On Agile scaling in Dutch magazine Managersonline

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I’ve had the occasion to publish an introduction to the subject of Agile scaling in Managersonline.nl, a leading Dutch management website. Click if you can read Dutch!

I’ve covered the basics of the SAFe, DAD and LESS approaches, as well as agile42’s own Enterprise Transition Framework™ (ETF). This draws from the FAQ page on scaling you can found on this site as well, ETF with SAFe, DAD and large frameworks.

Managersonline.nl

Sponsoring ProductCamp Berlin 2014

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We are very proud to announce that after a successful ProductCamp in Vancouver with Dave Sharrock and Andrea Tomasini we are happy to support and sponsor ProductCamp Berlin 2014. It is the first and only unconference for product managers, product marketing managers, entrepreneurs and others with passions for product, online and IT, in the German capital.

ProductCamp Berlin

They expect 200 participants, and following the Barcamp idea of “no attendees, only participants”, they will actively engage in a day of workshops, discussions, networking and learning.

ProductCamp Berlin will take place at Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS on Saturday September 13th. Unfortunately registration is sold-out at the moment but you can join the waiting list.

Agile2014 session on Smart Scaling: Finding the right approach for Enterprise Agile

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Are you looking for answers on scaling Agile but finding it hard to get unbiased information on the different options that are available? Well, this is the place to start that discovery!

This highly anticipated session is intended to help you answer the question: What is the right scaling approach for our organization?

We’ll explore the major scaling options together. We’ll help you understand some of the key differentiators and criteria for choosing an approach (or rolling your own!). After a quick overview of the major scaling frameworks, we’ll present the concept of the Agile Scaling Knowledgebase (ASK) and decision matrix – an evolving tool for evaluating and selecting the right approach(es) for your organization.

We expect to have a lively discussion but we’ll avoid any framework-specific cheerleading or bashing. We’ll instead elicit questions and insights that help drive decision-making and/or improvement. This will be a highly interactive session where participants will be encouraged to share their experiences, perspectives and questions on the topic. 

Together, we will come to insights that may help you make sense of the various approaches or frameworks and determine the best approach for scaling agility in your organization.

For more insight into this topic, check out our recent Q&A with InfoQ.

No

Doing No Better

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Companies doing agile transformations must empower their development teams or Product Owners to say no.

 

No is important, it is also very final. It implies that you can’t have whatever it is that you want. That is not an answer that Product Owners, trying to keep customers happy can go back to their customers or bosses with. 

 

Here are some ideas on better ways to have those conversations.

 

Team Capacity:

 

What does this have to do with not saying no?

 

Helping stakeholders to understand the impact of adding work to a full system is a valuable way to start this conversation. In this instance, the conversation must be about when this feature can be delivered in relation to what the team is already busy with. 

 

Evaluating how important the new project or feature is versus what the team is already busy with is another way. 

 

Understanding the impact of changing direction mid product is also a valuable conversation to have. Every new feature or product added to a backlog means one that doesn’t get completed right now. Making sure that you are focusing on the right features and that everyone understands the impact of changing those features is a very valuable way to start an important conversation.

 

Feature Value:

 

Features and projects are often pushed into teams without a real estimation of, or a way to measure their value. If we as Product Owners understand the value of each of the features we need to deliver, at least in a rough and estimable way, then making decisions about what is important and having conversations about what is and isn’t going to get done now is much easier.

 

The Rubbish bin:

 

I recently moved, and I had to pack up much of my house. The result was that it was a great time to purge. Anything that I hadn’t looked at or used in the past six months or year had the potential to go in the “throw it” pile. I have seen software backlogs that could use the same heuristic. 

 

Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, but if something is constantly being sent to the back of the backlog, how important is it. Understanding the value and the impact of that feature will aid in getting it moved up the list. If we can’t measure or understand that value in some way, it’s time to send it to the rubbish bin. The ‘we aren’t going to do that pile’. 

 

In essence, there are many ways to say No, and we need to find the most useful way to do that. We as development teams and Product Owners need to use the information that we have. We need to have valuable conversations about what is possible and what is not. And we need to use that information effectively to address the fears and concerns of the business and our customers. 

 

No is a very final statement, finding useful ways to say, not right now or is this the most valuable thing we should be doing is a more effective way of having this conversation.

Photo by Gemma Evans on Unsplash

Webinar recording: Measuring the Success of Your Agile Transformation

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In the first segment of this webinar , part of the Thought Leadership Webinar Series, coach Brad Swanson together with Aaron Smith, editorial director of ProjectsAtWork, have discussed pro tips for using agile metrics to measure the success of your transformation. Topics included:

  • Starting with ‘why’ – creating urgency for your agile transformation by articulating the reasons change is necessary
  • Defining the key success factors in your change initiative
  • Leading and lagging indicators of success, including examples from many successful transformations
  • Avoiding unintended consequences and dysfunction that often arise from ill-chosen metrics

Brad touches a number of subject including the usage of an Agile Strategy Map, part of our methodology the Enterprise Transition Framework™.

Here are the slides of the webinar that took place Thursday June 19th.

All videos from Lean Kanban Southern Europe 2014

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Lean Kanban Southern Europe 2014 has been a great success in Bologna on May 30th. A packed room of attendees that gathered in the Italian town to listen to the top presenters of the Lean and Kanban movement – and they also played Kanban Pizza Game with agile42 coaches!

agile42, as the organising sponsor of the event, has produced video recordings of all session that you can watch here (using a YouTube playlist) or in a specific page together with slides.

Agility meets regulatory compliance

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How can we reconcile the light touch approach of Agile development teams to the governance and information security requirements such as Data Privacy and Regulatory Compliance? At the IBM Innovate event in Orlando I discussed how to bring together the apparently conflicting needs of information security and Agile, and showed by example how Agile teams actually approach tough regulatory requirements and good governance.