Agile Mentors Podcast

John Miller joins Brian to talk about Agile in the classroom. Overview Agile classrooms help students develop skills that will serve them long after they've left the classroom. John Miller is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and the Chief Empowerment Officer for Agile Classrooms. Today on the show, John joins Brian to share how he started introducing the Agile framework to educators. He walks us through how Agile classrooms help students solve complex problems while developing decision-making skills. He'll share how converting to an Agile classroom creates deeper, more fulfilling student and teacher relationships and the steps teachers can take to make their classroom an Agile classroom. Listen now to discover: [01:27] - Brian introduces John Miller and explains how, as a CEC, he's reached the highest rung on the Scrum Alliance certification ladder. [03:33] - How John got started with bringing Agile to the classroom. [06:09] - The collaboration between John and the educators to achieve the goal of creating a self-managing classroom. [09:45] - John shares how he went from thinking he'd ruined one class's education to watching them become one of the best self-managing groups he's ever seen. [12:16] - How children's lack of preconceived notions about how things are supposed to work helps them create teams that work. [13:48] - How an Agile classroom empowers students of all levels and learning abilities. [14:36] - The five levels of choice in an Agile classroom. [15:44] - John shares the objective of Agile classrooms to help students solve complex problems by developing choice-making skills. [17:55] - Brian shares that "Scrum is a sports analogy." [19:33] - Dark Scrum vs. Bright Scrum. John shares the formula he created using Ron Jeffries' term Dark Scrum. [24:06] - Is Agile dead, or are people just doing it wrong? [25:13] - John shares the levels of classrooms where Agile works best. Plus, which one did he work with that made him more nervous than high-level CEOs? [27:12] - John explains how the different dynamics lead to different success outcomes for incorporating Scrum into the classroom. [28:42] - What size classrooms achieve the most benefits from working with Scrum? [29:44] - John shares the steps teachers can take to make their classroom an Agile classroom. [31:20] - How converting to an Agile classroom creates deeper, more fulfilling teacher-student relationships. [31:53] - How Agile in the classroom acts as a bridge to industry and a life skills primer. References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Mentors Community Scrum Alliance Agile Classrooms Dark Scrum Agile Manifesto McGregor's Theory Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we'd love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you'd like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Please share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode's presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. John Miller is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and the Chief Empowerment Officer for Agile Classrooms. Since 2012, John's mission through Agile Classrooms has been to help educators take a more innovative and creative approach to guiding faculty, managing their schools, and teaching students.

Roman Pichler joins Brian to talk about Product Roadmaps. Overview Product roadmaps help teams plan their everyday work and how their products will change over a year. But then, products evolve, and new data is collected and shared. Companies must then decide how to adapt and progress. So, how can we then create a product roadmap? Roman Pichler is an internationally renowned product management expert specializing in product strategy, leadership, and agility. Today on the show, Roman joins Brian to discuss how to create helpful product roadmaps that create value for the end users in a Scrum based context to move forward and simplify product management. Listen now to discover: [00:06] - Brian introduces Roman Pichler, one of his 'agile heroes. [00:35] - Brian shares about the book Strategise, 2nd Edition. [02:54] - Roman answers the question, "What is a Product Roadmap?" [03:58] - Roman explains if product roadmaps are helpful in an agile Scrum based context. [05:31] - Roman discusses using outcome-based goal-oriented roadmaps to determine a company's product value. [07:33] - Roman shares some examples of goals on a product roadmap. [08:12] - Why a goal-oriented based roadmap is all about outcomes. [09:35] - Brian shares insight into Roman's downloadable Go Product Roadmap. [10:07] - Roman shares how the latest version of the Scrum guide fits in with protocols, product goals, and outcome-based roadmaps. [11:54] - Why Roman adds time frame constraints into his product end goals. [14:41] - Roman shares the two things you need to succeed with collaborative product road mapping in an agile space. [16:40] - Roman explains how to incorporate time frame constraints into your roadmap. [19:40] - The difference between an internal and external product roadmap for public consumption. [21:11] - The importance of an impact analysis when determining whether to stick with a specific delivery date or fully meeting a goal. [25:00] - How to get precise estimates for your team. [26:15] - Roman shares his 'sweet spot' for making outcome-based investment decisions. [28:40] - Roman advises setting dates on (internal) roadmaps for contract-based environments. [29:06] - Roman shares Apple's trade-off decision when they launched the original iPhone in 2007. [31:40] - How to use goals to track the most valuable metrics. [34:41] - The importance of understanding the needs of the stakeholders. [35:19] - Roman shares the importance of balancing expectations with empathy for improved collaboration. [39:12] - Brian shares a funny story about the difference in polite communication between Americans and our friends on the other side of the pond. [40:46] - Roman shares why you shouldn't relinquish product road mapping in an agile space too soon. Listen next time when we'll be discussing… Agile and education with John Miller. References and resources mentioned in the show Roman Pichler Strategise Go Product Roadmap Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we'd love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you'd like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Please share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode's presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Roman Pilcher is a leading product management expert specializing in product strategy, leadership, and agility. He has advised product leaders and taught product managers and owners for over 15 years, pioneering agile product management practices. Roman shares his knowledge through his training courses, books, and podcast. You can find his popular Product Vision Board and Go Product Roadmap on his website.

Brian speaks with Stacey Ackerman about working with Marketing teams using Agile. While the majority of teams using Agile are based in software, one of the fastest growing areas for Scrum teams is in Marketing. There’s a natural fit as Marketers are used to using such practices as A/B testing and getting quick results that feed their next steps. As you can imagine, there are a unique set of challenges that a marketing team presents that other Scrum teams don’t necessarily have to deal with as well. In this episode, Stacey talks us through the process that marketing teams follow when attempting to apply agile principles to their work. Listen now to discover: - 2:28 - what’s different about the way marketing teams approach agile? - 8:51 - what is the Agile Marketing Navigator and how are teams using it? - 15:05 - Stacey goes over the different roles - 17:43 - what are the chief problems marketing teams deal with in adopting this? Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Product Roadmaps with Roman Pichler! References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Marketing Manifesto Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us as podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Stacey Ackerman is one of the few agile coaches and trainers that got her start in marketing. After graduating from journalism school, she worked as a content writer, strategist, director, and adjunct marketing professor. She became passionate about agile as a better way to work in 2012 when she experimented with it for an ad agency client. Since then she has been a scrum master, agile coach and has helped with numerous agile transformations with teams across the globe. Stacey speaks at several agile conferences, has more certs to her name than she can remember and loves to practice agile at home with her family. As a lifelong Minnesotan, she recently relocated to North Carolina where she’s busy learning how to cook grits and say “y’all."

Mike and Brian take audience questions in the “best of” from the Agile Mentors Community’s monthly coaching calls. Overview Twice a month, there is an open Q&A session we offer as part of the Agile Mentors Community where anyone from the community can join in and ask either Mike or Brian questions. These are open discussions and allow the users to ask their own questions that are unique to their situations. We call these “Coaching Calls” because they are there to help coach the members and help them overcome obstacles along the way.  Everyone who takes a class with Mountain Goat Software receives 12 months membership in the Agile Mentors Community and they are able to attend these calls and ask questions. Take a listen to some of the best questions we’ve received over the past few months to get an idea of what these sessions are all about. By the way, we are aware there are a few places where the audio is not perfect in this episode and apologize for the less-than-ideal audio in several places. This is because these answers come from live sessions and there were a few streaming hiccups while delivering them. Listen now to discover:  3:10 - Brian: How to conduct fun retrospectives when you aren’t allowed to use cloud-based tools? 7:40 - Mike: How much planning is needed to ensure we complete items in a Sprint? 11:50 - Brian: Do you change the story points on an item if it turns out to be bigger than you thought? 14:50 - Mike: Why use Fibonacci numbers to estimate? 18:05 - Brian: Should Product Owners attend a Daily Scrum? 20:25 - Mike: What’s the best practice for capturing Non-Functional Requirements? 23:00 - Brian: How do you get your first experience as a Scrum Master if you have none? 26:46 - Mike: Tips for starting out with a new team? Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Next week we will be taking a very short break of just one week. We are trying to practice a sustainable pace approach and are taking just one week off in order to do that. References and resources mentioned in the show Funretrospectives.com Agilementors.com Want to get involved?  This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.  Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one.  Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us as podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are:  Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.  Mike Cohn is co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, and founder of Mountain Goat Software. He’s a veteran of applying Scrum and agile principles and practices to help organizations build better products and ship them on time.

This week, Brian Milner is joined by Julie Chickering to talk about the wild world of Project Management. Overview Brian Milner and Julie Chickering discuss how the world of project management can blend successfully with an Agile approach. There seems to sometimes be an attitude that it’s an either/or decision with these two. In this podcast, we take a look at how to blend them, how project managers fit in, and how these two disciplines can coexist. Julie brings her experience to this discussion having come from the project management realm.  Listen now to discover: 3:42 - Brian asks Julie about the general distrust between these communities 6:15 - Julie shares that 50% of the PMP exam now is on Agile practices 8:38 - Julie brings up the dreaded status report - Green / Yellow / Red 12:10 - Julie brings up the politics of Green / Yellow / Red 15:10 - Julie talks about the cost of poor quality 16:26 - Are we in the Agile community making PMs feel wrong? 17:22 - Brian discusses Outcomes vs Output 26:10 - Brian asks about PMs who are in companies making transitions. What happens to the project managers? Listen next time when we’ll be discussing... Brian and Mike Cohn share some of the best questions from their live coaching calls on the Agile Mentors community. References and resources mentioned in the show Monty Python Project Management Institute The Cowman and the Farmer Should be Friends from Oklahoma! HBR article on Output vs Outcomes From Project Manager to Scrum Master - 3 Tips for Making the Transition Agile Project Management by Jim Highsmith The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility by Michele Sliger and Stacia Broderick PM Illustrated: A Visual Learner’s Guide to Project Management by Mike Griffiths - free on Kindle Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? It would be great if you left a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is a certified Scrum Trainer as well as a CST, PMP, PMI-ACP CSM, CSPO, and Path to CSP Educator. She believes that Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie loves to help people implement agile even when the environments are messy, people are complicated, and situations are challenging. She brings real-world experience working with people at all levels to adopt and roll out realistic Agile strategies organization-wide.

Lyssa Adkins joins Brian to talk about the wonderful world of Agile coaching. Overview When you think of the term “Agile Coach,” what comes to mind for you? This term has meant many different things over the years. Are we talking about a role or an approach? Lyssa Adkins, author of Coaching Agile Teams, joins Brian to dive into this topic. Lyssa has written and spoken about this topic for years and many would say she had a large hand in defining what we now call agile coaching. Listen now to discover:  02:05 - Brian shares a story about Lyssa from the Vienna Scrum Gathering conference 06:40 - Lyssa answers the question, “What is an Agile Coach?” 08:10 - Lyssa explains the unintended consequence of using the term “coach” in her book 12:02 - Lyssa talks about the “X-Wing Diagram” and the 5 coaching stances 18:50 - Lyssa talks about not colluding when someone in power pushes something you disagree with 27:04 Lyssa talks about coaching in a remote world Listen next time when we’ll be discussing…  Project Management with Julie Chickering. References and resources mentioned in the show Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins Agile Coach Competency Framework Developing Great Agile Coaches whitepaper describing 5 coaching stances What is an Agile Coach? talk with Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ●      Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ●      Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.  Lyssa Adkins has been one of the foundational voices in the Agile community for years now. Her book Coaching Agile Teams has been a best seller for over 12 years now. She released an audio version of this classic book on its 10th anniversary. In 2010, Lyssa co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute which has developed over 10,000 people in the knowledge, skills, and being-ness needed to yield genuinely competent agile coaching. She is a member of the ICAgile working committee and has served as a reviewer for the Scrum Alliance’s Certified Enterprise Coach certification program. Lyssa is also dedicated to amplifying women’s voices and is a founder of TENWOMENSTRONG #WomenInAgile programs.   Show edited by Rhett Gill.

David Hawks joins Brian to discuss the process of an organization becoming Agile. Overview When you read through the Scrum Guide, the picture it paints is of the desired end result - what the team/organization should look like when finished. There’s surprising little said though about how you get from where you are to where you want to eventually be. Enter the topic of Agile Transformations. There is a journey that organizations undertake when they decide to adopt Agile and like any journey, it’s always helpful to have a guide to help you get there who has been through it before. David Hawks joins Brian to share his experience in helping countless organizations make this journey to become Agile. Listen now to discover:  03:10 Brian asks David what the biggest hurdle is that organizations have when adopting Agile? 05:24 David explains that multiple levels the organization needs to focus on in the process 11:00 David talks about “Implementing Practices over Outcomes” 16:30 Brian asks what individuals who aren’t leaders can do to help? 20:20 Brian asks David to explain how his Path to Agility helps address these issues? 29:35 Brian talks about the Spotify Engineering Culture videos example Listen next time when we’ll be discussing…  Agile Coaching with Lyssa Adkins! References and resources mentioned in the show Path To Agility & Agile Velocity SAFe and LeSS Yellowstone spinoff 1883 Oregon Trail Spotify Engineering Culture Video 1 and Video 2 Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ●      Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ●      Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.  David Hawks is the CEO of both Agile Velocity and Path to Agility. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer as well as a Certified Enterprise Coach with the Scrum Alliance - their top two certifications. He received his Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems degree from the University of Texas at Austin. His love for his beloved Longhorns from UT is only eclipsed by his love (and expertise) in tailgating prior to their home games!   Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Mitch Lacey joins Brian to talk about building quality into our work. Overview The Scrum Guide says the developers own quality and that it is both a right and responsibility of the team. What does that look like though? What do we mean when we say quality? How do teams practically go about building quality or is it just “baked in?” Join Brian and Mitch Lacey as they discuss this all important secret ingredient to the Scrum framework and hear why it’s so vital to a team’s success.   Listen now to discover:  2:25 Mitch explains what we mean by quality 6:48 Brian asks Mitch how to tell when you are “gold plating” things? 12:30 Brian asks about the developer who thinks the code needs to be perfect before they release 16:55 Brian talks about the last stage of the creative process is releasing 21:25 Mitch relates self-accountability to a recent Soccer(Football) match 22:34 Brian and Mitch discuss the infamous “Squirrel Burger” story Listen next time when we’ll be discussing…  David Hawks joins us as we discuss transformations. References and resources mentioned in the show Test Driven Development “Squirrel Burger” story Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ●      Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ●      Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.  Mitch Lacey is an agile practitioner and trainer. Mitch has been managing projects for over fifteen years & is credited with many plan-driven & agile projects. He is the author of “The Scrum Field Guide,” a book targeting teams adopting agile and Scrum practices. He has published many papers, including “Adventures in Promiscuous Pairing,” “Transitioning to Agile: Key Lessons Learned in the Field,” “The Impacts of Poor Estimating -& How to Fix It,” plus a variety of papers for Microsoft and “Immersive Interviewing -Building Great Agile Software Teams.” Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Brian takes some of the most popular questions about Scrum from Quora.com and answers them. Overview If you are unfamiliar with it, Quora.com is a site people in the technology industry go to to ask and answer questions. For a change of pace, I decided to take a batch of the most popular questions from the site and provide my own answers to them. If you have questions you’d like to include in a similar episode in the future, make sure to email them to podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com.   Listen now to discover:  01:14 Brian explains the premise behind this episode’s topic 02:25 Question 1: Why do iterations in Agile start from Wednesday to Tuesday rather than Monday to Friday? 09:00 Question 2: Are Burndown charts even useful? 16:14 Question 3: Who decides sprint duration in a Scrum project? 18:50 Question 4: As a Scrummaster, how do you deal with people being late or refusing to come to Daily Scrums? 24.32 Question 5: Can a User Story be used for bugs? 26:54 Question 6: Can Agile work without a Scrummaster?   Listen next time when we’ll be discussing…  Join us next time where we will be discussing the topic of Quality with our guest Mitch Lacey.    References and resources mentioned in the show Send your questions for a future episode to podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com.   Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ●      Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ●      Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com   This episode’s presenter is: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.  Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Scott Dunn joins Brian to talk about what it means to be product-centric Overview Being product-centric has become a recent buzzword and objective for companies. But what does it mean? Is it the next stage of becoming agile? Or is it something that should drive an agile transformation in the first place? In this episode Scott and Brian discuss their definitions of what it means to be product-centric, and whether this is different to being customer-focused. They also look at the limitations that can stop teams from being more focused on the customer and long-term product value, such as being forced to fight those daily fires.  Listen now to discover:  00:23 - What does the term product-centric mean?  07:13 - Is there a difference between being product-centric and customer focused?  14:47 - Are nonprofits customer-focused entities? 22:02 - Does product-centric mean putting quality first?  28:23 - How does a disconnect between leadership and teams affect things?  Listen next time when we’ll be discussing…  Next time, I’ll be answering questions you’ve sent into the show as well as addressing other common agile questions.    References and resources mentioned in the show Impact Mapping and Story Mapping The Scrum Guide Kano Model for prioritization Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. ●      Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. ●      Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.  Scott Dunn is a Certified Enterprise Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer with more than 20 years of experience in management, project management (PMP), engagement management, and software development (MCSD). He is passionate about strengths-based teams and a solutions-based approach to people and organizational issues. Show edited by Rhett Gill.