Louder Than Ten Goes Full CoOp!

Louder Than Ten is a Vancouver-based Project Management Training and Consulting company. L>10 was founded by Rachel and Travis Gertz, and for the past 14 years, everything they have done has been centered around fostering healthy and humane ways of working together and managing projects. There aren’t many organizations in the digital agency space that have taken the time to develop their own project management manifesto. It is truly a unique place and now, as they do, Rachel and Travis have cranked up the volume just a scosche higher by converting their company into a Worker Owned Cooperative. This means that new employees who join Louder than Ten will have an option to purchase a stake in the company and become an equal partner. This is a far cry from the sweatshop grind-it-out approach that many agencies take and it is definitely unique in the context of what is happening in the field of project management today. 

In this episode, Rachel and Travis join me to explain why they took this step to completely transform their company and how they went about doing it. 

You can find the video version of the interview here.

You can find the audio version of the interview here.

Also, as you can see from the picture above, they have some totally badass merch. If there is a project manager in your life, remember, the holidays are right around the corner.

Suze Haworth at 2018 Digital PM Summit

Suzanna Haworth gave a talk at the 2018 Digital PM Summit called "Adapting Agile: How to Make a Blended Agile Approach Work For You". Agile and Digital can be an odd fit. In her talk Suze focused on how digital agencies can begin introducing agile practices into their workflow in order to realize some of the benefits that agility can provide.

The talk was very popular. So popular in fact, that I wasn't able to get in.
Fortunately Suze was kind enough to let me interview her about her session once she got back home to London. In this interview she shares some of the key points from her session and explains her take on hybrid approaches to bringing agile and a traditional (waterfall) approach together.

If you work at a digital agency and you're trying to figure out how to make agile fit, there are some great tips in here for you.



(Also, apologies for some of the background noise - they were doing construction in the apartment above mine and it could not be helped.)

If you'd like to get in touch with Suze to ask her some follow up questions, here is her contact info:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanna-haworth-55073616/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/suzehaworth
Web: https://suzannahaworth.com

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/

Justin Handler - Implementing Agile in Digital At O3 World

Justin Handler is the Head of Accounts at O3 World, a Philadelphia based Digital Agency. O3 World has been integrating Agile practices into their workflow for the past few years and Justin has been leading that charge every step of the way. In this interview, Justin shares stories about what has worked for O3, some things that didn’t, and he offers advice for Digital Agencies that are moving down the path towards Agile.

Justin is also one of the folks heading up the Digital PM group in Philadelphia. If you’d like to learn more about the group, check out http://twitter.com/dpmphilly or https://www.meetup.com/DPM-Philly/

SHOW NOTES

• 03:24 Interview begins 
• 03:44 Background on Justin and his role at O3
• 06:48 How O3 got started with implementing Agile
• 08:00 O3’s first experiments with Agile estimation practices
• 09:40 What O3 tried that didn’t work and what they learned from it
• 11:57 Debating the value of a Daily Standup and O3’s alternative solution
• 14:15 Does the client get access to the Trello Board and Slack?
• 14:34 The key to making Agile practices work in an Agency
• 16:05 Fitting UX into Agile at O3
• 19:25 Involving Developers with UX work
• 20:03 Capturing and prioritizing requirements at O3
• 22:30 Development and UX working in parallel
• 23:27 Helping the client with adopting Agile (or not)
• 25:39 Changing the nature of the relationship with the client
• 27:14 Advice for agencies getting started with Agile
• 29:23 How to reach Justin

JUSTIN’S ARTICLE

During the interview Justin references an article he wrote called “Agile In The Agency. Is It Possible?” You can find it here: http://www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com/managing-agile-projects-in-agency/

CONTACTING JUSTIN

Web: http://www.o3world.com

Email: handler@o3world.com

Twitter: @justinhandler

Making Agile work in a Digital Agency w/ Darren Petersen

Darren Petersen is a Senior Technical Project Manager at Lullabot. He’s also incredibly knowledgeable about Agile. In this interview Darren and I discuss how Agile has been implemented at Lullabot. We dig into what works, what doesn’t, why he moved away from Story Points and all, and how Lullabot has been able to get dedicated teams in place.

Note: During the interview Darren and I have a brief conversation about why it makes no sense to force yourself into the

As a (some user)
I want to (some action)
so I can (some benefit) 

format just for the sake of using it. I promised to get him an official answer. You can find that here.

SHOW NOTES

00:08 Interview Begins
00:47 Background on Lullabot
01:33 Managing 50 distributed team members
03:04 Using social media tools to stay connected with remote staff
05:57 Using Agile at Lullabot for client work
12:02 Making the case for some upfront planning, before using Agile during Development
12:50 Taking on the cost of teaching Agile to the client (who doesn’t care about Agile)
14:22 The way Lullabot sets up Teams to use Agile for client work
15:22 How can a digital agency maintain the business with dedicated teams
20:35 How dedicated teams impact the staff members morale and performance at Lullabot
23:27 Teaching customers to write decent User Stories
28:07 Should you force yourself into a User Story format when it doesn’t make sense? *
29:32 Why Darren doesn’t like using Story Points
33:00 How did Darren get so deep with Agile and what drives him to keep learning about it
36:19 Getting in touch with Darren
37:01 Interview Ends

CONTACTING DARREN

Twitter https://twitter.com/dsayswhat
Email: darren.petersen@lullalbot.com
About: https://www.lullabot.com/about/darren-petersen
Lullabot https://www.lullabot.com

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST

User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn http://amzn.to/2vKv4JI
Troy Magennis & Focused Objective http://focusedobjective.com
User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton http://amzn.to/2wckyOg
Agile Manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org

Making Agile work at Digital Agencies w/ Jack Skeels

TLDR

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, I have been doing lots of interviews about how to make Agile work in a digital environment.