mirco Hering is a Managing Director at Accenture leading the Agile & DevOps practice in the APAC region. Hering shares with us the two topics that he didn’t find in other books on DevOps, which motivated him to write his own. He also highlights for us why it’s so important to love learning.
“The world will continue to change and we need to continue to evolve… If you go to uni these days, it’s not a matter of getting that degree and continuing working in that space for the rest of your life; it’s you learn how to learn and now you need to do that for the rest of your career to continue to evolve.”
Hering covers the areas of knowledge necessary for success in IT today, but advises that you don’t need to be an expert in all of them. You need a little bit of knowledge in a lot of areas, and specialization in one.
Accenture’s Keith Pleas hosts at DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas.
Reach out to our guest:mirco.hering@accenture.com
Purchase "DevOps for the Modern Enterprise": https://itrevolution.com/book/devops_modern_enterprise/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Bryan and Dana Finster share their experiences helping deploy Continuous Delivery pipelines at Walmart, drawing inspiration from CALMS.
"One of the challenges [with things like DevSecOps]," Bryan points out, "is people not understanding what they're trying to do with CD. If they understand that, then security and quality is natural, because the CD pipeline is for delivering fixes to production really fast."
Dana also shares, "You can't just tell people about the culture... The phrase I use is 'use the culture to teach the culture'." And she and Bryan both share ideas of how to do just that.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Reach our guest:Bryan Finster Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-finster/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Josh Atwell considers himself somewhat of an “IT therapist” in his role as a technology advocate at Splunk. He informs and enables leaders and practitioners in the techniques and strategies needed for today’s quickly evolving IT landscape. Atwell believes that, in order to implement change, organizations must change the way people are measured. Leaders need to set clear expectations and proper examples from the get go. For example, their style might be to send emails all hours of the night, but they must communicate that they don’t expect the same behavior from their employees.
Greg Bledsoe hosts at DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas.
Reach out to our guest: - Twitter @josh_atwell
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
What makes for an impactful customer experience? How does your brand differentiate itself? If you’re a large enterprise like Oracle, you have people like Roland Smart, author of “The Agile Marketer: Turning Customer Experience Into Your Competitive Advantage” on staff architecting customer journeys using Agile methods and mindsets.
“It’s my strong belief that Agile will become a competitive advantage for marketers,” says Smart, who is also the VP of Corporate Marketing at Oracle. “It acknowledges the reality that we’re living in an environment today where things are moving too quickly to predict the future. So, no amount of analysis is going to lead to in a one-year marketing plan that is going to be recognizable in six months.”
Your best bet is combining Agile, innovative marketing and the “peak-end rule”: customers tend to average out their feeling about a brand based on their all-time best experience (“peak”) and their last experience (“end”).
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Mattis hosts.
This episode of Agile Amped is part of a series in partnership with the Business Agility Institute. businessagility.institute/
Mentioned in this podcast: - Oracle Next podcast - blogs.oracle.com/oraclenext-podcast-v2 - Peak-end rule en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule - Buy The Agile Marketer - www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Agile+Ma…ge-p-9781119223009
The major security breach at Equifax in 2017 should have been a wakeup call for many – but how much have dev and security practices changed since to ensure it doesn’t happen again? How vulnerable are the open source components you are using? How quickly can you identify and deploy security fixes?
This was the topic of our discussion with Derek Weeks, the Vice President at Sonatype, to talk about why security should be included in DevOps, the difficultly of compliance for open source usage and what may be in store for organizations that don’t take security seriously.
“If you don’t think you’re consuming a lot of open source, you really have to look at the reality of how software is built today… There are only six million JavaScript developers on the planet and they’re downloading 6 billion components a week.” Weeks offers small changes that developers– pressed for time – can make to make software products safer.
Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas.
Reach out to our guest: - Twitter @weekstweets - Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/derekeweeks/ - All Day DevOps: www.alldaydevops.com/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Clare Sudbery left the IT industry years ago because she was bored and unmotivated. Fast forward, and now she’s back at it, this time as a passionate lead consultant developer at ThoughtWorks. Why the change?
In her time away, Sudbery learned something during her stint teaching math: much like people divide themselves and others into good or bad at math, she says the IT industry is doing the same to employees and new hires. They’ll say, “Can you believe that so-and-so didn’t know anything about X?” Considering the complexity in the world, Sudbery says, “Yes, I can believe it.”
That's why she champions curiosity and learning today, and leads by example by showing it’s okay to ask questions when she doesn’t know the answer.
“When you meet people who don’t know things that you do know, don’t judge them about it, don’t laugh at them; get excited because that means you get to teach them the thing and you both win.”
Listen to this honest and thought-provoking conversation recorded at Agile 2018 in San Diego with host, Chris Murman.
Reach out to Clare Sudbery - Twitter twitter.com/ClareSudbery- Blog: insimpleterms.blog - Medium: medium.com/a-woman-in-technology
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Alex Miller is the General Manager for Stack Overflow, a website which has solved more than 10 billion problems for software developers over the last decade. Miller believes it is critical for IT leaders to empower developers to solve technical problems at the source, because they tend to have the best idea of how to solve it.
From the shift in types of questions that Stack Overflow answers, Miller can see that the role of software developers is changing, which reflects the need for IT leaders to also evolve.
“What we see in the data is a reflection of what we see in the industry: The entire concept of what it means to be a software developer is changing.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas.
For more information, visit:stackoverflow.com/stackoverflow.blog/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Sam Guckenheimer is the author of “Software Engineering with Visual Studio” and the Product Owner of Microsoft Visual Studio Cloud Services. He paints a picture of how much Microsoft has changed in the last 15 years or more: where once patent processing was seen as a critical skill for junior engineers, now open source, Agile and DevOps are the foundational to the company culture. Guckenheimer points out that "now Microsoft is the largest contributor to open source on Github," with Google coming in second.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Mentioned in this podcast:- Software Engineering with Visual Studio www.amazon.com/Agile-Software-En…dio/dp/0321685857 - Open Innovation Network www.openinventionnetwork.com/- Microsoft DevOps Resource Center docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/learn/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
We were excited to sit down with Gene Kim, CTO of IT Revolution and co-author of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and most recently Accelerate. We got to ask Kim some juicy questions including:
- What role do you play in the DevOps ecosystem?
- If you could go back in time and do it all over again, what would you do differently and why?
- How close are we to achieving all of the benefit of DevOps?
- And (drum roll) what is the functional definition of DevOps?
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Greg Bledsoe hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2018 in Las Vegas.
Reach Gene Kim on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim
Find the books mentioned:
The Phoenix Project itrevolution.com/book/the-phoenix-project/ DevOps for the Modern Enterprise itrevolution.com/book/devops_modern_enterprise/Accelerate by itrevolution.com/book/accelerate/And more on IT Revolution website itrevolution.com/devops-books/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Candace Kelley is the Director of Enterprise Agile Transformation at AT&T. She has been influencing the adoption of SAFe and Agile practices at AT&T for the last 5 years. Kelley shares her path to becoming an Agile leader within her organization and the keys to scaling Agile.
One of the key factors that has allowed the adoption of Agile at scale has been leadership engagement in the process. When embarking on a new program or portfolio, Kelley brings in the executives for a full day immersion.
“The reality is when you start a conversation with ‘We can deliver products and services faster, cheaper and at a higher quality, are you interested?’ they’re going to say yes. They are willing to come in. They’re setting the example to their team, they’re showing it’s important.”
Adam Mattis hosts at SAFe Summit 2018 in Washington, D.C.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Danielle Crop is the VP of Application Experience and Platforms at American Express. She shares her journey helping the 168-year-old financial services giant transition into an Agile organization.
Amex is fundamentally a digital company – they’ve never had brick-and-mortar branches – and have always been customer-centric. Today the challenge they face are the new ways of working within the organization. Some teams, such as marketing, that have traditionally used project management within their own silo, now have visibility into and are dependent on product teams to drive value.
Learn how Amex approaches scaling agility through a center of excellence with deep product understanding and expertise that works closely with both the technology teams and the business. Crop also touches on some of the emerging technology American Express is using such as machine learning and AI.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Mattis hosts at SAFe Summit 2018 in Washington, D.C.
Reach our guest: LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-crop-b3565b17/
Reach our host: Twitter twitter.com/adammattis13
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Dean Leffingwell is just a "geek on a mission". Recognized as the one of the world’s foremost authorities on Lean-Agile best practices, his passion has always been improving the craft of software development.
With the release of SAFe 4.6, he hopes to do just that. Leffingwell shares some of the most important updates to the framework including how to address the challenge of moving from a traditional to a Lean|Agile mindset, more guidance on XP, TDD and BDD, and how to scale a scaling framework—think 1000+ PI Planning participants.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Adam Mattis hosts at SAFe Summit 2018 in Washington D.C.
To find out more about SAFe 4.6, visit www.scaledagileframework.com/ and follow Scaled Agile on Twitter twitter.com/ScaledAgile
Reach our host: twitter.com/adammattis13
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Allison Pollard and Noreen Emanuel sat down for a chat with us about their mentor-mentee relationship. As an external Agile coach Pollard was able to act as a “super coach,” and through this symbiotic relationship Emanuel has now become a coach herself at her place of work.
Pollard sees the relationship as a partnership: “For me it’s like I have a new colleague. I have a new person that has different ideas, their brain works differently, and they have all these great skills, so how do we tap into that together?” Hear concrete examples of how these two found common ground and recommendations for how coaches themselves can hone their skills.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Chris Murman hosts at Agile2018.
Reach our guests: Allison Pollard @allison_pollard twitter.com/allison_pollard Noreen Emmanuel @sweetnor twitter.com/sweetnor
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmped Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileamped Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Esther Derby has spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success. She sat down with us to talk about an alternative to top down control: clarity, conditions, and constraints.
Her approach is a response to organizations saying that they want their teams to step into responsibility and to be empowered, but yet the management structure gets in the way of that. She doesn’t advocate just throwing away all the direction, but that we’re going to make a direction by making a compelling goal and attractor, rather than by telling individuals what to do on a day to day basis.
"You give smart people a problem to solve and some constraints so they don’t have to figure out on every single day whether they should use this tool or that tool, and they’ll come up with some really great solutions."
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
Reach our guest:esther@estherderby.com
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Head of R&D and Work Futurist at Atlassian, Dom Price sees an unsettling trend: a celebration of Agile teams who do all the right things but don’t get any of the value. While Price sees Agile as “a philosophy, a spirit,” he argues that too many large organizations use it as a means to achieve compliance, managers going around with their checklists, saying “We do x, we do y, therefore we’re Agile tech.”
But Agile is a means to real value - faster time to market, more innovative teams, more engaged teams, which are the true signposts for business agility. Price shares his experiences helping Atlassian with their scaling transformation and a challenge for agilists: “It’s ironic for me that people who are Agile practitioners, ones who are saying Agile is all about evolution, aren’t evolving as people. They’re static. They’re using things they learned 17 years ago and they’re deploying it in the exact same way.”
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
Access the Team Playbook: https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook?utm_source=teamtour
Reach our guest:Twitter @domprice twitter.com/domprice
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
A very familiar voice for the Agile Amped podcast listeners is our special guest for this episode. Howard Sublett, the Director of Community Development at Accenture | SolutionsIQ is moving on to become the Chief Product Owner for the Scrum Alliance.
Hear about Sublett’s journey in the Agile industry and learn how he helped build the culture we all here at SolutionsIQ cherish. Sublett offers examples of the kinds of activities and tools we’ve implemented to keep our community engaged.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Roxi Ozolins hosts.
To reach our guest:
Twitter @howardsublett https://twitter.com/howardsublett
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Troy Magennis is a consultant to major companies on Agile implementation and portfolio planning, and a seasoned conference speaker. He was a keynote speaker at Agile2018 on the topic of data, which for the first time was approved as a track by the Agile Alliance this year.
Magennis says part of being a good Agile coach is understanding data, although data can be inconvenient because it doesn’t always show what we want it to show. He walks us through the metrics that you really need to capture and why.
“If it doesn’t help you with a decision, or it doesn’t help you observe that something’s going off the rails earlier, it’s a vanity metric.”
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
Reach our guest:Twitter: @t_magennis twitter.com/t_magennis Email: troy.magennis@gmail.com
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Jim Benson is the author of the global bestseller "Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life" and self-identified "Agile heretic." A strong proponent for the values and principles, collaboration, and teamwork, Benson nonetheless is vocal on social media about ways Agile can approve. An example is when Agile teams don't do any documentation, pointing at the Agile Manifesto: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools."
Benson contends that people mistakenly turn this into a false dichotomy where the former is good and the latter is bad. But, he says, "You can't have interactions between individuals without process, and our process is facilitated by tools... The process is our social contract about how we are going to interact." He agrees that the Manifesto is good but it was written by "a bunch of guys going skiing" and a few relatively minor tweaks could make it more impactful.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
San Diego based April Wensel is the founder of Compassionate Coding. After a decade in software, she noticed that there was a lot of suffering in the industry. Rather than just assuming that that can't be changed, Wensel decided compassion was the answer. In this podcast, Wensel shares her experiences helping businesses to be more compassionate in not just business matters but also in their own interpersonal conduct. She also gives a useful definition of what compassion is (recognizing suffering and acting to end it) and is not (pity, or just faking niceness). And because all businesses are made up of people, anyone can get started being more compassionate. Individuals can get in touch with their core values and businesses can take a cultural retrospective.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
Reach our guest:Twitter @aprilwenselcompassionatecoding.com/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Krys Blackwood is a Senior Lead UX Designer at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. With her design team, she is creating a cultural change in an 80-year-old organization that's used to shipping things in a very waterfall way, "which makes sense when you're working with a billion dollar space craft."
Blackwood has even gone so far as to travel to places like Spain and Australia to physically sit and work with the engineers who control space craft far out in space, to get a better understanding of their UX. "We are inserting a user-centered approach into robotic exploration of the solar system," she says.
In her presentation at Agile2018, she shares case studies of work ranging from using AR/VR to drive rovers on Mars to making operations of the upcoming Europa Clipper mission simpler, faster and more pleasant for the human beings who have to do them.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2018 in San Diego.
To reach our guest and learn more:Twitter @NASAJPL and @shodoshan hi.jpl.nasa.gov/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Jason Little is an international speaker, Agile management consultant, and the author of Lean Change Management. He spoke with us about approaching organizational change based on Agile principles; how to sense and respond to change rather than to think of “transformation” as a linear path with an end date; and how to think outside the prescriptive box of frameworks.
"Today we have everything from Agile digital strategy development to Agile marketing to Agile testing ...and it's completely missing the point. We're not trying to make each individual function more Agile, we're trying to get rid of the individual functions and focus on the whole organization."
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts.
To reach our guest visitwww.leanchange.org
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Nowadays you can’t go anywhere without hearing about or interacting with voice recognition technology. Kari Ostevik of the Toronto-based Tribal Scale knows: she helped with the voice technology powering both Amazon Echo (i.e., “Alexa”) and Google Home. She provides 5 lessons for working in emerging technology:
- Humility – nobody knows yet so everybody needs to be curious and patient.
- Power of the Pair – Pair programming makes knowledge dissemination fast and seamless.
- Ruthless Prioritization – Tech is changing all the time, so you have to be clear about priorities.
- Test Late – In additional to testing early, with emerging tech, it’s important to have enough of a product to get good feedback.
- Submit Early – Start time-consuming (legal/bureaucratic) processes earlier on.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.
Reach our guest:
Twitter: @kariostevik
Email: kostevik@tribalscale.com
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
One year ago, Accenture acquired SolutionsIQ, the leading pure-play Agile consultancy in North America. We invited two key players from each side of the acquisition – SolutionsIQ’s CEO John Rudd and Accenture Technology’s practice lead Jeff Emerson – to give a rare behind-the-scenes peek into the process of an acquisition while using Agile practices and embodying an Agile mindset and culture.
"How does a little company that is based on Agile values move into a very large organization, in a way that doesn’t destroy the little company and the same time allows the acquiring company to get the value and the promises out of that acquisition?… And yet that’s exactly what happened." – John Rudd
"We didn’t make an acquisition to have SolutionsIQ come and do more of what Accenture does. We did it to bring that special sauce, that special consulting and transformation expertise that SolutionsIQ has led in the market with. We want to help get that with our clients and with ourselves." – Jeff Emerson
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts.
To reach our guests:john.rudd@accenture.comjeffrey.p.emerson@accenture.com
To find out more about Accenture | SolutionsIQ, visit: www.accenture.com/agile
To join our team, visit: https://www.solutionsiq.com/careers/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Alicia McLain is an Organizational Transformation | Executive Coach with a keen eye for organizational systems. Her session at Keep Austin Agile 2018, called “Confidence vs. Ego – The Role Empathy Plays in Organizational Transformation,” highlights the differences between acting “in confidence” and acting “in ego.”
Confidence is about responding rather than reacting, being outward-focused and being comfortable in your own skin, whereas ego tends to be self-focused, self-centered. McLain pairs a Confidence-Ego Map with the Empathy Map to help people understand where others are coming from, why they behave the way they do, and what motivates that behavior. This is especially important today as emotional intelligence (EQ) is seen as perhaps even more valuable in organizational transformation than IQ.
Accenture|SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile in Austin, Texas.
To reach our guest:
Twitter: @AgileLeaderSD and @TheLDRSHIPCOACH
LInkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciarmclain/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Pete Behrens is a Leadership Agility Coach, Certified Enterprise Coach, and a CST. He sat down with us to shed light on the Certified Agile Leadership Program by the Scrum Alliance which, according to Behrens, was the number one requested education that wasn’t being provided by the community.“The purpose of this program is not to make leaders experts at Scrum, but to help them adapt an Agile mindset. Being a Certified Agile Leader is not the point coming out of a two-day class, but to introduce them to a mindset they should be aware of.”
Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts at the Scrum Gathering in Minneapolis, MN.
Reach our guest:trailridgeconsulting.com/pete@trailridgeconsulting.com
To learn more about the Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) program by the Scrum Alliance, visit www.scrumalliance.org/get-certified/…-certification
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Mindset is the gray matter between why we do our work and how we get it done. Gil Broza, a much sought-after speaker, Agile coach, and author of The Human Side of Agile and The Agile Mind-Set, sat down with us for a deep dive into the Agile mindset.
According to Broza, the Agile mindset is made up for 3 things:• Values: What we care about.• Beliefs: What we assume or hold to be true.• Principles: The standards that guide how we act.
He goes on to explain why Agile transformations fail when we focus on behaviors without changing our mindset. Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts.
To reach our guestVisit: 3pvantage.com/ Email: gil@3pvantage.com
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Agile Amped producer Hanna Gnann attended the Women in Agile Lunch & Learn at Keep Austin Agile 2018, where the topic was sustainable pace. She was impacted by the speaker Tamara Nation, so we invited her to chat with us about sustainability, how to measure it and ultimately how to achieve it. Nation shares her tips, with Gnann providing color commentary, including:
- Balance and boundaries - making intentional choices about what thing you do not do. (Nation has stopped looking at her phone first thing in the morning)- Connect with nature daily - simple as stepping outside and breathing deep- Stop and eat - actually making meals a time to care for yourself and build rapport with colleagues- Take stock of your feelings - track how you are feeling in intense moments; meditation and prayer can help bring you back to center- Take time off - 50% of Americans don't use their allotted vacation, so this can be as simple as actually using your vacation or taking the weekend to do nothing
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2018 in Austin, Texas.
To find out more about Women in Agile visit womeninagile.com/
Reach out to our guests:Tamara Nation: tamara@scaledagile.comHanna Gnann: Twitter @hannagnann
Read more about Nation's Women in Agile session: www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-p…stainable-pace/
The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
First off, Mark Waite is a test-driven development (TDD) proponent. But - and hear him out - TDD may not actually be needed every single time you write code. Waite shares his discovery that the developers of Git - the leading version control system today - didn't use any tests during the first year or so of development. But why? Waite argues that testing is a quality assurance measure - and sometimes you don't care about things like longevity, breaking the code, or even shoddy value. For example, "Sometimes I need a tool to do something once" and never again. He goes on to point out that TDD is most useful when there is significant risk, or you need to understand the code better, or when there is a benefit to intentional variation.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.
Reach our guest on Twitter: @MarkEWaite
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Connect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
Are educators doing all they can to prepare students for the real world? High school teacher and CSM Bret Thayer feels we could be doing better to give today's students - digital natives - the soft skills that modern businesses need. These include critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, innovation, collaboration, adaptability. Thayer is all too familiar with the struggle of getting smartphone-obsessed teenagers to acknowledge, let alone learn from, other people - teachers as well as other adults and peers. He uses Scrum and Agile technicals and mindsets to get students involved in their own education.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile 2018 in Denver, Colorado.
Reach our guest:Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/teacherswhoscrum/ Twitter: @bathayerWebsite: agileintheclassroom.com/
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Drawing from the work of Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan, Henry Dittmer shares his experience using the Immunity to Change (ITC) map to help participants of his session identify what is keeping them from achieving a desired change. Dittmer used the four-step ITC map to demonstrate why - paradoxically - he doesn't like presenting at conferences. The four steps are:
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What One Big Thing do you want to commit to changing?
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What are you doing or not doing that's keeping you from doing this thing?
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What worries and fears (hidden competing commitments) arise when you think about doing this thing?
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What assumptions make these commitments real for you?
From here you can test assumptions: are they real, are they silly? Do you really believe them? Dittmer finds that some difficult assumptions can open the door to coaching, for individuals and teams and even organizations. "It's really most powerful when individual leaders are getting leadership coaching," and then after they arrive at their One Big Thing, the team can look at itself collectively and decide what is their One Big Thing, specifically in terms of the company they are leading.
Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.
Reach our guestTwitter: @hcdittmer Email: henry.dittmer@agileforall.comWebsite: agileforall.com/
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Round Table Roulette time! Daniel M. Lynn, Candase Hokanson, and Audrey Scheere are our "victims" today. The questions coming out of the hat were:
- What was your favorite conference keynote/session ever?
- Mile High Agile (Uncle Bob) - We're gonna get screwed into oblivion if we don't do engineering better.
- Agile2016 - 5 Dysfunctions of an Improv Group
- Scaling Agile: A Guide for the Perplexed
- What's the worst thing you've seen that people thought was Agile?People saying they bought/use an Agile tool, so they're Agile
- What is beyond Agile?
- How do you know if someone is a good/great agile coach?
- If you could only give one piece of advice to a new ScrumMaster, what would it be?
- Know your stuff.
- Come in with a positive attitude.
- Talk less, listen more.
- How did you get started in Agile?
Accenture|SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile in Austin, Texas.
Find our guests on Twitter:
@rawrdrey
@candasea2006
@Daniel_M_Lynn
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Diana Larsen is the Chief Relationship Builder at the Agile Fluency Project and she has a simple compelling message: software development is learning work. Knowledge work is what everyone is talking about - but Larsen argues that learning is really what we need to be doing today. She talks about "heroic learners" - people who have the courage, compassion and confidence to learn everywhere and all the time, because as Larsen puts it, "We have to get good and learning - or we get left behind." And this goes beyond just individuals - she discusses how teams need to learn together.
Accenture|SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.
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Dave Prior is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with Leading Agile, a Project Management Professional (PMP), and a podcast host. He got his start in project management at digital agencies. The problem he saw with the agencies was that they were willing to bend over backwards for the client, which made it difficult to stay profitable. The key to making digital agencies Agile, according to Prior, is to “get everyone trained together, make sure sales is part of that, figure out how to rewrite your statements of work, figure out how your company is going to bear the cost of teaching your client [Agile].”
Prior also addresses the question: Should I still get a PMP, does it have any value?
Howard Sublett hosts.
To reach our guest:
Twitter: @mrsungowww.leadingagile.com/drunkenpm.blogspot.com/www.projectmanagement.com/blogs/264092…tant-Agilist
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Where will the Agile space be in ten years? This great question kicks off this edition of Round Table Roulette with our guests Aidee Fischer, Corey Post and Steve Kovach, three experienced Agile coaches here at SolutionsIQ. On the topic of the future of Agile, our guests are unanimous: "Agile will be everywhere."
Other questions and conversation topics that host Howard Sublett guides our guests through include:
- Can Agile work at any scale? If no, at what size does it break down? (Fischer: "Depends on what we mean by Agile. If we're talking about the idea of delivery value quickly to customers, being more customer-centric... making our people or products the best that they can be, then I think that, yes: it could work at any scale.")
- What do you tell managers that want to compare Agile teams to each other?
- Is there a "Dunbar Number" for Agile?
- How do you know if someone is a good or great Agile coach?
- Share a story about Agile outside of software. (Kovach was moved last year by a session he attended at Mile High Agile by the teenaged Aaron Vadakkana who has been using Scrum at home for years. Listen here: Agileamped – Using-scrum-at-home-with-aaron-vadakkan)
- If you could only give one piece of advice to a new ScrumMaster, what would it be?
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Neil Smith and Chuck Copello from Red Hat sat down with us to discuss how an Agile mindset can overcome the 6th principle of the Agile Manifesto:
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
Red Hat is a large open source software company with 11,000 employees globally, 2,000 of whom work from home. Both Chuck and Neil have team members across different continents, and they provide practical advice for how to be a distributed Agile team and still feel united. They even shared with us tips for helping distributed teams collaborate more effectively.
Howard Sublett hosts.
Get in touch with our guests: neil@redhat.comccopello@redhat.com
Access the Google Doc mentioned here: https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/agile-amped-podcast/distributed-agile-teams-collaboration-over-collocation-at-red-hat/
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When Agile coaches Nidhi Sharma and Michael Callahan are looking at changing someone’s mindset and changing the way that they behave and work, they want to start with a purpose. The pair tied it all together in their Four R’s model for transitioning to Lean thinking:
- Why are we doing this work? (Right Reasons)- What work would fit that purpose? (Right Work)- Who needs to be in the room to have those conversations? (Right People)- What is the last responsible moment for doing the work? (Right Time)
Howard Sublett hosts.
Get in touch with our guests: michael.p.callahan@accenture.com and nidhi.t.sharma@accenture.com And find our podcast host on Twitter: @howardsublett
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Agile coach Ashok Mohan and IT Product Owner Burkhard Lustig sit down with Agile Amped to share their stories working at Ableton, a business focused on making software and hardware for music makers. In particular, the duo discuss an pivotal learning experience with a difficult trade-in program. Although Product teams had already been leveraging Agile development and practices for 10 years, this was not the case for the Business. When the trade-in program revealed gaps in organizational capability, they decided to make changes, specifically taking four major steps:
- They introduced team planning.2. To make work visible, they organized "expos" - demos more suited to their laid-back culture.3. Because WIP was too high and not enough was getting to done, middle management was brought together to own the work and the process, with coaching from Ashok and Brendan (another Ableton coach).4. After too much WIP, the second top impediment was lack of alignment, so they focused on establishing a shared purpose.
Mohan echoed Marsha Shenk's sentiment (in this podcast - Agileamped – Limitations-opportunities-of-neurophysiology) that "as humans, every one of us wants to contribute... They don't know how to contribute in a system... [but] it's almost always about 'how can you get to people to contribute in a way that's meaningful for them?'"
Leslie Morse hosts in NYC at Business Agility 2018.
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Marsha Shenk, coach, consultant and founder of The BestWork People, takes us on a whirlwind tour of how the brain affects everyday interactions. Shenk believes that people fundamentally want to contribute - to be part of meaningful interactions, which is what life - including business - is made up of.
Our favorite quote: "Business agility is not for the faint hearted."
More nuggets of wisdom Shenk offers:- "People get dumbed down by having imperatives imposed on them."- "Fear shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which is where our executive function is... so nothing new happens"- "Business is a social activity. Some people now think that itʻs happening between computers - no. Thereʻs somebody out there making a decision and that person has a beating heart."- "I recommend respecting the limitations of technology and ... physiology."- "In order to keep learning after puberty, you have to develop the skill of building new neural pathways."
Hosted by Leslie Morse in NYC at Business Agility 2018.
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Lars Bruns and Sudhir Nelvagal started working together in GE Healthcare 13 years ago. In this episode, they share their experience helping GE with their Agile transformation. GE, being a long-standing business giant with its fingerprints in virtually every infrastructure domain and every industry, is still traditional in many ways, but it is transforming itself to become a lean startup. Bruns and Nelvagal share their experiences applying innovative Agile and Lean techniques across GE’s traditional hardware and physical engineering-oriented business units. Other topics touched on include failing fast and leadership buy-in.
Hosted by Brent Barton in NYC at Business Agility 2018.
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Natalie Warnert is an independent consultant and the founder of Women in Agile, which started five years ago and has spread far and wide. Since then, Warnert has written her theses about why women are less involved in the Agile community. In her research, she has uncovered interesting biases that men and women have about themselves and each other. She briefly touches on current social movements that show how views on equality, inclusivity and diversity are converging. She's also excited about the grassroots pop-up chapters of Women in Agile that people are starting: "It's been so great to see people taking initiative to do these things... I can't do it alone and I don't want to." Other topics include globalization, UX, and AI.
Hosted by Leslie Morse in NYC at Business Agility 2018. Morse mentions this podcast: Agileamped – Limitations-opportunities-of-neurophysiology
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“Everybody knows going into the budget process that people make up the numbers because they know they’re going to get cut, they’re going to get manipulated, they’re negotiating for their bonuses, so it’s already a bad document to begin with,” says Nevine White. White and Mike De Luca from Beyond Budgeting Round Table of North America sat down with us for a deep dive into Beyond Budgeting, including a definition of what it is and some history. They also walk us through two real-world examples of implementing it.
De Luca says Beyond Budgeting requires a different philosophy around leadership: it needs to be very decentralized and is intended to drive decision making to the lowest appropriate level. He points out that the process of implementing Beyond Budgeting doesn’t really end since learning organizations must continue to refine and adapt. However, a lot of the heavy lifting can take anywhere from 6-18 months. Listen to find out what that entails, how to get started, how to measure and successfully transform financial planning in your organization.
Leslie Morse hosts in NYC at Business Agility 2018.
This episode of Agile Amped is part of a series in partnership with the Business Agility Institute. businessagility.institute/
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Angela Wick is the founder of BA-Squared and in this episode she talks about how business analysis is shifting drastically and how leaders are championing the charge. Wick discusses how important it is for business analysts to collaborate with Product Owners to focus on building the right products: "Agile can't happen without analysis... If you're building the wrong thing, it doesn't matter how fast you are." But what is really exciting to Wick is how much the world and her field is changing as a result of AI and machine learning. What might take a BA weeks to produce, an algorithms today can do at a fraction of the cost and time. But the complexity in the world means that you have to pair vision with rapid experiments - and a dash of curiosity - to make sure your business is on the right path.
Leslie Morse hosts in NYC at Business Agility 2018.
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Joshua Seckel is an Agile coach and also Sevatec’s Chief Solution Architect for Agile and DevOps. Joshua drives the the adoption of business, technical, and management agility both internally and at client sites. His presentation at Business Agility Conference 2018 is called "Agile Contracting in the Federal Government" and in this podcast he shares his experience helping USCIS not only contract Agile teams but also to evolve the procurement process to be more Agile. With a focus on enabling experimentation and cross-department collaboration, Seckel helped stand up 20 Agile development teams who are able today to deliver to production 4-5 times a week - in a federal environment!
Some recommendations that Seckel wants to share are:1. Many changes are risk-driven, which is directly related to the corporate culture. By adapting the business to allow a little more risk, you can unlock a lot more learning and success.2. Learn fast. Succeed either in learning (e.g., from failure) or in execution.3. Meet people where they are.
Hosted by Leslie Morse in New York City at the Business Agility 2018 conference.
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Allison Flaten is an HR practitioner (and one of our favorite people) with over a decade of experience in working with and leading HR departments in variety of industries, five of which she has spent in an Agile organization. She walks us through the differences between traditional HR departments where the focus tends to be on risk mitigation, compliance, and policy-driven communication, and Agile HR that focuses on how to make the organization the best place for its employees.
Flaten’s advice includes: - Ensure HR can adapt and shift with the needs of the business, as well as with the employees. - Share your HR backlog - Get feedback from employees and leadership to get buy-in before releasing policies - Provide fast performance feedback which can result in immediate adjustment, rather than waiting for an annual performance review
Howard Sublett hosts. Find him on Twitter: @howardsublett
Get in touch with our guest: allison.flaten@accenture.com
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Why should a job interview for a role on an Agile team follow the traditional interview format with high anxiety and low level of psychological safety? How do you find people who are natural collaborators? Jason Tice, VP of business innovation at Worldwide Technology, spoke with Agile Amped about using collaborative activities, or games, during job interviews to gather feedback and assess necessary skills. Tice says creating a safe space where candidates are willing to be vulnerable is a game changer for finding the right candidates for high-performing teams.
Hosted by Howard Sublett.
This episode of Agile Amped is part of a series in partnership with the Business Agility Institute. Register for the Business Agility Conference in New York March 14-15, 2018 and use code solutionsiq-founding-member to save 25% off registration: businessagilityconf.com/
Find Jason Tice on Twitter: @TheAgileFactor And find our podcast host: @howardsublett
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We chat with SolutionsIQ's Dave Wylie, a seasoned consultant, manager and developer with 35 years of experience. Wylie wants to make sure that, while Agile has expanded beyond IT, people especially in IT remember that good engineering practices are foundational for a successful Agile transformation. Agile software development approaches, techniques and mindsets are drivers for business value and make it possible for Product Owners to ship when they're ready to ship.
Dave argues that foundational development practices - writing tests as well as reviewing, integrating and continuously improving code - are important for everybody. Unfortunately, according to Wylie, ”There's lots and lots of people in the software development world that [have] had zero formal training or informal training or mentorship on these practices.”
Howard Sublett hosts. Get in touch with our guest: david.wylie@accenture.comAnd find our podcast host on Twitter: @howardsublett
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Once upon a time, Melissa Boggs worked for a company where their mission was central to everything they did. This podcast is a story about using mission, vision and values as a beacon for Agile transformation.
Boggs is an agility culture and leadership coach with Agile42. As a Certified Enterprise Coach, she is fascinated with company cultures and how they inspire, or conversely demotivate, individuals to become amazing. In this episode, Boggs walks us through concrete steps for how to not only create a mission statement, but how to live and breathe the mission, vision and values every step going forward, and how to avoid the ghosts that sometimes get in the way of an Agile transformation.
Our favorite quote is one that resonates with so many organizations:“They already had a mission statement, but quite literally the only person who could tell me who could tell me what it was, was the sweet lady in marketing who wrote it five years ago.”
Hosted by Howard Sublett.
This episode of Agile Amped is part of a series in partnership with the Business Agility Institute.
Register for the Business Agility Conference in New York March 14-15 and use code solutionsiq-founding-member to save 25% off registration: www.businessagilityconf.com/
Contact Melissa Boggs via email: melissa.boggs@agile42.comOr follow her on Twitter: @HmngbirdAgilityAnd find our podcast host:@howardsublett
Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
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Many of the data warehousing problems of the world have been tackled and solved--yet data warehousing and business intelligence teams in Agile settings still struggle with technical practices that better enable Agile. One example is test automation. Lynn Winterboer discusses with Agile Amped at Mile High Agile 2016 in Denver, Colorado, her conference presentation and why she thinks it's hard for such teams to do test automation and how the industry's vendor focus contributes to the problem. The bottom line? Don't wait for the right tool or vendor. Just jump right into test automation. Lynn Winterboer coaches DW/BI teams on applying agile principles to their work. She has filled many roles on data and agile teams for 20 years. Lynn understands the unique set of challenges faced by data teams who want to benefit from Agile project delivery. You can reach Lynn via her website: winterboeragileanalytics.com SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. Podcast library: www.agileamped.comConnect with us on social media! Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFacebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedInstagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
The International Consortium of Agile (ICAgile) is a certification and accreditation body with presence in more than 100 countries, with close to 70,000 people holding credentials thus far. Recently Agile Amped spoke with ICAgile leaders, Managing Director Shannon Ewan and Director of Learning Programs Shane Hastie about their new Agile Leadership track.
Ewan shared with us that fundamentally ICAgile enables “becoming an Agile leader, as opposed to teaching Agile for Leaders. If you’re not interested in changing yourself, then it’s not the program for you.”
According to Hastie, “The ideas embodied in this leadership track are built on that respect of people, and that people are the primary source of value in our organizations.”
Our favorite quote from this podcast? “It’s about transforming organizations to be more human-centric. The impact is to truly, fully unleash the potential of people within organizations. Creating cultures of learning; making organizations a place where people continue to learn and thrive and they truly are their best at work.” - Shannon Ewan, ICAgile
Hosted by Howard Sublett.
Find out more information about the ICAgile Leadership Track:http://www.icagile.com/Learning-Roadmap/Business-Agility/Agile-Leadership
Contact ICAgile: info@icagile.com
Find our guests on Twitter: @ShannonEwan@shanehastie @ICAgile And our podcast host:@howardsublett
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What do the Brazilian dance Bossa Nova and company-wide agility have in common? According to Jutta Eckstein and John Buck, both are created from a combination of different elements. While the dance is a synthesis of samba and jazz, company-wide agility can be created using the following elements: Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy and Agile - BOSSA nova for short.
Jutta is a coach, consultant and trainer with a M.A. in Business Coaching and Change Management. John Buck is a Certified Sociocratic Organizational Consultant. Listen to how they encourage organizations to use these time-tested concepts to begin experimenting at your company to become Agile, and how sociocracy can ensure that the power structure of an organization will uphold company-wide agility, not hinder it.
This episode of Agile Amped is part of a series in partnership with the Business Agility Institute.
Register for the Business Agility Conference in New York March 14-15 and use code solutionsiq-founding-member to save 25% off registration:businessagilityconf.com/
To find out more about Jutta & John’s book in progress, visit: leanpub.com/bossanova
Follow our guests on Twitter: @JuttaEckstein@johnabuckAnd find our podcast host:@howardsublett
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SolutionsIQ Business Agility Lead Kat Conner and CTO Evan Campbell discuss the rise of business agility, the challenges and opportunities before today's organizations, and some advanced topics like adaptive management, Agile portfolio management, and innovation as organizational capabilities.
Notable quotes:"Annual budgeting is irritating and wasteful and not very efficient in the things that we use it for. The hard part is coming up with more effective substitutes for the various purposes that we use annual budgeting."
"Instead of thinking of projects as the primary means of asset allocation and organization of people, we look at the critical streams of value that are flowing from technology to business leaders or customers, and we create long-lived, persistent, capable delivery units."
"One of the things that makes innovation safe and cheap and ultimately more efficient is taking an experimental mindset towards what you're doing."
To receive real-time updates: Podcast library: www.agileamped.com Subscribe to our newsletter: www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Connect on Twitter: twitter.com/AgileAmpedFollow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/agileampedFind us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/agileamped/
A retrospective is an opportunity for us as a team, as an organization, to ask ourselves what are we doing well, what are we not doing well, and how can we improve going forward. A retrospective is the catalyst for the continuous improvement that Agile promises. David Horowitz is a co-founder and CEO of Retrium, the world’s first and only enterprise-ready platform for Agile retrospectives.
David shared these tips (and more) for having successful retrospectives:- When should or shouldn't the manager be included- Why “What happens in the retrospective should stay in the retrospective” might not be the most effective approach- How to drive engagement during retrospectives- Why you shouldn’t only think about running a retrospective at the end of the Sprint- Why minimizing scope is powerful
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Co-founder and Principal Software Craftsman of Greater Sum, Mike Clement is passionate about raising the bar of technical excellence in the software development community. One way to do that is by using user story maps. While Clement doesn't advocate for getting rid of backlogs altogether, he believes that user story mapping helps bring the story and user journey out of disparate tasks. The problem is backlogs don't immediately show how different user stories work together, and prioritization doesn't always help. Clement describes how user story mapping helps the business and teams to think about slices of value that can then be turned into a backlog for an upcoming iteration. This helps limit work in progress (WIP) and drive toward delivering real value.
Howard Sublett hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Senior Technical Consultant at SolutionsIQ James Byars has noticed that many teams undergoing Agile transformation only focus on the new frameworks and processes. This makes it difficult to focus on the type and quality of the work being done. Byars, who is presenting on the human side of software at Southern Fried Agile 2017, believes that this tendency contributes to the business thinking of software developers as resources instead of people. When teams focus on outputs, such as how much code are written or how many tasks moved to "done," they lose track of why they are doing these things. When teams understand the "why" it allows them to be more creative about problem solving and providing solutions. This helps teams deliver business value and in turn increases the trust between software teams and the business. James says we need to stop "hiring smart people [only to]... tell them what to do" and instead hire these smart people, set some guide rails and set them free.
Howard Sublett hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Ken Pugh, author of "Lean-Agile Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Better Software Through Collaboration", gives us a lesson on Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). And guess what? They aren't as different as you may think. It comes down to whether the tests are written based on acceptance criteria or on the behavior that a system must meet. Pugh reminds us that the important thing is getting the customer representative, the developers and the testers together to write the acceptance criteria in plain human language before a line of code is even written. More kernels of wisdom from Pugh:- "Fixing a defect is valuable, but preventing a defect is even more valuable."- If during development you can't ship until a particular test passes, then that test is a requirement. "Testers aren't writing tests, they're writing requirements."- "If you take more than half an hour to write the tests, then your story is probably too big."- "If you feel like you need a defect tracking system... you've got too many defects. I have been in places where they actually have just one defect! "
Howard Sublett hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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The Southern Fried Agile (SFA) conference has come a long way since its inception. James Collins, SFA chairperson and a technical leader at Wells Fargo, and Neville Poole, SFA chairperson and Agile Practice Lead for Products at SolutionsIQ, sit down with us to share their experiences going from a literal shoe-string budget to major conference venue. James and Neville touch on some horror stories and victories - and joy - that they have experienced in this fun and energizing conference which may or may not have had a chicken for a mascot once upon a time.
Billie Schuttpelz hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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How is a cellphone like a satellite? Says Tom Friend, Agile consultant at Duke Energy who is blowing our minds with his work at NASA, "If you think about it, a cellphone is a micro satellite [without] stabilization [or] propulsion." Tom walked us through using Scrum and other Agile practices in a satellite mission simulation to create a roadmap and a backlog and to produce a paper prototype of a to-scale small satellite (smallsat), which Friend calls a cubesat. Of the experience, he says, "It creates a shared mental model that everyone can see. It's not what you get out of the paper, it's individuals and interactions."
Howard Sublett hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2017 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Richard Kasperowski is the author of "The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness", a book in which he describes how to use the Core protocols developed by Jim and Michele McCarthy, an Agile mindset and practices, and Open Space Technology to create high-performance teams. In this podcast, Kasperowski defines for us what he means by "high-performance teams" thus: "High-performance team is a team that gets objectively better results than other teams doing similar work. It's something you can observe and something you can measure." To achieve this end many times over with different clients and customers, Kasperowski has over time devised what he calls a "protocol stack" whose four layers - Positive Bias, Autonomy, Self-Awareness and Connections - he argues is foundational to all high-performance teams.
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile Arizona 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Ever asked your team, "How's our KPIs? Are we hitting our numbers?" Cat Swetel says that the answer you get may not be very useful for determining actual value delivery. In her Agile Arizona 2017 session "Agile Metrics You Should Use But Don't," Cat shared some metrics that everyone in Agile knows they should focus on, but for whatever reason get set aside. These include: Start date ("when a story crosses the line of commitment"), End date (when the acceptance criteria and definition of done have been met), how many things in progress, time in process (AKA "cycle time" - which in Cat's experience has different connotations in manufacturing), throughput (units of value per unit of time, AKA velocity).
Cat also shares a powerful story about how a delivery team radiated information to their business representatives about the negative impact expedite requests would have on eminent customer satisfaction and how this sharing of information had a profound, positive impact on communication and delivery flow.
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett at Agile Arizona 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Derek Neighbors is the CTO of Tanga, whose Daily Deals make online impulse shopping even more dangerous. Derek dives into the metaphor that they use at Tanga to make product management more fun and, more importantly, more effective. They call it "Blockbuster Product Management": it maps the many product delivery and release processes to similar processes in movie-making. For every strategic initiative, there are pitch scripts, executive directors and directors (the latter being the Product Owner), screenings, and even a cast of characters who "star" in the movie that is developing and delivering a particular product. The cast will include developers, designers, operations people. For the last two to three years, Tanga has been reaping the benefits of this movie metaphor, releasing posters that gets everyone excited - and completely clear - about what products are being released and when. Derek also shares stories about the power of this metaphor - and, yes, there have been sequels and even "straight-to-DVD" products.
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett at Agile Arizona 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.
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People don't always use the word "joy" to describe a place they would like to work, but Rich Sheridan thinks we should start. Author of Joy, Inc. and CEO of Menlo Innovation, Rich shares how he created an open space for delivery teams where computers and code were shared – an idea that one respondent said would result in “blood, mayhem, murder.” Instead this approach was what led Sheridan to recognize joy as the very thing that makes a place worth working in. 18 years after starting, Sheridan's mission to bring joy into the workplace is stronger than ever.
Memorable Quotes:- "It's okay to say, 'I don't know.'"- "We have intentionally created a culture focused on the business value of joy."
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett at Agile Arizona 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.
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In this edition of Round Table Roulette, we sit down with SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley, Reece Schmit from Agile Velocity, and Jeremy Wood from Matrix Resources. Some questions and head-scratchers that our panel wrestles with include:- Where will Agile be in 10 years?- What's your favorite retrospective technique?- How do you know if your pace is sustainable?- Describe the high-performing Agile team you've ever seen.
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett at Agile Arizona 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Author of the book "Tribal Unity" and SAFe Fellow Em Campbell-Pretty holds the claim to fame for launching the first Agile Release Train (ART) in Australia. Em believes that book clubs are a great vehicle for deep learning, scaling is about building the social fabric of the organization, and that companies get better results by starting with culture. Her session at SAFe Summit 2017 is called "Tribal Unity – The Heart of Scaling Agile."
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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Ever feel like, despite all your hard work and achievements and the praise that people sprinkle on you, you aren't good enough? That the successes in your life are accidents, chance, flukes? If this sounds like you, you may be feeling "imposter syndrome," a term coined in 1978 by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, and that's what SolutionsIQ's Billie Schuttpelz is elucidating in this episode. People suffering from imposter syndrome may actually be high achievers, Billie says, sharing some insights from her experience in the field as a senior Agile coach. Turns out that many, many people have experienced or will experience imposter syndrome. Billie dives into how this is affecting business and Agile transformations today and preventing innovation. And, she says, quit watching your blooper reel.
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett.
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Agile veteran Brian Watson urges companies to get over their addiction to projects. He remembers when, at a year-end awards banquet, someone won an award for consultant who billed the most hours. Brian says that you want to reward individuals going above and beyond, but it creates the wrong competitive environment where people one-up each other for number of projects. Instead they should focus on actual value delivered. He also reminds listeners to go read the Phoenix Project for a refresher on the power of small-batch releases.
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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SAFe Fellow, black belt-holder and father of two sets of twins Inbar Oren chats with Accenture's Daniel McGlynn on several topics concerning Continuously Delivery and technical excellence, what's next with SAFe, common challenges and myths preventing mindset shifts about Agile and development, and more!
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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Allen Ringel shares his experience in Agile transformation using SAFe at a large technology company. One key learning that Allen experienced was the need to get leadership engagement early on so leaders could help with the transformation. Something else he would do differently: over-communicate.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The data that helped sell Agile at scale to leadership- First steps into SAFe Implementation- Importance of training- How to get people engaged and align them with the vision- How to communicate during an Agile transformation- How critical executive sponsorship buy-in is - Tips for other organizations starting their SAFe implementation
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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Deema Dajani is a Senior Principal Transformation Consultant at CA and co-founder of South Florida Agile Association. Now she can add to her list of titles coordinator of the first Women in Agile local user group in San Antonio, which held its inaugural event at SAFe Summit 2017. Deema shares her experience and joy with the event, which was "full of energy" and standing room only. To keep the momentum going, Deema thinks there is need for more women in STEM careers, which starts with girls being encouraged to dive into science, software development and Agile.
Hosted by Accenture's Melissa Eisner at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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Fabiola Eyholzer is the CEO of Just Leading Solutions, a New York based consultancy for Lean and Agile People Operations – the 21st century HR approach. She helps enterprises to accelerate their agile transformation by focusing on their crucial asset: their people.
Here’s what you’ll learn:- Why Human Resource Management should be called People Operations- How the function of HR changes in enterprises in Agile Transformation- What is the new currency for competitiveness in organizations- The disconnect between mission statements and core values, and reality- Theory X and Theory Y: Micro-management vs Intrinsic motivation- What is “The Douglas Effect” and why you should get away from it- The percentage of people dissatisfied at work and the cost to economy- How organizations can get to 9% higher shareholder value- Amount of people who would take a new manager over a salary increase- How Agile ways of working don't differentiate between work and learning- How our perception of career is changing- When you should help an employee move on to another organization- Best way for HR teams to quickly adopt Agile practices into their work- The Agile Manifesto for HR www.agilehr.org
Leslie Morse hosts at the SAFe Summit in San Antonio, Texas.
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Transformation consultant and SAFe Fellow Eric Willeke shares his deep Lean-Agile experience with Agile Amped, focusing on the importance of ensuring organizations are guided by key results and outcomes. He points out that while many organizations are great at getting Agile Release Trains (ARTs) up and running, people doing the work have a hard time articulating how their work maps back to the bigger business strategy. Eric also highlights for us the need to clearly distinguish business strategy and transformation strategy and act accordingly. The topic of Eric's session at SAFe Summit 2017 was "Aligning Business Strategy and Execution with the SAFe Portfolio Level."
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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Round table Roulette time again! Our guests this time are Beth Hatter, Sally Elatta and Skip Angel and they have no idea what questions are in store for them! In this episode we answer... If a ScrumMaster were a tree, what kind of tree would they be? What's a favorite aha moment for you or your team? What's an example of a time when Agile didn't apply? How about the worst conference food you've ever had? And so much more!
Our favorite quote from this episode has to be by Sally: "You can use all of Agile sometimes and some of Agile all the time."
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett at SAFe Summit 2017 in San Antonio, Texas.
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Richard Knaster of Scaled Agile, Inc., touches on what makes SAFe so effective, DevOps as a key enabler of innovation, and first-mover advantage.
Hosted by SolutionsIQ's Scott Frost live from the second annual SAFe Summit in San Antonio, Texas.
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Billie Schuttpelz, Jolene Jangles, and Ronica Roth (sporting a giraffe onesie) sit down for a turn of Round Table Roulette, third and final of this year’s conference. What’s your favorite retrospective technique? What is your favorite conference? (Agile rap battle, anyone?) What would you throw in “Agile jail”? And then they share stories of a talk or training taking a bad turn or of Agile outside of software.
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida.
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Scott Ambler and Mark Lines are the co-creators of Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), and together they gave an overview of this framework in their “Disciplined Agile Master Class” at Agile2017. The duo enlighten us on the difference between their process-decision framework and scaling frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) or Large-Scale Agile (LeSS). And while they’re at it, they open the Pandora’s Box of “What’s better than Agile? And what does it mean to be “beyond Agile?”
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida.
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Giora Morein, founder and former president of BigVisible and current CST, proposed to us an inflammatory topic: enterprise Agile is killing product innovation and dooming global economies. To round out our discussion panel, we invited founder of Precoil David Bland before diving into a deep and long discussion with two major takeaways:Agile is good at making organizations more efficient, which may cause companies to efficiently undermine their own business, the people they employ and the larger economy.Organizations don’t invest enough in enough types of innovations to protect against the uncertainty of the future.
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida.
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The “enigma wrapped in a puzzle” Alistair Cockburn has an interesting story: signatory of the Agile Manifesto, author of two pivotal books “Writing Effective Use Cases” and “Agile Software Development,” and founder of the Agile software development conference in 2003 along with the more recent “Heart of Agile” conference. This last, “Heart of Agile,” has meme-ified Alistair, in ways oversimplifying who and what he is. But becoming a meme, he says, is crucial in order to have a greater impact. Alistair also shares his thoughts on Agile 2.0, what that means, and provides us with possibly our favorite quote for all of the Agile2017 conference: “Some people say that Agile is dead -- no, it’s just been incorporated into the bloodstream so you can’t see it”.
Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida.
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Extrovert Kupe Kupersmith has a goal to connect with every person in the world. “I’m not the smartest person in the room,” he admits, “but I am a click away from getting any answer that you need.”Kupe uses improvisation to improve human interactions, which technology and tools like social media can both hinder or support. He even demonstrates how you can use improv to, of all things, build a pool on the moon.
Howard Sublett assists at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida.
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How do you coach the mind? “Slowly, carefully,” say our guests Karen Greaves and Sam Laing. The duo are attending Agile2017 from far away South Africa and presenting on “Growing Internal Trainers and Coaches.” Karen shares her experiences becoming – then giving up being – a Certified Agile Trainer because it was at odds with her and Sam’s real objective: growing and uncovering competent Agile coaches and trainers, rather than just handing our certifications to people whose only concern is whether something will be on the exam. As Sam puts it, “Some things that you chase can actually drive the wrong behavior.”
SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida, with Agile coach Michael Tardiff adding color commentary.
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Author of O’Reilly’s “User Story Mapping” Jeff Patton joins SolutionsIQ’s George Schlitz to remind us that product success is not defined by how many features it has but by the value that customers get out of it. In other words, if customers aren’t using it, the company should take that feedback and run with it. “It’s incredibly important to be focused on what are we helping companies achieve in their worlds more than how much stuff are we delivering.” Meanwhile, George recognizes that leadership is key to ensuring that the business is achieving the actual goal of bringing value to customers.
SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts live at Agile2017 in Orlando, Florida.
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Beloved guest and co-founder of the Agile Coaching Institute (ACI) Lyssa Adkins graces us with her presence and regales us with her experiences through leadership development, both her own and those that she has coached others through. SolutionsIQ’s Halim Dunsky and Accenture’s John Borys round out the table with the discussion centering around how difficult it is to be a good leader, whether you’re leading a team or an enterprise. In the spirit of Agile and transparency, the group shares their individual growth experiences and aspirations, recognizing that “leadership development ain’t for sissies.”
SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts.
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Michael Vizdos is a coach, entrepreneur, author, and now the ScrumMaster in Residence, and part-time professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Universities around the world now have demand for curriculum in Agile and Scrum, and Michael was hired by VCU’s DaVinci Center to disrupt and develop both undergraduate and graduate studies in this field. “This is going to teach kids to think again.”
SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts.
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An Agile coach, trainer and mentor with a PhD in Psychology of Collaborative Software Development, Sallyann Freudenberg is an advocate for neurodiversity. It was after her son was diagnosed with autism that Sallyann recognized the same characteristics in herself – and in the tech industry around us. She says, “Statistically, you have autistics in your organization if you’re a tech company. There’s a huge correlation… These people are in your company right now, you’re just not making the most out of them.” To help companies recognize that neuro-atypical individuals with autism or ADHD may offer intrinsic “superpowers” to offset their challenges, Sally co-founded the Inclusive Collaboration Campaign with Katherine Kirk.
SolutionsIQ’s Howard Sublett hosts.
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Agile coach and “Agile for Humans” podcaster Ryan Ripley drops by to talk about a passion of his: the #NoEstimates movement. The problem is that estimates can turn into commitments, dollars get spent based on misinformation, features end up misaligned with business needs, and all parties end up feeling misled and frustrated. The question then is: do estimates add value or is it unnecessary overhead? Jump into with us to learn more about this movement!
SolutionsIQ’s Chris Murman hosts.
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Agile pioneers Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson take us on a roller-coaster ride – in a Delaurian! – through the pervasion of Agile, the evils of meeting big companies where they are, the next evolution of Agile, and treating programmers with human decency, all in the “right side lounge”! Not sure what that means? Neither are we, but we learned a lot and you will, too. Need more incentive? How about these quotes:- “You’re not doing Agile until your teams are shipping software every two weeks.”- “I have in mind a revolution.”- “What is Agile 2.0? It’s teal biomimicry.”- “We coded live during the keynote to prove that we could do it.”- “Everything I learned about Agile, I learned through pair programming.”
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David Marquet’s book “Turn Your Ship Around” is a favorite in the Agile community because it epitomizes team empowerment. David sits down with Agile Amped to discuss his thoughts on leadership, sharing stories of inadvertently becoming the leader aboard the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear submarine. He offers advice to the leaders of Fortune 500 companies, including (surprisingly) letting your waiter order your meal for you the next 10 times you eat at a restaurant. “When you know what it feels like [to give up control], then you know when you’re on the right track.” Learning to lead, he also advocates, is like learning a foreign language: you don’t learn it by going off to on retreats but by doing a little bit everyday.
Howard Sublett hosts with guest SolutionsIQ’s Dan Fuller.
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What happens when you get a handful of Agilists together and ask them random questions on the fly? A lot of fun – and insights. Who's the better ScrumMaster: Batman or Wonder Woman? What drink makes for the best retrospectives? What one piece of advice would you offer a Product Owner? Listen in and see how you stack up with our panel – Neville Poole, Chris Murman and Claire Moss. Hosted by Howard Sublett.
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Rob Oddi Change management expert and consultant, facilitator of Lego Serious Play, a facilitated thinking and problem-solving technique used by diverse organizations like NASA, the United Nations, Google, Fedex, and New Balance. It may seem silly at first but, according to Rob, many organizations agree that "the traditional ways of doing strategy are not working." Research suggests that your hands are connected to up to 90% of the brain cells, so getting your hands involved in strategizing, via Lego Serious Play for example, engages more of your brain power. It also helps players unleash their creativity and their metaphor abilities. It's easy to think of using Legos to represent a tower, but how about a marriage? The conversations built around the resulting 3D models takes on another dimension and enables people to get deeper into a problem, as well as potential solutions.The one rule of Lego Serious Play? You can never question the builder; you can only question the model.SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse (with her whirlygig) hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Suz O'Donnell, Executive Change Advisor with Thrivatize, has a call to action for leaders in two parts: 1) slow down to speed up and 2) figure out what a change means to you before you bring it to your team. When it comes to lasting change (as in Agile transformation), it isn't enough to simply forward an email. Leaders need to understand how the change will affect them, as well as their careers and families even. It's also important for leaders to customize the change messaging for their reports and teams and really focus on the engagement of their employees and customers. Says Suz, "If you're not engaging your employees, they're not engaging your customers." Furthermore, pushing the change process to go faster may actually impede progress. Slowing down to speed up may mean leaders pursuing professional advisory coaching, which Suz says, "dramatically increases the speed of adoption and implementation."SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Who said open space was for a small crowd only? Jake Calabrese has successfully hosted open space for crowds as large as 1200 people (in San Diego for the Scrum Gathering) and for the 800 people in attendance at Mile High Agile 2017. Jake works to ensure everyone, even those on the edges, are engaged - which involves a lot of running and silliness on Jake's part.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Boyd Hemphill, CTO of Victory CTO, and Christa Meck, a ScrumMaster at Kasasa, share their experience helping operations teams through their Agile journey. Operations teams typically struggle to make and keep commitments larger than a few days due to the myriad of break fix, operational change, and tuning work that happens on a daily basis. Recorded live at Keep Austin Agile 2017.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Andy Cleff talks with us about his presentation at Mile High Agile 2017, "Agile Team Metrics - Measure Many Things" -- an interactive discussion that explores how we can remove perverse incentives from our metrics and provide healthier ways for teams to gain meaningful insights on the outcomes of their experiments. Andy reminds us that "analysis without data is just an opinion."
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Rick Rothermel, CEO of LaMarsh Global, articulates for us the importance of the ACMP standard and how it has been evolving and will continue to evolve at the pace of change. Because the ecosystem of business is changing rapidly, clients want things to happen quicker, more efficiently. They also want to develop the competencies themselves rather than hire on outside vendors. These competencies include Agile, leadership, ability to sense and respond, risk-taking, etc., which Rick argues all wrap around the standard. Therefore, it is important to maintain and adhere to the standard for use both by change professionals and the clients they help.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Brian Fox shares experiences creating public-use maps for the National Geospatial Technical Operations Center (NGTOC) using Agile. Four years ago NGTOC embarked on a journey to adopt Agile methods within their Systems Development Branch to ensure development activities can better support the Center and users of the National Map.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Amy Haworth is a passionate member of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) as well as a hiring manager at Citrix who is excited for the new Certified Change Management Professional (CCMP) certification that ACMP now offers. For Amy, this certification helps her validate the capabilities and strengths of her hires. Amy also touches on how different the industry would be without the ACMP as well as some of the important conversations that the change industry need to be having today, namely: focusing on building resilience as a capability and changing our communication and language from top-down change toward a more peer-to-peer collaborative model, which has implications for how you craft your change management plan.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Are you building what your customers want, or are you just building? Many companies, old and new alike, fall into “the Build Trap,” building feature after feature without stopping to validate whether it’s what customers truly want and need. Melissa Perri advocates for using product management to help companies get out of that trap, because product managers look at the company goals, set product goals in alignment with the overarching objectives, and ask, “Where do we optimize this? And do these products help meet our users’ needs?”
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
What does it mean to be an Agile Coach. It's more than just doing coaching acts (facilitate meetings, provide guidance), but these are purely mechanical. CST at Agile 42, Dhaval says what really matters in Agile coaching is what you do when no one is looking, because "that is what is driving you to become better at your own craft." Dhaval invokes Aristotle and the notion of Virtues to help guide us on our path to becoming better Agile Coaches.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Visualizing work is something that Agilists are quite familiar with, but visualizing outcomes, in particular of large-scale change, is what Drew Mattison from XPLANE sits down with Agile Amped to discuss. Drew shares "the visual story of change" -- a powerful tool that can operate like a visual roadmap of not just the end state, but how to get there. Visualization takes the conversation from "Here's what we should do" to "Here's the work that we're doing." SolutionsIQ's CTO Evan Campbell hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
MHA2017ACMP2017
Too often Agilists make pronouncements to their clients expecting them to be instantly true: no more multitasking, we are now Agile, you are now empowered. As anyone can attest, it’s one thing to say something like this and really another to make it true. Tricia Broderick, a CST with Agile for All, wants people to experience Agile first hand. Tricia uses hands-on experiences and exercises to drive home meaning, with exercises as simple as writing with your non-dominant hand. That shift is more real than simply saying, “Starting today, you’ll write with your non-dominant hand.” What this does is open people up to engage more, and that’s something that can help Agile become more tangible and concrete for people.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Jo Grubb says nearly 50% of business leaders forecast that, in just five years, their business models will cease to exist. That means huge transformations, even for companies as large as her employer, Microsoft, where Jo is in Global Adoption and Change Management. Jo shares her thoughts and experiences on digital transformations, what it implies and how every organization regardless of size has to deal with the challenges and opportunities that accompany it, including big data, culture change and market disruptions.SolutionsIQ's CTO Evan Campbell hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
David Hawks is the CEO of Agile Velocity based out of Austin, TX, and he is a ardent proponent for abandoning the "project" mentality and moving to a value-driven approach to product development. "Projects are a waterfall container" that typically have a fixed date and scope. And data suggests that most of the products that result out of projects aren't even used in the end. David says that's because projects are developed at the beginning -- when we have the least amount of information -- and designed with what David calls "a mythical certainty."
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
14-year-old Aaron Vadakkan uses Scrum at home and visualizes work with his family using a task board. Who's the Product Owner of this family Scrum team? Mom, of course. Meanwhile, Dad Manoj is co-presenter of "Saved by Scrum" with Aaron at Mile High Agile 2017.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Bill Hefferman is an Organization Consultant at PeopleFirm, and he is presenting on "Resilience and Thriving in the Face of Change and Adversity" at Change Management 2017. Bill dives into the neuroscience of resilience, how resilience is hardwired into all of our brains, that we can fall "below the line" of resilience in trying situations, but that there are techniques and tools at our disposal to restore our natural resilience in the face of change. Bill's go-to method is empathy and compassion. There are also powerful questions you can ask to help yourself and others become aware of your own resilience, such as:- How can I learn from this stress?- Who do I reach out to get help in this situation?- Who else is frustrated about something that I can help with?Resilience is so crucial today because we are immersed in a constantly changing world and because, as Bill puts it, "life is just one long string of resilience practice after resilience practice." That means it's within our grasp to become more resilient over time.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Change Intelligence (CQ) is evidenced by how people approach change. It's also the title of Barbara Trautlein's book and cultivating it in others is her life's work. Barbara offers an easy-to-use paradigm for determining whether a person uses their heart, head or hands to effect change, and she identifies the strengths and weakness of each approach. Change agents who lead from the heart connect with people more readily but may have difficulty challenging others to surpass themselves. Change agents who lead from the head are visionaries, strategists with brilliant ideas but may lack the ability to tactically enact change. Finally, change agents who lead from the hands who can quickly come up with the, tactics, tools and process, but this can frequently become an obstacle where leading from the heart or head would be better. Barbara also shares how resistance in an organization may be less about people resisting change and more about how leaders are leading. "What looks like resistance in others is information that a change leader can use" to determine whether they need to engage more of their heart (e.g., by building trust), their heads (e.g., by clarifying the vision) or their hands (e.g., by removing obstacles or providing tools/training).SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Dean Leffingwell, author, serial entrepreneur, and creator of the Scaled Agile Framework, discusses the "Ten Essential Scaling Patterns We Can (Probably) All Agree On," his keynote presentation for Mile High Agile 2017.
The Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Author of "Change Rx for Healthcare" Keely Killpack shares the three components of overall change management: change readiness, the process of change management, and change adoption. Keely shares her experiences working as a change professional most recently in the healthcare sector, the topic of her book, which offers tools, like the Leader Readiness Checklist, that change agents and Agilists in any industry can use to help leaders effectively manage and lead through change.SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Lisa Earle McLeod is the opening keynote speaker at Change Management 2017 and the author of "Leading with Noble Purpose." Lisa helps clients identify their noble purpose -- that is, how do they impact the lives of their customers? "When you make customer impact your noble purpose," says Lisa, "you actually make more money... Purpose-driven companies outperform the market by over 350%." Too often, companies are too attached to their business model, which "will destroy you." Lisa makes a compelling comparison between Blockbuster's attachment to its retail model and Netflix's dedication to bringing great entertainment to customers.As a bonus, Lisa touches on how "the ability to attract top talent has become [a market] differentiator" for businesses today.SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Maria Widström is a change management consultant from Stockholm, Sweden, who has been an active member of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) for five years. Recently she has been working on an outreach and volunteer program. Maria was excited to participate in a global Change Management conference a few years ago but decided it was time to create an ACMP chapter in Sweden. Today the group has 60 members. While focusing on local change management opportunities and needs, Maria and the Sweden ACMP Chapter appreciate how connected the global community is and how improvements and innovations in one region can spawn the same all over the world because "people are people." Maria adds, "We are living in a world with an increasing amount of change" so everyone needs to be more intelligent about how they approach it in organizations of all types.Want to get involved? Become an ACMP member (http://www.acmpconference.com/cm2017/...). Already a member and want to do more for your own community? Start your own local chapter.SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at Change Management 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
It's a card, for a conversation. User stories have been around for quite some time, and are often misunderstood. In this episode learn from the wisdom of a 27+ year veteran developer/manager/consultant David Wylie on what makes a good user story, who writes them, and when. We also talk about Acceptance criteria, story splitting and what a user story is not.
Listen in. I bet there is something to learn.
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The science of Adult Cognitive Development has been around for quite some time, but William Rowden maps that science to the Agile Mindset and an Agile Transformation. His insights are fascinating and help him identify behaviors that are not aligned with an Agile mindset, and how to help his clients move in the correct development direction. William is speaking not from theory, but from practical application within clients in the US, China and Mexico.
Below, is the graphic (based on Robert Kegan's work) that William uses to illustrate the cognitive developmental stages and how it aligns to Agile transformation.
About Agile Amped:
The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere.
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but can you draw one? Stuart Young is a super talented graphic visualization artist that captures meeting minutes "on big paper on a wall" live at Agile conferences around the globe. He also teaches a course on how to draw - even for those that believe they cannot. In this episode we talk about why imagery is important, and Stuart's techniques for teaching people how to draw meaning. Alan Dayley joins us and provides his perspective as he took the course from Stuart and is putting the techniques into practice daily as an Agile coach and trainer. Enjoy!
About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.
Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/
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We all know what the ScrumMaster role is supposed to be, but do you want to be a great ScrumMaster? Zuzi Sochova and I talk about the role of a ScrumMaster as a career. She sees the SM as a change agent for the organization and so much more. Zuzi reminds us that one of the most important traits of a great ScrumMaster is passion for Agile itself.
More information on Zuzi Sochova can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zuzka/
Her book, The Great Scrummaster is available here: https://www.amazon.com/Great-ScrumMaster-ScrumMasterWay-Addison-Wesley-Signature/dp/013465711X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492255754&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=zuzi+sochova
About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, sharedknowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime,anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes orSolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: bit.ly/SIQYouTube, bit.ly/SIQiTunes, www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The Definition of Done is one of the higher searched glosary terms on the SolutionsIQ site, so we decided to take a few moments and talk InDepth. Lance Kind spends some time helping us understand the origin of the term, why it's important. He als ogives a new scrum team some tips on what kind of items would be in ( or not in) a typical definition of done. He uses the analogy of "washing you hands" to help us understand how things we believe to mean one thing, might mean another.
About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovativeideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere.
To receive real-timeupdates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes,http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Moving from waterfall to agile is a big topic with many facets to consider. Managing consultant Adam Asch takes on a listener question-"How to measure business value of moving to agile for both software development and business processes" We talk about when companys should, and shouldn't make the move, and provide insights into many of the costs and benefits of such a move. We talk about the the move from project management to product management, faster feedback loops, and the human side of agile. There is a ton to cover in a short time... so buckle up.
About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community throughcompelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovativeideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-timeupdates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: YouTube, iTunes,http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: Twitter Like: Facebook
High Performing Agile teams seems to be what everyone wants - but do you know what is means and what it takes to get there? Yasser Farra talks about his perspective of high performing teams and how to help create them. He gives us some helpful tips on team make up and dynamics, team environment, and more. We also spend some time at the end of the episode talking about the upcoming Keep Austin Agile conference.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series connects the community throughcompelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovativeideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-timeupdates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes,http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Amber King is a fan of team self-selection, which, in her experience, yields happier, more empowered, more productive teams. Amber shares her story working at Opower where the company decided to do an experiment: the goal would be to do what's best for the company, but individuals get to choose what they work on and with whom. The experience was positive and powerful for the company, where 40 people took two and a half hours to form 6 teams. Amber advocates for allowing time for the questions and concerns that will arise, including fear of being picked last. But Amber doesn't find that to happen: "You're picking yourself, you're not getting picked." The goal is "getting people to the point where it's safe enough to try."Amber also provides some tips for running a successful team self-selection event as well as a clear business case for letting team members choose each other and themselves, including: less work for already bogged-down managers; fewer unhappy teams; and happier, more productive teams.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Karen Favazza Spencer hears the echoes of the pioneering experiential learning psychologists from a hundred years ago in today’s Business Agility movement. Drawing on the wisdom of both 20th and 21st century neuroscience, Karen penned an Agile primer called “The Agile ABC Book” (http://agilekindergarten.com/store/pr...) that leverages visual cues and heuristics. Using another heuristic or two, Karen shares her approach to effecting positive change in challenging work environments. She calls it, the “three faces of environment”:1. Physical Environment: This is the shared space in which humans have evolved, and today this includes the virtual environment as well as physical because people work both in offices and online. Karen’s mantra for improving the physical environment: “manipulate and manifest.”2. Psychological Environment – Karen’s mantra here is “feedback and feelings”. To get the results you’re driving toward, “you need to make sure you put in structures … to improve communications” and creates a safe environment in which to collaborate.3. Process Environment, aka our story space – Karen says, “Stories are the operating systems of our minds.” Since everyone is the protagonist of their own lives, our actions are dictated by our understanding of the story as it relates to us personally: What are our roles? What are the rules? These internal stories may not be reflective of organizational intent but our interpretation governs our behavior. These rules, these head stories are often the biggest obstacles for individuals to overcome. The business also often has a narrative that is inconsistent with their stated mission, such as “we value work-life balance, but you must work 20 hours a week overtime.” Consequently, achieving clarity and buy-in on the “roles and rules” of a consistent and well understood narrative is critical to success.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter
Enterprise Agile coach Renee Troughton believes that pessimism and optimism are additive: lots of horrible moments can give you a pessimistic outlook, while lots of positive moments can yield an optimistic one. "We ride this pessimistic and optimistic wave as individuals based upon the moments that we have in conversations everyday." Perspective shapes how feedback is received -- and that can make an uncomfortable conversation out of sharing simple feedback.Too often, though, feedback is imposed on people by HR in a performance review, which Renee thinks often comes across as "disrespectful". Instead, people should be able to communicate to each other the feedback they have. The ideal is to create an environment where feedback is welcome and not delivered in a disrespectful manner. Renee champions patience, mindfulness of how you come across, respect and optimism because when people are ready for feedback, they will seek it out. She recommends having a conversation and, if you're the one providing the feedback, be aware of what your body language is communicating.SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Katy Saulpaugh started out in change management before becoming an Agile coach. Today she applies her previous knowledge and experience to the field of Agile transformations. In her Business Agility 2017 talk "Agile Reorgs: A Survival Guide", she outlines how to approach reorgs for Agile teams and minimize the pain using change management techniques.Change management offers much to the Agile industry and vice versa, so Katy finds her work helps many organizations bridge the gap between the two. Here she offers best practices and insights for communication around change initiatives like Agile transformation, including:- Communicate more often because silence only reinforces fear.- Create and maintain feedback loops with frequent bite-sized communication chunks.- Create alignment around why transform and how Agile is a means to that end.- Get everyone involved in the conversation.- Avoid sharing scary change through email; in person is best.Katy also shares a powerful change management tool: the change network. This is a group of highly engaged people who are not on the management team, and yet they’re influential. Katy says, "If you don’t engage them, they may leave the organization. If they’re not part of what you’re trying to do, they can derail things. At the same time, they’re your greatest assets." But how do you identify them? "Communities of practice [which includes] people who have self-selected and willing to learn more and spend time to learn more."SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Coach and consultant at Agile Strategies Dan Montgomery offers his insights on three problems with strategic planning today: 1. With all the effort put into planning, the resulting plan is immediately obsolete. Leaders bring in consultants to create an executable plan assuming that the goal won't shift during the long execution process.2. Because the change is dictated from the top, even Agile transformations aren't Agile in that they don't engage all of the stakeholders in determining the solution. Instead, change management is used to impose the solution on the lower echelons. 3. After all the planning, there's just too much to get done. Agile says, "Start less, finish more" and pull from a backlog. But org plans are so full of details, people get overwhelmed.Dan suggests combatting complexity with simplicity: "Boil it down to a few small rules people can follow and then let them innovate, let them come up with the details."SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at the inaugural Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Given the growing level of complexity, scope and audience involvement, from Andrea Fryrear's perspective, "Agile is our only hope" for modern-day marketing. Her book "Death of a Marketer"(due for release in March 2017) takes a look at the trajectory and cycles of marketing and where it is now. In the book Andrea argues that Agile is the stage in evolution where marketing is at.At Business Agility 2017, Andrea is presenting "A Common Sense Journey into Agile Marketing", in which she shares her experience of the first transformation with her marketing team. She highlights that Agile approaches that work for development teams don't necessarily work for marketing teams: "Because [of] of our challenges, our team structure, our skill sets, it's really hard to create a truly cross-functional marketer, whereas you can get that in a development team much more easily." Development teams gravitate to Scrum, which builds on cross-functional team members, whereas Agile marketers find more utility with Lean and Kanban.SolutionsIQ Marketing Strategist Roxi Ozolins hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
27 years ago, the founder of Morningstar sat his then-small staff down to share his idea for core principles as a foundation that they could grow an enterprise upon. Organizational consultant Doug Kirkpatrick was in that small group, and today Morningstar's two founding principles are still at the core of what is now the largest demand processor in the world:1. People shouldn’t use force or coercion against each other.2. People should honor the commitments they make to each other. Doug has turned his experience into a career, having authored "Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization" and begun the Self-Management institute.The interest in updating organizational management has exploded worldwide, driven in part by technology but also by people's desire to enjoy their work and be autonomous and self-managing. Leaders are now looking around at how the world of work is changing and realizing that they need to understand this change because it affects their business. Doug offers advice to executives and middle managers, and also shares his thoughts on Gary Hamil's "management tax".SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Seven and a half years ago when Paul Cobban started with DBS Bank in Singapore, the company was struggling with customer satisfaction. Since then the bank has gone from "damn bloody slow" to wowing customers. The driven factor for this was the Agile transformation that Paul Cobban has been heading up and for an ambitious vision by the bank's CEO: making banking joyful. To achieve that end, the organization went on the offensive against waste. By bringing together cross-functional teams to find and eliminate waste (a la Kaizen), they were able to eliminate 250 million Customer Hours (each hour that each customer has to wait for a result) in just two years!Then DBS used Design Thinking to create customer journeys, empathize with them and thus create solutions to their real-life problems. To date, DBS Bank has run upwards of 400 of these customer journey programs guided by Design Thinking.SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile leadership consultant Todd Little shares with Agile Amped the challenges he's seen in leadership as well as how to grow Agile across the organization. The major challenge impeding widespread adoption of Agile in an enterprise is the fact that business and IT don't have a shared language to facilitate communication and collaboration. In his experience Todd thinks that business and leadership are interested in the gains of agility but then they inadvertently create structures that run counter to this goal. Todd advocates strongly for moving toward forming partnerships, shared ownership, agreeing on a shared language, and identifying constraints and costs associated with change.
SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Phil Abernathy is an Agile Leadership Coach as well as the founder and CEO of Purple Candor. His talk at the first-ever Business Agility 2017 conference is called "Structuring Your Business for Agility". Phil walks us through the maze of systemic organizational structures and processes of today's businesses. Seeing IT's successes with Agile, business and leadership are pulling it in and layering it on existing structures without realizing that they are setting themselves up to fail. With the KPI madness that gave rise to heads of innovation and service, Phil imagines "we will have a head of Business Agility". And at the bottom of all these heads is a single person, a Bob or Mary, who is completely lost. In this maze there are maze runners: individuals who know the bureaucracy and processes so well, they "know how to chase the work through the maze to get it done". Phil commiserates that "we still stick with the manufacturing, industrial era models to run in the knowledge-based economy" - but change is happening. With Agile, leaders are finally able to see the maze for what it is and, Phil believes, we're all in a good place to do something about it.SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at the inaugural Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Author of "Sense and Respond: The Journey to Customer Purpose" Stephen Parry has a simple imperative: "Don't implement, grow." Organizational change isn't something you can implement, it's something the organization has to grow into. Management is so focused on "implementing the mechanics, and doing nothing with the dynamics". But Stephen advises, "You cannot implement an adaptive organization, you can only grow one."Stephen also touches on some of the other pressures impeding organizational change, for example, the legal implications: an employee's bonus may be affected by a change in role. In this case, the business can offer the bonus anyway as a motivator to get the employee bought in -- but few organizations are brave enough to do that. Stephen is also working with universities to look at the nature of the psychological change with Lean and Agile.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Isabella Serg got her start in Agile HR in financial services and insurance in Australia. That's where she learned that agility and adaptability aren't just an IT or delivery thing. Today, as Talent Advisor at IBM CIO, Isabella focuses on "how to improve people, talent, leadership practices to develop great Agile leaders and attract, develop and retain great Agile talent." This objective requires bringing an Agile mindset to the HR function -- and indeed to all parts of the organization. Isabella is certain that non-IT teams need to be Agile as well to improve their responsiveness. IBM is leveraging organizational agility as a market differentiator because, as Isabella points out, "The war for talent is here... [Incoming young people are] really looking for great leadership, great culture, and great learning and development opportunities." And this culture centers around the behaviors instilled by leadership. The most important driving focus, regardless of your organizational function (HR, IT, etc.), is "putting the customer at the center of everything we do."SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Leadership development expert and author of "Leadership Agility" Bill Joiner discusses the need for exactly that as the business environment continues to change and accelerate. Research shows that companies that are more agile outperform other companies. Further Agile companies require Agile leadership, so it is in the C-suite's own best interest to invest in Business Agility. Bill has also found that the key lever in increasing Business Agility is what he calls leadership agility -- particularly, the culture of leadership in a company.In his book, Bill writes that leaders move through 3 stages in developing agility: Expert, Achiever and Catalyst. Unfortunately, the majority of today's leaders are early in their development path because the previous century rewarded (and continues to reward) Experts and Achievers. Joiner's work focuses on helping leaders move through Expert to Achiever to Catalyst, and he is optimistic that the day will come when leaders will act with an Agile mindset, aiming not just for the target but through it. However, the change requires leadership to look at themselves and evolve their approach to be more like a Catalyst.SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Bjarte Bogsnes wrote the book underpinning the Beyond Budgeting movement - literally. “Implementing Beyond Budgeting – Unlocking the Performance Potential” captures his experiences helping organizations go "beyond budgeting". Bjarte reminds us that "Beyond Budgeting is and has always been about much more than budgets." The name is a little misleading because the purpose of beyond budgeting isn’t necessarily to get rid of budget but to change traditional management where you find the budgeting process and the budgeting mindset. Beyond Budgeting is a much broader, "comprehensive, coherent management model that addresses both management processes and leadership principles."
Which brings to the fore the concept of management innovation: exploration and testing in management models. The paradox is that executives love product innovation but are scared of management innovation because it requires a change in them. This change, however, is where real competitive advantage lay in today's markets.
SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Lithespeed's Jason Hall understands that keeping employees engaged and happy is important. Toward this end many organizations have reward systems: bonuses, shares, company lunches, even massages and boxed chocolates (thanks, Google!). But Jason highlights for us the fact that these rewards are doled out according to a hierarchical meritocracy: someone, whether a VP or senior manager, is deciding whether and who deserves recognition. While Jason thinks this is great and he has no beef with a meritocracy approach per se, but it doesn't reinforce team-based collaboration.
Jason shares his experience at Lithespeed where they experimented with different rewards/recognition programs. First they tried a token- or penny-based system before landing on their "Recognize at Lithespeed" program -- a peer-based system that, Jason says, "hits the nail on the head": real-time recognitions that people email to each other rather than waiting til the end of the quarter, for example, which was the previous token-based model.
SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Let’s get the community together and come up with a definition of Business Agility. But, according to business transformation leader and author Evan Leybourn, "having a nebulous set of common ideals, principles that form Business Agility gives us a common banner to work [under]... If we try to narrow it to something, we actually lose the power of this movement, the power of changing how organizations work" and inadvertently exclude something of value. Leybourn reminds us that delivery used to be the constraint to agility. Today, that constraint has moved to the business side: the PMO, Finance, HR, and in the structure of the organization. Business Agility applies the Agile mindset to the entire organization, enabling the enterprise to be competitive in the market.
Leybourn also shares his three domains of agility, which are interlinked and do not form a hierarchy:1. Technical agility: Agile in software - e.g., paired programming, DevOps2. Process agility: Scrum, Kanban3. Business Agility: Leadership, organization structure and processes
SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Being a product owner is far more than just backlogs and Kano analysis, and Geoff Watts knows this. In this episode we discuss his newest book “ Product Mastery-from good to great product Ownership” and why he feels its what’s needed for Product owners today. He’s challenging PO’s to be DRIVEN. As an acronym, D.R.I.V.E.N. is Decisive, Ruthless, informed, Versatile, Empowering and Negotiable. We also speculate a bit on his prediction on the future needs of product owners in the coming decade.
The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.
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Steve Denning is a thought leader par excellence in the Agile industry. With six successful business books and 600 articles on Forbes, which collectively deal with radical changes is leadership, management and storytelling, Steve has been a vocal proponent for Agile for years. In this Agile In-Depth podcast, SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett discusses with Steve the 3 Laws of Agile and how simplicity is the strongest weapon to combat complexity. Steve is also promoting the upcoming inaugural Business Agility conference, which SolutionsIQ and Agile Amped will be onsite to capture!
Here are some sound bites to whet your appetite:
- "We are moving towards a world I think where... Agile will simply be management, and the normal way to run a company will be Agile."
- Instead of scaling the organization up... it's de-scaling the work down to small pieces, small teams, small batches, small cycles... (In this way) you can in fact handle some very large, complex problems."
- "An obsession with delivering value to the customer... and giving everyone a clear line of sight to the ultimate end user."
- "Culture is a verb, not a noun."
- "The biggest risk is on-boarding people at the senior level... If they are not on the same page, then the organization is heading for immediate problems."
Further Resources * "Explaining Agile" (Forbes article by Steve Denning) * Steve Denning on Forbes * stevedenning.com
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention and so it was that, in 2009, SAFe Fellow Drew Jemilo invented the starter material for portfolio management approach now found in SAFe 4.0. With only one night and "lots of coffee", Drew managed to piece together a workshop based on Dean Leffingwell's architectural portfolio management material. Over the years, Drew and his colleagues at Scaled Agile have much opportunity and learnings with which to improve the material, and today he provides a rough sketch of it to Agile Amped and you, our viewers!
SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. Steve and Drew even recount a shared memory of a workshop the duo did together.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Caffeine-Induced "Brilliant Moment" Made it Into SAFe 4.0
It's not uncommon for delivery teams to become so focused on increasing their velocity that they fail to deliver the true business value: features. In the Agile enterprise, it is even more important for teams to focus on delivering complete features rather than simply completing stories. Teams need a way to "look up" to the program level to verify that they're working on the right thing to deliver value at the program level, not necessarily the team level. AgileCraft Peter Jessen says that his company's tool is one such option: it offers a Program Board to help visualize the relationship between team deliverables and program level business value.
SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado.
About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Kupe Kupersmith has a bunch of experience in business analysis in traditional and Agile environments, and he still hears from time to time, "We don't do business analysis, we do Agile." But Agile needs BAs too. Documentation is a huge part of the BA's contribution, for which Agile prescribes a less heavy-handed approach. Sometimes a photo of a whiteboard with the rough ideas sketched out is enough documentation. Meanwhile, some developers won't work on new requirements without the requisite documentation, but only as a way of deflecting blame for a defect -- because "that's what the document said." Kupe advocates for the team to think like a team: "If we fail, we fail together." SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Judith Mills has a simple message: if you want people to listen to them and work with you, you have to listen to them. "In order to show respect and build trust and have people take ownership, it helps if you listen to them rather than just tell them what to do." In her session "Can you hear me now? Start Listening Instead", Judith advises against jumping into providing the solution -- something that coaches and leaders sometimes do. By listening, we create a sense of shared ownership and active involvement. More advice from Judith on listening: - When speaking, think about the listener. How are people taking the information provided them? Did you leave out any pertinent information that might help the message land better? - When listening, are we qualifying what we're hearing? Use paraphrases to validate that you heard what they said. - During problem-solving, don't jump to solve the problem. Try to understand what attempts have been made previously. Problem-solving isn't about proving your value. SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Sococo VP of Sales Jack Crozier shares with Agile Amped his experience implementing Agile practices and tools in his department After the company CEO mandated that every department was to be Agile. At first, the sales team being reluctant and skeptical, but what started in fits and starts eventually grew into a robust sales workflow with clearly defined Scrum processes, tools for visualizing work flow, and a foundation of Agile values to guide future growth. Jack provides tips on how to balance work between a CRM (e.g., Salesforce) and a work board (they used Trello), how to balance existing workload with new lead nurturing, as well as how to focus on outcomes (e.g., closing a sale) rather than on activity (e.g., making a phone call). SolutionsIQ's Setarra DeVeaux hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Humans are evolutionarily predisposed to see patterns and make snap decisions based on very little information. The problem is that today's world requires a deeper analysis than most people are willing or can afford to give to very complex problems. Larry Maccherone's session "Going for it on the Fourth Down" is a look into taking calculated business risks and overcoming the cognitive biases and human factors that prevent you from making sound business decisions. In his conference session, Larry also identifies decisions as a kind of forecast of the probability that the choice you decided on will work out better than all the other choices. With this mindset, organizations and individuals can begin to invest in using analyses to make better forecasts (i.e., decisions). SolutionsIQ's Sheila Olds hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Jared Richardson sits down with Agile Amped to talk about the GROWS method, a new Agile methodology that hopes to succeed where some feel that "Agile has failed". Of GROWS, Jared says, "It's not about being Agile, it's about being effective." The basis for this methodology is the 3 Rs: 1. The Rhythm: Getting teams to iteratively produce working software at a regular cadence 2. The Right Vision: Getting alignment between leadership and the development teams. For example, instead of having the PO write stories in isolation, bring a skeleton story to the team and have the team help fill out the rest. 3. The Right Way: Building quality into the code using Agile technical practices SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Often conflict is viewed as something to avoid at all costs. But don't do that because the conflict isn't going to resolve itself just because you ignore it. Besides, "sometimes conflict is a good thing" -- it can lead to positive and productive growth, or resolution of a standing problem. Because you can't avoid conflict, you have to have constructs for navigating through them. SolutionsIQ's Roy Maines shares some patterns for determining the root cause of the problem, taken from his session at Southern Fried Agile 2016, "Navigating Conflict with Teams". He also shares some techniques and perspectives for how to resolve conflict and be more self-aware about how we each, often unknowingly, contribute to it through our actions and words. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Until recently, the concept of Agile data warehousing was ludicrous. Even today there has been a lot of resistance and minimal exposure to Agile in that industry, despite the need for data warehousing processes to innovate, if only to improve their cycle time. But Kent Graziano of Snowflake Computing has seen a shift in the last two years thanks to the work his company has done to bring the Agile principles to traditional data warehousing. Most exciting are the new techniques in Agile data engineering and modeling, Snowflake's "cloud data warehousing as a service" and its dynamic sizing and cost to address real-world problems in real time. Agile data warehousing is possible today because of enabling technology like Snowflake's, which sees queries of petabytes of data daily. The question isn't so much about the technology anymore, but more about whether large organizations are ready for the cloud. This is Kent's second visit with Agile Amped. See his first appearance here: http://www.solutionsiq.com/resources/... SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Michael Patrick Benning sits down with Agile Amped to discuss improving working relationships when dealing with creative/UX teams. In Michael's experience, differences in working processes can give rise to conflicts, especially when some teams have moved toward more Agile, iteration-based processes while others still deliver value using waterfall. Michael two examples of UX teams burdened with legacy processes: legacy approval processes (e.g., a simple request necessitating approval by five levels of management) and legacy testing processes. He also highlights for viewers what they missed in his session "Balancing Order and Chaos". SolutionsIQ's Sheila Olds hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
After testing the waters of accounting and standup comedy, Kupe Kupersmith of B2T Training finally found his calling by combining two of his passions: improv and helping teams be better. As with improv, life has no scripts: "you have to adapt... and be a good listener," says Kupe. When you provide an environment for good, positive communication, the fun happens naturally! Some key skills for using improv in teams: engaged listening and keeping an open mind. One of Kupe's favorite scripts is "Yes, and..." which is geared toward building constructive, rather than destructive, communication. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Tom Cooper has learned through the years that connecting with people is key to building the trust that makes a good working relationship. For years, Tom focused on improving his technical skills but not necessarily his interpersonal skills. When he diverted some energy to connecting better with people, he saw huge improvements in his productivity. This influenced to create the "4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader", a rubric to help techy-types improve their interpersonal skills and influence over others: 1. Individual: What can I do with my own two hands? 2. Team member: How can I work better within my team? 3. Team leader: How do I develop teams? 4. Team builder: How do I develop leaders who create teams who work well as teams? Tom encourages tech geeks to ask themselves, "Where are you on the four levels? And what can you do to expand your definition of success?" SolutionsIQ's Setarra DeVeaux hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
What do cows and trains have in common? They're both on the Kanban board that Sarah Scott uses to visualize the SAFe implementation at Northwestern Mutual. Sarah walks us through the visualization method they use to track progress of their SAFe implementation, which they use Agile-Lean practices and values to execute on the plan. The team calls their visualization tool a "cow board" rather than a Kanban board because of a funny if somewhat morbid occurrence from early in Northwestern Mutual's history, which taught the then-president a valuable lesson on thinking outside the box. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Dave Rush, Accenture Managing Consultant and Transformation Agent, is passionate about putting an end to projects, because as Dave puts is, "Projects are dead... because by their nature they have a start and end... and a goal to deliver some unique thing." But in Agile work is always flowing, so it makes more sense to think in terms of product life cycles. Moreover, it's time for businesses to think in terms of funneling work to long-lived, high-performance teams. Projects are constantly bringing together stars who have never worked together and, as soon as they get the hang of collaborating, the team is blown apart and the project process starts all over again. In Agile and SAFe, you want high-performance teams who are highly collaborative and practice collective ownership. To make that work in a business context, says Dave, you have to "fund the people and the trains and keep them stable and bring the work to them." Dave also shares his thoughts on why the English national team can never win. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Teams often lose sight of the business outcomes as they write stories and features in "technicalese", which external users may not be able to comprehend. SPC Stuart Perron thinks that PI objectives are a great way to keep the focus on the results in user language, so they can get quick feedback. Even before the work on the stories begins, stakeholders can rate the value of the completed story or feature. Then again when the story is completed, the team can share the true results and have the stakeholders rate its value, which may be more or less than predicted. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Joe Vallone has a powerful message for enterprise leaders -- that includes managers, directors, VPs and executives. When it comes to executives participating in the transformation, Joe says, "responsibility cannot be delegated... Success or failure of an Agile transformation doesn't belong to coaches... or to individual teams... Leaders need to take accountability and responsibility for this change." Joe invokes Kotter's Acceler8 change management model, saying that his focus has been on step 2: building a guiding coalition. But sometimes leaders are just too busy... An economics geek, Joe suggests starting with just 1% of their available time to start out doing Agile, creating backlogs and experiencing the process--then building on that. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
SPCT Dwayne Stroman has a simple but compelling message: Culture is at the foundation of your transformation success--or failure. According to Dwayne, SAFe is a spotlight will shed light on the dark corners, the culture barriers that impedes communication. To change the culture, you have to create a plan. Using the same dedication to creating good products, "we're developing people, we're developing a culture." (Plate stacking and silverware clanging in the background are a feature of this live recording experience!) SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Michael Stump is the Managing Director for the EMEA regions for Scaled Agile. He shares his experiences using a nifty group activity in value stream workshops to help attendees understand their true enterprise objectives by answering three key questions: 1. What is the objective? 2. How do you measure it? 3. How do you communicate the results? This exercise improves alignment around objectives and defining baseline and success metrics. Michael also shares his appreciation for SAFe partners who are in the business of implementing the framework in the real world and providing useful data that can be used in future improvements. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
SAFe Fellow Richard Knaster is here at SAFe Summit with Agile Amped in Denver to talk about the power of Value Streams, which have their own new layer in SAFe 4.0. He says it's a common antipattern that companies add a SAFe program on top of traditional waterfall methods. This is a huge opportunity for them to reduce lead time from concept to cash by looking for waste throughout the whole process. But identifying value streams identification isn't enough; you also have to ensure that the value is actually flowing all the way through. Richard also advocates for building quality into the software, through testing, rather than leaving it to be figured out just before release, as is typically the case in waterfall projects. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
What does BPUF and vacations have in common? According to Vikas Kapila, it's better to plan a little (for example, purchasing a plane ticket to Hawaii) then make incremental additions along the way, rather than to plan the entire experience (hotel, rental car, activities, food, etc.) up front without even making the first small commitment. Vikas uses this analogy and a handful of others to characterize the differences between a traditional mindset and a more modern, Lean-Agile mindset. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
SPCT4 Gillian Clark shares an experience with Agile Amped about inadvertently discovering a way to distill SAFe down to the bare bones so that teams can focus solely on executing. This was particularly helpful in a recent engagement that Gillian worked on at a New Zealand-based agritech firm who needed to execute a major overall of their herd management software before a hard deadline. Since the company didn't have time as a luxury, they had a laser focus on executing against a single backlog of prioritized features, aligning the cadence of their Agile teams and forcing their PMs to pull from a single budgeting pool. The result was a successful execution by the predetermined deadline. Little did Gillian and her colleagues know that they were using, basically, Essential SAFe. (We're live at SAFe Summit 2016, so background noise is part of the live experience!) SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Steve Mayner puts it well when he says that "just about everything in the federal government is very big". He discusses his work with implementing SAFe with the government as an Agile Practice Director. Scaling, understandably, was an issue. This was their third attempt to transform from a traditional mainframe to a modern architecture. After two failures and $3.2 billion spent with zero value, the third initiative, with a $436 million cap and three years to complete, finally succeeded--in large part due to the changes in their approach. Since failure was not an option, they had to be more open minded about their options, including looking into Agile and SAFe. Possibly most pivotal to their success was the close collaboration between two very senior leaders (one from business, one from IT): they were at every meeting, engaged, listening, providing guidance and listening to impediments that needed to be resolved at a higher level. They provided an environment conducive to change. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Pete Rim, Continuous Delivery Agile Coach at Cisco, sits down with Agile Amped to share his recent successes with wider adoption of SAFe and Agile, including 90% improvement in speed (from development to business stakeholders) without losing quality -- improving productivity by 32% across a population of 15,000+ folks. Having begun as a waterfall shop, Cisco is making strides toward organization-wide Agility, now considering such concepts as improving Agile career paths and portfolio management. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Robert Mahler of Tata Consulting Services (TCS) shares with Agile Amped his thoughts on and experience with Agile transformations and SAFe. In his experience Robert has learned that grassroots transformations without executive buy in don't work. If the C level is not interested, your transformation is going to fail. TCS has integrated SAFe into their approach to effecting organizational change and transformations, using SAFe to help them transform to the SAFe model. Robert also commiserates with those working to effect change in highly regulated industries and with everyone who has problems getting financial and business buy-in from clients. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell and Howard Johnson discuss a recent enterprise Agile transformation that Howard led previously in order to improve the organization's time to market and accelerate change adoption. Howard was instrumental in starting the transformation, which eventually became a "large organizational call-to-arms", from the IT side. By becoming Agile, IT was able to achieve great gains, whereas the business side was not, because Agile didn't obviously cater to the latter's needs. "The business team believed it was IT language... and they didn't understand what Agile meant to business practitioners." Howard shares some key learnings from his experience, including a couple antipatterns. (Mind the clanging halfway through.) SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Robert Mahler of Tata Consulting Services (TCS) shares with Agile Amped his thoughts on and experience with Agile transformations and SAFe. In his experience Robert has learned that grassroots transformations without executive buy in don't work. If the C level is not interested, your transformation is going to fail. TCS has integrated SAFe into their approach to effecting organizational change and transformations, using SAFe to help them transform to the SAFe model. Robert also commiserates with those working to effect change in highly regulated industries and with everyone who has problems getting financial and business buy-in from clients. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Sandra Johnson is a Release Train Engineer in the healthcare-IT industry. She started as a waterfall PM a few years and jumped at the opportunity to become a ScrumMaster in her company's SAFe implementation when she realized "there needed to be an easier way to get things done." She is appreciative of the coaching and guidance that Agile Amped host and SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost provided her years ago. Today she attributes a large part of the success to having buy-in from the leadership level (from the VP level down). Executives attend team training sessions and happily finance the entire transformation. Susan also shares how she has brought the fun back into demos, which can get boring. Susan collaborated with other SMs to retool the entire demo experience, based on what POs decided were the most valuable outcomes from the ceremony. The working group tapped into their own talents (e.g., audio-visual experience) as well as the personalities of their team members to make it interesting, for example through role play or skits. If Susan had advice for new ScrumMasters, it would be to grow some thick skin and to encourage people bringing problems to also come ready with possible solutions. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Certification Program Manager Susan Farago is new to Scaled Agile, but she's been in the certification and credentialing industry for almost two decades. Susan works to create certification programs to train people and "also measure what they know", especially when it comes to new offerings like SAFe Release Train Engineer certification, a critical role in SAFe implementations. Certification often gets a bad rap because, at the onset, quality (e.g., depth of knowledge) isn't always a focus. But Susan argues, in recent years, "we've gotten a lot smarter about what we're testing, and how." Even so, training and certification for hardware and software are much easier to do -- not so with human behavior, which can be "squishy and messy". SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
SAFe Fellow and principal consultant Inbar Oren is excited to announce the new SAFe ScrumMaster course and certification. Of importance for SAFe ScrumMasters to understand are the 10 Essential Elements of SAFe. Miss these and you won't get your results and, Inbar reminds us, "the point isn't to do SAFe, the point is to get your business results." One of the most commonly overlooked elements of SAFe is PI Planning. Another one is leadership training. Inbar advocates for starting training of change agents, executives and leaders early in the transformation -- "otherwise they will hamper the transformation because they don't understand what is critical and what isn't." To this end, organizational change management is crucial for Agile transformations to work, and Inbar shares his thoughts on how to embed OCM in SAFe implementations. SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
"HR is the key to bringing Agility to an enterprise level. If we don't fix our HR approach, we cannot a truly Agile organization." That's what Fabiola Eyholzer, CEO of Just Leading Solutions, shares with Agile Amped at the SAFe Summit 2016. Fabiola has 16 years of experience in human resources and applies her expertise and passion to the task of "bringing HR into the 21st century". How? With Lean-Agile practices and values. According to Fabiola, performance management needs to be rebooted to address today's concerns, such as "How do we recruit for Agile teams? How do we build careers in Agile organizations?" Recently, Fabiola collaborated with SAFe founder Dean Leffingwell to pen a white paper called "Agile HR with SAFe". With Agile Amped, she touches on the first of the 6 key themes for Agile HR, which are: 1. Embrace the new talent contract 2. Foster continuous engagement 3. Hire for attitude and cultural fit 4. Move to iterative performance flow 5. Take the issue of money off the table 6. Support impactful learning and growth Source: scaledagileframework SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Alex Yakyma, SAFe Fellow and principal consultant, stops by Agile Amped to talk about his three talks at this year's SAFe Summit: 1. "Advances in DevOps with SAFe" 2. "Applying SAFe to Large and Complex Value Streams" 3. "Lean-Agile Development for Large Enterprises: Adding Hardware to the Mix" Alex also encourages organizations not to lock themselves down "to early decisions that will inevitably be wrong". Lean practices can help orgs "find the middle ground" between planning big upfront and no upfront thinking at all. The author discusses his book "The Rollout", a narrative that uses an Agile Release Train launch as a vehicle for understanding SAFe better, before sharing that they all already working on the next version of SAFe, 4.1--but don't freak out: it's meant to be "additive" rather than a full revamp. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
How would our education system be different using agile principles and values? In this InDepth edition, our conversation focuses around the American School in Leysin, Switzerland, and their experiments over the past 3 yrs in Agile in Education. My guests are Paul Magnuson ( Director of Curriculum & Director of the Middle School) and Bill Tihen ( Director of IT, Teacher, and runs the Makers Space ) Empowering students, making learning visible, and creating life long learners are goals for Paul and Bill as they lead this movement at Leysin. You can find Paul and Bill and the Leysin School at https://www.las.ch/ Special thanks to John Miller for introducing me, and making this conversation possible. you can find John on Twitter at @agileschools The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The journey to become a CST is a long and rewarding one. In this episode, I get to discuss Karim Harbott's journey to becoming a CST just 2 days after he found out he had received the certification. Richard Cheng is a CST and a volunteer on the Trainer Approval Committee ( TAC) . He shares his side of the journey and what the TAC is looking for, some tips, and encouragement. One story, two perspectives. It should be interesting. The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
How does a large enterprise organization keep up, much less lead? Disruptive Innovation changes the landscape of products, and companies should want to be on the delivering end of this instead of the receiving end. Many companies focus on Sustaining Innovation, but if they really want to be leaders in their product offerings, they should be investing in Disruptive innovation. Jeff explains what is not working, and what does, and gives some great examples of success. He lays out a model he calls " Innovation Colony" and why he believes this should be a focus. The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Empowerment sounds like a good thing - right? What Alan is sharing is that this isn't enough. We talk through a leader/follower spectrum and identify different styles of leadership, and the types of followers that they help create. Alan makes a strong case for the manager to be a catalyst that inspires co-leaders. If you are a manager ( in almost any capacity/environment) this discussion should provide you value. How you lead, helps create behaviors in those you lead. The slides that were mentioned in this podcast can be found here The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Technology is built by people all over the world. Keeping them working as a team is one of Mark's specialties. Mark really knows distributed agile, with over 30 yrs in the software and coaching space. He has spent nearly the last 3 in a 100% distributed environment. On this InDepth distributed podcast, Mark talks about the different types of distributed teams, and offers tips for keeping people engaged. We talk a bit on the Agile Manifesto and how it still applies, plus he does give some sage advise on the tools we use to connect. If you have people working in multiple locations, this is the interview you should not miss. The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQ YouTube, http://bit.ly/ SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
In his Agile2016 session "The Technical Debt Trap", Doc Norton takes all the way back to the metaphor that started it all. Doc says Ward Cunningham coined the term "technical debt" not as shorthand for lousy code but for clean code implemented with your current understanding of the requirements and covered with tests. In short, "technical debt" isn't code that you intend to clean up later: it's clean code created when the dev's knowledge is impartial that the dev can then easily refactor when they learn more about the problem. The danger with the current meaning of technical debt is that the term is benign enough that we don't give it enough attention. "In a great extent, we're using the metaphor to abdicate our own professional responsibility..." Things that teams can start doing now: create debt stories and discuss with the business what the real value of that debt is. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Scrum.org CEO and Product Owner Dave West has come a long way from being a RUP Product Manager to where he is today. After realizing RUP wasn't helping developers or enabling them to build great software, Dave took a Scrum class where a light bulb went off. He saw that if you gave a team enough safety, the right problems to solve, access to the right people and some discipline in the form of XP practices (refactoring, continuous integration, etc.), you can get generate massive amounts of value. Scrum turns 21 in 2016, so what do the next twenty years look like? Dave says some of it centers on scaling product delivery, using evidence-based measurements (EBM) (i.e., value, release frequency and innovation), and actually getting to done. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The Agile Mindset. We've all heard that term, but what does it mean? What effects can it have on an organization if they are just adopting the frameworks without the mindsets? Ken Rubin and I spend this episode discussing the Agile Mindset. He shares how it effects delivering working software in companies, how he uses it in his family, and even as an angel investor in how it helps him make decisions on who ( and who not) to fund. Ken also shares his unique “Colonel Klink” test (from Hogan’s Heroes) to help determine if someone has and agile mindset or not. About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
David Bernstein, author of the book "Beyond Legacy Code: Nine Practices to Extend the Life (and Value) of Your Software", stops by Agile Amped to educate us on "What makes great developers great?" While developers are generally thought of as being analytical, dividing and separating things apart, David says, "The great developers that I know are also good at integrating." He adds that, while many devs focus intensely on writing code, "what we really want to do is create implementations of intent." David's book is about making code maintainable and understandable, helping you see connections between processes in the code so you can remove redundancy. The importance of simplicity and elegance in the code becomes obvious when you start to scale enterprise software with millions of lines of code, where a single change can cause a domino effect of broken code. In order to keep code simple, David advocates for treating programming primarily as a way to communicate intent to another human (including your future self) and secondarily as a way to get the computer to do what you want. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Maaret Pyhäjärvi is a tester and Llewellyn Falco is a developer, and they have been pair-programming wrong... or have they? They call it strong-style pairing. It's common in pairing for the one with the idea to drive, grabbing the keyboard and running with their idea. In other words, the person with the idea is the driver, while their pair is the navigator. But if you don't know where the driver is going, you can't navigate. Strong-style is kind of a role reversal where the person with the idea lets their pair drive and instead takes on the navigator role. This way both people in the pair actively contribute. The problem with the traditional driver-navigator model is that the "navigator" doesn't have anything to do if the driver is also the ideator. The navigator can get bored or disengaged. What's more is that strong-style pairing can help pairs build trust more quickly and to help each other with new dev tricks and techniques. This concept can also be used in Mob Programming. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Scott Ambler literally wrote the book on the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework. As Scott says, "Disciplined Agile is all about giving people choices and explicitly sharing the decision points that you're at in Agile projects and IT efforts in general." In addition to DAD, Scott also talks about his Agile2016 session on "The Agile Database Techniques Stack: Bridging the Agile/Data Cultural Divide". Without Agile database development, Agile wouldn't be possible. Yet despite efforts to realize database testing, refactoring and other Agile practices, the data community is still working with a traditional mindset. Data warehousing is typically slow and risky, accustomed to being bottleneck for the rest of the org. Scott also sounds off on microservices, too many technology stacks, and COBOL as a still viable dev language career-wise. John Esposito, Editor-in-Chief of DZone, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Ellen Gottesdiener, CEO and founder of EBG Consulting, says that, while teams are pretty good today at delivery, there's room for improvement in the "discovery" department "so we can make sure we're making the right stuff that we're feeding to the delivery team." In her Agile2016 Stalwart session, Ellen fielded many questions about product management and Product Ownership. Says Ellen, "We're moving into the age of 'product'" where the value is the product, not the project. "Product Management is a broader discipline dedicated to the care and feeding of the entire lifecycle of the product (not project), from inception to decline." Ellen also has a wakeup call for the Agile community: "We need to make sure we're building the right product and building it right. We have to focus on the discipline around product management using Agile because that's where the value's from." SolutionsIQ's Mike Alexander hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
"Coaching can be a very lonely role, because you're the one dealing with the dysfunctions," said Craig Smith, an Agile coach from Brisbane, Australia. For this reason and many others, Craig set out to try to improve the overall coaching experience. Craig was collaborating with a colleague on this one night when he saw an episode of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares". Craig was instantly struck by Gordon's "coaching" style, and the gears went to work. In his Agile2016 session "Coaching Nightmares: Insights We Can Learn from Gordon Ramsay", Craig shows snippets of Gordon Ramsay at work in the kitchen and asks participants, "What can we learn from this? As a coach, what would I do?" One of the big things about Ramsay's style is that he calls it like it is because he has no stake in the game. However, coaches may resist the urge to do that, maybe because they are tied to the company or are working for a consultancy that would rather they not. But, Craig says, "In order to get people to really change, we need to call it [like it is]." SolutionsIQ's Mike Alexander hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile transformation is the job of managers. Not "A" job, but " THE" job in this new world paradigm.
Mick shares with us theincredibly important role of managers in an agile environment and how many are currentlyfailing. He offers actionable tips for managers that may find themselveswondering about their new role, and how to succeed.
And according to Mick, sometimes the role of the manager is to be a sh*t umbrella.
About Agile Amped
The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community throughcompelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas.Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Ampedoffers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates,subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.
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Everyone has baggage, and everyone lets that baggage affect their interactions with others through the stereotypes, biases and judgments that they make, often at a subconscious level. Natalie Warnert spoke on bias in the Agile workplace in her Agile2016 session "Objectivity or Subjectivity: Owning Your Own Bias and Interactions". The thrust is to get people to recognize that they have personal biases as well as biases fueled by societal stereotypes, and then to get them to understand how to keep those biases and judgments in check. This is especially powerful for leaders who have to model the behavior they want to see in others. By enhancing their own self-awareness, leaders can understand how their own personal biases are affecting their interactions with their reports. Says Natalie, "We have the right as humans to think whatever we want... [But] we also want to be able to catch ourselves in the act and say, 'How are these things influencing my interactions in either a positive or negative way?'" Mandy Ross from Sococo, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Eric Willeke shares an account of his experience working with CA Technologies (formally Rally) where he discovered that limiting team WIP is only so useful when feature and strategy WIP aren't also coordinated. After working hard to figure out how to help his teams manage their WIP and deliver near-perfectly, Eric found that there was almost no change in the system; the same problems existed. Looking at a burndown chart of work performed by 47 teams, Eric thought it looked almost perfect--and yet the features delivered and accepted were flat. He found that while focus at the story level was great, focus at the feature level was terrible, and found the same case at the strategy level (which features to build). Eric's session at Agile2016 "WIP: The Tragedy Continues" centered around his experiences. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Pete Behrens from Trail Ridge Consulting is bringing his passion for Agile to leadership. He recognizes that, while the ScrumMaster is responsible for identifying and removing impediments, it's so often the case that the SM doesn't have the power to actually remove the impediments: only leadership can do it. Leadership is a key factor in the success of any organization but, when the teams have a desire to be Agile and the C suite want to transform to Agile, it's the leadership and management in the middle that have the least direction. One thing that's important to Peter: replacing bad habits with good ones. "We've got to give leaders the positive message... These are the behaviors you should be doing, not just what to stop doing." He also wants to create an Agile standard for leaders: "The Scrum Alliance has created the gold standard for [being] a certified ScrumMaster or Product Owner. We're trying to create that same standard for leaders." SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Microservices are all the rage now, and monolithic applications ("monoliths") are old school. So it makes perfect sense to ditch the monoliths completely and go straight for microservices, right? Not to Mike Gehard, it doesn't, especially for new projects. A software engineer at Pivotal, Mike says that for startups who don't yet know what their business is, microservices may box them in unnecessarily. He advocates for starting with a monolith before moving to microservices--in three easy steps (at least MIke makes them seem easy). The assumption going into the monolith, however, is that it's structured in such a way that moving over to microservices in the future is feasible and easy. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Markus Silpala is all about bringing the learning and growth that Agile dev teams have experienced over the past decade into the IT and infrastructure part of the equation. His session at Agile2016 was called "Making Infrastructure as Awesome as Agile Software". Markus experienced first hand why bringing the infrastructure into the Agile development workflow is so difficult. When the team he was working with got a taste of the Ops side of the release, they decided they didn't want any part of it and was hoping another team could do it. In other words, this Agile team wanted to re-instantiate a silo--but for legitimate reasons, some of which Markus covered: DevOps tooling isn't as developed and the domain of skill for DevOps adds a whole new level of complexity to developing. Markus goes on to touch on the 3 types of Agile: Process Agile, Technical Agile and Mindset Agile. Process is just the entry point and naturally arises when you grok Technical and Mindset Agile well. But people tend to get stuck on Process Agile because it's easier to walk through the paces and doesn't really require any internalization. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
In this in depth audio only podcast, we get to visit with Jeff Lopez-Stuit. Jeff coaches in far away places and with companies that build products on a global scale. Jeff helps bust a few of the myths we have about coaching in other cultures, the adoption of agile in very hierarchical societies, and shares technics to coaching approaches with people from different backgrounds. He even shares some tips for those coaches that may be taking their very first assignment to coach in a foreign land. Hint: We are all very much the same. About Agile Amped
The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.
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Product Owners can prepare for the business world by getting education in business and economics, software engineers can similarly prepare for a career in development--but how do you prepare for a career as a ScrumMaster or Agile coach? Andreas Schliep wants to provide them a path. "If [young people] want to become ScrumMasters or Agile coaches, there should be something at the university or college that just leads them there." If you asked Andreas how long he thinks the ScrumMaster's education would last, it wouldn't be three days (which is longer than the typical two-day CSM course), but three years. That's because many ScrumMasters lack the soft skills required to perform a servant leadership role for a Scrum team. To this end, Andreas and others have created an open-source curriculum to help individuals learn how to be better ScrumMasters and coaches. When it comes down to it, Andreas believes that the ScrumMaster is an Agile coach for the team. As he says, "It's about helping people achieve their goals, helping people become better." SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
CEO and co-founder of Retrium David Horowitz left his gig as an Agile coach to focus on a growing problem: retrospective fails. David says, "If you ask me, 'How would you describe Agile in just two words?' it would be, 'Continuous Improvement.'" Retrospectives are the vehicle for continuous improvement. Yet across the industry, David sees many teams who treat retrospectives like a chore or a checklist item--or, even worse, they skip the retrospective altogether. It gets even worse if the teams are distributed. David decided to quit being an Agile coach and founded Retrium, whose SaaS product makes retrospectives much more effective and engaging. The biggest pitfall in retrospectives, in David's opinion: "lack of follow-through." As for pitfalls during live retrospective, the lack of a level playing field may keep teams from getting value. Seniority, personality and physical location can all contribute to--or detract from--a participant's ability to actively participate and gain value. In other words, just because someone is junior, introverted and/or remote doesn't mean they don't want to contribute to the team's growth. David also touches on the Retrospective Facilitators Gathering, which he participates in. Mandy Ross from Sococo, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Chet Hendrickson & Ron Jeffries (briefly) take over Agile Amped after (briefly) breaking Howard Sublett. Then the duo reminisce on 20 years of collaboration since the beginning of Extreme Programming (which, you'll remember, is well before the onset of Agile). With decades of experiences in Agile (and its predecessor methodologies), Chet and Ron have lots to say about the state of Agile and aren't above saying it. Of interest: the fact that so many Agile companies focus on the tools for doing Agile and few focus on actually being Agile. On this point, Chet advocates for "more Jenkins, less Jira." Ron says it may be time to return to the roots of Agile and XP and do the unthinkable to get the desired results: change the name. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Boris Gloger says it's time to reimagine Scrum. Or rather to take Scrum back to its roots, before Scrum 1.0, whose original picture, Boris contends, is wrong. Scrum originated in "The New New Product Development Game" by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, and Boris revisits it to point out the ways that Scrum and current Agile practices need an overhaul. Here's a taste of some of Boris' thoughts on Scrum 3.0: - The team interacts directly with the customer or end-user and write user stories, not the Product Owner. - If, in Lean thinking, every type of inventory is waste, then the Product Backlog is also waste. - Sprints can begin as soon as one user story or task is ready for the team to consume. - Daily Scrum need to be rethought too, rather than daily, every 90 minutes. - Many more (very short) demos, perhaps every 90 minutes... Boris also shares some experiences using Scrum 3.0 at a client. (There's also a lot of dishes clanging in the background--sorry! But people gotta eat... :)) SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Earlier this year Anu Smalley and Kate Megaw co-chaired the Global Scrum Gathering in Orlando, FL, and are here with Agile Amped in Atlanta to talk about how to make training fun and women in Agile. For many people, training is nothing but death by PowerPoint, but Anu and Kate use Sharon Bowman's "Training From the Back of the Room" approach to ensure that students learn through short spurts of learning interspersed with hands-on exercises, discussion and debriefs on learning objectives. Meanwhile, both Anu and Kate are also passionate about the Women in Agile movement. In Anu's experience, "even though women come into the Agile industry, they don't stay." Now, along with many other women in the industry, the duo are working to create a group of people who are willing to mentor women in Agile. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Throughout Diana Larsen's Agile career, there has been a common thread: she has a strong desire to understand how people learn. Lifelong learner and champion for learning, Diana knows it's impossible to learn everything. "But if I know that you have some skills that I don't have, I can either come to you and ask you to help me learn them, or I can turn to you when I need them. And you can turn to me for the things you'd like to learn more about." Inherent in the learning process is trust and vulnerability. In team retrospectives, each team member has to trust others with their vulnerability in order to open the door to learning. Without that trust and vulnerability, no one learns--and then how do you build anything? Mandy Ross from Sococo, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Dan Attfield and Paul Hammond discovered that the rules of improv comedy are the polar opposite of Patrick Lencioni's "Five Dysfunctions of a Team." For example, the first dysfunction is Absense of Trust, but in an effective team, you encourage the Presence of Trust. The duo walked Agile Amped through a series of exercises that they used in their session "The Five Dysfunctions of an Improvised Comedy Group"--which started out right with a blackout disco with Beyonce blaring on the speakers. In the end, Dan and Paul have one goal: getting people to change their egocentric views to one that focuses on making others look awesome. Mandy Ross from Sococo, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
As CEO of Sococo Cliff Pollan knows a thing or two about telecommuting. His first experience with it was back in 1980 when he worked in Minnesota out of the First Bank Produce building, right across the street from where Prince shot Purple Rain. At the time, the only technology that was available was the telephone, and there was no voicemail or email. Cliff spent a lot of time on airplanes "commuting" between home and work to maintain strong ties and get work done. Cliff's telecommuting experiences made it clear how important interpersonal connections are to effective work. Now as the CEO of Sococo, an online office platform, Cliff is able to realize the value of Agile by enabling more face-to-(virtual)face interactions, so that distributed teams can be more productive without devoting so much time to telecommuting. Mandy Ross from Sococo, SolutionsIQ partner, hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
David J. Bland's session "Introduction to Assumption Mapping" walked participants through how to "facilitate a conversation with your team and enable them to focus on what matters". Some of the questions the team can tackle: 1. Does anybody want this? 2. Do we have any viability risks? 3. Can we feasibly built it? Then the team maps the answers. The goal is to elucidate the gaps in understanding of the problem space and the associated risks. Assumption mapping allows you to clear the air so they can talk about the problem openly and decide where to focus their efforts. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Troy Magennis has two sessions at Agile2016: "Forecasting Using Data: Quickly Answering How Big, How Long and How Likely" and "Data Driven Coaching: Safely Turning Team Data Into Coaching Insights". About the first session he shares that the workshop tries to eliminate the fear of statistics and demonstrate how to forecast software projects using historical data or range estimates and dice, of all things. Troy emphasizes using sample historical data to extrapolate probabilities. He also says that people "don't need as much data as they think"; if you focus on one data type like date of completion, you can do "basically any type of forecasting using just that data." As for the second session, Troy shares that data collection should serve three purposes: 1. To tell a story, not to build people up 2. To glean insights from the story 3. To see whether the insights had an impact at some later time Seen this way, data can be a powerful aid to coaches. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Bob's session at Agile2016 is called "Agile Testing Maturity - What Does 'Good' Look Like?" In his session Bob reminds us that you can't add quality on at the end; you have to build it in. "A lot of folks focus on automation, TDD, BDD, and ATDD, and they forget things like good effective story writing or using the 3 Amigos" as well as regression testing or system testing. Bob champions balance across the three pillars of Agile quality: technology, testing tactics, and soft/collaborative skills. When it comes to quality, he is also a strong proponent for an "everyone owns it" mentality. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Em Campbell-Pretty came all the way from Australia to deliver two talks at Agile2016. The first session "Leadership is an Extreme Sport" is based on work of Steve Farber, specifically LEAP: Love, Energy, Audacity, Proof. Of Love, Em remembers a particular credo that resonated with her: "Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do." Em's second session is called "Failing @ Scaling: Don't Panic and Carry a Towel" and focuses on some of the "really silly stuff" (a.k.a. anti-patterns) that she's seen her clients do. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile coach and trainer Richard Cheng shares his experience on a program for the US federal government called the USA Staffing program, which leveraged feature Scrum teams whose Product Owners formed a PO team guided by a Super Product Owner. Richard's Agile2016 session was called "Super Product Ownership - Creating and Scaling Product Ownership in the Federal Government" and was co-presented by Bridget Dongarra. Richard also served as Chair for the Government Track of Agile2016. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Steve Elliot from AgileCraft stopped by to talk about scaling Agile in a bimodal world. Bimodal IT is a concept Gartner introduced a few years ago, whereby Waterfall and Agile teams coexist in an Agile organization. But this is a scary thought for some who fear that it could take the steam out of Agile transformations that are underway. For Steve, bimodal presents an alternative for companies who want to become Agile but aren't ready yet. Bimodal can be viewed as an opportunity to break down some barriers to Agile transformation, giving executives and the business side some safety, which can help them transform faster. Steve believes that if it's clear to the company how each side is doing, "Agile will win the day faster than if we treat those two roles as silos." SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Fifty days is long time to be away from home, but for Jurgen Appelo it's worth it to get the word out about his book "Managing for Happiness". Managing for happiness means more than just getting engagement in the office and commitment to the organization. A fully committed, fully engaged individual who is giving their all in order to produce great value could be on a road to burnout if they aren't happy, says Jurgen. Researchers agree on certain points about happiness. One thing that Jurgen came across frequently in his research is that "Happiness is a path, not a destination--actually there is no destination... Everyday is a choice for you to decide to be a happier person." Another thing: exercise! Jurgen exercised both his body and his willpower by running 10 kilometers the morning of this podcast in the heat of Hot-lanta in July! SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Author and Scaled Agile founder Dean Leffingwell sits down with Agile Amped to talk about releasing SAFe 4.0, the challenge of building big systems and how value streams are now an integral part of portfolio management in SAFe 4.0. Dean also uses Scaled Agile as an example to describe in depth how the value stream and portfolio management works, before answering some burning questions like "How is SAFe 4.0 being received?" and "What's next for SAFe?" SolutionsIQ's Barry Gavril hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Jabe Bloom gets "meta" with Agile Amped discussing his Agile2016 session "Service Design in the Enterprise". Jabe's talk explores three big ideas: service practice, Wardley (value stream) maps, and service blueprints. Service blueprints are similar to value streams or customer journeys in that they plot out consumer interactions ("touch points") with the back-end workflow and applications that make it happen. Service design, then, applies the same ideas used to design consumer experiences inside IT organizations. The consumerization of IT is important because people want to bring their own technologies and apps into their work environments and their workflows. "People want to have that consumer experience at work." That means IT shops have to think more like consumers and consumer-focused companies. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Mark Kilby thinks it's time to rethink what face-to-face means for Agility, especially in today's increasingly global economy. In his Agile2016 session "Distributed Agile: Evolution or Delusion?" Mark emphasized that collaboration and connection between team members is what's important, and that collocation doesn't automatically imply face-to-face communication. While tools like Sococo and telepresence robots are great for enhancing team connections, Mark advocates for more human patterns, namely: the buddy system, pairing/copiloting and backchanneling. SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Dan Greening works for a startup using Agile to develop, design and manufacture a digital handheld single-molecule biosensor that can be used to detect diseases and viruses (like HIV and Zika) within minutes and at a fraction of the price of traditional approaches. After 8 years working in Agile, Dan now uses his Agile knowledge and experience to get this nanotechnology into consumer hands quickly. Dan highlights for Agile Amped that the Agile community generally focuses on software, but in an Agile startup you need to think deeper. "My interest in Agile has always been in Agile companies that produce things that people really find valuable." Agile startups have to think about the full lifecycle: hardware, firmware, software, cloud. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
People tend to think that the reason to go Agile can be distilled into three words: better, faster, cheaper. Ryan Ripley believes that this can actually be a recipe for failure, that "better, faster, cheaper" can actually sabotage your business success. Ryan provides a new take on the concept: smarter, sooner and safer. Smarter - This centers around measurements and metrics, specifically creating a safe metrics program whose whole purpose is to measure insights. Sooner - With Agile, we break down our work into smaller pieces that are easier to deliver. That means getting a product out the door sooner and establishing a revenue stream quicker. Safer - "Cheaper" optimizes on cost, which often results in lower-quality software. Instead we should strive for "safer": making smaller bets and make investments in the most valuable work at the time we need it and see what will happen from there. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Johanna Rothman sits down with Agile Amped in Atlanta, GA, to discuss her new book "Diving For Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in Your Project Portfolio". This book focuses on the causes of cost of delay and also how cost of delay can be used to rank portfolio investments. Multitasking and "expert bottlenecks" are common causes for delay that aren't traditionally incorporated into the decision of whether or not to move forward on a project. Another common cost of delay is interdependencies: when one team is waiting for work from another team to come their way. Johanna is also presenting a workshop on "Growing Your Servant Leadership" at Agile2016. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
If agreeing about where to go to lunch can get frustrating, imagine how frustrating it can be when the decision you need to make has much bigger implications. SolutionsIQ's Michael Tardiff presented on "Finding Agreement When Everyone is Right" to highlight how most of us believe ourselves to be right and also how two or more people can all be right and still find their way to a mutually beneficial result. Says Michael, "All we have to do is figure out how my 'rightness' doesn't keep your 'rightness' from co-existing... The more we practice... agreeing with people, the better we'll get at it." The purpose is not to help make a decision but to help truly arrive at a consensus, so that no one feels left out. SolutionsIQ's Alan Dayley hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Dr Dave Cornelius joined Agile Amped in Atlanta, GA, to talk about a program called 5aturdays, which engages with teenagers on--you guessed it--five Saturdays to introduce them to agility and technology, such as using WordPress to create websites. Job readiness and effective communications are the focus of this program. Topics for the first class include Kanban and user stories. Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance both sponsor 5aturdays, which is free to the public. Started in 2013, 5aturdays operates out of Costa Mesa, CA, but they hope to expand to LA and San Diego. Industry professionals, coaches and trainers donate their time to the program. This year, women constitute the majority of the attendees coming to learn about Agile at 5aturdays. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Many people think that getting teams to self-motivated high-performance is simple: just add coaching. But Esther Derby's research shows otherwise. In her session at Agile2016, Esther looks at "Coaching Teams: Environment + People". Without the right conditions, good coaching may not help much and, worse, inept coaching could make things worse. "It's really going to damage the team's ability to self-manage and work effectively." Esther emphasizes the importance of the team's environment both physical and social. Does the environment contribute to learning and creativity--or does it detract from it? Managers are tempted to blame teams for lack of engagement or motivation, without looking at the environment to see if it motivates teams to excel. If your team is buried in the basement working on boring projects without access to the right resources to do their job effectively, then no amount of coaching will motivate them. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
What makes great teams great? According to Peter Green from Agile For All, "They trust each other, they hold each other accountable, they communicate all the time, they have social bonds." But at what point does scaling Agile counteract organizational Agility? Peter evokes Dunbar's number, whereby individuals can only maintain stable relationships with 150 other individuals. Most Agile scaling approaches focus on practices, but Peter wants us to take a closer look at the principles and, for instance, how Dunbar's number can help or hinder it. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
What is Agile documentation? For lots of Agilists the term seems counterintuitive since Agile doesn't do documentation. Instead Agile tends to find other ways of ensuring users are constantly delighted. In this episode of Agile Amped, Mary Connor argues that Agile documentation can be beneficial. She introduces the concept of a one-touch doc: a piece of writing that is true to the best of the creator's knowledge at that point in time and that may be helpful to other people but isn't maintained ad infinitum. Sometimes you may need to create a document that will be maintained forever and ever, Amen. In this case you have to ask yourself the hard question: what is actually needed? This means leaving out unnecessary stuff and nice-to-haves and abandoning gold-plating of the content. You have to do the just barely good enough, which can break the technical writer's heart, but this bare-bones approach is much more Agile. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile is everywhere now. Regardless of the flavor (Scrum, Kanban, XP), everybody's using Agile to greater or lesser extent. After more than a decade of being Agile, why are so few organizations actually reaping the benefits of implementing it in the first place? Mike Cottmeyer of Leading Agile offers three simple and obvious things that an organization of any size needs to be able to do to be truly Agile: 1. Form teams. 2. Create backlogs. 3. Produce working tested software. Here are some tidbits from his engaging interview: - "A team is an encapsulated value stream... that has no dependencies on the rest of the organization, they can operate with autonomy, they can inspect and adapt..." - "Every failure mode in Scrum ... starts with a team that is not complete and well formed." - "Cargo-cult Scrum: going through the motions but not getting the benefits." SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame famously said, "Move fast and break things." In his Keep Austin Agile 2016 session, Thoughtworks Change Agent Chris Murman laments that "Things are Broken: a Case Study in Moving Too Fast," partly to nod at Zuckerberg. The case study centers on teams at Bottle Rocket who, after implementing Scrum, had so much pressure put on them to deliver fast that "they were writing themselves into technical debt and were releasing apps that weren't very good quality." The goal is not necessarily to work faster but to work better with more intentionality at a sustainable pace. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Some people think that visual models are only applicable to waterfall projects, but Candase Hokanson uses them to make information more accessible to stakeholders early on in the delivery process to avoid expensive redos in the future. A common model she uses in her work is a process flow model, which visualizes the steps that a user will go through to use a product or piece of software. Visual models like the process flow and feature tree help Product Owners see if any use cases are missing. Visual models are also useful when it comes time for documentation (user manuals, FAQs, etc.). SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Software is in everything today. Even the gas pump has a simple computer in it. Jeffrey Palermo, CEO of Clear Measure, sits down with Agile Amped to discuss how common architecture practices, even those used in Agile software development, often fail to consider the unique experiences and use cases of the end users. For example, one department may need 24/7 access to high-security applications, while another department may only need limited access to the same applications. Microservices and DevOps architectural practices can help in such a situation, which can be very expensive and not business-feasible without a new approach to the overall architecture. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
People often take it for granted that developers are paying attention to their craft. "Everyone assumes quality is in there," says Mike Rieser, Director of Software Development at Fenway Group. But, as he put it off camera, "technical excellence isn't something you just sprinkle on." Instead, technical excellence is foundational, not something you just add on in the end like some kind of condiment. Allison Pollard, Principal Consultant at Improving, adds that often people think they'll make "improvements" and clean up the code later. "The data becomes apparent... How many defects are escaping with every release? How many defects are getting resolved with every release?" Mike accentuates that, with Agile software development, zero-defect code is a possibility and, often, the general case. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Traditional organizations assign differing degrees of control to certain roles, a key role being manager. Senior Director of Coaching and Training Doc List has seen cross-functional teams comprising devs, UX, QA and other roles reporting to the dev manager, UX manager, QA manager or some other type of manager, respectively. The result is chaos and confusion due to competing priorities and power plays. Often a manager is assigned to the ScrumMaster or Product Owner role. In the event of a conflict of interest, team members are forced to ask themselves which role the manager-SM is filling. In a technical setting, this is especially problematic. Doc's session at KAA2016 aims to shed some light on this problem and explore possible alternatives that better support Agile structures. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile Velocity CEO David Hawks has seen 0mph Agility and 100mph Agility. Early on he thought it was possible to take an organization, like a luxury car, from 0 to 100 in no time flat. However, over the years David has learned that achieving high velocity must be approached in a stepwise fashion: from 0 to 20, 20 to 40, 40 to 60, etc. His session this year at Keep Austin Agile 2016 is called "Path to Agility: Adoption Patterns to Overcome Pitfalls". With Agile Amped, he discusses the five stages of an Agile adoption: 1. Align 2. Learn 3. Predict 4. Accelerate 5. Adapt SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
ScrumMasters have an important role in Agile: they help delivery teams achieve high-performance by removing impediments and taking care of the workflow process so that other team members can focus on producing excellent value quickly. Too often, however, ScrumMastery devolves into an administrative role. While functioning as de facto admin may be part of an SMs responsibilities, Enterprise Agile Coach Cherie Silas wants to help SMs sharpen and, if necessary, develop coaching skills to complement the tools already in their Agile toolkit. In her KAA2016 session, Cherie will a dozen new skills that SMs can cultivate, which fall into four categories: 1. Internal Control skills - self-control, self-management 2. Verbal Communication skills - making distinctions, direct communication, articulating what's happening in the room 3. Relational/Forwarding skills - help make a connection between coaches and the team, helping the team strive for more, critical thinking 4. Creative Thinking skills - changing geography, taking different stances, using visual aids and reference points SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Attaining and sustaining organizational agility isn't merely a matter of following a set of steps and you're done. As Stephanie Ockerman puts it, "Organizational Agility: It's Not a Sprint, It's a Marathon". Stephanie theorizes that organizational agility starts with sustainable teams--and that doesn't happen overnight. Stephanie is interested in how effective teams are, the quality of their product, how innovative they are, and even turnover rate. "If people aren't happy in the environment they're in, they're going to leave." She is a strong advocate for looking for ways to set Agile teams up for success: for example, what do they need to be their best, to collaborate, to build trust, and to feel fulfillment in their everyday work. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Chris Edwards sits down with Agile Amped in a hoppin' restaurant to discuss his Keep Austin Agile 2016 session "DevOps: Improving Agility Through a Culture of Continuous Delivery". Chris touches on how QA, previously completely separate from the dev team, has basically been absorbed into the Agile team. "We don't even have a QA department," Chris says of his experience, a common one in Agile teams. "The developers do all the testing, because it's all automated." DevOps takes the same principle and applies it ti operations: whereas previously devs would "toss code over the wall" to QA, now the same process is happening between devs and OPs. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Paul Baffes and Mike Ackerbauer are helping the elephant that is IBM jumpstart its Agile transformation. Their session at Keep Austin Agile 2016 is called "Agile from the Elephant's Point of View: Why IBM is Jump-starting Agile Teams With Design Thinking". IBM has an illustrious history as being a pioneer of software and engineering company, having carved out a product-based niche for themselves. But the future is about customer experience so the duo has been tasked with bringing design thinking and Agile together so that new products are built with the basic Agile precept of "doing the right work and doing the work right" in mind. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Scott Killen, founder and previous President of Agile Austin as well as the Agile Practice Leader for PayPal, sits down with Agile Amped at Keep Austin Agile 2016. His session at the conference isn't scandalous at all with its title "Backlog Managers: Beware the Devil on Your Shoulder!" The concept behind it is that approaches that Product Owners and other "backlog managers" employ (or don't) affect the team effectiveness. Scott shares his three tips for Product Owners to keep in mind when managing their backlogs: 1. Stories enter the backlog as a problem or need and exit as a solution. 2. Stakeholders change over the lifecycle of a user story, starting with individuals on the business side and seguing over to those from the development side. 3. Working with stakeholders to evolve a problem into a solution is "where the magic happens". SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
The ACMP Change Management Conference celebrated its fifth year in 2016. Donna Brighton, ACMP President, and Rhiannon Cooke, ACMP Vice President, graced Agile Amped with their presence to share their thoughts on the occasion as well as discuss how the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) and the annual Change Management conference have grown since both were conceived in 2011. A key component to the explosive growth of the association and the need for change management globally is the standardization of professional change management practices. The ACMP worked tirelessly to produce the Standards for Change Management according to ISO standards and, to foster continued growth and fellowship throughout the change management community, the standard is available for free directly from their website (acmpglobal.org). SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Email Monday, training Tuesday, change Wednesday--that's how quickly some people think change happens. Prosci CIO Tim Creasey points out that change management aims to "prepare, equip and support people to be successful in the changes" requested of them, and that process needs to time to take effect. Tim shares his thoughts of how companies who undergo an enterprise-wise change like an Agile transformation fail to invest adequately in the change management aspects. And then, if the company is successful in transforming to Agile, they don't know how to deal with the pace of change. A clear example of this is the stark difference between the rate of change in customer-facing technologies and internal technologies implemented by a company's IT department. Tim also shows how a change model like ADKAR can work in a Scrum environment. Tim Creasey is a dynamic presenter, researcher and thought-leader on managing the people side of projects and initiatives to deliver organizational results and outcomes. Through conference keynotes, presentation, webinars, articles and tools, he has advanced the discipline of change management by moving it out of the “soft and fuzzy” realm toward a structured, rigorous approach for driving benefit realization and value creation on projects. Tim coauthored the book Change Management: The People Side of Change and led Prosci’s last seven benchmarking studies. SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Amy Haworth of Citrix and Susie Patterson of Prosci sit down with Agile Amped to dispell any misinformation out there about how easy building an enterprise change capability is. In short, it's not. The duo share with us their thoughts on how to build effective change management into projects, how to help leaders build their leadership competency, and how to empower employees throughout the enterprise to change for the better without loss of effectiveness. They highlight some of their challenges and successes and also touch on how Agile has changed change management, forcing change agents to focus on how to help people achieve a smaller-scope, more immediate change with more predictable results. This contrasts greatly with the long horizons that traditional change management programs typically leverage. SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
More and more people are practicing mindfulness meditation in their personal lives. Over the last six years, Wendy Quan has found that "bringing this into the workplace can really make a powerful difference to how people build their resiliency to change and have a different perspective of what's going on in their lives." Wendy has been working to help organizations recognize the value of incorporating meditation into the business because of the business value it can provide. In particular, Wendy's research has demonstrated that mindfulness meditation can help businesses execute their change initiatives more effectively by helping people mindfully consider their individual impact on the change "in the safety of their mind". She asks powerful questions to engage individuals in the change process including: Can you describe the change in one sentence? Can you describe what would happen if you didn't take part in the change? What repercussions might there be. Wendy even offers an example of how to implement such a program! SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Stacy Aaron is surprised when she encounters change agents who are themselves surprised by the resistance they face when implementing change. After 20 years of experience as a change leader, Stacy has come to expect resistance and to learn from it. She says there are motivating forces behind resistance to change, a common one being a fear of loss of control. Sometimes, she notes, the strongest resistors have misinformation and, when invited into the change program as an active contributor, these people who once only voiced concerns suddenly become change advocates. Stacy also touches on cultural that can help or hinder change, because a company's values can directly conflict with the change goal, which makes achieving that change all the more difficult. Stacy Aaron has 25 years of business and academic experience specializing in change management, marketing and organizational behavior. Stacy, with her partner Kate, founded Change Guides in 2005 and co-authored two popular books on organizational change management, The Change Management Pocket Guide and The Eight Constants of Change. SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Attachment Theory and Big Data don't obviously go together, but after meeting at the 2014 Change Conference, Patrick McCreesh and Victoria Grady decided to see if they couldn't combine the two and help answer an interesting question: Can Washington Change? 2016 is an election year, so presidential hopefuls have been traipsing about the nation promising change. However, rather than taking them at their word, Patrick and Victoria have been looking at surveys conducted over the last 15 years aimed at ascertaining what the two million federal employees who took these surveys thought about Washington's ability to change. Attachment theory helped the duo identify which things (called "transitional objects") helped federal employees deal effectively with change or how the lack these transitional objects might have impeded change. SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Andrew Johnson sits down with Agile Amped at the Change Management 2016 conference to discuss conscious change leadership and why some leaders simply can't bring themselves to fully engage in their own change initiatives because of deep-seated internal biases. Some pragmatic leaders don't think that personal development is important to their ability to lead, which Andrew suggests is a product of our classic leader development culture: as you rise in the ranks and become leaders, they perceive their work as "more about blessing and delegating, as opposed to actively participating." These leaders may feel that, by getting their hands dirty and rubbing shoulders with the people of their company to effect change, they are somehow betraying everything they did to become leaders in the first place. In his work, Andrew helps leaders figure out why they resist engaging as a sponsor and how to overcome that to become better leaders. Andrew Johnson is a Senior Change Consultant at Being First, Inc. He is a pioneer in breakthrough approaches to multi-stakeholder collaboration on large-scale infrastructure change projects, and consultants to executives on major transformational change projects across industries and countries. SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Change is a difficult process that can take a long time to take hold regardless of the size of the change. But when you get into larger change initiatives, such as enterprise transformations, the work involved can quickly become daunting. Because the entire picture is never clear, Sadaf Khan helps people realize the value of breaking change down into smaller chunks in a very Agile way. Sadaf champions making decisions toward achieving "the full picture" (whatever that may be) based on the short-term data that is available now. Sadaf Khan is a Business Change Manager at the Emirates Group. SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Insights are ways of being -- a look into the mindset, culture, and values that the organization wants to espouse. Linda Ackerman Anderson of Being First says it's important to attach mindset, culture and behavior to real business results because that is what ultimately sustains the business transformation. Linda walks us through the nine-phase methodology that she uses to help organizations transform. "We're looking broadly across the entire organization [to find] what's out of place for the achievement of the outcome that we want and what has to be realigned." SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Being First has focused on designing and leading transformational change for 40 years. CEO Dean Anderson has been watching Agile grow in the past decade or so and has come to recognize its value. Dean says that change management and Agile share similar values and philosophies in "how to drive high performance in individuals, teams and organizations". In his work, Dean focuses primarily on two areas: leadership mindset and behaviors and the process design for the transformation journey. On the topic of leadership and change he says, "There's a direct correlation between the success of the organization's transformation and the transformation of the leadership, because they're either enabling or blocking the transformation." Therefore an organization's transformation truly begins when the leadership and executives are aware of the change they themselves have to experience on an individual level. SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Many change professionals get the methodology down pat but fail to recognize the importance of character and presence in effecting change. Daryl Conner's work focuses on rectifying this. Rather than helping consultants choose from a grab bag of possible "best" characteristics, Daryl helps these individuals find their own true nature, the idea being that genuine people are more impactful than those who are just acting out learned traits. The key is for change leaders to balance their true character with the amount of directness that their clients will appreciate. Daryl is founder and chairman of Conner Partners (a consulting firm specializing in strategy execution), Conner Academy (a professional development firm supporting leaders and change practitioners who are exploring character and presence as a means for advancing their capabilities), and Conner Advisory (a consulting firm dedicated to serving leaders who are pursuing “changes that matter”). SolutionsIQ's William Rowden hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Technical Director for Veteran programs at CSRA Michael Peter sits down with Agile Amped to share the successes and challenges of implementing Agile approaches including Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Within the first year, the project was able to establish Agile teams that continuously and consistently delivered on commitments and deployed working code. Over time and with a deeper understanding of the the VA enterprise, they discovered that what they were being asked to build wouldn’t likely return the best value to the Veteran and the VA. This helped them improve processes to identify value, so that their users–who are frequently veterans returning from a tour of duty, perhaps with life-altering injuries–could get the most value out of the VA’s products. However, there is still much work to be done. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2016 (http://conference.agileaustin.org/). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Sandy Schwan has decades of academic and hands-on experience in change management. Traditional approaches to change management have changed over the years and Sandy is excited to see how Agile will change it further. In particular, she thinks mobile technology engages individuals to study and learn (and change) at a more personal, smaller scale, which conflicts with traditional change management approaches but fits with Agile change management. Sandy is particularly passionate about how leaders drive change. To leaders enacting an organizational change, She offers three key lessons in her workshop, "Leading from the Edge of Change": 1. People are watching you and are paying attention. What leaders do (especially body language) makes a huge difference in the success of a change initiative. 2. Choose your words carefully and repeat these key messages 6-12 times. 3. Give people time to un-learn before they learn. Announcing that the change must happen doesn't make it happen; people make it happen. SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
You know what happens at conferences: surrounded by so many thought leaders and industry colleagues and inundated with information from sessions, workshops, games, lightning talks, etc., your brain gets overloaded. "Knowledge paralysis" sets in, where you learned so much that you can't remember any of it. That's what prompted Jason to bring his "Fun Over Study" learning lounge idea to Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016. The learning lounge is an experiment (and experience) aimed at helping conference-goers apply and reinforce learnings obtained during the conference. There's nothing new to learn at the lounge: conference-goers bring the knowledge from sessions attended and the lounge facilitators figure out how to create an experience that locks in the learning, reinforces and makes it applicable beyond just the conference. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
"Tools should be secondary to what you're trying to achieve with BDD and the value that it brings," says Kate Falanga, Director of QA at Huge, of some people's fascination with BDD tools. Kate's session at Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016 was a workshop called "Behavior-Driven Development for Non-Coders" and aimed to promote "shift left" testing: starting testing earlier in the development cycle (toward the left, if you're looking at the dev workflow). Part of Kate's workshop centered around acting out a story kickoff session with "a really terrible user story that I wrote." The goal was to focus on communication and for participants to feel how it changed the user story. The story kickoff session or huddle serves to clearly identify the requirements in a user story before any development takes place and as a result the best huddle with have the developer, the tester and the Product Owner. This ensures that any low-hanging fruit (both problems and opportunities) are addressed at the development stage, rather than later when changes are much more expensive. If you're gonna invite someone else into the huddle (or "Three Amigos" as some cheekily call it), Kate says consider a visual UX or design expert. Kate Falanga (Director, Quality Assurance at Huge) has over 14 years of digital experience. At Huge she works with a full time team of quality assurance professionals as well as actively supports projects and project teams with testing mentorship. As part of her role she works alongside other leadership within the company on overall technical strategy. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Woody Zuill is an Agile coach working on the "original Mob programming team". As is befitting since Woody coined the term "mob programming"--which is, as he puts it "pair programming, except for everybody here is going to be involved." For him, mob programming is a natural evolution of pair programming. Like in pair programming where each pair helps problem-solve and vet the resulting code, in mob programming, "When you work with a whole group, you get the best of everybody... We're not looking into getting the most out of everybody... We're looking to get the best out of everybody into everything we do." That's why what began as informal or scheduled work sessions became the de facto programming style of Woody and his team. Woody Zuill has been a software developer for 30+ years and is an Agile enthusiast. He has been instrumental in promoting a "No Estimates" approach to Agile product delivery. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile Manifesto signatory James Grenning is your Agile wingman: when you need Agile technical coaching help, he can do it all. For Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016, he's focusing on the three critical skills of refactoring: 1. Detecting smells in code. 2. Bright idea about how to build the code differently 3. How to transform the code into the new state James also talks about how Agile has changes since years ago when he signed the Agile Manifesto. One of the biggest changes: the majority of the signatories were developers and tech-minded individuals, but largely Agile has become more focused on process management. James Grenning trains, coaches and consults worldwide bringing modern technical and management practices to embedded systems development. He is the author of Test-Driven Development for Embedded C (http://wingman-sw.com/tddec). He invented Planning Poker, and participated in the creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Kent Graziano is excited to achieve one of his goals for presenting at Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016: educating people about Data Vault in his session "Agile Data Engineering: Introduction to Data Vault Data Modeling". As a technical evangelist, Kent is passionate about introducing people to concepts that are necessary in today's Big Data-driven economy. (For interested parties, according to Kent's presentation: "The Data Vault is a detail oriented, historical tracking and uniquely linked set of normalized tables that support one or more functional areas of business.") Kent Graziano is a Senior Technical Evangelist for Snowflake Computing and an award winning author, speaker, and trainer, in the areas of data modeling, data architecture, and data warehousing. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Alex Schladebeck is both a tester and a Product Owner. Who'da thunk that a tester (i.e., the person constantly trying to think how the user might experience a product) and a Product Owner (i.e., the person responsible for ensuring that the user gets the value they want) could perhaps have similar ideas about product design and development. Alex is at AATC2016 to turn "potentials" into "slayers" (and, yes, that is a Buffy reference). The goal of her session is to promote the concept of taking the testing responsibilities, which are often quite difficult and unreasonable ("You never have enough testers to do all of the testing"), and spreading them out across the team to make it more manageable. Alex Schladebeck is the head of Test Consulting at BREDEX GmbH and is also Product Owner for Jubula, the open source test tool. Within both roles, shes responsible for making sure that customers needs are satisfied, be it in terms of quality assurance services for their projects or features for implementation. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Fred George brings the concept of "managerless processes" to the Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016 with his session on "Programmer Anarchy". At the heart of it the idea that if you replace traditional roles like QA and BA with more programmers, you create an environment when the dev team can work with the customer at a higher (than user story) level, create much more code, experiment in live environments, fail fast and learn how to better the product. He shares that, at a recent client, "we were deploying something new into production every three and a half minutes." The key was fast failures: if the release failed to reach certain targets, it was pulled down and iterated upon before it was redeployed to gather more real-time data. Fred George is an industry consultant, and has been writing code for over 46 years in (by his count) over 70 languages. He started ThoughtWorks University in Bangalore, India, based on a commercial programming training program he developed in the 90s. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Tuba Kuklen knows that people are uncomfortable with the human aspects of change. But Tuba is working to turn that touchy-feely stuff into data that stakeholders up and down the organization can embrace. Technology is particularly difficult, she says, because people tend to race through decisions about technology without considering how it will likely affect people and their processes. Another important aspect of lasting change: engaged leadership and sponsors. Equipped with data about how much the people affected by a change underway understand it, change leaders can help demonstrate how important it is for leaders to be involved in individual transformations as well as the overall organizational transformation. Tuba Kuklen is Executive Director/ Performance Improvement Director at Central Transaction Operations (CTO) for JPMorgan Chase & Co. since 2012. Tuba is responsible for developing new programs to expand Operational Excellence capabilities in CTO and leading Organizational Change Management team to manage people side of change. SolutionsIQ's Dan Fuller hosts at Change Management 2016 (http://www.acmpconference.com/Join-Us). About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Amitai Schlair chats with Agile Amped about his DevOps Dojo session for the Agile Alliance Technical Conference. Ditching the "traditional" approach to DevOps, Amitai's workshop focused on a simple, iterative exercise (printing labels), made obvious the artificial divide between Dev and Ops--and any two departments in a single value chain. The takeaway seems almost too simple: the dev team should ask the operations team for their requirements before and during product delivery. Amitai Schlair is a software development coach, legacy code wrestler, non-award-winning musician, and award-winning bad poet. He publishes fixed-length micropodcasts at Agile in 3 Minutes, writes variable-length articles at schmonz.com, and contributes code and direction to notable open-source projects such as NetBSD, pkgsrc, and ikiwiki. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Emergent architecture is all well and good but, as Rebecca Wirfs-Brock puts it, "sometimes what emerges out of the swamp... may not be what you want, in terms of scalability or performance or reliability." Rebecca has a passion for ensuring that the often complex requirements used to define what companies want actually yields the software architecture and quality that they expect. Rebecca's session at the Agile Alliance Technical Conference is a workshop called "Being Agile about Architectural Qualities" and she shares with Agile Amped what she hopes it will accomplish. Rebecca Wirfs-Brock is a self-defined "design geek who invented Responsibility-Driven Design and the xDriven meme." She is keen about team effectiveness, communicating complex requirements, software quality, pragmatic TDD, and techniques for architecting and reducing risk on agile projects and programs. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Kevin Donohue (Sr. Developer) and Gabriel Ortiz (Sr. Developer) from Alaska Airlines sit down with Agile Amped to talk about the joys of mob programming. Gabriel's team paved the way for the adoption of mob programming (also called "swarming") at Alaska Airlines after attending the On Agile virtual conference last year. One year into its implementation and the Alaska teams are still using mob programming. Benefits of mob programming include better product quality and quicker cross-pollination and knowledge sharing. In addition, "mobbing" enabled people not always invited in development, such QA, to participate in the process, learn, and also provide input. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Refactoring is a big deal to Bryan Beecham. So much so that after looking at the role refactoring code plays in his life, he had an epiphany: "We are the code... If you're software what would you do [to improve yourself]... Are there parts of you that maybe you don't like... People think physically right away, but a lot of those aren't physical." Human refactoring (humanrefactor.wordpress.com) is about applying some technical practices to daily life. Befittingly Bryan is going "Inside Refactoring" in his AATC2016 presentation. Bryan Beecham is an international speaker, coach, trainer, and agile consultant. His passion is to help improve companies, teams and individuals through continuous improvement and increasing awareness. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Maaret Pyhäjärvi traveled from her native Finland to speak at the Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016 about "Exploratory Testing in API". According to Maaret, much of what's keeping non-technical people from understanding development and testing is not having a GUI to interact with and explore. "I wanted to create an experience ... where we actually take some API, which looks like code and doesn't have a user interface" and create a GUI for individuals to do exploratory testing on. In this session she applies her 20 years of experience in testing and, more recently, mob testing to enable non-developers to participate in exploratory testing in a mob development environment. Maaret Pyhäjärvi is a software specialist with emphasis on testing. She works with a 10-person software development team at Granlund Oy as the testing specialist. On the side, she delivers hands-on testing trainings and consults on testing through Altom Consulting Oy. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
"Cheezy" Jeff Morgan and Ardita Karaj chat with Agile Amped about their AATC2016 session "Test Driven: Deliberate Collaboration", where the two will perform live automation test-drive development (ATDD) for all to see. One goal of their presentation is make visible the fact that much of what people consider collaboration is really hand-offs: the developer plugs away at the code in her corner then chucks it over to the tester, who's often afraid to even touch the code. In their session, Cheezy and Ardita want to demonstrate what real team collaboration looks like. Chief technology officer and a cofounder of LeanDog, Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan has been teaching classes and coaching teams on agile and lean techniques since early 2004. Ardita Karaj is a passionate Agile coach, trainer, change agent and consultant in the Toronto area. Working at EPAM Systems, she brings more than 15 years of software development experience from different commercial and public organizations. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Melissa Perri is passionate about creating products that users will really love and also creating great teams with sustainable processes and a clear understanding of the end user. Melissa wants to go "Beyond 'Pretty'" in her AATC2016 conference talk, where she aims to change how people think about UX design. People tend to think that design is "very nebulous and fluffy, it's just making things pretty, but it's actually a very systematic and scientific approach to getting people to use your products." Sometimes that means taking a step back and using a holistic approach to addressing user needs and concerns that can't easily be fixed piecemeal. Melissa Perri is a product manager, UX designer and speaker based in New York City. As CEO of ProdUX Labs, Melissa works on strategy and training for product management and UX teams around the world. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Arlo Belshee spends all of his time working in "legacy" organizations: "legacy code, legacy culture, legacy team practices". In software, "legacy" generally means "full of bugs". But Arlo has an interesting concept: what if creating buggy code, we didn't. Arlo's topic at the Agile Alliance Technical Conference concerns eliminating bugs by not creating them in the first place, because, after all, bugs are optional and there are ways to develop without creating this. Arlo has lots of passion around this and has even created a new initiative with a nifty hashtag: #BugZero. Similar to the concept of "inbox zero" (zeroing out your email inbox to improve your efficacy), bug zero means "get the bugs out of your code and keep it that way." SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
After talking with Agile tester extraordinaire Lisa Crispin about test automation code, George Dinwiddie noticed that "the example test codes online are really tiny... They teach people enough to understand the test framework, but... over time they have a hard time putting the tests into practice." The problem is that as the code becomes larger and more complex, it's harder to maintain it long term. In his AATC2016 session, "The Evolutionary Anatomy of Test Automation Code", George will share some patterns he's noticed for making tests maintainable long term as the system gets larger and more complex as well as ideas about how to organize test codes. The trick, according to George, is to start thinking about the organization early, before the code is large and complex, so that when that does happen, you're better prepared. George Dinwiddie helps organizations develop software more effectively. He brings thirty-five years of development experience from electronic hardware and embedded firmware to business information technology. SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
James Lewis visits with Agile Amped at the first ever Agile Alliance Technical Conference to discuss microservices and Conway's Law. James is a self-described "coding architect" with Thoughtworks out of London, where he often leads teams and helps them build better software. Conway's Law, according to James, essentially says that how your teams look is how your software will end up looking. Says James, "If you have loosely coupled teams, then you have loosely coupled software. If you have tightly coupled teams, then you'll have tightly coupled software." A modular approach to building software, however would enable you to change software more easily and quickly without having to throw the whole thing out when you need to fix it. Together, these are the topics of James' session at AATC2016: "Microservices and Conway's Law". SolutionsIQ's Neville Poole hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile tester JoEllen Carter sits down with Agile Amped at Mile High Agile 2016 to chat about using "Testing to Build the Right Thing", the topic and title of the hands-on session she presented with Lisa Crispin. After enjoying their experience diving into story mapping, the duo decided to share it with a wider audience. Though testers aren't always invited to story mapping sessions traditionally, JoEllen points out that testers can help determine where weaknesses in a story are before it gets build into the product. JoEllen Carter has more than ten years of experience defining the role of tester on agile teams. Her experience in software development and testing began in the highly regulated and QA-intensive nuclear power industry, and now includes direct marketing donor management software, staffing software, e-commerce systems, and project management software. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Rose Fan has been an Agile road warrior for six years. To make her life (and others') easier, Rose is interested in how to set up highly effective distribute teams, whether it's one or two remote team members or it's a fully remote or 100% distributed team, where everyone is working from a different location, across different time zones. Rose gives advice on what team members in the various configurations can do to work at their most effective. Rose Fan is a lead consultant with ThoughtWorks, a global IT organization that has helped revolutionize the IT industry by being at the forefront of Agile and Continuous Delivery practices. She’s eager to share her experiences and conclusions to other Agile technologists. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Agile tester extraordinaire Lisa Crispin is back for another round with Agile Amped. This time she's talking about her presentation at Mile High Agile "Agile Testing to Build the Right Thing" (co-presented with JoEllen Carter). She also touches on some trends that she sees, some positive (e.g., people in the Agile field are recognizing testers as really valuable), others not so much (companies expecting that hiring an SDET will solve all their code quality problems). Lisa Crispin is the co-author of More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (2014, with Janet Gregory), Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (2009, also with Janet Gregory), co-author of Testing Extreme Programming (2002, with Tip House). Lisa enjoys working as a tester and sharing her experiences in the agile and testing communities. See our last podcast with Lisa here: http://www.solutionsiq.com/resources/... SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Jurgen Appelo, author of Management 3.0 and keynote speaker for Mile High Agile 2016, is back with his new book "Managing for Happiness" (due for release in June). Agile Amped was excited to sit down with him and discuss, among other things, the virtuous cycle between happiness and success, how frameworks can't simply be "installed" on people and how "recipes" or "workouts" for successful management resonate more with him. The goal in all this is to foster happiness throughout our organizations and empower managers to contribute to the proliferation of happiness. Because the research is clear: happy workers are more productive workers. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
There's always room for pie, right? Well, this isn't that kind of slice. Richard Lawrence introduces Agile Amped to a concept he calls feature mining, which he uses to "find the first slice" of work to do on a project. Feature mining asks four important questions of the group of the "right" people (i.e., people who can actually contribute to the solution of the problem at hand): 1. What makes it valuable? 2. Why is it big (and why don't we just go build it this afternoon)? 3. Where is the risk? 4. Where is the uncertainty? For each question, participants generate a list of answers. Then the group brainstorms different ways to slice the lists. (Surprisingly, answers tend to jump out at participants at this point.) Then comes the hard part: actually doing the work involved in the agreed-upon first slice. Richard Lawrence trains and coaches teams and organizations to become happier and more productive. Richard is one of a handful of Scrum Alliance Certified Enterprise Coaches and is a certified trainer of the accelerated learning method, Training from the Back of the Room. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Everyone in the Agile industry has had it: that one moment when you realize the effect Agile could have on you, your team, or your organization. Michele Sliger has become a connoisseur of such moments and collects them like butterflies, which are on display at http://www.sligerconsulting.com/light.... But can an organization also have a lightbulb moment? Michele Sliger has worked in software development for over 25 years and is the owner of Sliger Consulting Inc. She is the co-author of The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Dan Sharp stops by Agile Amped to discuss his Mile High Agile 2016 talk "Refactoring to Deeper Insight: Lessons Learned Applying Domain-Driven Design (DDD)" (co-presented with Paul Rayner). DDD is a new approach to refactoring legacy code, which is often a confusing mess of code in many languages like a huge pot of spaghetti with way too many cooks throwing ingredients in. This approach sheds light on refactoring legacy code by rethinking the system in design terms: how are objects being modeled, what are the naming conventions, how to ensure that each part of the system only does what it's supposed to do and nothing more, etc. Dan provides an example that hits close to home: his own experience redesigning a product for his employer Nexia. Dan Sharp is a life-long geek, having been fascinated with computers since early childhood. Dan is Senior Software Architect for the Nexia™ team at Ingersoll Rand, affording him the luxury of a startup environment backed by a multi-billion dollar company. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Today's businesses and organizations are faced with problems and opportunities that have never been faced before, and knowledge workers are important in the charge to resolve these problems. And yet these same businesses and organizations still operate under assumptions that don't apply to knowledge work and don't take into consideration the degree of difficulty and novelty inherent in the problem space. In her presentation at Mile High Agile this year (co-presented with Matt Barcomb), Cat Swetel proposes that businesses start implementing a more value-based roadmapping approach populated with options not commitments. "It's insane to dictate when a thing will be done when it hasn't been done before or it hasn't been done before in this context." Cat Swetel is a nerdy technologist with a finance degree. When she’s not helping teams and technology organizations improve processes and quality of work life, she’s probably reading feminist literature or making jokes about Bitcoin. Currently she’s very interested in smart contracts and the so-called trust web SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Playing cards, index cards and dice are some of the tools that Mike Clement uses to make learning fun because, as he puts it, "Learning shouldn't be an arduous activity." Mike's session at Mile High Agile this year is on "Playing to Learn". Many of the games that Mike uses, including the suggestively titled "Die Card Die!", teach Agile and Lean principles and engages players in a way that is both informative and enjoyable. "I can't force you to learn anything," Mike emphasizes to Agile Amped. "You're gonna learn what you're gonna learn and you're going to take the lessons that you're gonna take." To reinforce learning, Mike leverages debriefs where one person's a-ha moment may cause other lights to go on. Mike Clement is a husband, father of four, and currently a Software Craftsman and Co-founder of Greater Sum. Passionate about agile technical excellence, Mike founded and organizes Software Craftsmanship Atlanta, founded Utah Software Craftsmanship and previously organized the Agile Roots conference. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Women Who Code is an international, non-profit organization supporting women in technical careers. They even support casual coders, who may not be working professionally as coders but are still contributing to the tech space. Rylee Keys sits down with Agile Amped to discuss how this organization strives to inspire women to excel in technology and technical careers, in particular as it pertains to Denver and Boulder, CO. Rylee Keys is a software developer with a background in Agile, mobile, healthcare, eCommerce and social media SaaS platforms. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Pairing is a common concept for development teams: two developers working to produce superior code together. While their pairing role may change (e.g. from driver to navigator, etc.), it's generally assumed that pairing is only useful within development teams, but couldn't it be useful elsewhere as well? Pradeepa Narayanaswamy has been pioneering an approach to pair testing within Agile teams and also external stakeholders that provides each individual in the pair a new perspective of the application being developed and iterated on. Pradeepa shares with Agile Amped her experience of working with a salesperson to gain a new perspective on how customers actually use the application. The result is quicker, more valuable feedback that the developer can use early in the development cycle while it is still cheap, rather than late in the cycle. As an Agile Coach, Trainer and Consultant, Pradeepa Narayanaswamy is a self-proclaimed “Agile Passionista” who strongly believes in the agile principles used in transforming organizations to build superior quality products. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
It's all too common for the "business" to provide conflicting priorities for development teams, and Dominica DeGrandis is helping to get them re-aligned. She shares her experience with how LeanKit approached this exact problem internally. Dominica is presenting "From Divided to United--Aligning Technical and Business Teams" at Mile High Agile this year. Dominica DeGrandis teaches Kanban Flow to Devops enthusiasts. Her passion involves helping organizations improve workflow and optimize throughput. She is keen on providing visibility and transparency across teams to reveal mutually critical information. As Director of Learning & Development at LeanKit, Dominica combines experience, practice and theory to help teams level up their capability. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
Managers in an Agile organization have it tough: leadership and delivery teams have been given a clear understanding of how to "be Agile". Managers, though, have for a long time been left to fend for themselves. Steve Martin shares with Agile Amped that there is a way for managers to make their way back from the "land of the lost"--and he even has a nifty exercise, which he shares with us here! Steve Martin is a Principal Enterprise Agile Consultant at SolutionsIQ with over 20 years experience helping companies deliver exceptional results. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
According to Chris Shinkle, businesses that have been focused primarily on one thing (manufacturing hardware, developing new medications) are struggling to build the software that now drives... well, everything. Enter gamification. Gamification is more than just points and badges. Chris discusses how it can be used to increase engagement in users not of games but of future medications. The example he gives pertains to Alzheimer's medication. There's no shortage of new medications to bring to market, Chris says, but there is a real problem with engaging individuals willing to participate for the entirety of clinical trials. Who knows if this approach couldn't be the difference between "Game Over" and "1Up" for this area and countless others? Chris Shinkle is a thought leader and initiator of new ideas and continuous improvement at SEP. He has used these methods leading large, complex projects. He uses these ideas to train SEP engineers and coach clients. SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
But, really, if your organization is like most and is still operating under some grandiose "big master plan" (which is really just a big bad lies, since plans change quickly and frequently), then Matt Barcomb invites you to consider a more flow-based roadmapping approach that's more fluid and fits better with reality. Matt touches on the Lean principles (just in time, work in progress, etc.) that guide flow-based roadmapping, which is the topic of his conference presentation, to be delivered with Cat Swetel. Matt Barcomb has over 18 years of experience as a product development leader who takes a pragmatic, systems approach to change. He partners with organizations to help leadership teams develop & deploy strategy as well as optimize product management & development. Matt enjoys challenging mental models, simplifying the seemingly complex, and uncovering the “why” behind the “what”. And he spits at least one rhyme in this podcast, while SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook
AgileCamp speaker Jim Saliba discusses his talk "Coaching Agile Teams for High Engagement".Jim often finds that Agile coaches in the field aren't actually coaching; they're teaching and mentoring. Jim encourages coaches to be "inquisitive and ask questions and get people to decide on their own options of growth."
Teams and individuals that take ownership of their work out perform those that don’t, often by 50%! For high performance teams, ownership is essential. Learn how to help teams take ownership.
Mahesh Singh of Digite thinks that, whether or not Scrum is working for a team, they should consider using Kanban. The two approaches aren't in conflict with each other, because Kanban can be applied to any development process including Scrum.
Since 2006, Salesforce has practiced its own flavor of Enterprise-Scale Agile. After 9 years, in a department with heavy service components and new people everywhere, what are the challenges to preserving a healthy agile culture?
Kathryn Kuhn knows metrics. "There's no one metric to rule the team or that tells you the whole story." Kathryn is a transformation consultant (aka "Very senior Agile coach with Rally") that is often assigned to help really large companies deal with really large problems. Her AgileCamp session "Unlock Excellence with Agile Metrics" focused on three categories of outcomes that she helps her clients with:1. Adoption2. Operational3. BusinessYour metrics should provide the same kind of guidance as a car dashboard: no one metric is more important than any other (provided the tank is full, of course). Also of interest: EMPLOYEE Net Promoter score. Certainly something to think about.
Lead Agile coach at Western Digital Steve Sanoff discusses some of the technical aspects of his work coaching in the content solutions department of the company. He has his hands full with six teams operating under a model similar to Spotify's leveraging Continuous Integration (CI), two-week Sprints and a quick two-month release cycle. Steve presented on "The Funny Thing About Not Being Agile" at AgileCamp. The presentation touched on how the stupid things that people do when learning how to do and be Agile can be funny in retrospect. He also shared stories that coaches might be able to use in the field to tactfully show a client that someone else had a similar bonehead idea and the results were later laughable.
At the intersection of hardware, software, and innovation is WIKISPEED. An Agile hardware and engineering company of 500 collaborators in twenty countries, Team WIKISPEED uses test-first development practices, is run by Scrum teams, and produces road-legal cars, micro-houses, and social-good projects. Joe Justice shares how their 100-MPG road car was created in just three months through object-oriented design, iterative development, and agile project management. Joe describes how agile software techniques are applied to physical engineering and manufacturing, and how cross-functional team members can eliminate the constraints we imagine around traditional manufacturing. "We produce new modules of our car every week," he says. "We demo them every Thursday." Each module goes through a Sprint release cycle, a test cycle, and a release and ship once a week. The same Sprint process can be used in all kinds of product industries including, of all things, champagne.
Self-described "mentor-capitalist" talks anti-heroic leadership with Agile Amped at AgileCamp 2015 in Silicon Valley. Today's leadership, which includes managers, is often at a loss of how to provide leadership in their organizations. The literature of the day touts self-organizing teams who "don't need managers." Leaders and management, therefore, don't have clear models for how to help their own people succeed. Their people teeter between death by micromanagement and death by no management at all. Time to abandon the concept of "the one throat to choke"--because everyone up and down the organization is wising up to the fact that success is a team sport, not an Olympic competition.David is a proponent for helping leaders evolve into mentors, coaches, and advisers within their companies. Says David, "We've promoted leaders over the years based on what they know," but Agile doesn't buy into the follow-the-leader paradigm: Agile, operating under the assumption that the answer is not yet known, means iterating toward success. Hero-leaders don't work in today's creative economy. Enter the servant leader.
Father, mother, son, daughter--all of these terms connote both being and doing. What does it mean to be a daughter or mother, father or son? Manager and leader are other words with the concepts of being and doing built into it: what is a manager/leader and what does he or she do? Luke is championing the term "Agilist" as a person who is and does Agile. When doing and being are aligned--in other words, when an individual is and does their role, whether father or leader--their output is better. Luke proposes what he calls "serious play" as a way to get individuals to be and do their roles. "When you're in a state of play," he shares, "your doing and being are more aligned. You're actually in a place mentally when you're fully engaged."
After many years of experience with Agile transformations, Nicola has found that these changes often don't stick long term. At the root of this is the organization's culture type. Nicola often starts out at clients defining what their culture is. For example, is it a culture of fear? Such organizations tend not to allow failure or experimentation. Or perhaps it's a culture of "nice"? Seems nice, right? Except that these organizations tend not to embrace constructive debate and have employees that say they will go along with a decision but don't actually.
Widely recognized as a leading authority on software development, Dean Leffingwell is an author, serial entrepreneur, and software development methodologist. He is the creator of the Scaled Agile Framework, and author of five books on software development. His most recent books Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise, and Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises, form much of the basis of modern thinking on Lean-Agile software development principles and practices. Catch up with him has he discusses his Agile 2015 experience, the Future of SAFe and trends in the industry.
In agile, we have broad ambitions with no defining principles. We often talk about agile teams, people, departments, organizations and political campaigns, as if the definition of "agile" was obvious. And yet the Agile Manifesto and its principles were written for software development teams. Furthermore, many CEOs tell us how agile they are, because "we can move teams around on a whim" or because "we run sprints every week," but their teams can't produce working products rapidly, increasingly add technical debt, or shamble into work demoralized. Until we frame agile concepts around more general principles and modern psychological and system science research, our best advice will remain marginalized as the dreams of "software zealots."
The FAST Agile is a combination of Open Space Technology, Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), and Story Mapping. After watching hundreds of participants use open space technology to organize and hold a conference, Ron decided that such self-organization practices could also be applied to software development.Rather than relying control mechanisms like SAFe and LeSS, FAST Agile is a scalable agile framework that relies and individuals and interactions along with pulling work in to teams. Utilizing a 2 day sprint, FAST Agile implicitly requires teams to break their work down in to small chunks and to swarm the work in a #MobProgramming fashion.
In our journey to help create "more productive, humane, sustainable work places", we in the Agile community often have a tendency to look for a one-size-fits-all solution. But Agile transformations are as unique as the snowflakes requiring them. Diana Larsen's Agile Fluency model, which the industry veteran and pioneer discussed with us at Agile2015, offers a range of possible ways of operating to suit client and even practitioner needs.But first she wanted to clear up a common misconception: The Agile Fluency model isn't a maturity model. Diana shared. "It's a best-fit model... Getting to the end of the scale isn't necessarily the right place to be." The Agile Fluency model, then, can be thought of as having four bus zones: you have to go through each zone to get to subsequent zones -- but Zone 1 may be the best place for you to be, in which case you get off the bus and thrive there. The Agile Fluency model aims to help organizations identify the benefits and tradeoffs they are willing to make and then help them locate the zone in the model that maps best to the identified criteria.
From the perspective of the professional coach, coaching executive leaders is different than most other coaching situations. With executives, you are not only a facilitator of their inner process of discovery, as is true with any other professional coaching process: you are also their disorienting partner, provoking them into new ways of thinking. You are their thinking partner, sharing models, frameworks, concepts and ideas that inform them and expand their repertoire of ideas. You’re their truth-teller, giving them feedback that no one else will, reminding them of what they are committed to even as they want to run away. Finally, you are their mentor: teaching them about and guiding them through the nuances of enterprise and leadership agility.
One of the most challenging and trouble-prone aspects of product development is discovering the right product requirements to deliver at the right time—and for the right customer. User stories and product backlogs are useful tools, but they aren't the only elements you'll need. Ellen shares her common-sense approach to agile requirements that will help you reduce risk and deliver value. Survey powerful ways to have colorful and collaborative requirements conversations. Discover how acceptance tests, prototypes, and models articulate important details. Understand the characteristics of a healthy backlog and review the methods that agile teams use when mining the backlog for business value.
Innovation, innovation, innovation. It's all you hear in meetings and all you read about in business books and magazines. The confusing aspect behind all of the innovation hype is that we rarely put thought behind how we design environments for which innovation can emerge. I've found that rarely does meaningful innovation occur when people are directly incentivized or tasked with doing so. The best you can do as a leader, is empower your people and design an environment where innovation can emerge.
Collaboration is considered a fundamental part of "being agile" but how can you help your team understand HOW to collaborate? "Improvising" is not really about being funny, or panicking when things go wrong. It's a simple process that groups of actors follow in order to create interesting stories and scenes without the aid of a script. This session will show how the five 'secrets' of improvisational theatre can support an agile team's growth and also give you some practical guidance on how to get your team's collaborative and creative juices flowing from the very start!Follow Paul's journey on Twitter - @PaulKGoddard
Change is often much slower than hoped for, and more painful than anticipated. In the end, you may be left with feelings of frustration and dismay rather than the benefits you hoped for. How can we make change--whether it's adopting Scrum at the team level, or agile at the enterprise level--more successful, and more enlivening? Through her work with many organizations, Esther has distilled principles for successful transformation into Six Rules for Change. These principles address both the complexity of the organization and the complexity of the human experience of change. They provide a set of touch-points to guide Change Artists as they support and enable change in their organizations.
Jim Benson talks about why you should stop using user stories and start using hypotheses.
We all know that User Stories capture goals from the user perspective along with their business value. On the flip side, how can we ensure we've thoroughly examined the ways in which hackers, criminals and adversaries can exploit those stories to get access to our most valuable resources: Our Data! Abuser stories is a way to capture potential vulnerabilities in software systems, using the standard user story format. While user stories are written from a user perspective, abuser stories are written from an enemy or attacker’s perspective and describe the enemy’s mal-intent and motivation.
Pat Reed addresses many of the enterprise adoption "blockers" that companies may encounter.
When will it be done?” That is the first question your customers ask you once you start work for them. And, for the most part, it is the only thing they are interested in until you deliver. Whether your process is predictable or not is judged by the accuracy of your answer. Think about how many times you have been asked that question and think how many times you have been wrong. Now think about how much harder it is to answer that question when practicing Agile at scale. Your customers most likely feel like they have better odds of winning the lottery than they do of your next Agile project coming in on time. That you don't know your odds of success is not necessarily your fault. You have been taught to collect the wrong metrics, implement the wrong policies, and make the wrong decisions. Until now. This session will introduce how to utilize the basic metrics of flow to more effectively manage the uncertainty associated with very large scale software development. In it, we will discuss how to leverage the power of advanced analytics like Cumulative Flow Diagrams, Cycle Time Scatterplots, and Monte Carlo Simulations to drive predictability at all levels of the organization. Your customers demand better predictability. Isn’t it time you delivered?
The industry holds that both Mentoring skill and Professional Coaching skill are useful for ScrumMasters, agile coaches, and managers. Yet, the differences between these approaches is not crystal clear for most people. It's time to show more than tell. Learn about the anatomy of powerful Coaching conversations and Mentoring conversations, see how these skill sets address problems in radically different ways and become clearer on when to use which.
Ed Kraay and Stas Zvinyatskovsky discuss Yahoo's incredible come- back story and their strategic shift towards business agility
Jeff discusses the fact that only 39% of Scrum Teams have working software at the end of a Sprint - that means that 61% of Scrum teams are not meeting the second principle of the manifesto. This is the biggest problem with Agile today. Aggressive Scrum focuses on using Scrum practices to actually deliver value Sprint after Sprint. Like a synchronized bike team where the leader cleaves the air, a successful Scrum team follows tried-and-true principles to realize value. Agile doesn't mean doing whatever you want; it means working together toward a common vision and producing a potentially shippable product increment at the end of every Sprint. Keeping with the bike team analogy, "the guy leading the bike team [the ScrumMaster] is parting the resistance. And the faster they go, the more resistance there is... and the more necessary it is for the ScrumMaster to block and tackle."
Brian Bozzuto discusses his experiences moving from the consulting side to the client side. What is it like to to be the manager you once tried to coach?
The Agility Health Assessment tool is designed for companies that are scaling Agile and want visibility into the performance and health of their teams and enterprise.
David Scott Bernstein discusses his new book "Beyond Legacy Code: Nine Practices to Extend the Life (and value) of Your Software" with over 30 years of experience David shares stories and valuable lessons in Software Development
Johanna discusses her conference sessions, her experiences so far and her new book "Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization."
Anders Wallgren discusses life at Electric Cloud, upcoming events and the importance of continuous integration.
LeSS is a lightweight (agile) framework for scaling Scrum to more than one team. It was extracted out of the experiences of Bas and Craig while Scaling Agile development in many different types of companies, products and industries over the last ten years.LeSS consists of the LeSS Principles, the Framework, the Guides and a set of experiments. The LeSS framework is divided into two frameworks: basic LeSS for 2-8 teams and LeSS Huge for 8+ teams.But what does that all really mean? Find out.
LeSS is a lightweight (agile) framework for scaling Scrum to more than one team. It was extracted out of the experiences of Bas and Craig while Scaling Agile development in many different types of companies, products and industries over the last ten years.LeSS consists of the LeSS Principles, the Framework, the Guides and a set of experiments. The LeSS framework is divided into two frameworks: basic LeSS for 2-8 teams and LeSS Huge for 8+ teams.But what does that all really mean? Find out.
Where have we come from and where are we going? Agile over the years as seen by Shane Hastie.
Where have we come from and where are we going? Agile over the years as seen by Shane Hastie.
Ron and Chet discuss their conference experience, thoughts on the best sessions so far, trends in the industry and so much more!Buckle up.
Drum Roll Please..... - Form Stable Teams - Value Cohesion - Coach the Team - Watch Where You Place the Water Cooler - Help the Team Set Specific and Challenging Performance Goals Bonus Step* - Listen to this podcast.
Drum Roll Please..... - Form Stable Teams - Value Cohesion - Coach the Team - Watch Where You Place the Water Cooler - Help the Team Set Specific and Challenging Performance Goals Bonus Step* - Listen to this podcast.
Transforming an organization to become more agile requires more than just process change. Rather, it requires a complete culture shift. Sustainable, effective agile transformations affect all the elements of culture such as, leadership style, leadership values, work structures, reward systems, processes, and of course the work habits of people.
The responsibility process consists of a number of levels of progressive awareness:blame: looking outward and pointing at others as the source of your problems: they didn't deliver their part of the project in time for me to complete my workjustification: finding reasons in your environment for why things are the way they are: my computer wasn't working well and it slowed me downshame: an inward laying of blame or guilt for the situation: why can't I work harder and get this done?obligation: the sense that you have no choice but to get something done: I have to get this done because people are expecting itresponsibility: the target state of owning up to the situation and actively engaging from a positive position of power: I will complete the project because it gives me the opportunity to master this skill and opens doors to new ideasThere are two associated states that you also need to be aware of:denial: you do not believe that a problem exists or choose to ignore its existence. this is an avoidance mechanism that only serves to delayquit: an means to avoid the pain of coping with the other states. this is a passive attempt to resolve the issue but still leaves the underlying problem unresolved and likely to repeat.Once you have gained awareness of this mental model of responsibility, there are three keys to engaging to successfully reach an empowered state of responsibility:intention: you must enter a mindset where you are willing to act from a position of responsibilityawareness: you must recognize the problem you are addressing and your mental state relative to the problemconfrontation: you must look inward to discover the facts of the problem so you can confront it and yourself to find ideas and solutions
The responsibility process consists of a number of levels of progressive awareness:blame: looking outward and pointing at others as the source of your problems: they didn't deliver their part of the project in time for me to complete my workjustification: finding reasons in your environment for why things are the way they are: my computer wasn't working well and it slowed me downshame: an inward laying of blame or guilt for the situation: why can't I work harder and get this done?obligation: the sense that you have no choice but to get something done: I have to get this done because people are expecting itresponsibility: the target state of owning up to the situation and actively engaging from a positive position of power: I will complete the project because it gives me the opportunity to master this skill and opens doors to new ideasThere are two associated states that you also need to be aware of:denial: you do not believe that a problem exists or choose to ignore its existence. this is an avoidance mechanism that only serves to delayquit: an means to avoid the pain of coping with the other states. this is a passive attempt to resolve the issue but still leaves the underlying problem unresolved and likely to repeat.Once you have gained awareness of this mental model of responsibility, there are three keys to engaging to successfully reach an empowered state of responsibility:intention: you must enter a mindset where you are willing to act from a position of responsibilityawareness: you must recognize the problem you are addressing and your mental state relative to the problemconfrontation: you must look inward to discover the facts of the problem so you can confront it and yourself to find ideas and solutions
Tim's journey towards the year of living shamelessly - and what that means for his every day life.
Can you mix distribute open source culture with agile and lean principles? Sonatype is a unique company of open source leaders that produces software development support tools for companies that are struggling to keep track of their usage and risks of open source software components. Mark discusses how this startup has successfully used Scrum with completely distributed teams spread across multiple time zones. Find out what pre-conditions exist, principles we’re discovering, practices we use and continuing challenges we face as we coordinate the work of multiple teams across an open source product line with everyone working from a home-based office.
A story map is a simple way to visualize your product idea from your users’ perspective. Mapping your product's story uses the same approach scriptwriters use to think through a movie or TV story idea. It's fast, collaborative, and telling your product's story helps you spot the holes in your thinking. Once created, a map lets you think through options and alternative ideas that'll make your product better. It's easy to slice out what you think is a smallest viable product, and to identify the next experiment that'll help you validate your product concept.
Einstein said "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them" yet many organizations that want to adopt Agile end up using existing organizational structures to make it happen. That is, they create a centralized team to roll Agile out, define metrics, create a dashboard, communication and training plan and finally a Sharepoint site to push the change outwards. The outcome ends up being another failed Agile transformation story because people either resisted change or they failed to change their organizational culture.This isn't an 'Agile' problem, it's a structure problem. The real issue is that organizational structures are designed to serve the internal purposes of the organization, not their customers or the value they create for their customers. Jason and Declan explore how real organizations are thriving by structuring in radically different ways.
Do you work in an organization that expects development to be agile but doesn’t see any advantage of changing the way the rest of the organization operates? Do your colleagues in sales, marketing, finance, legal, HR, governance, etc., unintentionally make your job more difficult just by doing things they way they’ve always done them? Do you try to explain that agile requires changes across the organization, only to hear, “But agile is all about development, right?”The reality is that if we want to be successful with agile, I mean truly reap the benefits of what we expect to get from agility, then we need to embrace agile throughout the full value chain. In other words, the non-development parts of the organization have to embrace agile and align their efforts with those of development.
Manny Gonzalez, talks about what's next for the Scrum Alliance! He is 90 days in to his new role as CEO and he is ready to rock the future!
Will Evans discusses the challenge that companies face in creating products customers actually want, reducing cost, and eliminating waste in the process. The lean thinker does this in part through experimentation.Teams practicing LeanUX inside of organizations embracing Agile have developed a set of principles and methods for experimentation based on collaboration, customer research, problem space exploration, set-based design of solution hypotheses, and tight feedback loops. These approaches increase the optionality in the product development pipeline while mitigating risk. These principles and methods in experimental design based on the scientific method don't come naturally, but they are very useful and valuable if you are interested in increasing organizational learning, reducing risk, and delivering real value to customers.
Brains, Beauty, Agile Testing, and Donkeys with Lisa Crispin at Agile 2015- what more could you possibly need?
Mike Vizdos talks about the power of the Scrum Alliance Coaches clinic and why its so important stop by!
Learn how to build the bridge from the traditional government practices to a brave new world where we can plan, estimate and still inject agility with Brandon Raines at Agile 2015 - Washington D.C.
Scrum coaches say many things - both good and bad. It's a toughbalancing act to be effective. This might help your coaching & teams.
Maria facilitated the CST/CSC retreat here at the Global Scrum Gathering in Phoenix. Maria is also the author of a new book titled "Workaholic" - where she offers her insight on the importance of maintaining a sustainable place.
We can't always be Agile. By understanding the linkage betweenbusiness models, architecture and agility, we can make faster pivot decisions
Michael discusses his passion around group interaction and getting people to interact in meaningful ways. Podcasts are brought to you SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
Michael and Tom discuss their session at Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix - focused on understanding how complexity thinking can be applied in Scrum Team situations and specifically in the Product Owner context. Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance
Kalpesh Shah enterprise Agile coach talks about his experience driving innovation by involving teams earlier in the vision definition and hypothesis generation process. By providing access to user behavior analytics after deployment we help teams asses the impact of their work closing the feedback loop. Kalpesh is also a sketch note ninja shows us his skills from the Global Scrum Gathering in Phoenix. Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance.
The power of paired coaching - finding balance, fluidity and synergy together. Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
Use Agile Chartering and Liftoff to propel your project on a trajectorythat delivers results. Every time.Discover Agile chartering and how you can establish the project container you need to deliver successful results. Explore how Agile chartering with Liftoff adds context and depth to the project start strategies you already use.Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance
As an industry that prizes stories, why don't we have more successstories? If we've got the people, process and technology, what's missing?Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance
Zuzi Sochova co-chair for the Global Scrum Gathering in Prague this November discusses her session at the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix focused on mastering retrospectives.
Richard Cheng on "So you want to become a Scrum Trainer" through a Pecha Kucha style presentation and how hard the presentation style has been to master! Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance.
Lance Dacy discuss his role as a founder of DFW Scrum (in Dallas), one of the largest and most prominent Scrum user groups in the world and what it takes to keep the group flourishing.
Carlton Nettleton talks about using story cubes to write more creative user stories. Using story cubes with your teams can help inspire conversations, spark creativity and collaboration! Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
Catherine Louis talks us through her session here at the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix on how to use Design Thinking techniques to explore & identify agile transition failure patterns.Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
We captured this impromptu conversation between some of the greatest minds in the industry and trust us you are going to want to see the magic that ensued. You're welcome. Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance.
Are you tired of being afraid of having conversations with your manager or executives? Bob Hartman discusses how to speak with the C-Suite in a meaningful way!Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
Mike Cohn is the Global Scrum Gathering 2015 Keynote, his topic “Let Go of Knowing: How Holding onto Views May Be Holding You Back” exposes ways that biases may be preventing you from questioning your assumptions, why being open to new views is hard but vital, and why beginners so often think they know it all.Let go of knowing, and open yourself up to learning. Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
Steve Denning, is the author of over 600 Forbes articles and eight books, including the award winning book - Leader's Guide to Radical Management (2010). Steve is heavily involved with the Scrum Alliance's Learning Consortium. This podcast is brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance.
Jim McCarthy is the closing keynote at the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix. His session “Freedom, Culture Design and Our PossibleDestiny” is focused on the idea of 'Culture hacks'. A culture is the set of shared attributes, values, goals, and practices that both describes and shapes a group.Our era is increasingly characterized by an emergent "software culture." Not only is software itself creating much of our global wealth, but the unique challenges of creating out software have demanded wholly new types of engineered corporate culture from us. Various high tech development disciplines have been articulated and "packaged up." In response to the demands of software, we have created several seminalmanagement "movements" (such as Agile, Scrum, XP, etc.). These movements represent the birth of culture design. Culture hacking is a distinct kind of culture design. Culture hacks express a particular hacker ethos, an ethos originating in freedom and the world of software hacking. Good culture hacking will tend to promotefreedom, extend openness, and embody rationality and design elegance. As our culture becomes increasingly and fruitfully hacked, we will grow in effectiveness and ambition and will bring more and more problems into scope. This could trigger an unprecedented Golden Era, an age of unparalleled magnificence.Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
JJ Sutherland was an Executive Producer at NPR specializing in startups and building teams to tackle the most difficult stories of a generation from 9/11 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. JJ takes us on a journey through his experience implementing Scrum practices while on the ground in some of the most dangerous places in the world. It doesn't get much better than this. Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance
Join us as we sit down with Peter Green at the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix and discuss the changing world of work. Peter describes how Lean, agile, and lean startup are evolutions of the same mindset, and how with an aligned message, we might just change the world of work as we know it. Stay tuned for more podcasts from the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix this week! Podcasts are brought to you by SolutionsIQ.
Daniel and Stephen discuss the blood, sweat and tears that went in to planning the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix 2015!
Luke discusses a new approach to conducting enterpriseretrospectives that overcomes the limitations of traditional models.
Joe discusses Scrum for full-scaling manufacturing: a groundbreaking agile discipline that combines Scrum with modular architecture and Lean/XP practices.
Chet and Ron discuss hot topics, current trends and future directions of XP, Scrum and the industry in general.
Harvey Wheaton, Chairman of the Board for the Scrum Alliance, discusses the new Scrum Alliance offices in Colorado, current trends in scrum, certifications, and Agile as an industry.
Hope High School faculty & students share how they use Scrum to pivot the lives of some of the most disadvantaged students in Phoenix. We sit down with John Miller and Mark French to discuss how this idea was born, what it took to make it a reality, and the results that were produced. Krissyn Miller the principle of Hope High School and one of the teachers involved in the transformation Chris BuehnerKemper, share their experiences from within - including stories from their students, the passion of the hard working teachers and the power of change and that inspired this school and its community to change the way they worked. Videos are brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance
With an eclectic background ranging from experience working with zoo's, theme parks, hospitality and more - Manny Gonzalez could not be more excited to take on his new adventure as the Scrum Alliance's first ever CEO. Get to know Manny, his plans for the Scrum Alliance and his new passion for Scrum! Stay tuned this week for more podcasts on the ground at the Global Scrum Gathering Phoenix Brought to you by SolutionsIQ and the Scrum Alliance.
Agile2014 Keynote speaker Diana Larsen reminds us of how to reclaim our goal of reaching for and achieving what she calls “the best job ever” by focusing on the three aims: finding work you love, working with purpose, and caring for your tribe.
The awesome David Bland stops by the BigVisible un-booth at Agile2014. Topic for discussion: Innovative Accounting will land you in prison, but Innovation Accounting will land you a product that matters. David covers the basics of Innovation Accounting and dives into Pirate Metrics, Lean Analytics Phases and the Passionate User Model.
Carol McEwan, Managing Director at the Scrum Alliance, highlights the organization's growth strategy and evolution over the past few years.
Creator of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Dean Leffingwell, stops by the BigVisible booth to talk about recent updates. The latest version of SAFe features extensive refinements to many elements of the methodology infrastructure, as well as new content and guidance that helps enterprises better organize around value delivery, and improve coordination of large value streams.