Agile Coaches' Corner

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Mike Guiler to explore how organizations can better support their managers. In this episode, they discuss two adoption patterns, the grassroots and the top-down approach, and the distinction between being a Manager and a Leader.

Key Takeaways

• The grassroots adoption pattern and the top-down approach in an Agile Organization:

• Grassroots starts at a Team level.

• The top-down approach begins with the boss.

• If an Agile Team is self-managing: What does a Manager do?

• A Manager must decide whether he wants to be just a Manager or a Leader because these are different roles. Leaders set clear objectives; they are not so focused on the daily chores but on the higher business-valued conversations. A Leader cares about how to build the environment.

• A Manager needs to work his way to becoming a Leader and less about assigning tasks to Team members. A leader’s work should come from a mentorship place, sharing his knowledge and experience for the Team to explore (instead of being told what to do).

• An Organization can support a Manager embracing Leadership and becoming a servant leader.

• A Leader evaluates options and consults them with the Team; a leader does not impose practices. Communication is more valuable than processes and tools.

• The organization must have a plan in mind but check first how the Team responds.

• A Leader’s job is to establish the vision, shifting away from the “how.”

• While the Team is busy executing the hypothesis, the Leader is thinking about the next step.

• The Alignment of OKRs is vital for an Organization.

• Ensuring that OKRs match the plans for the product and what the business wants to achieve is fundamental for companies. This way, everyone knows what’s most important.

• How role descriptions are set up (performance reviews, salary adjustments) can influence the leader’s job.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Who Moved My Cheese?, by Spencer Johnson

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter

Team of Teams, by General Stanley McChrystal

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, Dan Neumann is joined by an external guest: Seth Maust, President and Founder of Five Star Life, an organization that aims to change perceptions of education, sports, and culture. Seth began 20 years ago researching why so many children were dropping out of school because they did not value education and ultimately did not value themselves. Five Star Life focuses on dismantling this root issue by ingraining a different curriculum they created that guides students in developing successful mindsets.

Key Takeaways

• Five Star Life focuses on attacking the root cause of student dropout.

• Children are not motivated to continue their studies because they don’t believe in the current education system.

• A good education teaches students how to think (not what to think).

• A successful life begins with the right mindset.

• Create new habits.

• It is a 28-week investment.

• The Five Star Life system teaches students to think critically.

• The application of the learned knowledge is fundamental.

• Students learn to handle conflict the right way.

• Choose your hard! Ignoring conflict is hard, and confronting conflict is too.

• Motivation is the result of vision.

• What is the first step that you can take to achieve your goal?

• Focus on taking small, incremental steps.

• An excellent way to start is to make an image of what you want to achieve and pin it somewhere you can see it daily.

• First, you must create a vision and then goals, but most of all, you must truly believe it will happen. When you attach emotion to an image, belief is born.

• Everything you are now is the result of subconscious programming.

• Unless you consciously choose to keep developing, you will remain what you are and you will repeat the same cycles.

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, your host, Justin Thatil, is joined by three of his colleagues, Mike Guiler, Jim Beale, and Mariano Oliveti.

In this episode, they explore the topic of accountability in Agile Teams and organizations. These four Agilists share their insights and experience on the role of accountability while explaining the value of tools such as OKRs and KPIs and the influence of a true leader in encouraging Teams by involving them in the whole process, trusting them, and enabling them to be self-directed and reliant.

Key Takeaways

• Why is accountability so important? How do we keep accountability in an organization?

• Accountability is needed to identify who will be in charge of each task.

• Accountability should start at the top but needs to be emphasized at all levels of the organization.

• OKR (Objectives and key results) is a goal-setting framework that assists in keeping the Team accountable and provides a way to measure the outcomes.

• KPIs are key performance indicators that also contribute to keeping accountability. KPIs measure a team's performance to ensure they are on track to meet their project objectives.

• Leaders encourage accountability in Teams.

• If a leader is willing to engage with a Team, he will share goals with them and the journey to achieve them.

• Leaders need to value the involvement of every member and encourage self-driven work.

• Keeping people informed of the “why” motivates them, while the “what” will only give them tasks.

• A good leader holds his Team accountable and empowers them to make decisions. Overall, a leader trusts his Team.

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, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Mariano Oliveti and Erica Menendez to discuss DevOps, mainly how it contributes to creating safety and providing feedback during an Agile product journey.

In this episode, they share their knowledge about how DevOps eases the work and ensures value delivery. Listen to this conversation among Agilists for actionable suggestions and amazing real-life examples of Agile Teams benefiting from DevOps.

Key Takeaways

• The problems DevOps can help to solve:

• DevOps can help solve inefficiencies such as the ones resulting from introducing a lot of bugs into the code or when there is a lack of Team Collaboration.

• DevOps helps to break down the silos.

• DevOps is a real time saver.

• Opportunities that DevOps gives:

• DevOps provides the opportunity for automation, testing early, and keeping a repeatable and reliable process that will work.

• DevOps ensures that, at the end of the day, the result is a product that was built in an efficient way.

• Employees working with DevOps are generally happier and more satisfied with their work, especially when automation makes their tasks easier to achieve and grants them the time to invest in the things that really matter.

• Applying DevOps infrastructure allows us to scale in a repeatable manner.

• DevOps is also a way to find what is wrong even before the customer does.

• Starting with DevOps is free.

• Begin with what you have and grow from there. Big changes are rough!

• The more you work with DevOps, the better you will get at it.

Mentioned in this Episode:

ACF Coaching Certification

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, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Anitra Pavka, an Agile Coach with vast experience in product ownership and management. In this episode, Anitra discusses the value of prioritizing people in the software development journey and shares ways and strategies to communicate more efficiently among the Team and with users. She also outlines different approaches to engaging better with users to minimize risks and maximize time use.

Key Takeaways

• Anitra emphasizes the importance of being human-centric in software development.

• Always approach people with empathy and compassion.

• Telling stories is a great way to reach people and communicate your message.

• Be curious and open.

• Be aware of who you are building a system for.

• Capture users as a persona with a set of behaviors, goals, and motivations.

• The Team needs to know who the user is.

• The Team then can use its creativity and ideas to meet the needs of those users.

• The whole Team contributes to the conversation.

• Ways to engage with end users:

• What are the end users doing daily to deal with the problem you are looking at solving?

• Interact with people to see what they actually do instead of what they say they do.

• Seek customer feedback sooner than later to reduce risk in the long run.

• Learn to ask the right questions.

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, Mariano Oliveti joined Dan Neumann to discuss the importance of continuous learning and growth as an Agile Coach

In this episode, Mariano shares his experience growing as a Coach. Listen to this conversation where Mariano and Dan dive deep into the steps of this incremental journey, which begins with awareness, followed by proficiency, to achieve mastery later. 

Key Takeaways

• The first step is identifying how you would like to grow as a coach 

• At the beginning of your learning process, ask yourself: How do you intake and process information? What is your learning style?

• The second step is to find the topics that best resonate with you.

• To be an Agile Coach, you must perform specific skills at different levels, such as teaching, mentoring, facilitating, or coaching.

• There are complementary skills that can help you along the journey to becoming an Agile Coach.

• You need to have a good understanding of Agile practices and the Scrum framework.

• Business knowledge is also necessary.

• Be aware of your strengths and your opportunities.

• How can you be intentional about your learning?

• Being intentional is critical to mastering what you do. 

• Be honest with yourself about your goals and objectives and how you want to reach them.

• Listening is the primary skill an Agile Coach needs to have.

• Listening internally to how you react to the events around you and finding opportunities to grow.

• Leaning is a journey, be patient with yourself and respect your process.

Mentioned in this Episode:

The  8 Stances of a Scrum Master

ACF Coaching Certification

DevOps Handbook

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, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by two external guests for Kanban University: Joey Spooner, Vice President for Community Development and Product Management, and Todd Little, Chairman of Kanban University.

In this episode, experts from Kanban University join the podcast to share their expertise with the audience. Listen to this conversation and learn about the trajectory of Kanban University and its fantastic community. Also, they dive into a profound exploration of what Kanban Methodology really is and how it can improve what you are already doing.

Key Takeaways

• What is Kanban?

• Kanban University has been educating a vast community on its method since 2013.

• The Kanban method is often misunderstood. Some significant aspects characterize the Kanban Methodology. It is a way to visualize the workflow, called operational practice. There are also Management Practices, which consist of taking and managing policies effectively in an organization. The practices of collaboration and experimentation are also of crucial importance.

• Kanban can also be used as a complementary practice to Scrum.

• A fundamental principle of the Kanban Methodology is to Start with what you do now. If you have started with Scrum, you can improve it with Kanban. Kanban is fundamentally an approach to improving your process framework; it isn’t a framework itself.

• The Kanban Method vs. the Lean Manufacturing:

• Lean Manufacturing aims to remove uncertainty, which is conceived as a waste.

• Sometimes, uncertainty does not need to be eliminated; it is inherited, and often, it is this uncertainty that brings value.

• Kanban tries to understand knowledge work and its behaviors while still representing the workflow.

• How does Kanban manage the predictability challenge while doing complex work?

• There are three common challenges while working with complex work: Delay, Dependencies, and Dormancies. Every Team needs to explore possible solutions for these challenges.

• Check Team reliability.

• An approach to predictability: Do more and better estimates.

• Advice for Scrum Practitioners starting to use Kanban:

• You can use Kaban on top of what you are doing with Scrum for more efficiency.

• Kanban tools allow Teams to stay focused and deliver consistently.

• Find first what your struggle is at the moment and see how Kanban can help with it.

• Learn to manage resistance to change and get accustomed to constant evolutionary change.

• Learn from the water's capacity for adapting to its environment.

• Agile needs to adapt to culture as much as a culture needs to adapt to Agility.

• Take small steps.

• You have to get your system under control, map it out, and ensure it is not overloaded. If a system is overloaded, it is not predictable.

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, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by an external guest, James D Murphy, a United States Air Force Veteran, F15 Fighter, and instructed pilot. James founded a company called Afterburner Inc. and is now the CEO of Afterburner Capital; he wrote seven books and is an expert on the Agile Delivery Framework.

In this episode, they discuss the concept of flawless execution, meaning an execution that is as impeccable as possible (nothing is perfect!). James shares how he combined his military training with his work as an entrepreneur and expert in the Agile framework.

Key Takeaways

• Flawless execution can’t be perfect; mistakes will take place.

• Start with simple frameworks that are easy and scalable.

• Find purposeful tasks and actions. Developing and effectively communicating the purpose of the Team’s job is crucially important.

• Knowing more about the context and details is essential to prioritize the purpose. Intention and vision need to stay connected.

• The Team needs to be involved in every step of the process.

• The key to flawless execution is to have a common language to get work done.

• The truth is more critical than artificial harmony.

• Teams must foster psychological safety, which means that anyone can feel safe admitting an error without fearing reprimand.

• Building a safe culture takes time.

• Flawless execution needs a systematic approach.

• The system followed must enable good execution as well as flexibility; in this matter, simplicity overpowers complexity. Complexity will decrease performance while augmenting the chance of errors.

• First is the planning phase (who is going to do what and when). Once it’s over, no more brainstorming takes place.

• After planning, the plan is briefed (repetition of what was planned and the accountabilities that come along with it).

• Execute! Don’t get off track.

• Debrief as soon as the mission is over. Debriefing is almost as important as the mission itself, leaving a lesson to the entire enterprise, not just a small Team. Is there a gap between the obtained results and what was imagined and expected from the plan? The Team should ask itself, how did the success occur? And why?

• This entire process must be leader-led. It is the leader who first has to admit his/her mistakes. This transparency and honesty create the much-needed psychological safety at the Tream.

Learn More:

• Afterburner website
• Afterburner on YouTube
• James D. Murphy on LinkedIn

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, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil, your hosts, are joined by Erica Menendez and Mariano Oliveti to discuss what it takes to deliver high-quality Agile Projects.

In this episode, they dive deep into what a successful Agile project looks like and describe the necessary steps to be taken in order to reach it.

Key Takeaways

• Clarify the purpose

• The company should have a purpose

• The culture you create should be in support of the purpose

• The products should align with that purpose

• Deeply understand the real needs of your users and meet those

• Adopting Agility can increase employee satisfaction

• Empower team members to take action in support of the company’s purpose

• Empowerment increases engagement

• Engaged and empowered employees tend to lead to happiness.

• Understand that the entire Team works towards a specific goal.

• Focusing on people is a crucial aspect of a successful Agile Project, optimizing the relationship with people, ensuring there is collaboration among them, and granting space for people to open up in a psychologically safe environment.

• Fear of criticism and resistance to feedback are barriers to address.

• Working in an Agile way allows more predictability.

• Agile Teams add transparency to their work and separate tasks into smaller parts, which enables them to look at things a lot more closely than traditional Waterfall.

• Transparency must appear at all organizational levels, having realistic expectations and empowering everyone to make decisions.

• Implement feedback loops. Be willing to pivot based on feedback.

• Foster continuous learning

• Embrace experimentation

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Coaching Trading Alliance: Life Coach Training and Certification

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, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by Erik Lindgren to discuss the concepts of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and MMP (Minimum Marketable Product) and the differences between them.

In this episode, they explore an example of a successful brand that started the simplest way possible and became a multimillion-dollar success a decade later!

Key Takeaways

• Erik shares the story of Honest Tea, which grew into a multimillion-dollar company. They started with the MVP (making tea at Eric’s home to sell later), and ten years later, Coca-Cola bought forty percent for forty-three million dollars.

• What is the simplest way to get to the market fast? Start with the minimum to get on the market and test your idea.

• It is crucial to shift from an existing platform to a new one with the minimum risk possible.

• What is the difference between MVP and MMP?

• MVP: We are unsure if there is a market for this product, who will buy it, and how they will respond to it; for that, you put together a business hypothesis.

• MMP: What is something that the market will really adopt broadly?

• There is a considerable risk in taking the Big Bang approach to a project.

• An integrative and incremental approach seems more effective than redoing the entire ERP system before going live. Grow a system organically instead of trying to do it all at once.

• A team must ensure they know whom they are solving a problem for to focus£ on what matters most.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Watch Flamin’Hot Documentary

Scrum@Scale Framework

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!