Catching Up... 27 Podcasts, 5 Blog Posts and a Chicken

Me holding a chicken

Sometimes, when you leave for the airport so you can go teach, you forget your guitar. (Actually, it isn't really a "sometimes" thing... more of a "once" thing... NEVER AGAIN).

When that happens you find yourself staring at your Kanban board looking at the cards that never move... like the one that says UPDATE YOUR BLOG!

I've been total crap at keeping this up to date. Sadly, my own blog is always the last place I remember to post new things, so... here is an onslaught of things  I have posted since the Agile 2015 Interviews.

I'm going to try (again) to suck a bit less at keeping this up to date.

If you like any of these, the best place to see updates from me on podcasts is on Twitter @mrsungo or @drunkenpm. (And there are some REALLY good ones coming.)

drunkenPM Radio Interviews (Episode 3 is coming soon)

• Episode 2: Bimodal with Steve Elliott and Dennis Stevens (2/2016)
• Episode 1:Hybrids and Organizational Agility with Shane Hastie and Data Literacy with John Cook and Troy Magennis (12/2015)

Projects at Work Podcast Interviews
Note: these require registration, but it is free

• Jim Benson - Personal Kanban, Lean Coffee, his new Distributed Teams workshops and great new stuff coming from Modus Cooperandi (3/2016)
• Johanna Rothman - Becoming Influential Agile Leader and the workshops she is doing with Gil Broza (3/2015)
• Dean Leffingwell Scaled Agile Framework 4.0 or "The one where Dean completely changed the way I think about SAFe "(2/2016)
• Mike Vizdos - Starting, Practicing, Coaching and Leading Scrum - Note: You should listen to this one because... Vizdos (2/2016)
• Manny Gonzales - The new mission of the Scrum Alliance  (1/2016)
• Mike Cohn - Mike Cohn on when we need Estimates and Why (12/2015)
• Kathryn Kuhn - Human Centered Design Thinking and Agile (11/2015)
• Rex Madden - Estimating and Answering "How Long, How Much?" (10/2015)
• John Miller - AgileSchools and using Empathy Maps with students (10/2015)
• Michael Tibbert - The challenge of moving from PM to Scrum Master (9/2015)

LeadingAgile SoundNotes Interviews 

• Tim Wise -  Agile Bodhisattvas and Developing Empathy For Change  (3/2016)
• Dan Greening -  The Five Characteristics of Sustainable Agility  (3/2016)
• Russ Pena - Managing Value in the Portfolio (3/2016)
• Mike Cottmeyer - The Focus of Agile in 2016 (2/2016)
• Jann Thomas - Why Should the ScrumMaster be a Full Time Role? (1/2016)
• Derek Huether - The Agile Baltimore Unconference (12/2015)
• Mike Cottmeyer - The Rise of Bimodal IT (12/2015)
• Tim Wise - Portfolio Telemetry and Optimization (11/2015)
• Russ Pena - The Integrated Business Analyst (11/2015)
• Isaac Hogue - The Importance of Measurable Progress in Agile Transformation (10/2015)
• Tim Wise - DevOps in Product Development Organizations (10/2015)
• Robert Sfeir and Adrian Wible - Coaching Q&A : Answering Student Questions  (9/2015)
• Andrew Fuqua - ATDD, BDD, TDD and More (9/2015)
• Mike Cottmeyer - The Emperor Has No Clothes Part 2 (9/2015)
• Chris Spagnuolo - System Design for Innovation Hubs in Large Enterprises (8/2015)

LeadingAgile Blog Posts  

• Should We Limit WIP for Organizational Change (3/2016)
• Why Bimodal IT Matters (2/2016)
• Digital PM Summit Report on the Use of Agile in Digital Agencies (10/2015)
• This Year's Model - Hybrids! (10/2015)
• Personal Agility Canvas (9/2015)

Projects@Work White Paper - Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits

ProjectsatWork has published a study called Distributed Agile Teams: Achieving the Benefits. The report was put together by Elizabeth Harrin  (@PM4Girls), who is the author of the website A Girls Guide to Project Management. The results of the research cover a lot of ground with respect to what makes distributed Agile projects work and what can contribute to their failure.  The report is very insightful and definitely worth the time it takes to read. While some of the findings may seem like common sense, knowledge workers in the IT space (myself definitely included) seem to possess a remarkable capacity for periodic loss of grip to that tether.

My favorite part comes at the very end during the summary of recommendations. Number One on the list is:

Don’t act like your project is co-located – pay the tax for distribution. 

This is one of the most simple things that so many of us forget when we are working at a distance. I believe this applies whether you are working down the hall from someone, or across the globe… there is a price that has to be paid when you are not sitting in the same room. With the transparency that Agile offers, this tax becomes far more obvious. There is no doubt that distributed teams provide a number of benefits, but those benefits come at a cost. The reason (IMHO) so many people struggle so much with distributed is that they keep thinking that the ride is free ... which it theoretically could be… unless you actually want it to work.