Definitely, Maybe Agile

It's been a couple of years since people started working from home, and now the situation is leading companies to make changes again. How we're dealing with the challenge of returning to the office is the big question. This week Peter and Dave dive into the implications of returning to work.

 This week's takeaways:

• Mandatory returns are not psychologically safe.
• Be transparent about why things happen.
• Make it attractive

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 of the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave talk about the Governance of software delivery value streams. In particular, how to take into account organizational concerns like regulation and architecture while increasing your ability to delivery software faster.

This week's takeaways:

• Governance of delivery in terms of in-process requirements.
• TACO: Traceability, Accessibility, Compliance, and Operations.
• Also need to govern out of process requirements, architecture, data, privacy, security, and regulation.
• The out-of-the-process is often the brakes or the foils that will slow down the delivery.

Resources:
Securing Your Pipes with a TACO - https://youtu.be/E7UjGd7ZRo0

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] 

Nowadays, training in the Agile space, in some ways, has had a bad rep. It has left a bit of a stigma around what training we need. However, people generally agree there is significant value, so can we change how we approach training? When is training valuable? In this week's episode of the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave discuss how to make your training program effective.

 This week's takeaways: 

• Need training that provides a common lexicon
• Train principles and values over process and practices
• Learn through play
• Facilitates rapid organizational change and speed change
• Training can be made more powerful with coaching elements like follow-on support to reinforce learning

 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 of the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave talk about Nested Value Streams. They explain how to take a value stream concept that works well with a single product or service, and scale it up to an organization with hundreds of teams working on multiple products and services.

This week's takeaways:

• How value stream thinking helps to scale up our development capability from one team to many teams
• The boundaries between value streams do not have to be a physical handoff
• Value streams can be technically distinct
• Understand how to make priority trade-offs between value streams

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 62 of the Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, Peter and Dave uncover what they mean by value streams.

 This week's takeaways:

• Understand how your organization does things, so you can learn how to improve.
• Identify where to focus and how to prioritize by identifying constraints in your value streams.
• Optimize your organization to be able to deliver more effectively and faster.

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] 

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]