Agile and Project Management - DrunkenPM Radio

Johanna Rothman is a force of nature. Every year, in addition to her work teaching, coaching, blogging, and speaking, she writes a book. Well, most years. This year there is a pandemic. Johanna has written five! I think if you are lucky, you can find people in your industry that you look up to, people who inspire you to dig in a little harder and rise. If you are really lucky, you get to meet these people and know them a little. And if you are really, really, really lucky, they are super fun to interview. This podcast includes a wide range of topics, including Johanna's new books, staying productive and inspired, leading and empowering people, how being distributed has changed under Covid-19, not losing your *** during the pandemic, and what it might mean for the working world if decide we don't actually need all those office buildings anymore. The books are here:
 Modern Management Series
Modern Management Made Easy Bundle (all 3 books):  https://bit.ly/3obOFNL You can also buy them individually Practical Ways to Manage Yourself: https://leanpub.com/manageyourself Practical Ways to Lead & Serve (Manage) Others: https://leanpub.com/manageothers Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization: https://leanpub.com/manageorg The other two books are: Write a Conference Proposal The Conference Wants and Accepts: https://leanpub.com/conferenceproposal Advise, Influence and Service Clients for Mutual Profit: https://leanpub.com/successfulconsulting And I've been given some homework: Johanna's Lifecycle Series https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/project-management/2020/10/what-lifecycle-or-agile-approach-fits-your-context-part-1-serial-lifecycles/ If you'd like to get in touch with Johanna:
Web: jrothman.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/johannarothman

When organizations begin adopting Agile, there are a number of business areas outside the teams that also have to change in order to create systems that can support this new way of working. Navigating this is always challenging, but it becomes even tougher when you need to have traditional (waterfall) and Agile work happening concurrently. This episode of the podcast features Ross Beurmann who is back to help explain how business planning can support both traditional and Agile time horizons. This episode also features an update on the conversation Ross, his son Tom and I had recently about the work Tom is doing to create social and legal change in his local government. If you haven’t had a chance to listen, you can check it out here. (https://bit.ly/2Fk6wAs) To visit Tom’s Facebook site: https://bit.ly/30R9SCo To Contact Ross • Web: www.leadingagile.com/guides/ross-beurmann/ • LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/rossbeurmannzcea/ • Email: Ross.Beurmann@leadingagile.com

Q: How do I get a job as a Project Manager, Product Owner, or ScrumMaster if I have no experience? This is a question I get asked almost weekly. People are looking for their first gig or trying to figure out what to say in an interview, or just convince themselves they are qualified to do the job. One of the biggest elements of getting your first gig is understanding how the work you have done can be reframed or reevaluated to demonstrate to yourself and others that you actually do have the experience. This episode of the podcast is an interview with Merchi Reyes. Merchi is outgoing and engaging and he comes from a background that, at first glance, may seem like it has nothing to do with leading teams and project work. And yet, as you’ll hear in the interview, his experience hurling gum into the crowds at Lollapalooza, spinning records as a DJay in Las Vegas, and leading crews who would clean up fallen trees after massive storms, all helped him get a job as a ScrumMaster and Product Owner. Merchi is a fascinating, engaging guy. I hope you are as inspired but this interview as I am. Contacting Merchi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merchicedek-reyes/

In Scrum, everyone is supposed to have one job. You get to be a ScrumMaster, a Product Owner, or a Development Team member. Each team member of the Scrum Team is supposed to be able to totally focus on the role they play. However, in many organizations, they ask people to play more than one role. You might be SM/PO, SM/Dev, or PO/Dev, or in my case (once upon a time), SM/Project Mgr/BA, and since we had no PO, I got to try and be that too… AND IT SUCKED LIKE A FLEET OF VACUUMS! In every class I teach, there are people who are faced with the daily challenge of playing multiple roles, and more recently I have had a number of students are tasked with being ScrumMaster AND Product Owner at the same time for one team working on one product. I have very strong feelings about this, and realizing that my responses to this situation are maybe not so flexible and not practical for everyone, I reached out on the Agile Uprising Discord channel if there were people who had succeeded in being SM and PO at the same time, AND if they would be willing to join me for a podcast and share some of their experiences around making the SM/PO gig work. This episode of the podcast features Andrew Leff, Chris Murman, and Mike Caddell. Over the course of the interview, we discuss the reasons why trying to be SM and PO at the same time is not advised, ways they found to survive it, and it some cases, actually make it work well. JobHackers: During the podcast Chris shared a link to https://www.thejobhackers.org which is a great place to go if you are looking to get started with getting experience as a ScrumMaster. Agile Uprising: Agile Uprising Discord - https://discord.com/invite/fC96BhD (This is the best way to reach Andrew, Chris and Mike) Agile Uprising Web: http://www.agileuprising.com/ Contact Info: Andrew Leff LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleff/ Chris Murman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismurman/ Mike Caddell LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikecaddell/

Being a Product Owner is not easy. You are responsible for the success of the product. You have to create enough work to keep up to 9 people busy, stay 2-3 Sprints ahead of them and at the same time, stay completely in sync with the business and constantly be learning more about the customer. It’s a lot. But what happens when you are the PO, and your Manager is spending most of their day acting as BA/PO on your project? Who gets to make decisions? Who do people come to with questions? Who walks the plank if the product tanks? (Trick question - YOU!) The role of ScrumMaster is just as tough - especially when you work at a startup and the Owner/Founder/KINGOFALLIDEAS keeps coming to you demanding you add new work in the current Sprint and seems frustrated by the fact that your team did not deliver on their forecast in the last Sprint. Whenever you push back on the additional work, you are reminded that part of Agile is being able to adapt. Note: If your manager/boss/owner spends a lot of their time “helping you”, then you are the target audience for this podcast Dhaval Panchal from Evolve Agility joins Dave this week to discuss how to cope with the above situations and begin managing up so that you and your team can start delivering on your commitments. Links from the Podcast: EvolveAgility: https://www.evolveagility.com Agile Will Fail video podcast: https://www.evolveagility.com/agile-within-waterfall-episode-1/ Systems Thinking for Transformative Change: https://www.evolveagility.com/systems-thinking-for-transformative-change-webinar/ Contacting Dhaval LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhavalpanchal/ Email: dhaval.panchal@evolveagility.com TWitter: https://twitter.com/dhavalpanchal

What do you do when they start asking for cost per point? This issue often arrives wrapped in requests that are pure in their intent and seem to be reasonable requests from the business… How much are we spending each month and how many points are we delivering for that spend? or Since we are now estimating work in User Story Points, we need to be able to determine how much to charge for the work that clients are asking for. So how much does a point cost us? or We need to evaluate the change requests so we can decide which ones to move forward with and which ones to reject. We’re estimating them in User Story Points, which gives us a relative idea of risk, complexity, and effort, but not cost. We need to be able to translate points to dollars so we can understand if the value we’d receive from the change is worth the cost. I had a student recently who was qetting requests like this from the business, so I asked Agile Coach Troy Lightfoot to join me for a podcast where we could unpack the issues that often come with the cost per point question, the pros and cons of tracking it, and some things to take into account when you formulate your response to the request. Links from the Podcast Probabilistic Forecasting Podcast interview with Troy Lightfoot https://drunkenpm.blogspot.com/2019/05/probabilistic-forecasting-with-troy.html Story Points Revisited (from Ron Jeffries Blog) https://ronjeffries.com/articles/019-01ff/story-points/Index.html Contacting Troy Agile Uprising: http://www.agileuprising.com/board-of-directors/ Agile Uprising Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Je8H5C

“What advice do you have on structuring sprint planning meetings in an agency setting with different product owners and project teams (when each PM is 'competing' for the same development resources)?" That is the question I got during the Q&A portion of a webinar I did recently for The Bureau of Digital. This is a scenario where you have an agency model approach to the work, so people are spread across multiple projects with different team configurations all running at the same time. Except they are trying to do Scrum, and, in this particular case, there is no real clarity on project priority, which makes it pretty tough to figure out who gets first dibs when it comes to allocation of human knowledge workers. I did my best to respond to the question during the webinar, but I wanted to get some advice from an expert with deeper agency experience. So, I reached out to Meghan McInerny. Before stepping into her current role as Director of Strategic Experience Design at Best Buy, Meghan spent 13 years at Clockwork Interactive, the last 7 years of which she served as COO. She is also the co-author of Interactive Project Management: Pixels, People, and Process. In this episode of the podcast, we talk through the issues, risks, and opportunities that come with a “Hunger Games” approach to Sprint Planning and offer some advice on how to cope with and/or resolve the problem defined in the question above. We also talk about her current role at Best Buy and why that is such a fascinating problem space to be working in right now. Side Note: The webinar I did for the Bureau of Digital focused on the new version of my Sprint Capacity Calculator and how to get the most out of Sprint Planning. These webinars are normally available in a recorded format only to members of the Bureau, but they are very kind and have made this one public in case you’d like to check it out after listening to the podcast. Contacting Meghan Web: http://www.meghanmcinerny.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanmcinerny/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/irishgirl Links Meghan’s Book - Interactive Project Management: Pixels, People, and Process (Voices That Matter) https://amzn.to/3hyPRGA The Bureau of Digital: https://bureauofdigital.com Better Sprint Planning Webinar: https://youtu.be/Wlz5gSfqw74

Practicing Agile at Home with Yvonne Marcus Yvonne Marcus is on a mission to create positive home management solutions for every family and she’s using Agile to do it. In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, Yvonne and I discuss how and why she began an Agile transformation at home, how it has impacted life for her and her family, and how you can get started bringing Agile practices into your home and personal life. If you’d like to learn more about Yvonne and how she helps others make the switch to Agile, you can check out her podcast. She also offers a free email course you can use to get started. You can access that via her website below. Contacting Yvonne Web: http://YvonneMarcus.com Podcast: http://www.yvonnemarcus.com/podcast-2/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/agileyvonne

In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, you’ll hear the story of how a father helped his son use outcome-based planning to define his personal response to what happened to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter events that followed. Ross Beurmann is a seasoned Agile coach (and a co-worker of mine). His son Tom just graduated from high school. When Tom learned about what happened to George Floyd, he felt a need to respond. Attending a local march was definitely an option, but Ross brought some of his coaching experience to bear in the conversation. By working together to define the results his son was looking for and exploring ways to achieve that outcome, Ross and Tom were able to define a plan of action that has impacted local officials, law enforcement, and increased local interest and awareness. This set the stage for Tom to move forward with his efforts to establish lasting local change that will have a positive impact now and into the future. This story is a little unusual for the podcast, but it provides an impressive example of how what we do at work can be applied at home and to help our friends and our families have a positive impact on the world around them. To visit Tom’s Facebook site: https://m.facebook.com/groups/689168331904305/?ref=group_browse To Contact Ross • Web: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/ross-beurmann/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossbeurmannzcea/ • Email: Ross.Beurmann@leadingagile.com

Since the Covid-19 Quarantining began, we’ve all had to adjust to our work-life taking place 100% online. Whether you are working in a traditional environment or in Agile, this change has impacted your teams’ ability to engage, learn, and collaborate online. In this episode of the podcast, I am joined by Braden Cundiff who works in the International Division of McGraw-Hill Education serving in a Product Ownership role for international education products. Braden’s work involves creating tools and products that are used in collaborative, educational environments all across the globe. He also has a background that includes teaching, agile coaching, and transformation. This allows him to offer a unique perspective on how to create an effective online environment for your teams. At the start of the interview, Braden and I also discuss his role as a Product Owner and he offers his take on the one question that comes up in every single Product Owner class I teach … “How do I get better at saying ’No’?” Contacting Braden LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braden-cundiff-52479121/ Email: bracundi@gmail.com