Making Agile Work at HUGE

In preparing for my How to Hack Agile for Digital Agencies at the 2017 Digital PM Summit I did a lot of research and conducted a lot of interview. This conversation, with Lance Hammond and Robert Sfeir from HUGE Atlanta was the last one I did before the Summit. During this discussion Lance and Robert share many of the lessons they’ve learned in bringing Agile to HUGE and they provide clarity on what it takes to make Agile work in a Digital Agency. SHOW NOTES 00:08 Podcast Begins 01:42 Some background on Robert and Lance 03:17 How long HUGE has been working on introducing Agile 04:40 Resistance from Design when switching to an Agile approach 06:08 Why Kanban may be a better approach for Design 07:39 How the Designers at HUGE approach their work without having all the requirements up front 09:30 Establishing Vision up front with the client and prioritizing options with them 10:33 The client needs to own the delivery from the very beginning and become part of the process 11:50 Making the client your partner in the workflow and decision making process 14:17 Why teaching the client how to work in Agile has to be an accepted cost 16:07 Why those with experience in Agile transformation can be so beneficial for Digital Agencies and what you need to watch out for 17:52 Changing how the work gets funded 20:22 How to change your Statement of Work to support Agile practices 21:47 Tips for convincing your client to want to use Agile to manage the work 24:11 Caring and feeding of the client during an Agile project at a Digital Agency 27:53 Should you include the client in the retrospective? 28:46 Do you need to have cross-functional, stable teams that are each working on only one project? 32:04 How long did it take HUGE to get to stable teams 34:02 Use Lean metrics to find and remove waste 34:20 How critical is it to move to a retainer (fund the team) model 35:30 You have to know why you want Agile, which approach you’ll take, and what you want from it 37:05 Scrum may have you thrashing for a bit before you switch to Kanban… and there is value in that 37:49 Why you need to switch the entire Digital Agency over to an Agile approach (including sales) 39:22: What is the hardest part about implementing/working with Agile in a Digital Agency 42:32 Defining what you are willing (and not willing) to try changing, when you switch to an Agile approach 44:30 How HUGE approaches estimating work 48:40 Why it is so important to watch and learn (inspect) before you start trying to change things (adapt) 50:45 Why Robert and Lance do not believe Scrum can work in a Digital Agency that wants Agile, but why you need to try it first to unlock the value of Kanban 53:00 Contacting Lance and Robert 54:06 Podcast Ends LINKS FROM THE PODCAST HUGE http://www.hugeinc.com/ Agile in Digital Agencies - Dave and Lance from the Atlanta Scrum User Group Meeting https://www.pscp.tv/leadingagile/1YqxomWqrwMGv (there is some static that persists until the interview begins at about 1 minute in) CONTACTING LANCE Twitter: https://twitter.com/lance5684 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lance-hammond-7288914/ CONTACTING ROBERT Twitter: https://twitter.com/robertsfeir LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsfeir/