Episode 80: Context Matters in SAFe with Em Campbell-Pretty

November 2, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

At Agile Australia 2014 in Melbourne; Craig, Renee and Tony catch up with Em Campbell-Pretty to talk about the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) as well as Impact Mapping and a variety of other topics:

Em’s Agile journey and how she came to Agile from the business side and discovered SAFe before it was SAFe
Australia’s first Agile release train and the SAFe Telstra Enterprise Data Warehouse Case Study
Pretty Agile blog – Adventures in Scaling Agile
Scaling Software Agility and Agile Software Requirements books by Dean Leffingwell
did SAFe without PSI Planning – doing textbook SAFe you will most likely fail – apply it to your context
SAFe is designed for big enterprise and is just where you start
Leading SAFe training – focus on lean principles and leadership
Epic – Feature – Story – why?
if your wall isn’t changing then your process is probably not changing (inspect and adapt)
key metrics – cycle time, employee net promotor score and customer net promotor score – recommended book “The Ultimate Question 2.0“
Context Matters – consulting, training and coaching with Mark Richards
people take comfort from the fact there is a process (and a certification)
SAFe 3.0 – cleaned up some of issues and imagery, lean leadership, etc…
the book is still a reasonable resource but the website is the most up-to-date source
Impact Mapping – good way to get alignment around business objectives on a project – “Impact Mapping: Making an Impact over Shipping Software” presentation at Agile Australia 2014
Impact Mapping is good for mapping opportunities and assumption testing – why, who is impacted, how do we want behaviours to change and what can we do to support the impacts, Story Mapping is further down the line
Impact Mapping book and website are both good resources, Em’s blog post “How I Fell in Love with Impact Mapping“

TheAgileRevolution-80 (35 minutes)

Episode 79: Vomit Value with Jim Benson

October 9, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

At Agile Australia 2014 in Melbourne, Jim Benson of Personal Kanban fame takes some time to talk with Craig, Renee, Tony and (a very silent) Kim Ballestrin and along the way they talk about:

early work implementing David J. Anderson’s Agile Management which resulted in Jim focussing on the person (Personal Kanban) and David focussing on the organisation (Kanban method) – two different viewpoints on the same solution set
XP, Scrum, Kanban method and Personal Kanban exemplify the people who created them
The Oath of Non Allegiance
Scrum vs Kanban
Why Limit WIP and Why Plans Fail books out now and working on an upcoming book about meetings
Individuals and interactions is redundant – relevant in 2001 to shake people out of complacency
Agile is anti-manager
Agile in knowledge work
WIP limits and avoiding “death flow”
Vomit Value – user stories with spurious and arbitrary value in a 2 week sprint
standardisation of humans and collaboration
Toyota change of culture – “what’s good for your life is good for Toyota”
Product Owners (#nopo) – should be the stewards of the value stream

https://twitter.com/Playin_w_nomes/status/479031669517582337

TheAgileRevolution-79 (45 minutes)

Episode 78: Renee-Renee-Renee

September 20, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

Yes they’re at it again ! The revolutionists bring forth their innermost thoughts on the life the universe and most importantly Agile . Oh yeah and Craig and Tony ask the question repeatedly ….Renee,Renee……Renee

Wall street hands the whip back to their staff …Less deaths and sustainable pace
Via @jboogie : The Lean Product Management Manifesto
Lean Startup Website and the Principles of Lean Startup
Slicing Heuristic Concept Explained : Via @neil_killick :
Task based collaboration with Asana
JIRA Service Desk application
The new names for Distributed Agile and CoLocated Agile : Via Alistair Cockburn: @TotherAlistair
State of Agile Survey – Version One

TheAgileRevolution-78 (61 minutes)

Episode 77: Agile Australia 2014 Vox Pop #2

September 2, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

At Agile Australia 2014 in Melbourne, Craig and Renee grab the microphone again and wander the conference foyer in one of the breaks looking for interesting people in the Australian Agile community to ask them about what they are working on and their views of the conference.

The people they harassed include:

Tyson Nutt – believes giving teams empowerment is part of the core of strong Agile teams, Rachel Botsman on disruption was a highlight
Stephanie BySouth – enjoyed seeing new speakers and attendees and that we are taking agile outside of IT, looking to bring collaborative innovation into the space, co-organiser of Agile Coaching Circles Melbourne
Dipesh Pala – IBM is realising we don’t do Agile to our clients, we do Agile with our clients, spoke on how leaders can recognise the humans in our teams
Chris Chan – holocracy and the concept of no managers is pushing the boundaries, co-organiser of Agile Coaching Circles Melbourne, stream chair of Agile Australia 2014
Neil Killick, Simon Bristow and Alexandre Barreto – Red Bubble is building their Agile development shop in Melbourne, MYOB are a large Agile shop in Melbourne, good lean startup feel running through the conference, #noestimates the book may come sometime soon (or not)

TheAgileRevolution-77 (19 minutes)

Episode 76: Agile Australia 2014 Vox Pop #1

August 22, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

At Agile Australia 2014 in Melbourne, Craig and Tony grabbed the microphone and scoured the conference foyer in one of the breaks looking for interesting people in the Australian Agile community to ask them about what they are working on and their views of the conference.

The people they harassed include:

Maxime Groenewoud – Project Manager, enjoyed hearing about new practices including microservices architecture
Nigel Dalton – CXO at REA Group, Agile Australia advisor, highlight of the conference was an Ellen DeGeneres moment getting a selfie with Brant Cooper, excited to hear about holocracy at Zappos, at REA have been disrupting through bringing virtual reality to real estate, “there is one innovative startup in real estate in Australia each week!”
Steve Lawrence – Agile Coach and Agile Australia stream chair – has been watching the scaled agile debate and the learnings allowing us to take the message into the business
Paul Detheridge – Executive Coach at Shibusa – need to set the ecosystem up well at the executive level, huge opportunity outside of software
Tom Sulston – Thoughtworker and Agile Australia stream chair – enjoyed Adel Smee talk on Nice Pairing and Martin Fowler keynote on ethics of software development
Nish Mahanty – Program Manager at RMIT University – interested in gaining new insights and reconnecting with the community
Michael Stange – Agile Coach at IOOF – always enjoys the discussions in the hallway
David Brough-Smyth – Agile Coach – enojoyed Jim Benson keynote on lean thinking and visualisation and adapting the good parts of the toolkit
Renee Troughton – Agile Revolutioner and needs no introduction!

TheAgileRevolution-76 (25 minutes)

Episode 75: Agile Expedition with Alan Bustamante

July 13, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

At Agile 2013 in Nashville on a park bench, in a garden, near a waterfall that is ever present, Craig catches up with Alan Bustamante to talk about his Agile expedition. Along the way they chat about:

the enormity of the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville and the average weather outside
the use case approach in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and how it set the scene for Scrum and Agile
bringing architects along for the Agile journey
an initial lure for Agile – “the pressure of letting the team down is greater than staying resistant”
Agile Cincinnati and the take up in Cincinatti and Colombus
the need to “get back to making work fun and building relationships”
Alan’s work at Seapine Software and “The Agile Expedition” book
Alan’s conference tip: make it a goal to meet at least one person and get to know them
Advice: “there are bigger things in life than project work, keep grounded and realise what’s important”
Starting a company: Xcelerate Partners
Agile 2013 nighlights were Michael Sahota and Olaf Lewitz on “Temenos—the Healing Container” and Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd on “Conflict Facilitation as a Leadership Skill“

TheAgileRevolution-75 (36 minutes)

Episode 73: What Made You An Agile Coach?

May 26, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

Tony asks a philisophical question , whilst Renee harnesses her nineties pop star – Ice Ice Baby and Craig marvels at Tony’s cool intro – probably the coolest intro he’s done since the eighties.

Craig entices us to save the environment by using Octopads instead of sticky notes – with Luke Stephenson
Renee get us game playing with the Lean Startup game”Snowflake” from TastyCupcakes.com
Carrying on the game theme ,Devops-against humanity
Tony asks ….What Made You An Agile Coach?
I didn’t sign up for all this people Sh**t from @flowchainsensei
TDD is dead .Long live Testing from @dhh
Ship It Day! with Renee
The “Safe Segment” – discussing Safe Training blog from Steve Barrett

The Agile Revolution – 73 (54.21)

Episode 71: Essential Scrum with Kenny Rubin

May 3, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

At Agile 2013 in Nashville, TN, Craig catches up with Kenny Rubin, author of “Essential Scrum” and Scrum trainer and coach at Innolution. While sitting in the corridor, they talk about:

Essential Scrum – the success and background of the book
Visual AGILExicon® – free image library to describe Scrum and Agile in a visual way
The lack of Agile (and technical) audio books
Strategies for Agile Portfolio Management and Scaling with Feature vs Component Teams talk at Agile 2013
The size of the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville
Contact Kenny to speak at your user group / meetup if he is passing through your town!

TheAgileRevolution-71 (15 minutes)

Episode 70: Hello Is This Thing On?

April 9, 2014 by The Agile Revolution

Craig, Renee and Tony catch up again and discuss the wonderfully diverse world of Agile :

Tony starts the SAFe conversation again via @RonJeffries blog post SAFe – Good not Good Enough
I want Agile back , you ? via Tim Ottinger
Craig brings the Raccoon back whilst discussing ” Reports of Agile’s death” from @jbrains, “Agile is Dead (Long Live Agility) ” from @pragdave
What is ScrumStudy and the “Scrum Master Certified” ? via @sdunnrocket9
We’ll ask for estimates @jonelf
Renee gets in a shameless plug for the “Who Is Agile in Australia and New Zealand ?” Book
Siemens success story ” Kanban at Scale” via InfoQ
“Kanban in Action” book review via authors @marcusoftnet and @joakimsunden
“The Human Side of Agile ” book review @gilbroza