Using Personal Kanban to Start Agile Transformation with Michael Grill

Michael Grill is a Product Owner and Head of Process and Methods in the Agile Practice at Knorr-Bremse, and they have taken steps to address this challenge of helping individuals adopt an agile mindset and practices in managing their day-to-day work by adopting Personal Kanban before they put them together on agile teams. In this interview, Michael joins me to share how Knorr-Bremse came to make this choice and how it is deeply impacting their agile practice. First, you begin working with Personal Kanban, then you and your team members begin working together using PK, and then you adopt practices from Scrum, Kanban, or other forms of agile, to get the work done. 

You can find the podcast and links to learn more here.

The Five Lenses of Humane Management with Jim Benson

Jim Benson is back to explain The Five Lenses of Humane Management and how to use them to understand and design cultures and systems that support human collaboration.

I asked Jim to join me for this podcast because I’ve been studying the lenses and incorporating them into my work for about a year now. They have had a deep impact on me, the way I engage with teams, and the way I show up to collaborate with others. If you are interested in understanding how and why the groups you are working with are high-performing (or perhaps the opposite), you will find valuable insights in this interview.

You can find the interview here.

The Collaboration Equation with Jim Benson

Jim Benson joins the podcast to talk about his upcoming book The Collaboration Equation, why collaboration is part of everything we do, and what you need to make it work.

You can find the video version of the interview here.

You can find an audio version of the interview here.

When Your Team Members Also Report to Other Teams w Dan Eberle

In this episode of the podcast, Agile Coach Dan Eberle is back to help me respond to a student question that is complicated, confusing, and more common than it should be…

Ivan (not the person’s real name) explained the situation like this… 

Six Product Owners/Developers oversee 20 reports within the org. Each of the reports has a specialized role. They are broken up into teams that range in size from 1-5 people, and the team size tends to fluctuate. Some of the Product Owners/Developers oversee teams and are also the people managers of the individuals on the team. Some of the team members report to people managers who are Product Owner/Developers of other teams, team members of other teams, or people completely outside the grouping of 6 + 20. There is competition for the attention/efforts of team members who are allocated to more than one project and/or reporting to a people manager who has different priorities than the PO/Dev they are assigned to work with. 

You can find the interview here.