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Ari Tikka - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aritikka/ has a magic wand for team performance, just what this wand was took me by surprise.

Not because its actually magic but because it stands a pretty good chance of working because
1) its not actually magic
2) its based upon research
3) Ari has a rather special approach.

WHO IS ARI?
Ari provides coaching, training, and consultation for Agile Teams, Product Owners, Adoption Leaders, and executives. He has worked in the software business since 1990, including seven years of developing fault-tolerant embedded real-time systems.

WHAT IS IN THE EPISODE?

In this episode, Ari makes the case that, to achieve a great systemic, organisational performance a Team, regardless of size, is required. Focusing on 7+/-2 won't get us to where amazing performances are staged,  so we spoke about

🍄What is performance in a team context?
🍄Everyone knows there are two types of magic Harry Potter style (real) and Dynamo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_(magician) (not real). Which is Ari's?!
🍄What are group dynamics?
🍄What does Ari recommend when you get to more than around eight teams?
🍄What type of Teamwork and collaboration mode has Ari seen between Product Owners
🍄The problems with people who have never really experienced great teamwork leading and managing teams
🍄In small-scale software development, how does Ari see leadership being enacted?
🍄How the performance of the "smartest person" has held back our thinking on Teams
🍄 Why is it that in some organisations, the "aggressive whippers" (aka Project Managers who focus on Jira ticket management) get promoted?
🍄 Ben's complete ignorance as to what Zen meditation is was exposed (Ben: "turns out its inverse floating")
🍄Is a Requirement Area  - https://less.works/less/less-huge/requirement-areas in
If the enablers for Teamwork are the same for communities, so what are Ari's tips for getting a community working well?
 

USEFUL LINKS
Richard Hackman's books - https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/701345.J_Richard_Hackman
Teamwork and Rewarding, a blog post by Ari - https://gosei.fi/blog/teamwork-and-rewarding/
More info on Ari's approach - https://gosei.fi/teamwork/

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

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James Mayers is the Cofounder & former CEO, Mind the Product. I grabbed James for 10 minutes at the Product Elevation 2022 conference in Dublin to get his talk in Ten.

Now his talk wasn't titles the "Product Mentor" shortage, but I needed something pithy to put on the thumbnail and it seemed relevant to our conversation.

Here is the offical title and synopsis for his talk

How to build the best support for you AND your team
Product mentors are in short supply, leadership mentors even more so - and real experts are always time poor. This lightning session will run through tips, tactics and hacks to help you build the support networks you need

What James has to say on mentoring in the Product world was fascinating, thought provoking and  practically useful.

These descriptions are short, mostly because I am sat in the conference venue trying to keep the cycle time per episode nice and short :-)

Useful Links

• Jame's slides from  Product Elevation -https://www.slideshare.net/JamesMayes/building-support-for-product-people
• LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmayes/
• Twitter – https://twitter.com/James_Mayes

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

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Janna is a product manager, taking the forms of a startup founder and CEO, consultant, and accidental event manager.  As a product manager, she is always looking for better tools, which led to her founding ProdPad, product management software that helps you manage your roadmap and your product backlog.

Janna on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannabastow/

Continuing with the hugely popular "Talks in Ten" format Ben is at the Product Elevation Elevation 2022 conference in Dublin asking people to summarise their talk in ten minutes (ish)

This time up it is Janna Bastow, her talk was enlightening and this short interview is rammed with good tips.

Here is the overview of her talk (and this chat)

In this talk, Janna will look at modern road mapping best practices, including where lean road mapping came from and how to put it to use in your organization. You’ll learn practical tips on how to move away from old school feature and date-driven roadmaps, and how to move your team on to a leaner, more objective-focused track of product management using OKRs.

Brilliant links

The slides - https://bit.ly/lean-roadmapping-okrs
A safe place to play with Janna's Prodpad-  www.prodpad.com/sandbox
Prodpad- - www.prodpad.com/

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

Ben is at the Product Elevation Conference in Dublin and delivered an experimental talk on Product Team Coaching. TLDR: Its about how to increase Product Team Performance.

This talk was done live less that one hour before release, how's that for a low cycle time :-)

Product Elevation - https://skillsmatter.com/conferences/13772-pe2022-in-person#program

The slides are here - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gfV1UHp2ZFov3iFEfCmkcQoEchsEzI8w?usp=sharing


Why experimental? The slides were a bit out there and the content, perhaps a little different to what people were expecting!

Either way, it went down brilliantly. Enjoy!

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

**DISCLAIMER** This is my MOST POLITICAL PODCAST to date and goes deep on a HUGE failure of a HUGE project. It is an emotive topic for many so I want to make it clear that there were great people working long hours and nothing we say is aimed at any one person. It was, in my (Bens') opinion, a systemic failure with nothing to do with individual people.

Pardeep "Paddy" Dhanda - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-dhanda/,  Creative Industry Awards Best Content Creator nominee,  Agile Practices Director for the UKs largest technical training company QA picks up from where we left off in episode 1 to try and understand what could have been done to have made the £2 billion project less of a sh*t show.  Having been on benefits for half of his life, this was a  topic close to Ben's heart.

So what did we talk about?

✨ When people parent the truth away from the people doing the work.
✨ How the LeSS Huge Product Owner structure creates alignment
✨ With a project with such a strong purpose, why didn't people speak up?
✨Did the fact that consultancy firms had incumbent software give them too much power?
✨Would it have been possible for Universal Credit to have been a single Product with a single Product Backlog?
✨How competition between consultancy firms leads to feature/requirement land grabs, (much like corporate Cobra Paw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45oTvnqTmrc) where the desire was to be the richest, not do the right thing for the people of the UK.
✨Was there any approach that could have saved the project from disaster?
✨ The Sponsor employed Go See, so what on earth went wrong?

Some awesome links

🔗 Universal Credit, the UKs largest agile failure - https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=universal+credit+agile+failure
Pardeep's AWESOME podcast superpowers.school - https://superpowers.school
🔗 Seacom Enterprise Agility Conference - https://www.seacom.online/
🔗 Check out this Visual Thinking Webinar - https://info.qa.com/visual-thinking-superpowers-ondemand-webinar
🔗 Must Read book, shame on your if this is not on your bookshelf; Death March - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_march_(project_management)
🔗 Ben's RBS Case Study - https://less.works/case-studies/rbs?preferred_lang=jp
🔗 Who is IDS, he is probably quite a nice chap - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Duncan_Smith
🔗 What is IBS - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/irritable-bowel-syndrome-ibs/

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

Pardeep "Paddy" Dhanda - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-dhanda/,  Creative Industry Awards Best Content Creator nominee,  Agile Practices Director for the UKs largest technical training company QA and ex IBM'er tells us about what it was like working on the UKs largest ever (to date) agile failure the UK Department Of Work and Pensions (DWP) £2 billion Universal Credit Platform. Having been on benefits for half of his life, this was a  topic close to Ben's heart.

With around £1.12billion burnt on consultants, Paddy tells us what it was like working there and what he blieves were some of the biggest hurdles that lead to the DWP pulling the plug on all agile development for this delivery.

Sounds pretty unbelievable right? You can find more information from this great write up from Computer Weekly - https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240187478/Why-agile-development-failed-for-Universal-Credit

What is:

• Housing benefit - https://www.gov.uk/housing-benefit
• Council tax benefit - https://www.gov.uk/apply-council-tax-reduction

So what was explored?

💣 A whole new reason why component teams are created that I had never though of. 
💣How Paddy came from the UK's worst performing school to the UKs worst agile delivery
💣What was the human skill that was missing that caused it to be such a HUGE failure
💣 What do you get if you have 200 super intelligent consultants, what do you think they were optimising for? 
💣 Universal Credit was seen as the UKs Conservative  governments flagship agile programme, how did this contribute towards it's failure? 
💣 How you can you be totally agile when you have vendors handing large requirement documents they have spent years writing? 
💣 Why so many scenarios they had to implement couldn't be without them being discussed by the UK Government leaders
💣Do any agile approaches take into account the operational overhead created when technology is not the silver bullet? 
💣 What is and who were the "middle users"?

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

"The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay" - Henry Ford

Saloni had a seat at the table and could look people in the eye and help them directly with what they had to do. In her expeditions, did she find a way to make the contract game work?

If aviation and agile is your thing, then do contact Saloni.

Did Saloni's approach cause a lot of attrition? (The answer is yes, but not how you think)
Is it really better to train them and risk the leave rather than not doing that and risk their stay?

✔️Hear why Saloni thinks Business Agility is nonsense (and listen to this interview with Karim Harbott, author of the 6 enablers of business agility, to hear another side of the story)
✔️What can the Peter Parker principle teach us about how we or others lead an "agile transformation."
✔️In Saloni's big one, did they change the role descriptions for the senior people as well as the teams?
✔️What is Saloni's elevator pitch for LeSS (given that she has spent time in lifts with very, very senior people before...)
✔️What makes Saloni sad?
✔️What is happy attrition?
✔️Why agile isn't just values and principles anymore, it has morphed into something much scarier
✔️Ben makes a case for the Real Product Owners and why they should be senior
✔️And when Project Management is equally as senior pain begins, how has Saloni dealt with this in the past?
✔️Do you need magic project managers to make a supply and demand model work?
✔️Why do we still need Project Managers in big organisations as they begin to make agile work
✔️What is Ben on about with the Beer Game - Find out here
✔️Why do you need to be bi-lingual, speaking both corporate and agile speak?
✔️Why talking about adoption just messes things up
✔️What was the word never said in Saloni's last big LeSS-like usage?

As mentioned in this episode

• Jim Collins - Good to Great
• Tommy Caldwell - The Push -  A brilliant book about dedication and calculated risks
• LeSS Manager Job Description - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qqdHkJBWzVBwlKqdsFe-ZIRZQDwZPWYY-zJcBDnTP_o/edit?usp=sharing
• LeSS Scrum Master Job Description - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13HidyRQ4LlF5u-KXeZeqdEiqaWNWQ1U2xdc1_LRRD7o/edit?usp=sharing

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

Saloni Seth-Watkins has an agile experience that sets her apart from 99% of the agile crowd.

She's been a consultant at one of the BIG 5, helped build successful companies from the ground up, has the unique experience of using agile in the aviation industry AND also been Director of Performance & Talent at one of Europe's most recognisable big banks.

What did we talk about? Let's find out

🛫 Why good will and good intentions wont make you agile and how governance cna help. 💣💣SAY WHAT?!💣💣
🛫Should we have sympathy for the Managers 👿? How can we help make it possible for managers to be successful in a corporate environment when using LeSS?
🛫  Saloni gives us some solid advice on how to achieve a bubble and even break through it, reminds me of my my chat with John Coleman
🛫 Has the agile coach industry ended up being an outsourcing partner for peoples agile thinking?
🛫 Outcome, purpose, behaviours and interactions descriptions over Job Descriptions?
🛫How can you be MORE agile by reducing power and autonomy?
🛫 What can you do with 126 distinct technical "products" and a desire to be agile?
🛫 What 💡did Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) turn on for Saloni?
🛫 How LeSS is more than just Scrum
🛫 Are the agile Values the behaviours we would like to see?
🛫 What is the link between an organisation's and the ability for people to live these values?
🛫 Doe's technical excellence enables the application of the agile principles? And how can LeSS enable the the application of the values?
🛫 What do big organisations and coach tours have in common?

Useful Links

• LeSS Manager Job Description - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qqdHkJBWzVBwlKqdsFe-ZIRZQDwZPWYY-zJcBDnTP_o/edit?usp=sharing
• LeSS Scrum Master Job Description - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13HidyRQ4LlF5u-KXeZeqdEiqaWNWQ1U2xdc1_LRRD7o/edit?usp=sharing

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

Poor technical excellence means terrible quality software products. This low quality makes teams hate their work, so they leave. With high staff churn, baking in that quality becomes a useless endeavour.

Or does it?

Terry Yin is an Agile Software Development expert, trained and coached by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde for many years.

So when he told me he has a training course that simulates a company with 100% attrition, and yet the quality remains high, I honestly thought that he, too, was high.

It turns out Terry has spent 10 years crafting what is now called "LeSS In Action", which does what sounds impossible.  Creates teams that inherit a codebase, evolve it, release it and, guess what, maintain an incredibly high level of quality.

In this eye-opening episode, we explore:

 🧨Can you tell if the way the software is being created supports the organisational goal?
 🧨Does the PO have the right to ask everyone to work from Trunk to achieve CI?  And why would they bother?
 🧨What cant you tackle trunk-based development head-on with developers who don't or won't do it?
 🧨Can you describe what a good organisational structure would be to help achieve tech excellence
 🧨 What's better many teams working on many "high-priority epics" or many teams all working on one high-priority Epic.
 🧨Does being a feature team mean only working on one type of feature?
 🧨 Explore the course, which lets people see the organisational impact of great technical practices
 🧨 What happens when you use Specification By Example (SBE) across people with different native languages?

Use the Product being created in Terry's courses - https://doughnut.odd-e.com/
Terry Yin - https://less.works/profiles/terry-yin-1 at www.less.works
LeSS In Action: Developer Practices - https://less.works/course-details/less-in-action-developer-practices-singapore-2982 

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80 

Send us Fan Mail

Ravi Jay wins the competition for the most questions asked to me in one course. 

He had so many questions that I invited him onto the podcast so that we could finish them off.

He did not disappoint.

What makes Ravi's questions so interesting is that they are coming from a very practical and realistic frame of mind.

So when he asks about performance reviews, I don't respond with 

"In LeSS there are no performance reviews" 
or 
"in an agile environment we want continuous feedback not an annual ritual to share out of date news"

No, I was helpful and gave some valuable advice that can be applied with ease so we explored:

• In LeSS Huge how might rotating the APO and PO role help with performance
• How might a LeSS org think about career progression and competency improvement
• Why Career paths are flow and we should think more about a Mosaic's
• Clarity coming from Maturity
• And so much more....

Speaking of value,  during the conversation I mentioned some LeSS Job descriptions. These are just as good in an healthy agile environment as well as a LeSS one so enjoy!

• LeSS Scrum Master Job Description
• LeSS Manager Job Description

I also mentioned Saloni Seth-Watkin's (Candidate LeSS Trainer) talk from the LeSS conference 2021 where she spills the beans on LeSS needing More so here it is.

Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.  

Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱!

Ben Maynard

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/

🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard

💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ 

Product Agility Podcast 

🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 

💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/

🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility

Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes

• Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56
• iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p

Want to come on the podcast?

Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80