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! 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileamped/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/solutionsiq/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgileAmped

Training is a vital piece of today’s business climate. It’s typically at the forefront of conversations around development or growth, but what is the correlation or connection between training and actual business transformation? The assumption has been that if my employees only had the knowledge, they would produce different outcomes. While training is an undoubtedly valuable piece of creating large, organizational change, the outcomes that our organizations produce are highly intertwined with a number of factors on which training has very little impact.

In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Training Consultant, Nathan Hummel joins Dave to discuss the role training plays in organizational change, how it impacts Agile transformation, and, what else, beyond training, an organization will need to see true lasting change.

Contacting Nathan

• Web: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/nathan-hummel/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-hummel/
• Email: http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/mrsungo
• Personal blog: http://drunkenpm.net

We Need Reviews

If you like this podcast, we’d be very grateful for reviews or feedback on iTunes. It will help us create more visibility for this podcast so that we can reach more people. Click here to leave us a review or post feedback.

Feedback/Questions

If you have comments on the podcast or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at [email protected]

LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes

For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to http://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class.

Vic (@AgileCoffee) hopped on Zoom with Paul Tevis (@PTevis) and had a nice chat back in mid-March… a couple weeks after the world turned upside down. We talked about Paul’s workshops on remote facilitation and techniques for making the most with meetings in general.

Find more about Paul’s services – including his upcoming FREE workshops – at https://www.vigemus.com/

Stay safe, and enjoy your coffee with geographically distant friends

Join Coalition members Claudia Orozco-Gomez and Carter Leffen as they sit down to discuss the ICA Agile Coaches Certification Course.  Both Carter and Claudia are fresh out of the course, and they shared their learning, insights, and suggestions about who would most benefit by the experience.  Enjoy!

Claudia’s LinkedIn 

Carter’s LinkedIn

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world’s largest audio library on Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website.

Steve was hired to help the teams go “faster”. However, when he started to see the Prodcut Owners throw their teams under the bus at Sprint Demos he understood that something else was going on. It wasn’t only about helping teams be faster anymore. As he started to dig deeper, he found a culture of fear in the organization and many other anti-patterns that he shares with us. A great story, with lots of warnings for us to keep an eye out for.

Featured Book of the Week: The #NoEstimates Book by Vasco Duarte

In The #NoEstimates Book by Vasco Duarte, Steve found a book that helped him understand what empirical process control is about, and put some things in place on how he approaches teams and their process. 

In this segment, we also refer to The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, Drive!, Coaching Agile Teams, Agile Game Development with Scrum, and Suzuki’s Zen Mind.

About Steve Jaccaud

Steve is an Enterprise Agile Coach, Volunteer, Speaker, and Musician in Boston, Massachusetts. When he’s not leading workshops with creative software organizations, he’s probably working on an album or deep in meditation!

You can link with Steve Jaccaud on LinkedIn and connect with Steve Jaccaud on Twitter.

Last year I spoke with Jurgen Appelo at LitheSpeeds annual Lean + Agile DC conference.  He delivered a great Keynote on his book Startup, Scaleup, Screwup.

Items necessary for "Minimum Viable Airlines" and your "Minimum Viable Project". These are the items that we agreed we would need before embarking on a project together. Do you have all of these before you begin a project?

1. Destination – Project Vision
2. Altitude – Depth of backlog
3. Location – Progress (working software)
4. Airspeed – Speed of delivery and speed constraints
5. Fuel – Stories
6. Captain or pilot – A leader
7. Black box – Project data or metrics
8. Landing gear – A clear and well worn path to prod
9. Good flight procedures – Working agreements
10. FAA flight time restrictions for pilots – Sustainable pace
11. Logbook – Source control
12. Emergency slide – Good enough or a safe way to end a project on short notice

Picks

Jason

• Podcasting Innovation – it’s amazing how much has changed in the last 7+ years, thanks to all the people & companies that have created
• Goats to Go – www.goatsonthego.com – you can poop out the back of the airplane
• The Red Rubber Ball at Work – by Kevin Carroll – a fun book on practical strategies and why you should inject more fun into the workplace – http://kevincarrollkatalyst.com/books
• TV shows you can watch that Jason likes:
• Why Planes Crash
• Airline Repo

John

• Uncle Bob, professionalism in software development and the future of programming, https://youtu.be/LmRl0D-RkPU

Craig

• Waverunners
• Vacation from your vacation
• China Airlines Flight 006, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006
• Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents

Daniel Vicanti is the author of Actionable Agile Metrics and When Will It Be Done? Find all the show notes and links at https://www.theagilewire.com

Support the show (https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership/)

You know our style. We’re here to help you get better. To facilitate that, we’re entrusting our listeners (that includes YOU) to drive our content in new directions. Ask us ANYTHING. Seriously. How can we help you? What’s troubling you and your organization? You name it, and we’ll answer it…

LinkedIn, Twitter, email, you name it and we have a channel for you to post questions:

• LinkedIn Post
• Twitter Post

More from our hosts:

Get FREE agile coaching on Josh’s new live stream. If you ever wanted to hear how our co-hosts would answer your individual question, this is your chance! Friday mornings, Josh hosts a free live stream on Twitch where you can bring your questions and challenges to the table. Josh, the community, and sometimes Bob, will be there to help you. Check it out at twitch.tv/kazi_io

BIG NEWS! Josh just launched is side project at https://www.gettokens.gg/. Give his app a download (now available on iOS!), trade some tokens, and be sure to submit some feedback so Josh can keep improving his product to help all of the budding streamers out there!

Spread The Word: 

Love our content? Help us out by sharing on social media, rating our podcast/episodes on iTunes, or by giving to our Patreon campaign. Every time you give, in any way, you empower our mission of helping as many agilists as possible. Thanks for sharing!

Sponsor Links:

• The AgilePacks team is excited to offer a 20% off discount code on your first purchase of an AgilePacks kit. There’s a Starter and a Pro option to fit you and your team’s needs. Simply enter METACAST at checkout to save. Get your discount here.

The Liberators (Barry Overeem and Christiaan Verwijs) joined Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller for an episode of Craft Brewed Agile on YouTube. We discussed building a consulting business, focusing on the things that bring you joy, and how authenticity can make all the difference in your agile pursuits.

Support the show:

• Purchase our new book – Fixing Your Scrum: Practical Solutions to Common Scrum Problems.
• Join Todd and Ryan in a Professional Scrum Course: https://www.scrum.org/ryan-ripley

Special Guests: Barry Overeem and Christiaan Verwijs.

As with most loops, things come back around. In this case, some of the research for an earlier episode led to the book called Loops by J Cornelius which is definitely something Product Owners need to crack open. J joins in this episode to discuss how his book can help POs and teams understand their customers needs better and ways to constantly research, prototype, and test for their ( and your ) benefit. If you want to understand how J measures business success then listen in, better yet go get the book and learn even more.

Feedback: twitter – @deliveritcast email – [email protected]

Links: PO Coaching and Consulting – seek taiju J Cornelius – JCornelius.com – NineLabs – @JC Loops: Building Product With Clarity & Confidence Loopsbook: LoopsBook-Resources Deliver It Cast Ep 94 – The Loop Marty Cagan – Spotify vs. Fitbit Mob Mentality – Rob Myers on the next “Extreme” Methodology

Special guest Jessica Kerr asks: What if we could understand the words?

Learn More

• Jessica on Twitter
  and
  LinkedIn
• The Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming
• Florentine Camerata
• Sanctus – Benedictus – Osanna II
  from
  Palestrina’s
  Missa Tu es Petrus
• Pur ti miro, pur ti godo
  from
  Monteverdi’s
  L’incoronazione di Poppea
• ExpertInEarshot

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Management 3.0 – Manage the System , not the People

In this podcast Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods spoke to Dr Michelle O’Sullivan and Douglas Talbot about how managers and team leads can support the mental wellness of their teams through turbulent times

Why listen to this podcast:

• Good work is one of the best things for our mental health. It gives us a sense of purpose and it provides us with a community
• Mental wellness is about how to speak with people, having open conversations, giving people practical support when they need it, and also just creating a safe space and a good culture within your team. Most of it is just about good line management in general.
• Checking in in about how people are sleeping can be a safe conversation and can be good indicator of potential deeper issues
• So if somebody is quite stressed by the pandemic or what’s happening with their loved ones, or someone’s sick, these are very real fears, and we don’t want to pathologize what is a very normal reaction to an abnormal situation
• As a manager it is important for you to model the behaviour you want to see in your team, be vulnerable and open about your own fears and concerns, which gives others permission to be vulnerable too

More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ https://bit.ly/2ZGTaGa
You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq

Subscribe: www.youtube.com/infoq
Like InfoQ on Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8
Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ
Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq
Check the landing page on InfoQ: https://bit.ly/2ZGTaGa

Learn more about enterprise strategy formulation as it relates to lean portfolio management and SAFe 5.0, as well as how organizational agility gives companies flexibility to respond to unexpected global events like the coronavirus.

Jira Align Technical Account Manager Matt Magee provides insights on how traditional PPM style time tracking can still be critical in an agile world. Learn more at agilecraft.com/time.

In this episode, Professional Scrum Trainer Eric Landes addresses the questions: “How technical stories should be used in Scrum?”

Overview

I have been asked how technical stories should be used in Scrum.  Great questions, and of course Scrum has a framework, while not specifically talking to this issue.

When discussing technical stories, I typically am thinking about things like product performance, system availability, and security.  I refer to these as non-functional requirements, and the Scrum guide does not specifically speak to NFRs.  However, the scrum guide has this to say about the product backlog:

“The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. “

So, looking at the scrum guide definition it would seem that we can put NFRs in the product backlog.  Of course, the last sentence of this part of the scrum guide:

“The Product Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.” means that the team needs to work with the Product Owner on NRFs that belong in the product backlog.

Example of a Non-Functional Requirement

Here is an example of an NFR that might be used in the backlog.  The team has a screen on an application that shows personal information, including credit scores to a sales administration user of your application.  Your security team has deemed that Personal Information like this cannot be displayed due to certain laws within different countries. Your product owner could add a PBI that describes hiding data on the Sales administration screen, which is not adding functionality. 

Refine the Definition of Done

I also tell students that NFRs that apply to multiple PBIs might be a candidate for definition of done.  For instance, if we have a security requirement that all code must be run through a static code analysis and then dealt with, we might put running a static code analyzer against source code as part of our definition of done. 

Update the Acceptance Criteria

Another way to deal with an NFR is to place it in the Acceptance Criteria of a PBI. Let’s say we have a feature that includes posting data to an external data store.  The requirement was that after a sales transaction the sales data needs to be pushed in that data store within 10 minutes of the transaction.  We could easily put that into your Acceptance Criteria.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that while Technical Stories, or Non-Functional Requirements are not mentioned explicitly in the Scrum Guide, the framework gives teams ways to handle them.  And in typical self-organizing fashion, it is up to the team to determine the best way to handle this for their application.

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Register for our upcoming web meetings by visiting agilethought.com/events

See available training courses at agilethought.com/training.

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes at AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Continuing our tour of our new book Agile Conversations, we come to our chapter on the foundational method for conversational analysis, the Four Rs. We briefly explain the value of conversational analysis, and share our observation that even highly motivated people who know how much it can help their agile teams find it hard to actually pull out a piece of paper and do an analysis. The reasons for this are very similar to the reasons we need the analysis in the first place—our cognitive biases fool us into thinking we don’t need the help, others do.

SHOW LINKS:

– Extract of Agile Conversations: https://itrevolution.com/conversations-humanitys-secret-weapon/
– Thinking, Fast and Slow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
– Previous episode on the Four Rs: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/learning-through-case-studies-the-4-rs
– James Clear, Atomic Habits: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
– London Organisational Learning meetup: https://www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/
– Slack for Conversational Transformation: https://join.slack.com/t/agile-conversations/shared_invite/zt-e7j2fbet-jIjExF5HpWqMWpTJ1RfEfw

Our new book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://conversationaltransformation.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We’d love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.


Email us at [email protected]

“Starting work doesn’t generate value, starting work only costs money. Finishing work generates value.” – Klaus Leopold

First, there was personal productivity.

Then, everyone started talking about Agile teams.

Today, it’s time to take it even higher.

In this episode of the Lamp, we are talking about business alignment with Klaus Leopold. Klaus is an experienced computer scientist and a well-known Kanban pioneer – he was one of the first Lean Kanban trainers and coaches worldwide.

He is the author of books Practical Kanban, Kanban in IT and co-author of Kanban Change Leadership. Today on the podcast, Klaus is sharing with us his passion for establishing lean business agility that goes beyond teams.

Business alignment and coordination might be one of the biggest challenges any leader faces. In this episode, you’ll learn how to enable your teams and your whole organization to do the right work at the right time using the concept of Flight Levels.

Team performance vs Business Agility
We often think we need to have agile teams in our business so they would deliver projects faster. But that’s the wrong lever. 

What should we optimize in business to speed up the overall delivery time?
How to take the right decisions on the right levels.
Individual performance vs Team performance vs Company performance
Understanding the difference between team Kanban and Portfolio Kanban
When you fly high, you don’t see much detail. When you fly low, you can’t see the bigger picture
How to ensure the right team is working on the right stuff at the right time
How to optimize cross-team collaboration for value delivery

The impact of levers you can use is greater at higher levels of your organization. But if the lever doesn’t solve your problem, it doesn’t matter how strong it is.

Business agility is not about the power of the lever. It’s not about the performance of individuals, not about team performance, not even about product performance. It’s all about company performance.

First, company, then products, then teams, then individuals. But it’s the company that has to improve.

Contact with our guest:

Twitter
LinkedIn

In this episode, we discuss what does it mean to be “good enough” to ship a product.  Also, we talk about how Agile coaches measure their own success in an organization.  

• (00:00) Introduction
• (00:52) What does it mean to be “good enough” to ship a product?
• (26:45) How Agile coaches measure their own success in an organization?
• (44:25) Wrap up

This podcast is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Support the show (https://www.agilealliance.org/membership-pricing/)