Tag Archives: kanban

Episode 176: The Lost Tapes – Kanban For One with Sandy Mamoli

by

2

In this previously lost and unreleased podcast from 2012 (we found it on a SD card that was thought to be lost forever), Craig catches up with Sandy Mamoli at Agile 2012 in Dallas, Texas and chat about Personal Kanban and how everything is bigger in Texas. It’s amazing how much hasn’t changed in this time!

TheAgileRevolution-176 (14 minutes)

Advertisement

Episode 113: GreenHopper Handyman Folio with JC Huet

by

1

JCHuetCraig and Renee, sitting on the banks of the Potomac River on a sunny but slightly windy day at Agile 2015, they catchup with JC Huet, creator of GreenHopper (renamed to JIRA Agile and post-podcast now JIRA Software) and Tempo Folio:

  • Craig was apparently the first client of GreenHopper that was built in a basement, now JIRA Agile is the most popular JIRA add-on with over 500,000 users, used by more than 80% of JIRA users
  • the idea was to have a tool that brought bugs into software management
  • the name GreenHopper represented the Green company branding at the time, and Hopper was for cards hopping between columns
  • a shout out to our friend Nick Muldoon (who is now writing Atlassian plugins at Arijea)
  • Tempo Folio plugin is about supporting cost management, including time sheeting, estimation, forecasting and allocation
  • time and dedication and about three months is all it takes to create an Atlassian plugin (and JC challenges Renee to write her own WSJF plugin)
  • hippies, not EP’s!
  • versions on frameworks are good, means feedback changes are coming

TheAgileRevolution-113 (34 minutes)

Episode 111: M&Mailbag

by

1

peanutmmCraig and Renee, sitting in a shoe-box sized hotel room in Sydney eating peanut M&Ms, decided to rustle through the mailbag and answer a bunch of outstanding questions.

Note: this episode is not sponsored or endorsed by M&Ms but we certainly enjoy their product!

Crossing The Chasm

  • more and more organisations seem to be crossing the chasm to Agile, but too many are still just doing and not being Agile
  • inimal viable product (MVP) is still the trend word, the next stage is Minimal Viable Experience and then Minimal Viable Robustness to Minimal Marketable Product and finally Continuously Evolving Product
  • Enterprise Transformation Meta Model
  • Agile is a true north concept, not sure that you will ever get there

Suggested reading list on where to start with Agile:

What certification should a new Scrum Master get:

Building your own scaled framework

  • Holacracy and Reinventing Organizations
  • need to answer questions around ensuring quality, growing capability, benefits realisation, etc…
  • at what level do the questions need to be answered
  • Minimal Viable Organisations
  • scale on the operational cadence of the problems of the organisation, not following a framework
  • how often do we check that our approach is meeting our needs

Visualising business analysis in a Scrum team

  • 3 Amigos approach
  • call it what it is if you’re sprint length is longer than it is
  • focus more on Kanban flow

Reading List

  • Renee is reading about climate change (and how that applies to Agile) including “This Changes Everything” by Naomi Klein
  • Craig is reading “CTRL-SHIFT” by  Jessie Shternshus and Mike Bonifer

TheAgileRevolution-111 (71 minutes)

Episode 107 – Kanban in Action with Marcus Hammarberg

by

2

MarcusHammarbergMarcus Hammarberg, co-author of “Kanban in Action” talks with Craig at YOW! West in Perth in a sometimes noisy coffee shop at the Parmelia Hilton Perth:

  • Craig’s quote on the book! “No mucking around … gets to the heart of kanban from the first page. A must-read!”
  • originally from Sweden, now working for The Salvation Army in Indonesia helping them become more effective
  • bitten by the Agile bug by demonstrating something embarrassingly small at the end of a sprint and yet he found the stakeholders were overjoyed at just seeing movement
  • Agile has changed many things that used to manual to be automated, such as testing and deployment, to fit in short cycles
  • Fred George’s talk “Agile Roots: Use JIT to Go Faster” at YOW! West (slides / video)
  • Marcus’ talks at YOW! West “Kanban in Action – A Practical Whirlwind Tour of Kanban” (slides / video) and “Impact Mapping: Drawing is Not the Point” (slides)
  • other books on Kanban include Henrik Kniberg’s “Kanban and Scrum – Making the Most of Both“, and David J. Anderson’s “Kanban” and “Lessons in Agile Management“
  • Kanban slides on SlideShare led to writing the book with Manning
  • recommend “The Goal” by Eli Goldratt, the content is boring but the intriguing story keeps you reading
  • Kanban is trustworthy due to its principles: start where you are, limit the work in process, manage flow from idea to production
  • sprint is a crazy word, when running a physical marathon you should keep a pace that allows you to continue a conversation
  • slack will always occur, so plan for it, idle people is OK, we sell ideas not keystrokes per minute
  • “you can’t be more productive than not delivering a feature” – John Smart
  • recommended books include “Turn The Ship Around” by David Marquet (also see the TED talk) and “Reinventing Organizations” by Frederic Laloux
  • lessons we can learn from IT – simple visualisations, data that makes sense (you can’t improve what you can’t measure), be transparent on what is being worked on and meeting every day
  • not an Agile Coach but a Social Worker

TheAgileRevolution-107 (42 minutes)

 

Episode 89: Intersecting Service Management, People Development & Agile

by

3

IanKorrineJonesCraig gatecrashed the Australian ITSMF / ITIL conference, LEADit in Melbourne and in the hallway chats to Korrine Jones (an Organisational Development Consultant and running late for a plane) and Ian Jones (an IT Service Management expert) about how People Development and Service Management are intersecting with Agile and each other:

  • LEADit is the biggest service management conference in Australia – focus on disruptive service management, Agile, Lean, DevOps, Continuous Delivery
  • Challenges with virtual teams – not everybody is suited to working this way, need to take time up front on shared values and getting to know each other (and this can be done virtually if need be)
  • Measuring good teams – satisfaction surveys, team results, engagement levels
  • Agile Virtual ITSM Teams workshop
  • Opportunity for convergence between Agile and people development areas
  • Issue is how to translate Agile to Service Management – learn by continuous improvement and experimentation
  • Leading ITSM from Scrum to Kanban talk
  • Olanned work (continuous service improvement and BAU) and unplanned work (major incidents) and how to write story cards for service management teams
  • Moving from Scrum to Kanban moved the team from being reactive to proactive but they missed the cadence and planning and did not respect WIP limits, so went back to Scrum
  • Tracked number of points which represents delivered service improvement
  • Showcases are a challenge outside of an IT management team – who should come?
  • Problem Management Analysts use a Kanban wall to track incidents and impacts
  • Buy in increasing in IT Service Management community, but slow uptake
  • ITIL – when implemented well, it provides real benefits to the customer
  • DevOps Days Brisbane – Why You’re Destroying DevOps – many correlations to what DevOps is experiencing now to what ITIL experienced 10 years ago
  • ITIL has nothing about culture, rather it is just focussed on process unlike Agile and Lean, it is also often pushed from above and has a compliance way of thinking due to certifications
  • Nigel Dalton keynote – The Cloud: It’s Not About The Money
  • Need to continue to support and coach the ITSM community and collaborate

TheAgileRevolution-89 (33 minutes)

Episode 87: Coffee From The Trenches with Henrik Kniberg

by

2

Henrik KnibergRenee and Craig catch up with Henrik Kniberg at Scrum Australia 2014 where he tries coffee for the first time in ten years at the Paramount Coffee Project (the best coffee in Sydney according to Renee). Apart from getting his verdict on the brew, they also talk about:

  • First time back in Australia in a long time to keynote at Scrum Australia 2014
  • Craig’s interview “Henrik Kniberg on Lean From The Trenches, Translating the Agile Manifesto and Living Agile” from Agile 2012 in Dallas on InfoQ
  • “Scrum and XP From The Trenches” and how the book was written in 3 days
  • Ivory Tower Syndrome – you can get good at describing crap in a believable way if you don’t have connections to reality
  • “Kanban and Scrum: Making The Most of Both“
  • Spotify – 25 coaches with 25 pet approaches, the culture and the fundamentals in each cross functional team is the same, the purpose of organisations is not make life easy for the manager, it is to make it possible to deliver and learn fast
  • Tradeoffs – consistency vs flexibility in tools such as version control at Spotify
  • Spotify culture – started with Scrum, was fundamentally healthy, created by the mindset of the founders and the first few people
  • Spotify succeeded because the people who work there are passionate about making a great product – making a product where they also the customer – the new problem is keeping empathy for new users
  • Renee still buys CDs apparently!
  • Spotify is focussed on growth not profit – optimise for users loving the product – there will ultimately be one big player
  • “Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds” paper and “Spotify Engineering Culture Part 1” and Spotify Engineering Culture Part 2” videos
  • Scaling Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches – gradual ramp up since 2010, each coach has 2-3 squads, coaches are culure workers (a good example of investing in coaches)
  • On coaches, Spotify has shown it is probably harder to multitask roles than teams
  • Crisp – balance of independence versus freedom, runtime environment for consultants
  • Oath of Non Allegience – come to companies with toolboxes – how they work and which one is appropriate for the environment
  • Need some relation to the craft of the team as a coach – need to be open to blindspots
  • Henrik’s verdict on the the coffee… no spoilers, you will need to listen!

TheAgileRevolution-87 (40 minutes)

Episode 79: Vomit Value with Jim Benson

by

0

14491375311_22bf182a39_zAt 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

TheAgileRevolution-79 (45 minutes)

 

Episode 70: Hello Is This Thing On?

by

1

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

The Agile Revolution – 70   (65 minutes)

Episode 68: Together Again Like Peas & Carrots

by

1

peascarrotsCan you believe it ! Yes it’s a real Forest Gump moment, the revolutionists are finally back together again just like peas and carrots . They are back to their best discussing :

The Agile Revolution-68 (53 minutes)

Episode 63: The Lean-Agile Project with Al Shalloway

by

1

alan_shallowayAt Agile 2013 in Nashville, TN, Craig talks to Al Shalloway from Net Objectives in the open space area (ironically in front of a waterfall) about his current areas of interest in the Lean Agile community. Al has been a leading voice in the Agile community for many years, is the author of many software development and Agile related books and is a SAFe Program Consultant as well as a co-founder of the Lean Software & Systems Consortium. The topics discussed include:

TheAgileRevolution-63 (26 minutes)