The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

AgileDad ~ V. Lee Henson
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Jun 8, 2023 • 7min

Identify & Engage Your Stakeholders

Identify & Engage Your Stakeholders - What is the difference between a Key Stakeholder, Stakeholder, and Interested Party? There are in essence 4 categories these stakeholders fall into: Promoters — high influence, high interest (upper right quadrant). Promoters are vital for success, and thus active engagement with this group is important to keep them informed. This group often influences others in the organization. Observers — high influence, low interest (upper left quadrant). These stakeholders can potentially pose a risk to product/project success. Monitor this group and keep them informed on progress, successes, upcoming goals, impacts and vision. Ideally some or all in this group can eventually be influenced in such a way that they become Promoters. Defenders — low influence, high interest (lower right quadrant). Defenders can help you build momentum for the product/project. They are often willing to give you feedback on prototypes and MVP’s. Nurture this group. Sedentaries — low influence, low interest (lower left quadrant). Since these stakeholders are potential defenders, keep them in the loop, with an eye toward helping them see “What’s in it for me.” Seek to build excitement among this group. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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Jun 7, 2023 • 4min

The Benefits of Delaying Decisions - Mike Cohn

The Benefits of Delaying Decisions - Mike Cohn I'm sitting in a hotel right now. I won’t fly home for several days.But once I arrive at the airport near home, I have a choice of two routes to get me all the way back to my house.Both routes start the same. But then I have a decision to make. I can either stay on the side streets or get on the highway. Usually the highway is the faster way home.But, depending on a number of factors, sometimes taking the highway takes longer.Fortunately, when I first leave the airport, I can catch a glimpse of the highway and decide: highway or side streets.And so, I defer the decision until I see the traffic on the highway. There is no reason for me to decide today (as I sit here in my hotel) how I will drive home from the airport several days from now.There is tremendous value in deferring decisions, yet we often rush to make decisions that don't need to be made.Lean refers to the "last responsible moment" as that time at which a decision will be made for you if you don't decide. When I leave the airport, I am in the rightmost lane. Unless I explicitly change lanes, I will end up on the highway by default.The last responsible moment is that moment at which the decision becomes made for me. If I don't change lanes by then, I'm taking the highway home.As you make decisions on your project, be aware of both the power of deferring decisions and the last responsible moment. Doing so will help you succeed with agile. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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8 snips
Jun 6, 2023 • 14min

4 Common Misconceptions About Agile Transformation

4 Common Misconceptions About Agile Transformation The most popular misconception is that Agile is a set of practices and can be installed by trainers and coaches. This is the easy button form of Agile Transformation. You train your teams on Agile, the teams start using Agile, recognize their impediments, and change the systems to be more effective at delivery. In practice, most teams are not empowered to change the systems they operate within, so they bastardize the processes to accommodate the dysfunction. This is where we see lots of teams going through the motions of Agile and not getting the business benefit of doing the approach. The litmus test for this is as follows. Can any given Agile team claim to have a stable velocity against a known backlog? Can they produce a working tested increment of software every week or two that can be validated by an end customer? The next most popular misconception about Agile Transformation is that it is a culture problem. The challenge is that it feels like a culture problem. It feels like Transformation is hard because of command-and-control leaders who don’t want to delegate to or empower the teams. It feels like an attitude and beliefs problem. A behavior problem. But let me tell you, if you understand how and why Agile works, and you understand what will get in its way, these leaders are right to stand in the way of Agile. Implementing Scrum or XP or Lean Startup on top of a tightly coupled legacy mainframe system is a recipe for disaster. One of my favorite user group questions to ask is this. If you were king for a day, you could do anything you want, you could change anything in the culture or mindset of the organization, what would you do tomorrow? The caveat is that you had to start producing working tested software within a few weeks. What would you change in the org design? The technology architecture? The governance model? You see, many of us want to believe that the teams know best. And that may be true about building software. But it’s not always true about running a for-profit software company. Another popular misconception is that Transformation is a one-time event. Transformation itself is a process that takes years. It has a starting place. It has intermediate states. It has a defined end-state. But as customers and markets change, your organization has to change with them. So, the misconception is that the process is linear, and once the process is installed, or the culture has shifted, you will be done. In my experience, this is never the case. We find that getting an organization to change requires a series of intermediate states that have to be traversed as you systematically improve the organization to enable greater Business Agility and move closer to the ideal. The fourth and final misconception is that the things you do at the team level are sufficient for running Agile at scale. So, Transformation is about creating the conditions to do Agile well. And in large organizations, training teams on how to do Scrum or XP is wholly insufficient. You have to address the overall operating model. You have to address governance and compliance and audit and control. https://leadingagile.medium.com/4-common-misconceptions-about-agile-transformation-3245e8dd1d99 How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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Jun 5, 2023 • 11min

What Is The Agile Mindset? - Is it Culture?

What Is The Agile Mindset? - Is it Culture? An Iterative Mindset. Create value in small, iterative steps allowing for early and frequent feedback on each piece of work, which helps eliminate waste and build better products faster. Be data-driven, evidence-based and use that data to decide what to do more of and what to do next. A Product Culture. Form long-lasting, durable, product teams that reflect the company’s focus, vision, and purpose. Have a top-down vision that influences the teams’ roadmaps and day-to-day work. Prioritize diligently. Build and support only so many products and services, and do them well. A Customer-Centric Mindset. Include the big picture, product vision and an appreciation for WHY it matters to users before doing anything. Don’t guess what customers want, be customer-driven and empirical about it. A Culture of Learning. Team members share knowledge, make learning a priority, and invest in communities that grow people and skills that benefit the company. All failures are opportunities to learn something. A Culture of Experimentation. A Design Thinking mindset is utilized from idea formation through delivery. Instead of requirements, think hypotheses. What’s the smallest thing we can do to learn something? A Culture of Continuous Improvement. Teams are empowered to change and improve their own process. Self-reflection, transparency, courage, and respect lead to sustainable value delivery and better results. A Culture of Psychological Safety. People will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with any ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. This breeds greater innovation, inclusive collaboration and a greater flow of ideas that can impact our products, people, and company. These seven mindsets and cultures are the most important things a company and its employees should embody in order to be agile. The agile mindset is the combination of all these concepts and they represent the key tenets of the new ways of working. https://medium.com/practical-agilist/what-is-the-agile-mindset-3c320fc955d7 How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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Jun 2, 2023 • 9min

Top 3 Things That Keep People Motivated

Top 3 Things That Keep People Motivated 1. Autonomy The first motivational driver is autonomy. Autonomy refers to how much people feel in control of their own life and able to make their own choices. In the context of work, autonomy means people feel they have a say in what they work on and how they work on it. They don’t feel micromanaged; they feel empowered by their managers to pursue objectives and deadlines on their terms. Creating a sense of autonomy in an individual or on a team can come in many forms. It could be by mutually assigning objectives and establishing deadlines. It could also be giving people more freedom over where they work, or incorporating the team or individuals in decision making more often. 2. Competence The second motivational driver is competence. Competence refers to our desires to seek control but also to experience mastery. Competence speaks to our natural human desire to be learners, to be growing and feeling like we’re making progress. It could be progress in our career, progress towards a set of objectives or working for a team or a company that is making progress. Anything that helps individuals feel they are moving toward mastery leverages competence as a motivation. Creating a sense of competence in an individual or on a team might actually be more about what you don’t do. Much of the job of a team leader is providing feedback or constructive criticism. But constructive or negative criticism has been found in numerous studies to decrease a person’s feeling of competence, and thus reduce motivation. 3. Relatedness The third and final motivational driver is relatedness. Relatedness refers to our will to connect with others, interact and care for other people. In terms of research, we’ve only just begun to grasp just how important relatedness to others truly is. But we know that humans are much more motivated to take actions when they’re seen as pro-social — that is, when they’re seen as being able to help other people. Creating a sense of relatedness in an individual or on a team means making sure people build connections to each other. But it also means making sure people know the significance of what they’re being asked to do and how it relates to the whole team and the team’s and organization’s larger objectives. Even better, you might frame the team’s work in a way that makes it quite clear exactly who is helped by the organization’s, the team’s and even the individual’s actions. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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4 snips
Jun 1, 2023 • 5min

3 Tips To Better Understanding Roles, Responsibilities, & Accountabilities

3 Tips To Better Understanding Roles, Responsibilities, & Accountabilities Agile teams are rarely so simple as to have solely a Scrum Master, a Product Owner and a number of Developers. There may be others around the team supporting them in some way, or the team itself may simply be made up differently to this. There’s nothing wrong with this necessarily; but things can get complicated quite quickly, and keeping track of who does what, and who is talking to who, can be tricky. Here are three tips... How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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May 31, 2023 • 5min

How to Increase Stakeholder and Team Member Engagement Right from the Start - Mike Cohn

How to Increase Stakeholder and Team Member Engagement Right from the Start - Mike Cohn Do you struggle to engage the right people in product development? You are not alone.Development team members sometimes view their jobs as things to be endured. They want to get through the 8-hour day, go home, and then do the things that really give them purpose.Customers sometimes really want the end-result product but hate the process of getting there. “Can’t I just wave a magic wand and get what I want?” they wonder.Increasing engagement in both team members and stakeholders leads to better products. Achieving that level of engagement can be hard, though.One of the ways I get people excited about a project from the start is to involve everyone in story-writing workshops.That means I want the programmers, testers, designers, analysts, DBAs, tech writers, and so on to participate. The Scrum Master, product owner, and key stakeholders should be there as well.I don’t advise holding a story-writing workshop every sprint. Instead, I recommend doing one every three months or so. Each story-writing workshop should be focused on a strategic objective or two that is larger than a sprint.Sure, the product owner and team can adjust this plan from iteration to iteration. But if a team doesn’t have a larger goal in mind, their work is often sub-optimized as they go from this iteration’s crisis to the next iteration’s crisis.You may think it will be wasteful to include development team members in these quarterly story-writing workshops.I don’t.I consider it an investment. Sure, team members get less done on the day of the workshop. But that pays back quickly because:  Team members know more about the work they’ll do. Questions always arise when team members begin work on a product backlog item. But, if team members were present when user stories were written, they’ll have more context and fewer questions. Encouraging participation when defining a set of features leads to greater engagement when building those features. Conducting approximately quarterly story-writing workshop with team and stakeholder participation sets a project on the path to succeed with agile, How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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May 30, 2023 • 9min

Sprint Goal - Is It Worth It?

What do we know about Sprint Goals? The 2020 Scrum Guide clearly states that a team commits to a Sprint Goal rather than how many User Stories the team can complete. Having a Sprint Goal is a great idea, but I often see it misfiring. The latest Scrum Guide focuses more on Sprint and Product goals, which is good. However, setting goals will only help us if we change our thinking from output to outcome. If we set goals based on delivering features, we risk still ending up in a feature factory When setting goals, we should have a customer-centric perspective. We need to think as if we are in their shoes. Businesses are often tempted to give IT solutions rather than explain their problems. To tell what functionality or features they need. Speaking in a metaphor, the business is unwilling to let us walk in their shoes.
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May 29, 2023 • 8min

A Tribute For Memorial Day

Join V. Lee Henson as we learn more about the history of Memorial Day and celebrate this special US based holiday tradition. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠
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May 26, 2023 • 8min

Georgia State University Hails First Class of Inmate Graduates

Georgia State University Hails First Class of Inmate Graduates In caps, gowns, and perhaps even ‘blues,’ 9 inmates at Walker State Prison in Georgia are set to receive their associates degrees for 60 credit hours of coursework done while incarcerated. 3 are graduating with highest honors (3.9 – 4.0 GPA) while the other 6 are gradutaing with high honors (3.7 – 3.89). Organized by Geogria State University as part of their Prison Education Project, the courses included a variety of subjects such as environmental science, English, philosophy and ethics, and geology. The GSUPEP program began in 2016 and offers college courses at Walker State Prison and Phillips State in Buford and is currently offering enrichment courses at the federal U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta. By 2025, GSU would like to offer the PEP associates degree in five other Georgia penitentiaries. “Not only have these students demonstrated that they are critical thinkers by completing a degree, but they’ve also shown tremendous character to seek education and follow it through to the end,” said President Blake. “The degree they rightfully earned can never be taken away.” 50 other students are already in the pipeline, something which Patrick Rodriguez, director of the PEP says will reduce the chances they will end up incarcerated again. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/⁠

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