Agile Coaches' Corner

In today’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by return guest, Andrea Floyd! Andrea is an enterprise agile transformation consultant at AgileThought. Andrea has 25 years of experience in software development and management. She is an innovator who has led multiple organization-wide scaled agile implementations, and she has also architected innovative solution strategies and roadmaps across many frameworks (including Scrum, Kanban, and the Scaled Agile Framework).

Dan and Andrea will be discussing the premise of agility and the common misunderstanding that it is only an IT ‘thing’ and is software-centric. Andrea explains how agility addresses needs across the enterprise and that it is about collaboration with many different areas of the business beyond IT. She shares how a shift from software agility to business agility drives the enterprise; and talks collaboration, feedback loops, design-thinking techniques, the importance of being customer-centric, applying agility across the organization, and key considerations around bringing the technology side and business side together.

Key Takeaways

Considerations when shifting to a more business agility:

Be careful not to create “us vs. them” scenarios (‘us’ as in the technology side and the ‘them’ being the business side)

As leaders, it is important to open up about the way you think about Agility and the principles

It is important to create a united effort of working together to achieve the desired outcomes (moving from ‘doing’ to ‘understanding’)

Be aware of cognitive biases, for instance, the ingroup and outgroup bias (where people tend to ascribe positive behaviors/attributes to people they consider to be in their group vs. ascribing/amplifying negative behaviors/attributes to people they consider to be outside of their group)

It is important to expand your ingroup bubble to at least your whole company (which would lead to more interpretation of positive intent and better collaboration)

It’s not about the individual developer getting to done; it’s about the team getting to done

Being more inclusive and valuing what every individual is bringing to the table has an incredibly profound impact

Key pieces in shifting from a software (or IT-centric) view of agility to business agility:

Start to reimagine roles and how you operate together

The business side needs to welcome the technologists to their side/domain and vice versa

Everyone needs to understand that there is huge value in understanding their customers/users and understanding the ‘why’ behind delivering

Allow people to be free and feel safe enough to create and innovate

Invite everyone into the full conversation

Truly value being engaged

Work towards building empathy between the people building the software and the people who will be using it

Apply the Agile principles, practices, and mindset pieces across the organization

Understand the ‘why’ behind why you’re doing agile practices as well as the intention behind them

Key places to have dynamic conversations with technology and the business:

Through backlog refinement — the inclusiveness comes from the product owner being able to articulate

Come up with a more creative ‘how’ or an ‘incremental how’

The product owner can communicate “no” or “not yet” to their stakeholders

The software on its own is not the product; there are other key pieces that create the ‘shrink-wrapped’ product

“When we think about business agility, what we want to do is understand what it takes to really get that product into the hands of our customers”

How you coordinate across the teams so you get that “shrinkwrapped product increment” is important

Think beyond just getting the software to ‘done’

Key points around accelerating the value chain:

Look to make ‘idea to value’ as short of a line as possible

Reference The Age of Agile’s three laws of business agility: the law of the customer, the law of a small team, and the law of the network

Empower your team and allow for autonomy

Feedback loops with your users/customers are key

Design thinking techniques are a great way to learn more about your customers/users

Empathy is huge — it is the basis for innovation and creativity

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Agile Manifesto

Modern Agile — Joshua Kerievsky

The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done,
by Stephen Denning

The Decision: Overcoming Today’s BS for Tomorrow’s Success, by Kevin Hart

Andrea Floyd’s Book Picks:

Shelter in Place, by Nora Roberts

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this episode, Professional Scrum Trainer Sam Falco answers the question: "Is it OK to plan several Sprints in advance?"

I’ve seen this practice in many organizations. Product Owners plan four, five, even six Sprints of work for their teams. The result is something like a Gantt chart with Sprints instead of weeks as the unit of measure. It’s a bad practice with many drawbacks and no real benefit.

The Scrum Guide’s description of the Product Backlog gives us our first clues that planning Sprints in advance is a bad practice.

• “The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product.”

Assigning Product Backlog items to future Sprints means that you’re splitting your Product Backlog into multiple lists. The order is more difficult to see, and instead of a single source of requirements, you now have several.

The Scrum Guide also says that the Product Backlog is dynamic and constantly changing. Having Product Backlog Items scattered over a number of Sprints makes managing this dynamic change more difficult than if you have a single artifact. In one organization I was in, Product Owners would plan an entire Program Increment and then spent a significant amount of time trying to manage multiple forecasted Sprint Backlogs as well as the remaining Product Backlog.

When multiple Sprints are planned in advance, the Development Team loses its role in collaborating with the Product Owner to craft a Sprint Goal and select Product Backlog Items into the Sprint Backlog that they believe will help achieve that Sprint Goal. Often, no Sprint Goal is identified—instead, the goal is for the Development Team to “do all the things.” The Development Team’s autonomy is hobbled, and it is robbed of the opportunity to self-organize around a coherent, meaningful goal.

The Scrum Guide closes its definition of the Product Backlog by pointing out that while forecasting progress may prove useful, forecasting techniques “do not replace the importance of empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. Only what has already happened may be used for forward-looking decision-making.”

Planning multiple Sprints in advance means that we are making decisions about the future based on what we expect will happen. Sprint six is planned based on what we expect to do in sprints one through five, for example. We’re making assumptions about the future before we have a chance to validate what we’re doing right now. It tends to result in attempting to produce to a forecast rather than basing our work on current business conditions.

Proponents of planning multiple Sprints in advance say that they need to do it in order to forecast release dates. But as Scrum Master Yoda said, “Always in motion is the future.” Planning several Sprints at a time, only to have to re-plan them as things change is wasteful and doesn’t create certainty.

Instead, we should embrace uncertainty and incorporate it into our forecasts, providing a target range that widens the farther out we look.

Forecasting with Scrum is best done by understanding our team’s velocity (as it actually is, not as we want it to be). We can use what we know about the team’s historical ability to deliver to make a “good enough” estimate of the least and most they are likely to produce.  

Register for our upcoming web meetings by visiting agilethought.com/events

See available training courses at agilethought.com/training.

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes at AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this episode, Professional Scrum Trainer Sam Falco answers the question: "Is it OK to plan several Sprints in advance?"

I’ve seen this practice in many organizations. Product Owners plan four, five, even six Sprints of work for their teams. The result is something like a Gantt chart with Sprints instead of weeks as the unit of measure. It’s a bad practice with many drawbacks and no real benefit.

The Scrum Guide’s description of the Product Backlog gives us our first clues that planning Sprints in advance is a bad practice.

• “The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product. It is the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product.”

Assigning Product Backlog items to future Sprints means that you’re splitting your Product Backlog into multiple lists. The order is more difficult to see, and instead of a single source of requirements, you now have several.

The Scrum Guide also says that the Product Backlog is dynamic and constantly changing. Having Product Backlog Items scattered over a number of Sprints makes managing this dynamic change more difficult than if you have a single artifact. In one organization I was in, Product Owners would plan an entire Program Increment and then spent a significant amount of time trying to manage multiple forecasted Sprint Backlogs as well as the remaining Product Backlog.

When multiple Sprints are planned in advance, the Development Team loses its role in collaborating with the Product Owner to craft a Sprint Goal and select Product Backlog Items into the Sprint Backlog that they believe will help achieve that Sprint Goal. Often, no Sprint Goal is identified—instead, the goal is for the Development Team to “do all the things.” The Development Team’s autonomy is hobbled, and it is robbed of the opportunity to self-organize around a coherent, meaningful goal.

The Scrum Guide closes its definition of the Product Backlog by pointing out that while forecasting progress may prove useful, forecasting techniques “do not replace the importance of empiricism. In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. Only what has already happened may be used for forward-looking decision-making.”

Planning multiple Sprints in advance means that we are making decisions about the future based on what we expect will happen. Sprint six is planned based on what we expect to do in sprints one through five, for example. We’re making assumptions about the future before we have a chance to validate what we’re doing right now. It tends to result in attempting to produce to a forecast rather than basing our work on current business conditions.

Proponents of planning multiple Sprints in advance say that they need to do it in order to forecast release dates. But as Scrum Master Yoda said, “Always in motion is the future.” Planning several Sprints at a time, only to have to re-plan them as things change is wasteful and doesn’t create certainty.

Instead, we should embrace uncertainty and incorporate it into our forecasts, providing a target range that widens the farther out we look.

Forecasting with Scrum is best done by understanding our team’s velocity (as it actually is, not as we want it to be). We can use what we know about the team’s historical ability to deliver to make a “good enough” estimate of the least and most they are likely to produce.  

Register for our upcoming web meetings by visiting agilethought.com/events

See available training courses at agilethought.com/training.

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes at AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

This week on the Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann is joined by a new guest, Michael Guiler! Mike is an Agile Consultant at AgileThought. He has been an Agile coach for over 13 years now and has tons of experience helping geographically dispersed organizations (both business and technology) transform to better achieve their goals. His focus is on helping organizations learn and apply the values and principles of the Agile mindset to continuously improve.

In this episode, Dan and Mike will be focusing on the topic of intent-based leadership and the key leadership characteristics that allow for intent-based leadership. Mike shares how an organization can begin to take the first steps towards intent-based leadership, how to avoid common pitfalls, and shares his best practical tips and advice on embracing intent-based leadership throughout the organization.

Key Takeaways

What is intent-based leadership? What problems does it solve?

Helps to get the entire team to chip in and no longer wait for approvals and sign-offs

Takes the pressure off of one single leader and unlocks the potential of every employee

The opposite of directive leadership

Changing the pattern from leader-follower to leader-leader

Those in the leadership level are not telling people what to do/how to do it; they are setting goals and directions

The ‘followers’ are engaging their creativity, mind, and intelligence and leveraging those skills and sharing their solutions with the leadership (this gives the organization a great opportunity to learn and exposes leaders to things they hadn’t thought about before)

Getting started with intent-based leadership/Characteristics of leadership to allow for intent-based leadership:

Before the leader-leader pattern can take place a lot of growth has to take place

Keep in mind that this process won’t happen overnight

Immediately begin to address competence — leadership at all levels can’t thrive if your team doesn’t have the skills or knowledge to prioritize and take action

Establish safety — mistakes will happen; it’s how we react to those mistakes that will enable leadership at all levels to thrive or to fail miserably

Use mistakes as a learning opportunity rather than punishing an individual

Be curious and ask good questions from a place of true curiosity

Challenge your preconceived notions of how things have always been done

Embrace new ideas and thoughts — there’s a real chance you’ll learn something!

Allow time for the team to talk out loud

Respect others opinions and encourage others to have their own point of view

It’s hard and will take a lot of time and investment (but it’s money well-spent — the productivity will explode)

It’s important to set guide rails in the technology world

Focus on the goal/outcome instead of the ‘how’; set clear intentions and let the team figure out how

Adopt the “I intend to” language pattern

Mike’s intent-based leadership tips:

Once the competency is established and you’ve gotten your organization thinking about it, it is important to establish safety (without safety people won’t bring their creative-selves or do anything new)

It is key crucial for the team to know what the goals are

Have an “ish” mindset; decisions and actions being taken won’t match yours and that’s OK!

Overcome urges to command and control

Be tolerant of differences and encourage different points of view

Mike’s recommendation to further learn about intent-based leadership:

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by David L. Marquet

Mentioned in this Episode:

Michael Guiler

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 84: “Getting to ‘Finish’ as a Scrum Team with Andrea Floyd”

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by David L. Marquet

Forbes article regarding psychopathology in CEOs

Michael Guiler’s Book Picks:

The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done, by Stephen Denning

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't, by Simon Sinek

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

This week on the Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann is joined by a new guest, Michael Guiler! Mike is an Agile Consultant at AgileThought. He has been an Agile coach for over 13 years now and has tons of experience helping geographically dispersed organizations (both business and technology) transform to better achieve their goals. His focus is on helping organizations learn and apply the values and principles of the Agile mindset to continuously improve.

In this episode, Dan and Mike will be focusing on the topic of intent-based leadership and the key leadership characteristics that allow for intent-based leadership. Mike shares how an organization can begin to take the first steps towards intent-based leadership, how to avoid common pitfalls, and shares his best practical tips and advice on embracing intent-based leadership throughout the organization.

Key Takeaways

What is intent-based leadership? What problems does it solve?

Helps to get the entire team to chip in and no longer wait for approvals and sign-offs

Takes the pressure off of one single leader and unlocks the potential of every employee

The opposite of directive leadership

Changing the pattern from leader-follower to leader-leader

Those in the leadership level are not telling people what to do/how to do it; they are setting goals and directions

The ‘followers’ are engaging their creativity, mind, and intelligence and leveraging those skills and sharing their solutions with the leadership (this gives the organization a great opportunity to learn and exposes leaders to things they hadn’t thought about before)

Getting started with intent-based leadership/Characteristics of leadership to allow for intent-based leadership:

Before the leader-leader pattern can take place a lot of growth has to take place

Keep in mind that this process won’t happen overnight

Immediately begin to address competence — leadership at all levels can’t thrive if your team doesn’t have the skills or knowledge to prioritize and take action

Establish safety — mistakes will happen; it’s how we react to those mistakes that will enable leadership at all levels to thrive or to fail miserably

Use mistakes as a learning opportunity rather than punishing an individual

Be curious and ask good questions from a place of true curiosity

Challenge your preconceived notions of how things have always been done

Embrace new ideas and thoughts — there’s a real chance you’ll learn something!

Allow time for the team to talk out loud

Respect others opinions and encourage others to have their own point of view

It’s hard and will take a lot of time and investment (but it’s money well-spent — the productivity will explode)

It’s important to set guide rails in the technology world

Focus on the goal/outcome instead of the ‘how’; set clear intentions and let the team figure out how

Adopt the “I intend to” language pattern

Mike’s intent-based leadership tips:

Once the competency is established and you’ve gotten your organization thinking about it, it is important to establish safety (without safety people won’t bring their creative-selves or do anything new)

It is key crucial for the team to know what the goals are

Have an “ish” mindset; decisions and actions being taken won’t match yours and that’s OK!

Overcome urges to command and control

Be tolerant of differences and encourage different points of view

Mike’s recommendation to further learn about intent-based leadership:

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders,
by David L. Marquet

Mentioned in this Episode:

Michael Guiler

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 84: “Getting to ‘Finish’ as a Scrum Team with Andrea Floyd”

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, by David L. Marquet

Forbes article regarding psychopathology in CEOs

Michael Guiler’s Book Picks:

The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done,
by Stephen Denning

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't, by Simon Sinek

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this episode, Professional Scrum Trainer Sam Falco addresses the question: “How do you escape the tyranny of the burndown chart?”

This was the question a student asked last week. I knew exactly what he meant. I experienced it myself with my first Scrum Team, and I’ve seen it many time since. Teams try to predict every task they’ll have to do during a Sprint, estimate the hours for each, and make sure that the team’s capacity is fully allocated. As the Sprint progresses, they discover new work. Work that was predicted takes longer than usual. The burndown rises instead of falling, or it plateaus. The burndown chart becomes a burden that destroys morale and effectiveness.

After a few Sprints of this experience, teams either abandon the burndown chart or they start playing games to make the burndown “look right.” In both cases, the team loses out on a valuable tool for helping them achieve the Sprint Goal.

To be clear, the Scrum Guide does not mandate the use of a burndown chart. Here’s what it says about tracking Sprint progress:

“At any point in time in a Sprint, the total work remaining in the Sprint Backlog can be summed. The Development Team tracks this total work remaining at least for every Daily Scrum to project the likelihood of achieving the Sprint Goal. By tracking the remaining work throughout the Sprint, the Development Team can manage its progress.”        

Tracking total work remaining provides transparency about the team’s progress toward the Sprint Goal. That transparency allow the team to make informed decisions about how to adjust the scope of its work throughout the Sprint. If the team doesn’t know how much forecasted work remains, the Sprint Goal may be placed in jeopardy.

A sprint burndown chart is one way to fulfill the need to sum up the remaining work and make that data visible. So why does the burndown chart so easily become a burden to the team, rather than a tool?

Often, it’s because of a holdover from the mistaken belief that software development can be managed through predictive processes. Even in organizations that recognize the folly of predictive planning on a macro level, teams fall into the trap of thinking they can and should plan every minute of a team’s capacity.

Software development falls into the realm of complexity. Even within a Sprint, we have to allow for emergent understanding of the work. Requirements, understood well enough for the work to begin, become clearer. New work emerges as a result. Teams that have strived for efficiency in allotting their time find that there’s no room to adjust as new information and understanding becomes available.

The secret to avoiding the tyranny of the burndown chart has nothing to do with the burndown chart itself. The secret is to let go of the belief that we can know everything up front and that efficient time usage is a worthwhile goal. Instead, strive for value delivery, select work that the team understands well enough to start on, and don’t strive for 100% utilization. The only thing certain about software development is that it is filled with uncertainty. In Sprint Planning, you need only look a few days into the future, and allow remaining details to arise as work gets underway.

Register for our upcoming web meetings by visiting agilethought.com/events

See available training courses at agilethought.com/training.

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes at AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this episode, Professional Scrum Trainer Sam Falco addresses the question: “How do you escape the tyranny of the burndown chart?”

This was the question a student asked last week. I knew exactly what he meant. I experienced it myself with my first Scrum Team, and I’ve seen it many time since. Teams try to predict every task they’ll have to do during a Sprint, estimate the hours for each, and make sure that the team’s capacity is fully allocated. As the Sprint progresses, they discover new work. Work that was predicted takes longer than usual. The burndown rises instead of falling, or it plateaus. The burndown chart becomes a burden that destroys morale and effectiveness.

After a few Sprints of this experience, teams either abandon the burndown chart or they start playing games to make the burndown “look right.” In both cases, the team loses out on a valuable tool for helping them achieve the Sprint Goal.

To be clear, the Scrum Guide does not mandate the use of a burndown chart. Here’s what it says about tracking Sprint progress:

“At any point in time in a Sprint, the total work remaining in the Sprint Backlog can be summed. The Development Team tracks this total work remaining at least for every Daily Scrum to project the likelihood of achieving the Sprint Goal. By tracking the remaining work throughout the Sprint, the Development Team can manage its progress.”        

Tracking total work remaining provides transparency about the team’s progress toward the Sprint Goal. That transparency allow the team to make informed decisions about how to adjust the scope of its work throughout the Sprint. If the team doesn’t know how much forecasted work remains, the Sprint Goal may be placed in jeopardy.

A sprint burndown chart is one way to fulfill the need to sum up the remaining work and make that data visible. So why does the burndown chart so easily become a burden to the team, rather than a tool?

Often, it’s because of a holdover from the mistaken belief that software development can be managed through predictive processes. Even in organizations that recognize the folly of predictive planning on a macro level, teams fall into the trap of thinking they can and should plan every minute of a team’s capacity.

Software development falls into the realm of complexity. Even within a Sprint, we have to allow for emergent understanding of the work. Requirements, understood well enough for the work to begin, become clearer. New work emerges as a result. Teams that have strived for efficiency in allotting their time find that there’s no room to adjust as new information and understanding becomes available.

The secret to avoiding the tyranny of the burndown chart has nothing to do with the burndown chart itself. The secret is to let go of the belief that we can know everything up front and that efficient time usage is a worthwhile goal. Instead, strive for value delivery, select work that the team understands well enough to start on, and don’t strive for 100% utilization. The only thing certain about software development is that it is filled with uncertainty. In Sprint Planning, you need only look a few days into the future, and allow remaining details to arise as work gets underway.

Register for our upcoming web meetings by visiting agilethought.com/events

See available training courses at agilethought.com/training.

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes at AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this week’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by frequent guest of the show, Quincy Jordan — principal transformation consultant and agile competency lead at AgileThought! Together, they are exploring COVID-19 as an agile accelerator.

In the agile space, there has been a long-time myth that face-to-face is synonymous with colocation and that you cannot have effective agile teams if they are not colocated. However, in the past year or so, many companies have been beginning to consider going to a hybrid remote model. But, when COVID-19 hit, their 12-month transition plans quickly became one-week transition plans. And though this has been very difficult for many, this acceleration due to COVID-19 has actually been a good thing in many cases — which is what Dan and Quincy will be talking about today!

They discuss which types of things got accelerated, beliefs about agility that got challenged due to COVID-19, what the ‘new normal’ post-COVID-19 may look like, and how these changes will be made to be sustainable going forward.

Key Takeaways

Beliefs about agility that got challenged due to COVID-19:

Those people in the agile space that were especially adamant that you cannot have effective agile teams that are remote were shown that it was possible 

Some people believed that doing training in a distributed way would bring the quality down — however, the quality of training that is being delivered has not gone down since going remote

What COVID-19 has accelerated:

When pressed, many people are able to do very impressive things and accomplish more than they thought possible

It accelerated ingenuity and creativity

It accelerated the decisions to collaborate with one another as teammates and to quickly come together on a situation to figure out the most effective solution

It helped accelerate clarity on what was truly important to accomplish

It has driven companies to really start embracing business agility a lot more

Agility went from a concept that companies only thought about to a concrete concept that they embraced

Organizations have been focusing on value more due to embracing the agile mindset (and COVID-19 has been pushing this to further bounds)

It has helped push organizations to further their alignment on business agility and focus on the problems that need to be solved

COVID-19 has also accelerated businesses beyond those in software (it permeated into all facets)

Challenges regarding COVID-19 and the acceleration it has brought:

How do we maintain alignment between business and IT in this remote world? (How often do we need to meet? What do we need to be aligned on?)

Video conference fatigue

How do we ensure that the right problems are being solved, that the vision is clear, that the business objectives at hand are clear, and that the teams know how to tie their work to meaningful outcomes for the business?

People don’t adapt as fast as technology

What might the new ‘new normal’ look like post-COVID-19?

There most likely will be more remote work and more emphasis on collaborating remotely

There may be a bigger demand for remote tools (such as digital whiteboards) and they will become even more efficient going forward

People will most likely be more intentional about how they are showing up to video conferences with clearer goals in mind

Mentioned in this Episode:

From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver, by Johanna Rothman and Mark Kilby

The Decision: Overcoming Today’s BS for Tomorrow’s Success, by Kevin Hart

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this week’s episode, Dan Neumann is joined by frequent guest of the show, Quincy Jordan — principal transformation consultant and agile competency lead at AgileThought! Together, they are exploring COVID-19 as an agile accelerator.

In the agile space, there has been a long-time myth that face-to-face is synonymous with colocation and that you cannot have effective agile teams if they are not colocated. However, in the past year or so, many companies have been beginning to consider going to a hybrid remote model. But, when COVID-19 hit, their 12-month transition plans quickly became one-week transition plans. And though this has been very difficult for many, this acceleration due to COVID-19 has actually been a good thing in many cases — which is what Dan and Quincy will be talking about today!

They discuss which types of things got accelerated, beliefs about agility that got challenged due to COVID-19, what the ‘new normal’ post-COVID-19 may look like, and how these changes will be made to be sustainable going forward.

Key Takeaways

Beliefs about agility that got challenged due to COVID-19:

Those people in the agile space that were especially adamant that you cannot have effective agile teams that are remote were shown that it was possible 

Some people believed that doing training in a distributed way would bring the quality down — however, the quality of training that is being delivered has not gone down since going remote

What COVID-19 has accelerated:

When pressed, many people are able to do very impressive things and accomplish more than they thought possible

It accelerated ingenuity and creativity

It accelerated the decisions to collaborate with one another as teammates and to quickly come together on a situation to figure out the most effective solution

It helped accelerate clarity on what was truly important to accomplish

It has driven companies to really start embracing business agility a lot more

Agility went from a concept that companies only thought about to a concrete concept that they embraced

Organizations have been focusing on value more due to embracing the agile mindset (and COVID-19 has been pushing this to further bounds)

It has helped push organizations to further their alignment on business agility and focus on the problems that need to be solved

COVID-19 has also accelerated businesses beyond those in software (it permeated into all facets)

Challenges regarding COVID-19 and the acceleration it has brought:

How do we maintain alignment between business and IT in this remote world? (How often do we need to meet? What do we need to be aligned on?)

Video conference fatigue

How do we ensure that the right problems are being solved, that the vision is clear, that the business objectives at hand are clear, and that the teams know how to tie their work to meaningful outcomes for the business?

People don’t adapt as fast as technology

What might the new ‘new normal’ look like post-COVID-19?

There most likely will be more remote work and more emphasis on collaborating remotely

There may be a bigger demand for remote tools (such as digital whiteboards) and they will become even more efficient going forward

People will most likely be more intentional about how they are showing up to video conferences with clearer goals in mind

Mentioned in this Episode:

From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver,
by Johanna Rothman and Mark Kilby

The Decision: Overcoming Today’s BS for Tomorrow’s Success, by Kevin Hart

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

In this episode, Professional Scrum Trainer Sam Falco addresses the question: "How do we avoid Scrum adoption pitfalls?"

Last week, a student asked me what are some common pitfalls that we see when organizations shift to Scrum from a “big design upfront” process like waterfall.

A big one is that they think it’s a silver bullet

Adopting Scrum doesn’t solve problems overnight. It doesn’t solve problems at all! Scrum will surface the problems in your ability to deliver so that you can fix them. Too many organizations falter when Scrum runs up against an organizational impediment and “the way we’ve always done it” wins out. One example of this phenomenon is when there’s an onerous change management system that prevents code from getting into production. Scrum teams complete an increment and it sits there waiting until someone approves it to be moved to production. Sometimes, the wait is so long that multiple increments pile up.

Some organizations will cling to that change management system even though it’s getting in the way. Success comes when they adapt to the new way of working. At one organization I worked with, the solution was to set up an experiment with one team working on a less risky area of code. Once they proved that they could safely put code into production without breaking things, it paved the way for broader changes to their process.

Another pitfall is that the organization doesn’t really adopt Scrum

 In many cases, organizations claim to adopt Scrum, but what they really do is apply Scrum terminology to existing roles and processes. I frequently see the term “Product Owner” used—or maybe I should say abused—as a new name for a Project Manager. But those Project Managers carry on pretty much the way they did before. They lack any of the accountabilities or authority of a Scrum Product Owner. They shift from using Gant charts measured in weeks to plotting out a project in Sprints over several months.

And that’s another way this behavior manifests. They’ll use the name of Scrum events without understanding their underlying purpose. A Sprint lacks the focus of creating a usable increment. “Daily Scrum” is a daily status report. “Sprint Review” is a carefully orchestrated smoke-and-mirrors show with limited, if any feedback or collaboration with stakeholders.

Without using all of its roles, events, and artifacts—and the rules that bind them together—you’re not using Scrum. You’re probably perpetuating your existing system. You know, the one that wasn’t working for you before. This is the realm of “Scrum, but.” And “Scrum, but” is not Scrum at all.

They don’t make other necessary changes

Even when an organization adopts Scrum’s mechanics, they sometimes find that Scrum doesn’t provide the benefits they hoped for. Delivery improves a little, but it soon plateaus and it’s a struggle to keep improving. That’s because other changes are necessary to really reap the gains of Scrum.

A common organizational structure is to have teams organized around technical layers or components. For example, a User Interface team, a Data Access Team, a Service gateway team, and so on. Scrum requires that we produce a working increment each Sprint, which means one that’s in usable condition. Teams organized by layers or components face numerous handoffs and challenges integrating their work. There’s a loss of transparency, and they struggle to compete that working increment.

The solution is to form teams that can deliver complete features that cut across all layers. Scrum doesn’t tell you to do that, but it works best if you do.

Scrum also doesn’t tell you to adopt good DevOps practices, or incorporate Kanban techniques, or to refactor your code. They’re all still good ideas.

Scrum is incomplete for a reason and that’s so that you can identify what works best for your organization. You have to go beyond Scrum. I talked about the pitfall of “Scrum, but,” earlier. But “Just Scrum” isn’t enough. You need “Scrum, and.”

Adopting Scrum requires a shift in organizational mindset. Without that, people revert to familiar behavior, even if that behavior wasn’t effective. And adopting Scrum can’t be an endpoint. It’s the beginning of a journey of experimentation and continuous improvement. In the Trainer Talk episode “Why Does Scrum Have So Many Meetings?” a few weeks ago, I mentioned that implementing Scrum requires intentional, thoughtful organizational redesign. That’s true of implementing the basics of the framework, but it’s equally true about the wider ecosystem that Scrum teams work in. And just like I said in that earlier episode, that’s why you need a good experienced Scrum Master—and sometimes more than one—to guide your organization’s Scrum adoption.

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