Sprint Commitment

We're launching a podcast!

Hosted by Tim Meyers and Luke Lackrone, "The Competitive Advantage" is Booz Allen's regular look across the agile landscape.

On this initial episode, our Backlog contains Scrum Masters and Product Owners, the Agile Mindset, Agile@Scale, Failing "Agile Initiatives," and, what can only be referred to as Lackrone's Coach Manifesto.

Additionally, we take the podcast itself into the Time-box for a meta-discussion, our Spotlight this week is the "Walking Skeleton" practice, and we answer some agile emails.

Backlog:
* ScrumMaster - http://www.agileprojectmanagementtraining.com/why-scrum-master-what-about-scrum-apprentice-maybe-we-need-a-scrum-jedi/
* Product Owner - http://allisonagile.com/index.php/articles/agile-theory/57-the-lorax-would-have-made-a-great-product-owner
* Scaling Agile - http://blogs.versionone.com/agile_management/2014/09/08/scaling-agile-your-way-agile-scaling-aspects-and-context-matter-greatly-part-1-of-4/
* Agile Mindset - http://sdtimes.com/guest-view-agile-mindset-time-change-thinking-scrum/
* Stop Agile Initiatives - http://agilitrix.com/2014/09/stop-agile-initiatives/
* TED: Shut Up and Listen! - http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen?language=en

The Time-box:
* The podcast itself

The Spotlight: 
* http://alistair.cockburn.us/Walking+skeleton
* http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2014/03/20/kickstart-your-next-project-with-a-walking-skeleton/

Please send us feedback at tca@bah.com


Iteration 0: Walking Skeleton

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

09 - Scrum Master Skids

Bringing Certainty in Agile Sprint Planning through Estimation

This week on The Guardian Ryn Melberg describes a couple of more roles in the Agile project management world, that of Scrum Master and then later the Relief Train Engineer. 

The Scrum Master And The Release train Engineer

In order for Agile to work we have to have three things in place: clarity, accountability and measurable progress. This podcast explores the different ways an organization can measure the progress of their transformation and how to tie their progress to their key business drivers. Ahead of his talk at the Building Business Capability Conference in Las Vegas, Enterprise Transformation Consultant, Isaac Hogue shares how an organization can use a transformation scorecard to see where they are today, where they want to be tomorrow and how they can measure progress along their transformation journey.

The Importance of Measurable Progress in Agile Transformation

This week on the podcast Ryn Melberg describes the do's and don'ts of Agile User Stories. The overall idea with these stories is that members of the team talk about what the customer wants and why. So in a way, the user story is a way for the team to articulate what the customer wants, or at least that is the idea.  is responsible for writing user stories? How can they be written so that they are most effective? 

Agile User Stories Best Practices

In this version of our Sound Notes podcast, we sat down with LeadingAgile CEO, Mike Cottmeyer to talk about the focus of Agile in 2016. We discuss why organizations are still struggling to successfully adopt agile, how the systems of many large organizations are still broken, and how the popular scaling methods are only a part of the solution to successful enterprise agile adoption. From there, Mike and Dave Prior use a couple of metaphors to describe the past, present and future of agile along with the difficult change management aspects of agile transformation. 

The Focus of Agile in 2016

This week on The Guardian Podcast with Ryn Melberg, the topic is Epics. What are Epics in Agile and Scrum? Are they better suited to Scaled Agile or are they appropriate elsewhere? And what are the differences between Epics and Themes? To learn more be sure to visit the web site, www.rynmelberg.com. 

Epics In Agile

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

In this episode of AgileNEXT, Dave Prior, CST at LeadingAgile,  joins Daniel and Stephen and talks to us about many awesome topics including:

Transitioning from PMI / Traditional PM to Agile
How playing in a band is agile
Mindfulness practices, social engineering; i.e. meditation, etc.
Training Style and Comedic timing
Scrum for Girlscouts…
Agile outside of IT
Agile Brands and Scaling

029 - Dave Prior - Episode 29 - 20161229 - AgileNEXT

Agile Book Club

Agile Book Club podcast episode 1 - Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve your User Stories by Adzic/Evans

This week Devin Hedge joins Dave Prior for another student question. This time about architecture and if the complexity of it would be better served by a waterfall approach:

The Question:

"How to plan for the Architecture effectively. With waterfall, we try to figure out all aspects of the business and the technical solution in advance before we start development. In Agile, we discover as we go. It's very likely that when we come to a certain, we'll find either the current business logic or the current technical framework cannot adapt our upcoming demands. There's a high opportunity that we'll need to destroy all the work that we've done. Talking in this perspective, isn't waterfall better than Agile?"

Show Notes

00:08 Interview Begins
00:51 This week’s question
02:00 What do we mean by architecture
02:29 The design principles and standards you need in place to support your work
03:35 If it isn’t loosely coupled, neither waterfall or agile can really help
04:17 Challenging the assumption that big up front planning could help you eliminate the risk of having to do rework and whether or not waterfall is actually supposed to do that
07:43 If we can’t eliminate the risk of not knowing everything up front, what can you do?
08:30 Devin puts on his architect hat - guardrails and guideposts
09:53 Reframing the problem 
10:40 How physical building architects are still designing even after the building is built - you never know what the tenants of the building will actually want
11:48 The risk of making decisions too early
12:18 Advice from Devin on how to reduce your risk of designing architecture up front and put up the guardrails and guideposts you need
14:14 How architects look at the work and decision making
17:02 Making decisions at the last possible responsible moment
17:43 Having a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset
19:10 Is there value in waiting to make your decisions until you have all the information? What is your cost of delay of waiting to make the decisions?
20:57 Devin’s upcoming events: Agile Budgeting and Cost Tracking for the PMI North Carolina Chapter on July 11 and PMI South Carolina on July 20
21:57 How to get in touch with Devin
22:47 Interview Ends

Links from the podcast


Does Agile addresses the 25 point Federal IT Reformation plan? (June 29)
PMI Washington DC 
http://conta.cc/2sov4vn

Agile: Budgeting for Agile Financial cost planning/tracking (July 11)
PMI North Carolina
http://bit.ly/2tmVMZz

Jeff Bezos Memo about Cloud Services 
http://apievangelist.com/2012/01/12/the-secret-to-amazons-success-internal-apis/


Contacting Devin

LeadingAgile: www.leadingagile.com/guides/devin-hedge/
Twitter: twitter.com/agiledevin
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/devinhedge

Contacting Dave

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

LeadingAgile CSM & CSPO Classes

For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/ Use the discount code: LA_Podcast to receive a 15% discount on the class.

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 dave.prior@leadingagile.com

Student Q&A: Dealing with Architecture in Agile w/ Devin Hedge

Jack Skeels is the CEO and Founder of AgencyAgile. There are many organizations devoted to helping companies transform to agile, but AgencyAgile is the only one that is solely focused on helping Digital Agencies adopt Agile. In this interview Jack shares his thoughts on Agile and what makes it succeed or fail in a Digital Agency context.

SHOW NOTES

00:10 Interview Begins
00:40 Background on Jack and Agency Agile
01:24 How Jack ended up helping Digital Agencies adopt Agile
05:10 Trying out different types of Agile
06:10 Taking a job so you can run experiments in how to manage projects
08:12 You can’t make people trust
09:13 Jack’s initial questions for management: How much pain are you in? How much gain do you want?
09:52 What is the hardest part for a Digital Agency adopting Agile?
11:52 Transforming the agency AND their clients. Training is not enough
13:40 Do we need a new flavor of Agile tailored to Digital Agencies?
17:26 Does Agile actually make things work better? Are there actual business benefits?
18:38 How does AgencyAgile “sell” Agile to companies?
21:32 We need to stop disempower team members. They care as much as we do.
24:39 Can we actually get consistent cross-functional teams in an Agency?
25:22 Designing work stream teams of 25
26:07 Transforming the whole agency at once
27:31 Are there clients who are not ready to transform yet?
31:10 Letting go of learned behavior
32:30 What do we need for Agile to work in a Digital Agency?
33:19 Agile will work  when it becomes a management initiative NOT a Project Management Initiative
34:53 How you can learn more about the AgencyAgile approach 
36:10 Books about Agile that Jack recommends 
37:00 Jack response to “We can’t do Agile because we’re fixed bid.”
38:10 Advice from Jack for those who want to adopt Agile in a digital agency
39:07 Where you can learn more about Jack
40:11 Interview Ends

Links Mentioned in the Podcast
2017 Digital PM Summit: http://bureauofdigital.com/summits/digital-pm-2017/

Books by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman
Practices for Scaling  Lean & Agile Development http://amzn.to/2uCR6AV
Scaling Lean & Agile Development http://amzn.to/2wXVKWG


Contacting Jack:
Website: https://www.agencyagile.com
Blog: https://www.agencyagile.com/insights/
Medium: https://medium.com/@jackskeels
Twitter : https://twitter.com/agencyagile
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackaskeels/

If you are interested in this topic, please stay tuned for more. In preparation for a session I am leading at the 2017 Digital PM Summit (ttp://bureauofdigital.com/summits/digital-pm-2017/), I have been doing lots of interviews about how to make Agile work in a digital environment.

Making Agile work at Digital Agencies w/ Jack Skeels

Andrew Stellman and Jenny Green are back with a new book “Head First Agile: A Brain Friendly Guide to Agile and the PMI-ACP Certification”, which offers a strong foundational understanding in the most widely used Agile practices. The book is also intended as a PMI-ACP Exam preparation resource, providing complete coverage of the material included on the certification exam. 

In this podcast, Jenny and Andrew explain why they wrote the book, how PMI-ACP has evolved and why reaching a level where you are no longer concerned about the tools you use to get work done are traditional or agile is a great place to be.

SHOW NOTES

01:19 Interview Begins
01:50 Background on Jenny and Andrew
03:30 Who the book IS NOT for 
04:48 Who is book IS for and how it can help you move beyond simply going through the motions
06:29 The debate over principles vs. practices and it has impacted Andrew and Jenny’s approach
11:55 If you are new to Agile of have no experience working with Agile practices, how can this book help?
14:32 Why PMI-ACP prep is the secondary goal of this book. (And what the primary goal is.)
16:05 How the PMI-ACP exam has evolved and how Jenny and Andrew approached the topics for this book
19:23 How the authors ensured the book covers 100% of the material included on the PMI-ACP exam
20:21 Is is harder for a PMP to learn Agile, or harder for an Agilist to learn traditional Project Management?
21:40 Reaching the “Ri” level of project management where Agile vs. Waterfall is no longer a concern
22:43 Agile has moved beyond software, even reaching into construction, and how the is impacting PMI’s approach to Agile
24:46 Agile and the PMO: Is the PMO a dead man walking?
26:10 Scaling Agile is large organizations
27:44 What is the most dynamic/challenging area of Agile that we need to pay attention to?
28:29 Getting in touch with Andrew and Jenny


THE BOOK
You can find “Head First Agile: A Brain Friendly Guide to Agile and the PMI-ACP Certification” here: https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Agile/dp/1449314333/

CONTACTING ANDREW AND JENNY
If you’d like to reach Jenny and Andrew, here is how to find them:
Their Website: https://www.stellman-greene.com
Andrew on Twitter: ‎https://twitter.com/AndrewStellman
Jenny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jennygreene

Head First Agile w Andrew Stellman and Jenny Greene

Episode 4: Sam, Michael, and Ashley discuss the following sections of "Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve your User Stories" by Gojko Adzic and David Evans: 
 
-Watch out for generic roles 
-Evaluate zone of control and sphere of influence

Ep. 4: Agile Book Club podcast - Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve your User Stories by Adzic/Evans

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

Episode 5: Sam and Michael discuss the following sections of "Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve your User Stories" by Gojko Adzic and David Evans:

-Put a best before date on stories
-Set deadlines for addressing major risks

Ep. 5: Agile Book Club podcast - Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve your User Stories by Adzic/Evans

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

Estimation of User Stories and its purpose is a sensitive topic in Agile circles that we bring into discussion on this episode, responding to a question received from one of the listeners. Remind yourself why do we estimate work in the first place, and what actual value does it bring to the end Product that the Team is delivering... 

This and more on the Episode 34, please enjoy.

Sprint Commitment

Tai