Using Data to Drive Enterprise Adoption of Agile w/ Mike McCalla

Mike McCalla, President, and Founder of Lean Agile Intelligence joins me in this episode to discuss why taking an Object-Oriented Data-Driven approach to change is critical to your enterprise-wide agile transformation.

You can find the podcast here.

If you are curious about how Lean Agile Intelligence can help you and your organization continually assess how you are progressing in your transformation journey and what next steps are likely to help the most. 

https://leanagileintelligence.com

How to Run a Lean Coffee with Derek Huether

What is a LeanCoffee? How do they work? How will this agendaless meeting format save you from the desperate time suck of those endless soul-sucking meetings you've been languishing in? You can find all about it here: https://bit.ly/3q7twar

PLUS! Special tips for Jira users at the end of the interview to help you find resources to amp up your Jira skills.

Finding the Right Problem to Solve w/ Braden Cundiff

Braden Cundiff is back to discuss finding the right problem to solve in Part 2 of our series on using his FLIP method to change behavior. 

In this interview, we explore how to find the problem, why you need to name that problem and create a definition around the scope of it, and then how to assess whether or not it is a problem you can, and should take on.

You can find the podcast here: https://bit.ly/3s1cKLs

You can pick up Braden's book here: https://t.co/aQl3a5FY1z

Common Sense Scrum with Eric Tucker

Sustained Agility’s Eric Tucker, CST, joins me to talk about missteps people and organizations make while transitioning to Scrum that could be easily avoided if they would just use common sense. Eric has put together a talk highlighting some of these mistakes and during the interview, he and I explore why they occur in the first place, and how two avoid them.

You can find the interview here.

Assumptions Mapping with David Bland

Assumptions are often the Achilles heel of any development effort. These are the things we’ve unintentionally decided are true and unfortunately, far too often, our assumptions are wrong. If you’ve based the success of the work you are doing on incorrect assumptions… VERYBADTHINGS.

In this episode Founder David Bland has joined me to talk about why we need to pay attention to assumptions and how to use Assumptions Mapping to determine which of our assumptions present the biggest threat and need to be addressed first. During the interview, we review how to use the Assumptions Mapping approach that is included in Testing Business Ideas, the book David co-wrote with Alexander Osterwalder.

You can find the interview here: https://bit.ly/3DhlVcR

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.

What it Takes to Enable Business Agility with Karim Harbott

Karim Harbott joins me to discuss his new book, The 6 Enablers of Business Agility: How to Thrive in an Uncertain World, and the challenges faced by organizations who try to adopt practices that could lead to Business Agility but are thwarted by a continued commitment to a command and control mindset. 

The podcast can be found here: https://bit.ly/3GwO2rg

The book, which I highly recommend, can be found here: https://amzn.to/2Zn4aLh

What Do We Do With The QA Manager? w/ Joel Norman

Joel Norman is joining me for this episode to respond to a question I got in class recently about what happens to the role of QA Manager once all the QA folks have joined teams. Do we still need someone to manage QA if everyone in QA is part of a cross-functional, self-organizing team? If the answer is yes, what do they do day-to-day? If the answer is no, who is going to advocate for things like continuous integration across all the development teams?

You can find the podcast here.

Does Your Team Really Understand What Is Valuable? w Adam Weisbart

In this episode of the podcast Adam Weisbart and I take on the topic of how you can get clarity on value, how can you make sure your backlog reflects that understanding of value and how can you ensure the team has awareness of what “value” means to the organization.

You can find the interview here.

Adam also shares some details about his upcoming Agile Virtual Summit (Bite Size) which is taking place on October 14, 2021. The event is free and there are going to be some great speakers, including people like Jim Benson, Richard Cheng, and Melissa Boggs who have all been guests on the podcast. You can learn more about the Agile Virtual Summit (Bite-Size!) here.

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