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Agile Gravy 2016

9/30/2016

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 I attended my second Agile Gravy conference on September 29, 2016. This year, I was a presenter along with my partner in crime, Maggie. We were fortunate to have been chosen, as I understand a lot of speakers were turned down. 

Keynote speaker: The keynote was the amazing Thiagi, of The Thiagi Group. The format was very free form, with a display of post-its on the screen containing topic suggestions, and Thiagi picking people at random out of the audience to choose a topic off the board or one of their own. There were a lot of nuggets of wisdom, including "It's failure only if you fail to learn from it." Prior to Thiagi's keynote, he sat at our table and we were able to share some jokes.

Agile Training: From Mundane to Mindblowing: This was the session I did with my cohort, Maggie. We have been working on this for a while, and it all came together so well. We had 57 people (standing room only) and everyone was engaged. We started off with a round of Ultimate Rock-Paper-Scissors, told our Monsanto training story, answered a whole bunch of questions, played Maggie's draw-guess game, and answered more questions. During the rock-paper-scissors, we were warned about the noise - everyone was having such a great time. It went extremely well, and we are basking in the memory of every moment! 


​Taming the Chaos: Bringing Agile to the Business with Little or No Process: I went to this one because, to me, "business" means customers. I wanted to know how to bring agile to customers. It was, in reality, "business" meaning a small business, probably IT. I was about ready to leave when Tom pulled out the Modern Agile wheel, and started talking about each section...however, he did it in an old PowerPoint, bullet point, lecture format which wasn't very modern. If we want people to understand something new, we have to present it in a new way. Everyone was excited about it and took photos and wrote down the initial info, but after a fashion, many left the room and I don't think they did so with a mind full of Modern Agile. I do think that Tom is an experienced and knowledgeable coach, and he believes in Modern Agile. The only feedback I have is to look at how you are presenting material, and see if it matches the material itself. 

Truth, Transparency and Trust: John Sextro is a likable guy, and I can't think of anyone who wouldn't trust him, and feel comfortable around him to be open and transparent. So, he already had the audience on board. Many were still skeptical about how they could instill trust in their organization, but I hope they found a few things to help them bridge the gap just a little bit.  John also went headlong into Modern Agile, but by helping the audience to understand the concepts first, and then giving them the link to find out more, which was a much more effective way to communicate that message. 

Zombie Kanban Game:: I am not sure I learned anything new about Kanban, but I had a heck of a good time. I collaborated with three people that I didn't know, and we had about 30 story cards with tasks ranging from doing a Rubik's Cube to getting the team names of all of the other teams. We blew up balloons, then popped them, used yard to establish trade routes, and built a tower with marshmallows and skewers. It was a great way to show some Kanban-like collaboration and dependencies. Awesome game - very clever!

Closing Keynote & Remarks: Mike Cottemeyer, CEO & Founder, Leading Agile LLC spoke to me directly, or at least it seemed like it, about organizational transformation.. It was so applicable to my current job that I was mesmerized.  He made very good points about being transparent to executives about what an agile transformation really is -- and that alone was worth the price of admission. 

Overall: Great time, awesome networking, good food, well run. Can't wait for next year!



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A Bunch of Cool Coach Quotes

8/24/2016

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“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.” 
― John Wooden

 “I have a rule on my team: When we talk to one another, we look each other right in the eye, because I think it's tough to lie to somebody. You give respect to somebody.“ ― Mike Krzyzewski

“The interesting thing about coaching is that you have to trouble the comfortable, and comfort the troubled” – Ric Charlesworth


“Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear” – John Madden

“Victory or defeat is not determined at the moment of crisis, but rather in the long and unspectacular period of preparation” – Anonymous

“Failure is never quite as frightening as regret” – Anonymous

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” -- Bobby Knight – Henry David Thoreau

“You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward.  But both those methods are only temporary.  The only lasting thing is self-motivation.” – Homer Rice

“My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team.” – Don Shula


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Modern Agile Made my Monday

8/22/2016

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It was a normal Monday morning, not much to speak of. I walked into the building and greeted the security officer: "How was your weekend?" "Too short!" A shared laugh, and I was on my way upstairs to catch a conference call, a couple of daily stand-ups, and a coaching circle gathering. When nobody showed up to the circle, I decided to watch a video that a fellow coach pointed me to. He hadn't even watched it yet, but the topic looked interesting: Modern Agile.

For the next 40 minutes, I was mesmerized as Joshua Kerievsky, CEO of Industrial Logic, gave his Agile2016 keynote on his invention, Modern Agile. For months, I'd been tortured by the idea that somehow, some way, Scrum and the Agile Principles could be leaned down, but just couldn't put my finger on how. Little did I know, Kerievsky had it all worked out before I even started wondering. 

Below is the Modern Agile spinner. No side is destined to remain on top, no side has precedence. He compared scrum and the agile manifesto/principles to an old laptop that looks just like mine (ouch!), and said it was time to put those old thoughts in in an agile senior home ("the food is great!").  I agree. 
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I immediately redesigned my Scrum/Agile Basics training around the four easy ideas above. No more will I walk through all twelve principles, explaining each on in detail to confused new hires. In the spirit of one of the discarded principles, the art of the work not done includes not having to make a "cheat sheet" for students so they can remember them. I'll post more as I used Modern Agile to lean my own processes, teams, and training. Stay tuned! This is just day one! 

https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/videos/modern-agile/

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If Agile Methods and Frameworks were car trips....

4/4/2016

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Inspired by Mike Vanier's If programming languages were cars... 

If you have suggestions for changes or additions, please send them to me! You will be credited. That's cool, right?

  • Adaptive software development (ASD) - A bunch of frat guys get together and decide where to go, then speculate how much money they'll need for both beer and gas. After they hit the first two bars, you'll see them on the side of the road thumbing for a ride.
  • Agile modeling - Document continuously until you have a 16-page whitepaper describing the entire trip, then decide that the Best Practice is to just leave the car in the garage.
  • Agile Unified Process (AUP) - You take your Grandpa's old '57 Ford out for a spin, but paste flames on the side to make it look cool. You go three miles before the car overheats and you have to push it the rest of the way.
  • Crystal Clear Methods - Car? We don't need no stinkin' car!
  • ​Kanban - A small team develops a car in small pieces. The work moves quickly across the board, where it all congregates in a junkyard heap waiting for someone to pick it up for testing.
  • SaFE - You and 1,000 of your closest friends take a road trip on a Greyhound Bus that has a Volvo logo pasted on it.
  • Scrum - Everyone works as a team to design the car in small increments, inspecting and adapting at the end of each city block. By the time you've travelled ten blocks, you realized that you are just going around in a big square.
  • Scrumban  - You decide that you're going to MapQuest your trip, but then you decide the directions are wrong, ignore all signs, swerve into the ditch and then blame MapQuest. 



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Disruptive Leadership - A Keynote from Jeff Sutherland

11/3/2015

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Last month, I had the privilege to be invited to speak at Agile Camp 2015 in Dallas, TX. Jeff Sutherland was the keynote, and it was an amazing presentation. You can see it, along with the back of my head, here:
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A Scrum Master Job Description

8/27/2015

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I just read an excellent blog post titled, "A Scrum Master Job Description," on one of my favorite blogs, Illustrated Agile. In it, Len Lagestee describes the role of a scrum master from the view of the team and the company, based on their needs rather than a checklist of to-dos.

Here is my favorite part:

Intentionally design resiliency.

  • You know how fast the world is changing and the way we work together today may be different tomorrow.
  • You understand that your team, because of how quickly things are changing, may be touching the fringe of chaos at times and you are comfortable with this.
  • You are a student of many frameworks, methodologies, approaches, concepts,and perhaps, cutting-edge organizational design ideas. This allows you to choose from a variety of techniques to help strengthen your team through the chaos.
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Things that Drive Me Crazy About "10 Things to Drive Your Scrummaster Crazy"

8/25/2015

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I recently came across an old blog post by Marc Loffler titled "10 Things to Drive Your Scrummaster Crazy." The "10 Things" seemed pretty innocuous to me...be late, hide impediments, do tasks that aren't part of the sprint backlog. All things that are not fatal, but a practice that the team could improve upon. I just kept focusing on the first line, "In my life as a ScrumMaster, I faced many things which drove me nuts."

As a ScrumMaster, one way to improve your own skills is to become so comfortable with your position that things don't drive you nuts, make you crazy, freak you out, or otherwise cause your blood pressure to rise. Relax. Breathe. It's only scrum.

In fact, I will counter with five ways to make sure that nothing a scrum team does will drive you nuts.

1. When you talk to your team, make sure that the first thing out of your mouth is a compliment or other positive statement. If you start right in with whatever it is that you think they are doing wrong, they will naturally be defensive. On the other hand, when you start with a positive statement, that reminds you that not all is lost - that there is success, even if they were late to stand-up today, or even tomorrow.

2. You don't have to tell them everything you see that can be improved. Like the breaking down of large stories, large changes in a team require attacking issues one small step at a time.

3. Learn to identify things that aren't your problem to solve. Loffler lists at least five things that aren't in the Scrum Master's realm of things they should be fixing, at least directly: work assignment, lateness, ignoring the definition of done, working on non-sprint tasks. If a developer says they don't have anything to do, it's the team's responsibility to help that person figure some things out. If an individual repeatedly can't figure out what to work on, then the training moment from the Scrum Master isn't to the individual, it's to the team on the importance of accountability and inclusiveness.

4. If something really bothers you, just mention it to the team...."I've noticed that...." and let it go. The team will either pick it up, or they will decide it's not important. That should be OK. If a team were required to fix everything that you didn't like, you'd be their project manager, not their Scrum Master.

5. Remind yourself of the Agile Principles. Encourage your team to know and love them. Set a good example. The details will come, if you help them feel the benefit of the overall picture.

Basically, relax and let go of the need to control.


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Watch Your Backlog

8/21/2015

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To muck up an old saying about watches: a team with one backlog always knows which item is the highest priority, a team with two backlogs is never sure.


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    I'm an Agile Coach and Scrum Master in St. Louis, MO. I also do improv theater and stand-up comedy around town. 

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbarakryvko

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