In almost every CSM or CSPO class that Dave teaches he gets asked to explain the difference between Scrum and Kanban. So, in this episode of SoundNotes, Jessica Wolfe, Derek Huether, and  Dave take turns responding to the question and detailing some of the main differences between two of the most popular approaches to Agile.

If you'd like to reach out to Jessica, Derek or Dave for more—here's their contact info:

If you’d like to contact Jessica you can reach her at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/jessica-wolfe/

If you’d like to contact Derek you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you're interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified ScrumMaster or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

“Culture is just the boogeyman people use when they don't know how to articulate an organizational change management strategy that executives will buy into.”

In this episode of SoundNotes, LeadingAgile CEO, Mike Cottmeyer shares his thoughts on why we need to stop blaming culture when organizations are unable to adopt Agile. During the interview, Mike and Dave dig into the reasons why many of the organizations that struggle with Agile are dealing with deeply rooted mechanisms that extend far beyond culture. Unfortunately, one of the most common refrains in the Agile community is that the culture is the primary thing that must be addressed, and once that is solved, the rest will take care of itself. For many organizations that buy into the promise of Agile without having clarity on the organizational impediments they must overcome for Agile to be able to exist, maybe culture isn't the best place to start.

If you'd like to read Mike's blog post on the topic, you can find it here: https://bit.ly/2pO8YU4

If you’d like to contact Mike you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you're interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified ScrumMaster or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

This episode of SoundNotes features a question submitted by a student in one of Dave's recent CSPO classes. Maheesh’s question centers on how to apply Scrum on a project that involves BI reporting and ETL. Since Jessica Wolfe and Derek Huether both have far more experience in that type of work than Dave does, he asked them to help him respond to the question.

Here's the question we got from Maheesh:

“As a Product Owner for a BI reporting platform I typically get requests for new reports and this might entail bringing the data from a CRM platform or any other platform into the data warehouse so that that requires building ETL for that and developing the report on top of that. Which typically cannot be done within a two week Sprint. So how would I go about taking this requirement from the customer and converting into shippable user stories that can be delivered through a Scrum methodology?”

If you'd like to reach out to Jessica, Derek or Dave for more, here is their contact info:

Contacting Jessica

If you’d like to contact Jessica you can reach her at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/jessica-wolfe/

If you’d like to contact Derek you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

After co-teaching a CSM class in Atlanta earlier this week, Tim Wise and Dave Prior sat down to talk about  Empathy in Agile. During their conversation, they dug into why empathy is such an important factor in developing an Agile mindset, working with teams, building trust, and helping your organization adopt an Agile approach to work.

Tim and Dave also offer some advice on:

• How you can go about trying to develop empathy towards those up and down the org chart

The Responsibility Process by Christopher Avery

• Email: [email protected]

• Email: [email protected]

If you have comments on the podcast, or have questions for the LeadingAgile coaches that you’d like to have addressed in a future episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, you can reach Dave at [email protected]

For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: http://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

This episode of SoundNotes is all about Vision Statements. Dave Prior offers his thoughts on why they're so critical to the success of your team and how to go about putting one together.

One of the most important things a Product Owner can do to help the Development Team deliver value for the customer is to make sure they have clarity on the context of the problem they are trying to solve. If the Dev Team is just being given User Stories, and there's no understanding of the problem-space in which the story lives, it's going to be much harder for the Dev Team to make the choices that will maximize value for the customer.

Also, Vision Statements are one of the best ways a Product Owner can make sure that all the stakeholders are in agreement about what problem is being solved, who it's helping, and why it matters. If the Vision Statement is documented and agreed upon by all the stakeholders, it is going to be a lot easier to keep them in sync with one another.

Listen as Dave presents two very popular templates that can be used to create Vision Statements and walks you through how to go about putting them together.

Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm (3rd Edition) 

Roman Pichler's Product Vision Board

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you're interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

In this episode of LeadingAgile’s SoundNotes, Derek Huether and Dave Prior take on the topic of Leading and Lagging Indicators. During the podcast they discuss how Key Performance indicators can help guide you towards an understanding of what to track with the expectation that it will create a certain result in the future (leading indicators), and what to measure in order to confirm if that result has in fact occurred (lagging indicators).

One example they touch on in the podcast is:  if you are trying to lose weight, tracking things like how much you exercise and how many calories you are consuming each day are leading indicators because it is reasonable to expect that if you are exercising regularly and limiting your caloric intake, that these actions could result in you losing weight. This is a way of tracking the actions you are taking to in order to bring about a desired change. But, we still need a way to confirm if the desired result has actually occurred. The only way you will know if you have actually lost weight, is to climb up on the scale and check your weight. That is a lagging indicator because it confirms whether or not the actions you took had resulted in the desired outcome.

Audio Version Only:

Links

If you’d like to learn more about Leading and Lagging Indicators, check out Derek’s recent blog post on the topic here: https://www.leadingagile.com/2018/02/leading-lagging-indicators/

Contacting Derek

If you’d like to contact Derek you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

In this week's episode of SoundNotes, Derek Huether and Dave Prior respond to a question from a student who works in a long-standing supply chain organization that wants to move to Agile, but has questions about how to get started.

Here's the question:

I took your scrum master class and your product owner class a couple weeks ago and I got a lot out of it. Thanks so much for everything you did for everyone in the class. 

After taking the class I was thinking about how I could apply what I’ve learned to my organization and to all of our customers who are thinking about implementing Scrum Teams in their supply chain organizations. 

So, what my question is for you Dave is, what do you think is needed for an organization to transform to develop an Agile mindset across the organization and develop successful scrum teams? 

I’d imagine that new organizations have the benefit of not having a status quo to compare it to so you don’t have to deal with change so they can start with Agile mindsets and they can start Scrum teams from the get go, but organizations that have been established and have been around for decades and even centuries have the challenge of having a traditional way of doing things. 

So they have to get over the change management and implementing and changing the way they think… it seems like a lot to do for an organization so I’m curious to see what your thoughts are on what an organization that’s established…what they should do?

If you’d like to contact Derek you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

This week Jessica Wolfe and Dave Prior respond to a question about how to be an effective ScrumMaster when you are not in the same location as your team. To complicate matters even more, try stepping into the ScrumMaster role in place of an SM who was colocated with part of the team.  If that doesn’t seem challenging enough—try two Product Qwners working with the team.

Here is the question:

My Scrum team consists of 4 devs in San Diego and 3 devs and 2 POs remotely (I know, breaking a rule right there having 2 POs and multiple projects assigned to one team) The previous scrum master for our team was located in San Diego and was able to have actual facetime with the portion of the team 2 times a week on average. Tuesday for Daily Scrum and Wednesdays for Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective and Sprint Planning (and then off week's Daily Scrum and Backlog Refinement). While we do everything virtually (Sprint backlog, Product Backlog, screenshare ceremonies encouraging video (but not required)), it was something the team welcomed, it was a rallying day, and I believe allowed the SM a better check on the morale/heartbeat of over half the team - seeing them in person, having easier one on one time available if needed. I have now taken over as SM for this team and another team (other team is all remote and they never met in person regularly), so I'm wondering if you might have any suggestions to foster that same closeness, continue to keep a close pulse on the team and provide a safe environment for openness and collaboration while serving the team from across the country.

If you are curious about Jason Kelce’s speech at the Eagles parade, here you go:

• Uncensored version (NSFW)

If you’d like to contact Jessica you can reach her at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/jessica-wolfe/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

As organizations continue to grow and evolve in their practice of Agile, what they expect from Agile transformation coaches continues to evolve as well. Ten years ago, an Agile coach was someone who had enough experience working with Agile to help others pick up the basic habits and avoid some common mistakes. Today, we need a lot more.

In this episode of SoundNotes, Mike Cottmeyer talks with Dave Prior about how the needs and expectations of coaching have changed over the last 10 years. During the interview, Mike explains how LeadingAgile has evolved its understanding of the specific areas of skill and expertise the company needs to focus on when talking with transformation coaches during the interview process. Dave and Mike also discuss how coaches can address some of these gaps, and why it is so important to understand what type of coaching you are passionate about and how to leverage that.

If you’d like to contact Mike you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/mike-cottmeyer/

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

We frequently get questions from clients who are transitioning to Agile when they begin working through the challenge of determining which roles are the best fit for individuals in their organization. Since many of our clients begin their Agile journey by taking on Scrum, the question usually shows up as:

Who should I make a Product Owner and who should I make a ScrumMaster?

While there is no locked down definition of who should transition into what role, there are some standard patterns that appear across organizations. A lot of it though depends on how an organization views the individuals in those positions and what level of responsibility they are given by the company.

In this short video, Dave Prior, LeadingAgile’s resident Certified Scrum Trainer, offers some advice and guidance with respect to sorting out which individuals in your organization should move into a Product Owner role and who is a better fit for ScrumMaster.

CONTACTING DAVE

If you’d like to contact Dave you can reach him at:

• LeadingAgile: https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/

If you have a question you’d like to submit for an upcoming podcast, please send them to [email protected]

And if you are interested in taking one of our upcoming Certified Scrum Master or Certified Scrum Product Owner classes, you can find all the details at https://www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/