Agile Coaches' Corner

In this episode, Rebecca and Dan are focusing on all things related to nimble facilitation! Though her background is not in Agility, her insights around nimble facilitation greatly align with the Agile value of “responding to change over following a plan,” and apply to what Agile coaches do daily

Joining Dan Neumann today is return guest — and his colleague at AgileThought — Sam Falco! Sam is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Professional with an extensive background leading Agile development teams.

 

In today’s episode, they will be discussing coaching around resistance. Sam began developing this topic a couple of years back when he had seen some books and articles about overcoming resistance and how to defeat resistance. It had always struck him as kind of psychologically violent, very prescriptive, and not too collaborative. When he thought about his own experiences with resistance — both when he resisted some sort of change and his experiences coaching change — he discovered that it should not be thought as something to be overcome, but instead, as a useful red flag.

 

Sam further explains what coaching around resistance is, how to get people to talk about their emotions when they’re resistant, how to become an effective coach for leading changes or a transformation, and how to build the skills that are key to coaching around resistance. They also discuss the different levels of relationship that are important when coaching around resistance, the different types of inquiry you can apply in your coaching, and overall, what you should keep in mind while coaching.

 

Key Takeaways

What is resistance?

A natural reaction to an emotional process of adapting to difficult change

What is coaching around resistance?

It is when you act with empathy and help others to — not overcome or defeat something — but to work past what is blocking them

Treating the underlying cause rather than ignoring it or bandaging over it

How do you get people to talk about emotion (in regards to resistance)?

Use humble inquiry (which is asking for information in the least biased, least threatening way which helps to build trust)

Access your ignorance

Ask in a neutral way

Sam’s advice for being an effective coach for leading change or a transformation:

Consider the relationship you have with this person (the four levels of relationship that Edgar Schein identifies are: ‘minus one’ relationship, transactional relationship, personal relationship, or intimate relationship) with the goal being ‘personal’

Have honesty about the mutual problem or the experience that is happening

Honor commitments and promises

Find that level of comfort where you both trust each other to be open and truthful

Share information (which can help foster that personal relationship)

Use relationship/team building exercises such as The Line Journey or Personal Maps

Model the behavior you’re expecting from them

Build a rapport so they’re open, transparent, and willing to share the true challenges that they may have

Live by Scrum values (which helps to build the relationship to the right level)

Use humble inquiry to build trust

Use diagnostic inquiry, confrontational inquiry, and process-oriented inquiry at your discretion

How to coach around resistance:

Make sure to ask more questions

Leave more space for the other person to talk

Go beyond the mechanics; which includes the values of Scrum

How do you build these skills?

Start by trying them on/practicing with someone who you already have a good, trusting, personal relationship with

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Sam Falco (LinkedIn)

Paul R. Lawrence

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, by Peter Block

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, by Edgar H. Schein

Humble Consulting: How to Provide Real Help Faster, by Edgar H. Schein

The Journey Line Exercise

Mind Map

Personal Map

Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team, by Jurgen Appelo

The Four Forms of Inquiry

Scrum Values

The Situation Behavior Impact Framework (SBI Model)Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 27: “Deep Drive on Scrum Values with Sam Falco”

Nimble: A Coaching Guide for Responsive Facilitation, by Rebecca Sutherns

 

Sam Falco’s Book Pick:

The Professional Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage, by Don McGreal and Ralph Jocham

 

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!

Joining Dan Neumann today is return guest — and his colleague at AgileThought — Sam Falco! Sam is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Professional with an extensive background leading Agile development teams

In today’s episode of the Agile Coaches’ Corner, returning guest and AgileThought colleague, Adam Ulery, will be joining the podcast!

 

Adam is a perpetually curious, continuous learner who is always willing to encourage others to try new things (as he very often does himself). He’s a Senior Agile Coach and investor in multifamily properties. He’s focused on helping organizations clarify and meet their business outcomes and loves to help companies become resilient, rediscover curiosity, and change their traditional approach to business.

 

Today they will be discussing Business Value Points (BVPs). Business Value Points are a way for for leaders, sponsors, and funders of a project to measure progress. It enables them to understand the progress being made towards building their product. Adam shares a more in-depth look at what BVPs are, why we should care, and breaks down what they measure! He also provides tons of practical tips and methods for generating BVPs for Product Backlog items.

 

Key Takeaways

What are business value points? And why should we care?

BVPs are a great way for leaders to measure progress against their investment

Provides leaders, sponsors, and funders of a project a way to understand the progress teams are making towards delivering value with their product

Compliments Story Points to give a more complete picture of the Product Backlog

What do Business Value Points measure?

BVPs measure the amount of value a feature or story is expected to deliver. The ratio between BVP and Story Points helps inform prioritization decisions

The three factors of Story Points: Complexity, Uncertainty, Effort

The three factors of Business Value Points: User Value, Time Criticality, Risk Reduction or Opportunity Enablement

Adam Ulrey breaks down the three factors in BVP:

User Value: the value of a particular feature to the business (or to the end user)

Time Criticality (or “Cost of Delay”): How important it is that the feature is released right now

Risk Reduction or Opportunity Enablement: Does doing this reduce the risk of future delivery? Is there value in the information we will receive? Will this unlock or enable new business opportunities in some way?

Ways to generate Business Value Points for Product Backlog Items:

Planning Poker

Card Sorting

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Adam Ulery (LinkedIn)

Planning Poker®

Card Sorting

Nimble: A Coaching Guide for Responsive Facilitation, by Rebecca Sutherns

 

Adam Ulery’s Book Pick:

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, by G. Edward Griffin

 

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 Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Today Adam and Dan will be discussing Business Value Points (BVPs). Business Value Points are a way for for leaders, sponsors, and funders of a project to measure progress. It enables them to understand the progress being made towards building their product. Adam shares a more in-depth look at what BVPs are, why we should care, and breaks down what they measure! He also provides tons of practical tips and methods for generating BVPs for Product Backlog items

Your host, Dan Neumann, is going solo this episode to explore the topic of cognitive bias. It’s impossible for us to logically process every piece of information we receive, so our brain has come up with shortcuts — simpler ways of processing information. Though this can serve us really well, unfortunately, to process information rapidly our brain has developed biases.

 

Today Dan covers many of the common cognitive biases, why they’re evolutionary helpful, and how they can affect agile teams. He also provides examples and gives solutions on how to combat these biases in an agile team. Some of the biases he covers are the anchoring bias, optimism bias, availability bias, illusory superiority, attribution bias, and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

 

Tune in to discover the cognitive biases you may not even know you had and learn how to combat them!

 

Key Takeaways

What is cognitive bias?

An error in the way our brain processes information

It’s impossible for us to logically process every piece of information we receive, so our brain has come up with shortcuts; simpler ways of processing information

Our brain has developed biases in order to process information rapidly

Common biases:

Information biases: errors in the way we process information (includes: anchoring, optimism, and availability biases)

Ego biases: errors in the way we see ourselves (includes illusory superiority)

Anchoring bias (where an individual relies too heavily on an initial piece of information offered to make subsequent decisions)

Optimism bias (where we generally believe ourselves to be less prone to negative events)

Availability bias (where we judge how important or how likely something is by how easy it is to think of an example)

Illusory superiority (known as the “above average” bias; we consider ourselves)

Attribution bias (where we tend to attribute our own successes to our innate abilities and our failures to bad luck, and others’ successes to circumstance and failures to incompetence)

Dunning-Kruger effect (where unskilled people tend to be overconfident and overestimate their abilities and highly skilled people underestimate their abilities and become frustrated with others)

How do cognitive biases affect agile teams?

Anchoring bias over-weights the first piece of information presented

Under pressure, anchoring can become even more pronounced

Anchoring in a retrospective can lead the meeting to revolve around the first topic mentioned

Optimism bias isn’t so helpful in a complex adaptive system, building software, and working in teams

Availability bias can affect those design systems because when we’re not clear about the end user we’re targeting; we tend to use our own references

How to combat and moderate cognitive biases:

Combat anchoring with silent writing, planning poker, and by simply sleeping on it to remove the pressure

Combat optimism bias by processing more complex information using the “beyond budgeting” approach: estimate, budget, and the expected outcome

Combat optimism by considering the opposite, many alternatives, or alternative plausibility

Combat availability bias by really doing your research; be aware you’re most prone to recall your most recent or most memorable event and conduct experiments to prove or disprove your bias

Moderate ego bias by creating safety; model getting feedback, evaluate the work and not the individual, bring data, and broaden your perspective

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Anchoring bias

Optimism bias

Availability bias

Illusory superiority

Attribution bias

Dunning-Kruger effect

Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review, by Norman L. Kerth

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 26: “How an Effective Leader Coaches with Joseph Carella”

 

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 Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Your host, Dan Neumann, is going solo this episode to explore the topic of cognitive bias. It’s impossible for us to logically process every piece of information we receive, so our brain has come up with shortcuts — simpler ways of processing information. Though this can serve us really well, unfortunately, to process information rapidly our brain has developed biases

This week, Dan Neumann is excited to bring on an agile Thoughtleader from the Wemanity Group, a Chair-Elect of the Agile Consortium International, and co-author of The Agile Manifesto on today — Arie van Bennekum. Arie is incredibly passionate about agility. Originally, Arie came from a very traditional environment as a developer and technical designer, but later switched to RAD and DSDM and then got involved with communities and began publishing, training, and coaching. Now, as a Thoughtleader with the Wemanity group, Arie focuses on helping individuals and organizations adopt the agile approach.

 

Today, he and Dan will be discussing common misconceptions and interpretations of The Agile Manifesto. They discuss the context in which The Agile Manifesto was first authored, how to transform from a traditional company to a more agile one, important aspects of using the agile method, some fun additional facts about the creation of The Agile Manifesto, challenges around business value, Agnostic Agile, important pieces that are often forgotten when moving to an agile method, and much more.

 

Key Takeaways

Facts about The Agile Manifesto:

Authored at the Lightweight Methods Conference in 2001

It’s a distillation of values and principles behind several lightweight methods that were in use at the time

Important aspects of using the agile method:

Agility is a way to avoid waste

Experimentation is at the heart of agility

Do Scrum by the values and not just by the rules

Empowerment of the team and great communication

A hunger for learning is key

“Perfection is not a state; perfection is an ambition” (you are constantly moving forward with agile)

Intentionally practice the basics and make it a natural part of work

Tooling is continuously changing in agile, so keep up that hunger

Don’t become complacent or sloppy with how you do the discipline

Implement improvement after retrospectives

Innovate

Face-to-face communication is the best way to convey information

Alignment on how the team works and great team structure

And of course: the four values and 12 principles of The Agile Manifesto

What is Agnostic Agile?

Being agnostic with agility (i.e. one size does not fit all, one framework is not the answer, etc.)

Don’t be dogmatic

Keep up with all learning

Explore all the agile practices and methods

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Arie van Bennekum (LinkedIn)

Wemanity Group

The Agile Manifesto

Agile Business Consortium

Agnostic Agile

Crystal Methods

Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

Rapid Application Development (RAD)

James Grenning

Ward Cunningham

Winston Churchill

The Four Values and 12 Principles of The Agile Manifesto

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. Ep. 26: “How an Effective Leader Coaches with Joseph Carella”

 

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!

Today, Arie and Dan will be discussing common misconceptions and interpretations of The Agile Manifesto. They discuss the context in which The Agile Manifesto was first authored, how to transform from a traditional company to a more agile one, important aspects of using the agile method, some fun additional facts about the creation of The Agile Manifesto, challenges around business value, Agnostic Agile, important pieces that are often forgotten when moving to an agile method, and much more

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by AgileThought colleague and return guest, Sam Falco! Sam is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Professional with an extensive background leading Agile development teams.

 

A few episodes ago they discussed Scrum and empirical process control and today they’ll be doing a deep dive on Scrum values!

 

One of the problems many people tend to face with Scrum is that it can feel very mechanical. But luckily, there is a solution to that. There’s a statement in the Scrum Guide that the successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living by five values; the values that drive Scrum. These values truly put the heart in Scrum — and they’re exactly what Sam will be talking about today!

 

Tune in to learn what these values are, why they are so critical to the success of Scrum teams, and how to apply these values. Sam also gives some examples of where he’s seen the values be really present (and, where they haven’t) in a Scrum team and the effect that it has on the organization overall.

 

Key Takeaways

The five values that put the heart in Scrum:

Commitment

Courage

Focus

Openness

Respect

Why these values are so critical to Scrum teams and how to apply them:

You need commitment to stay on track with Scrum

Openness and courage are key to having transparent and honest communication

Stay focused on the work of the sprint and the goals of the Scrum team

Stay focused on the sprint goal helps to eliminate distractions

Don’t get distracted by side projects and focus on the main task at hand (Sam recommends using personal Kanban boards)

Respect all members of the Scrum team to be capable, independent people

Show respect by showing where you have dependencies with the Scrum team

Show respect by not expecting everyone to know what you know

With openness and courage: share the whys, share the issues you ran into, how you overcame them, and where you need to escalate them

How to strengthen these values in your Scrum team:

See where they’re present and figure out where they can be strengthened

Bring it up in a retrospective and have some deeper conversations about it

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Sam Falco (LinkedIn)

The Scrum Guide

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 23: “Scrum and Empirical Process Control with Sam Falco”

Agile Coaches’ Corner Ep. 21: “Why Are Games Important to Agile? With Sam Falco”

Agnostic Agile

Kanban Guide from ProjectManager.com

Personal Kanban Board

Agile Manifesto

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, by Alex Hutchinson

 

Sam Falco’s Book Picks:

The Servant as Leader, by Robert K. Greenleaf

Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, by Alan Sillitoe

 

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!