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  • All Things Agile - Episode 011 - Ken Rubin Interview

    All Things Agile - Episode 011 - Ken Rubin Interview
    2015/01/10
    Please checkout out this exciting interview with author of Essential Scrum, Ken Rubin. Ken is a distinguished author, speaker, and Agile instructor. He has worked with many of the nation's top companies, and he joins us in this episode to tackle some of the tough questions facing teams as they adopt Agile. If you haven't already read Ken's great book, please pick up a copy of Essential Scrum on Amazon today!  You can also read Ken's blog and learn more about his services through his website innolution.com. I hope you enjoy this episode and please remember to subscribe in iTunes. Do you have a question that you would like answered in an upcoming podcast? Please send your question to: coach@agileinstructor.com. All Things Agile - Episode 011 - Ken Rubin Interview Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast – your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast in iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Ronnie: Hello everyone and welcome to All Things Agile. I’m very excited to announce that Ken Rubin is our guest today on the show. Ken is a noted author of Essential Scrum as well as being a public speaker and Agile instructor. Before we begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and we accept no legal liability. So let’s get started!  First off, Ken, thank you so much for joining us on this episode.  I am really glad to have you on this show. I’ve given the audience just a quick introduction, but can you please take a few minutes and explain a little bit more about yourself, both personally and professionally? We really want to get a chance to know you. Ken: Sure! So my background is software engineering. My degrees are all in computer science and I’ve had a typical path through most software companies. I’ve been a developer, project manager, VP of Engineering at a number of companies both large and small. I’ve done 10 startup companies in my career, and I’ve taken two of those public on the NASDAQ. I did my 2 year stint with IBM in the mid-1990s. I’ve helped companies and I worked with 130 people; we ran around North America building large distributed object systems and if anybody’s old enough to remember, I came out of the Small Talk world. Back in the late-1980s, I helped bring Small Talk out of the research labs at Xerox PARC, and I worked with a startup company that was a spin-off of Xerox PARC called Barclay System. We were the early market object technology folks.  So we brought Small Talk and object technology to the market. I’ve been doing Agile since the early-1990s. Scrum, formally, since 2000. In those days, I worked for a startup company in Colorado called Genomica. It was a 90 person engineering team, and they let the VP of engineering go. I ended up inheriting the engineering team which wasn’t functioning all that well and we transitioned everybody over to Scrum. And that ended up working out much better for us. And I’ve been using Scrum ever since, about 14 years. These days, I spend my time out either doing Scrum training classes and Kanban training classes or doing coaching. And, I hope that in our discussion today I can go over a number of examples that I had the benefit of seeing a lot of different companies and what’s working and what isn’t working. Ronnie: Thank you for the introduction Ken. I’m really looking forward to the insights you can provide us based on your considerable experience. The first question I’d liked to ask you, regarding your book Essential Scrum, is in regards to the dedication and introduction. It really got me thinking about the importance of relationships and software. I also started thinking about how relationships or soft-skills play into the success of Scrum. What is your insight or your advice on how relationships affect Agile teams? Ken: It’s a good question to start with. To me, the unit of capacity in Agile is the team. Even the Agile Manifesto calls that out – individuals and interactions over processes and tools. It really is about the team. So how they interact with each other, how they perform is of outmost importance. The relationships among the members of the teams is critical. If you’re going to have self-organizing teams, they have to have trust in one another. That’s one of the characteristics that, for me, distinguishes a group from a team. Group, simply being a bunch of people that I threw together with a common label. And honestly, the only thing they have in common are the T-shirts they printed out that have the name of the group on it. A team is a group that’s gone through the stages. Sort of the top most stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. And if you can make a real investment to turn a group into a team, first, they had to figure out these soft skills issues: how...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 010 - Resolving Team Conflict

    All Things Agile - Episode 010 - Resolving Team Conflict
    2014/11/25
    Welcome to another episode of All Things Agile. In this episode, we discuss the tough subject of team conflict. Whether your Agile or not, every organization is bound to encounter team conflict. We'll discuss how to resolve existing conflict as well as preventing it from even occurring. I am also very excited to announce that the next episode will feature an interview with notable Agile author, Ken Rubin.  Ken is the great mind behind Essential Scrum. I hope you enjoy this episode and make sure you subscribe to catch the upcoming interview using this link: iTunes. Reviews on iTunes are also always appreciated. Do you have a question that you would like answered in an upcoming podcast? Please send your question to: coach@agileinstructor.com. All Things Agile - Episode 010 - Resolving Team Conflict Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! Your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! First off, I want to get started by issuing an apology for the delay in getting a new episode out. The reason why is because I have an upcoming guest and unfortunately, we are not able to get the scheduling worked out in time for this episode. But, I am pleased to announce that Ken Ruben, author of Essential Scrum, will be the honored guest in our next episode. That said, I want to go ahead and issue another episode. I don’t want to keep you waiting too long – and with that, I hope you accept my apologies for the delay in getting this episode out to you. Now, before we begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts no legal liability. So the topic for today will be ‘Resolving Team Conflict’. Virtually any team you will be working on is going to have some degree of conflict. It’s just part of human nature. You can’t all agree 100% of the time, even though Agile encourages more of a democratic approach to what the team is working on and the approaches that they use, there’s bound to be some degree of conflict on any team that you work on. Now, before we dive into solutions to resolving team conflict, let’s first identify the different types of conflict. One type I think is just general healthy conflict and what really we’re referring to is debate. Using the word ‘conflict’ is probably inappropriate in this particular case. An example of debate, you may have people that share different ideas and solutions and what type of technologies should be used, or different coding practices, whatever. That’s fine. Having those healthy debates, discussing ideas, is actually a good thing. In this case, it allows you to have differing points of opinion which can be discussed, evaluated and reach an ultimate decision on. And that’s fine. That’s a healthy form of debate or conflict, if you will. And, if you have a little bit of that on your team, that’s fine and I wouldn’t worry about it. What we’re really going to be focusing on in this particular episode, is unhealthy debate. And I would describe unhealthy conflict or debate as a case where it’s really impacting the team. Where it’s creating what I like to call a toxic environment. You can definitely tell it when you’re part of a team that’s having this because it just brings everybody down. It brings the morale down, and it just feels like the team has been poisoned, if you will. And you’re going to see evidence of that not only in the morale, but the conversation, the level of communication and collaboration are going to go down. You are going to see people that are going to be engaging in using a lot of inappropriate language. You’re going to have a lot of people getting into some sort of personal battles with each other or one-upmanship, and it just really destroys the overall team morale and ultimately, the productivity. And you’ll actually begin to see this long-term in the metrics where you’ll start to see a team that was doing really well, and then they start to perhaps have their velocity dip down and more and more of their stories are being accepted late, etc. So that definitely has an impact. I would definitely classify unhealthy conflict as conflict which is really bringing down the team. It may be disrespectful, and it’s simply just not in the long-term viability of the team. So that’s kind of how I would probably classify the two main types of conflict that I see, either healthy, just discussion of topics and technologies versus some things more personal and toxic. And so we’re going to talk about the latter and how do you resolve it? Now, I have personally seen these cases come up numerous times in my career, and if you are particularly in a situation – your team or teams that you’re coaching ...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 009 - Scrum of Scrums

    All Things Agile - Episode 009 - Scrum of Scrums
    2014/10/18
    Welcome to another great episode of All Things Agile. This blog and podcast is dedicated not only to interviews with Agile leaders but also to actionable and practical advice. In this episode, we tackle Scrum of Scrums. Well cover what it is, mechanics, benefits, and things to watch out for. If you have multiple Agile teams, this is an episode you must checkout. As always, please take a moment to subscribe using this link: iTunes. Reviews on iTunes are also always appreciated. Do you have a question that you would like answered in an upcoming podcast, please send your question to: coach@agileinstructor.com. All Things Agile - Episode 009 - Scrum of Scrums Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! Your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Ronnie: Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast. Today’s topic will be: Scrum of Scrums. What are they and how do you implement them successfully? But before we begin – a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts no legal liability. So let’s get started. As part of the AgileInstructor.com blog and this podcast, All Things Agile, I like to alternate between interviews and informational content. I think it’s important to help listeners with direct, actionable advice based on hands-on experience. Interviews are great and I certainly look forward to conducting more interviews, including in the next episode – however, I definitely want to include direct content. Things that I’ve learned from my experience that I hope can help you. One of those topics that is often overlooked is Scrum of Scrums. Now, many people have heard of this, but are not really quite sure how to pull it off or perhaps they’re kind of winging it right now and perhaps haven’t seen what has worked at other organizations and are maybe looking for some additional advice. So I’d like to focus today on, again, Scrum of Scrums. So in this case, let’s start with ‘What is it?’ For those who haven’t heard that term – Scrum of Scrums – basically, when you have the individual Scrum teams, maybe in a smaller company or at a team that’s focused on a product –that team might work well and be able to take care of all the needs and that’s great. However, you may have cases when one team is just not enough to fulfill the needs of a product. Or perhaps there are multiple products being worked on and perhaps each team is working on one particular product or component, but those teams then have dependencies on each other. So just to recap: you may have cases where you have to have multiple teams working in order to get the job done on a particular product because there’s just so much work to do; or perhaps you still have multiple teams, not because multiple teams are required for a particular product or component, but just because maybe there is a dependency between the teams. You may have a product A and a product B, and you may have a case where the products are supposed to act like a suite. For example, a lot of Apple and Microsoft products are designed to work together with each other. And so, in that case, even though the teams may be working on separate products, they still may have dependencies on each other in which case there are pieces of the puzzle that still need to align with each other. With any of our project managers in the listening audience, they’ll immediately start to think ‘Well, you got to keep these teams in sync’ because if the teams are working on the same product or multiple products with dependencies, then there’s definitely the risk that the teams can end up stepping on each other. And, you run into other issues where you need to be able to release code at the same time together, right? Because if you have, say 3 teams working on the same product, that product is going to get released at one time or is going to get delivered to production. And you can’t have those teams so disconnected that they’re causing havoc for each other and making it difficult to release the product at one time. And then you also have quality concerns. You have multiple teams working on products together in parallel – there’s always a risk that one team can make a change for something and then inadvertently break another team and introduce unaccounted for defects. And naturally speaking, that’s not a good thing. So, how to overcome it? Well, there are many different practices and I’m not going to say there’s any particular right and wrong answer for this, but one of the more commonly applied principles, or practices I should say, is the Scrum of Scrums. So there’s a need for it when you have multiple teams and you have to keep them in sync, help them ensure they’re not stepping on ...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 008 - Nupura Kolwalkar Interview

    All Things Agile - Episode 008 - Nupura Kolwalkar Interview
    2014/09/28
    I am thrilled to bring you a true business leader to the show. This episode features an interview with HealthPort CTO, Nupura Kolwalkar. Learn how she championed the transition to Agile in her organization. We will discuss challenges, tips, and most importantly, results. I hope you are enjoying the great targeted content on this podcast. Please take a moment to subscribe in iTunes using this link: iTunes. Also, please send me your thoughts and questions using coach@agileinstructor.com. All Things Agile - Episode 008 - Nupura Kolwalkar Interview Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast - your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host – Ronnie Andrews Jr. Ronnie: Hello everyone and thank you for joining me for another exciting episode of All Things Agile. Today I’m joined by a special guest: Nupura Kolwalkar. She’s a long-time friend and former colleague of mine. Nupura is a business leader who is utilizing Agile to accelerate her organization. So first off, thank you Nupura for joining us today – it is definitely an honor. Nupura: Thank you for having me on the show. Ronnie: Can you please take a moment to tell our audience more about your background, maybe both personally and professionally? Nupura: Sure! So I have been in the healthcare IT space for about 9 years now. I have been exposed to all aspects or most aspects to approach IT from a revenue cycle, clinical, HR and analytics perspective. So a good, broad understanding of this day’s American healthcare industry. It’s been an interesting journey – as much as everybody focuses on the actual industry and the domain expertise, through 9 years, more of my learning has been on the talent management and process simplification side, although the domain expertise is always a great plus. What I enjoy most about my role, where I’m at now, is that I get to see folks learn something from simple processes and direct conversation that helps them to be better professionals at their workplace and find joy in working with their teammates. Currently, I am working at HealthPort Technologies as the Chief Technology Officer. I have worked in the past with companies like McKesson, Pfizer, NextGen – so I have a wide variety or background, but I’ve definitely found my groove where I am. That’s professionally. Personally, I have two young kids, a husband, a house, a typical family with a dog as well. So, standard young family, mom role at home. So my goal always is, if I take on a new challenge, how do I rely on the talent that I hire and work with to achieve my personal work-life balance; which is usually measured by how many times in a week do I have to take my laptop back home. And currently I take my laptop home only in the weekends, which I think speaks to my theories and my co-workers and the folks that work in our organization. So that’s probably more on the personal side. I love to travel, love to interact and learn these things; I love change, so change is probably the most constant thing in my life. Ronnie: That’s a great introduction – thank you so much! First off, I really wanted to thank you for coming on the show because you’re really our first guest that’s coming on as a business leader. We’ve had some other guests before that were sort of with the Agile gurus and more like instructors and so forth; but I’m really excited to have an actual person who is putting this in place in the field as a business leader and implementing Agile in their organization and being able to testify to the impact. So with that, I’d probably like to dive into our first question which is: As a business leader, how has the use of Agile impacted your teams? Nupura: When I think about the question, there are so many little impacts that make a big impact; but at the end of the day, to really pinpoint a couple, I would say my biggest satisfaction from bringing Agile to our organization is it’s allowed the organization to scale fast and work correctly really early on. We do two weeks test, so in a couple of weeks we usually know if something’s going to work through the organization, because we’re able to demo to the business. And if it doesn’t, then we’re able to course correct early on in the process. My next key point is showing business value. This is probable where I feel that Agile has come true in the most significant way and close to the idea Agile principles. But showing business value: when I walked in we had internal tenth day quarters because we had a good evaluation aspect to work with, as well as products and we had to wait 6-7-9 months to see what came out, but as we moved to Scrum and we installed the demo process, the stakeholders got absolutely addicted to it. They wait for every Tuesday to get the demo ...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 007 - Tips for Startups

    All Things Agile - Episode 007 - Tips for Startups
    2014/06/02
    In this episode, I tackle some common challenges faced by young start-ups trying to implement Agile. If you are a solo entrepreneur or have a few cofounders trying to launch a successful tech startup, then I certainly suggest you checkout today's episode. As mentioned in the episode, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes. Of course, I hope that you will leave a 5-star review. I will try to mention reviewers in upcoming episodes. Here is a link to subscribe and post a review: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-agile/id640441739  All Things Agile - Episode 007 - Tips for Startups Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! Your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! We have another great show lined up for you today. In this episode, we’ll be covering tips for startup companies. But before we begin, a friendly reminder to please submit an iTunes review. The reviews are very helpful and a way to acknowledge the great free content presented on this show. I also look forward to giving you a shout out in an upcoming episode. So let’s dive into today’s topic. How to implement an Agile solution in a young company? A quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts no legal liability. So, in the case of this episode, I will be defining a young company as 1-3 co-founders. A company certainly less than 10 members in total. Agile is often considered the cool thing to do. So many people try to start using it! A common mistake is to start Agile methodologies before having the critical mass to do so. Let me take a moment to better explain. Methodologies such as Scrum are often designed for larger organizations and not 2 co-founders. For example, a typical Scrum practice is to have 7, plus or minus 2 team members. Having many team members provides resiliency. If a team member isn’t feeling well, goes on vacation or is otherwise unavailable, the team can still function. There are other team members available to absorb bumps in the road. Also, don’t forget the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master. A fresh startup doesn’t likely have the resources to staff a team this large. Chances are a startup has 2-3 people, working long hours and performing virtually every role, including taking out the trash. Literally. So what other Agile approaches, such as Kanban? What about those? Well, I definitely believe that Kanban is a bit more sexy at the moment and it certainly has its advantages. It’s a great tool for teams that are more queue based in the work, such as product support teams. It’s a lightweight approach with minimal formalities and that said, based on my personal experience though, I still believe that Kanban needs at least a minimal level of critical mass to be successful. I would recommend a team size of at least 5 to successfully implement Kanban. It can be a daunting challenge to build a Kanban team with only 2 or 3 founders who are wearing numerous hats. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but that it simply may not be wise. So what can I recommend for a young startup? I would advise not worrying about trying to follow a structured methodology. If you are in the early stages of 1-5 company members, it’s great if you can adopt a full methodology, but you may find yourself focused more on following ceremonies, rather than the urgent needs of building a company. The key is to not worry about having an efficient team when you’re just starting. Instead, I challenge you to become an effective team. Simply put, if you are efficient, but not effective, it won’t matter because you’ll be out of business. Doing the wrong thing well, is still doing the wrong thing at the end of the day. You can still apply Agile principles though. For example, the Backlog concept is a great way to ensure that you’re always working on the most important thing first. A young company certainly has limited resources. It is imperative that it focuses on the most impactful items first. This does not mean firefighting. Many small and even large organizations join in firefighting. They spend their day carrying a fire hose, putting out one fire after another. Does that sound familiar to, you know, perhaps your own company? A significant danger in this approach is that the leaders rarely examine what is truly important to their business and customers. Successful companies must take the time to lay out their priorities and determine really what is impactful and focus on one thing at a time. The goal is to not do everything perfect. Striving for pure perfection is a fallacy and will just slow you down. A second suggestion is that you can leverage someone else’s ...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 006 - Jeff Sutherland Interview

    All Things Agile - Episode 006 - Jeff Sutherland Interview
    2014/03/12
    I am pleased to share an interview with Agile pioneer, Jeff Sutherland.  Jeff is a founding father of Scrum and Agile.  He is a noted author and speaker.  Jeff provides insight to many of the largest organizations in the world.  In this episode, Jeff addresses some of the tough issues facing today's organizations.  Please take a moment to listen using the link below or subscribe to the podcast using this link. Please visit Jeff's website: scruminc.com to learn more and check out available courses. During the episode, Jeff mentioned several great books which are linked below for your convenience.  Please take a moment to pick up a few copies for your Agile teams. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time All Things Agile - Episode 006 - Jeff Sutherland Interview Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast – your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Ronnie: Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast. I’m very excited to announce that today’s guest is Jeff Sutherland. He’s a true legend in the world of Agile, especially Scrum. He’s a founding father of Scrum and also an original participant in the Agile Manifesto. I’m very excited to have him on today’s show and I’m hoping that he can shed some insight into how implement Agile teams in larger organizations. So let’s go ahead and get started. First off, thank you Jeff for joining us today! Regarding my first question, I’d like to know what is your input or advice on how to implement Agile successfully in today’s global workforce where we often have teams that are spread across the globe: India, China, etc. How can we implement Agile successfully even if our teams are globally distributed? Jeff: Well, first of all, Scrum simplifies their already complex Waterfall implementations. So Scrum is easier to implement globally than traditional approaches. I’ve worked with many skilled firms over many years – the first one was actually IDX, now GE Healthcare, which was a competitor to McKesson and in fact, the head of marketing – Pam, at IDX who worked with me, implementing Agile there, went on to become the CEO of McKesson; she might still be there, I don’t know, I haven’t checked recently. But she was probably there when you were doing your Agile transformation. But IDX, at the time, had 8 business units. Each business unit had a minimum of 3 products. Many of them were acquired technologies, acquired companies, mainly in the United States, but some teams that I’ve worked with were in Europe; but scattered all over the place. So we scaled Scrum in a big way. One of the best teams was actually in 3 locations across the continent. So I’ve written about at least a half a dozen papers on good distributed implementations of Scrum, and Scrum is the only way of doing software that allows you to actually scale up without losing productivity per developer. As soon as you start to scale Waterfall, the productivity per developer goes down. It starts to drop radically once you get more than 6 people, which is why we keep Scrum teams small. But by keeping Scrum teams small and then using the scalability mechanism that we do, we actually have several case studies now which are the only ones every published showing that you can scale globally and when you scale, you can get linear scalability by adding teams. Of course, you have to do Scrum well. Now, one of the problems with any kind of distribution – Microsoft did a study on this a few years ago in a process group – and they found that in every case, in 10 years of doing Microsoft distributed development, in every case, it delayed the project, it increased the project risk and it increased the dysfunction on the teams. And so, any time you distribute, those are the 3 things that you have to deal with. And as I’ve said, Scrum can effectively deal with all of them, but only if you run a very good Scrum locally. Then you can distribute it. If you distribute a bad Scrum, then you magnify the dysfunction when you distribute. But that’s also true with Waterfall. So, in the worst case, Scrum is better than Waterfall. Ronnie: Okay – and maybe just a follow-up question to that: In your opinion, when an organization is looking to adopt Scrum and globally distribute, have you found that it’s easier to sort of treat the teams all as equals, if you will? Each one’s equally able to grab work from a bigger picture from the product backlog, or do you think that it’s easier to delegate certain either component areas or certain pieces of functionality to particular teams; or do you think that creates too much of a siloed pigeonhole? Jeff: You always want to maximize the feature teams. You always want to have cross-functional teams...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 005 - Mary and Tom Poppendieck Interview

    All Things Agile - Episode 005 - Mary and Tom Poppendieck Interview
    2014/01/25
    I am thrilled to present a wonderful interview with Mary and Tom Poppendieck.  They are true legends in the Agile and Lean Software Development movement.  Checkout today's episode where we discuss challenges facing many organizations such as: product vs. project mindset, globally distributed teams, and equipping teams for success. We also discuss their latest book, The Lean Mindset.  Please consider picking up the book to learn more about these topics in greater detail. Please check out their website: poppendieck.com to learn more about Mary & Tom and their insightful work.  Many thanks to Mary and Tom for investing their time for this podcast and for their contribution to our industry. All Things Agile - Episode 005 - Mary and Tom Poppendieck Interview Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast. Your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Ronnie: Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast, Episode 5. I’m very excited to present to you a wonderful interview with lead software legends Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Before I begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts no legal liability. So let’s get started! One of the goals for this podcast is to interview and feature influential leaders in the Agile space. Today’s guests are just that – Mary and Tom pioneered the Lean Software development movement, with their groundbreaking book Lean Software Development and Agile Toolkit. It’s a classic among Agile literature. In 2013 they also released ‘The Lean Mindset – Ask the Right Questions’. Mary and Tom travel the globe, speaking at conferences and consulting with many of the world’s top companies. It’s an honor and a pleasure to have them on the All Things Agile Podcast. Without further ado, let’s welcome Mary and Tom! Well, thank you for joining me today Mary and Tom, I really appreciate it. Why don’t we go ahead and get started with a few questions. During my own career, I have worked at several Fortune 500 companies. And I’ve often found that large organizations tend to be project-focused, rather than product focused. For example, I have seen environments where software development is treated as a black box, and it can sometimes have a throw-it-over-the-fence mentality. I would love to hear your thoughts on integrating software development as part as a holistic product chain. Mary: If you look back to the early 90’s, I was a manager in the early 90’s and there were very few of my colleagues that could even type. Typing wasn’t something that you learned, unless you were going to be a secretary. The idea of doing email and stuff was so difficult that when the internet first came, many managers sat down their secretaries to do their email typing. Eventually that went away. But if you look at industries that were formed before technology was widespread, like banks and insurance companies and those kinds of industries, you’ll find that this technology area was separated out from the mainstream for two reasons: one reason is because the managers of the line businesses simply were not comfortable with technology; and another was that computer technology was considered something that was expensive and should be centralized in order to reduce costs. Well, today, computer technology is not the same. It is the fundamental basis for competition for almost every company that uses it. Thanks to the kinds of products that they offer, or the things that help them be competitive – if you take a look at the new companies like Google and Facebook and Amazon and those companies, computer technology is a fundamental competitive advantage. And if that’s true, then it needs to be manage, at least what’s done, in the line organization, rather than in some side-organization that is in side to the line organization. So if you look at the companies I’ve just mentioned, they don’t have a central IT department. They have the line organizations responsible. That doesn’t mean that they don’t think about IT costs, but they think about them as product development costs. So now, the things that people develop that are helping the company become more competitive and distinguish it from other companies, are things that need to happen with people who sit in the line organization and truly understand customers and are close to them and secondly, software technology today is much more thought of not as a black box, but as a constant feedback mechanism. So you do something, you see the results on customers and on the line business, you adapt to the results and you continue on. With those two things said, first of all it provides the competitive or strategic advantage to be thinking in line organization about ...
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  • All Things Agile - Episode 004 - A New Hope

    All Things Agile - Episode 004 - A New Hope
    2013/12/01
    Today's episode is centered around some exciting news. I am launching a new venture, Team Xcelerator Inc., which will focus on Agile team software. The AgileInstructor.com blog and the All Things Agile podcast will be moved under the Team Xcelerator umbrella. I am very excited about the possibilities. Please checkout the podcast and send me your thoughts and product feature input using coach@agileinstructor.com. Also, don't forget to please post a kind review in iTunes. We really appreciate your time and support  :) All Things Agile - Episode 4 - A New Hope Transcript: Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast. Your destination for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast in iTunes and please check out our sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr. Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast, Episode 4. Today’s title is ‘A New Hope’. This is paying homage to the classic Star Wars title, but before we begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only and accepts no legal liability. So let’s get started. As an Agile coach, I’m frequently searching for tools to help myself and others utilize Agile methodology successfully. Candidly, I haven’t found many tools which truly reflect the needs that I have seen over the years. Rather than let this frustration remain, I decided to start a new company: Team Xcelerator Inc. to tackle common challenges for Agile teams. You have undoubtedly heard references to Team Xcelerator a few times already. I want to take a few moments to talk about it in more detail. Everything is still very early stages, but I’m hopeful that many Agile practitioners will come to love it. A goal of mine is to develop a product which reflects the global nature of today’s workforce. Almost all development teams are now spread across the world and this trend is only continuing to rise. The use of Agile itself is also on the rise. However, many organizations are still struggling with learning and how to adapt Agile, including the fact that teams or departments may implement Agile differently. Many of the products that I’ve seen on the market are really just project management tools. We still have a lot of work remaining, but it is a goal of mine to develop Team Xcelerator into a cloud-based web tool which will enable teams to specifically focus on Agile success. I also intend for Team Xcelerator to be affordable. I want to encourage teams to utilize the tool and achieve success. It will be targeting organizations of all different sizes, including young startups to industry veterans. I can’t release too many specifics at this time, but I did want to take a moment and let my audience have advance notice of this new platform. I’m also interested in your input to ensure that it better conforms to your needs.  As the episode title alludes to, it is a new hope for me and for the world of Agile; an opportunity to create a platform for Agile professionals, by Agile professionals. And I hope that you’re excited about this recent product news as I am – and remember: you can check out my blog using the website agileinstructor.com and feel free to contact me using coach@agileinstructor.com and feel free to include product comments that you may have regarding Agile tools. I would love to be able to take in your input and ensure that we have product features that will truly meet the needs of our audience. Also, don’t forget to visit our previously discussed sponsor: TeamXcelerator.com which makes this podcast possible. And thank you once again for joining me for this quick podcast – join me for Episode 5, we’re having an exciting interview with Mary and Tom Poppendieck who are the innovators of Lean Software. You don’t want to miss it! Remember – it’s time to accelerate your team, today! Thank you for listening to All Things Agile. We look forward to you subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving a kind review. Thanks and God bless!
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