This week, on LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, Staff Consultant Sarah Smith shares some tips to survive the role of ScrumMaster. During the interview, Sarah and Dave discuss how to create a stakeholder map that a ScrumMaster can use to understand the best approach to take when interacting with different stakeholders in the organization. They also talk about how to develop greater empathy for stakeholders and how important it is to understand the different motivators driving their behavior, as well as ...
Apr 18, 2019•21 min•Ep. 295
Organizations embracing an Agile approach to their work value their ability to inspect and adapt. They value the ability to continually learn and deepen their understanding of what problems they are trying to solve so that they can inspect and adapt toward a better solution. The challenge is that just because we're Agile and we want to inspect and adapt our way to a better solution doesn't mean that we can ignore the constraints of scope, cost, and time. Those constraints matter and we need to f...
Apr 11, 2019•51 min•Ep. 294
In this week's SoundNotes we're focusing on one of the fundamental elements in Scrum: The Sprint Planning Meeting. During the podcast, Dave Prior reviews the key aspects of Sprint Planning: its purpose, how it works, who attends, what it produces, and tips to help you make sure yours are achieving the desired result. If you want to help protect your team from over (or under) committing during Sprint Planning, each team member is going to need to have a solid understanding of their capacity for w...
Apr 04, 2019•17 min•Ep. 293
When people talk about Agile, they often talk about the approach they are taking: Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, SAFe, LeSS, DAD, Nexus, etc. These and the other frameworks and methodologies that could be considered to fall under the Agile umbrella are Systems of Delivery because they are techniques for delivering. There's often an assumption that if we adopt the System of Delivery, our organization will Transform to Agile. Sometimes this happens, but often, organizations need more than a S...
Mar 28, 2019•46 min•Ep. 292
This week, on SoundNotes, we're featuring another question from a student in one of our Certified Scrum classes. The question came from someone who's working in an organization that doesn't see value in the role of Product Owner and isn't convinced that it's needed as part of the Scrum Team. The question: What is the worth of a good P.O.? LeadingAgile Senior Consultant, Tim Wise spent some time with Dave talking through various aspects of the question. Together, Dave and Tim will explore the rol...
Mar 21, 2019•19 min•Ep. 291
In one of my recent Certified Scrum Master classes, I had a number of students who were working on projects involving migrating from a legacy data warehouse to new data warehouses. Figuring out how to apply Scrum to the work they were doing presented a number of challenges and left some open questions. Here are two examples of the data related topics that showed up in the Parking Lot: How do I apply Scrum to data factory? As a Data Architect, I want to learn how Scrum applies to data factory so ...
Mar 14, 2019•41 min•Ep. 290
This week, on SoundNotes, we've got Part 3 of a trio of interviews with LeadingAgile Chief Methodologist and Co-Founder Dennis Stevens. The series focuses on how to build an organization that can embrace change. In the final episode of the series, Dennis and Dave cover how to prioritize work being done to maximize return. During the interview, they discuss how prioritization at all levels of the organization can support the ability to inspect and adapt and how some lingering traditional approach...
Mar 07, 2019•42 min•Ep. 289
In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Senior Consultant AJ Sanford joins Dave to answer a student question that's frequently asked in Dave's CSM and CSPO classes. How do you use Scrum when you have to coordinate work between teams that are using both Waterfall and Agile all within one organization? During the interview, AJ and Dave touch on the following topics: What to expect from an Agile pilot project The types of challenges you can expect when you begin working on Agile Transformation ...
Feb 28, 2019•32 min•Ep. 288
Mikkel Ladegaard is a Senior VP and Executive Consultant with LeadingAgile. This week, on SoundNotes, Mikkel and Dave Prior discuss Mikkel's focus on designing product-centric organizations in which the company's strategic prioritization of work is implicit and decision-making can be localized at the team level. During the conversation, they unpack a range of issues related to this topic, including how favor-based economies work, what the value is in designing organizations where there is a sepa...
Feb 21, 2019•55 min•Ep. 287
In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile's own Brandon Dudley—Senior Consultant—shares his experience making the shift from a Waterfall mindset to a more Agile way of thinking and working. Brandon got his start in traditional, PMI-centric, project management working in the auto industry in Detroit. His introduction to Agile didn't involve the hard break that many of us experience. For him, this was just another set of tools to help him get work done. During the podcast, Dave and Brandon talk ...
Feb 14, 2019•39 min•Ep. 286
When we try to explain Agile, many of us begin by trying to describe some of the characteristics of how we approach work. We often talk about things like: Limiting work in process Delivering smaller increments of work Reducing team size and empowering the teams to become cross-functional and self-organizing These are all things that, from an Agile point of view, are good because they help us to focus on the most important things, optimize flow, localize decision making, and deliver the most impo...
Feb 07, 2019•57 min•Ep. 285
This episode of SoundNotes features, LeadingAgile Technical Consultant, Rich Dammkoehler in a conversation about why it is so important to make sure your organization is focused on improving their technical practices. If you're struggling with helping your organization understand why introducing technical practices like collective code ownership, refactoring, pair programming, and test-driven development is such a crucial part of attaining business Agility; this podcast will help you build the c...
Jan 31, 2019•55 min•Ep. 284
If your company is working on Agile Transformation, understanding how you can track the organization’s response to change and the impact it's having on business outcomes can be a bit daunting. It’s not so tough to track whether or not people have been trained and what practices they are using, but when it comes to understanding what people see, feel, believe, and desire, that can be harder to understand. In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Managing Consultant, Jeff Howey and Dave Prior t...
Jan 24, 2019•33 min•Ep. 283
Estimating work in Agile is something many people struggle to understand. It's not that it's an especially complicated thing, but there is often confusion about things like why many people prefer to use story points instead of hours, why some people feel compelled to try and convert story points to hours (and why some of us find that so frightening), how t-shirt sizing works, and the eternal question of how do I get my teams to estimate accurately. Hint: They're called estimates, not exactimates...
Jan 17, 2019•15 min•Ep. 282
Iteration 2019 has begun and we’re starting off the year with an episode of SoundNotes where, LeadingAgile CEO and Founder, Mike Cottmeyer shares what's on his mind as we begin the new year. During the interview Mike talks about some of the trends he’s been paying attention to in and around the Agile space, the changes he sees coming down the pike, and how that's influencing his focus and expectations for the next 12 months. Oh.. and… Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Links Whitepaper - https://www.leadingag...
Jan 10, 2019•56 min•Ep. 281
A few weeks ago, Dennis Stevens and I recorded a podcast called Building an Organizational System That Can Embrace Change . The podcast introduced three critical concepts which we are exploring at a deeper level in additional interviews. In this episode of SoundNotes, Dennis Stevens, LeadingAgile’s co-founder and Chief Methodologist, and Dave Prior, dig into one of those key concepts: How to design an execution model that can provide feedback which can then be incorporated back into the strategi...
Dec 06, 2018•44 min•Ep. 280
While many organizations would like to adopt an Agile approach, there are certain types that—due to the nature of their work and their relationship with the client—are not an easy fit with a process like Scrum. In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Senior Consultants AJ Sanford and Andrew Fuqua explore how Process Maps and Value Stream Maps can help you gain greater clarity on where there are practices that need tuning and how Agile might be able to help. During the conversation, AJ, Andre...
Nov 29, 2018•39 min•Ep. 279
LeadingAgile has grown significantly over the past few years. Along the way, we’ve found that one of the most critical elements of growing successfully is how we introduce new folks to the company and how we approach helping organizations Transform. In this episode of SoundNotes, Dave is joined by Betsy Layman and Matt Smith—two of the latest additions to the LeadingAgile family. Both Betsy and Matt started their on-boarding process a few weeks ago as Expedition Lead and Transformation Lead, res...
Nov 15, 2018•31 min•Ep. 278
This episode of SoundNotes features LeadingAgile’s Chief Methodologist and Co-Founder, Dennis Stevens, and focuses on how to build an organization that can embrace change. The interview provides an overview of some of the key capabilities an Agile organization needs to accelerate learning, increase optionality, and improve their decision making including: How to incorporate market sensing capabilities into strategic planning How to design an execution model that can provide feedback which can th...
Nov 08, 2018•30 min•Ep. 277
One of the most important things you can do for your team is to make sure you have a clearly defined, and well-documented, Definition of Done. If you’ve ever seen footage of the flight control center when NASA launches a rocket you’ve seen a great example of a Definition of Done. Imagine what it would be like if NASA didn’t have all those stations that had to report in with “Go for launch” or “No Go for launch”. Imagine how that would work if we assumed we all had the same understanding of what ...
Nov 01, 2018•9 min•Ep. 276
Earlier this month, Dave sat down for another Q&A with our CEO, Mike Cottmeyer. Prior to recording, we asked the audience to submit their questions via a sign up sheet, and Dave collected some questions from the students in his certified Scrum training classes. However, when people get to asking questions about Agile, Mike has found that the questions are often the wrong question. In order to get the right answer from a wrong question, you have to go back what Mike calls "first principles." ...
Oct 25, 2018•56 min•Ep. 275
Once again, Mike and Dave sat down to discuss some of Mike's latest thoughts on Agile Transformation and answer questions that we received from the audience. Some of the topics discussed were: Agile PMO, velocity, and governance just to name a few. These live Q&A sessions will be recurring, so make sure you're on the lookout for the next installment. For more of Mike's latest thoughts on Agile Transformation, you can check out his latest white paper, here: www.leadingagile.com/whitepaper Con...
Oct 18, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 274
In this week’s episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, we’ve got an interview/case study of sorts. Marty Bradley, Greg King, and Jessica Wolfe share the story of how they were able to leverage tooling and reporting in support of the transformation effort at one of LeadingAgile’s clients. In telling the story, they explain what was in place when they began the transformation, the data elements they used to help create awareness and transparency at the beginning of the project, and how the reporting...
Oct 11, 2018•41 min•Ep. 273
Back in September, Mike and Dave got together for our first ever live Q&A. The conversation was streamed on Facebook, so they were able to answer some viewer questions, as well as questions Dave had been collecting, beforehand, in his CSM and CSPO classes. We're planning on making the live Q&A a recurring event, so make sure you're on the lookout for the next one. We want to answer all of your burning, Agile related questions. Contacting Mike If you’d like to contact Mike you can reach h...
Oct 04, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 272
his Spring at Agile Australia 2018 , Martin Fowler , Chief Scientist at Thoughtworks and Agile Manifesto co-author gave a Keynote titled "The State of Agile Software in 2018". He recently published the text of his talk here . (If you refer video, you can find it on InfoQ .) His Keynote centered around 3 specific concerns with the current state of Agile, the first of which was The Agile Industrial Complex and imposing process on teams. In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile CEO, Mike Cottmey...
Sep 20, 2018•43 min•Ep. 271
Cara presented two sessions at Agile 2018: Shifting Diversity Through to Inclusion What Part Does My Priviledge Play (with Steve Holyer) Codex Story: Challenging the Metrics that limit Diversity in the Software Industry Contact Info: http://projectcodex.co https://twitter.com/Cara_Faye...
Sep 07, 2018•24 min•Ep. 270
Esther's Sessions at Agile 2018 were: Creating an Environment for Successful Agile Teams Clarity, Conditions, and Constraints: An Alternative to Top Down Control Contact Info: http://www.estherderby.com/ https://twitter.com/estherderby...
Sep 07, 2018•18 min•Ep. 269
Contact Info: https://www.agileclassrooms.com/ https://www.agileineducation.org/ https://twitter.com/agileschools...
Sep 07, 2018•15 min•Ep. 268
Laura's sessions at Agile 2018: Never Would I Ever: Examining Your Agile Non-Negotiables w/ Jenny Tarwater Say “Yes" to “No" - The Power of “No" in Agile Contact Info: https://www.radtac.com/ https://twitter.com/laurapowers...
Sep 07, 2018•14 min•Ep. 267
Natalie led two sessions at Agile 2018: MVR: Minimally Viable Relationships (with Jenny Tarwater) The Customer is Not Always Right... and Neither are You For more on the Women In Agile Initiative: Click Here. Contact Info: http://nataliewarnert.com https://twitter.com/nataliewarnert...
Sep 07, 2018•8 min•Ep. 266
