Tag Archives: Agile Australia 2015

Episode 112: Inside Spotify with Anders Ivarsson

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AndersRenee and Craig are at the Agile Australia conference and talk to Anders Ivarsson, an organisational coach at Spotify, and learn some of approaches that make Spotify tick:

  • Agile Australia talk “Autonomy and Leadership at Spotify” and workshop “Organisational Improvement: Design-inspired Problem Solving”
  • Agile Coaches spend time with squads versus a new role of organisational coach that looks at the culture, ways of working, vision and systemic wastes
  • Spotify is not a model
  • Original Spotify scaling paper, never imagined the spread or the impact
  • Spotify have shared a lot of the things that have worked well, but they do also have challenges as well – one is alignment across teams as the organisation gets bigger so they have been working on visualisation and prioritisation
  • Spotify Culture videos (Part 1 and Part 2)
  • use microservices to ensure that the organisation can work in the way they want to work – great autonomy but a challenge in keeping a consistent design language and customer journey
  • Agile culture is spread throughout Spotify, use what works rather than one particular approach
  • The Oath of Non Allegiance
  • POTLAC – Product Owner / Team Leader / Agile Coach – leadership cell at Spotify
  • use internal blogging to share Agile approaches and patterns, started to recognise the value of story telling
  • Agile Product Management in a Nutshell video – Henrik Kniberg is a genius at making things simple and understandable

TheAgileRevolution-112 (24 minutes)

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Episode 108 – SAFe from the Source with Dean Leffingwell

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DeanLeffingwellRenee, Craig and Tony (with a lurking Em Campbell-Pretty) in a very busy corridor with random bells ringing, catch up with Dean Leffingwell, author of numerous books including “Agile Software Requirements” and “Scaling Software Agility” and the creator of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) in a very candid discussion:

  • the journey to SAFe included as a developer building the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ride and infusion pumps and generally a mission to make quality better
  • epiphony around Agile was the step change around how teams perform and how they like their work when they perform better
  • not everything that is old is stupid, “we are discovering new ways of developing software” and we need to ask ourselves are we still discovering
  • Scrum is the only method that defines what a software team is (roles and size)
  • SAFe is not a war it is a mission to improve outcomes
  • need to provide leadership to agile learning, SAFe is a body of knowledge and a set of patterns that helps simplify learning
  • the differing viewpoints on SAFe are because the stakes have gotten higher, Agile is a big business and hence other approaches need to defend their turf because we are in a competitive market
  • they don’t defend SAFe – we publish case studies, talk about it and implement it, we have to take the pragmatic approach to help people succeed
  • SAFe is versioned because we record the best knowledge we have at the time and Dean is an author, but it has also allowed change management
  • SAFe will always support two versions in the market, including courseware and the big picture, the blog is kept fully up-to-date
  • SAFe LSE was a fork for SAFe for Lean, Software and Systems Engineering and allows for innovation, most of it has been collapsed back to the main framework
  • the framework is free (and will remain so)

TheAgileRevolution-108 (30 minutes)

 

Episode 106: Turning the Agile Ship Around with David Marquet

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DavidMarquetTony, Renee, Craig and special guest host Tyson Nutt catchup with David Marquet, author of “Turn The Ship Around!” and the “Turn Your Ship Around” companion workbook at the Agile Australia conference and talk about how similar a nuclear submarine and an Agile team really are:

  • leadership is not about telling people what to do and how to do it
  • all investments in human beings are long term
  • the approach spread from the bottom up, now the book is on the official reading list of two Navy’s (including New Zealand)
  • “I intend to” does not mean they get to do it – gives psychological ownership and to spark the conversation
  • thinking out loud is about saying what is going on in our head, this even works when teaching your children how to drive!
  • feed the beast – don’t respond by hiding, feed them with as much information as you can as data puts you in control
  • you can’t empower people, you can only unempower them
  • you give control while ensuring competence and clarity
  • whilst not telling people what to do can be good for their learning, sometimes you just need to tell people what to do (in the absence of competence and clarity)
  • good to have you team hold you accountable when you fall back to old habits
  • deal with the “frozen middle” by giving them decision making authority they previously didn’t have
  • when learning about a new team ask “what do you hope I will change” and “what do you hope I won’t change”, this is easy when you have not created the culture
  • “I imagine a world where we all find satisfaction in our work” – you need embrace your fears, on a submarine that can be fear of death
  • need to seek permission to proceed and embrace feedback rather than pursuing signoff
  • instead of saying “are you sure?”, ask “how sure are you?”
  • David is working on a couple of new books – a book of success stories and a colouring book
  • when talking to yourself, use the third person for motivation
  • signup for a weekly leaderhip nudge on David’s website

TheAgileRevolution-106 (40 minutes)

Episode 104: Agile Australia 2015 Vox Pop #2

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Agile-Australia-2015-LogoCraig and Tony wander the lunchtime floor on day 2 of Agile Australia conference in Sydney, looking for more interesting people in the Australian Agile community. They chatted to the ones who couldn’t quite run fast enough away from the microphone including:

TheAgileRevolution-104 (22 minutes)

 

Episode 103: Agile Australia 2015 Vox Pop

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Agile-Australia-2015-LogoCraig and Tony are once again roaming the floor, this time at the Agile Australia conference in Sydney, looking for interesting people in the Australian Agile community. While walking around the floor they run into:

TheAgileRevolution-103 (31 minutes)