Roman Pichler : Strategy and Product Ownership

Roman Pichler, one of the leading voices in Agile Product Ownership has released a new book, Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age. Roman's new book presents a number of tools and techniques Product Owners and Product Managers can use to gain a deeper understanding the product(s) they are developing in order to stock and maintain a better product backlog.

This was a special treat for me. I've been saving up questions for this interview for long time and Roman was kind enough to tolerate all of them.



Show Notes

• Why the wrote Strategize 00:26
• Adding Product Strategy to Agile Planning 2:46
• Vision to Strategy to Roadmap 5:37
• How to use the Go Product Roadmap to feed Release Planning 6:00
• Who you need to create the Roadmap? 8:40
• How Strategize should help Product Owners and Product Managers 10:30
• Is the focus on Product Ownership increasing and maturing? 11:50
• Explaining the difference between and Product Owner and a Product Manager? 15:20
• The key elements of Product Strategy  19:20
• Aligning products across the portfolio 21:24
• Product Owner at the Portfolio level 23:00
• How often should you update your Vision Board and Roadmap? 24:05
• How important is it that Team Members know the Product Vision? 25:50
• If there was one misunderstanding about Product Ownership that you could fix, what would it be? 27:54
• How to get in touch with Roman 30:00

If you'd like to get in touch with Roman, you can reach him at http://www.romanpichler.com
If you'd like to pick up a copy of Strategize, you can find it here.

IHG Product Ownership Outside of Software

In this LeadingAgile SoundNotes podcast IHG's Rebecca Williamson and LeadingAgile's Russ Pena talk about the role of Product Owner and how it has evolved through IHG's adoption of Agile on a project that has nothing to do with software... they are using it to redesign hotel rooms.

Howard Sublett : Creating and Supporting Community

Click here to go straight to ProjectsatWork interview

One of the most challenging issues faced by any organization is how to support and care for the individuals who work there. This challenge takes on a whole new level of complexity in the context of a consulting organization with staff who spend most of their time on the road away from their families and from one another. There is no specific formula for how to protect your most valuable resource (the people) from turning into burned out, disconnected road warriors who check out and eventually bail in search of something better.

In this interview, Howard Sublett, the Director of Community Development at Solutions IQ and Dave Prior discuss how Howard advocates in support of the people who are in the field and the importance of maintaining empathy for members of the community. Dave and Howard also talk about how Howard’s approach to life and work all focus around the idea of being of service to others and the importance of planning your life (and work) so that you are able to take advantage of the magic that interruptions provide.

Click here to go straight to ProjectsatWork interview

Show Notes:

• How Howard describes what he does 0:38
• You can’t create community in a vacuum 2:50
• Where Howard’s empathy comes from 4:45
• On the road 6:40
• What you do is a very subtle thing 7:45
• Planning for the disruption 9:20
• Being open to disruption in all areas of your life 10:50
• Taking the chance to build a deeper connection 12:06
• The lens you see the world through 13:12
• Learning to be more open? 14:10
• Maintaining the Introvert/Extrovert balance in your organization 15:22
• How to maintain the level of openness even when ti doesn’t always work 17:00
• Journaling 18:45 Diving as a meditative practice 19:45
• Getting in touch with Howard 21:26

Click here to go straight to the interview

LEADING INDICATORS YOU CAN USE TO ASSESS AGILE PORTFOLIO HEALTH

LeadingAgile's Dr. Dan Greening shares details on three key leading indicators you can track to get a better understanding of your portfolio health.

Click here for the SoundNotes Podcast and Show Notes

New Ways to Subscribe to DrunkenPM Radio Podcasts

       

The Power of Accountability Partnerships w/ Katrina Coker

In this LeadingAgile SoundNotes Podcast, Katrina Coker shares information about how working with an Accountability Partner has been beneficial both in her work, and in personal areas of her life. This is one of the most interesting interviews I have had the pleasure to be a part of. Katrina is very open about how having someone hold her accountable has challenged her. She also talks about how her spiritual practice resonates in her professional life.

Click here for the podcast and show notes

In Memory of Jean Tabaka

Jean Tabaka passed away this week. It's a very sad thing and the Agile feels a little broken right now. I was lucky enough to get to interview Jean a few times. The results are below.

While I always feel incredibly fortunate to get to do the podcast interviews with people, there are some folks who are just a complete blast to get to talk to every time. Jean was one of these people. I am grateful for the conversations. I learned a lot, she made me laugh, and she had no qualms about giving me sh17.

Thank you Jean.

Jean Tabaka BV from BigVisible Solutions on Vimeo.

Agile 2015 Video Podcast - Jean Tabaka from Agile Alliance on Vimeo.

How IHG is Using Agile for Hotel Room Redesign - LeadingAgile SoundNotes

A LeadingAgile SoundNotes Podcast... I interviewed LeadingAgile Transformation Consultant Russ Pena and IHG Project Manager Daniella Huang about how IHG is using Agile to redesign hotel rooms. The work they are doing is a great example of how Agile has been extended far beyond software.

This is the 1st of a series of 4 interviews with folks from IHG about their use of Agile.

Click here for the blog post and podcast

DrunkenPM Radio Ep. 4 - Gender Bias in Project Management

Gender Bias in Project Management

Episode 4 of DrunkenPM focuses on the impact of Gender Bias in the Project Management space. This episode consists of two interviews. The first is with a group of women who work in Digital Project Management (Larissa Scordato, Tera Caldwell Simon and Patrice Colancecco Embry). The second interview features Agile Coach Natalie Warnert






Show Notes:
Interview 1 : Gender Bias in Digital Project Management - with Patrice Colancecco Embry, Tera Caldwell Simon and Larissa Scordato
00:05 Intro
01:18 Women in Digital Project management Interview start and guest introductions
04:42 Meet the Dexters
05:25 Being a PM comes with challenges, does being a female PM carry additional challenges
9:38 Reaching out to your team for validation and support
12:08 Getting support may not fix the actual problem
13:50 How much does experience factor in
14:35 Does having a commanding presence only come with experience and how does gender impact your ability to take the room
16:46 Larissa is not sorry for interrupting
17:41 Letting your team take the floor
18:28 Note Taking
20:20 Generational gender bias
22:50 An apology is nice, a public apology is better
23:00 Advice for young women who are new to Project Management
24:05 Having difficult conversations and owning your role
24:40 The power of being knowledgable about your topic
26:00 The importance of assigning a notetaker
26:45 Getting a mentor
27:19 Know that you are good at what you do
27:35 How gender bias has an impact on your use of the phrase “I don’t know.”
29:30 When you get caught now knowing
30:09 Pretending to be brave enough / Imposter Syndrome
32:00 Taking care when you act “As if…”
33:30 “You’re either emotional, or your’e a bitch…”
35:20 Putting on the dominant female role and protecting your team
38:00 The “Sorry” thing
44:20 Advice for Men
46:10 Contacting Tera, Larissa and Patrice
46:40 Closing

All the participants in the above interview are "on the Twitter"
Larissa Scordato: twitter.com/larissascordato
Patrice Colancecco Embry : twitter.com/patrice108
Tera Caldwell Simon: twitter.com/tcaldsimon

Interview 2 - Gender Bias in Agile - with Natalie Warnert
47:07 Intro to the Interview with Agile Coach Natalie Warnert
47:50 Natalie’s involvement with Women in Agile
48:42 Women in Agile events are not just for women
49:27 Is it more difficult for a young woman to break into Agile
50:40 Behavior at a conferences
51:33 An example of differing standards
52:27 Gender bias, age bias and the Agile Coach
53:30 Women attendees at conferences
54:06 Advice for women entering the Agile space
55:35 Carrying yourself with confidence and owning it
56:00 Being more mindful of gender bias
57:31 What is an Aspiring Feminist?
60:10 Is the bias as significant in Agile as it is in waterfall?
61:20 Proving yourself
62:30 Support among women in Agile and at Agile conferences
65:00 Fighting over the slice of pie
65:39 Not tracking gender at conferences
66:00 Tracking down Natalie

Natalie can be reached via her website at nataliewarnert.com

Where to find the podcasts...

A friend send me a question via text today asking where to subscribe to my podcasts. I'm working trying to make the answer less complicated, but for right now, there are three answers because I post podcasts in a few places and not all of them can be subscribed to through iTunes.

LeadingAgile SoundNotes 

Interviews with the leadership and transformation consultants at LeadingAgile as well as our clients. These podcasts focus on the tactical application of Agile in various sized organizations. These are published very close to weekly.

You can subscribe to these via:
iTunes
SoundCloud

Projects at Work 

Interviews with thought leaders and practitioners in the Agile space. The range of topics tends to be a bit wide but I do try to make sure that the conversations would be relevant to anyone moving from the traditional side of the house over to a more Agile way of working.  This publishes close to weekly, depending on my teaching schedule.

You can check out these podcasts on my blog The Reluctant Agilist on Projects at Work. The site does require you to register, but it's free.

DrunkenPM Radio 

These are longer format interviews that are meant to dig deeper on specific topics and will often times include topics that step outside of Agile a bit. Recent conversations have included Bimodal, Coaching Burnout and Gender Bias in Agile. These take a little more editing. I'm trying to get them to be posted close to monthly, but sometimes the window is longer.

You can subscribe via
SoundCloud