Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Measuring Business Value of Agile with Adam Asch Apr 03, 2017

Show notes

Moving from waterfall to agile is a big topic with many facets to consider. Managing consultant Adam Asch takes on a listener question-"How to measure business value of moving to agile for both software development and business processes" We talk about when companys should, and shouldn't make the move, and provide insights into many of the costs and benefits of such a move. We talk about the the move from project management to product management, faster feedback loops, and the human side of agile. There is a ton to cover in a short time... so buckle up.

About Agile Amped: The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community throughcompelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovativeideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-timeupdates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: YouTube, iTunes,http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: Twitter Like: Facebook

High Performing Agile Teams with Yasser Farra Mar 28, 2017

Show notes

High Performing Agile teams seems to be what everyone wants - but do you know what is means and what it takes to get there? Yasser Farra talks about his perspective of high performing teams and how to help create them. He gives us some helpful tips on team make up and dynamics, team environment, and more. We also spend some time at the end of the episode talking about the upcoming Keep Austin Agile conference.

About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series connects the community throughcompelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovativeideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, AgileAmped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-timeupdates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes,http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitterLike: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Amber King Champions Self-Selection for Happy Teams Mar 23, 2017

Show notes

Amber King is a fan of team self-selection, which, in her experience, yields happier, more empowered, more productive teams. Amber shares her story working at Opower where the company decided to do an experiment: the goal would be to do what's best for the company, but individuals get to choose what they work on and with whom. The experience was positive and powerful for the company, where 40 people took two and a half hours to form 6 teams. Amber advocates for allowing time for the questions and concerns that will arise, including fear of being picked last. But Amber doesn't find that to happen: "You're picking yourself, you're not getting picked." The goal is "getting people to the point where it's safe enough to try."Amber also provides some tips for running a successful team self-selection event as well as a clear business case for letting team members choose each other and themselves, including: less work for already bogged-down managers; fewer unhappy teams; and happier, more productive teams.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Karen Favazza Spencer's 3 Faces of Environments and How They Affect Work Mar 22, 2017

Show notes

Karen Favazza Spencer hears the echoes of the pioneering experiential learning psychologists from a hundred years ago in today's Business Agility movement. Drawing on the wisdom of both 20th and 21st century neuroscience, Karen penned an Agile primer called "The Agile ABC Book" (http://agilekindergarten.com/store/pr...) that leverages visual cues and heuristics. Using another heuristic or two, Karen shares her approach to effecting positive change in challenging work environments. She calls it, the "three faces of environment":1. Physical Environment: This is the shared space in which humans have evolved, and today this includes the virtual environment as well as physical because people work both in offices and online. Karen's mantra for improving the physical environment: "manipulate and manifest."2. Psychological Environment – Karen's mantra here is "feedback and feelings". To get the results you're driving toward, "you need to make sure you put in structures … to improve communications" and creates a safe environment in which to collaborate.3. Process Environment, aka our story space – Karen says, "Stories are the operating systems of our minds." Since everyone is the protagonist of their own lives, our actions are dictated by our understanding of the story as it relates to us personally: What are our roles? What are the rules? These internal stories may not be reflective of organizational intent but our interpretation governs our behavior. These rules, these head stories are often the biggest obstacles for individuals to overcome. The business also often has a narrative that is inconsistent with their stated mission, such as "we value work-life balance, but you must work 20 hours a week overtime." Consequently, achieving clarity and buy-in on the "roles and rules" of a consistent and well understood narrative is critical to success.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter

Renee Troughton on Uncomfortable Conversations and Agile Transformations Mar 21, 2017

Show notes

Enterprise Agile coach Renee Troughton believes that pessimism and optimism are additive: lots of horrible moments can give you a pessimistic outlook, while lots of positive moments can yield an optimistic one. "We ride this pessimistic and optimistic wave as individuals based upon the moments that we have in conversations everyday." Perspective shapes how feedback is received -- and that can make an uncomfortable conversation out of sharing simple feedback.Too often, though, feedback is imposed on people by HR in a performance review, which Renee thinks often comes across as "disrespectful". Instead, people should be able to communicate to each other the feedback they have. The ideal is to create an environment where feedback is welcome and not delivered in a disrespectful manner. Renee champions patience, mindfulness of how you come across, respect and optimism because when people are ready for feedback, they will seek it out. She recommends having a conversation and, if you're the one providing the feedback, be aware of what your body language is communicating.SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Katy Saulpaugh's Survival Guide for Agile Reorgs and Culture Change Mar 17, 2017

Show notes

Katy Saulpaugh started out in change management before becoming an Agile coach. Today she applies her previous knowledge and experience to the field of Agile transformations. In her Business Agility 2017 talk "Agile Reorgs: A Survival Guide", she outlines how to approach reorgs for Agile teams and minimize the pain using change management techniques.Change management offers much to the Agile industry and vice versa, so Katy finds her work helps many organizations bridge the gap between the two. Here she offers best practices and insights for communication around change initiatives like Agile transformation, including:- Communicate more often because silence only reinforces fear.- Create and maintain feedback loops with frequent bite-sized communication chunks.- Create alignment around why transform and how Agile is a means to that end.- Get everyone involved in the conversation.- Avoid sharing scary change through email; in person is best.Katy also shares a powerful change management tool: the change network. This is a group of highly engaged people who are not on the management team, and yet they're influential. Katy says, "If you don't engage them, they may leave the organization. If they're not part of what you're trying to do, they can derail things. At the same time, they're your greatest assets." But how do you identify them? "Communities of practice [which includes] people who have self-selected and willing to learn more and spend time to learn more."SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Dan Montgomery on Combatting Complexity with Simplicity Mar 16, 2017

Show notes

Coach and consultant at Agile Strategies Dan Montgomery offers his insights on three problems with strategic planning today: 1. With all the effort put into planning, the resulting plan is immediately obsolete. Leaders bring in consultants to create an executable plan assuming that the goal won't shift during the long execution process.2. Because the change is dictated from the top, even Agile transformations aren't Agile in that they don't engage all of the stakeholders in determining the solution. Instead, change management is used to impose the solution on the lower echelons. 3. After all the planning, there's just too much to get done. Agile says, "Start less, finish more" and pull from a backlog. But org plans are so full of details, people get overwhelmed.Dan suggests combatting complexity with simplicity: "Boil it down to a few small rules people can follow and then let them innovate, let them come up with the details."SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at the inaugural Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Author Andrea Fryrear: Agile is Our Only Hope for Modern Marketing Mar 15, 2017

Show notes

Given the growing level of complexity, scope and audience involvement, from Andrea Fryrear's perspective, "Agile is our only hope" for modern-day marketing. Her book "Death of a Marketer"(due for release in March 2017) takes a look at the trajectory and cycles of marketing and where it is now. In the book Andrea argues that Agile is the stage in evolution where marketing is at.At Business Agility 2017, Andrea is presenting "A Common Sense Journey into Agile Marketing", in which she shares her experience of the first transformation with her marketing team. She highlights that Agile approaches that work for development teams don't necessarily work for marketing teams: "Because [of] of our challenges, our team structure, our skill sets, it's really hard to create a truly cross-functional marketer, whereas you can get that in a development team much more easily." Development teams gravitate to Scrum, which builds on cross-functional team members, whereas Agile marketers find more utility with Lean and Kanban.SolutionsIQ Marketing Strategist Roxi Ozolins hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Doug Kirkpatrick on Morningstar, Self-Management and the Management Tax Mar 14, 2017

Show notes

27 years ago, the founder of Morningstar sat his then-small staff down to share his idea for core principles as a foundation that they could grow an enterprise upon. Organizational consultant Doug Kirkpatrick was in that small group, and today Morningstar's two founding principles are still at the core of what is now the largest demand processor in the world:1. People shouldn't use force or coercion against each other.2. People should honor the commitments they make to each other. Doug has turned his experience into a career, having authored "Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization" and begun the Self-Management institute.The interest in updating organizational management has exploded worldwide, driven in part by technology but also by people's desire to enjoy their work and be autonomous and self-managing. Leaders are now looking around at how the world of work is changing and realizing that they need to understand this change because it affects their business. Doug offers advice to executives and middle managers, and also shares his thoughts on Gary Hamil's "management tax".SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

DBS Bank's Agile Transformation to Make Banking Joyful Mar 13, 2017

Show notes

Seven and a half years ago when Paul Cobban started with DBS Bank in Singapore, the company was struggling with customer satisfaction. Since then the bank has gone from "damn bloody slow" to wowing customers. The driven factor for this was the Agile transformation that Paul Cobban has been heading up and for an ambitious vision by the bank's CEO: making banking joyful. To achieve that end, the organization went on the offensive against waste. By bringing together cross-functional teams to find and eliminate waste (a la Kaizen), they were able to eliminate 250 million Customer Hours (each hour that each customer has to wait for a result) in just two years!Then DBS used Design Thinking to create customer journeys, empathize with them and thus create solutions to their real-life problems. To date, DBS Bank has run upwards of 400 of these customer journey programs guided by Design Thinking.SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

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