Scrum Labs - An Interview with Howard Sublett from the 2019 North American Global Scrum Gathering

I had the chance to sit down with Scrum Alliance Chief Product Owner, Howard Sublett, at the 2019 North American Global Scrum Gathering. During the interview we discuss Dan Pink's keynote at the Gathering, the amazing work being done by volunteers to create a free library of agile coaching resources as part of the Scrum Alliance's Scrum Labs initiative, the Unscripted videos that Howard is making with Scrum Alliance Chief Scrum Master Melissa Boggs and, of course, The Wonder Twins.

The interview can be found here.

The Perfect Product Owner w/ Richard Cheng

My interview with Richard Cheng on his presentation "The Perfect Product Owner". Richard gave his presentation earlier this week at the 2019 North American Global Scrum Gathering.


https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/53427/The-Perfect-Product-Owner-w--Richard-Cheng

David Hawks at the 2018 North American Scrum Gathering

David Hawks led two sessions at the 2018 North American Scrum Gathering. During the conference we had the chance to sit down and talk through some of the key ideas he was presenting in Minneapolis.

David’s first session, “The Post Project Era: The Future of Agile,” looked at how a project-centric mindset can actually impede your ability to deliver value for your client.  In his second session, “Move Beyond User Stories: What’s Next,” David presented an approach to understanding requirements that goes beyond simply working with User Stories and involves forming hypotheses, designing and prioritizing experiments to test them, and then running the experiments to gain a deeper understanding of what the customer’s needs actually are and how to best solve them.

David is the founder and CEO of Agile Velocity, as well as a Certified Enterprise Coach and a Certified Scrum Trainer. If you’d like to learn more about David, check out AgileVelocity.com. 

You can also find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/austinagile.

And if you’d like to learn more about the Keep Austin Agile Conference, which took place on May 24, 2018, or Agile Austin, check out http://www.meetup.com/agileaustin/.

Billy McLaughlin - 2018 Global Scrum Gathering Keynote

The 2018 North American Global Scrum Gathering kicked off with a keynote presentation that was incredibly unique and inspiring. Billy McLaughlin is a professional guitar player who spent his life working to reach a level of success most musicians only dream about. But just as he reached the top, the tools that got him there began working against him.



Billy suffers from focal dystonia. You may not be familiar with this condition, but for a professional guitar player, it is one of the the worst things that could possibly happen because it means you can’t do the one thing you have spent your life mastering.

While something like this might cause a lot of people to give up on their dreams and find something else to do, Billy found a different path. He learned to play the guitar left handed instead of right handed. (Just for frame of reference, imagine learning how to write again, using your opposite hand, but having to write everything backwards… what Billy had to do was harder than that.)

In this interview you’ll hear Billy explain what focal dystonia is, how it impacted him and how he worked through relearning to play guitar all over again.

The story is inspiring all on it’s own, but for me, there is something deeper in this story. In the interview you’ll hear Billy talk about the struggle of working through all the relearning and how he stayed motivated and kept at it. While it doesn’t touch the level of complexity that Billy had to work through, there are some parallels to what traditional PMs go through when they have to relearn how to do their jobs using Agile. For me, that journey felt like I was being forced to unlearn everything I had spent years trying to master, and then start over from scratch. Maintaining some level of motivation and not giving up hope was one of the hardest parts of the transformation. This is something Billy and I discuss in the interview, and for any of you who need inspiration from time to time, my hope is that his story will help.

There is contact info for Billy below, but if you’d like to check out his keynote presentations from other events, you can find them here.

Links from the Podcast 

Billy McLaughlin 

• Web: http://www.billymclaughlin.com 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/billymclaughlinmusic 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillyMacMusic 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BillyMacFan 
• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/billy-mclaughlin/537883 

Focal Dystonia 

• Dystonia Medical Research Foundation 
• The Dystonia Society (UK)

Jeff Sutherland at 2018 Global Scrum Gathering on the Scrum@Scale and Scrum Alliance partnership

Last week, at the 2018 North American Global Scrum Gathering, the Scrum Alliance and Scrum co-founder, Dr. Jeff Sutherland, announced the creation of a new joint venture to train, coach, and promote Scrum@Scale. Scrum@Scale is an extension of the Scrum Framework that is designed to deliver business Agility across an entire organization.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to to sit down with Jeff during the Scrum Gathering and ask some questions about his partnership with the Scrum Alliance, Scrum@Scale, and how it can help organizations achieve greater business Agility.

Links from the Podcast

If you’d like to read the press release on the joint venture, you can find it here: https://tinyurl.com/yc5z4w3p
Here is a link to the Scrum@Scale Guide
Here is a link to Jeff's latest book, "Scrum, The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half The Time".

Contacting Dr. Jeff Sutherland

If you’d like to contact Jeff you can reach him at:

• Scrum@Scale: https://www.scrumatscale.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffsutherland
• Email: jeff@scruminc.com
• Jeff's books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2H9ZePk

Agile 2017 Preview - Laura Powers

Laura Powers is has a LOT going on. She’s got a new role as Co-CEO of RADTAC US, she got classes coming up AND she has sessions set for Agile 2017 and the Scrum Gathering in Dublin. In this podcast I had the chance to catch up with Laura and hear about all she has going on, and we got to dig into the sessions she’ll be presenting at Agile 2017 and the Scrum Gathering in Dublin.

SHOW NOTES

00:10 Interview Begins
01:03 Laura explains her new gig at Radtac US
02:15 Laura’s experience London following the recent attacks
02:56 Laura and Kim Brainard are giving some Training From the Back of the Room classes
05:03 Laura’s participation in the Women in Agile Event at Agile 2017
07:24 Laura’s talks at Agile 2017
07:48 What about The Power of Play?
14:12 The Difference between Culture and Climate
18:02 Laura’s upcoming session at the Scrum Gathering in Dublin and Say Yes to No!
19:50 Improv,  the “Yes, and” culture and the Power of No
25:25 Saying YES! to more things than you can possibly do and how to fix that
27:58 Laura’s advice for newcomers attending Agile 2017
31:34 Getting in touch with Laura

CONTACTING LAURA

Radtac https://www.radtac.co.uk/about-us/page/3/
Twitter https://twitter.com/laurapowers

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST

• Radtac http://Radtac.com
• Training from the BACK of the Room
  Thursday, August 3, Orlando, FL
  Kim Brainard and Laura Powers
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/training-from-the-back-of-the-room-tbr-1-day-graphic-facilitation-tickets-31829812827

LAURA’S PODCASTS

Agile Games http://agilegamespodcast.com
NLP Your Agile - Link will be updated soon

WOMEN IN AGILE

Women in Agile at Agile 2017
Date: Sunday, August 6, 2017
Time: 1-5 PM
Location: Orlando, FL - Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel (Agile2017)
https://www.agilealliance.org/women-in-agile-2017/

LAURA'S SESSIONS AT AGILE 2017

The Power of Play - Coaching Teams to Play at Work
Wednesday, August 9, 10:45 AM
http://sched.co/ATXu
It’s Not Just About Culture: Co-creating an Awesome Agile Climate in an Imperfect World
Thursday, August 10, 10:45 AM
http://sched.co/ATWv

Laura's Session at 2017 SCRUM GATHERING - DUBLIN

Say "Yes" to "No": The Power of the "No" in Agile
Tuesday, October 31, 11:00 AM
https://www.scrumalliance.org/sgdub

Lisa Hershman At SG2017 - Scaling, Certification Changes and Top Initiatives at the Scrum Alliance

Scrum Alliance Interim CEO Lisa Hershman shared some time at the 2017 Scrum Gathering in San Diego to talk about the top initiatives being worked on at the Scrum Alliance, including their partnership with Large Scale Scrum, changes to the certification programs and more.

2016 Scrum Gathering Munich - The Agilistocrats!

An update from the 2016 Scrum Gathering in Munich featuring Maria Matarelli, Richard Cheng and Karim Harbott (with special guest Howard Sublett).

 

Agile in Education Update

Check out my Projects at Work interview with the folks who got together at the 2016 Scrum Gathering to formalize the revolution Scrum is bringing to education.

Click here for the interview


To Learn More about the work that came out of the meeting in Orlando, click here -> http://www.agileineducation.org

Personal Agility Canvas 2.0

Here is my presentation from the 2016 Global Scrum Gathering in Orlando and the new Personal Agility Canvas.

Thanks to everyone who showed up for the session.

Presentation
Canvas

PMP Rehab: Personal Agility Canvas 2.0

I'll be leading a workshop to introduce the new version of the Personal Agility Canvas at the 2016 Scrum Gathering in Orlando on April 18 at 3 PM. If you know anyone who is struggling with getting their head (or heart) around Agile, please encourage them to attend and I promise they will leave with a plan of attack to improve their adoption of Agile.

Getting Interviewed by the Agile Archers at the 2015 Phoenix Scrum Gathering

At the Scrum Gathering in Phoenix Vivek Angiras and Aakash Srinivasan invited me to be interviewed for a series of videos they were recording with different CSTs. I am very grateful to them for allowing me to be included and I'm really psyched about how this came out. I think it does a good job of conveying my approach to training and the work that I do to try and help make the transition to Agile suck a little less for others than it did for me. Thank you @vivangiras and @AakashKvs for letting me be part of this.

Generation Agile

When I posted on twitter earlier this week about the presentation my wife and I gave at the Global Scrum Gathering, Paris 2013, on The Agile Girl Scouts, a friend of mine asked me to put some context around it. He was able to understand that this was a pretty big deal to me, but was't sure why. My hope is that this blog post will provide some explanation around that.

The Waterfall

Most adults in the workforce today have learned how to manage work using a waterfall model. That means work follows something along these lines:

• Initiation - We figure out what we need to do

• Planning - We figure out how we are going to do it

• Execution - We do it and try to follow the plan as best we can

• Monitoring and Controlling - We check to see if what we delivered is what was wanted

• Closing -  We shut it down and capture what we've learned along the way.

Bag of Oranges Days

For many of the people who adopt this method, success comes from a command and control approach. This approach tends to view people as "resources" which are expended on a project to achieve a specific end. In the IT space, it has a history of being successful about 30% of the time. For the person acting as Project Manager, it often leads to a lot of "bag of oranges" days.

When I learned and later began teaching this model, I kept wondering why no one had taught me that stuff before. The simple tools it provided, seemed more like common sense. Just having the simple capacity to see an overwhelming amount of work and have the basic tools to break it down into manageable, workable elements was very enlightening. Since then I have been looking for ways to go back and teach my younger self some tools that would have made life a lot easier. 

Those tools were great, but using them was a bit like Frodo putting on the ring. The more I used them, the more I started to feel that I was supposed to try and control the uncontrollable and the more I started to view the humans I worked with as "resources" and not people. They were pawns on a chess board and I was playing chess against an opponent I could not hope beat because the only thing I could be sure of was that whatever I was able to imagine, predict, or plan for, was the only thing that was not going to happen. 

When I entered the workforce and started to work for people who had been taught that success came through control, I was often the pawn on the board. In many jobs I was micromanaged, condescended to, accused, blamed and generally treated like someone who could only be counted on if they were bossed around and threatened. I, in turn, reluctantly learned this approach and tried, to apply it (with limited success). This didn't happen all the time. I was lucky to have a few really great bosses and teams along the way and I was fortunate to find myself in situations where I really was able to be creative and collaborate with other people who cared as much about the work as I did. Those moments were invigorating. 

The Agile Manifesto

As part of a response to the waterfall approach, in 2001, a bunch of smart guys got together and came up with the Agile Manifesto, which says: 

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

In my journey towards adopting the above and learning to use the models and frameworks which support the Agile Manifesto, a lot of what I do is a reaction against the traditional command and control approach I had been taught.  I often joke that I am in a state of recovery, but I do tend to view it that way.  One of the reasons I get so much joy from what I do for a living is that  I get to help others on their transition as well. But I do think it is important to acknowledge it as a corrective action. 

Hope for the Future

Any parent wants their child to have a better life than they did. We all want for our kids to experience less adversity (or at least different adversity) than we did. If Agile is about creating a work environment that values people, their ideas and ability to collaborate in an effort to deliver higher quality work, then it is a very positive and healthy response to a workspace that did not support creative collaboration and self-organization. 

Each new generation finds that certain things which were common in previous generations, are no longer good for us. When I was a kid we'd go to the Jersey shore in the summer. If my Mom was able to get some Coppertone SPF2 or 4 on me it would only last until I was able to get to the water and scrub it off. I'd play, swim and lay in the sun until the blisters formed. The blisters were an indicator that maybe it was time to put on a t-shirt, a baseball hat, or in extreme cases, SPF 15. My daughter has been spared that due to how much more we know about the damage the sun can do to our skin.

My goal with teaching Agile to young people is similar to educating them about the dangers of too much sun. My hope is that if they learn about Agile first, their experience with it and exposure to the benefits it can provide will "inoculate" them against some of the challenges they would otherwise face if they entered the workforce as "resources" to be used up on a waterfall project. My hope is that they will see Agile not as a response against something else, but as a natural, organic way for empowered, creative people to deliver high quality work.