Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations

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Kupe Kupersmith: "Improv is Common Sense but not Common Practice" Dec 05, 2016

Show notes

After testing the waters of accounting and standup comedy, Kupe Kupersmith of B2T Training finally found his calling by combining two of his passions: improv and helping teams be better. As with improv, life has no scripts: "you have to adapt... and be a good listener," says Kupe. When you provide an environment for good, positive communication, the fun happens naturally! Some key skills for using improv in teams: engaged listening and keeping an open mind. One of Kupe's favorite scripts is "Yes, and..." which is geared toward building constructive, rather than destructive, communication. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Tom Cooper's "4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader" at Southern Fried Agile 2016 Dec 02, 2016

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Tom Cooper has learned through the years that connecting with people is key to building the trust that makes a good working relationship. For years, Tom focused on improving his technical skills but not necessarily his interpersonal skills. When he diverted some energy to connecting better with people, he saw huge improvements in his productivity. This influenced to create the "4 Levels of Thinking as a Geek Leader", a rubric to help techy-types improve their interpersonal skills and influence over others: 1. Individual: What can I do with my own two hands? 2. Team member: How can I work better within my team? 3. Team leader: How do I develop teams? 4. Team builder: How do I develop leaders who create teams who work well as teams? Tom encourages tech geeks to ask themselves, "Where are you on the four levels? And what can you do to expand your definition of success?" SolutionsIQ's Setarra DeVeaux hosts at Southern Fried Agile 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Sarah Scott on Cows as Impediments & Using SAFe to Implement SAFe Dec 01, 2016

Show notes

What do cows and trains have in common? They're both on the Kanban board that Sarah Scott uses to visualize the SAFe implementation at Northwestern Mutual. Sarah walks us through the visualization method they use to track progress of their SAFe implementation, which they use Agile-Lean practices and values to execute on the plan. The team calls their visualization tool a "cow board" rather than a Kanban board because of a funny if somewhat morbid occurrence from early in Northwestern Mutual's history, which taught the then-president a valuable lesson on thinking outside the box. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Dave Rush: Why Projects are Dead & Why Some Teams Have a Harder Time Collaborating Nov 30, 2016

Show notes

Dave Rush, Accenture Managing Consultant and Transformation Agent, is passionate about putting an end to projects, because as Dave puts is, "Projects are dead... because by their nature they have a start and end... and a goal to deliver some unique thing." But in Agile work is always flowing, so it makes more sense to think in terms of product life cycles. Moreover, it's time for businesses to think in terms of funneling work to long-lived, high-performance teams. Projects are constantly bringing together stars who have never worked together and, as soon as they get the hang of collaborating, the team is blown apart and the project process starts all over again. In Agile and SAFe, you want high-performance teams who are highly collaborative and practice collective ownership. To make that work in a business context, says Dave, you have to "fund the people and the trains and keep them stable and bring the work to them." Dave also shares his thoughts on why the English national team can never win. SolutionsIQ's Evan Campbell hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Stuart Perron on the Performance Predictability Index & Not Losing Sight of Actual Business Value Nov 29, 2016

Show notes

Teams often lose sight of the business outcomes as they write stories and features in "technicalese", which external users may not be able to comprehend. SPC Stuart Perron thinks that PI objectives are a great way to keep the focus on the results in user language, so they can get quick feedback. Even before the work on the stories begins, stakeholders can rate the value of the completed story or feature. Then again when the story is completed, the team can share the true results and have the stakeholders rate its value, which may be more or less than predicted. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Joe Vallone to Leaders: Responsibility for Agile Success or Failure Cannot be Delegated Nov 28, 2016

Show notes

Joe Vallone has a powerful message for enterprise leaders -- that includes managers, directors, VPs and executives. When it comes to executives participating in the transformation, Joe says, "responsibility cannot be delegated... Success or failure of an Agile transformation doesn't belong to coaches... or to individual teams... Leaders need to take accountability and responsibility for this change." Joe invokes Kotter's Acceler8 change management model, saying that his focus has been on step 2: building a guiding coalition. But sometimes leaders are just too busy... An economics geek, Joe suggests starting with just 1% of their available time to start out doing Agile, creating backlogs and experiencing the process--then building on that. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Dwayne Stroman: Let's Talk About How Your Culture is Impeding Your Transformation Nov 23, 2016

Show notes

SPCT Dwayne Stroman has a simple but compelling message: Culture is at the foundation of your transformation success--or failure. According to Dwayne, SAFe is a spotlight will shed light on the dark corners, the culture barriers that impedes communication. To change the culture, you have to create a plan. Using the same dedication to creating good products, "we're developing people, we're developing a culture." (Plate stacking and silverware clanging in the background are a *feature* of this live recording experience!) SolutionsIQ's Howard Johnson hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Michael Stump on Drafting Case Studies to Identify Enterprise Objectives & Pairing with Partners Nov 22, 2016

Show notes

Michael Stump is the Managing Director for the EMEA regions for Scaled Agile. He shares his experiences using a nifty group activity in value stream workshops to help attendees understand their true enterprise objectives by answering three key questions: 1. What is the objective? 2. How do you measure it? 3. How do you communicate the results? This exercise improves alignment around objectives and defining baseline and success metrics. Michael also shares his appreciation for SAFe partners who are in the business of implementing the framework in the real world and providing useful data that can be used in future improvements. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Richard Knaster on Value Streams to Reduce Lead Time and Building Quality In Nov 21, 2016

Show notes

SAFe Fellow Richard Knaster is here at SAFe Summit with Agile Amped in Denver to talk about the power of Value Streams, which have their own new layer in SAFe 4.0. He says it's a common antipattern that companies add a SAFe program on top of traditional waterfall methods. This is a huge opportunity for them to reduce lead time from concept to cash by looking for waste throughout the whole process. But identifying value streams identification isn't enough; you also have to ensure that the value is actually flowing all the way through. Richard also advocates for building quality into the software, through testing, rather than leaving it to be figured out just before release, as is typically the case in waterfall projects. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Steve Davis hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Vikas Kapila's Big Box of Analogies: Planning Vacations and Trains vs. Planes Nov 18, 2016

Show notes

What does BPUF and vacations have in common? According to Vikas Kapila, it's better to plan a little (for example, purchasing a plane ticket to Hawaii) then make incremental additions along the way, rather than to plan the entire experience (hotel, rental car, activities, food, etc.) up front without even making the first small commitment. Vikas uses this analogy and a handful of others to characterize the differences between a traditional mindset and a more modern, Lean-Agile mindset. SolutionsIQ SAFe consultant Scott Frost hosts at SAFe Summit 2016 in Denver, Colorado. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thought leaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

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