Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Leaning into Sustainable Pace with Women in Agile Jun 21, 2018

Show notes

Agile Amped producer Hanna Gnann attended the Women in Agile Lunch & Learn at Keep Austin Agile 2018, where the topic was sustainable pace. She was impacted by the speaker Tamara Nation, so we invited her to chat with us about sustainability, how to measure it and ultimately how to achieve it. Nation shares her tips, with Gnann providing color commentary, including:

- Balance and boundaries - making intentional choices about what thing you do not do. (Nation has stopped looking at her phone first thing in the morning)- Connect with nature daily - simple as stepping outside and breathing deep- Stop and eat - actually making meals a time to care for yourself and build rapport with colleagues- Take stock of your feelings - track how you are feeling in intense moments; meditation and prayer can help bring you back to center- Take time off - 50% of Americans don't use their allotted vacation, so this can be as simple as actually using your vacation or taking the weekend to do nothing

Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile 2018 in Austin, Texas.

To find out more about Women in Agile visit womeninagile.com/

Reach out to our guests:Tamara Nation: tamara@scaledagile.comHanna Gnann: Twitter @hannagnann

Read more about Nation's Women in Agile session: www.solutionsiq.com/resource/blog-p…stainable-pace/

The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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To TDD or Not to TDD, That is the Question Jun 14, 2018

Show notes

First off, Mark Waite is a test-driven development (TDD) proponent. But - and hear him out - TDD may not actually be needed every single time you write code. Waite shares his discovery that the developers of Git - the leading version control system today - didn't use any tests during the first year or so of development. But why? Waite argues that testing is a quality assurance measure - and sometimes you don't care about things like longevity, breaking the code, or even shoddy value. For example, "Sometimes I need a tool to do something once" and never again. He goes on to point out that TDD is most useful when there is significant risk, or you need to understand the code better, or when there is a benefit to intentional variation.

Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.

Reach our guest on Twitter: @MarkEWaite

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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Preparing the Next Generation for the New Agile World Jun 07, 2018

Show notes

Are educators doing all they can to prepare students for the real world? High school teacher and CSM Bret Thayer feels we could be doing better to give today's students - digital natives - the soft skills that modern businesses need. These include critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, innovation, collaboration, adaptability. Thayer is all too familiar with the struggle of getting smartphone-obsessed teenagers to acknowledge, let alone learn from, other people - teachers as well as other adults and peers. He uses Scrum and Agile technicals and mindsets to get students involved in their own education.

Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile 2018 in Denver, Colorado.

Reach our guest:Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/teacherswhoscrum/ Twitter: @bathayerWebsite: agileintheclassroom.com/

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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4 Steps to Change with the ITC Map May 31, 2018

Show notes

Drawing from the work of Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan, Henry Dittmer shares his experience using the Immunity to Change (ITC) map to help participants of his session identify what is keeping them from achieving a desired change. Dittmer used the four-step ITC map to demonstrate why - paradoxically - he doesn't like presenting at conferences. The four steps are:

1. What One Big Thing do you want to commit to changing?

2. What are you doing or not doing that's keeping you from doing this thing?

3. What worries and fears (hidden competing commitments) arise when you think about doing this thing?

4. What assumptions make these commitments real for you?

From here you can test assumptions: are they real, are they silly? Do you really believe them? Dittmer finds that some difficult assumptions can open the door to coaching, for individuals and teams and even organizations. "It's really most powerful when individual leaders are getting leadership coaching," and then after they arrive at their One Big Thing, the team can look at itself collectively and decide what is their One Big Thing, specifically in terms of the company they are leading.

Accenture | SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.

Reach our guestTwitter: @hcdittmer ‏Email: henry.dittmer@agileforall.comWebsite: agileforall.com/

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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Round Table Roulette - Keep Austin Agile 2018 May 25, 2018

Show notes

Round Table Roulette time! Daniel M. Lynn, Candase Hokanson, and Audrey Scheere are our "victims" today. The questions coming out of the hat were:

What was your favorite conference keynote/session ever?
Mile High Agile (Uncle Bob) - We're gonna get screwed into oblivion if we don't do engineering better.
Agile2016 - 5 Dysfunctions of an Improv Group
Scaling Agile: A Guide for the Perplexed
What's the worst thing you've seen that people thought was Agile?People saying they bought/use an Agile tool, so they're Agile
What is beyond Agile?
How do you know if someone is a good/great agile coach?
If you could only give one piece of advice to a new ScrumMaster, what would it be?
Know your stuff.
Come in with a positive attitude.
Talk less, listen more.
How did you get started in Agile?

Accenture|SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Keep Austin Agile in Austin, Texas.

Find our guests on Twitter:

@rawrdrey

@candasea2006 ‏

@Daniel_M_Lynn

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Teams of Heroic Learners | Diana Larsen May 22, 2018

Show notes

Diana Larsen is the Chief Relationship Builder at the Agile Fluency Project and she has a simple compelling message: software development is learning work. Knowledge work is what everyone is talking about - but Larsen argues that learning is really what we need to be doing today. She talks about "heroic learners" - people who have the courage, compassion and confidence to learn everywhere and all the time, because as Larsen puts it, "We have to get good and learning - or we get left behind." And this goes beyond just individuals - she discusses how teams need to learn together.

Accenture|SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett hosts at Mile High Agile in Denver, Colorado.

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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Hacking Agile for Digital Agencies | Dave Prior May 17, 2018

Show notes

Dave Prior is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with Leading Agile, a Project Management Professional (PMP), and a podcast host. He got his start in project management at digital agencies. The problem he saw with the agencies was that they were willing to bend over backwards for the client, which made it difficult to stay profitable. The key to making digital agencies Agile, according to Prior, is to "get everyone trained together, make sure sales is part of that, figure out how to rewrite your statements of work, figure out how your company is going to bear the cost of teaching your client [Agile]."

Prior also addresses the question: Should I still get a PMP, does it have any value?

Howard Sublett hosts.

To reach our guest:

Twitter: @mrsungo www.leadingagile.com/drunkenpm.blogspot.com/www.projectmanagement.com/blogs/264092…tant-Agilist

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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Round Table Roulette - Agile in 10 years and more! May 15, 2018

Show notes

Where will the Agile space be in ten years? This great question kicks off this edition of Round Table Roulette with our guests Aidee Fischer, Corey Post and Steve Kovach, three experienced Agile coaches here at SolutionsIQ. On the topic of the future of Agile, our guests are unanimous: "Agile will be everywhere."

Other questions and conversation topics that host Howard Sublett guides our guests through include:

Can Agile work at any scale? If no, at what size does it break down? (Fischer: "Depends on what we mean by Agile. If we're talking about the idea of delivery value quickly to customers, being more customer-centric... making our people or products the best that they can be, then I think that, yes: it could work at any scale.")
What do you tell managers that want to compare Agile teams to each other?
Is there a "Dunbar Number" for Agile?
How do you know if someone is a good or great Agile coach?
Share a story about Agile outside of software. (Kovach was moved last year by a session he attended at Mile High Agile by the teenaged Aaron Vadakkana who has been using Scrum at home for years. Listen here: Agileamped – Using-scrum-at-home-with-aaron-vadakkan)
If you could only give one piece of advice to a new ScrumMaster, what would it be?

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Distributed Agile Teams: Collaboration over Collocation at Red Hat May 10, 2018

Show notes

Neil Smith and Chuck Copello from Red Hat sat down with us to discuss how an Agile mindset can overcome the 6th principle of the Agile Manifesto:

"The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation."

Red Hat is a large open source software company with 11,000 employees globally, 2,000 of whom work from home. Both Chuck and Neil have team members across different continents, and they provide practical advice for how to be a distributed Agile team and still feel united. They even shared with us tips for helping distributed teams collaborate more effectively.

Howard Sublett hosts.

Get in touch with our guests: neil@redhat.comccopello@redhat.com

Access the Google Doc mentioned here: https://www.solutionsiq.com/resource/agile-amped-podcast/distributed-agile-teams-collaboration-over-collocation-at-red-hat/

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The Four R's: A Model to Transition to Lean Thinking May 03, 2018

Show notes

When Agile coaches Nidhi Sharma and Michael Callahan are looking at changing someone's mindset and changing the way that they behave and work, they want to start with a purpose. The pair tied it all together in their Four R's model for transitioning to Lean thinking:

- Why are we doing this work? (Right Reasons)- What work would fit that purpose? (Right Work)- Who needs to be in the room to have those conversations? (Right People)- What is the last responsible moment for doing the work? (Right Time)

Howard Sublett hosts.

Get in touch with our guests: michael.p.callahan@accenture.com and nidhi.t.sharma@accenture.com And find our podcast host on Twitter: @howardsublett

Podcast library: www.agileamped.com

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