Product Agility

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⚠️⚠️THIS PODCAST COMES WITH A WARNING⚠️⚠️

It's not because we explain "Why to start small when beginning a transformation journey"

Oh No (I feel that I should have edited it a bit more really)

So what you get is (for the first little while)

🎯Ben's run-in with one member of a UK 1980s Comedy Duo
🎯Nisha & Diana Ross
🎯Barry White's dubious lyrics  - "We got it together didn't we?, We've definitely got our thing together, don't we baby?, Isn't that nice?"
Nice? Is that the best you had Barry?!
🎯Short runways 🛬

THEN you get the agile gold:

🎯Why transformation blueprints (📘) are rubbish and belong in the 🗑️
🎯How you can test the organisational fitness for agility
🎯Why mimicking starting conditions is cool
🎯What makes teams slower when making changes (small and large)
🎯What's the sales pitch for starting small?


Stuff that was mentioned

• Ben's delivery space podcast episode on SAFe Vs LeSS
• Chain Reaction by Diane Ross
• Everyones a Winner by Hot Chocolate
• First My Last My Everything by Barry White

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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Nisha Joshi and I have been friends for a while and that chemistry seeps out of this podcast by the bucket load (IMO)

We went straight in there with a meaty (or non-meat substitute) question "how do we determine a client's readiness for agile", not to blow our trumpet but we smashed it.

So if you want to find out:

🎺What Nisha's Arnold Schwarzenegger impression sounds like
🎺Did a Certified LeSS Basics course give Nisha the tools for surviving the pandemic
🎺What can we learn about those that we help that will help us to help them?
🎺What are the questions you should seek to be answered?
🎺If you are assessing readiness, why? For you or for them?
🎺What happens when there isn't a readiness fit?
🎺If you are coaching a team or forming any partnership, why we should avoid thanking each other.
🎺How to use the Scheinder culture model
🎺 What's an easy way to find out what people's values are?


Stuff I said I would put in the show notes:

• Propensity
• The Value Cards I mentioned
• The Schneider Culture Model

Stay up-to-date with us on our social medias!

Ben Maynard - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev

Nisha Joshi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishajoshi1 

LeSS Matters Website - https://www.lessmatters.co.uk 

LeSS Matters LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/less-matters-community/?viewAsMember=true 

LeSS Matters Twitter - https://twitter.com/LeSSMattersComm 

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

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

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

Products here, products there, products are seemingly everywhere. 

And this is part of the problem.

SAFe (The Scale Agile Framework) would seem to imply that a Product could be anything because there is no limit of the number of Product Owners you can have (well one per team, but you get the sentiment). 

This is wrong and its a problem if you really want to be able to adapt quickly and cheaply.

In this episode I want to explain a meaningful way of perceiving a Product, one which doesn't over empower teams, slow you down and quite simply, break Scrum

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

In an ideal world, a company would make the transition to #agile and we would all embrace flat structures and embody the roles as defined in the #scrum and #LeSS framework.

But organisations don't transform overnight. The traditional style of management and project management has been around for over 100 years and it is deeply entrenched in most organisations.

As much as we would love companies to embrace the 21st century style of working, the truth is that we have to integrate the old with the new in order to make progress in our quest for true Business Agility.

So, where do managers fit into the equation?

The #scrumguide doesn't make mention of line management nor does it make clear what role managers play in nurturing and developing a #scrum environment.

And yet, managers exist in many of the organisations we work with, and they have a valuable if not crucial role to play in creating environments where people can excel and thrive.

#LeSS expert and certified #coach, Ben Maynard, walks us through the role of a manager in a Large Scale Scrum environment.

Ben has deep experience and expertise in #LeSS environments has been and has worked with both teams and managers to ensure successful and productive #LeSS adoptions around the world.

Ben understands the enthusiasm with which #scrum is adopted and balances that dogmatic approach with a far more pragmatic approach to integrating traditional and #scrum working environments.

In this short video, he shares his thoughts and recommendations for empowering managers to play a crucial role in helping teams to create and develop products and features that truly delight customers.

#agile #scrum #largescalescrum #management #projectmanagement #productdevelopment

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

I (Ben here) have never really enjoyed telling me what to do.

It has served me well over the years by gifting me with a very enjoyable, zig zagging career path and the freedom to spend time with the people that I love the most.

Why am I saying this?

Because Large Scale Scrum has played a ginormous part in the journey, not by telling me, in detail, what I should do. Rather it has provided me with some principles, challenging ideas and a community that have helped me to help others really push the boundaries of what they thought was possible with multi-team agile but in a way that worked (and still works) for them.

Perhaps from this you can infer where I am going with this and perhaps why I prefer LeSS over SAFe, if you spend 5 minutes of your time listening to this episode I will give you some the benefit of my years and perhaps even change your opinion of SAFe (or LeSS) a little. 

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

Welcome to part 2! This is the best 2nd episode for one LeSS Trainer conversation we have ever published!! (and the first ;-) ) 

Last time we spoke about Potty Training (or at least I did), in part two we cover the remaining LeSS Trainer questions and also cover some of these tasty topics:

• Learn how Jurgen and Ben work through their differences when they disagree on Ben’s desire for LeSS to be more popular
• Should LeSS be mainstream, and if not why not?
• Find out what Ben is thinking about for the LeSS Matters Christmas Specials
• Do people want LeSS or simply multi-team Scrum and what's the difference?
• What does it take to push Jurgens boundaries?
• Is Scrum Master and Agile coaching a role or an industry?
• Is a Scrum Master and Agile Coach?
• FOMO is driving agile transitions leading to top-down change efforts

These are the LeSS Trainer questions we covered:

• What’s the one thing, above all others, you love about LeSS?
• What was your favourite LeSS adoption?
• If you could change one thing about LeSS what would it be?

Agile In General

• What is something in the agile world that should have been more popular? 
• Following on from this, what is going to be the next big thing?

A lot of extra stuff was mentioned, here are some links I promised and others I did not:

• The Land that Scrum forgot
• Coaching Supervision
• ICF and EMMC Team Coaching
• ICF Codes of Ethics
• Any academic research for coaching effectiveness
• Software craftsmanship and testing community Belgium
• Sandro Mancuso - Codeurance
• Bas’s Tech excellence talk from the LeSS conference 2021
• Jurgens LeSS Matters talk - All the Acronyms Shared
• Miro
• Mural
• Jurgen LinkedIn

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

You often find that newly minted #scrummasters are incredibly enthusiastic about the idea that #projectmanagers don't have the same kind of authority or power as they do in a traditional #projectmanagement environment.

For the true die-hard evangelists, there is no place for project managers in #scrum environments or #agile frameworks whatsoever. Something which doesn't go down very well with project managers.
So, what do we do with project managers?

For anyone who has worked with great project managers, you will know that they are passionate about creating products and features that truly delight customers. They are incredible people with the valuable skill set of being able to build relationships and keep project stakeholders on board through each element of the #project they manage.

Why does #scrum not value these individuals? Why do agile frameworks not make provision for the amazing skillsets and passionate drive of these individuals?

Truth is, they do.

#agile is both a culture and mindset that truly values people. It prioritises people over processes and seeks to create environments where individuals and teams can excel, people with great project management skills, given the right support can be true advocates for this.

In this short video, #LeSS coach and #trainer Ben Maynard walks us through the role of a project manager in an agile environment. If you're a project manager thinking about using the Scrum framework, at scale, that lives in the real world rather than dogma you're going to love this.

Visit https://www.sheev.co.uk for more information on Ben Maynard and how we can work with you on your project management and product development needs.

Find us on socials:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/less-matters-community 
Twitter - https://twitter.com/LeSSMattersComm 
Skillsmatter -https://skillsmatter.com/groups/10964-less-matters

Thank you for watching! Subscribe for more. 

#agile #scrum #LeSS #largescalescrum #projectmanagement #productdevelopment #certifiedlesspractitioner #agilecoach #lesscoach #agiletrainer #projectmanager

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

How does Jurgen greet CEO's in an elevator?

By saying  "Do you also find that this is a real mess out here!?"  An unorthodox approach perhaps, but the way he delivers it must be heard!

In this episode, Your Chief Simplification Officer, Jürgen De Smet and host Ben Maynard got along very well, almost too well as they ended up speaking for almost 2 hours. 

Brilliant conversation, too long for a podcast so we have split this into two parts.

This is Part 1 and in it, you can:

• How organisational change is like potty training a child (clue, it can be quite messy if you do not do it well)
• Find out the key to creating an effective elevator pitch
• Hear about how to balance the LeSS Adoption principle of Deep and Narrow in a 5000 person organisation where everyone is to be agile
• Learn about 4 different types of complexity that need to be addressed when simplifying your organisation
• Here about how LeSS does work with distributed teams (as well as co-located)
• Discover if LeSS is suitable for people who cannot yet think within the agile or LeSS principles and if not what are their options.
• Discover if you can ever say you have truely "Done" a LeSS Adoption
• Find out what Jurgen thinks of PMBOK and Prince 2 Agile
• Learn why you should not base LeSS useage decisions on conversations and what you should do instead
• Find out how Jurgen priototises his work to give him energy, not take it away
• Discover what kaikaku is

Seeing as we spoke for so long, in this episode we covered the following questions About LeSS

1. What is your elevator pitch for LeSS?
2. Did you choose LeSS or did LeSS choose you?

Stuff that was spoken about

Kaikaku
Jurgen de Smet: From idea towards a LeSS kaikaku @LeSS Day Europe 2020 (Scrum Ukraine)

LeSS Case Studies

Agfa
Base Company
Ysoft
Federal Pension Service in Belgium (SFPD)

How Does Jurgen optimise his energy?
By understanding what he doe's with one of these

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