Jimi Fosdick at SG2017 on going from PMP to CST

Fearless Agility’s Jimi Fosdick took some time out of during the 2017 Scrum Gathering in San Diego to let me interview him about what it was like to go from being a full on, old school, traditional PMP, to someone who spends his days helping individuals and organizations move to a more Agile way of working.

“It should feel counterintuitive awkward uncomfortable and maybe a little bit painful because anything that represents real change feels that way.”

Jimi is not your run of he mill PMP turned Agilist. His outspoken style, views and approach are unique, but the reason I was so psyched to get to do the interview was the fact that despite all that, Jimi still shows a lot of respect and empathy for traditional minded folks and the challenges they face in making the switch… because he went through it himself.
If you are trying to move from a traditional way of working to someone who has adopted and internalized Agile, there is a lot of good advice in this podcast.

SHOW NOTES

01:40 - Interview begins
02:00 - Jimi’s work and his background
04:17 - Jimi’s experience of going moving from traditional PM work to Agile
06:35 - Advice from Jimi for those moving from traditional to Agile
07:46 - Knowing what you are arguing against, before you know what you are arguing for
09:30 - Embracing the crisis of faith
10:49 - Hyper-focus and the discipline required to make Scrum work
11:45 - The difference between a Project Manager and a ScrumMaster
14:44 - Why Scrum has no Meetings
16:47 - Jim’s work in the Enterprise
20:10 - Cargo Cult Scrum
20:30 - Advice for the PMO that exists in an organization transitioning to Agile
21:19 - Jimi (See the photo below for the more older and mellower Jimi)
24:44 - It’s more about people and change than governance
25:55 - If you have a time machine and could go back and meet Fredrick Taylor would you stop him?
26:42 - Breaking Gantt’s hands
26:55 - Finding Jimi

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

Cargo Cults on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Cargo Cult Video: https://youtu.be/qmlYe2KS0-Y

CONTACTING JIMI

Web: FearlessAgility http://www.fearlessagility.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fearlessagility
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FearlessAgility/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimifosdick/
Upcoming Events on the Scrum Alliance site: http://bit.ly/2srE7gU

Parikshit Basrur and the Agile Transformation Playbook

Parikshit Basrur works in Sydney, Australia as a Management Consultant who focuses on leadership, strategy and execution. He comes from a strong traditional project management background but for the past few years he has been working in a senior leadership role within an organization that has been undergoing a transformation to Agile. This work, and Parikshit’s unique way of looking at managing work has led him to develop an Agile Transformation Playbook. In this interview, we discuss his approach to working with and transitioning to agile, the importance of focusing on culture, his take on the agile vs. traditional debate and his upcoming sessions at the Hindsight Forum where he will be giving a presentation on how to establish agile practices in a well-established business.

Show Notes

00:12 Interview begins
00:33 Background on Parikshit
01:52 Parikshit’s transition from waterfall to Agile
05:00 The difference between being Agile and doing Agile
07:15 Finding the right tools and delivering work
08:12 Speaking with Stakeholders Executives about Enterprise Transformation
12:03 Responding to the “WE HAVE TO SHIP NOW!” attitude and understanding WHY Agile?
17:15 Helping stakeholders appreciate how hard transformation can be
19:10 The McDonald’s Drive Thru version of Agile
22:30 Agile needs to be like air
23:35 Change your culture first… help them stay away from the candy on the table
27:40 Creating the desire for change
29:50 How the Agile Transformation Playbook differs from other transformation approaches
32:35 Where to find the Agile Transformation Playbook, seeing Parikshit’s upcoming presentations
33:15 Where to reach Parikshit
33:39 Interview Ends

To learn more about the Agile Transformation Playbook

Slideshare: http://bit.ly/2s0TKvy
Medium: http://bit.ly/2rlv3YD
YouTube: https://youtu.be/js96mF3X_fw

Parikshit’s upcoming sessions at the Hindsight Forum

HindSight Forum http://www.hindsightforum.com/events/
Melbourne - June 21, 2017
Sydney - June 22, 2017

Contacting Parikshit

LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/2rg8z06
Twitter: https://twitter.com/parikshitbasrur

Student QA: Design on the Scrum Team & Multiple Roles w/ Derek Huether

This post originally appeared on  LeadingAgile's Field Notes.
You can subscribe directly to these podcasts on SoundCloud or iTunes

Design and Cross Functional Teams (2:11 )

“Every time I hear you speak about cross-functional team I am not sure who these teams comprise of exactly. In my world the confusion here is most often related to design inputs. Any digital product will have a visual UI and thus its development will require design inputs. Do most of Leading Agile clients consider this a separate process that contributes to the readiness of stories for a technical Scrum team? Or do you normally assume designers are a part of a Scrum team?
In my view, the former creates waterfall-like dependencies and the latter gets in the way of confident estimations. So, even if both models are feasible, none of them seems ideal, because it leaves an are that has to be tightly managed.” Submitted by Sergey via Email

Multiple Roles - ScrumMaster & Product Owner for 3 Teams (8:20)

How do you deal with a manager who thinks you should be ScrumMaster for multiple teams AND Product Owner at the same time?

This question was submitted by a student in a CSPO class who allowed me to record the question being asked as long as I promised not to post the recording or identify the person by name. In order to honor that, I played the recording for Derek before hand, but in the podcast, what you’ll hear is me (Dave) relating the question.

The question shared by the student related to the fact that they are currently playing the role of ScrumMaster on three different teams and have also been asked to act as Product Owner for these teams. The person explained to their manager that the way Scrum is designed to work, a ScrumMaster is supposed to be dedicated to a single team, should definitely not be trying to support three teams and absolutely should not be playing the role of ScrumMaster and Product Owner at the same time. The manager responded by asking that the person give a detailed account what they are doing all day as a Scrum Master because the manager did not believe the person was too busy to be able to serve as ScrumMaster for three teams and Product Owner for as those teams as well.

Contacting Derek

You can reach Derek on the LeadingAgile site at www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/
On Twitter at twitter.com/derekhuether
Or on his personal site at www.derekhuether.com

Contacting Dave

You can reach Dave on the LeadingAgile site at www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
On Twitter at twitter.com/mrsungo
Or on his personal site at: drunkenpm.net

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

LeadingAgile CSM and 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.

Catching Up...

I haven't been very diligent about keeping this blog up to date with all the posts I do at LeadingAgile each week, so I'm going to start scheduling those into the blog and get things caught up. Until I am caught up, I'll be adding one every few days.

Also, since ProjectsatWork is not part of ProjectManagement.com, the P@W podcasts will soon be adjusted a bit to reflect that.

Savannah Rayat - Enhancing your life with Personal Agility

During the 2017 Heart of Agile Conference in Pittsburgh, Savannah Rayat gave a presentation called “Enhancing your life with Personal Agility”. During the session she explained how she has applied some basic Agile practices from Scrum and Kanban to refine and focus her approach to life, deciding what is most important to her, and managing teams. Savannah has also applied Agile in other non-IT areas. During the interview, we talk about some of the Scrum practices she has applied in working with her team of Realtors.

Show Notes

00:10 - Interview Begins
00:52 - Background on Savannah
01:42 - How Day-Trading fits in with being a Realtor/IT Professional
02:15 - How Savannah defines Personal Agility
04:44 - Savannah’s approach to Personal Kanban and her issue with deadlines
05:31 - The important of setting and maintaining WIP Limits
07:06 - Reducing your WIP to 3-4
10:00 - Preventing the backlash of cutting stuff our of your life
12:15 - Having affection for your interests
12:42 - Deciding what you can live without
14:29 - Long term and short term road mapping
15:48 - Savannah’s  Day to Day practice of Agile
18:50 - The need for slack
21:35 - The benefits of self-reflection and coping with the guilt of doing unplanned stuff
23:16 - Making the time for Personal Kanban
24:19  - Accountability Partners
25:33 - How to get started with using Personal Agility
27:44 - How Savannah uses Scrum to support collaboration on her Real Estate team
32:38 - Getting in touch with Savannah
34:39  - Interview Ends

Contacting Savannah 

on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/savannah-rayat-8942b8120/
on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SavannahRayat
Savannah’s Realty site: http://rayatrealtygroup.com
Savannah’s Heart of Agile 2017 http://heartofagile.com/Session/enhancing-your-life-with-personal-agility/

Tracking Scrum Master Performance w/ Troy Lightfoot

Troy Lightfoot joins Dave Prior to respond to a recurring student question “How can I track the performance of a ScrumMaster using metrics which are different form the ones I use to track the performance of the team?” Using the LeanAgile Intelligence tool he co-authored, Troy walks Dave through a few options that can be used to collect data that could provide clarity on performance of an individual ScrumMaster.

For more information on LeanAgile Intelligence: https://www.leanagileintelligence.com/
You can follow Troy Lightfoot on Twitter at https://twitter.com/g4stroy
You can follow Dave Prior on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mrsungo

Test Driven Development and Mobbing for Non Developers

Summary: You don’t have to be a developer to use Test Driven Development and Mob Programming. Last week on Twitch Amitai Schlier & Troy Lightfoot led Dave Prior and Rachel Gertz (neither of who can program) through an exercise in remote pairing with TDD.




If you come from a PM background, you’ve probably heard developers talk about Test Driven Development and you may even get the basic idea behind it - build the test to prove something works, then build the thing that passes the test.

You may also have heard about Mob Programming - the set of practices put together by Woody Zuill that takes the idea of pairing and extends it to the whole team. In mobbing, an entire team builds everything together. They share one keyboard and rotate the person typing at timed intervals. This allows them to develop cross-functionality, to learn from each other and, basically, QA as they go.

These are both topics I’ve been interested in for awhile, but I’ve never had an opportunity arise that gave me a chance to actually try them.

But, last week I had the opportunity to participate in a unique experiment that not only let me learn more about each of these sets of practices, but gave me a
Troy Lightfoot, from Agile Uprising set up a TDD & Mobbing workshop in Twitch. Myself and Rachel Gertz from Louder Than Ten were guided by Amitai Schleier, the creator of Agile in 3 Minutes Podcast and Schmonz.com, who led us through an exercise in remote mobbing using TDD.

The entire experience was a blast and I’ve developed a new found appreciation for the entire though process and discipline that goes into using Test Driven Development and trying to mob with a team.

I’d encourage you to check out the video on your own, or with your team and maybe even try to replicate the experiment. I think this would work great as a team building exercise as well. Most of the time I felt like I was playing a board game with a bunch of friends.

Jessie Shternshus - Improv, Safety, and “Yes, … and”

Jessie Shternshus is the founder of The Improv Effect and the author of “CTRL SHIFT: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today”. In her work, Jessie often incorporates improv techniques to help people tap into the things they need to become better communicators, team members and leaders. She also coaches organizations through Agile transition and cultural change. After recently completing my first improv class, and not feeling very confident that I “got it”, I had lots of questions. Jessie was kind enough to spend some time talking with me about my experience, the benefits improv can provide, what “yes, and…” really means, why it is important and the elements needed to create a safe space where people can thrive and be creative.

SHOW NOTES

00:00 Podcast Intro
01:58  Interview Start
02:22 What Jessie has been up to lately
03:42 Jessie’s work coaching people to help them amp up their presentation skills
04:45 The Creative Courage Summit
05:58 Jessie’s Book “CTRL SHIFT: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today”
06:17 Intro to the Improv Discussion
07:00 Dave’s fears about the safety provided by the improv framework
07:46 “I’m happy to tell you your being dumb”
08:22 How can you have an environment that is supportive AND critical
08:41 Dave missed some important pieces
09:08 Learning from what makes you uncomfortable
10:04 It’s important to find the class that is right for you
11:50 How you establish a safe improv space
13:36 Safety comes from setting expectations, modeling behavior and getting to know people
16:12 Finding a way to use improv to build camaraderie with remote teams
18:20 Do you always have to “Yes, and…”
18:50 How “Yes, and” works, and the benefits it can bring
21:22 What skills improv can offer to individuals and teams working in an office setting
22:50 Advice from Jessie on how to pick the right class for you
25:19 Part of being creative involves tapping into your childlike self, but you have to feel safe going there
26:18 What if you can’t let go of everything and reach that childlike state?
28:20 Being mindful of the things you are resisting
30:02 Getting in touch with Jessie

CONTACTING JESSIE

http://www.improveffect.com
https://www.facebook.com/improveffect/
https://twitter.com/TheImprovEffect

LINKS

Jessie’s Book: “CTRL SHIFT: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today” http://amzn.to/2rhOxPk
The Creative Courage Summit: http://CreativeCourageSummit.live
My Video Podcast interview with Jessie at the 2015 Agile Conference: https://vimeo.com/135568636

John Le Drew - The Creator of the Agile Path Podcast

There are lots of podcasts about Agile out there and each of them has something valuable to offer to the community. But a few weeks ago, a new kind of Agile podcast launched. John Le Drew is the creator of “The Agile Path”, a long form NPR style podcast… (think Serial for Agile). In this interview, John shares the story of how he ended up working on the podcast, what it was like creating it, some of his current projects as well as details about the process he follows in creating the podcasts and his favorite gear.

If you are interested in podcasting, block out some time for this one, there is a lot of valuable stuff in here.

SHOW NOTES

00:01 Podcast Intro
00:52 Interview begins
01:19 John’s journey from whizkid geek hooligan to developer to Agile coach/podcaster
10:29 What inspired John to create The Agile Path and the sources that influenced his approach
11:45 Creating the soundscape for listeners
14:15 Finding the right music and getting permission to use it in a very bold way
17:53 The benefits of overcoming the fear of approaching people on your bookshelf
19:57 We should all strive to bring out our inner Woody
20:25 John’s editing process and the work he’s doing on future episodes
22:05 How John is integrating improv in his upcoming workshops and why that is relevant to the topic of safety
25:51 Dave asks John a question about how safety works in improv classes and how “Yes and…” is about accepting what comes to you without judgement and building on it
29:40 Imagine it like a sieve… find the gold
31:09 Paying attention and what that really means
34:28 Scripting it all out, then editing
39:18 Work on the next episode and the schedule John is aiming for
40:29 John’s favorite recording equipment
45:05 Wrapping Up

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

The Agile Path http://agilepath.fm
Twitter: https://twitter.com/agilepathfm
John’s upcoming speaking events and workshops: http://wisenoodle.me/speaking

Lisa Hershman At SG2017 - Scaling, Certification Changes and Top Initiatives at the Scrum Alliance

Scrum Alliance Interim CEO Lisa Hershman shared some time at the 2017 Scrum Gathering in San Diego to talk about the top initiatives being worked on at the Scrum Alliance, including their partnership with Large Scale Scrum, changes to the certification programs and more.