Future State Now: A Business Technology Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Prioritizing Work to Maximize Return w/ Dennis Stevens Mar 07, 2019

Show notes

This week, on SoundNotes, we've got Part 3 of a trio of interviews with LeadingAgile Chief Methodologist and Co-Founder Dennis Stevens. The series focuses on how to build an organization that can embrace change. In the final episode of the series, Dennis and Dave cover how to prioritize work being done to maximize return.

During the interview, they discuss how prioritization at all levels of the organization can support the ability to inspect and adapt and how some lingering traditional approaches to work, compensation, and prioritization can have a negative impact on your organization's ability to embrace change.

Links

If you'd like to check out the first two parts of this interview:

Here are links to the two other podcasts mentioned during the interview:

Here is a link to the article he co-authored for Harvard Business Review

The Next Revolution in Productivity

Contacting Dennis Stevens

Web: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dennis-stevens/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dennisstevens
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Coordinating Work with Agile & Waterfall Teams in a Mixed Environment w/ AJ Sanford Feb 28, 2019

Show notes

In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Senior Consultant AJ Sanford joins Dave to answer a student question that's frequently asked in Dave's CSM and CSPO classes.

How do you use Scrum when you have to coordinate work between teams that are using both Waterfall and Agile all within one organization?

During the interview, AJ and Dave touch on the following topics:

What to expect from an Agile pilot project
The types of challenges you can expect when you begin working on Agile Transformation
Why you need to align on quality standards as well as schedule
The importance of focusing on communication when coordinating work across multiple teams
How risk management practices and Cost of Delay can help when coordinating work across teams in a mixed environment
Tracking dependencies across teams
Why a culture of shared learning and empathy is such a vital part of working with teams in a mixed environment

Contacting AJ Sanford

Web: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/aj-sanford/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aj-sanford-5a9a4264/
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Designing an Organization that Manages Value w/ Mikkel Ladegaard Feb 21, 2019

Show notes

Mikkel Ladegaard is a Senior VP and Executive Consultant with LeadingAgile. This week, on SoundNotes, Mikkel and Dave Prior discuss Mikkel's focus on designing product-centric organizations in which the company's strategic prioritization of work is implicit and decision-making can be localized at the team level. During the conversation, they unpack a range of issues related to this topic, including how favor-based economies work, what the value is in designing organizations where there is a separation between those who identify the problem and those who solve the problem, and what the benefits are in making sure your organization is managing value rather than resources.

Contacting Mikkel Ladegaard

If you’d like to contact Mikkel, you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/mikkel-ladegaard/
LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2GU3Fg7
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Letting Go of the Waterfall, Embracing Agile, and Mixed Martial Arts w/ Brandon Dudley Feb 14, 2019

Show notes

In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile's own Brandon Dudley—Senior Consultant—shares his experience making the shift from a Waterfall mindset to a more Agile way of thinking and working. Brandon got his start in traditional, PMI-centric, project management working in the auto industry in Detroit. His introduction to Agile didn't involve the hard break that many of us experience. For him, this was just another set of tools to help him get work done. During the podcast, Dave and Brandon talk through his experience of transforming his way of thinking about people and work and his advice for those on a similar journey.

Outside of work, one of Brandon’s biggest interests is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts. The work he does there, both study and practice, have a significant impact on his view of work, how he interacts with people, and how he deals with challenging situations. This is a topic that Brandon and Dave dig into during the podcast as well.

Contacting Brandon Dudley

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/brandon-dudley/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-dudley-msc-safe®-spc-csm®-pmp®-6b1a5421/
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

The Language of Loss and the Language of Gain w/ Mike Cottmeyer & Andrew Young Feb 07, 2019

Show notes

When we try to explain Agile, many of us begin by trying to describe some of the characteristics of how we approach work. We often talk about things like:

Limiting work in process
Delivering smaller increments of work
Reducing team size and empowering the teams to become cross-functional and self-organizing

These are all things that, from an Agile point of view, are good because they help us to focus on the most important things, optimize flow, localize decision making, and deliver the most important thing at a higher level of quality. But, for those who are not familiar with our approach, what they may hear is

I can't have all the things I want
The things I do get will be smaller
I no longer have control of the people and how they work

A lot of this comes down to the words we use to convey the message. This week's episode of SoundNotes is a discussion centered around the Language of Loss and the Language of Gain. During the podcast, you'll hear LeadingAgile Founder and CEO Mike Cottmeyer, Senior Consultant Andrew Young, and Dave Prior as they dig into the different levels of this topic. Together, the three of us will discuss how we can raise our awareness and shift the conversation to focus on what Agile gives, as opposed to what Agile takes. Links

Whitepaper: https://www.leadingagile.com/whitepaper/
The Trust and Influence Loop Podcast: https://www.leadingagile.com/podcast/trust-influence-loop-mike-cottmeyer/

Contacting Mike Cottmeyer

If you’d like to contact Mike you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cottmeyer/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcottmeyer
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/andrew-young/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atyoung/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/exclamation101
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

The Value of Improving Your Technical Practices w/ Rich Dammkoehler Jan 31, 2019

Show notes

This episode of SoundNotes features, LeadingAgile Technical Consultant, Rich Dammkoehler in a conversation about why it is so important to make sure your organization is focused on improving their technical practices.

If you're struggling with helping your organization understand why introducing technical practices like collective code ownership, refactoring, pair programming, and test-driven development is such a crucial part of attaining business Agility; this podcast will help you build the case. Rich is a deeply experienced developer who got his start doing development using Waterfall and then found his way to Agile. In the Agile Transformation work that Rich does now, he focuses on helping organizations understand why and how the techniques and tools that came from Extreme Programming make them more effective at solving business problems and bring greater business success to the organization.

Towards the end of the interview, Rich also explains what it is that keeps him excited about doing development work after all these years, what development-related topics he is currently following the closest, and why punk rock is better than stadium rock.

Links from the Podcast

Contacting Rich Dammkoehler

If you’d like to contact Rich you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/rich-dammkoehler/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/net_zer0
Email: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richdammkoehler/
Github: https://github.com/rdammkoehler

Contacting Dave Prior

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Measuring the Impact of Change in Agile Transformation w/ Jeff Howey Jan 24, 2019

Show notes

If your company is working on Agile Transformation, understanding how you can track the organization’s response to change and the impact it's having on business outcomes can be a bit daunting. It’s not so tough to track whether or not people have been trained and what practices they are using, but when it comes to understanding what people see, feel, believe, and desire, that can be harder to understand.

In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile Managing Consultant, Jeff Howey and Dave Prior talk through some of the things you need to consider when trying to understand how change is taking root, how it's impacting what people think, how they work, and what they see, feel, believe, and desire.

Contacting Jeff Howey

If you’d like to contact Jeff you can reach him at:

Email: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhowey/

Contacting Dave Prior

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Agile Estimation: A SoundNotes Tutorial Jan 17, 2019

Show notes

Estimating work in Agile is something many people struggle to understand. It's not that it's an especially complicated thing, but there is often confusion about things like why many people prefer to use story points instead of hours, why some people feel compelled to try and convert story points to hours (and why some of us find that so frightening), how t-shirt sizing works, and the eternal question of how do I get my teams to estimate accurately.

Hint:

They're called estimates, not exactimates for a reason.

There's even a whole camp dedicated to the idea of notestimating work. So, if this is something you're struggling with, you're not alone.

This episode of SoundNotes is a brief tutorial on Agile Estimation and some of the ways you and your team could estimate work. The podcast offers some tips in general about Agile estimation, things to watch out for, how to estimate work using Story Points and Poker Planning, how to estimate work using T-shirt sizing, and–once you break your Product Backlog Items down into discrete tasks—how to estimate the using Ideal Hours. There are volumes that can be said about how to estimate work and a lot of fun "debates" to be had along the way, but if you're struggling to understand it, if you need to get a sense of whether your current approach makes sense, or if you just want a refresher on how to go about it, this podcast should give you plenty to start working with.

For More on Agile Estimation

LeadingAgile's FieldNotes has a number of posts covering different aspects of how to estimate work in Agile. Two great posts to start with are:

Agile Estimation Guidanceby Marty Bradley
The Real Reason We Estimateby Mike Cottmeyer

To see in index of all our posts on estimation,click here.

Contacting Dave Prior

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Kicking Off 2019 w/ Mike Cottmeyer Jan 10, 2019

Show notes

Iteration 2019 has begun and we’re starting off the year with an episode of SoundNotes where, LeadingAgile CEO and Founder, Mike Cottmeyer shares what's on his mind as we begin the new year.

During the interview Mike talks about some of the trends he’s been paying attention to in and around the Agile space, the changes he sees coming down the pike, and how that's influencing his focus and expectations for the next 12 months. Oh.. and… Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Links

Whitepaper - https://www.leadingagile.com/whitepaper/

WakeUp Warrior.com http://wakeupwarriormovie.com

Contacting Mike Cottmeyer

If you’d like to contact Mike you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cottmeyer/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcottmeyer
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrsungo
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrsungo
Email: https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Designing a Feedback-Driven, Strategic Execution Model w/ Dennis Stevens Dec 06, 2018

Show notes

A few weeks ago, Dennis Stevens and I recorded a podcast called Building an Organizational System That Can Embrace Change. The podcast introduced three critical concepts which we are exploring at a deeper level in additional interviews.

In this episode of SoundNotes, Dennis Stevens, LeadingAgile’s co-founder and Chief Methodologist, and Dave Prior, dig into one of those key concepts:

How to design an execution model that can provide feedback which can then be incorporated back into the strategic planning.

If you're involved in making strategic decisions and planning at the program and portfolio level, there is a lot of valuable information here about how to reduce risk and create greater optionality for your organization.

Contacting Dennis Stevens