Episode 188: Doing Agile Right with Steve Berez & Tony Christensen

Tony and Craig catch up with Tony Christensen and Steve Berez, co-author of “Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos” as well as from Bain & Company and they chat about:

  • Saw a lot of companies doing agile wrong and a lot of pain suffering and probably worse off than when they started – book is to try to share learning and get agile on the right track
  • The conditions for agile to flourish need to change, particularly beyond team level
  • RBS – one of the key impediments was funding, changed to funding persistent teams
  • Most organisations have a dissatisfaction with their financial process – need to have an honest conversation around the pain points of trust and process and seeing the promise of early return
  • Bosch – were not innovating as quickly as they needed to, now using Agile for product design, manufacturing process and supply change operations – use Agile wherever a change need is required
  • Best way to manage a transformation is in an agile way – problem is unfortunately a transformation has to be funded using the existing processes and adapt the process as you go
  • Where Agile works well is where it is more organic – give the teams the tools for success and get out of the way
  • Saab Gripen Fighter Jet – built using Agile
  • Set the ambition to be a continuous internal learning organisation
  • We need good recipes – Toyota and Spotify are good examples – sharing is of benefit to each other
  • Persistent teams are recommended to get the best results. – there is a compelling economic argument for this as well
  • How Agile Is Powering Healthcare Innovation – healthcare has had to innovate at a much more rapid pace than traditionally due to the global pandemic – built around small empowered teams that are focussed on the problem

TheAgileRevolution-188 (54 minutes)

Episode 79: Vomit Value with Jim Benson

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

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

TheAgileRevolution-79 (45 minutes)