LeadingAgile SoundNotes: an Agile Podcast

In this episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, Devin Hedge makes the case for focusing on Agile IT Operations in order to increase speed within your organization. If you’ve been considering working with (or have already adopted) DevOps, the information Devin shares in this interview may help you discover how your organizations Operations function is limiting your ability to increase flow. Show Notes 01:08 Podcast Begins - Introductions 01:36 Background on Devin 02:14 Topic Introduction: Agile IT Operations 02:49 The relationship between Agile IT Operations and DevOps 03:48 Why DevOps is picking up again 04:34 Our new problems are our old problems 05:29 It’s about awareness and maturity 06:37 An indicator that IT Ops is where you need to focus your attention in order to increase your speed 07:02 Speed creates dependencies 08:52 Why IT Operations is the bottleneck 10:18 Agile is not going to fix your lack of solid disaster recovery planning, but it may force you to acknowledge that you need to do something about it 11:41 Automating the process of server creation all the way through the system 15:02 How to get started with understanding what the issues actually are 16:46 What do we do with the folks who need something new to do after we automate? 18:22 An example of automated templates for virtual machine creation 20:12 Organizational Debt = Technical Administrative Debt 21:50 A case study in how Agile IT Operations can impact an organization 24:50 Not trusting the automation and not being able to see the ball moving at 90 mph 27:27 How do you maintain the situational awareness that can’t come from an algorithm set up to review logs? 30:37 It’s all about establishing and maintaining a “practice” 33:49 How do I get started with this? Where can I get more information on Agile IT Operations? 34:44 How Lean Practices and Value Stream Mapping can help you get started 36:55 How gaining visibility and awareness can help you establish yourself within the organization you work for 37:54 How does this work within the context of scaling to things like SAFe? 39:51 Failure is a gift - don’t blink! 41:34 How to reach Devin Links from the podcast The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim http://amzn.to/2i3pURL Additional titles by Gene Kim http://amzn.to/2i3xDPI LeadingAgile Basecamps https://www.leadingagile.com/the-journey/ Contacting Devin If you’d like to get in touch with Devin with follow up questions you can reach him at: LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/devin-hedge/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/agiledevin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devinhedge Contacting Dave If you’d like to get in touch with Dave LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo For Information on LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes If you’d like to attend one of LeadingAgile’s CSM or CSPO classes, you can find a full list of upcoming classes here: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Student Q&A: Estimating Work for Contracts when your Agile Consultancy is Bidding Against Waterfall Competitors In this podcast, LeadingAgile Enterprise Transformation Consultant, Devin Hedge joins Dave Prior to discuss a question from one of our recent CSM/CSPO students who wanted to know how to estimate work for contracts if the Agile consulting he works for is bidding against a waterfall organization that may be providing a more detailed bid. If you’d like to get in touch with Devin with follow up questions you can reach him at: LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/devin-hedge/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/agiledevin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devinhedge Here are links to the resources Devin recommends for further information: Defense Acquisition University http://dau.dodlive.mil/tag/agile/ Agile Contracts: Creating and Managing Successful Projects with Scrum http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118630947.html If you’d like to attend one of LeadingAgile’s CSM or CSPO classes, you can find a full list of upcoming classes here: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/ And if you have a question you’d like to submit for a podcast, just send us an audio file to use in an upcoming episode just send it to dave.prior@leadingagile.com

This podcast features a question from one of the students in a recent LeadingAgile CSM class. Cheri (the student) asked for advice on how to use Jira with Scrum and her organization's SDLC. In the podcast LeadingAgile Principle Consultant, Derek Huether, offers advice on how to go about using/customizing Jira to work with Scrum and an existing SDLC. If you'd like to reach Derek with follow up questions you can find him: the LeadingAgile site (https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/), via Twitter (https://twitter.com/derekhuether), on his personal website (http://www.derekhuether.com) or via email at derek@leadingagile.com.

Derek Huether has been working on new blog post that outlines 3 things you need to do to establish better productivity practices. The blog post will be live in a few days on the LeadingAgile Field Notes site (https://www.leadingagile.com/blog/). In the meantime, check out this podcast where Dave Prior and Derek discuss the triangle of productivity, how to understand what enables you to get more done and the importance of learning to hack yourself for greater productivity. 00:09 Podcast Begins 00:23 Topic Introduction - Patterns on what makes people productive or kills their productivity 01:13 The patterns of success - system, ritual and habit 01:32 Where the data comes from 02:36 Getting clarity the process of productivity 03:10 An example: Scrum 04:14 Personal Kanban as an example 05:25 Holding yourself accountable vs. Making a commitment 06:37 Testing out different personal productivity systems 09:09 The myth of productivity guru’s and developing habits out of rituals 10:54 Learning to do X every day because of what happens when you don’t 11:23 Two systems Derek uses almost daily to increase his productivity 12:00 The importance of breaks and downtime to reset 13:07 If the information being shared requires too much time to convey the message, the message is lost 13:43 How many hours a day are you actually able to be productive 14:22 No one is productive for 8-9 hours a day without a break 15:05 Why you need to reset: “It takes more and more effort to get less and less out of me” 15:46 Planning for personal maintenance 17:15 You need a change of scenery to recharge 17:38 Going to Lowes “OH MY GOD THAT IS SO BORING!” 17:58 Focusing on a different problems to recharge 19:13 If I don’t see progress, my productivity is going to go down and down 19:25 Creating self maintenance tasks and putting them on the board so you don’t skip them 20:35 Is taking a break part of the process? 21:17 Habits can show you if you are being productive 21:36 Hacking yourself to become more productive 23:00 Am I really committed to doing what I am working on now? If not, why are you doing it? 24:04 Dealing with writer’s block 24:42 It’s not about getting the most done. It’s about becoming a student of your productivity 25:27 Having an approach to help you work through things like writer’s block 25:50 Managing procrastination - driven and optimistic vs. pessimistic and indifferent 26:45 What can you do to make yourself more driven and optimistic 26:57 A fifth quadrant - giving yourself permission to not be productive 27:54 Finding the checkpoint so you can take a break - It’s OK! A link to the blog post will be posted here as soon as the blog is live Here is a link to the twitter picture mentioned in the podcast Links from the Podcast: A link to the blog post will be posted here as soon as the blog is live Here is a link to the pictures mentioned in the podcast: The Triangle of Productivity https://www.instagram.com/p/BMhrTBcAPdM/ The 4 Quadrants of Productivity https://www.instagram.com/p/BNUVR07Avjw/ Reaching Derek: On the LeadingAgile website: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/ On his blog: http://www.derekhuether.com On Twitter: https://twitter.com/derekhuether Agile Baltimore Agile Baltimore and the Baltimore Lean Coffee Meetup can be found here: http://www.meetup.com/Agile-Baltimore-Group/

In this episode of LeadingAgile's SoundNotes, Tim Wise joins Dave Prior to answer some questions from CSM and CSPO students about how Business Analysts, Systems Analysts and Product Managers can work with Scrum Teams. If you are interested in learning more about LeadingAgile's Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, please visit http://www.leadingagile.com/training/ If you would like to reach Tim, you can find him here: LeadingAgile http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/tim-wise/ WiseAgile http://www.wiseagile.com Tim on Twitter https://twitter.com/timswise Tim on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwise

LeadingAgile' Tim Wise spent some time talking with Dave Prior about how important stable teams are to making Agile work. Tim and Dave also discuss the impact of not having them and what you can do about it. Show Notes 00:08 Interview Start and Tim introduction 00:53 - Topic Introduction - Why you need stable teams to make Agile work 02:03 - Tim explains what stable teams are and why they are important 04:51 - Dave presents a common argument against stable teams 05:30 - An example of an organization being successful without stable teams 07:12 - How Digital Agencies struggle with Agile due to a lack of stable teams 07:35 - Why are we advocating for stable teams? What’s the reason behind it? 08:08 - Why you need stable teams to be predictable 08:30 - Research about teams and making them work 10:08 - Shouldn’t really skilled professionals just be able to work together? ( Studio Musicians vs. Professional Athletes) 12:33 - Packing your team with all “A” players does not make a great team 13:18 - Google’s Search for Perfect Teams 14:00 - Establishing Team Norms and a Shared Purpose 15:01 - Why great teams are able to be flexible and cope with change 15:28 - Trusting the skills and abilities of your fellow team members 15:52 - How trust enables greater focus 16:48 - Diverse Collective Intelligence and Self Organization 18:09 - How a team exploits their own conditions and uses their own capabilities to get the most out of each other. 19:49 - Teams spread across multiple projects have lower throughput that teams working with a single focus 21:29 - Team stability metrics and collecting data on team performance that can be used to identify hot spots in the organization that can be addressed 23:05 - What if you don’t/can’t have stable teams? What should you do in order to still get value out of Agile 23:47 - Advice for Digital Agencies that lack stable teams 25:53 - Understanding the cost of making the choice to not have stable teams 27:08 - Making the choice for stable teams and one backlog (regardless of the number of projects) 29:44 - Running a test to prove stable teams work 30:28 - How to reach Tim for more information What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html The Atlanta Scrum User Group https://www.meetup.com/agile-38/ Here is where you can reach Tim: LeadingAgile http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/tim-wise/ WiseAgile http://www.wiseagile.com Tim on Twitter https://twitter.com/timswise Tim on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwise

Ric Merrifield has spend the last 25 years helping organizations develop products that enhance their relationship with the customer. In this podcast Ric shares his approach to Capability Mapping, what makes it different from process mapping, how it can help an organization serve their customer better and why it is so important to Agile Transformation. Show Notes 00:09 Interview start 00:30 Ric’s background 03:19 Capability Mapping vs. Capacity Modeling 03:42 Dave fails at mansplaining Capability Mapping 03:58 Ric sets him straight on what it is and how it works 06:47 Walking through an example - Capability Mapping for an airline 10:15 Using the same scenario to understand the difference between Capability Mapping and Process Mapping 11:33 Helping to remove the blinders… or crack their heads open and the getting a more durable lens 13:45 How Capability Mapping will help you find the gaps in the organization, but process mapping will help you see the gaps in the workflow 15:00 How often should we revisit the capability maps? Durable does not mean “not changing” 18:11 Different customers want different things. How do you decide which customer to serve? 20:15 Dave is more high maintenance than Ric 21:17 Do we track enough information about our customers to know how much they cost the company to retain? Is it okay to use this information to “serve” the customer 23:09 How much personalization and customization is too much? 25:51 How to get your organization started with Capability Mapping 27:31 How does Capability Mapping fit with Agile? 29:29 How much do organizations struggle with this level of transparency 3-:48 Getting in touch with Ric If you’d like to reach Ric, you can find him on the LeadingAgile site here: http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/ric-merrifield/ Or via LinkedIn here https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricmerrifield You can find Ric’s books here: http://amzn.to/2eBHgTP We’ll post the link to his TEDx talk as soon as it is live

In this podcast Dave Prior explains how to use the Personal Agility Canvas to identify strengths and areas for improvements in your approach to Agile. Dave takes you step by step thru the tool so that you can use it to set goals and amplify your personal approach to working with Agile. You can download a PDF of the Personal Agility Canvas here: http://bit.ly/2elPaAF

Since entering the workforce, Millennials have gotten a bad rap. There is a long list of complaints levied against them… mostly by the crowd that falls into GenX and older. In this interview, Dave Prior and John Tanner from LeadingAgile are joined by Jenny Madorsky, a Millennial who is a Project Manager at Huge. Dave is GenX and harbors a secret fear the internet will break and go away forever. John is in between the two (and would like you to get off his lawn) but self-identifies as being more on the Millennial side. During this podcast they explore the way Millennials approach working and collaboration. They dig into some of the stereotypes that crop up when people complain about Millennials and GenX, as well as how a Millennial’s view differs from the older crowd’s. In the final portion of the interview, the discussion turns towards what GenXers can do to be better prepared for working with Millennials in order to better support them. 0:08 Interview Begins 00:42 Introductions 01:44 Jenny’s areas of focus in college are a secret weapon - Mechanical Engineering & Theater Studies 03:18 Defining what we mean by Millennial 03:36 A Millennial explains Millennials (experience over stuff) 04:50 What is challenging about working with GenX 07:40 The changing relationship between employee and company 09:33 Get Mentors! 11:54 Building lasting relationships and networks though shared work experiences 12:34 Broad knowledge vs Deep knowledge 14:25 What can employers do to make the work place more enticing to Millennials? 17:17 Consumers of employers… who offers the best experience? 19:37 Do you need different skill sets to interact with different age groups? 21:42 How can older generations be better prepared to work with Millennials? 24:05 Sometimes the gift of feedback can be a tough thing to receive 26:27 Helping the other person be open to feedback (Shout out to Sally Elatta!) 30:10 Jenny asks John and Dave for their perception of working with Millennials 31:20 Curiosity perceived as arrogance “I’m still expecting the internet to just shut off one day..” 32:29 Positive dissonance in the workspace 34:04 Knowing when to contribute and when to listen 35:27 Why Jenny chose to make the switch from Program Manager to Project Manager 37:17 Applying Agile practices in a Digital Agency 40:27 Agile for the Millennial crowd… do we need a new Manifesto? 44:02 Closing Reaching Jenny LinkedIn http://bit.ly/2dL0PeP Reaching John Twitter http://twitter.com/tannerjs LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/tannerjs LeadingAgile http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/john-tanner/ Other Links from the Podcast Huge http://www.hugeinc.com Sally Elatta http://www.linkedin.com/in/elatta Other Links from the Podcast Huge https://www.hugeinc.com Sally Elatta https://www.linkedin.com/in/elatta

One of the most important things an organization can do in order to help teams deliver working, test software is to manage organizational dependencies. In this SoundNotes interview, LeadingAgile Enterprise Transformation Consultant, Andrew Fuqua shares his thoughts on how organizations can manage and remove dependencies in order to better their teams to deliver. 00:08 Interview Starts 00:45 Some background on Andrew 01:25 How the topic of Managing Dependencies Across the Value Stream (until we can break them) came up on LeadingAgile’s internal Slack channel 03:20 The difference between breaking dependencies and managing them across the value stream 04:55 Figuring out where the dependencies exist within your organization 06:35 Dependencies and user stories vs. dependencies created by the organizational structure 08:07 How cross functional do your teams need to be before you can fully address dependencies within your organization? 09:31 Making responsible choices when it comes to setting up cross functional teams that can deliver fully tested working product 11:08 How do you help an organization figure out what is reasonable to achieve with setting up teams 11:52 Changing the organization in an iterative manner 12:32 Refactoring the organization is an ongoing effort 13:38 Stable Teams vs. a constantly changing organization 14:41 Key things you need to focus on if you want to remove dependencies within an organization 15:53 Techniques you can use to surface where the dependencies exist 16:24 Why you need multiple ways to identify the dependencies and remove them 17:05 Managing the environment you are in 18:42 Manage the heck out of the dependencies that matter, until you can break them 20:16 What’s the right way to do this? There is no best practices, just good practices given a specific context 21:07 Helping your organization learn to cope with impact of the dependencies you have in place 22:25 Are we leaning into the waterfall or just being practical by having design work a Sprint ahead? 23:02 If you feel your organization needs to have design work ahead, is that a bad thing or are there times when that is ok? 24:49 It’s ok, but it’s not ok that it’s ok… refactoring organizations in flight 25:42 Other suggestions for managing dependencies 27:05 Why would you commit to something you have no control over? 28:55 How do you deliver on the promise of the epic and know what is “good enough” to release? 31:26 Being flexible about what you have to release can help you manage dependencies as well 31:58 Steps you can take right out of the gate to help the organization cope with dependencies 34:05 Are there elements of a waterfall approach that can help if you are able to maintain an Agile mindset 35:52 PUT THE PMBOK AWAY! Just worry about the real world stuff and manage that stuff. 37:26 Andrew’s parting words of advice for managing and removing dependencies 39:17 The Lean + Agile Atlanta UnConference leanagileatlanta.co 40:30 How to reach Andrew if you want to follow up with him on this conversation Email: andrew@leadingagile.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewmfuqua Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AndrewMFuqua LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewfuqua You may also want to check out Mike Cottmeyer’s post on Managing Dependencies here: http://www.leadingagile.com/2011/10/dependencies-break-agile/ Or his post on How to Structure Your Agile Enterprise http://www.leadingagile.com/2014/02/structure-agile-enterprise/