LeadingAgile SoundNotes: an Agile Podcast

In this week’s episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Senior Consultant, Matthew Oatts joins me to talk about what to do when you are placed in a leadership role, but not given a lot of clarity on what you are specifically supposed to do or how you are supposed to do it. How do you lead people when you don’t have clear boundaries or you don’t have clarity on what your leadership is looking for.

Oftentimes, this guidance is lacking because the people you report to don’t actually know and are just waiting for you to figure it out. How can you be successful in your role when success is not clearly defined for you?

If you’ve ever found yourself in that situation, Matthew Oatts and I talk through different ways to respond when you find yourself in this situation.

Matthew's 3 albums to listen to while working

• Brahms:  Hungarian Dances Nos. 1-21
• The Genius of Charlie Parker
• Miles Davis - Bitches Brew 

Contacting Matthew Oatts

If you’d like to contact Matthew you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/matthew-oatts/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmoatts/
• Email: matthew.oatts@leadingagile.com

Contacting Dave Prior

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
• Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to dave.prior@leadingagile.com

Agile Transformation is more than just installing Agile processes or Agile principles. It’s more than simply training your team on Agile methodology. But if that’s the case, then what is the actual path to becoming an Agile organization? 

You must create the conditions where Agile processes can be deployed and exploited for better outcomes than you had before—so you can get more value, better ROI, more predictability, and more. But to create this foundation, you need a way to move the organization incrementally and iteratively through Transformation that operates with certain characteristics. LeadingAgile has found a way to do this with what we call a Systems-first approach to Agile Transformation. 

In this podcast, LeadingAgile CEO Mike Cottmeyer and host Dave Prior candidly explore and discuss the details of the LeadingAgile Systems-first approach, including how it started, why it has become a proven and tested way to successfully enable any organization to Transform, and how each part of the system works.

Contacting Mike Cottmeyer

If you’d like to contact Mike, you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cottmeyer/
X: x.com/mcottmeyer
Email: mike@leadingagile.com

Contacting Dave Prior

If you’d like to contact Dave, you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
X: x.com/mrsungo
Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to dave.prior@leadingagile.com

Interested in CSM or CSPO Training?

You can find all the details at www.leadingagile.com/scrum-training/

Finding, supporting, and retaining people with skills and talent is never easy. Over the past few years, between the pandemic and the great resignation, it has become even more challenging. What attracts the next generation of talented change agents? How can you help them grow into the skilled transformation ninjas you need them to be? If you are part of one of the older generations, how can you become more aware of your blind spots and take steps to improve the way you engage with the people who will lead us into the future?

This week in SoundNotes, Dave is joined by Lien Nguyen and Regan Jenkins who both work as staff consultants at LeadingAgile. During the interview, they discuss what LeadingAgile was able to offer that they could not find elsewhere, the different ways they are supported by the folks they work with, and they also offer Dave some tips on how he can show up for in a helpful and supportive way for those who are in the earlier stages of their careers.

What is PSTIR? PSTIR is an acronym for a change management model we use at LeadingAgile to explain our approach to creating lasting change. It stands for Prepare, Socialize, Tailor, Implement, Reinforce and it is a series of collaboration and implementation activities that enable our clients to be part of the change while leveraging the LeadingAgile reference architecture.

In this episode of SoundNotes, Dave is joined by LeadingAgile Principal Consultant, Melissa Oberg and Dennis Stevens, our Chief Methodologist to discuss what PSTIR is, why it exists and why it is such a crucial part of how we introduce and manage change in an organization.

In this episode of SoundNotes, Dave is joined by LeadingAgile Chief Marketing Officer Tim Zack. Tim offers his unique perspective on how to communicate within an organization during an Agile Transformation to influence lasting change. The biggest part of an Agile Transformation is asking people to work differently at a job they might have been doing for years. People are naturally resistant to change, especially when their livelihood is on the line.

Tim discusses the strategies that organizations can use to communicate where they want to go. It's about influencing people over a period of time, not going in and trying to change the culture first. This is why we lead with a systems first approach because they adapt to change faster than people. Making lasting change in an organization is a slow, repetitive process as people become ready to hear it, understand it and apply it.

This week on SoundNotes our Founder and CEO, Mike Cottmeyer, joins Dave to discuss why simply showing up and having the answer for the customer is not enough. During this conversation, Mike explains the process he follows when engaging with clients to ensure he is truly hearing them and understanding the way they see the problem, and how that begins a series of steps that enables him to work with the client to find the best solution for them.

If you are involved with introducing change in an organization, especially from a consulting standpoint, this interview is a must.

This week LeadingAgile Senior Consultant Matthew Oatts joins Dave for a different kind of interview. This is the first of two interviews we will be posting with Matthew and they both focus on what it is like to work here at LeadingAgile and how to make the most of your early days with the company. Because LeadingAgile has a unique point of view and approach to organizational change and Agile transformation when people join the company we take extra care to make sure they are up to speed on the LeadingAgile Why and How. As the company has matured over the years our on-boarding process has gone through a number of iterations and has evolved into a very comprehensive robust program.

But, Matt joined LeadingAgile during the 2nd half of December of 2021. In consulting, the last few weeks of December are pretty slow and this meant Matt was going to need to wait for an on-boarding class to start. This gave Matt some time to dig around on his own and discover his own path while he waited for his official introduction to the way of LeadingAgile. During this interview, we discuss some of the most valuable things Matt picked up on during his first few weeks and his take on what it is like getting started at LeadingAgile. In a few weeks, once he has officially completed his onboarding, were going to do a follow-up to see how he felt about his official introduction to LeadingAgile.

For anyone considering working here, or getting started working here, this interview should offer valuable tips on what makes LeadingAgile a unique place to work and how to make the most of your initial days with the company.

At LeadingAgile our approach to helping organizations transform the way they work is deeply rooted in First Principles. These are core beliefs we all have in common that shape the way we work. People who work here come from different backgrounds and have different experiences, but First Principles are things we all believe to be true.

In our interactions with clients, these core beliefs are an essential ingredient in our ability to deliver on the promises we make and to fulfill the Trust-Influence loop.

In this episode of SoundNotes, Mike Cottmeyer joins Dave to discuss First Principles, what they are, why they are so important, how they work, and how they become more important as we grow.

Lance Kind, Daryl Kulak, and George Walters join for this podcast episode about software. Daryl and George describe how they help companies answer the question: Is your software getting better or worse? LeadingAgile Studios team mission is to help companies going through an Agile Transformation resolve the problem of where the software is the leading impediment to a company's success.

LeadingAgile Studios team starts with a software assessment that uses an in-house tool to analyze a codebase by collecting data on how it changes over time. With this information, LeadingAgile Studios helps clients make a plan to remediate the discovered problems. With this plan, the client will have the option to fix the problem independently, do it with assistance from the Studios team, or have the Studios team take complete control.

Listen to this episode to learn more about how the LeadingAgile Studios team can answer the question: Is your software getting better or worse?

Contact Daryl for more information or check out the LeadingAgile contact page https://www.leadingagile.com/contact-us/ and tell them "a podcast on software assessment" sent you.

Spike solutions are one of the ways extreme programming teams "figure out answers to tough technical or design problems". Their use has evolved over the years and as they've been adopted by Scrum Teams. There are also many teams out there who may be using spikes in a way that creates more work without solving problems.

In this episode of SoundNotes, Stephen Cavaliere joins Dave to talk all about Spikes. In order to make things as simple as possible the podcast has been broken up into three parts: