Badass Agile

By Fuse Chamber, IncTechnology

Badass Agile episodes

March 18, 2019 Badass Unscripted – Too Much of The Wrong Thing
As I was looking at yet another sales deck for which I was asked to comment on an Agile approach, I’m overwhelmed that even a meagre attempt to stick to the 7×7 rule of PowerPoint presentations is hopeless. Each slide reads like a high-school essay in 7-point Arial.
What would happen if we trained our people to connect at a lower level – to focus on the actual human needs we are satisfying when we offer our product? Specs and logic often only confirm what we deeply know – we buy things to feel good or to avoid feeling bad.
5 min
March 18, 2019Episode 88 – Working Around Fear
Now that we’ve learned some things about fear, what are some practical ways to work around it?
You don’t have to make change all at once
Remember, you have to deliver things that THEY (team, client, customer) value. Do that in small, low risk, low-impact ways, and they’ll ask you to do more
Always start with willing minds and projects that fit.
15 min
March 17, 2019 Episode 88 - Working Around Fear
Now that we’ve learned some things about fear, what are some practical ways to work around it?
* You don’t have to make change all at once
* Remember, you have to deliver things that THEY (team, client, customer) value. Do that in small, low risk, low-impact ways, and they’ll ask you to do more
* Always start with willing minds and projects that fit.
15 min
March 13, 2019 Badass Unscripted - Too Much of The Wrong Thing
As I was looking at yet another sales deck for which I was asked to comment on an Agile approach, I’m overwhelmed that even a meagre attempt to stick to the 7x7 rule of PowerPoint presentations is hopeless. Each slide reads like a high-school essay in 7-point Arial.What would happen if we trained our people to connect at a lower level - to focus on the actual human needs we are satisfying when we offer our product? Specs and logic often only confirm what we deeply know - we buy things to feel good or to avoid feeling bad.
5 min
March 11, 2019 Badass Answers – Keeping Procrastinators on the Rails and Being vs. Doing Agile
Today, we’ve got two killer listener questions, one to do with procrastination in agile team members, and the other on the difference between Being and Doing Agile. What I love most about these questions is that they go to the heart of our philosophy. That’s this week….
Both of these questions go to the heart of the Badass Agile Philosophy
Agile, Scrum and Kanban, etc are all about minimum rails. Enough process to fix most of your common problems and enough flexibility and simplicity to shape them to fit the uncommon problems
To cure a procrastinator, you might need carrots and sticks to get them in the room initially, but if you focus your daily stand-ups on making and keeping promises to each other, you’re golden. Most people value loyalty or fear losing face in front of others. Also, use the idea of MVP in everything you do. If people are procrastinating to the point where work is not getting started until the 11th hour, break big things into small things and re-focus on an MVP if scope continues to slip. In retrospective, you can commit to improvements. This way, nobody loses face.
Doing Agile is all about the techniques, which are easy enough to learn, but also present two major risks – by focusing on individual techniques, we forget to focus on the bigger picture and underlying principles that help us when situations are less than ordinary, AND we create unnecessary complexity under the assumption that more information is better, when really we ought to be integrating information into a cohesive whole that drives our leadership. Being Agile means applying agile principles to your leadership game – continually inspecting and adapting YOURSELF, applying value-based prioritization and iterative planning, execution and measurement to your leadership game…this not only teaches you how to be a better agilest, but a better leader as well.
13 min
March 10, 2019 Badass Answers - Keeping Procrastinators on the Rails and Being vs. Doing Agile
Today, we’ve got two killer listener questions, one to do with procrastination in agile team members, and the other on the difference between Being and Doing Agile. What I love most about these questions is that they go to the heart of our philosophy. That’s this week….
* Both of these questions go to the heart of the Badass Agile Philosophy
* Agile, Scrum and Kanban, etc are all about minimum rails. Enough process to fix most of your common problems and enough flexibility and simplicity to shape them to fit the uncommon problems
* To cure a procrastinator, you might need carrots and sticks to get them in the room initially, but if you focus your daily stand-ups on making and keeping promises to each other, you’re golden. Most people value loyalty or fear losing face in front of others. Also, use the idea of MVP in everything you do. If people are procrastinating to the point where work is not getting started until the 11th hour, break big things into small things and re-focus on an MVP if scope continues to slip. In retrospective, you can commit to improvements. This way, nobody loses face.
* Doing Agile is all about the techniques, which are easy enough to learn, but also present two major risks - by focusing on individual techniques, we forget to focus on the bigger picture and underlying principles that help us when situations are less than ordinary, AND we create unnecessary complexity under the assumption that more information is better, when really we ought to be integrating information into a cohesive whole that drives our leadership. Being Agile means applying agile principles to your leadership game - continually inspecting and adapting YOURSELF, applying value-based prioritization and iterative planning, execution and measurement to your leadership game…this not only teaches you how to be a better agilest, but a better leader as well.
12 min
March 04, 2019 Badass Unscripted – Your One Thing
What’s the one thing you’ve always been good at?
Knowing your ‘one thing’ allows you to link your passion to your profession, even if they seem completed unrelated
Having that passion allows you to anchor all of your communications in areas where you feel confident and enthusiastic, which reflects in how you show up for your teams.
This is what creates your unique value – your teaching and leading style
6 min
March 04, 2019Episode 87 – Fear of Failure
Fear of failure surfaces at every level of your organization
In individuals, teams, units, leadership
It is a perfectly natural human instinct. People don’t want to lose face, lose trust, or lose security in the form of their jobs, prospects, opportunity for growth, and pay
However, fear of failure creates several forms of waste and loss:
Hesitation (doubt, uncertainty, procrastination)
Resistance to change
Stonewalling – resistance to team
Overcompensating with process to gain certainty and safety (planning, consensus building, failsafes, estimation
All of these result in very poor performance
The antidote is in the the culture you build
Hesitation – train people (through Agile Games, for example) the value of quick decisioning, and give them safety nets when their rapid experiments fail
Pull change, don’t push it
Connect more authentically with people’s sense of purpose, values, and needs.
Again, start with willing minds and projects that fit – lower risk, less need for documentation – and pull people to you with the results
Demonstrate, visibly, the results of thinking and acting in this way, and find people who will reward it (hint, you don’t need execs to approve incentives)
17 min
February 26, 2019 Badass Unscripted - Your One Thing
What’s the one thing you’ve always been good at?
* Knowing your ‘one thing’ allows you to link your passion to your profession, even if they seem completed unrelated
* Having that passion allows you to anchor all of your communications in areas where you feel confident and enthusiastic, which reflects in how you show up for your teams.
* This is what creates your unique value - your teaching and leading style
6 min
February 25, 2019 Badass Answers – Timelines and Predictions
How do you handle date and deadline pressures in Agile Environments?
A listener sends us his question on what to do if you are pressured in the early days of a project to commit to specific deliverables on certain dates
Remember that some projects reasonably require delivery commitments – especially those with regulatory, audit, or compliance expectations. These may not make great first experiments in Agility, because Agile requires flexible scope in order to work well with the philosophy
It is also perfectly normal for a business to want to make promises to its customers (and therefore demand them from its delivery teams)
Agile provides a better model that allows for continuous scope negotiation. This requires trust between product owner and team
Attitudes and beliefs, or ‘frames’ have to change in order for the ‘when by’ culture to change
19 min