Agile Coaches' Corner

Barry is an agile thinker, an expert in the DevOps space, and a colleague of Dan’s at AgileThought — serving as a Senior DevOps Consultant. Prior to his role at AgileThought, he was the Director of Enterprise Applications at Kforce Inc.

In this week’s episode of Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann is joined by two of his colleagues at AgileThought — the Vice President of Build Practice, Taylor Howard; and the Vice President of Transform Practice, Steven Granese.

 

Taylor’s work with Build Practice involves supporting the absolute best practitioners in the business — including Data Scientists, Architects, Delivery Leaders, Engineers, and Analysts with multiple technical competencies and domain experience. Taylor and his team translate business strategy into a technical roadmap, delivering cloud-first and hybrid solutions at a global scale. Steven’s work with Transform Practice is focused on organizational consulting. They help their clients figure out the right way to work, the right product to build, how to implement Agile ways of working, and DevOps (i.e., how to get that software that the teams have created to the production environment and make sure it’s stable, scalable, and secure).

 

Today, Taylor and Steven will be discussing the challenges with large-scale software delivery and how to overcome them. With scaling comes a whole different set of challenges so Taylor and Steven not only outline many of the challenges their clients are facing today but some of the challenges they’re facing internally, at AgileThought, as they scale themselves.

 

Key Takeaways

• Challenges with scaling:
  • Understanding what the business outcomes are that the client is looking for
• • Aligning the stakeholders to make sure that they truly understand each other’s vision and are speaking the same language
  • Making sure that the teams are coordinated (i.e. everyone is headed towards the same goal and they’re being measured in the same way)
  • The danger of issues getting buried
  • The ways teams interact (or don’t interact) with each other
  • Getting connected to your customer
  • Making sure there’s alignment with the objective that’s to be achieved
• How to address these challenges:
• • Implement Agile ways of working
  • Look at areas that need improvement and have active feedback cycles
  • Use data to support all the teams (to either replicate the good or improve the not-so-good), bringing them to the same level with more predictable outcomes
  • Be transparent, inspect, and adapt
  • Embrace a culture of curiosity and ask questions about the data
  • Blame the system; not the person
  • Leaders need to make sure the system is healthy so the teams have what they need and can be freed up to do what they do best — build software
  • More time needs to be spent communicating the dependencies
  • Lots of feedback loops and channels for communication
  • Be pragmatic in delivery
  • Align to the larger vision
  • Moving from an “us/them” mentality to a “we” mentality (amongst the teams)
• Mentioned in this Episode:
  • Taylor Howard (LinkedIn)
  • Steven Granese (LinkedIn)
  • Agile Manifesto
  • Podcast Ep. 12: “The Importance of Embedding a DevOps Skill Set into Your Team”
  • Podcast Ep. 02: “What is a Full-Cycle Developer?”
• Taylor and Steven’s Book Picks
  • The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done,
  • by Stephen Denning
  • Scrum Mastery: From Good To Great Servant-Leadership, by Geoff Watts
• 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 of Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann is joined by two of his colleagues at AgileThought — the Vice President of Build Practice, Taylor Howard; and the Vice President of Transform Practice, Steven Granese

In this week’s episode of Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann welcomes back a return guest — Quincy Jordan! Quincy is a Principal Transformation Consultant and has been with AgileThought for about one year now. Previous to that, he has served as a Principal Consultant and Agile Coach at SCRUMstudy.com for over six years. Quincy’s mission is to help companies and people who are ineffective in their own mission by assisting them in transforming from what they are to what they desire to be.

 

Today, they’re going to be exploring the topic of cultural debt — which, much like financial debt, comes with the cost that it has to be paid back over time. Quincy explains, in detail, what cultural debt is, and what needs to happen to avoid it. He also gives some examples from organizations who have experienced cultural debt so you don’t have to make the same mistakes too!

 

Key Takeaways

What is cultural debt?

• If you don’t modify the culture as you roll out changes, bad habits and behaviors within the organization begin to build over time
• Eventually, these bad behaviors that occur can ultimately negatively affect business outcomes
• It can become a severe problem that can become difficult to unravel down the line

Some examples of cultural debt:

• If leaders take something away from middle management without giving a replacement, communication begins to deteriorate
• If a leader isolates themselves and does not support a collaborative culture, you won’t achieve the needed level of transparency within your team and the culture starts breaking down
• An organization focused more on “burning hours” rather than delivering value can cause the culture to suffer and less productivity to be had

What needs to happen to avoid cultural debt:

• The cultural change that happens at the leadership level also needs to happen at the team level
• The leaders need to empower the teams and the teams need to take risks to be more self-directed
• Leaders need to make sure they do not become siloed
• Leaders need to support a collaborative culture and be a part of it also
• Strategically build trust and transparency

A change Quincy sees at the leadership level that really helps to address cultural debt:

• Making the shift from annual budgets to iterative investments

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Quincy Jordan

Agile Manifesto

HiPPO Culture

Gantt Chart

The Reengineering Alternative, by William E. Schneider

 

Quincy Jordan’s Book Pick

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

 

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, they’re going to be exploring the topic of cultural debt — which, much like financial debt, comes with the cost that it has to be paid back over time. Quincy explains, in detail, what cultural debt is, and what needs to happen to avoid it. He also gives some examples from organizations who have experienced cultural debt so you don’t have to make the same mistakes too!

In this week’s episode of Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann brings on a colleague of his at AgileThought to explore the topic of design thinking — Chris Spagnuolo. Chris is one of the Product Specialists at AgileThought, serving as Principal Consultant of Product Management and Innovation. He has a deep background in a lot of things from a products standpoint and is incredibly passionate about all things related to design thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile.

 

Dan and Chris give their insight on what design thinking is, where it came from, its core elements, and how to incorporate it into overall delivery. Chris also gives his advice around design thinking and where he sees it developing in the future.

 

Key Takeaways

What design thinking is:

• Designing products with people in mind
• Focusing on understanding the problem that you’re solving and understanding the person that you’re solving it for, and then building a solution
• A fluid process with a loose methodology
• Building a product, having the real end user test it, and incorporating their feedback

The five core elements of design thinking:

1. Empathize: get to know your customer on a personal level (who they are, what they do, and what they’re trying to do)
2. Define: looking at how you can start to frame the problem that your customer has
3. Ideate: coming up with as many ideas as possible that can solve that problem
4. Prototype: create lots of low-fi prototypes to see if these solutions solve the problem
5. Test: give the customer the solution, test it with them, and collect the feedback without bringing your own biases or opinions in

And remember: you don’t have to go through these core elements in this order; you can go back to any of them at any time to get it right

Chris’ advice around design thinking:

• Small batch things and solve small parts at a time
• Support continuous discovery
• The more feedback the better; don’t make false assumptions about how to go forward

How to incorporate design thinking into the overall delivery:

• Getting feedback from real end users to incorporate
• Start up an input committee and get real customers that well-represent the end users to sit on the team
• Get feedback on each iteration
• Make sure there’s somebody holding the vision and focusing the feedback back into the iterative process

Where Chris sees design thinking being applied in the future:

• Escaping the realm of product development and instead permeating business in general
• Being brought into the organizational level for better engagement
• All decisions within the business

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Chris Spagnuolo (LinkedIn)

Stanford Design School

The Five Core Elements of Design Thinking (Visual + Definition) “What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?”

Podcast Ep. 12: “The Importance of Embedding a DevOps Skill Set into Your Team”

 

Chris’s Book Pick

The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll, by Ian S. Port

 

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 of Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann brings on a colleague of his at AgileThought to explore the topic of design thinking — Chris Spagnuolo. Chris is one of the Product Specialists at AgileThought, serving as Principal Consultant of Product Management and Innovation. He has a deep background in a lot of things from a products standpoint and is incredibly passionate about all things related to design thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile

Dan Neumann is excited to bring you another fantastic colleague of his on today’s show — Mike Cooper! Mike has an extensive background in negotiation and experience with restructuring bank deals, brokerages, negotiating property sales, and managing a bunch of sales folks. After a long and successful career leading software organizations, Mike now focuses entirely on technology consulting and is a Senior Cloud Technical Architect at AgileThought.

 

In this episode, Mike takes Dan through the foundational elements to ethical negotiating and gives his tips and techniques on how to generate positive, win/win outcomes. He explains what ethical negotiating is and how it is different from the regular, political negotiating, as well as general problems that may arise during ethical negotiation.

 

Key Takeaways

What is ethical negotiating?

• Based upon the concept that if an organization is going to do a deal, it’s going to be a win/win deal or there’s going to be no deal at all
• Structured around mutual problem solving and long-term relationship building
• Meant to solve problems when there’s a conflict and often is fun and involves a lot of creativity
• Foundational elements to successful ethical negotiating:

Start by focusing on the people; not the problem

• You want to work together; on the same side of the table with your “adversary”
• Slow down and spend time talking and understanding the people
• Remove the time pressure and think of things in the long-term
• Generate a lot of options (usually the first option is not the best)
• True collaboration leads to a win/win solution for the shared problem
• Reschedule and take personal time if you feel you are freezing under pressure
• Walk away from a deal where you’re not set up for a win/win
• Plan before your negotiation session, do your homework, and bring some options to the table initially

Problems that can arise in negotiating:

• If you feel rushed you may skip generating a lot of options
• Freezing under pressure from conflict or time strains
• You can’t feel like a winner unless you’ve put your issues on the table, too
• You will get pushed around if you keep caving in negotiating (which also leads to a poor long-term relationship, too)

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Mike Cooper (LinkedIn)

 

Mike Cooper’s Book Picks

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by William L. Ury, Roger Fisher, and Bruce M. Patton

The Laws of Human Nature, by Robert Greene

 

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, Mike takes Dan through the foundational elements to ethical negotiating and gives his tips and techniques on how to generate positive, win/win outcomes. He explains what ethical negotiating is and how it is different from the regular, political negotiating, as well as general problems that may arise during ethical negotiation

Your host, Dan Neumann, is excited to bring you two guests for this week’s episode — repeat guest, Eric Landes, and Barry Matheney. Eric and Barry are both Agile thinkers, experts in the DevOps space, and colleagues of Dan at AgileThought.

 

Eric Landes is a Scrum.org certified professional Scrum trainer and currently serves as a Senior DevOps Consultant, ALM Director, and Solutions Architect. Barry also is a Senior DevOps Consultant. Previously to his role at AgileThought, he served as Director Enterprise Applications at Kforce Inc.

 

Today, they’re talking about DevOps and the importance of having it on Scrum teams. They cover whether it is good or bad that there are barriers between Agile, Scrum, and DevOps; what well-functioning Scrum teams look like when they have a DevOps skillset embedded into them; how to incorporate DevOps into organizations; what a DevOps skillset could bring to a team; and how DevOps can fit into even the most traditional of companies.

 

Key Takeaways

Is it good or bad that there are barriers between Agile or Scrum and DevOps?

• It is disadvantageous to separate DevOps from Agile or Scrum because it is important that your team has all the skills they need to deliver software
• You need the DevOps skillset on your team and it should be a goal to incorporate it

What do well-functioning Scrum teams look like when they have DevOps skillsets embedded into them?

• Self-sufficient
• Not limited by dependence on other teams or organizations
• Eliminates walls and allows for continuous delivery

How to incorporate DevOps into organizations:

• Use baby steps
• Use it to inform the beginning of the development cycle and product decisions down the line

What the DevOps skillset brings to a team:

• Experimentation or hypothesis-driven development
• Rapid deployment and continuous delivery
• Tons of not-so-visible benefits (such as auditing, compliance, security, deployability, and testability)

How DevOps can fit into traditional companies:

• Remove constraints (such as specific deployment dates)
• Automate the value the compliance brings

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Eric Landes (LinkedIn) Barry Matheney (LinkedIn)

The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations, by Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, and Jez Humble

Podcast Ep. 9: “Exploring Expert Facilitation Tips with Adam Ulery”

SRE — Site Reliability Engineering

Cowboy coding

 

Eric Landes and Barry Matheney’s Book Picks

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

Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale, by Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, and Barry O’Reilly

Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations, by Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell

 

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!