LeadingAgile SoundNotes: an Agile Podcast

During a recent LeadingAgile offsite Jeff Vogelsang and Tom Churchwell sat down with Dave Prior to break down the TIES approach of Agile planning that they have bee using with clients. This approach been used to help organizations who need a way to manage long term strategy planning that creates visibility all the way down to the execution level. TIES addresses planning at 4 levels:

• Themes – Strategic long term goals broken down into time boxes of 1 to 3 quarters.
• Initiatives – Themes are broken down into elements that collectively address the theme. These are broken down into time boxes of 1 to 3 months.
• Epics – Initiatives are broken down into Epics which would take between 1 to 3 sprints to deliver.
• Stories – Epics are broken down into User Stories that are small enough to be completed by a Team within a Sprint, ideally within 1 to 3 days.

In this interview Jeff and Tom explain the different level of planning TIES, how they work and how they can be used to help management understand their capacity to introduce more work.

Contact Info for Jeff Vogelsang

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffvogelsang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffvogelsang/ Email: jeff.vogelsang@leadingagile.com

Contact Info for Tom Churchwell

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tchurchwell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomchurchwell/ Email: Tom.Churchwell@leadingagile.com

The TIES podcast Tom Churchwell and Dave did previously

https://www.leadingagile.com/podcast/agile-planning-ties-tom-churchwell/

Certified Scrum Master class in Las Vegas

https://www.leadingagile.com/event/certified-scrummaster-training-nevada-10-14-17/

For information on the special CSM training discount available to attendees of the Digital PM Summit

Email: training@leadingagile.com

2017 Digital PM Summit

http://bureauofdigital.com/summits/digital-pm-2017/

In this Agile 2017 interview Johanna Rothman talks with Dave about her new book “Create Your Successful Agile Project Collaborate, Measure, Estimate and Deliver” and how teams that are struggling to make Scrum work may want to adopt an approach that focuses on continuous flow in order to deliver value for their customers with greater frequency. The interview includes a conversation about working with User Stories that are sized to only take the team a single day to complete, how this can help teams that are struggling with estimation, and how Johanna’s approach to writing (she averages about 1 book a year in addition to posting to her blog every few days) involves writing for just 15 minutes a day.

For more on Johanna:
Web: https://www.jrothman.com
Books: https://www.jrothman.com/books/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/johannarothman?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannarothman/

Radtac Co-CEO Laura Powers took some time out of her busy schedule at Agile 2017 to talk with Dave Prior about the benefits an organization can gain from introducing play into the workplace. In this interview she explains how it can help unlock creativity within the team. Laura led an additional session at Agile 2017 called “It’s Not Just About Culture: Co-creating an Awesome Agile Climate in an Imperfect World”. During their conversation Laura explains how to create a working climate that supports safety for knowledge workers. If you work in an environment that does not have a supportive climate, there are tips in her for how to cope with that as well.

If you’d like to get in touch with Laura:

Radtac: https://www.radtac.com/about-us/page/3/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurapowers
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurampowers/

Laura’s session descriptions from Agile 2017
It’s Not Just About Culture: Co-creating an Awesome Agile Climate in an Imperfect World - http://sched.co/ATWv
The Power of Play - Coaching Teams to Play at Work - http://sched.co/ATXu

At Agile 2017 Diana Larsen sat down with Dave Prior to talk about the Agile Fluency model. In this interview she explains what it is (a way of thinking about what benefits an organization needs to get from it’s teams) and how she and James Shore co-founded the Agile Fluency Project with the hope of moving past the question of whether or not a given team, practice, etc. was Agile or not. They wanted to shift the focus to a more positive approach that would help teams develop routine, skillful ease as they move further down the path of adopting agile practices with the ultimate goal of providing enough benefit to the organization so that they, in turn, receive the organizational support for continuous improvement.

If you’d like to learn more about Agile Fluency, please check out the following:
Your Path through Agile Fluency https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html
The Agile Fluency Project http://agilefluency.org

And if you’d like to learn more about Diana Larsen check out:
FutureWorks Consulting - https://www.futureworksconsulting.com
Her books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Diana-Larsen/e/B002BM7U7Q
Diana on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DianaOfPortland

This podcast features LeadingAgile SVP and Executive Consultant John Tanner who joins Dave Prior foo discuss how to take on a “Goal-Question-Metric” (GQM) approach to gaining clarity on how well Agile is being employed across the organization. Last Spring at Agile Day Atlanta, John led a session called  “The GQM Approach to Agile Metrics”. The session was very well received and when we posted the video of John’s presentation and the slide deck he used, there was a great response and we thought it was worth digging a little deeper on.

SHOW NOTES

01:08 Interview Begins 

02:18 Three distinct ways of looking at metrics

05:22 What is GQM and how does it work?

06:14 How does an organization know if they are asking the right questions? 

08:33 How to know if your questions are well formed

10:00 How do we collect the data?

12:37 Interpreting the data

13:29 Metrics are not the answer. They are just data points that need to be investigated

16:29 Debating whether it is okay to ask the team NOT to work extra hours

17:47 The metrics are very seductive and can create an illusion of understanding

19:48 In their sexy Monopoly pajamas rolling around in money

21:00 GQM and Agile

22:09 For coaches - how to help your customer figure out what their goals actually are

23:25 Contacting John

24:08 Podcast Ends

CONTACTING JOHN

Web: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/john-tanner/

Email: john.tanner@leadingagile.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tannerjs

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tannerjs

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tannerjs/

Blog Post w/ Video and Slides: https://www.leadingagile.com/2017/05/agile-metrics-gqm-approach/

The GQM Book Referred to in the Podcast:  

Aligning Organizations Through Measurement: The GQM+Strategies Approach (The Fraunhofer IESE Series on Software and Systems Engineering)

http://amzn.to/2x30uxd

In this interview with David Bland, he and Dave Prior discuss definitions of lean startup and design thinking as well as his passion for building businesses that matter. David goes into detail about how he works with existing companies to create new lines of businesses using internal venture capital, as well as how the scientific method applies to business.

LeadingAgile CEO and Founder, Mike Cottmeyer led two sessions at Agile 2017: Agile Transformations Explained and Faster Food and a Better Place to Sleep: Applying Agile Outside of Software. In this interview Mike and Dave discuss how an organization can get better at setting appropriate constraints, making iterative and incremental decisions that inform execution and creating feedback loops that will help drive a more successful adoption of agile across the organization.

If you’d like to learn more about Mike’s sessions at Agile 2017:
Agile Transformations Explained: sched.co/ATZ5
Faster Food and a Better Place to Sleep: Applying Agile Outside of Software: sched.co/ATa2

And if you would like to contact Mike, here is how you can reach him:
Web: leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer/
Twitter: twitter.com/mcottmeyer
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cottmeyer/

Yi Lv became the first Certified Scrum Trainer in China in 2008, and is currently an Agile coach at Odd-e. Yi is also an expert in Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) and in this interview, he talks about the session he led at Agile 2017, “LeSS without Scrum”. Yi’s presentation focused on explaining how you can implement the principles of Large Scale Scrum in an environment that does not have a proper Scrum implementation at the team level.

If you’d like to check out Yi’s experience report on the subject you can find it here:
https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/experience-reports/less-without-scrum/

If you’d like to contact Yi here is how you can reach him
Email: yi.lv@odd-e.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/yi_lv

Dr. Harry Koehnemann is the Director of Technology at 321 Gang and a SAFe Fellow. Harry led a session at Agile 2017 conference entitled: When Worlds Collide: Regulatory Compliance Meets Lean Agile Development. During his talk, he discussed some common mistakes companies make when trying to scale Agile in the face of regulatory compliance. In this interview Harry and Dave discuss his talk at the conference and some of the ways in which compliance requirements can be incorporated into development using Scaled Agile Framework.

Click here for an audio only version of this podcast

If you’d like to learn more about Harry, you can find him at
Twitter: https://twitter.com/harrykoehnemann
Web: http://321gang.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-koehnemann-7a76191/