Letting Go of Pure Agile with Andy Jordan

After seeing yet another verbal Agilista beat down on LinkedIn, my friend Andy Jordan wrote an article on Project Management.com called Letting Go of Pure Agile. I reached out to Andy and asked if he'd let me interview him about his post to try and dig a little deeper on what he sees happening in the Agile space, how it intersects with traditional project management, and the impact it is having in the job market.

It was also just great to catch up with Andy. He, Mark Price Perry and I used to do workshops for PMI on Redefining Your PMO. You can find links to more on that, Andy's original post, and our interview here: https://tinyurl.com/mr2u9jxv

Obeyas and Agile in Film Making with Dan Eberle

Dan Eberle is back! This time in the podcast Dan is here to talk about his work as a filmmaker. The interview focuses on the Obeya he and his team use during production and how his work as an agile coach influences his work making films. 

If the term "Obeya" seems unfamiliar...

"Conceptually akin to traditional “war rooms,” an Obeya will contain visually engaging charts and graphs depicting such information as program timing, milestones and progress-to-date and countermeasures to existing technical or scheduling issues."
(Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obeya)

The podcast was recorded in video because Dan shows examples of his work. You can find the podcast here: https://bit.ly/3SeTmEY

If you'd prefer an audio-only version, that lives here: https://bit.ly/3dGoZIJ

And if you'd like to check out a slide show with pictures of his Obeya and some of the other ways he and his crew visualize their work, you can find that here: https://bit.ly/InsurgentObeya

Can Teams Actually Achieve Predictability? w/ Troy Magennis

Before the pandemic hit, one of my favorite parts of the summer was going to the Agile Conference and doing podcast interviews with the speakers and thought leaders who were there. Each year, one of the very best moments of each Agile Conference was when I would get to sit down and talk with Troy Magennis. 

It’s been two summers. 

I miss talking to Troy.

So I reached out and he was kind enough to spare some time for an interview. 

During the conversation, we cover a number of topics, including:

• Is it actually possible for a team to become predictable? 
• What gets in the way of predictability? 
• What is BlockedApp and why did he create it?
• Which constraints are the most important ones to start with? 
• Who is responsible for acting as the scientist of flow? 
• Why are we still so focused on utilization and output instead of results?
• Why do we all need to know CPR?

Click here to check out the interview

ProKanban with Colleen Johnson

 

My interview with ProKanban CEO, Colleen Johnson on creating ProKanban.org, the ProKanban Guide, and why ProKanban Certification is something you need to seriously consider as you deepen your skills in working with Agile. 

You can find the interview here.

And if you want to check out the Kanban Guide, you can find that here.

Lessons from a Coach at Toyota w/ Bob Tarne from Agile 2018

When I was in the beginnings of my career in Project Management and started volunteering for PMI, Bob Tarne was my mentor. Bob taught me volumes about not just project management, but how to be on the Board of the IT & Telecommunications SIG.

This summer at Agile 2018, Bob led a session called "Agile Road Trip: Lessons from a Coach at Toyota" (http://sched.co/EUEg). Bob's presentation focused on some of his recent work as an Agile coach working at Toyota. (If you didn't just do a spit take, yes... Toyota... the place that spawned Lean Manufacturing... which is what most of Agile is rooted in.)

This interview was streamed live on Facebook during the conference. During the conversation Bob and  walk through his experience of helping Toyota retune how it is implementing Agile. We also discuss what value having a PMP Certification can be to someone whose work is primarily focused in agile.

Contacting Bob:

Blog: http://zen-pm.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/btarne

The Agile Heretic - An Interview with Jim Benson

Jim Benson has been involved with Agile since the very beginning. You may know him as creator of Personal Kanban,  as the co-creator of Lean Coffee, through his work as CEO of Modus Cooperandi, his books, or from the many awards he’s won for his work in applying Lean practices to knowledge work. 

After years watching Agile being misused, misunderstood, and seeing it “calcify and solidify because of commercialization”,  Jim’s new project The Agile Heretic is focused on calling attention to many of the things people are doing that are causing Agile to not work. In the videos and blog posts, Jim takes on a wide range of Agile related topics, he explores why things are off the rails and how to address them.

In this interview Jim and I talk through what led to him creating this series, his hopes for it and what he is looking forward to seeing in the future of Agile. We also touch on some specific topics (like why he doesn’t like Story Points) and he shares a bunch of great stories (like why a group of developers once passed the hat amongst themselves and smuggled him into their company after their organization deemed his ideas too dangerous to their way of working.

Note: During the podcast, Jim makes multiple references to the Kuhn Cycle, You can find some basic info on it here:  Kuhn Cycle: http://www.thwink.org/sustain/glossary/KuhnCycle.htm

Agile Heretic Links - here are two places to get started:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/CmfZvdGWKv4
• Medium: https://medium.com/@ourfounder/the-agile-heretic-an-introduction-29992e52052c

Jim at Agile 2018

Jim will be leading a Stalwarts session at Agile 2018 called “Ask the Agile Heretic Almost Anything” You can find more about that here: https://agile2018.sched.com/event/EUEU/ask-the-agile-heretic-almost-anything-jim-benson-jim-benson

For more in Jim and his work:

• Modus Cooperandi http://moduscooperandi.com
• Jim on Twitter https://twitter.com/ourfounder
• Jim’s books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LWuhx1
• Personal Kanban http://personalkanban.com/pk/
• Lean Coffee http://leancoffee.org

The Apprentice and the Project Manager

A few weeks ago I had a chance to interview Kamal Manglani for Projects at Work. Kamal is an Agile coach who has written a book, The Apprentice and the Project Manager, that was recently released on HappyAbout.

(check out the interview here)

The book includes a narrative based in the past and the present. Stories from earlier work experiences as an apprentice mechanic and current experiences working as a technology project manager are used as a metaphor to explain some key concepts that factor into Agile and Lean.

Explaining an Agile process/framework as a call and response narrative is not a new approach, but what is unique and refreshing about Kamal's book is that in taking a practical approach to getting work done and coping with very specific situations, the author has made a choice to steer clear of promoting one method over another and just kept it to a very pragmatic, straight up approach.

Author: Kamal Manglani

If you are new to Agile and/or Lean, this book would be a great starting place to introduce some of the key concepts without drowning you in jargon and trying to sell you on having found "THE WAY".

When I interviewed Kamal we discussed the book and he mentioned that one of his goals in writing it was to provide a unique perspective on Agility that crossed the  boundaries of different areas within an organization (like Quality, Security and Infrastructure) in a way that would make it easy for executives to see how Agile and Lean could help them take advantage of opportunities.

For me, as someone who has spent a lot of time working in both traditional project management and in Agile, my favorite section of this book was the chapter on Financial Health. It is great to see a book for people who lead projects include an easy to understand explanation of why it is so important to factor finance into our decision making process and how to go about doing that in a responsible manner.

You can check out The Apprentice and the Project Manager at HappyAbout.

Personal Kanban - Weeks 13-16

Zen and The Art of Personal Kanban Maintenance

Phaedrus had Quality 

I have Value

The more I examine my approach to getting work done, the more I am aware of the inefficiency I have baked into it. The more I study about Lean, the more I become concerned about "waste". Waste is bad. Waste must be exterminated!

But what about the waste that is in there on purpose? Is that really waste?

When I teach classes, I bring a few extra workbooks for students, just in case. Most of the time, it goes in the trash at the end. So, the waste of creating extra materials for extra money is made worse by discarding it at the end of the class. Massive waste. However, that waste provided me with peace of mind that enabled me to be better focused on teaching the class. So, was it really waste?

To understand what waste is occurring and where it is taking place,  I need to understand what I am doing that does not contribute to "value". 

Value = ?

In interviewing people about Personal Kanban, several of them said they prioritize work based on what makes them happy and that they only do things with make them happy. 

Initially, this sounded great, but, 

IF (value = happy)

THEN (who changes cat litter?)

I wasn't doubting the people who told me they prioritize based on what makes them happy, I was just struggling with all the other stuff that still had to get done.  When I asked what they did with the work that did not make them happy, they said they would delegate it if it was truly necessary. This was not something I was able to envision applying to my own world though.  I have no one to delegate to.

(Minions would be nice.) Even if I did, the thought of just dumping all the not happy work on them does not seem entirely in synch with my understanding of  servant leadership.

I am clearly struggling with "value". I need some help.

Milestone...

To mark the halfway point in my 6-month experiment with Personal Kanban here is an update on where I am with it…

Original Goals - 100% achieved

1. I have learned more about how Kanban works and how it is different from Personal Kanban.

2. I have demonstrated to myself that I am capable of actually practicing some version of Personal Kanban

Having reached a point where I have solved my initial questions (above), I realized that to go any further with this I was going to need to solve a different (bigger) question:

What is value?

I also realized that if I wasn't going to go the same route as Phaedrus, I was going to need some assistance. 

I've coached teams in Agile, but I've never had a coach myself. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. I asked Brian Bozzuto if he would be kind enough to coach me and he was kind/foolish enough to agree to work with me for a few weeks. During our initial calls we talked about a number of topics which I will be posting about in the coming weeks. One of these was "value".  After discussing the prioritizing by happiness approach, it seemed that defining happiness first would be key.  Boz suggested we both try an experiment. We each signed up for Track Your Happiness http://www.trackyourhappiness.org/. Once you sign up you being receiving polls from them a few times a day trying to determine your relative level of happiness. After you complete a number of surveys they create a report that is designed to provide you with a better understanding of the things which truly bring you happiness. 

In the next post I will explain why the DFW is (sadly) my happy place.