Agile Coaching Blog

This agile coaching blog has news & articles from BigVisible coaches and trainers. Find agile topics like Scrum and Kanban. Read about collaboration, communication, & enterprise agile. See hints for better daily meetings, retrospectives, and Scrum reviews. Learn about leading edge tools for lean startup and customer development. Discover information geared toward agile teams as well as leaders & executives.

We hope the information you find here will help your organization become more agile, adaptive, and innovative. Our goal is to help you delight your customers & succeed beautifully.

Agile Transformation: Go Faster, But Not for the Reason You Think

Posted By Alan Dayley on March 27, 2013
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A common reason people give for undergoing an agile transformation is that their projects will “go faster.” When most people think of faster they think of getting all the work done sooner. And they are not wrong to think that way. A recent industry survey [PDF] and other sources point to increased productivity as one of the benefits of agile practices. I do not dispute this but I’d like to look at faster from a different perspective. Agile practices pave the road, so to speak. It doesn’t matter how fast your car can go if you are driving on a dirt road.

Pave the Road to Agile Transformation

Magical Agile Transformations?

In this discussion I will focus on Scrum as the framework the team has chosen in order to become agile. Assume a team of good people is formed, trained in Scrum and starts Sprint 1. Suddenly the programmers can write code faster? Or the product owner can define features faster and tests are written and run faster? No, there is no magic. The reality is that most of the individuals on the team are just as fast at their usual tasks as they were before Scrum. Each individual, in fact, is probably not any faster at their specialized skill even after several sprints.

So, given that the individuals on the team are not actually faster, what is happening to make productivity go up? Or does it only look like productivity is up? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Transformation, Continuous Improvement
Tagged With: Agile Adoption, Agile teams, Agile Transformation, continuous improvement, organizational agility, scrum

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Enterprise Lean Startup: Part II – Measures for Learning

Posted By Brian Bozzuto on March 25, 2013
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One of the key differences between traditional agile approaches and Lean Startup practices is that agile places the highest level of value on working product, whereas Lean Startup will prioritize learning. As Ash Maurya observed, “The initial goal of a startup is to learn, not to scale.” This is not to denigrate building working product, but rather to properly emphasize that if we don’t know we’re doing the right thing, well then it doesn’t matter how much of that thing we can do.

Enterprise Lean Startup Measures for Learning

Enterprise Lean Startup & Learning

So, if learning is so important, how do we ensure we are learning? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Continuous Improvement, Enterprise Lean Startup, Lean Startup, Organizational Agility
Tagged With: continuous improvement, enterprise lean startup, Lean Startup, Metrics, organizational agility

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Intuition & Innovation in the Age of Uncertainty

Posted By Jim Elvidge on March 19, 2013
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“My [trading] decisions are really made using a combination of theory and instinct. If you like, you may call it intuition.” – George Soros

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you, and you don’t know how or why.” – Albert Einstein

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” – Albert Einstein

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs

Have you ever considered why it is that you decide some of the things that you do? Like how to divide your time across the multiple projects or activities that you have at work, how and when to discipline your kids, where to go and what to do on vacation, which car to buy?

The ridiculously slow way to figure these things out is to do an exhaustive analysis on all of the options, potential outcomes and probabilities. This can be extremely difficult when the parameters of the analysis are constantly changing, as is often the case. Such analysis is making use of your conscious mind.

The other option is to use your subconscious mind and make a quick intuitive decision.

uncertainty-intuition-innovation

We who have been educated in the West, and especially those of us who received our training in engineering or the sciences, are conditioned to believe that “analysis” represents rigorous logical scientific thinking and “intuition” represents new-age claptrap. Analysis good, intuition silly.

This view is quite inaccurate.

Intuition Leads to Quick, Accurate Decisions

According to Gary Klein, ex-Marine, psychologist, and author of the book “The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work,” 90% of the critical decisions that we make are made by intuition in any case. Intuition can actually be a far more accurate and certainly faster way to make an important decision. Here’s why… [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Transformation, Continuous Improvement, Enterprise Lean Startup, Lean Startup, Organizational Agility
Tagged With: Agile Transformation, decision-making, enterprise lean startup, Innovation, intutition, organizational agility

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ScrumMasters and Agile Transformation: Are We There Yet?

Posted By Carlos Buxton on March 13, 2013
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After you finished your first CSM class, you probably felt that the ScrumMaster role was pretty simple. Facilitate a few meetings, keep everyone true to Scrum—how difficult can it be? We’ve found that most people return from introductory Scrum training feeling like they can easily add a few ScrumMaster duties to their current responsibilities with little to no disruption.

What you have likely realized since serving as a ScrumMaster, however, is that the ScrumMaster role is far more complex and rich than you had originally envisioned. Although it can be done alongside other responsibilities, the ScrumMaster role takes a lot more expertise than just scheduling meetings and passing the CSM exam. The reality is that being an effective ScrumMaster is anything but easy. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Coaching, Agile Transformation, Scrum Roles
Tagged With: Agile Transformation, effective ScrumMaster, scrum, scrum coaching, scrummaster

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Enterprise Lean Startup: Lessons Learned from Entrepreneurs

Posted By Brian Bozzuto on March 12, 2013
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Thanks to the local user group, Agile New England, for the opportunity to speak there last month. It was a great opportunity to build on my introductory presentation about Enterprise Lean Startup. I spoke on a topic many organizations are interested in, how to apply the lessons of entrepreneurship and Lean Startup in the enterprise.

Enterprise Lean Startup Lessons You Can Learn

Some of the lessons organizations can take from startups include: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Presentations, Enterprise Lean Startup
Tagged With: enterprise lean startup, lean startup in the enterprise, lean startup presentations

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Personal Kanban: Week One, Dysfunction Goes to Eleven

Posted By Dave Prior on March 7, 2013
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Editor’s note: One of our agile coaches and Scrum trainers, Dave Prior, has been keeping a log of his experience using Kanban to manage his own work. You can follow his adventures every other week on our blog.

When this experiment started one of my goals for the first time box/iteration was just to see if I could actually give up my Things task list and follow the practice with a board. I had tried a number of other productivity frameworks and found that only pieces of them stuck. (Someday someone will write on a book on how to finish David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” book and I’ll actually get all the way through it.) And while I know that limiting work in progress is a cornerstone of this type of approach, and I did set WIP limits, I decided to be a little loose with the limits since I was just guessing at what they should be.

Because my larger plan is to test out different approaches to Personal Kanban, I wanted to start as simply as I could manage. I created a task board and began to fill it with post-its. The first lesson I learned was that I had far too much in my to do list to fit on my Kanban board. I decided to limit it to the things that seemed to be the most important at the time.

The Architect of My Own Demise

The most basic way to set up my board would have been to create three columns: On Deck, Doing and Done. I know this. However, when I sat down to work on it, I began struggling with how I would be able to visually understand the different types of things I had to do. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Experience from the Field, Kanban, Project Management
Tagged With: Agile Project Management, Kanban, personal kanban, Project Management

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Agile Transformation and IT Operations in The Phoenix Project

Posted By Tom Looy on March 6, 2013
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This blog is intended to help you determine whether The Phoenix Project would enable you (or someone in your organization) to better understand how vital IT Operations is to an agile transformation. I do not intend this as a book review (but needless to say I think it’s a really good book).

Overview: IT Operations Meets Agile Transformation

Written in business-fable format, much like Eli Goldratt’s The Goal, The Phoenix Project takes the reader through one IT Operations team’s discovery process of how to deliver greater business value to the business. The journey takes the team through the discovery of how Lean manufacturing and Theory of Constraints principles apply first to the value stream within the group, then globally within IT. The discovery process eventually leads the team to specifically align its work to the organization’s business goals.

Erik, the Socratic style “Jonah” coach in The Phoenix Project, summarizes the concepts as The Three Ways: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Teams, Agile Transformation, Enterprise Agile, Organizational Agility
Tagged With: Agile Books, Agile Transformation, IT Operations

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Agile Accountability

Posted By Skip Angel on March 5, 2013
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This was a great week at BVCon, our bi-annual company gathering where we build relationships, show experiences, and learn from each other. These events are core to our values and success, as it brings our virtual company together not only physically but also emotionally. While I have always enjoyed and treasure this time together, in past events I have felt something was missing. While we would have awesome discussions and a fun time, little would happen after the events. We would essentially go back to our real world with our clients and continue with our lives as coaches. Sure, we would come back refreshed and energized, but there were few tangible results that we could take back and use.

Is Agile Accountability an Oxymoron?

This year’s theme was around accountability, a topic that is difficult for leaders to talk about, especially those that have embraced agile principles. Why? Because many leaders believe that accountability resembles command-and-control leadership. A manager tells you to be accountable, instead of allowing you to be empowered and self-organize with the rest of your team. I have heard some say in the agile world that management is not needed for true accountability; instead, the team members should hold each other accountable for their success.

BigVisible & Agile Accountability

For a long time, the only goal our BigVisible leadership team gave us was to “be awesome.” They felt that to be more specific might put structure or constraints in place that would be stifling. As coaches, we felt great to have complete power over our destiny. No rules, no guidelines, just do your best and help our clients. Should be enough, right? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Coaching, Agile Transformation, Enterprise Agile, Leadership, Organizational Agility
Tagged With: agile accountability, agile leaders, Agile Transformation, catalyst leader

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Team Building the BigVisible Way

Posted By BigVisible on March 1, 2013
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Each day, our agile coaches are focused on client issues, helping to spot and solve the impediments and barriers to agile implementations. But once in a while, these same coaches stop what they are doing and recharge their collective batteries at BVCon.

BVCon is our name for our company retreat, a time for team building where coaches, staff, trainers, and a few lucky guests gather to learn, laugh, and lean on each other. As one coach put it, “It helps to remember that as I leave here to return to my engagement, I have each one of you behind me, ready to support me.”

Team Building Day 1

This year’s BVCon started with some tribal story telling, a brief look at where we began, what we’ve accomplished, how we’ve struggled, and what we hope to accomplish in the future. It included a call to action, a rallying cry for us to band together toward some company objectives and help achieve some lofty goals. Amidst the facts and figures were anecdotes that made us laugh and look back with nostalgia. The evening concluded with card games, billiards, quiet talks, and walks by the ocean.

BigVisible Team Building by the Ocean

BigVisible Team Building at Play

Team Building Days 2 & 3

Days two and three [Read more...]

Filed Under: Agile Teams
Tagged With: agile retreat, agile team building, company retreat, corporate team building

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Rise of the Lean Executive

Posted By David Bland on February 20, 2013
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“No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it.” – Peter Drucker

Drucker has passed on, but fortunately for us his ideas have not.

Corporate executives are turning to books like The Lean Startup for ideas on how to keep their organizations relevant. (I know because I see the growing demand for it in our work)

Lean Executive

They are frustrated and under an enormous amount of pressure. Not only do executives have to worry about other large and mid-sized companies, but now even startups, seemingly come out of nowhere to take away market share.

Executives are discovering it isn’t enough to encourage practices such as building Minimum Viable Products to create meaningful change in their organizations.

Smart executives realize that to win the game, their organizations need to discover, learn, and act quicker than the competition.

I call these executives, Lean Executives. [Read more...]