Audio

In the first of a few podcasts recorded in India, Devesh and I test Alistair Cockburn’s trampoline effect theory, we talk about how agile demand is causing the community to scale too quickly, why you should hire people who are agreeable and open minded rather than ‘agile experts’, and why agile transformation should all be run on a pull based system, even if cogs wont’t come and tell you that they need oiling.

You can find Devesh on Twitter via @devesh_ch, on LinkedIn here or via his website https://www.steerlean.com.

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A bit of a first for the podcast this one, an episode recorded remotely across two different countries. We discuss the role of goal setting in transformation, the poor way agile people sometimes treat offshore development teams, and the cultural aspects of agile in other countries amongst much, much more.

If you want to say hello to him, his blog is http://aqaguy.blogspot.com, and he’s on Twitter as @aqaguy

p.s. This episode was recorded on the 21st November 2017. It was published on 17 January 2018. The gap was caused by the fact that 36 hours after this was recorded, I became a parent for the first time. Demanding little things, babies…

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I got put in touch with Rob a few months back, as someone who’s championing the cause of agile within the Project Management Institute in the UK. I couldn’t resist an opportunity to find out how agile is going down in the world of ‘traditional’ delivery, and how agile is transforming mindsets within the PMI itself.

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Sean Robinson has been a huge influence on my agile thinking, both directly and indirectly, so it was a real pleasure to get to record an episode with him. In it we discuss whether a transformation itself is almost inherently unagile, whether our transformation should be based on kaizen or kaikaku, the importance of understanding the history of agile to understand why the frameworks contain the practices that they do and whether failure might be inevitable until the death of Taylorism

Click these words to find out more about the fantastic Agile Cymru and the equally great South Wales Agile Group meetup. I can genuinely recommend them both.

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In this episode, John takes a look at the practice of agile coaching, the good, the bad and the value-judgement-relevant-to-organisational-context. Do we know what agile coaching really is? How can organisations starting out with agile tell an experienced coach from an agile consultant? Can you really learn to be a Scrum Master in two days and an agile coach in three?

Check out the project John’s working on here, www.whatisagilecoaching.org

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Helen Meek approaches agile transformations with perspectives from both Scrum and Kanban, so in this episode we discuss why calling them evolutions might be better than calling them transformations, the pay offs between autonomy, scaling and distributing, why insights are better than metrics, the need for honesty and whether Kanban needs you to have a PhD in mathematics.

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David Smith explores an area we’ve not covered as much yet in these podcasts, the importance of product owning in all of this, specifically the mechanism of value points as devised by Jim Highsmith.

What effect do they have on whether to start small of go large with your agile transformation, and how value relates to cost? Is your transformation about reducing cost or maximising value? How should your vision be tied to your calculations of value? What if your product backlog isn’t a function of democracy? Can you name the fourth attribute the Scrum Guide says a product backlog item must have? If not, have a listen…

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In this episode, Portia Tung looks at agile transformation from the personal perspective, looking at how we support individuals in transformations, rather than seeing people as one amorphous blob to be transformed. What memories of other experiences does change and transformation trigger in people, and why does that matter?

To find out more about Portia’s School of Play, click here.

(incidentally, I didn’t take the usual photograph with Portia for the podcast as there was a professional photographer taking photos of us whilst we were recording. When I got sent the photos, they were all of me and the back of Portia’s head. Not exactly the look I was going for, hence the above photo, which is better.)

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A podcast episode that raises some of the difficult questions around agile transformations that other podcasts have yet to ask. As an agile person, should you take the day rate anyway when you know the transformation is not going to work?What are the metrics you should look at when considering your transformation? What if the most difficult yet most important thing to transform is yourself, because you’re right, and every other muppet is wrong? Jose also suggests a fantastic metaphor for transformations actually being metamorphses.

For more information on the Snowbird Collaboratory that Jose mentions, click here.

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Helen Lisowski has been a huge inspiration to me over the last year or so, so it was great to get her take on things for this podcast. We discuss whether you need your senior management to buy in or buy out, the importance of journal keeping, why you don’t have to like people but you do have to respect them, and a great team building game called ‘lie to me’ which you could well run with your senior execs… .

I strongly recommend you find out more about Helen and her ideas at www.fluidworking.com

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