Tag Archives: Renee Troughton

Episode 194: Business Agility Sparks at Lithespeed with Sanjiv Augustine

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Renee and Craig are at Agile2019 in Washington, DC and catch up with Sanjiv Augustine, author of “Managing Agile Projects” and “Scaling Agile” and founder and CEO of Lithespeed:

  • Craig’s InfoQ interview with Sanjiv
  • “Leadership is about managing change while management is about managing complexity… you need to be both”
  • Lithespeed = flexible speed
  • “Reinventing Organisations” by Frederick Laloux and the Morningstar model
  • The Agile community is excited about the benefits of the teal level but not the responsibility
  • Business Agility Sparks – need to shift left from IT to the business and shift right to DevOps and shift up into leadership
  • What makes you successful at the executive level is working with others
  • Agile Value Management Office (VMO) is a cross functional leadership team that manages the flow of work from end to end
  • PMO is more oriented towards best practices process, whereas the Agile VMO is more about flow of work to a business outcome (rather than output)
  • Collaborate with external auditors to determine what documentation is really needed and the controls required
  • Basic agile transformation model – build a true end to end value stream team, implement lean discovery and dual track discovery / delivery and an Agile VMO
  • Agile VMO is needed when there are obstructions to the flow of value
  • Dynamic strategy (top down, bottom up and outside in) and decision making velocity (speed to make a decision) and ensuring leadership is not a bottleneck to decisions
  • We still have work to go in taking Agile to other parts of the organisation and taking it to the executive and the board room
  • “Only the paranoid survive” – Andy Grove
  • “If we are in danger of being disrupted, why don’t we disrupt ourselves” – Andy Grove

TheAgileRevolution-194 (43 minutes)

Episode 190: Talking Agile Live From The Man Cave with Serge Beaumont

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Renee, Craig and Tony are together to chat with Serge Beaumont, Principal Agile Coach at Xebia, live from his man cave and despite showing their lack of mathematical skills in relation to dice they chat about:

TheAgileRevolution-190 (51 minutes)

Episode 185: Heart of Agile Academy with Alistair Cockburn & Soledad Pinter

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Tony, Renee and Craig speak to Alistair Cockburn and Soledad Pinter about the newly launched Heart of Agile Academy:

  • The Heart of Agile Academy is the opportunity to reset Agile learning with a clean sheet of paper
  • The core design decisions were to remove the classes being tied to a title and to be better at the specialities that make up the Heart of Agile
  • Heart of Agile is just four words or focus areas: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect and Improve
  • Alistair and Ahmed Sidky tried to solve this problem in 2010 when they launched ICAgile
  • There are over 3,000 different certification programs for Agile
  • The Academy has courses at different levels that are taught by Agile experts from around the world (and in multiple languages)
  • There is an accreditation ladder and process for bringing on new courses and trainers
  • Designed to be a marketplace for Agile classes and open for business now!
  • The values of the Heart of Agile community are openness, dialogue and humanity

TheAgileRevolution-185 (50 minutes)

Episode 184: Agile Virtual (Pizza) Summit with Adam Weisbart

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Craig, Renee and Tony catch up with old friend and “irregular” guest Adam Weisbart about Agile Virtual Summit, Recess retrospectives, Build Your Own Scrum and making your own pizza.

  • Renee realised Washington state is nowhere near Washington, DC
  • Agile Virtual Summit 1-5 June 2020 – a collection of great speakers and registration is free!
  • Distributed retrospectives – important that people give a voice-over to the items that they add
  • Tips for Remote Agile ceremonies – recreate being in the same room with technology as much as possible, avoid the asynchronous Slack bots, actually standup,
  • At Slack, you are not allowed to hold a meeting via Slack!
  • Recess – retrospectives in a box!
  • Making virtual retrospectives fun – change them up, craft retrospectives into a story (Recess does this), remember the future (where would you be if you had the most awesome sprint ever)
  • The next thing in Agile just sounds like Agility!
  • No apologies meeting rule for children, dogs or ringing the bell…
  • Build Your Own Scrum in a virtual world works well on Miro and Mural (and the exercise started as an accidental panic!)
  • Build Your Own LeSS
  • Bad Scrum Master Video
  • pizzamaking.com is the nicest place on the entire internet
  • ‘Zoom fatigue’ is taxing the brain. Here’s why that happens

TheAgileRevolution-184 (57 minutes)

Episode 183: Let’s Not Waste A Crisis – Live at Agile Brisbane April 2020 Virtual Meetup

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One of the strengths of the agile approach to delivery is flexibility in responding to changing circumstances, and there is no better example of this than the current lockdown. I’m sure you have heard the political adage: “Don’t waste a good crisis.” which allows us to reflect on how ways of working are currently being impacted. The Agile Brisbane community joined Tony, Craig and Renee for this online fireside chat to explore concepts around the state of agile now, and what we can carry over to the post-COVID world.

Thanks to John Stathakis, Dave Pryce, Andy van der Gugten, Michael Hunyh, Patrick Fernando, Wei Yin, Lawrence Noun, Gautami Shetty and everybody else who joined the conversation.

  • A lot of organisations are shifting their strategy and looking to digital in a stronger way than they did before
  • Remote amplifies everything you do when you interact with people
  • Once upon it was agile teams, now all teams are agile – they just struggle to operate in an agile mode
  • Conversations are more asynchronous now and single disruptions amplify a level of discomfort – we are not seeing the right level of tools
  • Need to think about the social styles of the people you are dealing with
  • You can work efficiently but not effectively
  • Working from home now is not the same as it was before – you are working AT home
  • “We need to be able to do the same with less”
  • This is the opportunity to look at the waste and focus on the value
  • This has allowed us to get access to people and places we had not been able to do this before
  • People put pressure on themselves to work harder as we lack the ability to sense the need that our teammates need help, but we have solved the amount of distractions we get during the day
  • The heart of agile is people, and if we can’t help people what are we doing?
  • This crisis is sending us a message to slow down and focus on what matters – as businesses and human beings
  • Reinventing Organizations and the fact some organisations have been forced to move up a level out of necessity
  • Are organisations responsible for providing a good workspace that meets workplace health and safety when we work from home?
  • With disruption comes opportunity – look for the collaboration, lean, tooling and continuous improvement opportunities

TheAgileRevolution-183 (58 minutes)

Episode 177: The Human Side of Agile for Non-Software Teams with Gil Broza

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Renee and Craig are at Agile 2019 in Washington, DC and talk to Gil Broza, Agile Mindset and Leadership Coach / Trainer at 3P Vantage and author of “The Agile Mind-Set“, “The Human Side of Agile” and “Agile for Non-Software Teams” and they talk about:

  • Agile 2019 talk – “How to Help your Non-Software Colleagues Adopt Agile“
  • Outside of software, they notice Agile and want what they have – a different team experience and doing things better
  • Focus on a principle based transformation rather than practices – have conversations early and often on how we want to be and how we want to operate
  • The Agile Manifesto principles are partial and software heavy, the values and beliefs are the root and leadership should keep these alive
  • 26 principles in “The Agile Mind-Set” book and includes transparency (which is harder in areas like HR and Finance)
  • Craig’s Agile 2010 talk “I’m The Business & Agile Was My Idea” (and we were before our time!)
  • The practices really don’t matter and there aren’t really equivalents outside of software
  • We are obsessed with the how in Agile (the implementation), Lean has always been about principles
  • We have crossed the chasm of Agile at team level but not at scale – or have we? Nail it before you scale it!
  • Ceremonies mean people turn up and go through the motions (The Scrum Guide says events), use workflow instead of process (which means I do work and send it in for approval), work item or task instead of user story (Scrum calls them backlog items)
  • The common denominator between software and the rest of the organisation is the principles
  • If you don’t think differently, doing differently won’t matter
  • Renee recommends “The Human Side of Agile” as well as “Coaching Agile Teams” for new Scrum Masters
  • Heart of Agile (Gil is not familiar with it so Renee and Craig channel their inner Tony to explain it!)
  • Oath of Non Allegiance
  • Are you coaching around values, principles and mindset or practices?

TheAgileRevolution-177 (57 minutes)

Episode 168: Agile 2019 (Un)bagging

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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:

TheAgileRevolution-168 (48 minutes)

Episode 138: A Responsibility Deep Dive with Christopher Avery

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Christopher AveryIn this episode of the Agile Revolution, Renee Troughton and Peter Lightbody join Christopher Avery again as entertains and educates Australia on The Responsibility Process and The Leadership Gift.

Whilst we looked at The Responsibility Process in Episode 114 of The Agile Revolution, this episode does a deeper dive and looks at:

  • Christopher’s talk at Scrum Australia on how Agile Leader’s improve results with The Responsibility Process. You can check out the LinkedIn article Christopher refers to here
  • Self leadership and self management
  • WL Gore and Associates core values and how it relates to The Responsibility Process.
  • The four minute overview of The Responsibility Process including denial, lay blame, justify, shame, obligation and responsibility.
  • How The Responsibility Process is a self-use tool
  • How to work with others (individuals or groups) using The Responsibility Process
  • The subtlety in the word of “responsibility” over others like “accountability”
  • Overcoming catastrophic events using the responsibility process
  • How The Responsibility Process aligns with other similar fields of thought such as Byron Katie’s “The Work” and Samuel Arthur’s vocal coaching
  • How responsibility is different from “being good”
  • Taking responsibility is about being at choice
  • What organisations can do to make an active practice of responsibility through “wins” using Intention and positive psychology
  • Walking through an example of the responsibility process in action
  • The difference between Quit and choosing not to act
  • Don’t try these with the Responsibility Process…
  • The Leadership Gift Program
  • The Responsibility Process Book

You can ask Christopher Avery for more information through his main website at ChristopherAvery.com.

TheAgileRevolution-138 (50 minutes)

Episode 133: Rules Are For Pussies!

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Craig and Renee are both in Sydney and catch up around the kitchen table to discuss a bunch of things happening in the Agile universe:

TheAgileRevolution-133 (76 minutes)

Episode 132: Usability Made Easy with Steve Krug

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Tony, Craig and Renee are at Agile Australia and catch up with Steve Krug and talk usability and along the way try to figure out whether Tony is lean, agile or just old…

TheAgileRevolution-132 (27 minutes)