Making Agile Work at HUGE Inc. w/ Lance Hammond and Robert Sfeir

In preparing for my How to Hack Agile for Digital Agencies at the 2017 Digital PM Summit I did a lot of  research and conducted a lot of interview. This conversation, with Lance Hammond and Robert Sfeir from HUGE Atlanta was the last one I did before the Summit. During this discussion Lance and Robert share many of the lessons they’ve learned in bringing Agile to HUGE and they provide clarity on what it takes to make Agile work in a Digital Agency.

SHOW NOTES

• 00:08 Podcast Begins
• 01:42 Some background on Robert and Lance
• 03:17 How long HUGE has been working on introducing Agile
• 04:40 Resistance from Design when switching to an Agile approach
• 06:08 Why Kanban may be a better approach for Design
• 07:39 How the Designers at HUGE approach their work without having all the requirements up front
• 09:30 Establishing Vision up front with the client and prioritizing options with them
• 10:33 The client needs to own the delivery from the very beginning and become part of the process
• 11:50 Making the client your partner in the workflow and decision making process
• 14:17 Why teaching the client how to work in Agile has to be an accepted cost 
• 16:07 Why those with experience in Agile transformation can be so beneficial for Digital Agencies and what you need to watch out for
• 17:52 Changing how the work gets funded 
• 20:22 How to change your Statement of Work to support Agile practices
• 21:47 Tips for convincing your client to want to use Agile to manage the work
• 24:11 Caring and feeding of the client during an Agile project at a Digital Agency
• 27:53 Should you include the client in the retrospective?
• 28:46 Do you need to have cross-functional, stable teams that are each working on only one project?
• 32:04 How long did it take HUGE to get to stable teams
• 34:02 Use Lean metrics to find and remove waste
• 34:20 How critical is it to move to a retainer (fund the team) model
• 35:30 You have to know why you want Agile, which approach you’ll take, and what you want from it
• 37:05 Scrum may have you thrashing for a bit before you switch to Kanban… and there is value in that
• 37:49 Why you need to switch the entire Digital Agency over to an Agile approach (including sales)
• 39:22: What is the hardest part about implementing/working with Agile in a Digital Agency
• 42:32 Defining what you are willing (and not willing) to try changing, when you switch to an Agile approach
• 44:30 How HUGE approaches estimating work
• 48:40 Why it is so important to watch and learn (inspect) before you start trying to change things (adapt)
• 50:45 Why Robert and Lance do not believe Scrum can work in a Digital Agency that wants Agile,  but why you need to try it first to unlock the value of Kanban
• 53:00 Contacting Lance and Robert
• 54:06 Podcast Ends

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

HUGE
http://www.hugeinc.com/
Agile in Digital Agencies - Dave and Lance from the Atlanta Scrum User Group Meeting
https://www.pscp.tv/leadingagile/1YqxomWqrwMGv
(there is some static that persists until the interview begins at about 1 minute in)

CONTACTING LANCE

• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/lance5684
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lance-hammond-7288914/

CONTACTING ROBERT

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/robertsfeir
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsfeir/