Agile Bites

If you do Scrum, you know that the sprint is the heartbeat of your process. They're what many aspects of a Scrum team are based around. But Scrum often gets criticized for seemingly arbitrary time boxes around getting work done.

While we usually do love an opportunity to criticize Scrum, we don't think it's exactly fair to criticize it from a flow-based methodology perspective. Scrum and its time-boxed Sprint method are great tools…when used in the right scenario. 

In this episode, Host Phil Ledgerwood explains why sprints have their place, the utility behind them, and for which scenarios they're best suited.

There’s a prevalent idea that Scrum is a good way to introduce a team to agility. But at the same time, a lot of teams are really struggling with Scrum. So is Scrum really a great place to start for a team new to agility? 

In this episode, hear from host Phil Ledgerwood why Scrum was created in the first place, what type of teams it was intended for, and why it's most likely not the right place for a team to start.

Oftentimes in organizations shifting to be more agile and focusing on team-oriented operations and production, the question inevitably arises, “How do we deal with individual performance?”

Performance happens at various levels of an organization. To only focus on individual performance (and not the performance of the systems those individuals are working in) only tells part of the story - the least important part, really. 

In this episode, host Phil Ledgerwood shares ways of measuring performance at the various levels operating in an agile organization and why it's important to do so.

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The title to this episode may seem like a question with an obvious answer. But we think it's important to discuss why it's a question at all, and why somebody might even think differently about it (because there are some good reasons).

The more you understand the issues associated with this question, the better off  you're going to be strategically when you try to move your own organization to greater agility. 

So tune in as we unpack this loaded question and look at how speed impacts agility.

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How often does your software team do releases? And when you do, how traumatic is it?

Many software teams may be agile in their workflow but still be very slow or inflexible when it comes to the actual delivery of value.

But what if we told you that your release cycles are -key- to how agile your team can actually be? 

In this episode, Host Phil Ledgerwood shares why the big batch and infrequent nature of releases might be canceling out the value you're getting out of an agile workflow and what you can do about it to improve both the technical and cultural aspects of your agility.

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So you've identified the constraint. You've optimized your constraint. You've learned to subordinate to your constraint. Assuming you haven't skipped any of these important steps (if you have, go back and listen to those episodes!), now it's time to elevate your constraint. 

In this episode, host Phil Ledgerwood discusses ways to get the most efficiency out of your constraint and increase its capacity to keep work moving forward.

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When you're starting to build an application, at what point should the database be designed? (To our non-developer listeners, hang in there—this is relevant to you!) 

There are a lot of opinions on this topic in the software community, and many say the database should come first. But if you're building an application in an agile manner, why would you start with a piece of the project that the user can't interact with and give feedback on?

In this episode, host Phil Ledgerwood discusses why he thinks starting with the database can not only hold back your team's agility but also negatively affect the quality of the application in the long run. And he'll be giving some suggestions for better places to start that will help you create a more useful app for your users.

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We all know that having lots of work in process causes problems when it comes to your delivery rate.

If you're on a Scrum team, this can look like items getting carried over from sprint to sprint, nothing being ready until the very end of the sprint, no capacity to respond to emergency fixes, or every new user story taking longer and longer to complete. These can all be indicators that your Scrum team has too much WIP.

But before you start thinking you need to incorporate other techniques and frameworks that focus on limiting WIP—did you know that Scrum already had a WIP limiting mechanism built into the framework?

In this episode, learn to take advantage of the ways Scrum can guide your team to limit the amount of work they have in progress and deliver at a more consistent rate.

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Can you be a good scrum master or agile coach without experience in the domain you work on?

There are several schools of thought when it comes to this controversial question. Some say yes, some say no, and some say that technical knowledge can actually make you worse at your job. 

What should actually be the standard? Who's to say? But in this episode, we're going over the different perspectives we've come across and sharing our viewpoint on the matter.

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The title of this episode may sound counterintuitive, but it's actually the key to optimizing your team's agility.

When we say “working less,” we're not talking about slacking off—we're talking about balancing your workflow by subordinating your work stages to your constraint. 

Having every team member produce the most amount of work at all times seems like the fastest way complete projects, but it's not. And it'll actually work against you.

In this episode, learn how you can start thinking about your team as a stream of value rather than individual units cranking out as much work as possible. And in learning that, we hope you more clearly see the path to delivering value in the most efficient way possible.

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