Agile and Project Management - DrunkenPM Radio

TLDR Regardless of whether you are a traditional PM or you are working in Agile, topics like emotional intelligence, creating safety and self-care are part of the current conversation about how we approach our work. This podcast presents another side of that discussion and focuses on how different experiences and events result in trauma that can leave lasting scars that we carry with us as we interact with others. Becoming more aware of different types of trauma, how it shows up in you as well as others, will help you become a more valuable and effective leader for your teams and organizations. In this episode of the Reluctant Agilist, Brandon Brown is back to talk about trauma. Trauma takes many forms and it is something that all of us deal with, but we may not think about how it pertains to our day to day work. As we move through life, each of us experiences different things that have a lasting impact. Sometimes, these things are very obvious, sometimes they are more subtle, and sometimes we don’t realize how deeply they’ve impacted us until much later. As an example, if you’ve ever worked in an organization where you felt that your contribution was not valued or your ideas were not heard, the impact of this may stick with you long after the conditions are no longer in play. You may find, even years later, that you are still reacting to the unfortunate previous situation. Recognizing the trauma you’ve experienced in the past and finding ways to work through it will help you show up in a more open and present state for your co-workers and your team. And recognizing that others have had different, but equally significant experiences can help us offer more empathy to the people we are interacting with. If you'd like to reach out to Brandon with follow up questions, here is how you can reach him: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/brbphilly/
 Twitter: twitter.com/b_pbs
 AboutMe: about.me/brandonrbrown

It’s the start of a brand new year! And one of the best things you can do for yourself and your career is to start volunteering for a professional organization. By offering a little of your time, you can find a path into a community of passionate PMs and Agilists who can provide support, coaching and mentoring to you as you progress in your career. In this episode of the podcast Agile Coach, Reese Schmit shares her story of how she got involved in helping out with Burning Flipside (an Austin, TX-based Burning Man event), how that led her to start volunteering for local Agile and User Groups and how that led her to become part of the team of folks who plan and run the Scrum Gathering. In the interview, Reese shares her experience of volunteering and how that work has not only helped her create valuable experiences for others but has also helped her develop a wide network of seasoned professionals in the Agile space and all the benefits that can provide. I have talked about this in previous podcasts but volunteering is one of the best investments you can make in your career. It is about giving back to your professional community, but it is also about finding the group of people who might be able to help you land your next gig. So why not start off 2020 by reaching out to a local group, PMI, the Scrum Alliance or the Agile Alliance and find a way to invest in yourself by giving back to the community. Here are some links to help you get started: Volunteering for PMI https://www.pmi.org/membership/volunteer/opportunities Volunteering for the Scrum Alliance https://www.scrumalliance.org/get-involved Volunteering for the Agile Alliance https://www.agilealliance.org/the-alliance/volunteer-signup/ Meetup.com is a great place to start searching for local professional groups who could probably use your help. https://www.meetup.com Contacting Reese LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reeseschmit/ Email: reeseschmit@gmail.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/reesendesist

It has been 10 years since Jesse Fewell and I became Certified Scrum Trainers. We both came to it from backgrounds deeply rooted in traditional project management. We were both PMPs, which was something like a scarlet letter in the Agile community. Ten years… things have changed. In this episode of The Reluctant Agilist, Jesse Fewell and I close out 2019 with a retrospective of sorts, looking back at how things have evolved from a time where Agile and traditional project management were considered to be opposite approaches, to a place where practitioners are starting to understand how to use both for the benefit of our customers and clients. Jesse and I also look forward and share our opinions on where things are headed and what traditional and/or agile project managers need to focus on in order to stay relevant in the job market over the coming years. Happy New Year! And thank you for listening! Contacting Jesse Fewell Web: http://jessefewell.com/ 
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jessefewell
 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jessefewell/ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/jessefewell

When I am teaching CSM and CSPO classes I frequently get questions from students who have trouble understanding how work flows from the release level down through product backlog items like User Stories on down to the task level. I do cover this in class but for some, it is not so easy to see. 
In hopes of resolving this, I asked Judy Neher, a fellow Certified Scrum Trainer, to help me work through a metaphor that I hope will provide clarity on how we take work from Releases to User Stories to Tasks, how they tie back to strategy and vision and how Epics and Themes fit in as well.   If you'd like to reach out to Judy with follow up questions, here is her contact info: Judy Neher
 - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judy-neher-22ab614/
 - - Twitter: https://twitter.com/judyneher

This episode features a student question and a special appearance by Adam Weisbart. I recently had a student in class who was struggling to get her team to participate during retrospectives. This is a fairly common problem for teams that are either trying to get the hang of how to run a retro, or teams that may have stuck with a particular tactic for so long that it has stopped working. I invited Adam Weisbart to join me for the podcast. If Adam's name sounds familiar, it may be because you've taken a class from him, seen him speak at a conference, watched the video "Shit Bad Scrum Masters Say," or because you've used his Agile Adlibs or his retrospective facilitation kit, Recess. (We'll be spending time on those last two during the interview.) If you've got teams that aren't fully engaging during your Retrospectives, you are not alone. This podcast has some ideas that should help you get that turned around. Links from the podcast Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen https://amzn.to/2DYTBzq Retrospective Facilitator Gathering https://www.retrospectivefacilitatorgathering.org/ Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say https://youtu.be/GGbsgs611MM Download a free copy of Agile Adlibs http://downloadretro.com/drunkenpm Recess https://recesskit.com/ Contacting Adam Weisbart Web https://weisbart.com/

Jessie Shternshus founded The Improv Effect (https://improveffect.com) to help businesses reach their full potential by means of interpersonal-communication skills training. Her work includes leveraging tools and practices from improv to help individuals and organizations improve the way they interact and problem solve. Jessie is also the author of the book CTRLShift: 50 Games For 50 ****ing Days Like Today. (amzn.to/2Qy0eAi) In this interview, Jessie and I discuss ways in which improv practices can be used to improve your listening skills, develop your ability to read the room, and find more effective ways to respond. Personal Note: Jessie is brilliant, kind, and extremely patient. During the latter half of the conversation, I asked Jessie about one of the ways I often try to emphasize certain points in class or when I am presenting. In a supportive, kind, and patient way, she helped me see how that "habit" can impact the folks I am working with. I got completely schooled and I am grateful to her for the lesson. For more information on Jessie, her upcoming classes and speaking engagements: Web: https://improveffect.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessie-shternshus-04765a11/ Email: jessie@improveffect.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/theimproveffect

This episode of the Reluctant Agilist features an interview with Melissa Watts. Melissa works for Major League Baseball as a Technical Project Manager and acts in the capacity of ScrumMaster for a Scrum Team. During the interview, Melissa shares some of the experiences she has had working as a ScrumMaster over the last two years. In this conversation, we explore things like how hard it can be to move from being a member of the Dev Team to being a ScrumMaster in addition to how to run experiments and find different ways to get the members of your Scrum Team to gel and reach that high-performing state we are all aiming towards. Melissa and her team work in a very complex environment on a product that has to perform on a wide range of platforms and is not allowed to have any downtime. They are also faced with the added challenge of dealing with legacy systems and a significant amount of technical debt. If you are working as a ScrumMaster or curious about what the job is like, this podcast offers real-life stories and examples of the day-to-day challenges of the job, how to work through them, and how to pick yourself up and put yourself back together at the end of one of the bad days. If you'd like to contact Melissa with follow up questions: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/melissa-w-a9a9518

"The state of our attention determines the state of our life" ~ Chris Bailey This summer at Agile 2019, author Chris Bailey kicked off the conference with his keynote session “How to Manage Your Attention In a World of Distraction.” Chris has invested years of his life exploring productivity, distraction, and how to find the best possible use of the one thing no one has enough of—time. Chris shares his experiments and their results on his website http://ALifeOfProductivity.com and in his first book The Productivity Project, which recounts his first year of testing productivity hacks. His new book Hyperfocus explores understanding and managing our attentional space so we can be truly present and engaged (or hyperfocused) in work, as well as how “scatter focus” can enable us to be more creative and connect different ideas. In this interview, Chris and I talk about his productivity experiments, what worked and what didn’t, and the critical role meditation plays in becoming more focused and engaged in the most important work. Links: Agile 2019 Keynote https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/videos/how-to-manage-your-attention-in-a-world-of-distraction/ Chris’s website: https://alifeofproductivity.com/ Chris’s Books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Bailey/e/B015WTNT3S?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1571710982&sr=8-1 Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chris_bailey

In August of 2019, The Project Management Institute announced that it had acquired Disciplined Agile. According to Mark Lines, who together with Scott Ambler created Disciplined Agile, " The Disciplined Agile approach recognizes that every organization is different, and within each organization, there are different ways of working. The Disciplined Agile approach meets you where you are and allows you to tailor solutions for the way that you and your organization need to work.” The acquisition of DA is part of the PMI's continued effort to bring valuable tools and methods to the hands of people whose work involves management, enablement, support and delivery of projects and products.  In this episode of the podcast, Scott Ambler who co-created Disciplined Agile together with Mark Lines, shares his thoughts on what this change means for those who practice a Disciplined Agile approach, those who follow a more traditional approach and why the PMI and DA have so much to offer each other.  2019 PMI Global Congress Mark Lines will be presenting at PMI Global Congress on Sunday, October 6 at 10:05 AM. For more info: https://sched.co/VH9T Contacting Scott Blog: https://www.projectmanagement.com/blogs/578692/Disciplined-Agile Disciplined Agile site: http://disciplinedagiledelivery.com ProjectManagement.com: https://www.projectmanagement.com/profile/ScottAmbler/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottwambler

For a long time now I have held strongly to the opinion that there is no such thing as an Agile Project Manager. There are Project Managers and there are ScrumMasters but the value systems they serve are different and at odds. I am comfortable playing either role, but I cannot do them both at once. (That is based on personal experience as well as observation.) When I saw that the PMI NY Chapter was going to have someone give a talk on Agile Project Management, I was skeptical, but I thought it would be worth checking out. Unfortunately, the event was sold out before I could get a ticket. Obviously this is an important topic to the community. Fortunately for me, Mike Anderson was willing to have a conversation with me about his presentation. That conversation had a huge impact on me and completely changed the way I felt about the topic of Agile Project Manager. Thanks to Mike, that opinion I mentioned above … not held so strongly anymore. In this interview, Mike Anderson makes a logical, thoughtful case for what an Agile Project Manager is, why we need this role on our teams, and what stage of Agile Transformation you need to reach before you give this role a try. And this is not just theory—Mike is heading up the Agile Transformation effort at a company where they have successfully made the switch from Scrum Master to Agile Project Manager. During the podcast Mike and I refer to the slide deck from his presentation at PMI NYC. You can find it here: https://www.slideshare.net/secret/JN1P00L1i9iwfE This could be the next step in the evolution of Project Management. Contacting Mike Anderson If you'd like to reach out to Mike with follow up questions, you can reach him via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-anderson-03b62210/