Agile Coaches' Corner

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

Today’s guest is Betty Pierce, a Senior UI/UX Developer at AgileThought. Betty has extensive skills in various front-end frameworks and libraries including React Native, React, and AngularJS. She is also the Director of Women Who Code Tampa and Trainer for GDI Tampa Bay. Her main passion is building front-end architectures for enterprise apps.

 

In this episode, Betty gives her perspective on the coding groups for women; the women’s groups she is a part of; how she, as an organizer, makes these groups accessible and welcoming for new members; how she runs the groups and participates in them; and how to get involved in these women-oriented groups yourself. She also gives her tips on how to get started and break into the industry as a woman!

 

Key Takeaways

About the groups Betty helps run and their benefits:

• Helps women stay in the technology profession (especially in the software and development field)
• Nice to have other women to relate to in a field mostly dominated by men
• As an organizer, how did Betty make these groups welcoming for new members?
• She picked an accessible, central location
• All events are free
• Offers a lot of introductory classes and meet-ups
• Always encourages members to join in and not be intimidated

Betty’s tips for getting started and breaking into this industry as a woman:

• Get uncomfortable and try new things
• Your approach and outlook with problem-solving may be different as a woman so don’t be afraid to speak up
• Go back to basics (composition 101) when presenting a topic
• Immerse yourself in events and local meetup groups (such as a Hackathon or one of Betty’s groups) to get exposure and brush up on your knowledge

Betty’s tips for getting involved in these women-oriented coding groups:

• Put yourself out there
• Encourage your friends and bring them along
• Don’t worry — other women will be there and they’re not a judgmental group

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Betty Pierce’s LinkedIn and Twitter

Women Who Code

Women Who Code Tampa Girl Develop It

Girl Develop It Tampa Bay

Girls Who Code

Women Who Code Hackathon

Meetup

Suncoast Developers Guild

Suncoast Developers Guild Jr.

 

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’s guest is Betty Pierce, a Senior UI/UX Developer at AgileThought. Betty has extensive skills in various front-end frameworks and libraries including React Native, React, and AngularJS. She is also the Director of Women Who Code Tampa and Trainer for GDI Tampa Bay. Her main passion is building front-end architectures for enterprise apps

Today on the Agile Coaches’ Corner, your host, Dan Neumann invites on Sean Davis to explore the DevOps movement. Sean is one of Dan’s colleagues at AgileThought and is a DevOps expert and frequent conference speaker. He has been a Business Transformation Consultant at AgileThought for nearly two years now and previously was a Technical Advisor at InterContinental Hotel Groups.

 

In this episode, Dan and Sean explore the background and history behind DevOps, where they believe it is headed in the future, the enablers that help teams be most effective with DevOps, important mindsets to bring to DevOps, as well as both the challenges and benefits of DevOps not having a defined manifesto or framework.

 

Key Takeaways

Challenges Sean sees the most without a manifesto in terms of defining good DevOps:

• It is harder to get education around it
• Lack of standardization
• Lots of interpretations of what DevOps is

The benefits of DevOps not having a defined manifesto or framework:

• Freedom to create different frameworks around what works best for a customer or organization so it’s much more adaptive
• A supported culture of collaboration
• Able to adapt and grow more easily over the years
• Continuous learning

Important mindsets to bring into DevOps:

• Focus on connecting the dots of Dev and Ops
• Work together as a team and articulate that to the business
• Get every stakeholder of the business involved
• Don’t do things in a vacuum
• Learn from every experience, good or bad
• Effectively debrief so you’re continuously improving and learning
• A strong culture with expectations

Where Sean sees DevOps headed and where he thinks it should head:

• A possible name change as the name itself is limiting
• Not to think of DevOps in such a narrow way and instead, think of how to radiate it throughout the entire organization
• Be more careful about building silos in communities
• Move towards a model similar to ADAPT (which ties together Transformation, Agile, DevOps, and Product all into one executable transformation)
• DevSecOps and a greater culture of collaboration

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Sean Davis (LinkedIn)

Agile Manifesto

Patrick Debois (AKA the Godfather of DevOps)

John Willis’ framework, CAMS

DevOps Institute

ITSM Academy

Gene Kim’s ‘Three Ways’

Scrum

DevSecOps

Azure Terraform

Xebialabs

VSTS (Azure DevOps)

Derek Wade

Tom Gilmore, creator of ADAPT

 

Sean Davis’ Book Picks

The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

Reinventing Organizations, by Frederic Laloux

 

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, Dan and Sean explore the background and history behind DevOps, where they believe it is headed in the future, the enablers that help teams be most effective with DevOps, important mindsets to bring to DevOps, as well as both the challenges and benefits of DevOps not having a defined manifesto or framework.

Joining Dan Neumann today is returning guest, Adam Ulery, a colleague of his at AgileThought.

 

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

 

This week, Dan and Adam explore some facilitation tips. Facilitation is an incredibly important skill for many different roles, so in this episode, Dan and Adam explore both basic tips as well as some pro tips. There are many great, key takeaways on how you, as a facilitator, should handle the group, prepare accordingly, use effective tools to gain consensus during meetings, and allow your group to make the most of the meet-up and get where they need to go.

 

Key Takeaways

Types of roles that need solid facilitation skills:

• Scrum master
• Any type of coach (Agile or otherwise)
• Anyone who’s going to be leading meetings, workshops, or training

What types of events facilitation skills are used for?

• Sprint planning, daily Scrums, sprint reviews, and retrospectives
• Workshops where you’re trying to teach a concept to a group of people
• Release planning or quarterly planning events

The basics of good facilitation:

• As a facilitator, you should be preparing in advance, getting info radiators up, and understand the goal of the session
• Information radiators should be concise, clear, valuable, seen by everyone, and include the agenda, parking lot, and working agreement
• A good room setup (including big flip charts or large amounts of whiteboards)
• Clarify the roles in the meeting
• Really utilize the parking lot tool to table items without the risk of losing sight of them and be able to continue to discuss the important topics at hand

Useful facilitator tools/deciding tactics for gaining consensus or attention:

• Roman voting
• Fist of five
• Show of hands for a simple yes or no decision
• Raise your hand, quietly
• Dot voting (to narrow down topics)

Adam’s Pro facilitation tips:

• Let the group make the decision; the facilitator should remain neutral and not drive the group to make a particular decision
• If you must wear two hats, make it clear when you’re switching from facilitator to group member
• Control your own reactions to not influence your audience
• Actively listen and clarify (even if it seems obvious)
• Work hard to stay out of their way, be self-aware, and allow them to get where they’re going
• Encourage workflow and be the guardrails
• Allow people to be heard but don’t let them take over the conversation

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Roman voting

Fist of five

Dot voting

Eric Landes (LinkedIn)

Agile Coaches’ Corner episode with Eric Landes

 

Adam Ulery’s Book Picks

Ben Franklin: America’s Original Entrepreneur, by Blaine McCormick and Benjamin Franklin

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom, by Robert Kiyosaki

 

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 and Adam explore some facilitation tips. Facilitation is an incredibly important skill for many different roles, so in this episode, Dan and Adam explore both basic tips as well as some pro tips. There are many great, key takeaways on how you, as a facilitator, should handle the group, prepare accordingly, use effective tools to gain consensus during meetings, and allow your group to make the most of the meet-up and get where they need to go

Today’s topic is all about retrospectives! A retrospective is a short meeting for project teams to reflect on the most recent stage of their project, analyze their processes, and identify issues or things they can do better, moving forward.

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.

Dan and Sam dive deep into discussing Agile retrospectives, going over the five phases of the widely accepted framework from Esther Derby’s and Diana Larsen’s book, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. They also discuss what makes an effective retrospective, some of the failure patterns in unsuccessful retrospectives, and some great resources on retrospectives to follow up on after this week’s show!

 

Key Takeaways

The 5 phases of the Agile Retrospectives framework:

1. Set the Stage
2. Gather Data
3. Generate Insights
4. Decide What to Do
5. Close the Retrospective

What makes an effective retrospective?

• Engage the team in ‘setting the stage’ activities (as it is imperative for the team to effectively work together)
• Track useful and pertinent data to bring to the retrospective
• Leverage an experimental mindset
• Generate insights by digging deeper beyond the superficial issues by using the 5 Whys
• Narrow down the list, make the list doable/actionable, hold people accountable, and follow through
• Show appreciation for your teammates
• Ask for feedback as a facilitator to improve future retrospectives

What are some failure patterns?

• Making the cycles too short and time-cutting due to no value
• Covering the same issues every time without any experiment to fix it
• Turning the retrospective into an unproductive complaint session
• Having a long list of too many things to change (which dilutes focus)
• Declaring your hands are tied and the problem cannot be fixed

 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Diana Larsen

Agile Coaches’ Corner episode: “Exploring an Experimental Mindset with Adam Ulery”

5 Whys

Retromat

The Thiagi Group

Fun Retrospectives

Liberating Structures

1-2-4-All

Agile Coaches’ Corner episode: “Setting Up Working Agreements with Christy Erbeck”

Rory’s Story Cubes

Retrium

 

Dan Neumann and Sam Falco’s Book Picks

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives — A Toolbox of Retrospectives Exercises, by Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim

Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts., by Brené Brown

 

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’s topic is all about retrospectives! A retrospective is a short meeting for project teams to reflect on the most recent stage of their project, analyze their processes, and identify issues or things they can do better, moving forward.

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

Today on the Agile Coaches’ Corner, Dan Neumann is joined by Ryan Dorrell, the Chief Solutions Officer, and one of the co-founders of AgileThought. He leads the strategic design of their portfolio of offerings and services across their practice areas, focusing on understanding what the future looks like for their clients and how they can best serve them.

 

In this episode, Dan and Ryan explore the topic of product management. Ryan explains what it is, the ideal skill set and thinking that goes into it, the benefits, and his own tips and techniques around it. He also goes in-depth about the differences between projects vs. products — and why you really should be joining the #noprojects movement!

 

Key Takeaways

• What is (software) product management? And what goes into it?
• • A lot of creativity, diverse skill set, and a different mindset around solving problems
  • Continuously delivering value and aligning with products and services that provide to customers
  • Solves a problem in a unique way
  • Engaging with customers for feedback loops
  • Customer journey maps, user story mapping, design thinking, and workshops
• The benefits of product management:
• • Builds empathy with customers and focuses on understanding their needs
  • Addresses the user experience
  • Helps to make systems more delightful and engaging to use
• Ryan’s tips and techniques around product management:
• • Go start learning and understanding the aspect of taking products to market
  • Be prepared to learn a lot of new skills and techniques
• ● Projects vs. Products:
• • A project is a temporary endeavor (to create a product or service) with a deadline
  • A product satisfies a need, a want, or solves a problem and continuously evolves with customers/users feedback
  • With product management, there is less focus on timesheets and more focus on the product itself
  • Projects stop and start, while products respond to change
• Mentioned in this Episode:
  • Chris Spagnuolo
  • Twitter (products vs. projects): #NoProjects
• Ryan Dorrell’s Book Picks
  • User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product, by Jeff Patton
  • Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework, by Mik Kersten
  • #noprojects: A Culture of Continuous Value, by Evan Leybourn and Shane Hastie
  • INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, by Marty Cagan
  • Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams, by James Kalbach
• 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!