The Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast is back this week with an episode all about plans. In today's episode, Peter and Dave continue their series on the Value Management Office by talking about the importance of planning. They discuss how planning is critical to successfully executing a project and how having a structure rather than starting from a blank sheet of paper can aid the planning process. They also explain why it is essential to understand the framework of a plan before creating one.

This week's takeaways:

• Coordinate over short distances.
• Having a frame to drop work into can be valuable.
• Avoid blank sheets of paper
• Priorities over the medium term, decisions at the team level in the short term.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected]

This week on the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave talk about VMO/ Product Office ways of working. They share their thoughts on the importance of understanding how the ways of working around a Value Management Office differ from those that we might associate with a project management office.

This week's takeaways:

• Shift to dedicated teams (no need for resource management)
• Outcomes over activity- specifically short timelines
• Start small and iterate. Continually deliver increments of value.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

In episode 59 of the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave discuss the different models of governing delivery. They talk about how project management offices and value management offices approach the same problem of transparency and governance differently.

This week's takeaways:

• Differences between models for governing delivery
• When and why a central office would be valuable
• Intensifying short cycle delivery of customer value

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

In this week's episode, Dave Sharrock and Peter Maddison share their insights about the decisions within an organization with technology and how we spend money from a technology perspective.

 This week's takeaways:

• Cost of doing business in a VUCA world.
• The unintended consequence of strategy.
• Technology is a strategic partner of the organization.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected]

This week Peter and Dave debate about constantly evolving technology and what that means for the business.

This week's takeaways:

• Let IT take care of it (it's part of your cost)
• Nothing is as permanent as a temporary change.
• Systems, assumptions, and changes cost more than you think
• Challenge your assumptions around TCO (e.g., depreciation)

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

If all you care about is rushing around, you'll miss learning opportunities that might make you more effective in your delivery. This week Peter and Dave talk about the impacts of innovation as a department.

This week's takeaways:

• Think of innovation as a culture across the organization.
• Innovation is everywhere.
• The psychological safety of making mistakes and learning from them is a foundational block in any learning organization.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

This week Peter and Dave will deconstruct a quote from Tom DeMarco. "Quality takes time and reduces the quantity, so it makes you, in a sense, less efficient. The organization that optimizes efficiency recognizes quality as its enemy. That's why many corporate quality programs are actually quality reduction programs in disguise."

This week's takeaways:

• Technology is cheap today, but the impact is expensive. 
• Organizations that test at the end reinforce the loop. 
• We now have more integration abilities between systems. 

Resources:
The machine that changed the world- https://www.amazon.com/Machine-That-Changed-World-Revolutionizing/dp/0743299795

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

Some projects never seem to end. Big upfront design results in long execution phases and eventually it becomes difficult to believe it will ever be delivered. This week, Peter and Dave discuss how to approach these seemingly never-ending projects once they are well underway. Having started this way, how can you bring it under control and apply what we know of business agility to move forwards again? 

 This week's takeaways:

• Stakeholder communication.
• Identify and prioritize
• Do one thing at a time.
• Work on the thing that will help us create stability and move forward.
•  Meanwhile, have everybody else focus on improving the integrations, fixing defects, and removing technical debt. 

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

 Learning from failure is an essential part of building your resilience. In this week's episode, Peter and Dave discuss how failure gives us the ability to improve and continually create more resilient systems.

This week's takeaways:

• The importance of understanding the resiliency of each part of our system in context of the whole system.
• Failure allows us to learn, and then we can rebuild stronger.
• Recognize that we need to persevere through failures to gain the benefits.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected] 

We're so happy to have made it to episode 52! This year has been full of guests and conversations about agility. We've also had the opportunity to share our expertise, so thank you for joining us on these journeys together—it's not going unnoticed.
This week's episode is about addressing your team's needs and not just forcing agile processes on them. You'll learn what happens when an organization doesn't put people first.

This week takeaways:

• The hiring process is our first impression. If we make a mess there, we're always going to be on our back foot.
• Talk about what's happening. Don't lie.
• Lead by example.

References in this episode:
Leaders Eat Last- Simon Sinek https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16144853-leaders-eat-last.

We love to hear feedback! If you have questions, would like to propose a topic, or even join us for a conversation, contact us here: [email protected]