Allistair Cockburn

Sprint Commitment

All the tracks from my last album 'Skizm' previously released on Fruit Soup.

09 - Scrum Master Skids

Nic Sementa from the Agile Marketing Academy joins me in this podcast to share his thoughts on how to craft User Stories that will work for marketing. Nic's thoughts and opinions on this topic are heavily influenced by his marketing background, which, as he points out in the interview, is a little unique since most of the conversations on the topic are led by agile practitioners. 

During the interview Alistair Cockburn joined in the conversation to offer his expert advice and guidance on the subject. Alistair is one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, the creator of the Crystal methods, leading voice on Use Cases and the man behind the Heart of Agile. (There is lots more - you can find it all at http://alistair.cockburn.us/ )

Show Notes:

00:38 Nic’s background and the challenges faced by Marketing that Agile could help with

4:27 Putting Agile together with Marketing

5:52 User Stories from a Marketers perspective

6:52 The historical challenges involved with “marketing” to the customer as opposed to engaging directly with the customer to find out what they need

8:00 How coercing your customer to buy leads to the marketing equivalent of technical debt

8:50 Googling Agile Marketing

9:20 The corporate world is high school with ashtrays

10:00 Why marketing needs a new language framework for Agile

10:57 Apology to the Band Geeks (which Dave is)

11:30 Revenue impact of implementing Agile Marketing Techniques

11:52 How User Stories change in Agile Marketing

12:33 Personas and more

13:33 Developing a deeper understanding of the User and his/her pain points

14:03 MadMen in Reverse is not going to help you understand the “ideal customer”

15:14 Marketing Research

16:10 There is no such thing as offline marketing

17:52 Recap of the Marketing User Story Guidance

18:57 Let’s get al Skynet with this thing!

20:00 Special Guest Alistair Cockburn on Agile Marketing User Stories

25:55 Abstract thinkers vs. concrete thinkers

28:05 Alistair’s visual grammar version of User Stories

35:33 Where to learn more about the Agile Marketing Academy and how to reach Nic

Some Links:

For more on the Agile Marketing Academy you can go to their Certification site http://www.agilemarketingcertification.com
or send them an email at info@agilemarketingacademy.com.

You can reach Nic on Twitter -> https://twitter.com/nicsementa



How to Write a User Story for Marketing w/ Nic Sementa and Alistair Cockburn

Writing the introduction to a podcast interview with Dr. Alistair Cockburn is not a simple thing. He is the co-author of the Agile Manifesto and the author of numerous books on Agile, Use Cases and Object Oriented Programming. There is also his work with Crystal and now with the Heart of Agile. He’s contributed a significant body of material around the topic of how we work. While this interview touches on most of the above, the primary focus of the interview is around a simple question with a complex answer: How can you design a lifestyle that is based on continually examining and enhancing the quality of your life. 

The interview is a long one, but is filled with volumes of advice and wisdom on how to build a professional life that supports the level of quality you want to achieve in your personal life. The information will be especially valuable for anyone working on consulting. For those who are pressed for time, I’ve created detailed show notes below so you can jump to a specific portion if you need to and you can find them here: http://bit.ly/2cjamVJ

If you would like to learn more about Alistair Cockburn, check out http://alistair.cockburn.us.
If you’d like to follow Alistair on Twitter, you can find him at https://twitter.com/TotherAlistair
If you’d like to learn more about Heart of Agile, check out http://heartofagile.com
If you’d like to check out the Facebook Live conversation between Alistair and Nic Sementa, try http://bit.ly/2cESM57


Alistair Cockburn - Designing Quality of Life

In this episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, Derek Huether and Dave Prior take on the topic of Leading and Lagging Indicators. During the podcast they discuss how Key Performance indicators can help guide you towards an understanding of what to track with the expectation that it will create a certain result in the future (leading indicators), and what to measure in order to confirm if that result has in fact occurred (lagging indicators).

One example they touch on in the podcast is:  if you are trying to lose weight, tracking things like how much you exercise and how many calories you are consuming each day are leading indicators because it is reasonable to expect that if you are exercising regularly and limiting your caloric intake, that these actions could result in you losing weight. This is a way of tracking the actions you are taking to in order to bring about a desired change. But, we still need a way to confirm if the desired result has actually occurred. The only way you will know if you have actually lost weight, is to climb up on the scale and check your weight. That is a lagging indicator because it confirms whether or not the actions you took had resulted in the desired outcome.

Links

If you’d like to learn more about Leading and Lagging Indicators, check out Derek’s recent blog post on the topic here: https://www.leadingagile.com/2018/02/leading-lagging-indicators/

Contacting Derek

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

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekhuether/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/derekhuether
Email: derek@leadingagile.com
Contacting Dave

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

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Introduction to Leading and Lagging Indicators w Derek Huether

In this week's SoundNotes,  LeadingAgile’s Tom Churchwell and Matt Fischer join Dave to respond to two questions submitted by students of our Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner classes.

STUDENT QUESTIONS

Question 1:

"How do you see the way companies, after long years of waterfall, trying to move to Agile in few weeks?"

Question 2:

"How does a ScrumMaster correct a development team member?"

CONTACTING TOM CHURCHWELL
LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/tom-churchwell/
Email: tom.churchwell@leadingagile.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tchurchwell
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomchurchwell/

CONTACTING DAVE PRIOR
LeadingAgile:http://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
Email: dave.prior@leadingagile.com
Twitter at http://twitter.com/mrsungo
Personal Blog: http://drunkenpm.net

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

UPCOMING CLASSES
And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Agile in a Few Weeks and Correcting Developer Behavior w/ Tom Churchwell

For this episode of SoundNotes, we reached out to some of the students who have taken CSM and CSPO classes over the last few months. We got a lot of great questions and will be responding to them over the next few weeks. This week, Derek Huether and Dave Prior respond to these two questions:

Question 1:

My team seems to have a problem with estimating and understanding the estimating concepts.  The team members are accustomed to traditional waterfall projects and estimating everything in units of time.  How can I help them understand estimating, but continue to complete the sprints with no pbis rolling over to the next sprint?

Question 2:

I have a team lead who is skeptical of scrum, especially metrics related to the process. He doesn’t think carryover matters from sprint to sprint as long as we’re “creating value” and getting the program priorities completed. Any advice on how to convince him that metrics can be a tool for good, and that the sanctity of the sprint commitment matters?

Links from the Podcast

If you’d like to check out the Multiple Team Throughput Forecasting Tool that Troy Magennis has created for use with multiple teams who have different ways of estimating work, you can find it (and his other tools) here: http://focusedobjective.com/free-tools-resources/


Contacting Derek

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

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekhuether/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/derekhuether
Email: derek@leadingagile.com

Contacting Dave

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

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Estimation and Meeting Sprint Commitments w/ Derek Huether

A podcast about Agile and Project Management

How to Write a User Story for Marketing w/ Nic Sementa and Alistair Cockburn

drunkenpmradio