Companies struggle to get the metrics to know if their agile transformations are making a difference, hence the creation of Agility Health Radar
Business Agility pillars – customer seat at the table, lean portfolio management, organisation structure and design, agile framework, leadership and culture, make it stick, technology agility and agility metrics
DevOps pillars – faster value delivery, higher quality, culture of improvement and building the right product
The real value of Agile is in the technical practices so we can build iteratively, but still very few people practice them
The future is already here, but it is not very well evenly distributed – the same applies to Agile
Companies are being consumed by their technical debt and they don’t even recognise it
What is always cheaper in the virtual domain is building quality
Continuous Integration makes the most painful thing in software development (integration) our greatest asset – this in turn gives us feedback
We don’t necessarily know there is a better way to do things – but there is a better way to do things
We traditionally think of software as a write once event, but it is write many – users want it changed
We think procedurally so object oriented code often ends up being procedural with a class statement wrapped around it
Test First Development – very few developers know how to write a good test because they haven’t been taught, it was intended to assist with refactoring
Studies show about 10% of people follow the Agile technical practices like XP, and only 10% of those are doing it correctly
The mindset of testing is different to the mindset of coding and they are mutually exclusive (in the same way we need editors when writing a book)
Refactoring is at two levels because we learn in chunks – we need to do while doing test first as well as in the large
Leadership through seeding rather than driving by changing language, building mindset and removing impediments
Open the kimono and leaders do Agile by example and muddle through it publicly
Story telling to move through the change
Eliminating the PMO – don’t need a middle man to get in between the IT and business to slow you down and sort out the projects if the team is cross skilled and cross facilitating
Disrupted finance through asking for a five year envelope of money and working and modelling the work that is ready to be done
Heart of Agile takes the complexity out of Agile – deliver, trust, reflect and improve
The CIO needs to fix the chaos of systems and make them more simple so we can get closer to the customer and work on their innovations
Craig and Renee are in Washington, DC at Agile 2019 and ahead of day one have some fun and decide to open up the swag bag after collecting their badges and see what is inside:
Craig and Tony are at Agile Australia in Melbourne and with guest revolutionist Toby Thompson (who was sitting at the table and initially didn’t want to speak on the podcast but then we couldn’t keep him quiet!) catch up with Jessie Shternshus, CEO at The Improv Effect and author of “CTRLShift“:
When you are facilitating you need to know your audience and believe in what you are doing – to get people involved, do things in small groups in partners so nobody has the attention on them initially and then build them up to group activities
Make people safe and get them to laugh – then you have them for the ride
Tony imitates a dinosaur (which we keep telling him doesn’t work on a podcast)
Introduction Tiebacks – introduce yourself as the facilitator and then when it comes to your turn tie your introduction back to the person who came before you
Game ideas come from twists on old games or from things people say
Last Letter Conversation – use the last letter from what someone just said to be the first letter of what you say
Improv Encyclopedia and a bunch of books are good resources but are usually made for actors (so you need to amend for the workplace)
Helping people change comes back to listening and empathy
Walkshop – 4 day hike for leaders to help them unlearn and connect
Unlearning – need to find experiential learning that helps people unlearn – backwards number game or name things around the room differently
Mayor of Weirdsville – dealing with pushback, pretend you are the mayor, make a proclamation and then the rest of the town has to poke holes in your idea
Australian Agile journey took him from Telstra, to a small startup and then to Suncorp, and later IBM and World Fuel Services
Scale of thought is more important than scale of people
The Suncorp Agile Academy was born out of the fact that learning matters, but the idea was for other companies to create content that could be shared in the Agile community which did not happen
Thinking from a team point of view is important – at World Fuel for example, the MTR dropped 80% due to this approach
Don’t waste time on people who don’t want to follow what you want to do
Most companies surround themselves with the companies being disrupted, not the disruptors – need to work with people and companies who want to change the game
You learn a lot from being around better people
For ANZ, the key to their Agile journey has been that CEO Shayne Elliott was willing to spend time outside the organisation and learn
You need to be structured to support end to end cross functional teams formed around the work – the structure of the team matters
The next disruption is the physical versus virtual world, in particular what happens to things like networking appliances
It’s easy when something is new to find ways to shut it down, its harder to keep it going
Craig and Tony sit down for a personal chat with the microphone turned on for the first time in 2 years (that is not an interview) (wow, time files…), unfortunately without Renee who was out sick:
State of the nation is a lot of dark / fake Agile and lack of collaborative connective tissues
Fail Agility – Craig and Tony’s keynote talk (Episode 150)
The word Agile is done, we are trying to harness agility
Heart of Agile – a reflective improvement framework that helps you find your way forward
The Agile Manifesto tells you the what, the Heart of Agile tells you the how
Craig catches up with Sally Elatta, president of Agile Transformation and the founder of Agility Health Radar and they chat about:
